DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Stafford Plantation has to say — and friend, it's got roots worth knowing about. William Joseph Stafford was a Tennessean, and in 1822 he packed up his family — his second wife, Martha Cartwright, and their people — and made the move to this part of Texas as one of the original settlers in Stephen F. Austin's 'old 300' colony.
That's as early as it gets in Anglo Texas. You were not fashionably late to that particular party. You were the party.
Now, William and Martha didn't just survive out here — they built something. Eight children they raised on this land, and alongside all that living, they developed a full plantation: a sugar cane mill, a cotton gin, the whole operation. They called it Stafford's Point.
And here's the thing about that sugar — it carried a high molasses content, which meant when the cotton market went soft and neighboring operations struggled, Stafford's Point kept right on prospering. That sugar was doing the heavy lifting. Then came the Texas Revolution, and with it, Mexican troops who burned the plantation buildings to the ground.
Now, I want you to sit with that for a moment — everything they'd built since 1822, gone in the fire. But the Staffords rebuilt. They came back, and the settlement that grew up around that plantation grew into a commercial center.
The very place you might know today as Stafford, Texas, takes its name from that resilient piece of ground. And this site right here — the one the marker stands on — is thought to be the cemetery of the early Stafford Plantation. The people who planted the roots are buried where the roots still hold.
What the marker says
Stafford Plantation Tennessean William Joseph Stafford and his second wife, Martha Cartwright, moved their family to this area in 1822 as part of Stephen F. Austin's "old 300" colony. Here they reared eight children and developed a plantation with a sugar cane mill and cotton gin. The plantation, known as Stafford's Point, produced sugar with a high molasses content and prospered even when local cotton production was low. During the Texas Revolution, Mexican troops burned the plantation buildings, but the family rebuilt, and the settlement surrounding the plantation became a commercial center, known today as Stafford. This site is thought to be the cemetery of the early Stafford Plantation. (2003)