Story

Storyteller: NA

On the banks of Oyster Creek in Fort Bend County stood a ten-room plantation house built in 1846 by the widow Mary Nibbs. All that remains of the 5,000-acre sugar and cotton plantation — once called “Walnut Grove” — are three very large live oak trees, grown from acorns Mary Nibbs planted. These are witness trees. Under their branches the enslaved ate lunch while the mules were fed and watered; when the plantation bell rang, the men came out of the fields to these trees, unhitched the plows, and rested in their shade. One hundred enslaved people lived on this plantation. After the war, three hundred tenant farmers still came to eat beneath these ancient oaks. Today the site is the Orchard Lakes subdivision in Sugar Land; nearby is an old Black graveyard from which 24 graves were moved to build the subdivision’s entrance.