After Texas became a state, many settlers arrived from the Old South, bringing in hundreds of slaves in total, though only a few plantation owners held more than a dozen slaves. Most of the slaves lived on small farms with their owners, who remained subsistence farmers for years after settling their land. The contributions of African Americans to building the community are all but ignored in local histories written during the period when slavery was still being excused as justifiable due to the alleged low development of those enslaved. In fact, for the first 50 years or so, and probably for the first 100 years of the town, blacks did most of the construction work, including the main concrete buildings such as Sebastopol.