Levi Jordan Plantation
Brazoria, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Home built 1848-1851 by slave labor; materials came by sea, Florida to Velasco, and up the San Bernard River. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Between 1848 and 1851, enslaved workers built this plantation house for Levi Jordan, hauling materials shipped by sea from Florida to Velasco and up the San Bernard River. It stands in the heart of Texas's antebellum plantation belt, where cotton and sugar were worked by forced labor. The site later became one of Texas's most significant archaeological windows into enslaved and freed communities.
Why it matters
The plantation is a stark reminder that Texas's early prosperity was built on slavery, and its grounds preserve rare evidence of the lives of the people held there.
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Related people
- · Levi Jordan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church
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Freedpeople in the Cedar Lake community organized St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in 1867, in the first uncertain years after emancipation, meeting in log cabins and under a tent until land was donated in 1873. With building materials supplied by the Freedmen's Bureau, the congregation raised a permanent structure that doubled as the community's first school for Black children, and a portion of the land became a cemetery. More than a century and a half later the church still stands as a pillar of the community.
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After fighting in the Texas Revolution, John Sweeny, Jr. received this land from his father, one of the region's large landholders, and in 1837 enslaved workers built the plantation house entirely from brick, nails, and lumber produced on the property. The plantation raised molasses, cotton, and sugar, the cash crops of the antebellum Gulf Coast. The land has remained in the family's hands for generations.
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