In January 1956 The Fort Bend Mirror devoted part of an issue to the 4th anniversary of the 'new shopping center.' The issue included several articles about town history, some containing recollections of long-time residents.
The following short article recounts the memories of W. H. Dierks. What interested me most were his comments about the Mercantile Store. He says that before 1908 Sugar Land had a single building that served as a store and post office. After Kempner & Eldridge bought the Cunningham Sugar Company, they moved a newer building from Imperial, Texas (Mr. Dierks refers to it as the Imperial Plantation) into town. It became the Mercantile Store that stood until the 1970s.
Here's a photo of workmen putting their finishing touches on it.
Notice the date of the photo is September, so they had recently completed the move from Imperial per Mr. Dierks's recollection. He said they moved the building during a night and half a day.
If you look closely, you can see the Ellis Plantation House being moved into Sugar Land. It eventually sat on the east side of the Char House and served as Eldridge's residence until 1928.
I've seen T. C. Rozelle's annotations on copies of this and other photos. He noted that they used 40 mules and large logs to 'roll the house into town.'
Imperial, Texas was located on the south bank of Oyster Creek opposite Constellation Field, today's home of the Skeeters. At the time this picture was taken that acreage was Prison Farm property and the site of a sugar mill, about half the size of the mill in the Cunningham refinery complex. The mill burned in 1914 and the small community of Imperial, Texas disappeared into distant memory.
