prairie point

We spent Easter weekend in Chappell Hill with a group of friends at a place called the Old Browning Plantation. We rented the entire place, which was an 1850 cotton plantation house, no doubt built with slave labor. Eight identical rooms, four per floor and all 20 by 20 with a 12 foot-wide central hall down through the middle. There was an attic and a widows walk on top. Every room had a fireplace but they were no longer functional. The closets had all been converted into little bathrooms with the plumbing going down through the old chimneys. The weather was cool and windy. We grilled steaks and ate out on the wide verandas and had our own little wine-tasting.

Easter morning we went to the services at the Methodist Church in Chappell Hill, where we sang traditional hymns and heard a local boy play violin and the church bell choir which had only had five practices. It was an unusual 1901 building with dark wood panelling on the walls and on the vaulted ceiling and with beautiful stained glass windows. There was a woman minister. Many small-town Methodist congregations are led by women these days, I’ve noticed.

I had not been to the Chappell Hill/Brenham area for many years. It seems much more “gentrified” than the way I remembered it. Actually we spent very little time in town but mainly cruised the countryside looking at wildflowers and visited the little villages of Independence and Round Top. I think Washington County was the only place in Texas with abundant bluebonnets this year.