Jefferson Walton was a son, husband, father, grandfather, farmer, voter, and Texas transplant. He was born in Alabama in either the late 1820s or early-to-mid 1830s, and was brought to Milam County, Texas, by his enslavers in the early 1850s.

We don’t know whether Mr. Walton was among the skilled craftspeople who built the large log plantation home preserved today at Log Cabin Village. What we do know is that his labor, and that of the many other enslaved workers around him, was essential to the economic development of the plantation — and of Texas more broadly. Those contributions were not given freely, but that makes them no less significant. Mr. Walton and thousands of others like him built the foundation of 19th century Texas.

Around 1860, he married Fanny Wollard Holland. Over the course of their 66 years together, they raised 13 children: James, Jeffie, Walter, William, Fannie, Lulu, Mary, David, Burthenia, Walton, Ivory, Addie, and Ozie — who in turn gave Jefferson and Fanny a growing family of grandchildren.

In 1867, during Reconstruction, Jefferson registered to vote in Texas. He spent the rest of his life farming in the Branchville area with his family, and died in 1926.