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Texas Ghost
Town
WILLIAM
PENN, TEXAS
Washington
County, Central Texas S
FM 390 (aka La
Bahia Road)
12 miles NE of Brenham
Population: 100 (1990 est) (peaked with 127 people in 1904)
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The
Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church c.1893
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
FM
390 - La Bahia Scenic Highway
A
Brief Biography of William Penn, the Man
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© John Troesser |
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