History
Austin's Colony Capital
For twelve years this bend of the Brazos was the effective capital of Anglo Texas. Stephen F. Austin founded the settlement in 1823 to administer the colony he had contracted with the Mexican government to bring in, beginning with the 297 families later remembered as the Old Three Hundred.
History
The Sealy Mattress
The town came first and the mattress took its name from the town, which is the reverse of what most people assume. Daniel Haynes arrived in this new railroad settlement in 1881 as a builder of cotton gins, and began making cotton filled mattresses for friends, without the buttoned tufts that were standard at the time and that tended to compress into lumps.
Elsewhere in Texas
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
