Randon & Pennington Grant of 1824

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, friends, so let me give it to you straight from the record. Back in 1821, Stephen F. Austin received a permit from the Mexican government to act as empresario for three hundred families settling in Texas.

That very summer, Austin and those settlers, who would come to be known as the Old Three Hundred, began crossing into Texas. What followed was one of the great land-dealing operations in early Texas history. From 1823 to 1824, Austin and the Commissioner of Colonization for Texas, Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop, issued 272 land grants.

Now, 56 of those grants landed along the banks of the Brazos and San Bernard Rivers, in territory that would eventually become Fort Bend County in 1837. Fifty-six parcels of Texas earth, waiting to be worked. On August 3, 1824, two men stepped forward to claim theirs.

David Randon and his business partner Isaac Pennington received a grant of 4,428 acres on the Brazos River, sitting right between the John Foster League to the east and the Churchill Fulshear League to the west. Fertile soil, river access for moving crops to market. Not a bad piece of Texas to call your own.

Now, David Randon was a native of Alabama and part Creek Indian, and he came to Texas in search of opportunity. He received his land grant as a single man, but the record doesn't leave him that way for long. By March of 1826, he was recorded as having a wife, Nancy McNeel, daughter of John McNeel, himself a land grant recipient over in Brazoria County.

Randon would go on to become one of the most successful planters in Austin's colony. He died in 1867 and is buried on the Dyer Moore ranch near the community of Orchard. His partner, Isaac Pennington, a native of Virginia, sold his interest in the land to Randon and went his own direction.

And here is where Pennington's story gets its own kind of weight. He was listed as a teacher as early as 1823 to 1824, which puts him among the earliest teachers in the colony. Later, in 1836, he was the mail contractor on the route between Independence and Milam.

Two very different callings, but both of them stitching this new place together, one lesson and one letter at a time. Four thousand four hundred and twenty-eight acres on the Brazos, two men from far-off states, one a planter who would leave his mark on Fort Bend County, one a teacher carrying knowledge into a frontier that badly needed it. The marker calls their grant an important part of the early development of Texas and Fort Bend County.

And standing here today, with all that has grown up around that stretch of the Brazos, it is hard to argue with that.

What the marker says

In 1821, Stephen F. Austin was granted a permit from the Mexican government to act as empresario for 300 families to settle in Texas. That summer, he and the settlers, known as the Old Three Hundred, began crossing into Texas. From 1823 to 1824, Austin and the Commissioner of Colonization for Texas, Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop, issued 272 land grants, 56 of which were situated on the banks of the Brazos and San Bernard Rivers in what became Fort Bend County in 1837. On August 3, 1824, David Randon and his business partner, Isaac Pennington, received a grant of 4,428 acres located on the Brazos River in Fort Bend County between the John Foster League to the east and the Churchill Fulshear League to the west. The Randon and Pennington Land Grant offered fertile soil and valued river access for the transportation of crops to market. David Randon, a native of Alabama and part Creek Indian, came to Texas in search of opportunity. Randon received his land grant as a single man, but by March 1826, he was recorded as having a wife, Nancy McNeel, daughter of John McNeel, a land grant recipient in Brazoria County. Randon soon became one of the most successful planters in Austin's colony. He died in 1867 and is buried on the Dyer Moore ranch near the community of Orchard. Isaac Pennington, a native of Virginia, sold his interest in the land to Randon. Pennington was listed as a teacher as early as 1823-24, making him one of the earliest teachers in the colony. He was later the mail contractor on the route between independence and Milam in 1836. The Randon and Pennington land grant became an important part of the early development of Texas and Fort Bend County.