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T H E   V I L L A G E   O F   M U M F O R D

Presented to the Robertson County Historical Commission by Barbara Collier-Foyt

The village of Mumford is situated on the only high ground in the lower Brazos River Bottom that comprises the southwestern tip of Robertson County, Texas.  The role this place came to play in the settlement of the area was determined both by its geographical location and slight elevation above the surrounding floodplain.  During the period from 1838 - 1848, traffic came into the area via the Old San Antonio Road (OSR), the lower boundary of the Original Robertson's Colony.  At least one account places this road about one a half miles north of the place where Highway 21 crosses the river today.  In the 1916 survey made to determine the official route of the OSR, V. N. Zively surveyed two crossings, one at Stone City where both highway and railroad crossed the Brazos, and one a few miles up-stream at what he called Shoal Ford.  No known ferry operated at the present-day crossing, which is quite near the confluence of the Little and Big Brazos rivers.  It was only in 1913 that the highway and railroad bridge were built at this site.  Before that time, it is likely that practically all travelers on the Old San Antonio Road crossed the river near Tenoxtitlan, a few miles to the north, around the great bend to the west in the river.  The old Spanish outpost marked a fixed point on the road leading to other settlements due east, such as Staggers Point (present-day Benchley) and Dunn's For (Wheelock).  The elevated spot about a mile east of the river crossing attracted those wishing to rest before continuing on their journeys.

Among these was a horse and mule trader named Jesse Mumford, one of the first to stake his claim in the fertile, but as yet untamed, bottomlands.  Malcolm D. McLean refers to Wilbarger's Indian Depredations In Texas to note that "a man named Mumford" was living in Tenoxtitlan in April, 1834, byt his application for admission to the Robertson Colony had not been found.  In 1855, Mumford successfully petitioned the court in Robertson County for a permit to operate his ferry, but it is not known how long he was in business before that time.

Pioneers making their way between Tenoxtitlan on the west bank of the Brazos and settlements such as Staggers' Point and Dunn's Fort utilized the services of this ferry located at a point on the Brazos River about one mile north of the site of the Spanish outpost, considered the first community established in Robertson's Colony.  The Mumford ferry was self-described as a "first rate boat float" costing the sum of $1.00 for a wagon and team of four horses or oxen, 75 cents for a wagon and team of two horses or oxen, 50 cents for a man and a horse, 3 cents for loose sheep, cattle, or hogs, per head, and "for footmen, ten cents when the river is half full and when the same is high a reasonable additional amount may be charged."

From the river crossing, travelers followed a rutted wagon trail through the muddy bottomlands to a pleasant sandy knoll where they might stop to catch cool southerly breezes and refill their water barrels with clean artesian well water.  It was here, approximately midway between the Big and Little Brazos Rivers, that a town, originally known simply as Mumford's Ferry, came into existence.  Indeed, this high ground was the only part of the Brazos River Bottom north of the confluence of the two rivers ten miles to the south that remained above the level of rising floodwaters when the streams overflowed their banks.  For this reason, the spot became valued as a home site and gathering place for traders and homesteaders.

The fertile floodplain was contained in the original George Antonio Nixon grant of 48,750 acres, being subdivided into plantations by planters bringing slaves to the Brazos Bottom.  The extent and fertility of the soils of the river bottoms in Robertson County made them appropriate fields for cotton culture, and planters came during the fifties in great numbers to make their homes there and to operate large plantations.  Nixon held the land for speculation, and it was not until the early fifties that the grant was divided.  Among the earliest documented names associated with the emerging plantation culture are those of Mumford, Teague, Bailey, Wilson, Astin, Peers, Kent, and White.

Soon, Jesse Mumford became a wealthy man in his own right.  The Robertson County Census of 1860 indicates that a Jesse Mumford (sic), age 48, occupation listed as 'farmer' held $83,500 in real estate and owned personal property in the amount of $20,660.  The census shows that his birthplace was in Georgia, and that his household included a housekeeper, Elzira, age 25, of Tennessee, an older woman, Margaret Duncan, age 59, 9f Virginia, and two female children, Georgia, age 2, and Sarah Dooley, age 6, both born in Texas.  Although the legendary Judge "Three Legged Willie" Williamson was known to have married Jesse to his common law wife, Franky, in 1838, she is not listed in the census.  After officially giving the town his name in 1867, Mumford died September 4, 1883 and is buried at Davilla in the old Mumford-Taylor Cemetery (in Milam County).

Prior to emancipation, cotton land in the bottoms was cleared and worked by slaves brought with the numerous planter families who emigrated to Texas from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and other Southern states.  Today, the only physical evidence remaining to attest to the existence of these persons, listed only as "personal property" in the 1860 census, is a lone granite marker placed in the middle of a cotton field on land about a mile south of Mumford owned for three generations of the family descended from pioneer planter Jim Astin (see Astin Farm Negro Burial Ground).  An inscription reads:  "Negro Burial Ground, founded 1841.  Well done, thy good and faithful servant."  No one knows who erected this marker, or exactly when, but oral interviews with the current lessee indicate that the marker was most likely put in place ... in the 1960s ...

