Blog Posts About THC

By Nicholas Bourgeois, M.A., R.P.A., Archeologist, Levi Jordan Plantation 

Bricks are the most common type of artifact found at the Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site. They were handmade by the enslaved laborers from local clay and fired on-site in kilns.  

The bricks were used to construct the main house’s chimneys, water cisterns, sugar mill, and sections of many...

In March 1888, two articles appeared in the Marshall Messenger about a new waterworks (citywide water system) under construction in the city. The article appearing on March 1, 1888 lists locations of the new waterlines including “another branch at Grove running south to J. F. Starr’s residence” and the March 8 article declares “the waterworks will be completed about May 1” as pipes and other...

By Reece Black, Archeology Lab Technician, Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site

Stoneware ginger beer bottle fragments are recovered from archeological sites across the world. Sites in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States have produced many specimens. Here in Brazoria County, we find these artifacts at former plantations and 19th-century townsites. This...

Ginny McNeill Raska was born to Levi Jordan McNeill, Jr. and Mary Eloise Dance McNeill on June 20, 1952, in Brazoria County. At the time of her birth, her parents lived on the old Mims Plantation along the San Bernard River. Her great-great-grandfather, James Calvin McNeill, had purchased the property around 1880 and built a new home in the early 1900s after the original plantation house had...