Lavaca County, Texas

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: lavaca_county, texas us_history

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Welcome to Lavaca County, Texas Project!

• Texas Space Page
• The leader of this project is: Mary Richardson.

Contents 1 History/Timeline 1.1 Government Offices 1.2 Geography 1.2.1 Adjacent counties 1.2.2 Protected areas 1.2.3 Demographics 1.2.4 Cities 1.2.5 Town 1.2.6 Formed From 1.2.7 Resources 1.2.7.1 Census 1.2.8 Notables 1.2.9 Lavaca County Antebellum Settlers 1.2.9.1 Cemeteries 1.3 Sources

History/Timeline

Halletsville, Lavaca co. courthouse.

• 1846 Lavaca County was formed and organized from Colorado, Jackson, Gonzales, Victoria counties.^[1]

10,000 years artifacts from the Paleo-Indian (10,000-6,000 B.C.) and Archaic (6,000–200 B.C.) periods have been found in the area. Frequent visitors: various Coahuiltecan tribes, and Karankawas and Tonkawas were frequent visitors.

18th, 19th Centuries - Lipan Apaches and Comanches made forays into the region. These died due to European diseases, or were killed by other Indian tribes.

1685 documented exploration by Frenchman René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, landed on the coast and named the Lavaca River Les Veches ("the cattle") because of the buffalo he saw grazing on its banks. The name was retained by the Spanish, who translated it La Baca.

1822 County land was included in the empresario grants to both Stephen F. Austin and Green DeWitt with the Lavaca River marking the boundary of both.

1826 -first settlers from an Indian attack on the Mexican settlement of La Bahía.

1831 DeWitt had assigned homesteads to twenty-one and Austin to twelve American families who came to establish small farms and stock ranches.

by 1835 Settlements sprang up at Zumwalts Mill, Rocky Creek, Hallettsville, Petersburg, Turner's Crossing, and William Millican's gin, which became a center of revolutionary activity.

1836 - Defeat of Alamo, Texas army under Gen. Sam Houston and Mexican army passed through the county heading toward San Jacinto.

late 1830s until 1841 Indian raids by the Comanches and Tonkawas. Defeats forced the Indians to withdraw to the west, and after 1841 the attacks cease.

1842 the Republic of Texas Congress established a judicial county from portions of Fayette, Colorado, Jackson, Victoria, and Gonzales counties and named it La Baca County.

1846 the area was renamed Lavaca County, and it became a regularly constituted county with 140 taxpayers. Petersburg and Hallettsville vied to be county seat, and after two hotly contested elections.

Novohrad School

1852 Hallettsville won the contest, only It required force of arms, to remove the records and move them to Hallettsville.

1840s,s 1850s population grew rapidly during the late 1840s; by 1850 the number of inhabitants reached 1,571. The majority of the new settlers were from the Old South, and many brought slaves with them. (1850, had 379 slaves) The number increased By (1860 population- 5,945 residents with 1,606 slaves) Cattle was dominant occupation during the antebellum period.

late 1850s plantation began farming cotton - 6,000 bales.Due to lack of navigable streams the cotton had to be hauled overland to Port Lavaca and on to markets.

1860- Lavaca County was typically Southern in character and outlook, with a rapidly developing plantation economy. 95% (592 of 628) of those who went to the polls voted for secession.

1862-65 Lavaca County men volunteered for the Confederate Army, serving in Whitfield's Legion, the Eighth Texas Cavalry (Terry's Texas Rangers), and other volunteer units. Some early volunteers saw considerable action during the war; many were killed or injured. No fighting took place in Lavaca County; those at home problems: lack of markets for goods, shortages, and unstable Confederate currency.

1864 -:Large cotton crops were raised and harvested by ever-growing numbers of slaves, Tax rolls showed 2,713 slaves in the county.

La Bahía Road, crossed the county, became one of the main supply routes, feeding into what became known as the "Cotton Road" because of the continuous stream of wagons loaded with cotton moving south to bypass the Union blockade of the Texas coast.

1865-1870 Economic disaster for white plantation owners, the county taxable property lost half of all taxable property, less acres. and slaves. Also disaster for the freed slaves....

