MOSELEY'S FERRY. Ferries were the principal means of crossing the Brazos River for many years in the nineteenth century. Moseley's Ferry, ten miles east of Caldwell, operated on the Brazos River between Burleson and Brazos counties at the crossing of the Old San Antonio Road. It is generally believed to have been the first ferry to cross the Brazos from Burleson County. It was first operated by Michael Boren, one of Sterling C. Robertson's colonists, and was called Boren's Ferry until February 1849, when Daniel Moseley, an owner of plantations on both sides of the Brazos, began operating it. The ferrymen were licensed, and rates of toll were set by the Burleson County Commissioners Court. Moseley and members of his family operated the ferry until 1868.
A settlement known as Moseley's Landing developed on the Burleson County side of the ferry. It may have been the site of Election Precinct No. 1 of the county. Moseley constructed a wharf to ship cotton to the coast. In 1850 the steamer Washington loaded bales of cotton and cordwood there, and in 1852 the Camden also reached Moseley's Landing. After the Civil War, Burleson County men returning home were disbanded at Moseley's Ferry.
In 1868 T. B. Carr petitioned the Commissioners Court for a license to operate the ferry. Subsequent operators included a man named Worthington, who owned land in the vicinity. When the Houston and Texas Central Railway built a bridge over the Brazos River at the "San Antonio Crossing" in 1912, people stopped using the ferry because the railroad petitioned the court to move the road east of the bridge. In the 1920s when State Highway 21 was surveyed to follow the Old San Antonio Road as far as practicable, the bridge spanning the Brazos River from Burleson to Brazos County was built where Moseley's Ferry once operated. In 1976 the Burleson County Historical Commission erected a Texas Historical Marker for Moseley's Ferry on State Highway 21, just southeast of the bridge crossing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Burleson County Historical Society, Astride the Old San Antonio Road: A History of Burleson County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor, 1980). Pamela A. Puryear and Nath Winfield, Jr., Sandbars and Sternwheelers: Steam Navigation on the Brazos (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1976).
