John Foster Land Grant
Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas
Marker Inscription
John Foster (1757-1837) came to Texas in 1822 as a member of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colony. He received a grant of about 12,000 acres of land from the Mexican government. Following his death the land was divided among his ten children. A community which grew up in the area was named Foster. Over the years the Foster lands have yielded abundant wildlife and numerous agricultural products, including cotton, rice, pecans, and sugar cane. Twentieth-century land uses have included housing developments and oil and gas production.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
John Foster arrived in Texas in 1822 as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred," the first Anglo-American families to colonize the region under a Mexican land grant. His roughly 12,000 acres passed to his ten children after his death, and a community that grew nearby took the family name. Over generations the land yielded cotton, rice, pecans, and sugar cane — and, in the twentieth century, oil, gas, and suburban housing.
Why it matters
Foster's grant is a tangible thread of Austin's original colony, the seedbed of Anglo-American settlement that set Texas on its path toward independence and statehood.
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Related people
- · John Foster
- · Stephen F. Austin
Related events
- · Old Three Hundred
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Foster Community
Rosenberg, TX
The Foster community traces to 1821, when Randolph Foster pitched a permanent camp on an enormous land grant tied to his father John, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists. Foster kin fought in the Texas War for Independence, and the settlement thrived on sugar cane in the 1840s, later shipping its crop by a railroad Imperial Sugar built to the mills at Sugar Land. Schools, a store, and a post office followed, but by the end of World War II the failing sugar crop, the Depression, and shifting ownership drained the community away.
Randon & Pennington Grant of 1824
Fulshear, TX
When Stephen F. Austin won a Mexican permit to settle 300 families in Texas, he and Baron de Bastrop issued 272 land grants between 1823 and 1824, many along the Brazos and San Bernard rivers. In August 1824 David Randon—an Alabama native of part-Creek descent—and his partner Isaac Pennington received 4,428 fertile acres on the Brazos, prized for river access to markets. Randon grew into one of the colony's most successful planters, while Pennington, one of the colony's earliest teachers, sold out his share and later carried the mail on a Texas post route.
John Foster
Richmond, TX
Born in South Carolina in 1757, John Foster pushed west across the Appalachians around 1781 to the Spanish-held Natchez District, where he became a landowner, founded the town of Washington, and helped establish Jefferson College. In 1822 he joined the Texas frontier as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred," receiving an 11,600-acre grant in what is now Fort Bend County. On Christmas Day 1835 he signed the Columbia Resolutions urging Texas independence, then retired to Mississippi, where he died in 1837.
Randolph Foster
Richmond, TX
Born in Spanish West Florida in 1790, Randolph Foster served in the War of 1812 and hunted across the southwestern frontier before joining Stephen F. Austin's first colony as one of the fabled "Old Three Hundred" in 1821. Granted 4,400 acres and serving as an Indian scout, he became a prominent Fort Bend planter. During the 1836 revolution he helped supply the Texian army and, with a handful of comrades, delayed Santa Anna's crossing of the Brazos long enough to keep the fleeing Texian government out of enemy hands.