Place:Friendswood, Galveston, Texas, United States

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Friendswood is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is part of the metropolitan area. The city lies in Galveston and Harris Counties. As of the 2010 census, the population of Friendswood was 35,805.

In 2007, CNN/Money magazine listed Friendswood as one of 100 "America's Best Places to Live" for that year, making it one of 900 small towns recognized since the rankings first began in 2005.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Friendswood, situated in the northwest corner of Galveston County, has the distinction of being the only permanent town in Texas that started as a Quaker colony. It was established in 1895 by a group of Quakers led by T. Hadley Lewis and Frank J. Brown. They were looking for a "promised land" to start a colony of the people who belonged to the religious denomination called Friends or Quakers.

From its founding, life in Friendswood revolved around church and school. After the small church and school building was demolished in the 1900 Storm, the two-dozen families living in Friendswood erected a large two-story frame structure for their church and school. The building, called The Academy, housed the school and sanctuary until a larger, stone building replaced it.

Through the 1940s, Friendswood was predominately a small, remote, farming Quaker community with less than 500 citizens. The economy depended largely on growing and preserving Magnolia figs. After 1950, it became increasingly a suburban bedroom community, as Houstonians discovered the idyllic country setting the farmlands were converted to subdivision home-sites. The community became a city when it incorporated in 1960.

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