The black population of Lavaca County did even worse. Most African Americans left the farms owned by their former masters to seek better lives, but found little or no improvement.

Most ended up working still as agriculture laborers or sharecroppers (for 1/3 -1/2 of the crop for the labor) found no improvement.

1868 - Federal troops and a Freedmen's Bureau agent were stationed in Hallettsville, relations between whites, soldiers, any government were peaceful, except for isolated violence directed at African Americans.

1870s White elite gained political control, they disfranchised the black population.Due to this cotton declined and cattle ranching took precedence.

1870s-mid 1880s - Large trail drives to the railroads in Kansas began making some ranchers considerable fortunes.

1870 sheep ranching had also become an important industry, sheep were 25,000.

When barbed wire began, farmers fenced their fields and protect cattle from the free-ranging herds of cattle and sheep.

1870-1880 Central European immigrants began to settle in the county, displacing many of the original American planters. Over the course of the next 20 years many of the county's large land grants were divided into smaller, self-sustaining units.

1880 the number of farms were1,925, and by 1890 the figure had risen to 3,062. The new immigrants worked without hired labor, relying on their families.

1890 Cotton bales were 26,842 bales, and in 1900, 38,349 bales came from the gins.

1890-1900 corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, honey, sugarcane, and molasses were added

The majority of the new settlers were Germans and Czechs (in this case, Czech-speaking Bohemians).

1890 census listed 4,402 foreign-born residents, with majority from Germany (1,884) and Austria (1,748). The German, Moravian, and Czech immigrants founded numerous new ethnic farm communities, including Glecker, Breslau, Witting, Moravia, and Vienna.

1900 - German and Czech newspapers published, among them Obzor, Treue Zeuge, Novy Domov, Prozor, Vestnik, and Buditel, and many of the county's towns had Czech social organizations, such the National Sokol Society and the Slavonic Benevolent Order.

1887 - Railroads arrived - San Antonio and Aransas Pass in Hallettsville giving rise to a number of new towns, including Shiner and Yoakum. The steady growth in new residents continued until around 1900.

1910 -1930s poultry production became a leading industry and swine raising, and by the early truck farmers raising tomatoes

1930s Lavaca County ranked among the top Texas counties in poultry and egg production. Hallettsville

Fink Hotel, Halletsville, Tx

1904 company - 34-acre farm of tobacco, but quality was poor, so project abandoned..

1910 Truck farming of cucumbers, Irish potatoes, onions, garlic, beans, sweet potatoes were begun. Most successful was tomatoes, which thrived in the warm, humid climate.

1932 431 railroad carloads of tomatoes averaging 18,000 pounds each, went to markets in the North. Cotton continued to occupy a central place in the economy.

1930 half of county cropland was still cotton.

Mid 1930s Depression and Boll Weevil, and soil depletion caused decline in cotton. Majority of tenant farmers were able to switch to truck farming or livestock raising.

1930 and 1940 number of tenant farmers in the county actually increased (from 2,075 to 2,179).

post World war II diversification enabled farmers to survive.

1970s and 1980s, however, the pace of consolidation quickened as greater emphasis was placed on livestock raising

1990s Lavaca County remained among the leading Texas counties in beef cattle, poultry, and hog production. Leading crops included hay, milo, and corn. Nonfarm revenues toward the end of the twentieth century came largely from light manufacturing, leather goods, and the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner. Oil and gas, discovered in 1941, also contributed to the economy.

1990 oil production was 736,258 barrels; total production from 1941 to 1990 exceeded 21,000,000 barrels.

Government Offices

The Grand Old Lady on the Square

Hallettsville, Lavaca Co. Courthouse

"The 170-feet tall Lavaca County courthouse is made of brown sandstone and grey stone shipped in by rail as huge boulders from Mill County. These stones were measured and cut on site by local farmers and other laborers. "It has a hipped roof and heavy towers with pyramidal roofs which look a whole lot like those pyramids in Egypt (not the city in Texas). The windows are tall and narrow and have what are called lintels."There are some incredible Romanesque arches all around the courthouse. And the clock tower can be seen from miles away, especially if you're Swoops. That tower has windows that are two-stories tall, as tall as our house, and that tower is why this courthouse looks so much like the one in Pittsburg.^[2]

Hallettsville, Lavaca co. courthouse.

