One-Eighth Mile South to Peach Point
Jones Creek, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Home of Mrs. Emily M. Perry 1795-1851, only sister of Stephen F. Austin, who regarded the place as his home after the burning of San Felipe on March 29, 1836.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A short distance from here stood the home of Emily M. Perry (1795–1851), the only sister of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas." After the town of San Felipe burned on March 29, 1836, during the turmoil of the Texas Revolution, Austin regarded Peach Point as his home. The plantation tied the family of Texas's chief colonizer to the coastal plains of Brazoria County.
Why it matters
Peach Point connects the private family life of the man who led American colonization of Texas to the dramatic events that turned the colony into a republic, a founding chapter of the American Southwest.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Peach Point lies in Brazoria County, near the lower Brazos River and the Gulf Coast. This was the heart of the colony that Stephen F. Austin founded in the 1820s, when Texas belonged first to newly independent Mexico. American families came on Mexican land grants to farm the rich river bottoms.
In the coastal lowlands, many of those farms became plantations growing cotton and sugarcane. That economy depended on the labor of enslaved people, who did much of the clearing, planting and harvesting that built the wealth of the region.
By the mid-1830s, tensions between the colonists and the Mexican government exploded into the Texas Revolution. The spring of 1836 brought upheaval: the fall of the Alamo, a frantic civilian flight eastward, and the victory at San Jacinto that made Texas an independent republic.
People & events
Emily M. Perry, born in 1795, was the only sister of Stephen F. Austin, the empresario whose colony launched Anglo-American Texas. She and her family came to Texas and made their home at Peach Point here in Brazoria County. She died in 1851, having lived through Texas's years as a Mexican province, an independent republic and finally an American state.
On March 29, 1836, the town of San Felipe, the capital of Austin's colony, was burned as Mexican forces advanced and residents fled. Austin had his home there, so the fire left him without one. Austin himself was away during those weeks, working in the United States to raise support for the Texas cause.
After that, Austin regarded his sister's home at Peach Point as his own. It was a family refuge in a time when nearly everything else was uncertain. Austin died later in 1836, just months after Texas won its independence, and he was first buried near here before later being moved to the State Cemetery in Austin.
Its place in the American story
Stephen F. Austin's colony set in motion the chain of events that brought Texas into the United States. Texas independence in 1836 led to annexation in 1845, which helped spark the war with Mexico and the vast westward expansion of the nation's borders.
Peach Point brings that sweeping story down to a human scale. Behind the famous name was a family, and a sister whose home gave a worn-out leader a place to belong after his own was lost. Women like Emily Perry held households, property and family ties together through war and upheaval, though their roles are often overlooked.
It is also honest to remember that plantations like those of the Brazos lowlands were built on enslaved labor. Texas's early prosperity and its later politics were deeply shaped by slavery, a part of the founding story that belongs alongside the heroics.
If you visit
This marker points you toward Peach Point, about an eighth of a mile to the south. Standing here, you are on the edge of the coastal plain that drew Austin's colonists: flat, fertile land near the Gulf, once crossed by plantation fields.
Take a moment to imagine 1836 here. News of the burning of San Felipe and the retreat of families eastward would have reached these households in fear and confusion. Then, within weeks, came word of independence.
Peach Point makes a natural stop on a road trip through Brazoria County's early Texas sites, a region rich in places tied to Austin's colony and the Revolution. Respect any private property, and let the marker and the landscape carry the story.
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
- · Emily M. Perry
- · Stephen F. Austin
Related events
- · Burning of San Felipe, March 29, 1836
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Emily Margaret Brown Austin Bryan Perry
Jones Creek, TX
Emily Austin was the sister of Stephen F. Austin, the empresario who led the first Anglo-American colonization of Texas. Raised in the lead-mining town of Potosi, Missouri, that her father Moses Austin helped found, she twice married and raised a large family before bringing her household to Texas in 1831 to join her bachelor brother. From the family's Peach Point Plantation she offered Stephen a home and counsel during the crucial years of colonization and the Texas Revolution, and her descendants went on to help build the new republic and state.
Brazoria Townsite
Brazoria, TX
Founded in 1828 by John Austin, a friend of colonization leader Stephen F. Austin, Brazoria grew into a port, market, and social center for the young Anglo colony. Here Jane Long — widow of the filibuster Dr. John Long, who had tried in 1819 to wrest Texas from Spain — kept a tavern that anchored the town's public life. Burned during the Texas Revolution and rebuilt, Brazoria served as a county seat and business hub until 1897.
Site of Jane Long's Tavern
Brazoria, TX
Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long, sometimes called the "Mother of Texas," opened a boarding house on this site in 1832 after years on the Gulf frontier. Her tavern at the busy port of Brazoria became a hub of Anglo-American political life: she hosted a benefit for Stephen F. Austin in 1835 after his release from a Mexican prison, and in 1836 a ball attended by President Sam Houston and the adjourned Congress of the Republic. She later moved on to run a hotel in Richmond.
Battle of Jones Creek
Jones Creek, TX
In 1824, Stephen F. Austin dispatched Captain Randal Jones with a company of 23 men to the lower Brazos amid conflict with the Karankawa people. Jones's scouts located the Karankawa camp near this site, and at dawn the Texans attacked, only to find the Karankawa ready with spears. The clash left about fifteen Karankawa dead and scattered the rest.