The Window Pane

June 2005

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Brazoria County Historical Museum

100 East Cedar Street

Angleton TX 77515

 

The sights, smells and feel of an 1832 town can  be recreated only with careful research and much hard work.  Attention to detail, meticulous planning, some flexibility and more than our share of luck also lend a hand to make Austin Town a success.

These details are moving off the planning sheets and into reality as work is beginning to relocate Austin Town to a new site.  In partnership with the City of Angleton, Brazoria County and Drainage Districts 1 & 5, the Museum is developing a new location, which will have on-site parking as well as other modern amenities.  The new site is well situated centrally in Brazoria County at the intersection of Hwys 288 & 288B.  The new Austin Town has many nice features, not the least of which is good drainage so that it will be less prone to flooding.

The Museum also is raising money to construct a log cabin.  This single-pen log cabin will be built using period tools and techniques in order to create an authentic-looking cabin suitable for educational programming.

To help fund the construction of the log cabin, the Museum is selling logs for $50 each, with a goal of 100 logs.  Over 75 logs have already been sold!  Donations are tax deductible per IRS rules, and the donor’s name will be carved on a log inside the cabin. 

The Museum also is in need of volunteers to assist with building the cabin.  Volunteers will learn how to build a cabin using period tools and techniques.  If you would like to buy a log or volunteer, please call the Museum or e-mail programs@bchm.org.     Bruce Taylor-Hille

Dr. James Bruseth will review his book, From A Watery Grave: The Discovery and Excavation of La Salle’s Shipwreck, La Belle on July 14, at 6:30 PM in the Museum’s Auditorium.  This fascinating and beautiful book, for sale in the Museum’s bookstore, details La Salle’s doomed mission to locate the mouth of the Mississippi River as well as his plights on the Texas Gulf coast.

 

 

 

“Unknown Mexico” will be less of a mystery in Brazoria County after the opening of a fascinating humanities exhibit at the  Brazoria County Historical Museum.

Organized by the Texas Humanities Resource Center, Austin in collaboration with the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the exhibit features photographs, ink-and-wash drawings, maps, three-dimensional interpretive models, and select artifacts to trace the lineage of peoples indigenous to the high Sierras of western Mexico.

The exhibit is being presented by the Museum in an ongoing effort to foster an understanding of the many histories and cultures of Mexico as well as the relation of prehistoric past to present-day populations.

Photographs in the panel exhibit focus on figurines, pots, bowls, instruments, and tools that form part of the collection of the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  Elisa Phelps, former curator of Anthropology at the Museum, and Mimi Crossley, independent scholar from Houston, selected the featured images and developed the descriptive texts.

The most common articles descended from the ancient people of West Mexico are small figurines of people and animals.  Some of the figures are fantastical, like a mushroom-headed figure from Zacatecas, but many are quite recognizable:  toads and hummingbirds, a human figure carrying a burden, and a ceramic dog.  One in particular is very touching: the figure of a mother holding her child.

Central among the panels devoted to shaft tomb cultures is a three-dimensional model of a shaft tomb, which shows how the shaft is cut through volcanic tuff and the earth is hollowed out into large underground chambers.  For many years it was assumed that this kind of tomb was found only in West Mexico, but  examples have been discovered in the central highlands, too.  Still, the shaft tomb is the defining feature of ancient West Mexico.

More recent inhabitants of the region are represented by folk art of the 20th century.  There are pictures of a shaman’s mask, bags, belts, sashes, ceramics, and other articles that were produced by Huichol and Cora Indians.  Many of these articles are in the Rockefeller collection at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

The exhibit also includes select artifacts from modern Huichol Indians: a yarn   painting filled with symbols of tribal religion and the peyote quest, a mask decorated with yarn painting, and a prayer arrow.  These artifacts give viewers the opportunity to see first-hand the kinds of articles that are otherwise represented through flat photography.

“Unknown Mexico” will be on view at the Brazoria County Historical Museum  June  3 through June 24 , 2005.  Admission is free.  Group visits are encouraged, but leaders are requested to schedule their trip with the Museum by calling 979/864-1208.                Michael Bailey

In last month’s newsletter, I began to recount the search for the 1839 Courthouse building that once stood in “Old Town” Brazoria.  My interest in this was first piqued when Miss Oma Bell Perry wrote to the Museum in 2000.  Miss Perry said that the old building had been moved from its original location and not torn down, as I had previously thought.  This prompted me to make a few local inquiries about the old courthouse; finding no answer, I had moved the topic to the back burner.  It was still there in the back of my mind when Max Royalty brought in his wonderful photo of the 1839 courthouse that was printed in the May newsletter.  None of us at the Museum had seen this image before.  Max’s photo was the catalyst for additional research on the subject.

The Museum library’s 1839 Courthouse file yielded a few more pieces to the puzzle.  A transcript of the July 27, 1874 Commissioners Court meeting describes in detail some repairs and improvements to be made to the courthouse, including “leveling and putting under the ends, sides, and center new live oak blocks.”  Is it possible that Max’s photo showing workmen around the building was taken when it was being leveled in 1874, instead of when it was being moved in 1894?  Judging from the clothing of the individuals in the doorway of the County Clerk’s Office, I think that the photo was more likely made circa 1890s.

