Fort Bend sheriff and tax assessor to honor Walter Moses Burton at Missouri City senior breakfast

Fort Bend County fed Missouri City's 65-and-older residents at Landmark Community Center on Friday, October 9, and put before them the name of Walter Moses Burton — the man elected 157 years ago to the exact office Sheriff Eric Fagan now holds. The 6th Annual Senior Breakfast ran from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at 100 Louisiana Street, hosted jointly by Fagan and Tax Assessor-Collector Carmen Turner, the two elected officials who now hold separately the offices Burton once held together.

Burton was born August 9, 1840, in North Carolina and was brought to Texas while enslaved around 1858. After emancipation he became a landowner and farmer in Fort Bend County, and in 1869 county voters elected him sheriff and tax collector — the first Black sheriff elected in Texas and, according to the Handbook of Texas, the first Black elected sheriff in the United States. A Texas Historical Commission marker unveiled in 2026 reads, "the first Black sheriff in Texas and possibly the nation," the "possibly" acknowledging that the national-first claim rests on historical research.

He won a Texas Senate seat in 1873 and served from 1874 to 1882, after the Senate upheld his contested election on February 20, 1874. As a senator, Burton championed Black education and supported the legislation that established Prairie View Normal School, now Prairie View A&M University. He was the last Black state senator elected in Texas until Barbara Jordan in 1966.

U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee, who represents Texas's 18th Congressional District, gave the keynote. Seniors signed up by email at [email protected] or by phone at 281-342-3411. The breakfast filled Landmark's gymnasium, which holds roughly 200 people for events, and the building has a wheelchair-accessible path from the curb to the main floor and primary restrooms.

Two offices, two officials

Fagan has held the sheriff's office since January 2021, the county's first Black sheriff since Reconstruction, and won re-election in 2024. Turner was elected in November 2020 and took office in January 2021.

"Many law enforcement executives of color and I stand on the shoulders of Sheriff Burton," Fagan said.

The connection tightens at Prairie View. Burton's Senate work supported the bill that created Prairie View Normal School, and Fagan later earned his master's degree in juvenile forensic psychology there.

"A particular Senate bill created another inextricable connection between myself and Walter Moses Burton," Fagan said. "This bill allowed for the establishment of Prairie View Normal and Industrial School for Blacks. Today that school is called Prairie View A&M University — my alma mater."

Edmond Burton, a descendant of Walter Moses Burton, said of the recognition: "It's an incredible achievement to accomplish what he did during his time and to have made such a significant impact. We are grateful for this recognition, especially in a time when such acknowledgments are essential."

A name in the landscape

Burton already marks Fort Bend's geography. Walter Moses Burton Elementary School in Fresno, opened in 1996, carries the "Burton Sheriff" mascot. A Texas Historical Commission marker sits at Morton Cemetery in Richmond, and the Fort Bend Museum keeps a small exhibit with a life-size cutout.

Who carries the story

The question is whether the seniors seated at Landmark could themselves tell what the name means. Fort Bend County has no single racial majority, and in Missouri City roughly one in six residents — about 12,800 people — is 65 or older. Those are the people the county gathered Friday.

Those seniors live in places like Quail Valley and Sienna. Quail Valley's seniors can be found at Plantation at Quail Valley, a 55-and-over independent-living community at 2815 Cypress Point Drive, and in the older neighborhoods that grew up around its golf course. In Sienna, a master-planned community that now counts more than 10,000 homes, The Huntington at Sienna Ranch serves residents 62 and older with a clubhouse, fitness center, and planned activities.

Burton's story does not live in a county listing. It lives in the telling — and the people who carry this place's memory are the elders of Quail Valley and Sienna.

The place to start is Landmark Community Center at 100 Louisiana Street, open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sit down there with an elder from Quail Valley or Sienna and ask whether they can tell you who Walter Moses Burton was. The aim is a name a neighbor can tell — a life passed down rather than announced one October morning and put back on the shelf.