Allcorn-Kokemoor Farmstead
Brenham, Washington County, Texas
Marker Inscription
ELIJAH ALLCORN IMMIGRATED TO TEXAS IN LATE 1821 WITH HIS WIFE, NANCY (HODGE), AND THEIR SIX CHILDREN AS “OLD 300” SETTLERS IN STEPHEN F. AUSTIN’S COLONY. ON JAN. 1, 1822, A GROUP INCLUDING ALLCORN CAMPED ALONG A BRAZOS RIVER TRIBUTARY WHICH THEY NAMED NEW YEAR CREEK. ALLCORN WAS GRANTED LAND IN CURRENT WASHINGTON, WALLER AND FORT BEND COUNTIES, INCLUDING A PARCEL ALONG NEW YEAR CREEK. HE WAS A FARMER, STOCKRAISER AND FREIGHT HAULER, BRINGING GOODS TO SETTLERS FROM THE FERRY ESTABLISHED AT WASHINGTON-ON-THE-BRAZOS IN 1835. HE ALSO SIGNED THE PETITION REQUESTING ESTABLISHMENT OF THE WASHINGTON MUNICIPALITY. ELIJAH AND NANCY DIED NINE DAYS APART IN 1844. THEIR SON THOMAS JEFFERSON ALLCORN, HIS WIFE AMEY (CAPLE) AND THEIR CHILDREN LIVED HERE FROM THE 1840s to 1870s. ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF ARTIFACTS AND TIMBERS DATES THE OLDEST SECTION OF THE MAIN HOUSE, A TWO-STORY I-PLAN OF BRACE-FRAME CONSTRUCTION, TO c. 1845. A TWO-STORY WING WAS ADDED IN 1877, BY THE WILKINS OR SAMUEL FAMILIES. IN SEP. 1887, OSCAR SAMUEL SOLD THE HOUSE TO HENRY KOKEMOOR FOR $6,100. HENRY MARRIED FRIEDA HOLLE IN 1887 AND BOUGHT THE PROPERTY WITH FINANCIAL HELP FROM HIS FATHER-IN-LAW. THE KOKEMOORS MADE SEVERAL ADDITIONS, INCLUDING A KITCHEN WING AND A MOTHER-IN-LAW ROOM IN THE 1890s. A FINAL ADDITION WAS MADE IN THE 1950s. THE PROPERTY REMAINED IN THE KOKEMOOR FAMILY FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY. EXTERIOR HOUSE FEATURES INCLUDE PROJECTING WINGS, AN L-SHAPED PORCH, METAL-CLAD GABLED ROOFS, WOOD SIDING, AND A VARIETY OF DOORS AND WINDOWS. SIMPLE FINISHES, SUCH AS PAINTED TONGUE AND GROOVE CEDAR AND LONGLEAF PINE WALL AND CEILING BOARDS, DISTINGUISH THE INTERIORS. HISTORIC OUTBUILDINGS AND STRUCTURES, BUILT BETWEEN 1890 AND 1930, INCLUDE A ROCK AND BRICK CISTERN, A BARN, GARAGE, TWO WELLS AND TWO SHEDS. THE HOMESTEAD REPRESENTS EVOLUTION FROM A FORMAL FLOOR PLAN TYPICAL OF THE MID-19TH CENTURY TO A COMPOUND PLAN AND CONTINUING AGRICULTURAL USE INTO THE 20TH CENTURY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Elijah Allcorn arrived in Stephen F. Austin's colony in late 1821 as one of the "Old 300," the first legal Anglo-American colonists in Mexican Texas, and helped name New Year Creek while camping on its banks on New Year's Day 1822. His family farmed, raised stock, and hauled freight to the frontier settlements clustered around Washington-on-the-Brazos. The main house, dated to about 1845, passed through the Allcorn, Wilkins, Samuel, and finally Kokemoor families, who held it for more than a century and layered on wings, a cistern, barns, and sheds that trace a farmstead's slow growth into the 20th century.
