Of the 15 men who comprised the original Board of Trustees of a doughty little school on the rolling hills near the village of the Independence in 1845, only William M. Tryon and Judge R.E.B. Baylor are known and celebrated today. The others — J.G. Thomas, James Huckins, Albert G. Haynes, Albert C. Horton, R.B. Jarman, Nelson Kavanaugh, Oran Drake, Eli Mercer, Aaron Shannon, James L. Farquhar, Robert S. Armistead, Edward W. Taylor, and James Seaton Lester — are now, at best, shadowy figures, little known and less studied.
But Lester, a hero of the Battle of San Jacinto; one of the original delegates who witnessed the creation of the Republic of Texas; a successful lawyer, businessman, and legislator; and a generous civic benefactor, may well be the founder of yet another famous (or infamous) Texas institution, an “accomplishment” you most certainly will not find in any official Baylor University history.
Since Texas historians have meticulously researched Texian participants in the one-sided Battle of San Jacinto, we know that Lester was born on April 1, 1799, in Virginia, and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1831. He traveled to what was then known as the Mexican state of Coahuila — Texas — in February 1834. Within a year, he was named as a delegate from the successionist hotbed Mina community (at the junction of State Highways 71, 21, and 95, and on the Colorado River — later renamed Bastrop) to the “Consultation” in San Felipe that requested tax relief, immigration reform, and separation from Coahuila and, shortly thereafter, Mexico itself.
The Consultation led to the formation of the Provisional Government of Texas and Lester was quickly named to Texas’ General Council.
By now, Lester had apparently also become a skilled marksman, and he accompanied some of the fledgling government’s earliest military expeditions against Native Americans.
At the same time, however, settlers on the upper Colorado River had long accused a Col. James J. Ross, another delegate to the Consultation, of trading for horses stolen from the Texians with the neighboring Tonkawas (and sometimes even the dreaded Comanches). When his neighbors, including Lester, demanded Ross cease his illicit trade, he angrily refused.
On January 14, 1835, Lester joined Col. John Henry Moore and John Rabb in confronting Ross. As the small band approached Ross’ home (near modern-day La Grange), he fired at them. Moore, Rabb, and Lester returned fire and killed Ross. The Tonkawas, who had camped near the Ross homestead, heard the gunfire and fled and never returned.
In early 1836, when it was clear that armed conflict with Mexico was looming, the provisional government sent Lester back to the Bastrop area to recruit for Gen. Sam Houston’s army. As a result, Lester was not present at the heroic defense of the Alamo (February 23-March 6, 1836). Nor is there any record that he participated in the frantic Runaway Scrape that followed.
But Lester enlisted in Houston’s army in time to participate in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto on April 21.
Lester left behind two artifacts that help us track his movements. First, within a year of the San Jacinto, he successfully billed the new Republic of Texas for $10 to replace a large pistol lost on the battlefield. Second, a fine leather bullet pouch that once belonged to Lester is currently on display in the San Jacinto Museum.
By 1838, in recognition of his service at San Jacinto, the Republic awarded Lester 640 acres of land in what is now Fayette County, in Winchester, near present-day La Grange. He served in the First and Second Congresses of the new Republic, representing Bastrop and Gonzales, then represented Fayette County in the Third Texas Congress. Lester also served as a Texas senator in the Fourth and Fifth Congresses.
Lester was instrumental in the founding of what is believed to be the first Protestant institution of higher education in Texas, Rutersville College, founded by Methodists in January 1840. Located just a few miles from La Grange, Rutersville’s first trustees included President Chauncey Richardson, John Rabb, Andrew Rabb, John H. King, Wager S. Smith, Jonas Pandrall, Joseph Nail, Dr. A.P. Manly, Dr. W.P. Smith, Thomas D. Fisher — and James Seaton Lester.
While the school only lasted 15 years, one of its students was George W. Baylor, nephew of Judge R.E.B. Baylor, who attended Rutersville College for two years before transferring to Baylor at Independence.
Read more: Did Any Baylor Bear Ever Have a Wilder, Woolier, More Explosive Life Than Col. George Wythe Baylor?
Baylor, founded by Baptist missionaries and supporters in 1845, would be the last college chartered by the Congress of the Republic of Texas. Lester, a “devout Baptist,” served as a trustee for Baylor as well.
