May 2000

There exists today near the small crossroads hamlet of Perry's Landing, now known as Jones Creek in Brazoria County, Texas, one of the oldest and most historic plantations in the Southwest: Peach Point Plantation. Emily Margaret Austin, the sister of Stephen F. Austin, and her husband James F. Perry settled the plantation in December of 1832. It continues to the present-day in the hands of their descendants, having celebrated one hundred fifty years of family ownership in 1982.

Stephen F. Austin choose the location of Peach Point Plantation as a home site soon after his sister, her husband, and her children arrived in Texas on August 14, 1831. Stephen drew up plans for the house while his brother-in-law James supervised clearing the land. In accordance with Stephen's wishes, two rooms on one wing of the house were reserved for his bedroom and office since, as a bachelor, he made his formal home with Emily and her family. Those rooms remain today in the year 2000 much as he lived in them in the 1830s although a 1909 hurricane destroyed the remainder of the home which was later rebuilt to modern specifications.

Peach Point Plantation quickly became after its founding one of the most graceful and hospitable homes on the Texas frontier as a steady succession of the great and near great visited to confer with one of the leading pioneer families of Anglo American Texas, even after Stephen F. Austin's untimely death in 1836. Emily Austin truly lived at Peach Point Plantation as "sister to an empire" and one of the social leaders of early Texas. She was also one of the great mothers of Texas, bearing eleven children by two husbands; first, James Bryan and -- after his death -- James F. Perry. Peach Point Plantation became the ancestral home of her large and extended family of descendants. From the 1830s to the twenty first century, political leaders, statesmen, diplomats, jurists, businessmen, and other luminaries from all walks of life have called at Peach Point, including several Presidents of the United States. Rutherford B. Hayes, who stayed as a guest on the Plantation in the nineteenth century, later recalled its bucolic splendor when he noted that it was "delightfully situated at the edge of the timber, looking out upon a plain on the south extending five or six miles to the Gulf of Mexico." President Hayes particularly liked the "large beautiful flower garden in front" of the main house, while he was impressed with the diversity of products produced there including sugarcane and cotton. Although given over entirely to cattle-raising under the "Old Spanish Brand" of the Perry Ranch when another, later President, Lyndon B. Johnson, first called there as a United States Senator, Peach Point Plantation was no less impressive in the 1950s as one of the historic touchstones of this state's living history.

For us here tonight, Peach Point Plantation has more than passing significance for what brings us together in this magnificent, new banquet hall. It was there at Peach Point, in the office room of that historic place exactly one hundred and sixty years ago, that events occurred which helped set in motion the Austin College story. True leadership was exhibited in that place. In March of 1840, a somberly clad horseback rider slowly made his solitary way up the drive of the Plantation past the flower garden to be greeted on the front veranda by Emily and James. The rider was Reverend Daniel Baker, former pastor to both Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Baker had left the prestigious pulpit of the largest Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. years earlier to evangelize on the southern frontier. His widely acclaimed successes in these endeavors had brought him to Texas in 1840 in order to help found the Presbyterian Church in the young Republic. Emily and James Perry, as prominent members of that denomination, figured directly in a bold plan that had come to Reverend Baker.

Daniel Baker arrived at Peach Point Plantation in search of financial leadership. He came directly from a meeting during which the Presbytery of the Brazos had been founded for Texas. At that meeting, Baker has presented a rather startling idea for an infant Presbytery that was just being created: namely, it should found a denominational college in Texas for the children of its members. This was an adventurous plan for the relatively rude, rough-and-tumble frontier society that was the Republic of Texas in 1840. Nonetheless, Reverend Baker persisted and his fellow ministers tentatively approved the plan pending the securing of financial resources that would create the new college.

That motive brought him to Peach Point. Emily and her husband, devout church folk, had already established themselves as staunch supporters of Presbyterianism. They listened as Daniel Baker enthusiastically outlined his ambitious proposal for a college of that denomination in Texas. Such a school, he told them, would be a training ground for new ministers in the young republic while it would serve as an elevator of culture, refinement, and liberal learning on the young frontier. Emily clearly understood that value of a liberal education. As a young girl, she had attended finishing school in New York City, making her a cosmopolitan on the Texas frontier. Her daily routine included music, the arts, and the classics blended with the more mundane chores of being the mistress of a large plantation. In their own family life, the Perrys had already determined that the own children would have the best education possible.

The Perrys therefore agreed with Daniel Baker, firmly promising a generous financial donation once the new college became reality. In effect, Emily and her husband made the first financial pledge to what would become Austin College. Reverend Baker used the prestige of their support to enlist other prominent Texas in support of the proposed college.

