Noah Griffith (1786-1853) / Esther Wightman Griffith (1788-1863)

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Noah and Esther Griffith, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Now, most folks who settled this part of Texas came up from the south or drifted in from the east, but Noah Griffith and his wife Esther had a longer road behind them. They came from New York.

All the way from New York, down to Texas, in 1829. That's a journey worth sitting with for a moment. They were members of Stephen F.

Austin's second colony. So they weren't wandering blind into the wilderness. They had a place in something bigger, a deliberate settlement, a plan taking shape on the map of a young and uncertain land.

Noah was born in 1786, Esther in 1788, and by the time they made that crossing into Texas, they were not young newlyweds taking a gamble. They were grown people making a committed choice. They landed first in Matagorda, a port community on the Texas coast.

Life near the water, near the trade, near the comings and goings of a frontier port. But Matagorda wasn't where they were meant to stay. In 1831, they moved.

They came here, to this ground in Montgomery County, and they put down roots that the Mexican government made official in the form of a land grant. This very site is part of that original grant. Noah Griffith was a farmer and a miller.

Two of the most necessary things a frontier community could have. A man who could work the land and grind the grain. And the Griffith home, that same home they built on that land grant, became an early polling place.

Neighbors gathering to make decisions, to cast votes, under the Griffith roof. Esther outlived Noah by ten years. He passed in 1853, she in 1863.

And what they left behind was not just a family. It was a piece of ground with a story, a land grant, a mill, a farm, and a front door that once stood open to democracy finding its footing in Texas. Not bad, for two people who started all the way up in New York.

What the marker says

Members of Stephen F. Austin's second colony, Noah Griffith (1786-1853) and his wife Esther (Wightman) (1788-1863) came to Texas in 1829 from New York. They lived in the port community of Matagorda before moving here in 1831. This site is part of their original Mexican land grant. Griffith was a farmer and miller, and the Griffith home was used as an early polling place. Recorded - 1980