Friendswood, Texas

Everything Friendswood is known for

1 song mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Friendswood

Songs About Friendswood

the ballad of lavern and captain flint
guy clark
10%

Artists From Friendswood

D
Drake Dobard
country Pop: 6

Rivers & Roads in Song near Friendswood

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Friendswood.

Interstate 45 7 songs Interstate 10 32 songs US Route 90 8 songs U.S. Route 59 7 songs Brazos River 37 songs Trinity River 10 songs

History of Friendswood

The Only Town in Texas the Quakers Ever Kept RoadyGoat

The neighborhood around you began in 1895 as a deliberate act of faith. A colony of Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends, had drifted down from Kansas and tried the high plains at Estacado, then gave up on them and sent out a scout: Frank Jacob Brown, a former buffalo hunter of Quaker stock. Brown found more than 1,500 acres of well-drained prairie framed by dense woods in the northwest corner of Galveston County and called it the promised land. He and college-educated Thomas Hadley Lewis negotiated with Galveston banker J. C. League for the tract, and on July 15, 1895, they recorded the colony's name at the courthouse in Galveston. They named it for themselves, in a way: it honors the Friends, so it became Friendswood. The first church services were held that August in Brown's half-finished house, and a combination meetinghouse and school went up by December. Other Texas towns flirted with Quaker settlement and faded, but Friendswood stuck, earning it a quiet distinction: the only permanent town in Texas that began as a Quaker colony. (Source: Handbook of Texas; City of Friendswood history.)

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When Friendswood Ran on Figs RoadyGoat

Before the subdivisions and the commuters, Friendswood ran on figs. Among the first Quaker settlers was Nereus Stout, a former Kansas farmer who became a respected horticulturist and is believed to be the first person to grow figs commercially anywhere in Galveston County. Around 1910, J. C. Carpenter opened the county's first fig-preserving plant right here, buying mostly from the Stout farm at first, then from a growing web of orchardists as figs proved to be a dependable cash crop. By the early 1920s, Galveston County was producing half the figs grown across a seven-county stretch of the Texas coast, and in 1930 a third of the county's leading fig producers came from Friendswood, a town of fewer than 300 people. Two preserving plants here kept nurserymen, pickers, and orchard hands employed straight through the worst of the Great Depression. Production along the coast faded after World War II, Friendswood's orchards thinned out in the 1950s, and the last commercial fig-preserving plant on the entire Texas Gulf Coast, located in Friendswood, shut its doors in 1968. (Source: The Fig Industry in Friendswood, Texas Historical Commission marker.)

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The Storm Knocked Down the Pines, So They Built a School RoadyGoat

When the great Galveston hurricane roared inland on September 8, 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in American history, it leveled forests across this corner of Galveston County and demolished the little church-and-school the Quakers had built. Remarkably, the young colony came through the storm with no loss of life. Then they did something pure to their practical, no-waste character. Founder Frank Brown ran a sawmill, and rather than let the thousands of toppled pines rot, the settlers cut the storm-felled timber into lumber and used it to raise a sturdy two-story building they called the Academy. Completed around 1902, it served at once as church, schoolhouse, and town meeting hall, and for years it offered the only secondary education for miles, teaching a surprisingly classical curriculum to children of fig farmers. The Friends congregation worshipped under its roof until a stone church replaced it in 1949. There's a tidy lesson in that building: the same hurricane that nearly erased the colony handed it the raw material to build the structure that held the community together for half a century. (Source: Handbook of Texas; City of Friendswood history.)

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Friends Church Cemetery

1895

In 1895, six families left the disbanded Quaker settlement of Estacado in the Lubbock area and moved to Galveston County. Here, they established the community of Friendswood, named in honor of their faith and association with the Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers. By November 1895, the settlers needed a burial ground when a falling tree killed young Newton Knode while he cut firewood with his father-in-law. His grave is the earliest marked burial at what became Friends Church Cemetery, adjacent to the Friends church and school building on property owned by community founders T.H. Lewis and F.J. Brown. A church appointed committee has cared for the cemetery throughout its history, arranging for maintenance and establishing criteria for burial. The cemetery was open to all community residents for several decades, but when the town's population boomed in the late 20th century, new restrictions then required church membership or early town residency to qualify for burial. The cemetery today is a link to the early community and its religious founding. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006

Historical Marker →

Brown, Cecil and Frances

1920

Designed by Houston architect Henry A. Stubee and built in 1938, this was the home of local civic, church, and business leader Cecil Brown and his wife Frances. Both were from pioneer Quaker families. Mr. Brown was prominent in the Gulf Coast fig industry (1920s-1950s) and is credited with much of Friendswood's development. For many years after its construction, this French eclectic style house was the first and only brick residence in the Friendswood area. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1997

