SARTARTIA, TEXAS
Located in the Cartwright and Williams League, this plantation was known first as Walker Station. It was later named Sartartia, a Karankawa word meaning "potato patch."
When Colonel Littleberry Ambrose Ellis purchased the 2,000 acres of choice plantation land near the bend of the Brazos River, the records showed it was first farmed in sugarcane fields by the firm of Ellis ard Cunningham.
In 1879 Ellis formed a partnership with Colonel Cunningham, a sugar planter and promoter who at the time was one of the wealthiest men in the state. As a duo they leased and bought plantation lands and became involved in convict labor farming for five years.
Cunningham bought the Oakland Plantation and other lands while Ellis bought farms in the Cartwright and Williams League. The Ellis Plantation was chiefly located in the Cartwright League and embraced lands that belonged to Connors, Nibbs and Dunlavy before the Civil. Their successful careers of convict farming brought a reaction from the State of Texas, which also wanted to develop the business. In 1886 the lease system was abandoned and the Texas legislature informed the state penitentiary board to buy land.
Duringthe 1940s the property was operated as a dairy, poultry business and cotton farm, then as a cotton farm and cattle ranch. The Ellis home was destroyed in 1963 and today the property belongs to the Central Prison Unit.
In later years Sartartia Plantation was known as the best dairy farm in the county. It was located on the two thousand-acre parcel that fronted Old Spanish Trail between Richmond and Sugar Land. The dairy owned one hundred sixty registered Jerseys.
IMPERIAL VALLEY RAILWAY. The Imperial Valley Railway Company was chartered on May 30, 1907, in the interest of the Imperial Sugar Company owned by William T. Eldridge and Isaac H. Kempner. The railroad was projected to build from Sugar Land in Fort Bend County northwest along the east valley of the Brazos River to a junction with the Houston and Texas Central Railroad near Hempstead in Waller County, a distance of sixty miles. At Sugar Land the track was to connect with the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio and the Sugar Land Railway and to cross the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway of Texas on the line to Hempstead. Capital was $100,000, and the business office was in Sartartia. Members of the first board of directors included C. T. Raynor of Sartartia, Charles Davis and J. W. Edwards of Eldridge, J. J. McCarty, Daniel W. Kempner, R. Lee Kempner, and J. F. Seinsheimer, all from Galveston; and William T. Eldridge and F. G. Hillje of San Antonio. The railroad constructed a five-mile line from Sugar Land to Cabell. On January 31, 1912, the Imperial Sugar Company sold the Imperial Valley to the Sugar Land Railway Company.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin (Sugar Land, Texas).
Stephen L. Hardin and Chris Cravens
SARTARTIA, TEXAS-POSTMASTERS
Discontinued 20 Nov 1917; mail to Sugarland