In 1821, Stephen F. Austin was granted a permit from the Mexican government to act as empresario for 300 families to settle in Texas. That summer, he and the settlers, known as the Old Three Hundred, began crossing into Texas. From 1823 to 1824, Austin and the Commissioner of Colonization for Texas, Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop, issued 272 land grants, 56 of which were situated on the banks of the Brazos and San Bernard Rivers in what became Fort Bend County in 1837. On August 3, 1824, David Randon and his business partner, Isaac Pennington, received a grant of 4,428 acres located on the Brazos River in Fort Bend County between the John Foster League to the east and the Churchill Fulshear League to the west. The Randon and Pennington Land Grant offered fertile soil and valued river access for the transportation of crops to market. David Randon, a native of Alabama and part Creek Indian, came to Texas in search of opportunity. Randon received his land grant as a single man, but by March 1826, he was recorded as having a wife, Nancy McNeel, daughter of John McNeel, a land grant recipient in Brazoria County. Randon soon became one of the most successful planters in Austin’s colony. He died in 1867 and is buried on the Dyer Moore ranch near the community of Orchard. Isaac Pennington, a native of Virginia, sold his interest in the land to Randon. Pennington was listed as a teacher as early as 1823-24, making him one of the earliest teachers in the colony. He was later the mail contractor on the route between independence and Milam in 1836. The Randon and Pennington land grant became an important part of the early development of Texas and Fort Bend County.