The Pleasant Bend Plantation

The Pleasant Bend Plantation. . , PLEASANT BEND. "This beautiful place, which is situated about eight miles from this city, is one of the most pleasant places in Harris County. Several extensive improvements have lately gone up. Mr. A.T. Morse has lately erected a large [Cotton] Gin House, also several new farms have been laid out. Crops look exceedingly well in this neighborhood. The neighbors meet every other Sunday, and have preaching by the Rev. J. Morse." , - Houston Weekly Telegraph, June 30, 1858, Agur Tomlinson Morse and his wife, Grace Baldwin Morse, were born in Connecticut and lived on successive cotton plantations in South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas, moving nearly every decade as a way to compensate for worn-out soil. They arrived here in 1851, with five children and a number of enslaved African Americans. They named their new home Pleasant Bend. His brother, Rev. John Kell Morse, and his wife Caroline Jones Morse arrived a few years later, and held Methodist church services for the plantation community., During the Civil War, Agur Morse headed the Beauregard Cavalry - Houston's Home Guard - and his sons joined the Confederate army, as did nearly every Anglo and German able-bodied male in rural upper Buffalo Bayou, either as volunteers or by conscription. Life was also difficult at home, as families awaited news of the fate of their loved ones., "What fate our loved ones share we do not know.... Oh, how I long for a letter, just one more.... I am so afraid when news does reach us it will be of sorrow, and God knows what will become of us if this present state of things exists long. Our families are broken up and our homes left desolate and all is broken up.” , - Diary of Cecelia Hough Morse, wife of Henry A. Morse, April 13, 1862, Agur Morse's sons Henry and George served in the Bayou City Guards (Co. A, Fifth Texas Infantry) of Hood's Texas Brigade in northern Virginia. Henry was badly wounded in late 1864. , Captions , A southern cotton press and cotton gin. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, October 7, 1871, 1st Texas Infantry, Hood's Texas Brigade in winter quarters near Dumfries, Virginia in the winter of 1861-1862 , Courtesy of Austin Public Library, The Austin History Center