Settlement Community
Texas City, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During Reconstruction, former slaves founded a community known as the Settlement on land platted by Judge William J. Jones for purchase by freedmen. Prior to this, a number of cattlemen moved to this area with their slaves. During the Civil War, George Washington Butler was placed in charge of a containment camp and used slave labor from there to drive cattle for the Confederate Army. After the war ended, Butler continued in the cattle industry, hiring freedmen as cowboys. Some of them lived in the community first known as Highland Tank. The first settlers were Kneeland and Sylvia Britton, and Albert and Priscilla (Britton) Phillips. Calvin Bell, Thomas Britton and David Hobgood were area cowboys and pioneers of the community. By 1870, the Rev. Israel S. Campbell helped begin a church; residents built a sanctuary and school the following year in a community called Campbellville for the Reverend. The pioneering families, however, called it Settlement, shortened from "Our Settlement," declaring the importance of freedom and owning land. The African American community prospered throughout the late 1800s. Many male residents worked on Butler Ranch or as farmers. Also, unique for the time, the commuinty had a high literacy rate. By the early 1900s, residents worked in railroad occupations and later in industry. In 1911, and interurban line came through the community, and Highland Station opened; the Settlement was known as Highlands and La Marque until it was incorporated into the city limits of Texas City in the 1950s. The community began to decline in the 1960s, when many young people left to work in an integrated society. However, rodeos and trail rides have been held as reminders of this once flourishing and self-sufficient community founded by African American cowboys. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved people founded a community on land that Judge William J. Jones platted for sale to freedmen near the Gulf Coast. Many had been brought to the area by cattlemen, and after the war some stayed on as cowboys for the Butler Ranch while building their own settlement, a church and a school by 1871. Proud of owning land and their freedom, residents called the place "Our Settlement"; it prospered into the early 1900s with an unusually high literacy rate before industry, integration and incorporation into Texas City gradually dispersed it.
Why it matters
The Settlement is a rare and vivid record of African American cowboys and freedmen who turned emancipation into land ownership, literacy and a self-sufficient community on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
On the Texas Gulf Coast during Reconstruction, the collapse of slavery opened a narrow but real window of possibility. Formerly enslaved people, newly free, faced a hard question: how to turn freedom into something lasting. For many, the answer was land — owning a piece of ground was the surest foundation for independence.
This stretch of Galveston County had a particular history. Cattlemen had moved into the area before the war, bringing enslaved people with them, and the coastal prairies were cattle country. When the war ended, that cattle economy didn't vanish; it simply had to reckon with a workforce that was now free and could be hired, or could strike out on its own.
It was in this setting that a community of freed people took root. The very name they chose — shortened from "Our Settlement" — carried the whole meaning of the era: the pride of people who now owned land and their own freedom, and who wanted the name of their home to say so.
People & events
The community grew on land platted by Judge William J. Jones specifically so that freedmen could buy it — a deliberate act that made ownership possible. Some of the first residents came out of the local cattle world. During the war, George Washington Butler had overseen a containment camp and used enslaved labor to drive cattle for the Confederate Army; afterward, he continued in the cattle business and hired freedmen as cowboys. Some of those men lived in the community first known as Highland Tank.
The founders' names are recorded: Kneeland and Sylvia Britton, and Albert and Priscilla (Britton) Phillips were among the first settlers, with Calvin Bell, Thomas Britton, and David Hobgood among the area cowboys and pioneers. By 1870 the Rev. Israel S. Campbell had helped begin a church, and the next year residents built both a sanctuary and a school — a community that valued worship and learning from its earliest days. For a time the place was even called Campbellville in the reverend's honor, though the pioneering families held to "Settlement."
The community prospered through the late 1800s. Many men worked on Butler Ranch or farmed, and — remarkably for the time and place — the community had a high literacy rate, the fruit of that early school. As the new century arrived, residents moved into railroad work and later industry; a 1911 interurban line brought Highland Station, and over time the area was known as Highlands and La Marque before being absorbed into Texas City in the 1950s.
Its place in the American story
The Settlement belongs to two great American stories at once, and that is what makes it rare. It is a chapter of the freedmen's-town movement — the wave of communities that formerly enslaved people founded across the South after emancipation, built on the conviction that owning land was the bedrock of real freedom. And it is a chapter of the cattle frontier, a world usually pictured without the Black cowboys who in fact made up a large share of it.
Here the two meet: African American cowboys and freedmen who turned emancipation into land ownership, a church, a school, and unusually widespread literacy. That combination — self-sufficiency built on cattle, faith, and reading — is a vivid corrective to the way the frontier is often remembered.
The community's slow dispersal is also a national pattern. It began to decline in the 1960s, as young people left to take part in a newly integrating society, and it was gradually folded into a growing industrial city. The same forces that expanded opportunity for a new generation also thinned out the old, self-contained community — a bittersweet arc familiar across mid-twentieth-century America.
If you visit
Come here ready to see past the present-day cityscape. This ground is now part of Texas City, but the marker asks you to picture something older beneath it: a self-sufficient community of African American cowboys and freedmen who built a church and school on land they were proud to own. The imaginative work of reconstructing that place is the heart of the visit.
Let the layered names do their work as you read — Highland Tank, Campbellville, "Our Settlement," Highlands, La Marque. Each one marks a stage in the community's life, from cattle-country outpost to freedmen's town to a neighborhood absorbed by a growing coastal city.
The living memory of the place survives in the rodeos and trail rides held as reminders of this once-flourishing community. If you can time a visit to coincide with one, you'll catch an echo of the Black cowboy heritage this marker honors — a tradition that turns history into something you can still see riding by, on the same coastal prairie where it began.
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
- · William J. Jones
- · George Washington Butler
- · Rev. Israel S. Campbell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Greater Bell Zion Missionary Baptist Church
Texas City, TX
In the years after the Civil War, a group of African Americans — many of them Black cowboys who worked the Chisholm Trail — bought land in central Galveston County to build a community. Their Baptist church, founded in 1885 by the Rev. Israel S. Campbell, an escaped slave known as the "Father of Black Texas Baptists," became the settlement's backbone. It changed names with its pastors over the years and, from an early school begun in 1874, long served as a place of both worship and learning.
William Jefferson Jones
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A Virginia-born prodigy licensed to practice law at nineteen, William Jefferson Jones came to Texas in 1837 at the urging of Mirabeau B. Lamar and served as an associate justice on the Republic's first Supreme Court. He joined Lamar's 1839 campaign to expel the Cherokee from East Texas, later pioneered sea-island cotton and cottonseed oil on the mainland, and drew up early plans for a deep-water port at Virginia Point. His generous land terms helped seed La Marque's African American Highland Station community after the Civil War.
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