 Settlement during the first half of the
1800s placed an initial Anglo American imprint on the
Winedale area. Most Austin Colony pioneers were farming
families who grew corn, sugar cane, and especially
cotton. The soil, climate, and market for cotton
attracted southern planters, who brought slaves to the
new and abundant lands between the Colorado and the
Brazos rivers. Life on the Texas frontier was full of
hardship and violence. Austin colonists were swept up in
the Texas Revolution in 1836, and remained on constant
guard against marauding bands of Comanches. During this
period, William Townsend, and then Samuel K. Lewis, built
the first structures on the historic Winedale property. [Stagecoach graphic
is from ad in San Antonio Express 12/10/1876] |
| In 1831, the Mexican government made adjoining grants of a quarter league each to brothers John and William S. Townsend in the Austin Colony at the present site of Winedale. “Townsend” was also the original name given to the settlement now known as Round Top. Early Anglo settlers in the vicinity also included the Ledbetter, Taylor, Flack, and Hill families. Following his marriage in 1834 to the daughter of ferry owner Jesse Burnam, William S. Townsend built a large room on his property with a fireplace and a loft. This was the first, or south, section of what is now called the Wagner House. Historic Winedale began to take shape. | ||||
 View of the Wagner House,
highlighting Townsend's original structure, photograph by
Drew Patterson. |
Map
of Fayette County showing original land grants, Texas
General Land Office, 1920. Map Collection
|
 John and William S. Townsend
grants in Stephen F. Austin, A List
of Titles, 1831. |
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Deteriorating relations between Anglo settlers and the Mexican government culminated in the Texas Revolution of 1835-36. The defeat of the Texans at the Alamo and Goliad spread panic throughout Austin’s colony. Fearing themselves at the mercy of Santa Anna’s punitive expedition, the settlers abandoned their farms and fled to the Louisiana border in the “Runaway Scrape.” The reminiscences of colonist Mary Rabb evoke both their fear and suffering: | |
 “… then we was all drove out of ouer houses with ouer little ones to suffer with cold and hungry and little Lorenzy not three months old when we started out died on the road … when the Mexicans was invadeing Texas … we alwase calld the invadeing of Texas the runaway trip so your uncle Tommys wife onley lived one day after tha got home thare was many births and deths on that road while we was running from the mexicans.” Mary Rabb reminiscence, 1875. Rabb Family Papers |
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| Texas
Revolution Broadside, 1835. Broadside Collection |
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 |
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 Portrait of Comanche warrior by
W. M. Soule. Having survived the Revolution, Winedale area settlers still faced the constant threat of raids by bands of Comanches and their Waco and Kichai allies. Comanche raiding parties regularly penetrated into the heart of the Anglo settlements near the Gulf coast. Thus, the threat of Indian attack was a fact of daily life as much as the toil of working the land. |
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| Map
of the Comanche frontier, ca. 1840. Adapted by Drew
Patterson from a map by W. A. Riney, in Rupert N.
Richardson, The Commanche Barrier to
South Plains Settlement (1933). Texas Collection Library |
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Samuel K. Lewis came to the Republic of Texas in 1838, and soon acquired land in present-day Fayette County. A surveyor, legislator, and farmer, Lewis bought the Townsend property in 1848 from Indian fighter Capt. John York and developed it into a large cotton plantation worked by his slaves. He soon expanded Townsend’s original structure, turning the loft into a full second story and adding an identical section to the north, with a breezeway between the two sections. Across the front he added a broad two-story gallery, with cedar pillars running the full height of the structure. Lewis’s house and the nearby four-square barn are the only buildings that today occupy their original sites on the old Lewis farmstead. |
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| Portrait
believed to be of Samuel K. Lewis, ca. 1850s. Winedale Photograph Collection |
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 Map of Washington and Fayette
Counties, from Thomas Affleck, Affleck's
Southern Rural Almanac for 1860
(1860).Texas Collection Library As a result of Sam Lewis’s lobbying efforts, a public road was built that passed in front of the Lewis house. By the early 1860s this road served as a stagecoach route from Brenham to Austin. The Lewis residence became known locally as “Sam Lewis’s Stopping Place,” though it seldom lodged travelers. Affleck’s Southern Rural Almanac for 1860, published in nearby Brenham, shows the road from Brenham to La Grange passing through Round Top and “Vine Grove,” a Washington County community that predated Winedale. Sam Lewis died in 1867, but his heirs retained the house until 1882. His grave is located near Winedale in the Richter Cemetery on FM 1457. |
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S. K. Lewis grave
marker, photograph by Drew Patterson. |
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