Photo Courtesy Sugar Land Heritage FoundationTown grew up around sugar mill
The history of Sugar Land is bound up with the history of the Imperial Sugar Company. What had once been a plantation and mill that relied on forced labor became a model company town. Imperial Sugar was the leading employer in Sugar Land for nearly a century, and the vision of its founders—Isaac Kempner and W.T. Eldridge—would shape the community's growth for years.
"Kempner and Eldridge were visionary in creating an education system, good paved roads, good housing and access to clean water," said Dennis Parmer, executive director of the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation. "They saw the need for infrastructure, and they created a town where people would want to live."
The earliest settlers of Stephen F. Austin's colony found that sugar cane flourished in the area of the Brazos and Colorado rivers and local creeks. Austin granted land along Oyster Creek to an assistant, Samuel M. Williams, that would later become the site of the distinctive Imperial refinery. Williams and his brothers established the Oakland plantation in 1828 and began producing brown sugar.
By 1855 there were 40 raw sugar mills in the area of Fort Bend, Matagorda, Brazoria and Wharton counties and exports of sugar were sent to the eastern and southern U.S. through Galveston. In 1853, the Williams brothers sold their plantation to W.J. Kyle and B.F. Terry, who renamed it "Sugar Land."