Another document in the Museum library’s 1839 Courthouse file is a copy of a December 1893 record from the County Clerk’s Office.  The handwriting on these documents is difficult to decipher, but the record of the Commissioner’s Court minutes stated that the old building had been put up for sale to the highest bidder.  George Melgaard, J.G. Smith, M.B. Williamson, and H. Masterson offered the “last, best, and highest bid” of $675.00, and the Commissioners Court did sell and convey to them the courthouse building “as it now stands on Court House Square in the town and county of Brazoria, Texas.”  The Commissioners also reserved the right to continue using the building for the January term of the District Court after the sale.

Marie Beth Jones told me that at some point, a Mr. J.H. Jackson had “moved the two-story wood courthouse at Brazoria to Lot 8, Block 52, on order of Brazoria County Commissioners Court at a price of $725.00.”  In looking up that particular lot and block number on the old Brazoria town plat, Museum volunteer John Rathburn found that this move was to a lot at the corner of Market and Marion streets, just one block from the original location.  Was this just a temporary move to clear the original site for construction of the new courthouse?  Marie Beth had no date for when this move occurred.  Her source for the information was Mr. Jackson’s son, the late Johnny G. Jackson, Sr., of Angleton.

Another interesting bit of information in the 1839 Courthouse file is an article from an undated and unnamed newspaper.  The title of the column is “Old Brazoria’s Budget of News.”  There is no byline to tell who wrote it, but the dateline of the article is “Brazoria, March 27, 1894.”  The article reports on the Commissioner’s Court meeting of that date at which a bid was accepted for the construction of the new county courthouse in Brazoria.  Next, the Commissioners opened bids for the removal of the old court house; the bid of H. Masterson for $550 was accepted.  I interpret this to mean that after H. Masterson purchased the building in partnership with Williamson, Melgaard, and Smith in December of 1893, he was hired by the Commissioners to move it away for a fee of $550.  This gets confusing.  Had the commissioners already paid Mr. Jackson to move it a block away and then paid Mr. Masterson three months later to move it to yet another location, even though the building then belonged to Masterson and his partners?  Perhaps a more thorough examination of the Commissioners Court records will reveal a date for Mr. Jackson’s moving of the building.  Masterson may have been the first to relocate the frame courthouse, but either way it seems odd that the Commissioners would pay to move it once it had been sold to someone else.

The unnamed reporter then added a paragraph about the old courthouse: “some of the most important meetings ever held in the state were called to order in this old building.  Many of the grandest men known to Texas history were familiar speakers in the meetings.  This historic old building therefore will be PRESERVED INTACT, and will be used in its new location as a town hall.  It will be moved bodily--without being at all torn to pieces, or mutilated--and appear in the future exactly as it does today.”

I kept wondering, “Where did the 1839 Courthouse go after it was moved from Old Town?”  Finally, I asked the right person.  Beverly Runnels Nixon told me that her grandmother Ida May Runnels owned and operated the old building as a hotel after its move to new Brazoria.  And what was the location of Mammy Runnels’ Brazoria Hotel?  It was on the current site of Baker Funeral Home at 118 W. Texas, Brazoria.  By 1932, the hotel was only a one-story building that like many Brazoria County structures barely survived the 1932 Storm.  From a phone call to Baker Funeral Home, I learned that the hotel was still on that site in the 1950s, but was gone by the time the funeral home was built in 1973.  I also was told that Mrs. Scofield, Ida May’s daughter, operated the hotel by the 1950s.

Those who remember the hotel from the 1930s and 1940s remember that the front porch stretched all across the front of the building.  The living quarters and the boarders’ dining room were on the east side, and the kitchen was located behind the dining room.  A living room and individual rooms for rent were on the west side.  There was an inside hallway and probably only one bathroom shared by all boarders.  Many single men who worked in the area boarded at the Brazoria Hotel.  Beverly remembers when she was a child having dinner at her grandmother’s hotel almost every Sunday.

About once a month during the 1940s, Saturday evening Bingo games at the hotel raised money for a good cause--most likely for maintenance of the cemetery.  The old building’s proud history as the first Brazoria County Courthouse gradually was forgotten by most.  Eventually, the land was sold and the building was razed.  Some of the cedar lumber from the old courthouse is said to have been salvaged and used to build an addition on the back of the Britt house in 200 block of Washington Street.

The Museum now has photos of the 1839 courthouse when it stood on Courthouse Square in Old Town Brazoria; and thanks to Doris Setzer, we have a photo of it as a hotel in new town showing damage from the 1932 Storm.  What we do not have is a photo of the hotel in new Brazoria before the storm or one taken after the storm damage was repaired, showing it as a one-story building.  Learning when the building was razed, possibly in the 1960s, also would help to complete the story.

When others had forgotten the Brazoria Hotel’s historical past, Beverly Nixon’s family remembered and kept alive the story of its connection to Brazoria County history.  If you have photos or additional information about the 1839 courthouse or its other life as a hotel in new Brazoria, please contact the Museum at 979/864-1208.

Jamie Murray

Bruce R. Taylor-Hille, Program Coordinator, programs@bchm.org
Copyright © 2005 [Brazoria County Historical Museum]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 07/07/05