Morgan

Alvin is twelve miles southeast of Houston in northeast Brazoria County, on land originally granted to the Houston Tap and Brazoria Railroad. In the 1860s the Santa Fe Railroad established a flag station near the head of Mustang Slough on its Galveston-to-Richmond branch line. Santa Fe hired Alvin Morgan in 1872 to supervise the loading and shipping of cattle at the stock pens. Morgan built the first house in the area in 1879 and persuaded many travelers to settle there. In 1881 the settlement acquired a post office, and the residents named the community Morgan but renamed it Alvin upon learning of another Morgan, Texas. City folklore recalls Morgan's inseparable companions—a dog, a goose, and a white buzzard. Alvin was incorporated in 1891 and again in 1893.

By the mid-1890s Alvin had experienced a population explosion, with the number of residents increasing from 100 in 1890 to an estimated 2,000 by 1896. Businesses in the community included an ice factory, a pickle works, a cotton gin, a bank, an opera house, six hotels, four churches, and two weekly newspapers. Alvin's economy was based primarily on farming and fruit growing. Methodists organized the first church in Alvin in 1881, and other denominations soon followed: Baptist in 1886, Presbyterian in 1892, Episcopal in 1896, Nazarene in 1934, and Lutheran in 1938. Alvin's first public school classes met in the Methodist church building, but by the 1890s the school had facilities of its own. In 1910 the community raised funds for a two-story brick schoolhouse. Alvin became an independent school district in 1925. A community college opened at the high school in 1949 but moved to a separate campus in 1963.