Brutal lives of Sugar Land 95 come into focus
William Nash, a cook from Georgia, was only 16 when he died working at a brutal convict work camp in Sugar Land.
Nash had been convicted in 1892 of property theft and sentenced to four years in prison. He died from brain congestion, which could’ve stemmed from a traumatic brain injury.
Esau Powell, a farm laborer, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison after his conviction for stealing a gelding horse valued at $60. He never completed his sentence, dying of chronic diarrhea at age 32.
Nash and Powell are believed to be among the 95 African Americans whose remains were discovered in 2018 at a Fort Bend ISD construction site. As the community has debated the site’s future and how to honor those who perished, little has been known about those buried there except that they were likely part of Texas’ notorious convict-leasing system — until now.
This month, Fort Bend ISD released a 500-page report providing more information about the discovery and tentatively identifying 72 of those believed to be buried there.
“It is heartbreaking that the
Sugar Land 95 were previously forgotten, left in an abandoned cemetery that lay hidden for decades,” Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Charles Dupre said in a news release. “Educating our community and bringing awareness to their plight will ensure that they — and the injustices they suffered — are never again forgotten.”
The University of Connecticut is currently overseeing DNA analysis of the remains in order to make positive identifications. Researchers hope their analysis and intensive genealogical investigation will allow them to find descendants. The university has launched a permanent fund to support the costs.
“The records used to create this list indicated that these men were located at the Bullhead Camp at their times of death, but did not indicate where they were buried,” according to an executive summary of the report on the school district’s website. Without further DNA analysis, the report says, “it is not possible to name any individual buried at Bullhead Camp Cemetery with certainty.”
Harsh system
The convict-leasing system began in Texas and other southern states shortly after the Civil War, when officials realized they had a large population of prisoners to care for and little money. The state generated revenue by leasing out convicts to local plantation owners and industrialists, who in turn benefited from cheap labor. Dubbed “slavery by another name,” convict leasing targeted Black men, at times through questionable charges and harsh sentences.
Historians have described cruel conditions in Sugar Land, with prisoners working in a “low, mosquito-infested swamp” and “dying like flies in the periodic epidemics of fevers.” Prisoners called the region the “Hellhole on the Brazos.”
Meanwhile, the enterprise turned sugar plantation owners Ed H. Cunningham and L.A. Ellis into wealthy men. Reporting on abuses at the convict work camps by the San Antonio Express-News helped lead to a public outcry and the shutdown of the system in 1912.
Through historical research, 72 men have been identified as those possibly buried at the site, known as “The Camp & Bullhead Camp Cemetery,” according to the executive summary. Researchers pulled information from Texas State Penitentiary documents to identify the individuals. The camp is “named after its position along the Bullhead Bayou Creek,” the summary stated.
The camp was located on the former Sartartia Plantation, which was operated by Ellis and his family. The camp’s name changed six different times, starting as the J.A. Freeman Camp in 1875 and ending as Imperial Prison Farm Camp #1 by February 1908, according to the executive summary.
Fifty-seven to 387 convicts worked at the camp from 1880 to 1910. The remains discovered in Sugar Land are believed to be of 94 men and one woman. The median age of death was 24 among the men identified by researchers. They don’t think one man buried at the site, Steve Newman, was a prisoner.
Advocate remembered
The report’s release comes two months after the passing of Reginald Moore, 60, an African American activist who had warned Fort Bend ISD officials that they would likely find the remains of prisoners at the site of the future James Reese Career and Technical Center in Sugar Land, now completed. A former prison guard, Moore served as an caretaker of a nearby prison cemetery and devoted years to pressing local officials to honor the dead and confront a dark chapter in local history.
Harris County commissioners recently renamed an area park after Moore on Sand Canyon Drive.
Samuel Collins III, an adviser to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said he was glad to see the information released but wished that it had been done sooner. “It is disappointing that Mr. Moore didn’t live long enough to see all of this information,” Collins said.
The Convict Leasing and Labor Project, a nonprofit that Moore founded, concurred.
“Releasing the names over two years after the bodies were discovered and almost a year after they were reburied is a public relations move that does a disservice to the community at large as well as the Sugar Land 95 and their descendants,” the group said in a statement.
On Monday, the nonprofit released a report questioning whether the burial ground was at “Bullhead Camp.”
Their report shows that the Bullhead Camp Cemetery was “separate and distinct from the resting place of the Sugar Land 95, was probably located somewhere around Brooks Lake in Sugar Land, and contained additional victims of the convict-leasing system that were not part of the Sugar Land 95,” according to a press release.
In a Facebook post, the group said it found the Sugar Land 95 site to be in
“terrible, substandard conditions” when they visited last week.
The school district plans to include an educational exhibit on the “Sugar Land 95” at the Reese center and install permanent grave stones soon, according to the executive summary.
The district says it held off on releasing more information earlier in order to ensure it was done with “integrity and accuracy.”
“FBISD could not release the critical information requested, such as the list of the names, until the research was both complete and correct according to the researchers and contributors to the final report of findings,” the district said in a statement.
More details
The report offers a glimpse into the hard and often short lives of prisoners believed to be buried at the site.
Powell, for example, began working at the camp in November 1875 after his conviction for stealing a horse in Fayette County. Originally from Riceboro, Ga., he married Mary Dockery in Washington County and had at least two children, John and Margaret. He died in July 1880, according to the report.
Sebe Froche moved from Georgia to Fayette County around 1860. Six years later, he was married to Sarah Ann McClatchy. Records show that Froche had four children: Caroline, Melissa, Louise and Robert. Froche’s birth name was likely “Seaborn,” but he used “Sebe” as a nickname, according to the report.
At age 60, Froche was convicted of theft in Washington County in December 1881. The next month he was sentenced to five years and sent to prison.
Froche managed to escape from prison but was recaptured in April 1882. His leg was amputated some time between his capture and his death on June 17, 1882, at the convict camp, according to the report.
Reign Clark, the archeological project manager, wrote in the report that if it weren’t for the activism of Moore, the remains might never have been found.
“Without his voice, the men who died on Bullhead Camp might still be lost to history,” Clark wrote. “Rest now, Mr. Moore, and let others lend their voices to help educate our children about the difficult past so that we may never repeat it.”