Fortunately for Baylor, Lester did more than just serve. Shortly before his death, the Minutes of the 31stAnnual Session of the Baptist State Convention of Texas, held in La Grange October 5-7, 1878, gratefully acknowledged Lester for having “paid interest on $24 since 1851, and during the year has paid the principal and interest on his subscription, $300, which is deposited in a bank and drawing interest” toward Baylor’s $16,865 endowment (of which the report notes that only $8000 “may be considered good”).
“It is hoped,” the report continues, “all note givers and subscribers will follow this noble Brother’s good example. It is of the highest importance that the interest on the Endowment should be paid regularly to save the Faculty from suffering incident to want of regular payments.”
Lester parlayed his legal expertise, political acumen, and real estate investments in La Grange into a sizable fortune. Jan Hutson writes that he was one of the first landowners in the city and (despite his Baptist heritage), the first man in Fayette County to be granted a license to sell whiskey. Lester built the Lester Hotel at 160 W. Colorado St. in downtown La Grange, though the bar was much more profitable than the bedrooms. According to Hutson, the Lester Hotel was also the frequent headquarters of a growing number of “fancy ladies” who found their way to the booming town on the Colorado River.
Lester died in La Grange on December 1, 1879, and is buried there. He’s recognized in the Old City Cemetery by both a handsome gravestone and a tall obelisk commemorating his service to the Republic of Texas.
Over half a century later, on May 15, 1945, when Baylor University honored its founders and 15 original trustees, the event — with suitable pomp and circumstance — culminated with the planting of 15 oak trees on the campus and the unveiling of a stone marker featuring the names of the trustees. Among those in attendance that day was Mrs. Lester Joyce Nabors of Waco, Lester’s great-granddaughter.
Read more: The Centennial Class of 1945
If you’re a reader of a certain age, you know where this is going…
Hutson, in her small book The Chicken Ranch: The True Story of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, confidently writes that it was Lester who was, at the very least, the primary financial backer of the ramshackle scattering houses that became linked and eventually known as the notorious Chicken Ranch of La Grange.
Jayme Lynn Baschke’s heavily researched Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is somewhat more circumspect. She notes the success of Waco’s Reservation (also known as Two Street) as Texas’ first legalized prostitution district, with its heavily regulated — and taxed — brothels and as a precedent that Lester (as a Baylor trustee) would surely have been familiar with.
Baschke writes that La Grange’s legalized (at least tolerated) Chicken Ranch was an outgrowth of demand from the nearby ferry across the Colorado River, a wide-open racetrack nearby, gambling houses, and numerous hotels — including Lester’s, making him a logical suspect as the original investor of the brothel.
Baschke also cites Kathy Carter’s unpublished history of the Chicken Ranch in the Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives, which features interviews with several elderly La Grange residents. Carter’s interviewees only claim that Lester was one of two Republic of Texas senators (along with James Webb of Austin) who possessed the deep La Grange ties and financial wherewithal necessary to have established the original brothel. Lester is certainly a likely candidate for the “honor.”
The Chicken Ranch flourished for decades but the crusading efforts of a Houston newsman finally generated enough moral outrage to have the Chicken Ranch closed in the mid-1970s. The main building eventually sold to a Dallas entrepreneur, who opened an unsuccessful chicken-themed restaurant in Big D.
But the Chicken Ranch’s legacy includes, among other things, a hit song by the über-Texas band ZZ Top and the wildly successful Broadway musical and film versions of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
As for James Seaton Lester, his name still endures — albeit in passing — in various histories of Baylor University and on the small monument from the 1945 celebration that recognizes the school’s original trustees. The stone was removed in 2024 in conjunction with renovations to the area around the Judge Baylor statue. The official Baylor website adds that “information on the stone was added to the more complete story of Baylor’s founders and trustees.”
In search of the stone itself, I contacted a half-dozen Baylor faculty, staff, and administrators who served on the Commission on Historic Campus Representations, none of whom were able to tell us its current location. Finally, Dr. Todd Copeland, director of advancement marketing and member of the Commission, was able to forward this official response:
The trustee stone is being stores offsite, and it is not scheduled to be returned to campus. However, the information on the stone was incorporated into the new contextualization around the Judge Baylor statue.
And in La Grange, the Lester Hotel at 160 W. Colorado St. was destroyed by a fire March 1, 2000, and in its place — appropriately enough — is a tree-shaded park and the Texas Quilt Museum.
