Chenango, Texas


Chenango is an unincorporated community in Brazoria County, Texas, located seven miles north of Angleton on State Highway 521.

History

Chenango, Texas is a town located in Brazoria County at the intersection of State Highway 521 and the International & Great Northern Railroad. The older town of Chenango, New York is namesake for the town in Texas. It was centered on Chenango Plantation, a 1,300-acre plantation carved out of the William Harris Survey during the 19th century. S. Richardson and Joshua Abbott added about 3,000 acres to the plantation. In 1835 Benjamin Fort Smith bought a portion of the 3,000 acres, along with Monroe Edwards and Christopher Dart, who converted the cotton production of the plantation to sugarcane. Monroe Edwards and Christopher Dart also used the plantation for slave smuggling to Texas from Cuba. It was known as "Parker's Point" in the 1840s. An officer of the Eighth Texas Cavalry Terry's Texas Rangers, Captain Sharpe, owned the plantation later.
A post office was opened in Chenango in 1869 and closed in 1871, reopened in 1877 and closed after 1930.
In 1906 Chenango had a white school with two teachers and twenty pupils. It also had a black school with 180 pupils and five teachers. By 1947 the white children attended school in the Angleton Independent School District while the black children continued to attend school in Chenango.