Historical Marker →

Friendswood

1895

This community was founded in 1895 by a group of Friends (Quakers) led by F. J. Brown and t. H. Lewis. They acquired the land from J. C. League and named the settlement Friendswood. From the very beginning, church and school were central to the life of this community. In 1900 an academy building was built on this site, with lumber from huge pine trees felled by the 1900 hurricane. The Friends Church, which until 1958 was the only church in the community, used the academy building for both worship and education. In the early years it provided the only secondary educational facilities for the surrounding area. The last school term was held in 1938, but the building continued to be used for worship until 1949 when it was replaced by a more modern structure. The heritage of this community, received from its founders, is based on Christ's words, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." John 15.14

Historical Marker →

Friendswood, TX

1895

Friendswood is an incorporated residential community on Farm Road 518 twenty-seven miles northwest of Galveston and twenty miles south of Houston in northwestern Galveston and southern Harris counties. The surrounding area was originally wooded. The community was founded after a colony of English Quakers ( see RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS ) from Kansas moved to Texas and settled in Estacado, Crosby County, in 1880. They found the plains intolerable, however, and sent Francis Jacob Brown, a buffalo hunter and Indian fighter of Quaker heritage, out to locate a colony in South Texas. Brown located a tract of more than 1,500 acres and negotiated with J. C. League for the property in 1895. After a brief time near Alvin, where they disapproved of local customs (which included dancing), a group of three of the original families, including T. H. and Alistus Lewis, acquired land drained by four creeks-Chigger, Coward's, Mary's, and Clear-and named the new settlement in honor of the Friends. The settlers built traditional gabled homes, one of which was used as a monthly meeting place and Sunday school. A post office was established at the community in 1899. Brown set up a sawmill, and pine felled by the Galveston hurricane of 1900 was used to build Friendswood Academy, which graduated its first class in 1907 and served as the local church. Some residents worked in dairying or raised poultry, but the principal agricultural staples were Satsuma oranges, strawberries, figs, and rice, and the Quakers operated several processing plants until costs grew prohibitive. Oil was discovered in the area during the 1930s, and the population subsequently increased; in 1933 Friendswood reported 100 residents and seven businesses. In the 1940s it had a population of seventy-five and two businesses. A new church was constructed at the community by 1948. Friendswood remained predominantly Quaker until 1958, when a local Baptist church was organized. The community incorporated in 1960. With the location of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center ( see LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER ) ten miles away in 1962, many community residents began to commute there or to Houston, and Friendswood became a bedroom suburb. For a time astronaut Donald K. Slayton lived there. On April 8, 1963, the community became the only dry town in the county; at the time, smoking and drinking were already forbidden for local public school teachers. From a population of 1,675 with twenty-six businesses in 1968, Friendswood grew to 13,585 residents and 158 businesses by 1980. It then declined to 10,719 residents by 1982. The number of businesses grew to 315 by 1988. In 1990 Friendswood had 22,814 residents.

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Religious Society of Friends

