Stephen Jackson

🏛️The era

When Stephen Jackson came to Texas in 1831, it was part of Mexico. Mexico had opened its northern frontier to settlers through empresario grants, in which a contractor received the right to bring in families who would receive land. Lorenzo de Zavala, a prominent Mexican statesman, held one of these grants in the southeastern part of Texas, and Jackson settled in his colony.

The land units named on the marker come from Spanish and Mexican law. A "labor" was farmland of about 177 acres, and a "league" was a much larger grant of about 4,428 acres, usually meant for grazing. Heads of families could receive very large amounts of land under this system, which is a big reason so many Americans moved to Texas.

Within a few years, relations between the settlers and the Mexican government broke down. The Texas Revolution began in 1835, and in 1836 Texas declared independence and won it on the battlefield. The Republic of Texas rewarded its soldiers with bounty land, so a man's service could add to what he already owned.

👥People & events

Stephen Jackson was born in South Carolina in 1803. He came west in 1831 to Zavala's colony and received a labor of land to start a farm. In 1835 he received a full league, and that grant included the land where the community of Sour Lake later grew.

In 1836, the year of the Revolution, Jackson served in Captain Logan's company of the Texas army. For that service the Republic awarded him 320 acres of bounty land in Milam County. He was a farmer who became a soldier when the new country needed one.

In 1838 he married Susan Choate, who was born in 1807, and they set up their home near this spot. The marker names their children: Ambrose, Sarah, James A., Minerva, Stephen, and W. J. Stephen died in 1860 and Susan in 1873, and the family is buried together in the family cemetery here.

Lorenzo de Zavala, whose colony drew Jackson to Texas, supported Texas independence and served in the new Republic's early government. Jackson's own story is on a much smaller scale: one family making a home on a Mexican land grant that ended up in a new nation.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Jackson's story is typical of Anglo-American colonization in Mexican Texas. Thousands of settlers from the American South took Mexican land grants in the 1820s and 1830s. Within a few years their numbers and their demands helped lead to the Revolution. Texas became a republic and later joined the United States, which set off the war with Mexico and major changes to the map of North America.

The land-grant system also left a permanent mark. Spanish and Mexican units like the league and the labor still show up in Texas surveys and deeds today. A South Carolina farmer receiving a league near an East Texas lake shows how Spanish law, Mexican policy, and American settlement came together.

The land Jackson settled became more important after his death. Sour Lake later became the site of an early Texas oil boom, part of the Gulf Coast discoveries that changed the American economy in the early twentieth century. That boom came long after Jackson was gone, but it happened on land that was once his league.

🧭If you visit

This is a memorial marker, and the Jackson family cemetery gives the stop a quiet, personal feel. You're standing near the home of a family that lived through Mexican rule, a revolution, and the Republic of Texas.

Take a moment with the names on the marker. Stephen and Susan's children are listed one by one, and for many of them this cemetery may be the only record of their lives. If you can reach any gravestones, treat them with care. Old stones are fragile, and family cemeteries are often on private land, so respect any signs or fences.

Sour Lake is in the Big Thicket country of southeast Texas, with dense woods, bayous, and a wet, green landscape. A stop here fits well into a drive through the region's natural areas, or a trip to learn about the Gulf Coast oil boom that later came to this town.

The Texas Sesquicentennial of 1986 put up many markers like this one. If you notice the anniversary date on other markers, they are part of the same statewide project to honor the settlers of the Revolution era.