PVAMU Wyatt Chapel Cemetery Research: PVAMU Wyatt Chapel Cemetery Research

udents
Bill Baker
Jared Sallee
July 2010
I

KIRBY, JARED E. (1809–1865).Jared E. Kirby (Kerby, Curby), planter, son of Henry and Sarah Kirby, was born in Georgia in 1809 and moved with his parents, his wife, and his daughter from Mississippi to Texasin late 1848 or early 1849. The family settled on a quarter-league tract in the Hempstead district of Austin County, east of the Brazos River in what is now Waller County.

Jared E. Kirby, planter, son of Henry and Sarah Kirby, was born in Georgia in 1809 and moved with his parents, his wife, and his daughter from Mississippi to Texas in late 1848 or 1849. The family settled on a quarter-league tract in the Hempstead district of Austin County, east of the Brazos River in what is now Waller County. In 1850 county tax rolls described Kirby as the owner of fifty-five slaves and an estate valued at $28,000. He served as a delegate to the state Whig party convention at Tyler in the spring of 1852 and was chosen an elector in the impending presidential campaign. Kirby was master of Alta Vista plantation, at the site of present Prairie View. By 1860, after a decade of steady accumulation, he had perhaps become Austin County's wealthiest resident. He owned more than 8,000 acres on both banks of the Brazos, worth $285,000, and $175,000 in personal property, including 139 slaves. In that year his plantation produced 10,000 bushels of corn and 700 bales of cotton. After the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861 Kirby was selected to help organized public defense as a member of the Austin County Central Executive Committee. His first wife, Indianna, seems to have died in the mid-1850's; they had two children. He married his second wife, Helen Swearingen Kirby, in 1858.

Jared Ellison Kirby
Birth
8 June 1819 - Georgia, USA
Death
14 Dec 1865 - Houston, Harris Co., Texas, USA
Mother
Sarah Sheppard Harper - Georgia, USA
Father
Henry Kirby - Houston, Harris Co., Texas, USA

This cemetery is located on land that was originally part of Jared E. Kirby's Alta Vista Plantation. According to oral tradition, the Kirby family set aside this land as a burial site for their slaves, as well as slaves from nearby Liendo Plantation, owned by Kirby's cousin, Leonard Waller Croce. The numerous unmarked graves here are believed to date to the Antebellum period, when most slaves would not have had the resources to erect lasting grave markers.

Marker Text: ​This cemetery is located on land that was originally part of Jared E. Kirby's Alta Vista Plantation. According to oral tradition, the Kirby family set aside this land as a burial site for their slaves, as well as slaves from nearby Liendo Plantation, owned by Kirby's cousin, Leonard Waller Croce.

Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture
Documenting the complete history of African American Texans
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“Know your history, know yourself“
African descendants have had a presence in Texas for almost 500 years, maybe longer. The territory was the northernmost area of New Spain (Mexico) in 1528 when Esteban (Estevanico), a Moroccan Moor servant, waded ashore with a group of Spanish conquistadors near what is now Galveston Island and established himself as the first known African in what would become Texas. Since, African Americans have contributed significantly in all facets of the building of the Lone Star State — its infrastructure, image, and culture. For that, the Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture is charting every aspect of the black experience in Texas as an online encyclopedia.

Two years before the start of the Civil War, Col. Jared Ellison Kirby issued a blunt advertisement seeking the return of “runaway” slaves.

Three enslaved men had fled the Alta Vista Plantation, and Kirby was convinced they were headed to Mexico.

The slave-owner never found them. Now, on the same grounds from which the men escaped, historians are working to piece together their stories — plus other accounts of plantation life on land that later became Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black college.

PRAIRIE VIEW, TX (WALLER COUNTY).Prairie View is on U.S. Highway 290 and the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, between Hempstead and Waller in north central Waller County. It traces its roots to Alta Vista, the plantation home of Jared E. and Helen Marr (Swearingen) Kirby. Alta Vista was one of four plantations and several small farms owned by the Kirbys in the vicinity of Best and Iron creeks, and at one time claimed a population of 400 slaves.

WALLER COUNTY, Texas -- Out in a rural stretch of Texas northwest of Houston, Waller County was born of plantations, cotton fields and slavery. More than a century ago, state lawmakers planted there the state's first public college where Black students could pursue higher education.

Established in 1876 on Alta Vista Plantation after it was deeded to the State of Texas, Prairie View A&M University is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Texas and the only one located on a former plantation.

Prairie View is on U.S. Highway 290 and the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, between Hempstead and Waller in north central Waller County.

PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas — Picture this: you're attending a university that's known for its outstanding academics programs, along with its rich history of being the first college to be supportive of African-Americans in the state of Texas.

Prairie View State College
100 University Dr, Prairie View, Waller County, Texas

Website: https://www.pvamu.edu/

Geographical Coordinates: 30.092949, -95.989345

Travel Guide Listing(s): 1947 Green Book, Chauffeurs’s Travel Bureau Guide (no date)

Historical Designations: Historic & Architectural Resources of Prairie View A&M University Multiple Property Listing (NR MDL 64500650), L. C. Anderson Hall (NR 99000611), W. R. Banks Library (NR 99000612), Annie Laurie Evans Hall (NR 99000613), Hilliard Hall (NR 99000614), G. R. Woolfolk Social & Political Science Building (NR 99000616), Veterinary Hospital (NR 99000617), Prairie View A&M University (OTHM 8110)

Engaging the Public with and Preserving the History of Texas’s First Public Historically Black University
November 2018KULA knowledge creation dissemination and preservation studies 2(1)
DOI:10.5334/kula.33
LicenseCC BY
Authors:
Marco Robinson
Phyllis Earles
Prairie View A&M University

Prairie View A&M University, the first state-supported college in Texas for African Americans, was established during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War. The board of directors purchased more than 1,300 acres of land for the new campus from Helen Kirby, the widow of a colonel in the Confederate Army. The land was formerly the Alta Vista Plantation, owned by the Kirbys. It once had a population of more than 400 enslaved individuals.