Aaron Coffee: A Historical Overview of a Brazoria County Planter (1832–1912)
By: Diana J. Kleiner
Revised by: Brett J. Derbes
Published: December 1, 1994
Updated: August 15, 2015
Aaron Coffee, Brazoria County planter, was born in Brandon, Mississippi, in December 1832, to Thomas J. and Malinda G. Coffee. The Coffee family relocated to Oyster Creek, Brazoria County, Texas, in 1846. He married Mary Somerville on March 28, 1860. He personally owned twenty-five slaves, and the plantation he managed, Halcyon, had 132. In 1860 he owned real property valued at $100,000 and personal property valued at $167,350. On April 15, 1862, he enlisted as a private in Company B of the Thirteenth Texas Infantry and was sent to Brazoria County to make sabres for his company. He was discharged on February 10, 1863, after furnishing a substitute named Benjamin Hughes. Coffee applied for an official pardon for his Confederate military service on November 18, 1865, and applied to vote in Brazoria County on August 15, 1867. He joined the Texas Farmers' Congress and was a regular contributor of farming information to newspapers and magazines under the pseudonym "Old Cotton Planter." Coffee died on February 28, 1912, in McKinney and is buried in Pecan Grove Cemetery in Collin County.
Bibliography:
Abigail Curlee Holbrook, "A Glimpse of Life on Antebellum Slave Plantations in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 76 (April 1973). Ralph A. Wooster, "Wealthy Texans, 1860," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 71 (October 1967). Dallas Morning News, February 28, 1912. Waxahachie Daily Light, February 28, 1912.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Diana J. Kleiner Revised by Brett J. Derbes, “Coffee, Aaron,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/coffee-aaron.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
FCOAN
- December 1, 1994
- August 15, 2015
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