Why it matters
The farmstead preserves the full arc of Texas colonization — from an Old 300 land grant to a working German-American farm — in a single evolving cluster of buildings.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The story of this farmstead begins at the very first chapter of Anglo-American settlement in Texas. In the early 1820s, Texas was still part of newly independent Mexico, and an empresario named Stephen F. Austin had won permission to bring in a set number of families to colonize the land. The earliest of these families became known as the "Old 300" — the first legal Anglo-American colonists in the region.
The country they entered was open, well-watered, and largely unmarked by fences or towns. Settlers spread out along the creeks and tributaries feeding the Brazos, choosing spots with good soil and reliable water. Naming those creeks, clearing the ground, and hauling in supplies were the first acts of turning wilderness into a working landscape.
Over the following decades this corner of Washington County would pass through the whole sweep of nineteenth-century Texas — from a Mexican-era land grant, through the cotton economy and the upheavals of Civil War and Reconstruction, into a settled farming community reshaped by German immigrants in the Gilded Age.
People & events
Elijah Allcorn arrived in late 1821 with his wife, Nancy, and their six children, among the very first of Austin's colonists. On the first day of 1822 his party camped along a Brazos tributary and gave it the name it still carries — New Year Creek — one of those small, human moments when a place first enters the historical record. Allcorn received land across what are now several counties and set to work as a farmer, stockraiser, and freight hauler, carrying goods to settlers from the ferry at Washington-on-the-Brazos and adding his name to the petition asking for the founding of the Washington municipality.
Elijah and Nancy died within nine days of each other in 1844, and the property carried on through their son, Thomas Jefferson Allcorn, and his family, who lived here from the 1840s into the 1870s. The oldest part of the main house — a two-story, I-plan home of brace-frame construction — dates to about 1845, a rare survivor of the family's early years.
Then the story turns, as so much of central Texas did, toward its German immigrants. In 1887 Henry Kokemoor bought the house for $6,100, with help from his father-in-law, in the same year he married Frieda Holle. The Kokemoors added a kitchen wing, a mother-in-law room, cisterns, barns, and sheds, and kept the place in the family for more than a century — a working farm that simply kept growing.
Its place in the American story
Few places let you watch the American frontier turn into a settled homeland as clearly as this one. The Allcorns were part of the first wave of legal Anglo-American settlement in what was then Mexican territory — a colonization experiment that would eventually help pull the whole region into the United States. That an original "Old 300" grant is still legible in the ground and in a house from around 1845 is remarkable in itself.
The farmstead also tells the second great chapter of Texas settlement: the arrival of German immigrant families who, from the mid-1800s onward, put down deep roots across the central Texas prairies and Hill Country. The passing of this land from an Anglo pioneer family to the Kokemoors mirrors that larger demographic shift in miniature.
And in its sprawl of wings, sheds, cisterns, and barns, the property preserves something Americans rarely get to see intact — not a single frozen moment, but the slow, layered evolution of one family farm across more than a hundred years of continuous use.
If you visit
Approach this as a place to read rather than simply to look at. The buildings are a timeline you can walk: start with the oldest two-story core from around 1845, then notice how a later wing, a kitchen addition, a "mother-in-law" room, and a final mid-twentieth-century piece were grafted on as families and needs changed.
Let your eye drop to the humble details — a rock-and-brick cistern, the barn and sheds, the two wells — the ordinary infrastructure of a farm that had to catch its own water and shelter its own animals. Inside, the simple finishes of painted tongue-and-groove cedar and longleaf pine speak to practical, hardworking taste rather than showy wealth.
It makes a satisfying stop on a Washington County history drive, especially paired with the region's other early-settlement and German-heritage sites. Stand back far enough to take in the whole cluster at once, and you're looking at the full arc of Texas colonization compressed into a single, still-standing farmyard.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Elijah Allcorn
- · Nancy Hodge Allcorn
- · Thomas Jefferson Allcorn
- · Henry Kokemoor
- · Frieda Holle Kokemoor
Related events
- · Settlement of Stephen F. Austin's colony
Themes & tags
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