Webberville

Location: Webberville, TX (~12 miles east of Austin on TX-969 / Webberville Road)
Anchor Site: Colorado River Park at Webberville / Webberville Historical Marker

The Hook

The town is named for a smuggler and the woman he loved — who was legally owned by his business partner. Together they built the first free Black settlement in what is now Travis County, helped people escape slavery by running them south into Mexico, and were eventually pushed out of the community that bore their name by the same neighbors who had benefited from their hospitality. The tobacco smuggling was just how the story started.

Key Facts

• John Ferdinand Webber (ca. 1786–1882): Vermont-born War of 1812 veteran, in Stephen F. Austin’s colony as early as 1824, received his land grant on the Colorado River in 1832
• Silvia Hector Webber (1807–1892): born in Spanish West Florida, sold into slavery at age 12 for $550; came to Texas as the enslaved property of John Cryer, Webber’s business partner
• Webber and Cryer entered into “a short-lived tobacco smuggling business across Northern Mexico” before Webber fell into a relationship with Silvia
• On June 11, 1834, Webber purchased Silvia’s freedom and that of their three children — but Cryer, “cognizant of the situation, took advantage of it to drive a sharp bargain”: the price was not money but two enslaved children, a boy and a girl, delivered to Cryer and his niece before the end of October 1834
• Their marriage was legal under Mexican law in 1834; after the Texas Revolution, the Republic of Texas Constitution (1836) outlawed interracial marriage and severely restricted the rights of free Black people — Silvia existed in a legally precarious position for the remainder of her time in Central Texas
• Silvia is considered the first free Black woman settler of what is now Travis County and likely the first free Black settler of the area overall
• The post office was established as “Webber’s Prairie” in 1846; the name changed to Webberville in 1853 — the same year the Webbers were forced to leave

Story / History

John Ferdinand Webber arrived in Mexican Texas around 1824, part of the early wave of Austin’s colonists. He was a practical man — a War of 1812 veteran who had survived Shadage Woods and arrived on the Texas frontier looking for land and opportunity. The tobacco smuggling operation with John Cryer was a product of that opportunism: the Mexican border was porous, demand for contraband goods was real, and the Republic’s customs enforcement was thin.

Silvia Hector had been enslaved since childhood, sold across the Cryer family’s migration from South Carolina to Arkansas to Texas. She arrived in Austin’s colony in 1826, likely listed among the five enslaved persons in Cryer’s register of families. Witnesses’ accounts recorded that Webber “became infatuated with her.” They began a relationship and had their first child together in October 1829 — while Silvia was still legally Cryer’s property.

By 1834, Webber had resolved to free Silvia and their three children. Cryer, knowing he had leverage, refused money. He demanded two enslaved children in exchange — a two-year-old boy for himself, a three-year-old girl for his niece. Webber agreed. Silvia and her children were emancipated on June 11, 1834, at the cost of two other children’s freedom. This transaction sits at the center of the Webber story: it was, simultaneously, an act of love and a participation in the system it was trying to escape.

Silvia and John settled their 2,214-acre land grant on the Colorado River and built what became known as Webber’s Prairie. By the TSHA’s account, Silvia was the founder of that community — described by contemporaries as intelligent, kind, and welcoming: “her house was always open to anyone… no human being ever went away from its doors hungry.” The settlement grew into a genuine community, complete with a post office, churches, school, gristmills, and cotton gins by the mid-1880s.

The Republic of Texas created a legal problem for the Webbers from 1836 onward. The new republic’s constitution banned interracial marriage and severely restricted the rights of free Black people — Silvia’s continued presence was technically illegal under laws that had not existed when she was emancipated. John Webber did not participate in the Texas Revolution, a conspicuous absence for a man of his standing. The family survived by staying at their isolated river grant, cultivating relationships carefully, and relying on the good faith of neighbors who valued Silvia’s generosity.

By the 1840s, newcomers from the Deep South — less flexible about the Webbers’ arrangement — had begun arriving. The pressure built through the early 1850s. In 1851 the family sold their Travis County land and moved south. In 1853 they purchased nearly 9,000 acres near Hidalgo on the Rio Grande. The post office was renamed Webberville that same year — the town keeping the name after the family who had been pushed out of it.

The Smuggling Network

The tobacco smuggling Webber and Cryer ran across Northern Mexico in the late 1820s established something more than a business: it established routes, relationships across the border, and an understanding of how to move things past authorities who weren’t supposed to see them.

