T.W. House Sugar House Archaeological Preservation
Fort Bend County, Texas
HRA Gray & Pape, working with a private developer and the Texas Historical Commission, conducted archival research and archaeological excavation to document the remains of a circa 1880's sugar house in Fort Bend County, Texas.
The sugar house was one of two sugar processing facilities within the Arcola Plantation, which was started as the "Water's Plantation" by Jonathan Waters around 1849 and purchased by T.W. House in 1872. Documentary evidence, historic maps, and an analysis of artifacts found on site were used to determine the approximate dates of use for the facility.
Information about the layout and size of the sugar house was collected through archaeological excavation, hand-drawn mapping, and recordation via Total Station, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, and Geographic Information System (GIS) software. These data are being combined with survey results from various parts of the planned development to reconstruct the evolution and organization of the multi-acre plantation through time, and to predict the likely locations of as-yet unidentified plantation components, including the cabins where the plantation's large slave population lived prior to conversion to the convict-labor system.
HRA Gray & Pape is assisting the private development company with the creation of a management plan for the former plantation property. Key components of this plan will include overlaying historic maps with modern aerial photographs, mapping extant features of the former plantation, and creation of a series of interpretive panels that will provide information on historically-significant stops along walking trails and sidewalks running through the community.
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