Texas Highways Magazine

Beyond the Artifacts

ou’d be hard-pressed to find someone more fully connected to Texas history than J.P. Bryan. A relative of Stephen F. Austin—his great-great-grandmother was Austin’s sister—Bryan grew up in Freeport with a dad who served as the president of the Texas State Historical Association. Bryan attended the University of Texas and found success in the energy business in Houston, which funded his passion for collecting and preserving objects of Texas history. Since the late 1970s, Bryan and his wife, Mary Jon Bryan, have also dedicated themselves to restoring old buildings, from the Gage Hotel in Marathon to a historic home in Round Top to an abandoned orphanage in Galveston, the latter of which the couple reopened five years ago as The Bryan Museum. It’s not unusual for visitors

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