Humphrey and Sarah Merriman Jackson

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Humphrey and Sarah Merriman Jackson, and I'll do my best to give it the weight it deserves. Now, when you talk about the earliest days of Anglo settlement in Texas, you are talking about a very small number of families who came out here when this land was still raw and uncharted and full of unknowns. The Jacksons were among them.

Humphrey Jackson, born in 1784, and his wife Sarah Merriman Jackson, born in 1796, packed up their family and came to Texas in 1823 as members of Stephen F. Austin's Old 300 colony. That name, the Old Three Hundred, it carries a kind of weight.

These were the first colonists Austin brought in, and the Jacksons were counted among them. They settled east of the San Jacinto River, and that land grant Humphrey received, it mattered. The marker tells us it opened up what became known as the San Jacinto District and expanded the very perimeter of Austin's grant, providing an additional area for Anglo settlement.

One family, one grant, and the footprint of a colony grew. But here is where the story turns heavy, and it deserves to sit with you a moment. Sarah Merriman Jackson was a mother to four children.

She made that long journey to Texas, she settled in this new and difficult land, and just one year after arriving, she was gone. Born 1796, died 1823. She never got to see what any of it became.

Humphrey followed her in 1833. They are both buried nearby, and their grave site carries a zinc marker built by the Monumental Bronze Works of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Someone took care to mark where they lay.

Somebody wanted it known. Four children. A land grant that pushed the edges of a colony outward.

And two people in the ground east of the San Jacinto River before Texas was even Texas. That is how quietly history sometimes gets made.

What the marker says

Humphrey (1784-1833), Sarah Merriman Jackson (1796-1823), and their family came to Texas as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colony in 1823 and settled east of the San Jacinto River. Jackson's land grant opened up the San Jacinto District and expanded the perimeter of Austin's grant, providing an additional area for Anglo settlement. Sarah was mother to four children and died one year after settling in Texas. Humphrey and Sarah Jackson are buried nearby. The zinc marker at their grave site was built by the Monumental Bronze Works of Bridgeport, Connecticut.