BINGHAM, FRANCIS (ca. 1777-1851). Francis Bingham, pioneer settler, was born about 1777. He was one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred and came to Texas from Perry County, Mississippi, as early as October 1822. In November 1823 he subscribed twenty bushels of corn towards paying the expenses of the Baron de Bastrop as deputy to the legislature of Coahuila and Texas. Bingham's title to two leagues and a labor of land now in Wharton, Brazoria, and Waller counties was granted on July 10, 1824. By January 1825 he returned to Monroe, Louisiana, to move his family to Texas, but illness in the family prevented his returning until after August 1827, when he wrote Austin that his wife might not come with him because she had heard unpleasant things about the country and the Indians. Bingham ultimately established on Oyster Creek, on the line between Brazoria and Fort Bend counties, a plantation that remained in the hands of the family for over a century. A visitor to Texas in 1835 wrote that Bingham's place had been in operation only three or four years but had 200 acres of cleared canebrake land in cultivation and about 600 cattle. The house, in a grove of China trees, was a one-story log structure, with the board planed at Bingham's mill. The furniture had been brought from the United States, where Bingham made an annual visit. Mrs. Bingham, who said she had become reconciled to Texas, had numerous servants, four or five children, and could visit neighbors within twenty miles. In 1845 Bingham attended a Brazoria mass meeting in favor of annexation. He died on July 22, 1851.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924-28 Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897 Telegraph and Texas Register, April 30, 1845. Texas State Gazette, August 2, 1851. Abner J. Strobel, The Old Plantations and Their Owners of Brazoria County (Houston, 1926; rev. ed., Houston: Bowman and Ross, 1930; rpt., Austin: Shelby, 1980 Visit to Texas (New York: Goodrich and Wiley, 1834; rpt., Austin: Steck, 1952).