GULF PRAIRIE, TEXAS. Gulf (Gulph) Prairie grew up around several plantations off what is now State Highway 36 between Jones Creek and the San Bernard River, twelve miles south of Angleton in southeastern Brazoria County. On December 31, 1830, a contractor was engaged to construct a schoolhouse and other buildings at what was then known as Gulph Prairie. By the 1830s the community was settled by the Bryans, Perrys, and Austins, as well as Henry William Munson, James Peckham Caldwell,q^qv and the McNeel brothers. Protestant services were held in a log cabin during the 1840s. A post office operated at the community from 1848 to 1866. By 1895 the town had a Baptist church, and in 1906 the local school had one teacher and forty-one pupils. During the mid-1930s Gulf Prairie had a church, scattered dwellings, and several other buildings. In 1974 the church and cemetery remained at the site near State Highway 36. The Gulf Prairie Cemetery is a pioneer cemetery that was once part of Peach Point Plantation.^qv It was used as early as 1829 by descendants of James Franklin Perry^qv and other members of the community and was the first resting place of Stephen F. Austin^qv in 1836. Gulf Park, a residential community founded in 1927, grew up three miles east of the Gulf Prairie church and cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Max Berger, "Stephen F. Austin and Education in Early Texas, 1821-1835," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 48 (January 1945). James A. Creighton, A Narrative History of Brazoria County (Angleton, Texas: Brazoria County Historical Commission, 1975).

Diana J. Kleiner