Morse-Bragg Cemetery

Morse-Bragg Cemetery. . , The permanent settlement of this vicinity began with the construction of the San Felipe to Harrisburg wagon road in 1830, which lay half a mile south of here. Connecticut-born Agur Tomlinson Morse (1801-1865) and his wife Grace Baldwin Morse (1814-1890) left their cotton plantation in Mississippi and founded the Pleasant Bend plantation in 1851. Their house lay about five hundred feet to the south. Agur built a grist mill and a cotton gin, and two sons built a steam sawmill. Their land holdings grew to nearly eight square miles, including much of modern Tanglewood, Post Oak-Galleria, River Oaks, West University Place and Southside Place. Agur's brother Rev. John Kell Morse and his wife Caroline A. Jones Morse held Methodist church services on the plantation. Agur served as a volunteer head of Houston's Home Guard during the Civil War, and three sons were Confederate soldiers. Thomas McGowen started a small nearby farm in 1847, which was sold to James McFee and his wife Cassandra Hough McFee in 1852., The cemetery was used from the early 1850s by the Morse family and the Pleasant Bend community, and it contains the remains of many early citizens of rural Harris County. Pioneer settler Thaddeus Bell (1822-1871), the first male child born in Stephen F. Austin's colony, is buried here, as are at least four members of the African-American Banks family, and at least seven Confederate veterans. Deaths from yellow fever, cholera, and typhoid fever reflect the dangers of the pioneer era. Grace Morse deeded the cemetery in 1874 for its continued use by the Morse family and surrounding neighbors, with an additional part sold to Benjamin A. Bragg. All but two of the headstones were destroyed in the late twentieth century.