Texas Culpepper Archives
Brazoria County

County History and Geography

In the Texas Gulf Coast Marshes and Prairies Region at the mouth of the Brazos River in southeast Texas, Brazoria County was formed in 1836 as an original Texas County. Its county seat, Angleton, is on TX-288, about 45 miles south of Houston. Brazoria is bordered by the counties of Matagorda, Fort Bend, Harris, and Galveston.

During pioneer days, the Brazos River was the chief artery by which immigration, communication, and commerce penetrated Texas from the Gulf. Small boats regularly navigated as far as East Columbia, and customhouses were located at Brazoria and Velasco. By 1840, Buffalo Bayou and the growing town of Houston had begun to draw commerce away from the Brazos, but freight and passenger service between Brazoria, other Brazos River ports, and Galveston was established by 1842, and a canal from the Brazos mouth to West Galveston Bay was completed by 1857.

Between 1849 and 1859 plantation life in Brazoria County flourished, and the county became the wealthiest in Texas, with a typically Southern society based on slavery. Agriculture was the foundation of the county's early economy, and some of the state's largest and most prosperous sugar and cotton plantations grew up along the rivers and deeper creeks on which crops could be shipped by barges. Plantations in the county between 1850 and 1860 numbered forty-six, including nineteen sugar, sixteen cotton, and three that produced both sugar and cotton. Before the war, these plantations produced an average of 7,000 to 8,000 hogsheads of sugar annually, and up to three-fourths of the state's output in 1857. Many planters raised cattle, and some cultivated oranges, lemons, and other fruits. Each of twenty-six county residents owned more than $100,000 in property by the year 1860; the foremost planter was John H. Herndon, whose real property was valued at more than $1.6 million and personal property at more than $106,000. In that year Brazoria County had 2,027 white, 5,110 black slave, and six free black residents; by 1864, when slaves numbered 5,125, their value was only slightly less than the county's 283,151 acres of land. Town life was subordinated to plantation life, and Old Velasco and Quintana served as Gulf seaports and resort centers for antebellum plantation society. Later, the two towns declined in importance as plans for an intra-coastal canal to divert trade developed, and in 1875 and 1900 both were almost destroyed by hurricanes. Other transportation in the period was provided by the Houston Tap and Brazoria Railroad, chartered in 1856 and built by planters to connect East Columbia with Houston markets and with the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad at Pierce Junction. After the Civil War, this railroad became the property of the International-Great Northern.

Residents of Brazoria County cast more than 99 percent of their votes for secession, 527 for and two against. During the Civil War, the Dance Brothers gun works manufactured weapons, companies were organized for the Confederate Army, and women were left to run the plantations. Fortifications built at Velasco and Quintana weathered Union attacks in 1862. Confederate blockade runners operated along the coast, and some cotton was shipped overland by mule and wagon to Mexico. Though the county suffered little physical damage in the war, the presence of federal troops and loss of profit from cotton crops in 1864 brought increasing hardship. Some plantations were destroyed, and agricultural production declined sharply with the freeing of the slaves. David G. Mills alone lost 313 slaves as a result of emancipation. County land was valued at more than $3 million in 1860, but its value had declined to less than $2 million by 1866. During the same period, total property value in the county fell from almost $7 million to less than $3 million. Many plantations were divided into smaller farms or turned into pastures; others eventually became part of the Ramsey, Retrieve, Clemens, and Darrington state prison farms (see prison system). In 1870 only a single Brazoria County resident, farmer William Bryan, had a prewar level of wealth, with real property valued at $100,000 and personal property worth $20,000. As conditions worsened, some Brazoria countians moved to Mexico, where they organized settlements in the Tuxpan River valley in Vera Cruz.

Between 1870 and 1880 the population in Brazoria County grew from 7,527 to 9,774, largely due to the arrival of federal soldiers and other Northerners, foreign immigrants, and Confederate soldiers from Texas and the Old South. S. A. Hackworth, a white Republican, bought land in Wharton, Fort Bend, and Brazoria counties and sold it to blacks in the 1870s and 1880s. By the 1890s Columbia was the largest town in the county, followed by Brazoria, Velasco, Quintana, Sandy Point, and Liverpool, and new towns had been founded–Alvin, Angleton, and Pearland. In 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War, Adm. George Dewey acquired 65,000 acres of land in Brazoria County.

Economic recovery came slowly in the post-Civil War era. The principal crops were corn, grains, sweet and Irish potatoes, fruits, wild grapes, and cotton and sugar for export. Sugar production, reduced in the early years of Reconstruction, burgeoned with the use of convict labor by 1871, but never again reached earlier levels. By 1867 the value of livestock, chiefly cattle, nearly equalled that of agriculture. When cattlemen found northern markets shut off in the late 1860s, hide and tallow factories were established along the Brazos River; Brazoria County packed $100,000 worth of canned beef in 1870. Figs were introduced in the Alvin area around the turn of the century and became an important crop. Four canneries were later built in the community. Live oak moss was ginned at Angleton.

Source: Southeastern Genealogy Online.

Any names below in red have not been matched with a person in the Culpepper family tree. If you can identify any of them, please let us know.

Census Records

No Culpeppers were found in any Brazoria County censuses prior to 1860.

1860 US Census

Transcription from Ancestry.com image by Pat Roberts

1870 US Census

Transcription from Ancestry.com images by Pat Roberts and Warren Culpepper

1880 US Census

Transcription from Ancestry.com image by Pat Roberts

1890 US Census

1900 US Census

1910 US Census

Transcribed from Genealogy.com image by Pat Roberts.

1920 US Census

1930 US Census

Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997

Source: Ancestry.com. Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997 [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas. Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997. Microfiche. Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas.

Culpepper Mothers

Military Records

World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918

Source: National Archives and Records Administration. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-18 [database online] Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2002. National Archives and Records Administration. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. M1509, 4,277 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration

U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946

Source: National Archives and Records Administration. U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946 [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2005. Original data: Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938-1946 [Archival Database]; World War II Army Enlistment Records; Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 64; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.

Marriages

Texas Marriage Collection, 1814-1909 and 1966-2002

Source: Ancestry.com. Texas Marriage Collection, 1814-1909 and 1966-2002 [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas Marriage Collection, 1814-1909 and 1966-2002. Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas.

Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2002

Source: Ancestry.com. Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2002 [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas. Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2002. Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas.

Land Title Abstracts

Source: Texas General Land Office, Texas Land Title Abstracts [database online] Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2000. Original data: Abstracts of all original Texas Land Titles comprising Grants and Locations. Austin, Texas: , 19--.

Deaths

Texas Death Index, 1903-2000

Source:  Texas Department of Health. Texas Death Index, 1903-2000. [database on-line] Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2006. Original electronic data from: Texas Department of Health. Texas Death Indexes, 1903-2000. Austin, TX. Texas Department of Health. State Vital Statistics Unit.

Social Security Death Index

Source: Social Security Administration. Social Security Death Index [database on-line]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2006. All records of deaths on or before 31 Dec 2005 in which the final benefit was paid or final residence was in this county.