Quintana Cemetery
Quintana, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On the other side of the storm levee is one of the last physical reminders of the early Texas seaport of Quintana. The Quintana Cemetery began as the family burial ground of Henry and Josephine Seaburn, who began homebuilding and shipbuilding businesses here in the days of the Republic of Texas. The earliest known use of the cemetery dates to 1846, when the Seaburns' infant child died and was buried near their home. The child's grave marker and many others in the historic cemetery succumbed over time to the forces of nature and development. The oldest remaining tombstone, that of Louisa Powlis Brown, bears an 1851 date. The last burial in the Quintana Cemetery occurred in 1942. (2001)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Just beyond the storm levee lies one of the last traces of Quintana, a bustling seaport in the days of the Republic of Texas. The cemetery began as the family plot of Henry and Josephine Seaburn, who ran homebuilding and shipbuilding ventures here; their infant child's 1846 burial is its earliest known grave. Wind, water, and development erased many markers, and the last burial came in 1942.
Why it matters
It is the enduring remnant of a vanished Gulf Coast port town from the era of the Texas Republic.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henry Seaburn
- · Josephine Seaburn
- · Louisa Powlis Brown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Gulf Intracoastal Waterway
Surfside, TX
The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway threads more than 1,100 miles of barge canals and natural channels from Brownsville, Texas, to Florida — longer and heavier-hauling than the Suez and Panama canals combined. It began humbly in 1854 with a short, hand-and-mule-dug canal linking Galveston Bay to the Brazos, then grew through decades of widening and extension. The most decisive push came in 1905–07, when Texas businessmen Clarence Holland and Roy Miller organized the financing and won the congressional backing that made the modern system possible.
Vicinity of Oyster Creek and Chocolate Bayou
Alvin, TX
In the decades after Anglo settlement began in 1822, the sluggish coastal streams of the Texas Gulf plain doubled as highways. Oyster Creek carried shallow-draft boats said to float "on a heavy dew," and its landings piled high with sugar, cotton, and cane from some of the era's richest plantations, while Chocolate Bayou anchored early cattle raising. Together they were two threads in a web of some fifty streams and ten bays that knit the coast into a working network of waterways.
Dairy Industry in the Santa Fe Area
Santa Fe, TX
The railroad hamlets of Arcadia, Alta Loma, and Algoa sprang up in the 1890s, and by the turn of the century their economy ran on citrus, figs, truck farming, and a fast-growing dairy trade. Creameries shipped butter and milk to Galveston and Houston by rail, and by the 1920s dairying was so common that, as locals told it, nearly everyone kept a cow. Stock laws, consolidation, and the postwar drift of workers to city jobs slowly squeezed the small operators, and the last Santa Fe-area dairy closed in the 1970s.
Alta Loma
Santa Fe, TX
Named with the Spanish for "high land," Alta Loma rose on the gently swelling ground of inland Galveston County. In 1893 an investment company platted a townsite along a Santa Fe rail line and installed water, electric, and telephone systems to draw settlers, many of whom planted orchards and truck farms. Battered by the great 1900 storm, the town rebuilt and thrived on farming and dairying before its residents drifted toward Texas City's oil jobs; in 1978 it merged with Arcadia to form the city of Santa Fe.