In the early 1860s, William H. Bailey, who later served as the town's first postmaster, operated a store and way station at the highest point of the sandy knoll along the old wagon trail.  A portion of this trail still exists as part of a county road presently known as Mumford Circle, which becomes a fence line between two pastures, and then continues as a path leading to the community cemetery at the far eastern tip of the high ground.  Residents recall still seeing the deeply rutted remnants of this time-worn wagon road as late as the 1930s.

The cemetery (see Mumford Cemetery) is divided into two parts, Catholic on the north of the road, Protestant on the south.  Many grave markers in the primarily African-American section of the burying ground are indiscernible, but some indicate births as early as the 1870s.  Similar dates can be found in the Hispanic-American (and possibly Italian-American) Catholic portion of the cemetery.  Remnants of numerous graves whose markers may have been knocked down by livestock lie partially covered over in a part of the burial ground land since revered to pasture land.

During the Reconstruction era, some former slaves continued to work the cotton and corn fields as sharecroppers, but many moved away.  By the early 1880s, a workable system of land tenancy existed, with families living on the land and working it for shares to be paid to the landowners.  J. R. Collier, who came to Mumford in 1882 after marrying Rachel Bailey, leased over 1,000 acres nears the town, subletting small tracts to tenants successfully until the devastating overflow of 1885 which destroyed all the crops.

As in other parts of Reconstruction Texas, planters sought other sources of labor for their enterprises.  During the turbulent times of Reconstruction, the state penitentiary system leased convicts to planters who needed labor.  As the Brazos bottom lands had not then been entirely cleared, the planters were able to use penal labor the year around.  When the convicts were not busy in the fields, they could be set to work clearing underbrush and felling trees.  After the lands had been cleared and the local merchants made violent protests against the leasing system, inasmuch as the planters bought their supplied wholesale in Houston, instead of buying them from nearby stores, the system was abandoned.  The legislature then purchased farms for the penitentiary system and required it to employ the convicts thereon.

In the Spring of 1886, Collier went to Huntsville, Texas to contract "for fifty convicts, placing them on one of my farms.  These convicts were fed on good, wholesome food, which I supplied."  Natural gas was discovered when water wells were drilled, and this gas was used to light the convict camps.  Two other contracts were made for convicts to work other farms, each a force of fifty men.  In the early 1890s, Collier bought a ranch on the west side of the Brazos, "working free labor on it" and reviving the ferry to travel back and forth.  At that time, the Collier enterprise included the former Bailey store, a corn grist mill, which provided meal for all the workers and tenants, a lumber yard, cotton gin, brick kiln, broom factory, and syrup mill.

The lumber yard provided materials for a number of tenant houses that Collier built during the late 1890s.  Using local carpenters living on the property, he could construct "good, four-room box houses, fully equipped, for about $300."  To continue filling these houses, an arrangement was made with H. L. Lewis of Hearne to send to Georgia and get twenty African American families, half to live at Mumford.  Such structures still standing at Mumford are representative of housing in the area around 1900, and were used by families of black sharecroppers as well as whites.  Historians note that the sharecropper house was the focal point of family life and the origin of many urban African American families today.  As the sharecrop system was common in the rural South and provided a way for the newly freed slaves to earn a living, the house and the family living in it preserved black culture through a period of transition from slavery to urban life.

The opportunity to work the land attracted immigrants from as far away as Sicily in the last decades of the 19th century (see Italian Collection).  Needing additional labor for another farm, Collier went to Galveston, arranging with the Italian Consul to get twelve families from Italy.  He recounts: "after these families had been working for me for a while, they wrote back to their friends in Italy, telling them how satisfied they were.  The next year, additional families came from Italy.  These families were the parent stock of all the Italian people who now own so much valuable land in the Brazos bottom between Hearne and Bryan."

In what way can a small rural village be said to have made a difference in the context of the history on a larger scale?  Mumford is known for the production of its fertile surrounding farmland, and as a center of community life for residents of the Brazos Bottom living up and down FM 50.  A United States Post Office has operated continuously since 1878 and a rural independent school district has served the community since 1926.  Because pioneers with foresight sought to improve means of transportation and communication, rights of way for railroad lines (Union Pacific) and the first Farm to Market Road in the state (FM50) were granted through the town and adjacent farmland.  In 1891, J. R. Collier served as a member of the board which developed the Hearne & Brazos Valley Railroad connecting Hearne to Stone City, took the lead in organizing support for the 1895 construction of the iron bridge connecting Robertson and Burleson counties, and also built a telephone line from Mumford to Bryan, Hearne, and Goodland.  The telephone line was later sold to the Bell Telephone Company in Waco.  The bridge was washed away by the great 1899 flood, but two iron pillars remain on the western bank to mark its existence.  The two-story brick general store, built by J. R. Collier in 1913, is still owned and operated by descendants of the Bailey and Collier families.  It continues to provide goods and services, including those to the U.S. Post office, six days a week.  In 1892, J. R. Collier donated land for a church, now known as the New Zion Baptist Church, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 1995.  Countless descendants of the many sharecropper families who made their homes in and near Mumford continue to visit the community in search of remnants of their cultural heritage and personal family histories.

Note:  Hyperlinks were added to the text by the website editor.