Perkins Family Cemetery
West Columbia, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Stephen William Perkins (1808-1876) and his wife Anna Elizabeth (Walcott) came to Texas in 1840. They settled first in Montgomery County, and later in Velasco. In 1842 they built a home near this site. The Perkins family began a small family graveyard on their farm when one of their children died. the grave is not marked, but it is believed that William Collins Perkins (1842-1843) was the first person buried here. A daughter, three-year-old Mary Joplin Perkins, died in 1849 and was probably interred next to her brother. When Anna Perkins died in 1854, she was buried near her children. Eventually, four of the five Perkins children were interred here, although the grave of son Stephen Edward (1840-1885) is the only marked burial. Also interred here are a number of slaves. Stephen W. Perkins served as a representative from Brazoria County to the Republic of Texas Congress and the State Legislature. He represented Brazoria, Wharton, and Matagorda counties in the State Senate in 1847-1848, and later was chief justice of Brazoria County for twelve years. He was captain of a Texas volunteer company during the Civil War. He died in 1876 while visiting his daughter, Annie Eugenia Cayce, in Coryell County, and was buried there. (1990)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Stephen William Perkins and his wife Anna came to Texas in 1840 and settled near Velasco, where they built a home and started a small family graveyard after the death of a child around 1843. Four of their five children, their mother, and a number of enslaved people were interred here. Perkins served the Republic of Texas Congress and later the state legislature and senate, spent twelve years as Brazoria County's chief justice, and captained a Texas volunteer company during the Civil War.
Why it matters
A single family plot holding both a Republic-era statesman and the enslaved people whose labor sustained his household lays bare the intertwined story of Texas political life and slavery.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Stephen William Perkins and his wife Anna Elizabeth came to Texas in 1840, arriving in the brief window when Texas stood as its own independent republic. The coastal counties they settled in — first Montgomery County, then the Velasco area — were still frontier country, where families built homes and farms along the rivers and started their own graveyards close to the house. The small plot described here began, as so many did, with grief: it was opened when one of the Perkins children died, and the earliest graves are of little ones lost in the 1840s.
This was plantation-era coastal Texas, and its economy rested on enslaved labor. The Perkins farm, like others around it, depended on the work of enslaved people, and the marker records plainly that a number of them are buried in this same ground. The cemetery therefore holds, side by side, the family that owned the land and the people who were held in bondage upon it.
The years the cemetery spans — from the Republic through the Civil War and into Reconstruction — were the ones that decided the fundamental questions of Texas life: whether it would be independent or American, slave or free. A single family plot that opens in the 1840s and continues through the war years is a quiet ledger of that whole transformation.
People & events
The story here is told through a family's losses and one man's public life. The graveyard began with a child: it is believed that William Collins Perkins, who lived only from 1842 to 1843, was the first buried here. A daughter, three-year-old Mary Joplin Perkins, died in 1849 and was likely laid beside her brother. When their mother, Anna Perkins, died in 1854, she was buried near her children. In the end, four of the five Perkins children came to rest in this ground, though only the grave of a son, Stephen Edward, is marked. Also interred here — unmarked, but recorded on the marker — are a number of enslaved people from the household.
Stephen W. Perkins himself was a figure of standing in early Texas government. He served as a representative from Brazoria County to the Congress of the Republic of Texas and, after Texas joined the United States, to the state legislature. In 1847–1848 he sat in the State Senate, representing Brazoria, Wharton, and Matagorda counties, and he later served twelve years as chief justice of Brazoria County. When the Civil War came, he captained a company of Texas volunteers.
His own life ended away from home. He died in 1876 while visiting his daughter, Annie Eugenia Cayce, in Coryell County, and was buried there — so the statesman lies elsewhere while his wife, his children, and the enslaved people of his farm remain in the plot he began. The marker was placed in 1990.
Its place in the American story
What makes this small graveyard nationally resonant is exactly what it puts in one place: a Republic-era lawmaker and the enslaved people whose labor sustained his household, buried in the same ground. That single fact refuses the tidy separation American memory often prefers, in which political founders and the institution of slavery are kept in different stories. Here they share a fence line.
Stephen Perkins's résumé is a portrait of how a new state built its institutions — a congress, a legislature, a senate, a county bench, a volunteer company for the war. These were the offices through which frontier Texas governed itself and eventually chose secession and war. His public service and his ownership of enslaved people were not separate facts about him; in the antebellum South, political leadership and slaveholding were routinely intertwined.
The unmarked graves speak just as loudly as the marked ones. That four Perkins children and their mother rest here, and that the enslaved are recorded but their individual names and stones are not, mirrors the larger imbalance in how the nation preserved its history — carefully tracking the powerful, leaving the enslaved in anonymity. A marker that names the statesman's offices and, in the same breath, acknowledges the enslaved buried beside him does the honest work of telling both halves of the Texas story.
If you visit
Approach this as a place that asks for reflection rather than spectacle. It is a modest family cemetery, and much of its meaning lies in what you cannot see: unmarked graves of children, of Anna Perkins, and of the enslaved people of the farm. Only one Perkins grave carries a stone. Let that absence register — the missing markers are part of what the site is telling you.
Stand with the knowledge that this ground holds a Republic-of-Texas lawmaker's family and the people his household enslaved, together. It is a small space that carries a large and difficult truth, and it rewards visitors who take the time to consider both stories at once rather than only the statesman's.
In a West Columbia and Brazoria County history route, this cemetery makes a fitting, sobering stop among the region's grander founding-era sites. Walk respectfully, as you would in any active or historic burial ground, and use the visit to think about whose graves get marked and whose do not — a question this quiet plot poses more powerfully than many far larger monuments.
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
- · Stephen William Perkins
- · Anna Elizabeth Walcott Perkins
Themes & tags
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