Humphrey and Sarah Merriman Jackson
Crosby, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Humphrey (1784-1833), Sarah Merriman Jackson (1796-1823), and their family came to Texas as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colony in 1823 and settled east of the San Jacinto River. Jackson's land grant opened up the San Jacinto District and expanded the perimeter of Austin's grant, providing an additional area for Anglo settlement. Sarah was mother to four children and died one year after settling in Texas. Humphrey and Sarah Jackson are buried nearby. The zinc marker at their grave site was built by the Monumental Bronze Works of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Humphrey and Sarah Merriman Jackson came to Texas in 1823 as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300," settling east of the San Jacinto River. Their land grant helped open the San Jacinto District and enlarge Austin's colony, adding fresh ground for Anglo settlement. Sarah died just a year after arriving, and the couple lies buried nearby beneath a distinctive zinc grave marker.
Why it matters
The Jacksons were among the founding families whose grants shaped the boundaries and settlement of Anglo Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1820s, Texas belonged to newly independent Mexico, which had won its freedom from Spain in 1821. Mexico's government wanted settlers to populate its thinly peopled northern frontier and granted empresarios the right to bring colonists in.
Stephen F. Austin was the most famous of these empresarios. The first families of his colony became known as the "Old 300," and they are remembered today as the founding generation of Anglo-American Texas. They received land grants, and in return they were expected to settle and work the land under Mexican authority.
The country east of the San Jacinto River was a region of prairies, woods, and bayous near the Gulf Coast. Settling it meant clearing land, building homes from scratch, and enduring disease, isolation, and hardship far from established towns.
People & events
Humphrey Jackson, born in 1784, and Sarah Merriman Jackson, born in 1796, came to Texas with their family in 1823 as members of Austin's Old 300. They settled east of the San Jacinto River, at the edge of the colony's reach.
That location mattered. Jackson's land grant opened up what became known as the San Jacinto District and extended the boundary of Austin's settlement, making room for more Anglo colonists. One family's decision to settle on the far side of a river helped shape where Texas would grow.
The move came at a heavy cost. Sarah, the mother of four children, died only about a year after the family settled in Texas. Frontier life was dangerous, and early deaths like hers were a painful reality for many colonial families. Humphrey lived until 1833. Both are buried nearby, and their grave is marked by a zinc monument made by the Monumental Bronze Works of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Its place in the American story
The Old 300 started a chain of events that changed the map of North America. Anglo-American settlement in Mexican Texas grew rapidly, tensions with the Mexican government rose, and in 1836 the Texas Revolution ended, fittingly, at the Battle of San Jacinto, not far from the river the Jacksons settled beside.
Texas then became an independent republic and later joined the United States, which helped set off the Mexican War and the country's expansion to the Pacific. Families like the Jacksons were at the very beginning of that story.
Their grave marker adds a quieter national thread. Zinc monuments, sometimes sold as "white bronze," were made in Connecticut and shipped across the country, especially in the late nineteenth century. They show how American industry reached even rural Texas cemeteries.
If you visit
Crosby sits in the eastern part of the Houston area, where suburbs now spread across land that was once raw frontier. It takes some imagination to picture the Jacksons' world of open prairie and river bottoms, but that's part of the appeal of this stop.
If you visit the grave site nearby, look closely at the zinc marker. These monuments have a distinctive blue-gray color and crisp detail that sets them apart from stone, and they often weather remarkably well. Please be respectful, since this is a burial place.
This stop fits naturally with a visit to the San Jacinto Battleground area east of Houston, tying together the colony's beginnings and the revolution that followed a little more than a decade later. Together they make a fine half-day journey through early Texas history.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Humphrey Jackson
- · Sarah Merriman Jackson
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Humphrey Jackson
Crosby, TX
Trained in law and opposed to slavery, Irish emigrant Humphrey Jackson left his Louisiana sugar plantation to join Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1823, unknowingly settling just outside its bounds. He helped petition Mexican authorities to form the San Jacinto District under Austin's control and was elected its alcalde, becoming one of the earliest civic leaders in what is now Harris County before his death in 1833.
White Cemetery
Highlands, TX
Reuben White was one of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old 300" colonists, taking a Mexican land grant here in 1824 as part of a large family that settled the area later called White Settlement. Though his 1848 burial is the earliest recorded, older graves are thought to exist nearby. Formally set aside as a family cemetery in 1850, it grew into a community burial ground holding pioneers and veterans of conflicts from the Texas Revolution to Vietnam.
Sampson Masonic Lodge No. 231 A. F. & A. M.
Highlands, TX
Chartered in 1859 and named for Henry Sampson, a South Carolina transplant who rose to grand master of the Grand Lodge of Texas, this lodge began in a purpose-built log cabin near Lynchburg. Fire and a succession of Gulf Coast hurricanes drove the lodge from Lynchburg to Crosby and finally to Highlands in 1951, where it turned increasingly toward community service. Its members mark local life through parades, fundraisers, and charity that still anchor the town today.
Lynch's Ferry
Baytown, TX
Nathaniel Lynch, one of Stephen F. Austin's first colonists, established a ferry here before 1824 on land granted that August, and in 1830 the ayuntamiento of San Felipe gave him the exclusive right to operate it. Sitting where Buffalo Bayou meets the San Jacinto River, the crossing became a vital artery for the colonists of early Anglo Texas and lay near the ground where independence would be won in 1836. Still running today as the Lynchburg Ferry, it is among the oldest continuously operating crossings in the state.