Levi Jordan Plantation

In 1848, Levi Jordan traveled to Texas from Union County, Arkansas with around twelve enslaved African Americans to begin the development of his plantation in Brazoria County. Enslaved laborers built a brick sugarhouse, brick slave cabins, and a large sugar mill with six-foot rollers. The two-story Greek Revival-style house was built in 1854 and serves as a focal point of the site. The enslaved hand-hewed the sills and studs of the house from local oaks and made bricks for the fireplaces. Throughout the antebellum period the primary cash crops were sugar and cotton. Jordan helped make Brazoria one of the wealthiest counties in Texas. Adding to his profitability, slaves working in the sugar cane fields would harvest valuable sugar cane from sunup to sundown. According to a variety of historical records, Jordan also raised and imported slaves for sale. Jordan’s granddaughter Sallie McNeill recorded in her diary that Jordan kept a hospital on the property to address the health needs of the slaves and also allowed them to marry. As the editors of McNeill's diary observe, “These factors indicate that perhaps the slaves on the Jordan Plantation may have been treated with relative ‘humanity’.” However, McNeill did recount an episode “of a runaway slave who was hunted with dogs and whipped upon recapture.” Punishments such as whipping were not uncommon among the slaves of the antebellum south as thousands attempted to flee across the Rio Grande in the hopes of gaining freedom. Historian Sean Kelley notes that Mexico attracted and harbored slaves from the United States.

           The linking of Mexico and freedom began in the years 1829-1845, when tensions escalated between Anglo Texans and the Mexican government over the issue of slavery. This resulted in the establishment of an independent slaveholding republic and culminated in the annexation of Texas as a slave state. There were two options for fugitives after the formulation of the border: some sought freedom further south in Coahuila or Tamaulipas, possibly drawn by the lingering antislavery rhetoric of the Hidalgo movement and the war for independence. Kelley even references a proposed transaction between a politician and a slaveholder living in the same county as Levi Jordan Plan. Guy M. Bryan of Brazoria County, Texas and his brother-in-law discussed a trade of a slave for a tract of land in the year 1851. The trade was reconsidered after Bryan heard that said slave had attempted to escape to Mexico. Texas slaves took note of the ongoing conflict between the Mexican government and the Anglo settlers in hopes of taking refuge across the border.

           By November of 1860, the possibility of succession was common knowledge among the Jordan Plantation. Sallie McNeill wrote: “Stirring news! Lincoln is elected doubtless, but then will be bloody struggles ere he reaches Washington…Oh, I am just beginning to realize the possibility of a Civil War with all its horrors.” McNeill also exclaimed in her diary, “Grandpa is summoned to B. [Brazoria] to attend a meeting of the Citizens in order to try suspected abolitionists. I pity the offenders! Calvin and I yesterday almost agreed that we sometimes felt like crying out against slavery.” McNeill also made note of her grandfather’s actions during the early stages of the war. Despite rumors of war and growing political tensions Jordan appeared committed to continue life as usual and attempted to buy more slaves and a cotton gin.

           Jordan’s grandsons, James and Charles P. McNeill, joined the Texas Cavalry as the war expanded. Even so, “despite the loss of his grandsons’ assistance with the management of the plantation, cane and cotton production continued at a vast rate. Due to war conditions, however, Jordan was forced at times to sell his sugar in Houston and his cotton to Mexico.”

           On January 1^st 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as the nation approached its third year of the Civil War. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free.” This proclamation had a huge effect on plantation farmers and slaves in the south. Following Emancipation planters, like Levi Jordan, had to begin paying for labor that they had previously exploited under the peculiar institution of slavery.

           Soon, sugar production became unsustainable, and cotton production increased and then became the main cash crop. In 1865 Jordan shifted to a farming system that employed many of his former slaves and their descendants in a system of sharecropping and tenancy. While Jordan died in 1873, he left the property to family members, who continued its agricultural use growing desired crops and raising cattle. Following the death of Levi Jordan, inconsistencies arose on the exact amount of acreage distributed to his heirs and subsequent heirs. The reasons behind these discrepancies may be attributed either to errors in historical documents, inaccurate tax assessments, or unreported sales and purchases of land.

           It is unknown how many formerly enslaved people Jordan and his family employed after the Civil War, but freedmen occupied the slave quarters as sharecroppers and tenant farmers until 1892. Valuable research was obtained by Kenneth L. Brown and his students from the University of Houston when they conducted research at the Levi Jordan Plantation between the years 1986 and 2002. This research was focused primarily on the slave and tenant quarters, which were occupied by slaves who remained. Brown and Doreen C. Cooper’s findings help explain the day to day lives of the former enslaved tenant farmers. "One of the interesting aspects of the data so far generated concerns the manipulation of African-derived objects and symbols……The community-wide function of another cabin’s occupants provides another important test of ‘African’ retentions through the differential manipulation of European-American culture.” These sorts of findings are what helped archaeologists understand African American’s attempt to maintain their culture and the activities that relate to the internal activity of the plantation among those with a particular skill that were able to have jobs. Such jobs included a quilter, munitions maker, hunter, bone and shell carver, seamstresses, the political leader, and the curer. These jobs helped slaves form the external economy of the plantation and would later help them survive as free people. Although this was a victory among the former enslaved, adjusting to freedom was extremely difficult, even for those who had a particular skill. This was because even though these people were now free and no longer needed to listen to a master, they had to face a large amount of discrimination and intolerance from those who were pro-slavery and the Texas government as it adjusted to the new laws. Today, the Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site is a Texas Historical Commission property and is a significant example of the plantation system in Texas before the Civil War and during Reconstruction. The site consists of the plantation house and significant archeological remains. It is currently under development and not open to the public, but archaeologists have plans to continue further digs.

Kelley, Sean. “‘Mexico in His Head’: Slavery and the Texas-Mexico Border, 1810-1860.” Journal of Social History, vol. 37, no. 3, 2004, pp. 709–723. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3790160. Accessed 13 May 2021.

Leezer, Carole. "Archaeological Investigations at the Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site, Brazoria County, Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology 2006, Article 15. https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2006.1.15

McNeill, Sallie. The Uncompromising Diary of Sallie McNeill 1858-1867, ed. Ginny McNeill Raska and Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2017.

Robert Furniss Martin to Arch McNeill, February 6, 1878. Levi Jordan Plantation. Accessed March 6, 2021. http://www.webarchaeology.com/html/marltr.htm.

Brown, Kenneth L. “Levi Jordan Plantation.” Why this site is important to history, and comments on sharecropping. Accessed March 7, 2021. http://www.webarchaeology.com/html/whyken2.htm.

 McDavid, Carol. “Archaeologies That Hurt; Descendants That Matter: A Pragmatic Approach to Collaboration in the Public Interpretation of African-American Archaeology.” World Archaeology 34, no. 2 (October 2002): 303–14. doi:10.1080/0043824022000007116.