Homesite (Point Pleasant) of William Scott
Baytown, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A native of Virginia, William Scott (1784-1837) was a planter, merchant, and stockraiser in his native state and in Kentucky, where he relocated about 1806. He and his family moved briefly to Louisiana in the early 1820s before coming to Texas with Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists in 1824. He received a headright grant of land at this site on the east bank of the San Jacinto River and named the home he built here Point Pleasant. A great supporter of Texas independence from Mexico, Scott served in 1835 as captain of the Lynchburg Volunteers, a local militia company. Point Pleasant was a stopping place for many revolutionary-era pioneers, including Lorenzo de Zavala, first vice-president of the Republic of texas; and Emily Austin Bryan Perry, sister of Stephen F. Austin. Married in Virginia to the former Mary Hanna, Scott was the father of five children. Following his death in 1837 and Mary's death in 1840, Point Pleasant was inherited by their daughter, Sarah Scott Williams. After her death in 1860 the property was sold out of the family. Point Pleasant is believed to have been destroyed by a hurricane sometime after the Civil War.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Virginia-born planter William Scott came to Texas in 1824 as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists, taking a headright on the San Jacinto River and naming his home Point Pleasant. A backer of independence who captained the Lynchburg Volunteers in 1835, Scott made his house a waystation for revolutionary-era figures like Lorenzo de Zavala and Austin's sister, Emily Perry.
Why it matters
The homesite marks the earliest wave of Anglo-American colonization of Mexican Texas, the settlement that would soon fuel the drive for independence and the Republic.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1820s, Texas was the far northeastern edge of a newly independent Mexico. Mexico had won its independence from Spain in 1821 and inherited a vast, thinly settled borderland. To populate it and create a buffer against raids and foreign ambitions, the government allowed empresarios to bring in settlers under contract. Stephen F. Austin was the first and most famous of them.
Austin's first colonists came to be remembered as the "Old Three Hundred." Most were Anglo-Americans from the southern United States, and they took up generous land grants along the rivers of the coastal plain. In return they became Mexican citizens, at least on paper. Land was the great lure. Back in the United States, it was increasingly expensive and hard to get after the financial panic of 1819.
The lower San Jacinto River, where this homesite stood, was a country of bayous, prairies and timbered riverbanks near the upper reaches of Galveston Bay. Water was the highway. Boats and ferries tied the scattered homesteads together long before there were real roads.
By the mid-1830s, tensions between the colonists and Mexico's central government were boiling over. The dispute involved immigration, slavery, trade, and the centralization of power in Mexico City. In 1835 it turned into open revolt. The land around this site, near where Buffalo Bayou meets the San Jacinto, would soon become the stage for the revolution's decisive battle.
People & events
William Scott did not come to Texas as a young adventurer. He was a man in his forties with a family and years of experience as a planter, merchant and stockraiser, first in his native Virginia and then in Kentucky. After a brief stay in Louisiana, he joined Austin's colony in 1824. That timing made him one of the Old Three Hundred, the founding generation of Anglo Texas.
Scott received a headright grant on the east bank of the San Jacinto River and built a home he named Point Pleasant. The name hints at how he saw the place: a promising spot on the water, open to the traffic of the river. He and his wife Mary, whom he had married back in Virginia, raised five children as the colony took shape around them.
When the break with Mexico came, Scott stood firmly with the cause of independence. In 1835 he served as captain of the Lynchburg Volunteers, a local militia company drawn from the settlements around this part of the river. Point Pleasant also became a stopping place for travelers in the revolutionary years. Among its guests were Lorenzo de Zavala and Emily Austin Bryan Perry. Zavala was a Mexican-born statesman who embraced the Texas cause and became the first vice president of the Republic of Texas. Perry was Stephen F. Austin's sister.
Scott did not live long in the republic he supported. He died in 1837, and Mary died in 1840. Point Pleasant passed to their daughter, Sarah Scott Williams, and it left the family after her death in 1860. The house itself is believed to have been lost to a hurricane at some point after the Civil War. That is a reminder that the Gulf Coast has always reshaped what people build on it.
Its place in the American story
The Old Three Hundred are one of the great origin stories of Texas, and they belong to a larger American story too. For centuries, American settlers pushed into lands claimed by other nations and peoples. In Texas, that movement took the unusual form of legal immigration into Mexico, invited by the Mexican government itself.
That experiment had consequences no one fully foresaw. Within little more than a decade, the colonists' population and grievances had grown into a revolution. The result was the Republic of Texas, which joined the United States in 1845. Annexation in turn helped set off the U.S.–Mexican War. The Scotts' homestead sits near the start of a chain of events that redrew the map of North America.
The guests who passed through Point Pleasant show that Texas's founding was not a simple story of one people against another. Lorenzo de Zavala was a Mexican liberal who opposed the drift toward centralized rule and threw in his lot with Texas. Families like Emily Perry's tied the colony to the Austin name and to the planter society taking root along the rivers.
That planter society rested partly on enslaved labor, a fact central to the era's history and to the tensions with Mexico. Homesites like this one help visitors see the Texas Revolution as a story of real households: their ambitions, their contradictions, and their ordinary daily lives.
If you visit
The house called Point Pleasant is long gone, so what you come to see here is the place itself. Stand near the marker and picture the east bank of the San Jacinto as William Scott knew it: river frontage, open prairie, and the steady comings and goings of boats. Imagine a riverbank home where weary travelers were glad to find a meal and a roof in the tense years of the 1830s.
Today's Baytown looks very different. It is an industrial city shaped by the oil and petrochemical age. That contrast is part of the experience. The same waterways that drew colonists in the 1820s later drew refineries and shipping, and layers of Texas history sit right on top of one another here.
This stop pairs naturally with a visit to the San Jacinto Battleground nearby, where Texas won its independence in 1836. Seeing both helps you connect the settlers who lived along this river with the battle fought close to their doorsteps. It also fits a wider Gulf Coast history drive through the Houston region, where many sites tied to the Old Three Hundred and the revolution are marked.
Bring a map or navigation app, and allow a little time to stand quietly and take in the landscape. Much of the story here has to be imagined, and that is part of the pleasure of a homesite marker.
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
- · William Scott
- · Lorenzo de Zavala
- · Emily Austin Bryan Perry
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
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