What the Webbers appear to have done with those skills, later in life, was considerably more consequential.

At Webber’s Prairie, family descendants and oral histories describe Silvia and John helping “asylum seekers and fugitives from slavery” find safe haven. This was a specific and dangerous form of assistance: the Republic and then State of Texas criminalized the harboring of escaped enslaved people, and helping them reach Mexico was a federal offense under the Fugitive Slave Act after 1850. The Webbers did it anyway, and their house — “always open to anyone” — was understood in the community as a stop for people who needed to disappear.

At their Rio Grande ranch, the operation became more explicit. Webber built a licensed ferry crossing from his property directly to the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande. The TSHA records that this ferry was “useful for both their trading business and as a means to facilitate helping fugitives from slavery reach freedom in Mexico.” Their neighbor was Nathaniel Jackson, another interracial couple known for the same work. South Texas oral history places the Webber Ranch on the rumored Underground Railroad that ran south into Mexico — a route that has received far less historical attention than the northern routes to Canada, but which was the only viable path to freedom for enslaved people in Texas.

This was the second smuggling operation: people instead of tobacco, south across the Rio Grande instead of north from Mexico, freedom instead of profit.

The Civil War and After

The Webbers’ Unionism during the Civil War was a natural extension of everything that had come before. When Confederate troops occupied Hidalgo County, the family was persecuted as Union sympathizers. One of Silvia’s sons was arrested. Another escaped to Brownsville. Silvia, John, and their remaining children fled to Mexico — returning the same direction they had helped so many others travel — and did not come back to Texas until 1882.

John Webber died on July 19, 1882, at his Rio Grande ranch. Silvia died around 1892. Both are buried at the Webber Cemetery in Hidalgo County — far from the town in Travis County that bears their name.

Historic Context: The Battle of Brushy Creek (1839)

The land around Webber’s Prairie was the edge of the Texas frontier. In February 1839, a Comanche raiding party swept through the area on their way south from Williamson County. The Coleman farm — just twelve miles north of Bastrop, in the Webber’s Prairie vicinity — was attacked. Mrs. Elizabeth Coleman and her son Albert were killed. Her five-year-old son Tommy was taken captive.

The Webbers were living on this land at this time. The Comanche threat was not abstract.

Local Legend

The tobacco smuggling that Cryer and Webber ran into Northern Mexico in the late 1820s was, by all accounts, short-lived and not especially successful. Local lore fills in the details the historical record leaves out: that the real reason Webber abandoned the tobacco business was that one particular run went badly — wrong crossing, wrong night, wrong Mexican customs official — and Webber arrived back at the Colorado River with nothing but a story and a very strong opinion about the value of a legitimate land grant. The story shifts depending on who tells it. Sometimes there’s lost silver. Sometimes there’s a chase. The one constant is that whatever happened south of the border convinced John Webber that the future was here, on this land, with this woman. Whether or not that’s true, it makes a better origin story than “the tobacco market wasn’t right.”

Insider Tips

• Colorado River Park at Webberville (TX-969 at the Colorado River) has a boat ramp, picnic areas, and river access — a good natural stop on an east Austin circuit
• The Webberville Historical Marker is on TX-969 in the community; brief but worth the stop
• The Webber/Silvia story connects directly to the Austin Chronicle’s “From Prairie to Settlement to Village” piece and the TSHA’s recent (2024) full entry on Silvia Hector Webber — both are worth reading for tour prep
• Pairs naturally with Manor (10 min west) and Bastrop (25 min east)

Annual & Seasonal Events

Spring (Mar–May)

• Bluebonnet season (March–April) — the FM-969 corridor east of Austin through Webberville is reliable wildflower territory

Summer (Jun–Aug)

• Colorado River Park season peaks — boat ramp, tubing, and river access at their best; primary draw for the community

Logistics

• Tour stop duration: 30–45 minutes (marker + river park)
• Parking: Colorado River Park has a lot; free
• Nearby stops: Manor (10 min west), Elgin (20 min east), Bastrop (25 min southeast)

Sources

• Texas State Historical Association — Silvia Hector Webber: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/webber-sylvia-hector
• Texas State Historical Association — John Ferdinand Webber: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/webber-john-ferdinand
• Austin Chronicle — “From Prairie to Settlement to Village”: austinchronicle.com/news/from-prairie-to-settlement-to-village-11741091