HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Oakland

Lynchburg, Harris County, Texas

Marker Inscription

One mile south to the site of Oakland. Home of David G. Burnet (1788-1870). First President of the Republic of Texas. To Oakland he brought his bride in 1831 and there they and their son William wrested a livelihood from the soil.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

A mile from this marker stood Oakland, home of David G. Burnet, who served as the first (interim) president of the Republic of Texas. Burnet brought his bride here in 1831 and, with their son William, wrested a living from the soil in the turbulent years surrounding Texas's fight for independence.

Why it matters

Burnet led Texas through the perilous interim between revolution and republic, and his homestead grounds the story of Texas nationhood in ordinary frontier toil.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • ยท David G. Burnet

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryHome

Nearby & related markers

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.

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.

Wooster Community

Baytown, TX

In late 1892 two families from Mapleton, Iowa โ€” the Woosters and the Crows โ€” bought over 1,000 acres in the old Nathaniel Lynch league on the Harris County bay shore, soon joined by the Browns. For a generation nearly everyone in Wooster was kin to those three households, until the 1919 opening of the Humble Refinery pulled the sleepy farm settlement into the orbit of Gulf Coast oil. The community grew through 1920s and 1930s subdivisions, hosted a WWII holding camp for German POWs, and was annexed by Baytown in 1962. Battered by subsidence and the hurricanes Carla and Alicia, and later bought out for a refinery greenbelt, Wooster today has all but vanished into the Baytown Nature Center.