On Galveston Island, there is a "Powhatan House" built in the 1800's. Is there any relationship of this building, or of its ownwers, to the N&W?
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N&W is the world's greatest railway but they never got to Texas.
The house's builder, Col. John Seabrook Sydnor, was an early exponent of the importation of the "cotton culture" to Texas. Many Southerners regarded Texas as the South's frontier, where rich lands were ripe for exploitation of cotton cultivation and the consequential institution of the slave system. Col. Sydnor migrated to Galveston from his native Hannover County, Virginia, in 1838. Recognizing that Galveston was the major port of entry for all of Texas' trade and immigration, he invested extensively in real estate and formed the J. S. Sydnor & Co. cotton merchants, one of Galveston's leading cotton wholesalers until 1866. By 1840 Sydnor had been elected to the city board of aldermen and had brought his family, household goods, and slaves from Virginia.
OK, Mr. Sydnor named it after the tribe in Virginia. But as a railfan, it did make me wonder........
