The story of the Taylor-Stevenson Ranch begins with those two people, a white landowner and a black slave. They were Stevenson's great-grandparents. Her great-great-grandparents, Edward Wyllys Taylor and Aaroline Taylor, came to Texas from Massachusetts in the 1840s. Building a home on land that's now the site of Wortham Center, E.W. Taylor served in later years as president of the Houston Cotton Exchange and Board of Trade. When the Civil War erupted, E.R., the son, was away at school in New York. In 1862, the 16-year-old came home and joined up with Waul's Texas Legion, a unit raised in Brenham. He ended up getting captured at Vicksburg and contracting consumption (tuberculosis).

Once he was released from prison and the Rebel army, his father purchased 21-year-old Ann to look after him. Over time, her cooking skills and her familiarity with herbs and potions restored the young man to good health. Over time, also, the couple fell in love.

Nothing unusual about interracial love in the South, of course. What's unusual about E.R. and Ann is that, unlike most slave owners with black mistresses, they lived together openly as husband and wife. Even though it was illegal in Texas for them to marry - not to mention dangerous to live under the same roof - they had six children, all of whom, Stevenson notes, graduated from college.

In 1875, Ann persuaded E.R. to buy land south of town, where they could grow hay, raise cattle and tend turkeys. Three decades later, the family found gas in their water well, which gave rise to the Pierce Junction field, the oil field closest to Houston. In 1921, Hugh Roy Cullen made his first strike at Pierce Junction. Howard Hughes reportedly used his rotary drill for the first time in the Taylor pasture.

Ann George Taylor died in 1909, her husband in 1924. Their granddaughter, Mollie Taylor married Ben Stevenson, a Tuskeegee University football legend, in the 1930's. Ben Stevenson was inducted in 2003 into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame at a ceremony in South Bend, Indiana.