Cunningham Sugar Refinery, Sugar Land, ca. 1910. • Photo postcard of Imperial Sugar refinery, Sugar Land. • Photo postcard of Indiana Town, Rosenberg, 1909
This month’s article is a continuation of some fun facts about Fort Bend County History.
How many of them do you know?
The Imperial Sugar Company is the oldest extant business in Texas.
The Imperial Sugar Company’s roots can be traced back to 1843, when Samuel May Williams built a sugar mill
on his Oakland Plantation, in what is now Sugar Land. The plantation was sold
to William Kyle and Benjamin Franklin Terry after Williams died in 1852. They
named it Sugar Land.
Beginning in 1882, Col. Ed Cunningham began purchasing portions of the Kyle and
Terry plantation in conjunction with his partner Col. Littleberry Ellis. They
built a 600-ton raw sugar mill they called “Imperial Mill” to supplement the old Williams mill on Cunningham’s property. A year later, Cunningham and Ellis would part amicably.
Col. Cunningham modernized the sugar refining process and turned Sugar Land into
a booming sugar production area. In 1896, he began construction of a sugar
refinery that would later become Imperial Sugar Company. I.H. Kempner and W.T.
Eldridge bought the Ellis and Cunningham properties in 1906 and named their
enterprise the Imperial Sugar Company after the old “Imperial Mill” and the Imperial Hotel in New York. This company continues to produce sugar
today, though there is no longer any production in Fort Bend County.
A portion of Rosenberg was known as “Indiana Town.”
By 1900, land developers were promoting Rosenberg to northern and midwestern
states, extolling the fertility of Fort Bend County soil and showing pictures
of fancy homes, fruit orchards, growing fields and overall prosperity. Soon
people of German, Czech, Polish and Hispanic ancestry were moving into the
area. This included a large population of carpenters and craftsman from Indiana
who wished to bring their trade to Rosenberg. Many of them settled together in
a northern portion of Rosenberg that came to be called “Indiana Town.”
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Featuring the Homes, Communities, People,
Businesses, Professionals, and Lifestyles of
Fort Bend County and Sugar Land Texas Since 1987
