William Penn, Texas, Washington County Ghost Town. (original) (raw)
The Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church on La Bahia Road
Photo by John Troesser
History in a Pecan Shell
During the years when Texas was a Republic, a settlement three miles north of here was known as Hidalgo Bluffs. The original grant was to Isaac Jackson who sold it to John G. Pitts in 1839. The town was not named after either of these two men, but a steamboat that plied the river in the late 1840s - when the Brazos River was (occasionally) navigable.
Originally a plantation economy before the Civil War, newly arrived Germans bought the land from the original settlers, as they did in most parts of Austin, Washington and Fayette Counties.
In 1860 Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded and the church standing today was built in 1893.
William Penn was noted for wagon manufacturing in the late 19th century and it retained a working cotton gin into the 1980s - the last one working in Washington County.
See
The Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church ca 1893
Photo courtesy Gerald Massey. October 2010
William Penn Road sign
Photo courtesy Gerald Massey. October 2010
1907 postal map showing Wm Penn in NE Washington County
From Texas state map #2090
Courtesy Texas General Land Office
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