Beginnings
As a young man Samuel W. Allen (no relation to the Allen Brothers who founded Houston) came to the newly established Republic of Texas in 1842 in search of opportunity. He arrived at the young town of Harrisburg (modern east Houston) and soon after married into the Thomas family which had come to Texas as part of Stephen F. Austin's original colony. Using land from the Thomas grant which was located along the Buffalo Bayou between Harrisburg and Galveston Bay (what is now Pasadena) Sam Allen launched a cattle ranch in 1844. His cattle range extended much father down the shoreline of the bay.
Like many ranchers in Texas, Allen began his herd by gathering Longhorn cattle, descended from Spanish cattle brought to the New World, which ran wild throughout Texas. Allen's herd grew rapidly such that by the 1860s had gained exclusive shipping rights for cattle to New Orleans and Cuba from the Morgan Lines, Texas first steamship company which was later to become a major factor in establishing Houston as an important Texas port and railroad shipping center.
Read more about this topic: Allen Ranch
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?”
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“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
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