I found these photos at the Portals To Texas History Web Site. They exhibit selected photos from the Fort Bend Museum Collection. This is one of them.
This series of pictures shows the Nibbs-Fields House located on the Schumann family property off Clodine Road. I saw this place as a child whenever we drove down Clodine Road, and when I learned it was a pre-Civil War house, I was hooked. I wanted to know more about it and go out there, but I never got a chance.
The first two pictures are captioned with a date of 1962, but I always remember the place being more over-grown with vegetation and more dilapidated. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.
I'd always heard local slaves made the bricks used to construct the house, which brings up some curious points. Notice the inscription on the last picture, which is actually a photograph of an ink drawing. (See below.)
The bottom of the photo reads: The Nibbs home on Oyster Creek, near Sugar Land, Texas often visited by Sam Houston. He bought his horse from Mrs. Nibbs enroute to the San Jacinto battlefield. (Collection of Mrs. Lula B. Roberts of Houston.)
The first curious point is the claim is that Sam Houston visited this house before the Battle of San Jacinto. I would have thought a house in 1836 would have been much cruder - probably made of logs. I could be wrong - maybe the Nibbs family had the where-with-all to build a large wooden home.
The second point is that the house in the later photos is brick and not wood. Maybe two or three houses stood on that spot? The brick house was the last one?
If someone knows the answers, or can find them, let me know.
The information about Houston coming through on his way to San Jacinto makes sense, though it does seem a rather grand house for that time. Houston's army of volunteers crossed the Brazos at Richmond.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Santa Ana's army crossed at Thompson's Ferry, which was on the Brazos twelve miles south of the crossing at Richmond. That route would have taken the Mexicans through the southern part of Fort Bend County. The ferry landed on the other side of the Brazos in what is now Sienna Plantation. It must have been a rather soggy march, and I'm sure they encountered more than a few alligators. The soldiers must have been grumbling at El Presedente a bit at that point!