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The summer is off to a busy start at the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation! Our Volunteer Work Days have been a great success. We have managed to salvage five large pallets of historic bricks and other architectural fragments from the Imperial Sugar refinery site. These will be incorporated into the designs for our future museum facility.
We have also created a travelling display of Sugar Land history which will be exhibited at various venues around the community. The history display will be in the lobby of Sugar Land City Hall through the end of August. Please stop by to check it out! |
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Curator's Corner:
The Ellis Family
We recently received a wonderful addition to our growing collection of historic photos. Roger Bollinger donated framed photos his great-grandparents, Pink Owen Ellis Turner and David Adam Turner.
Pink Owen Ellis was born in 1861. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Littleberry Ambrose Ellis, a major landowner in Sugar Land after the Civil War. Her mother, Col. Ellis's first wife, died shortly after giving birth to Pink and her twin brother (Littleberry Jr.) who also died.
Pink Ellis later married David Adam Turner and the couple lived in Sugar Land from about 1898 until 1904 when they and their four children moved to Houston.
The donor's great-great grandfather, Col. Littleberry A. Ellis, was a native of Mississippi. Ellis's father and uncle signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. Col. Ellis used convict labor to establish a large plantation encompassing the area of today's Central One Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and named it "Sartartia" after one of his daughters. |
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Who's Who in History:
M.R. Wood
M.R. Wood came to Sugar Land in 1901 as the chief chemist and engineer for the E.H. Cunningham refinery. Wood continued his work in Sugar Land after the deteriorating refinery was taken over by I.H. Kempner and W.T. Eldridge in 1908.
 Wood's home still stands at the corner of Second and Wood Street. He was responsible for designing the impressive Sugar Land School and Auditorium which was completed in 1918. He also served as Sugar Land's first school board president. Both Wood Street in The Hill and the M.R. Wood School in Mayfield Park are named for him. |
TRIVIA ANSWER:
The five colums overlooking the reflecting pool at the entrance to the Sugar Creek neighborhood were originally part of the 1898 Galveston County Courthouse. The columns were brought to Sugar Creek after the building closed in 1966.
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