Stephen Samuel Perry

Stephen Samuel Perry (1825–1874) managed Peach Point Plantation, and is credited with amassing and preserving significant historical manuscripts related to Texas history.

Peach Point Plantation is an official historic landmark of Texas located in Jones Creek, but from the 1830s through the Civil War, Peach Point was an agricultural business located in Jones Creek. Peach Point was also the place Stephen F. Austin called home.

As proprietor of Peach Point Plantation, Stephen S. was responsible for agricultural planning, together with financial and legal decisions related to the business as well as the homestead. Stephen S. was advised by Mordello Munson. Stephen S. opted to focus on sugar cane growth in the 1850s.

In the process of decades of responsible management and communication, Stephen S. received and cataloged original source papers and manuscripts of early Texas history.

Named in part for Stephen Samuel Perry, whose grandson by exactly the same name donated them, one of the key sets of historical accounts of early Texas history is kept at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. These are called the James F. and Stephen S. Perry Papers, 1785-1942. Stephen Samuel Perry maintained extensive records of communications related to the management of not only the plantation, but also land deeds, growth, and the very settlement of Texas in the 1800s. In fact, the archives and manuscripts presented to the school were so extensive that they are officially measured as 13 feet, 9 inches in width. In fact, virtually all books related to Stephen F. Austin or settlement of Texas footnote or reference the James F. and Stephen S. Perry Papers.

As described by the library catalog, "Papers of Perry and his son Stephen Samuel Perry and their extended families cover significant events in Texas history from the early years of colonization up to the twentieth century. Collection relates to Stephen F. Austin's land holdings, James Franklin Perry's mercantile business and other family-related business enterprises, the establishment and operation of Peach Point Plantation, and the daily concerns of paternalistic slaveholders who found it difficult to make ends meet raising cotton, corn, and sugar; to educate their children where there were no public schools; and to handle chronic health problems. The papers accentuate the contrast between life in various sections of the United States since the Perrys traveled for business, health reasons, and pleasure; attended schools in Ohio, Connecticut, and Virginia; and corresponded with and visited relatives in the northeast as well as Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri."

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