1895

Few members of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, were to be found in Texas until after the Civil War . Their early opposition to slavery led the Friends to bypass the Gulf Coast states. Several monthly meetings (organizational units) of Friends made known their opposition to accepting slaveholding Texas into the Union, primarily because Texas reserved the right to divide into five slave states. Furthermore, a proslavery, antiabolitionist newspaper, the Austin Anti-Quaker , appeared in March 1842. Several individual Quakers made their way to Texas before the 1870s, however, the most famous being Mifflin Kenedy . Early twentieth-century Quaker groups were in Lipscomb County (1910) and in View Point, Texas. Today there are two major Quaker organizations in the state, the Kansas Yearly Meeting, the earlier group, and the South Central Yearly Meeting. The Estacado Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends, established in Estacado, Texas, was sponsored from Iowa. In 1893 the Friends began leaving Estacado and settled for a brief time in Alvin. They purchased 1,538 acres at the headwaters of Clear Creek, adjacent to Harris County, from J. C. League in 1895 and named their settlement Friendswood at the suggestion of Frank J. Brown, one of the colony's leaders. Friendswood Academy was established in 1902 and maintained until 1945. For a time the Friendswood Monthly Meeting retained its connection with Iowa Yearly Meeting. It later transferred to Rose Hill Quarterly Meeting, of which the League City Monthly Meeting was also a part in 1910. In December of the same year the Friendswood Quarterly Meeting was established under the auspices of the Kansas Yearly Meeting. Meetings belonging to this group in 1970 were in Bayshore, Northshore, Friendswood, South Houston, League City, Texas City, and San Antonio, which included the San Antonio Monthly Meeting and the Friends Chapel Monthly Meeting. These meetings have pastors, and their services are programmed to resemble traditional Protestant church services more than they do traditional Friends meetings. In 1964 the Kansas Yearly Meeting sponsored the Friends School in San Antonio. The school, located in the former Southern Christian College buildings, offered education, housing, and guidance to emotionally disturbed children who had been rejected by other child-care agencies. In 1970 approximately eighty students were being cared for. In 1963 the Kansas Meeting Friends joined an interdenominational group and established headquarters in Friendswood for CABCO (the Central African Broadcasting Company), known in Europe and Africa as CORDAC. The station, located in Bujumbura, Burundi, on the northeast shore of Lake Tanganyika, broadcasts daily missionary programs in five languages to a audience possibly as large as ten million. After World War II a number of individual Quakers moved to Texas, and the American Friends Service Committee began to expand its work into the state. These two developments resulted in the establishment of monthly meetings and smaller "preparatory" meetings in several Texas cities and finally, in 1961, to the formation of the South Central Yearly Meeting, which encompasses monthly meetings in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. These traditional meetings, like those in England and Pennsylvania, have no pastors or "programmed" services. In Texas in 1996 such monthly meetings and worship groups were found in Alpine, Austin, Corpus Christi, College Station, Dallas, Denton, Fort Worth, Galveston, the Hill Country , Houston, Lubbock, Midland, San Antonio, and Tyler. South Central Yearly Meeting is affiliated with the Texas Conference of Churches and the Friends General Conference, and is active in its support of the work of the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Friends World Committee for Consultation. The American Friends Service Committee has had service programs of various kinds in Texa

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The Texas Killing Fields — I-45 Corridor, League City

1971

The twenty-five-mile stretch of Interstate Forty-Five between Houston and Galveston has a name most locals know and most visitors don't: the Killing Fields. Since the early nineteen seventies, the remains of more than thirty young women have been found in drainage ditches, caliche pits, and vacant lots running alongside the highway through League City and Dickinson. Investigators believe multiple…

Curated → · 6.6 mi away

Things to Do in Friendswood

historical 6.4 mi away
NASA Johnson Space Center

Houston we have a problem. Where Mission Control guided Apollo 11 to the moon.
historical 7.0 mi away
Space Center Houston

Houston we have a problem. Every word spoken between Apollo astronauts and Earth came through Mission Control at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. The…
food 17.3 mi away
The Original Ninfa's on Navigation

Ninfa Laurenzo was a widow with five kids when she opened a little restaurant in her late husbands failing tortilla factory on Navigation Boulevard in 1973.…
food 5.2 mi away
Killen's Barbecue

Chef Ronnie Killen's Pearland powerhouse. A classically trained chef who chose brisket over fine dining. The beef rib is absurd.
historical 16.8 mi away
San Jacinto Monument

On April 21 1836 Sam Houston and nine hundred Texans caught Santa Annas army napping at San Jacinto and won Texas independence in eighteen minutes. Six hundred…
historical 16.9 mi away
San Jacinto Monument

Taller than the Washington Monument. Where Texas won independence in 18 minutes.
historical 17.1 mi away
Battleship Texas

The last surviving WWI-era dreadnought. Fought at D-Day and Iwo Jima.
quirky 15.2 mi away
Eclectic Menagerie Park

An outdoor display of giant welded-metal sculptures along the edge of the Texas Pipe and Supply pipe yard including a King Kong hanging from a crane a 20-foot…

Sports in Friendswood

⭐ HOMETOWN LEGENDS Class 5A · Baseball

Friendswood Mustangs — Friendswood — a college & pro athletic pipeline

3 alumni who reached major-college or pro sports

Friendswood High School, a Class 5A institution, has seen a number of its former athletes continue their careers at higher levels of sport. These alumni represent the school's athletic tradition, moving on to professional and major-college competition. Their journeys after high school reflect varied paths within the sports world.

Among those who have gone on to notable careers are Izaac Pacheco, a professional baseball player, and Haley Carter, who became a professional soccer player and coach. Scott Williamson also stands out, having played as a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds in Major League Baseball. These individuals illustrate the range of opportunities available to athletes after their time at Friendswood High.

Pro/D1 alumni
3
Class
5A
Founded
1940
Key Players
  • Izaac Pacheco — , Class of 2021; professional baseball player
  • Haley Carter — , Class of 2002; professional soccer player and coach
  • Scott Williamson — , Class of 1994; former Major League Baseball pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds
The moment

Scott Williamson played as a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds.

Sources: Wikipedia · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Friendswood

1217 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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