The creation of that college, however, did not progress as quickly as Daniel Baker desired on that first visit to Peach Point Plantation. A case of malaria forced him to return to the United States shortly after having outlined his plans to the Perrys. Although the Presbytery of the Brazos never abandoned plans for the college, obstacle after obstacle hindered its creation -- something that would not take place until Reverend Baker eventually returned to Texas. A delay of almost nine years retarded this return, during which time Texas joined the Union and Presbyterianism flourished as thousands of Anglo-Americans flocked westward across the Sabine in search of good land and better lives.

Daniel Baker came back to Texas for good in 1849, participating almost immediately in the legal creation of Austin College. It was he who picked Huntsville as its first home, personally enlisting to its first board of trustees two presidents of the former Republic of Texas, Sam Houston and Anson Jones. He also convinced Texas attorney Henderson Yoakum to write its charter and then personally shepherded it through to legislative approval in November of that year. Importantly, Reverend Baker also began the search for funds to make the new college an educational reality. That brought him back to Peach Point Plantation, where once again in the office room, the Perry's signed over to Austin College the deed to valuable acreage in Brazoria County, thus fulfilling their initial pledge to the college made nine years earlier. They also sweetened the pot, so to speak, by making an additional, unanticipated donation to the college. As a bachelor, Stephen F. Austin had no children. Emily was the sole heir to his estate. As part of that bequest, she held the rights to any money eventually recovered from the State of Texas due Stephen for his service and expenses as agent of the Republic to the United States during the Revolution of 1836. This had the potential to amount to several thousand dollars, a tremendous sum of money for the time. The Texas Legislature, however, had delayed and demurred in paying many of such claims on it, including the monies due the Austin estate. Emily signed over the rights to this money to Austin College and empowered college officials to act as agent before the legislature for its recovery.

These gifts made to Austin College by Emily and James Perry constituted some of the first major donations made to the young school. This proved to be crucial. Just before the Civil War, a later president of the college, Rufus Bailey, sold the some of the Brazoria land in a successful effort to keep the doors of the college open in the face of what otherwise would have been a certain financial collapse. Then, in the 1870s, President Samuel M. Luckett -- with the assistance of the college attorney Andrew McKinney -- reached a settlement of the Austin claims before the state legislature. It was this money that enabled Austin College to move to Sherman, thus insuring that it would have solid future in the midst of the profound financial dislocations of post Civil War Texas.

Emily, however, did not live to see the success of the college that her financial leadership helped to create. Her health had begun to decline at the very time that Austin College opened the doors to its first classes in Huntsville. In May of 1851, ailing and debilitated, she made the hard trip to Philadelphia in an effort to secure medical treatment at what would eventually become the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. There, her doctors informed her that their efforts would not be successful. Weak and exhausted, she told them that she wanted to return to her beloved Peach Point and there meet her end there among the warmth of family and friends. That she did, passing from this earth on August 15, 1851. She was buried in the nearby Presbyterian Church yard, in plain site of Peach Point. For many years, she lay next to her brother Stephen, whose remains later traveled in 1910 to the Texas capital city where they were reentered in the official state cemetery created in that year. Emily still lies at Peach Point, near the now empty crypt of her beloved brother.

She is, however, not forgotten. Each year in June, numbers of her descendants in the Austin/Bryan/Perry family gather in a grand reunion at the small churchyard located next to main house at Peach Point Plantation. They come in order to remember her. Many of them refer to her as "Aunt Emily," as if she were a living presence in their lives. And she is, not only for those family members, but also for all of us here tonight as well.

That is because her generosity as a mother to her family and as a philanthropist to our college has propelled all of us over the generations, on our respective journeys through a century and a half of Texas history. Many of her descendants today continue in positions of leadership in many walks of life in the modern state of Texas that has grown from the early efforts of her family. And, over the years, many of them have continued to support Austin College. Emily's son, U.S. Congressman Guy M. Bryan, served on our board of trustees in the nineteenth century. Guy M. Bryan, Jr., became a generous contributor to the college a generation later. To date, over two dozen of Emily's descendants have graduated over the generations from Austin College. Austin/ Bryan/Perry Family members have endowed two named professorships at the college in this century, provided the funds that constructed the Bryan Student Apartments, and have established scholarships and fellowships. Today, in the twenty-first century, Bryan and Perry family members continue to smile on the college with their time, talents, and stewardship.

So the journey that Emily Austin helped to set in motion continues for each of us here tonight in this banquet hall. Our presence here insures that we will honor her memory as the first person in our institution's grand history to make a financial pledge to Austin College. Our presence here tonight also gives testimony to our mutual hope that all of us will use her example of leadership as a guide for our own lives and for the future of the college.

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