Geography

From: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcl05

Lavaca County is E of San Antonio in the Claypan area of SE Central Texas.

Center of the county is 29°25' north latitude and 96°55' west longitude

County seat, Hallettsville.

Size - 971 square miles

Terrain flat to undulating terrain,

Elevation 150 to 350 feet.

Rivers -E part is drained by the Navidad River, central and W parts are drained by Lavaca River.

Soil - SE section the soils are light-colored and loamy with deep reddish, mottled subsoils. Remainder has deep, alkaline, clayey soils over halk underlayer with a high shrink-swell

Vegetation - NW the Blackland Prairies region with tall grasses, mesquite, oak, pecan and elm SE - the Post Oak Savannah area, characterized by tall grasses, post,blackjack oaks.

Prime Farmland -21 and 30% is considered prime farmland.

Natural resources include oil and natural gas.

Animals - white-tail deer, bobcats, coyotes, opossums, squirrels, foxes, armadillos, skunks, bats, cottontail rabbits, raccoons, and numerous reptile, fish, and bird species.

Climate is subtropical-humid, with warm summers and mild winters.

Rainfall is thirty-seven inches.

Temperature in January low of 41° to 64° and in July from 73° to 96°.

Growing season averages 278 days a year, last freeze in March and first freeze in December.

From:Texas handbook

Adjacent counties

• Fayette County (north)

adjacent counties.

• Colorado County (northeast)
• Jackson County (southeast)
• Victoria County (south)
• DeWitt County (southwest)
• Gonzales County (northwest)

Protected areas

• Managed Deer Permits
• Landowner wildlife Management
• Navidad River
• Lavaca River

Demographics

In 2000 there were 19,210 people residing in the county with a population density of 20 people/sq. mi. The racial makeup of the county was 86.86% White, 6.79% Black or African American, 0.19% Native American, 0.16% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 4.84% from other races, and 1.14% from two or more races. 11.36% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 27.0% were of Czech, 24.1% German, 9.1% American and 5.1% Irish ancestry according to Census 2000. 86.3% spoke English, 7.7% Spanish, 4.6% Czech and 1.2% German as their first language. The median income for a household in the county was $29,132, and the median income for a family was $36,760. Males had a median income of $26,988 versus $17,537 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,398. About 10.20% of families and 13.20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.20% of those under age 18 and 18.40% of those age 65 or over.^[3]

Hallettsville, Lavaca co. Jail.

Politics - Lavaca County has often followed statewide voting trends. Democrats dominated the county for more than a hundred years, and Democratic presidential candidates carried the area in nearly every election from 1848 through 1948; the only exception occurred in 1920, when James E. Ferguson, running as the presidential candidate of the American Party, won a solid majority of the area’s votes.. Though Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower took the county in the elections of 1952 and 1956, the Democratic presidential candidates won there in 1960 and 1964; in 1968, Democrat Hubert Humphrey won only a plurality of the area’s votes, partly because independent candidate George Wallace ran strongly in the county that year. After 1972, when Richard Nixon won a solid majority of the county’s votes, the area began to lean Republican. Though Democrat Jimmy Carter took the county in 1976,the Republican presidential candidates carried the area in almost every election from 1980 to 2004.

• Of residents twenty-five and older, 69 percent had graduated from high school and 11 percent had college degrees.

Nonfarm revenues toward the end of the twentieth century came largely from light manufacturing, leather goods, and the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner. Oil and gas

County income- agriculture, oil and gas production, tourism and various manufacturing operations were important elements of the local economy. In 2002 the county had 2,861 farms and ranches covering 601,698 acres, 52 percent of which were devoted to pasture, 34 percent to crops, and 13 percent to woodlands. That year farmers and ranchers in the area earned $45,660,000; livestock sales accounted for $42,122,000 of the total. Cattle, forage, poultry, rice, corn, and sorghum were the chief agricultural products. More than 590,000 barrels of oil, and 86,673,031 thousand cubic feet of gas well gas, were produced in the county in 2004; by the end of that year 30,805,165 barrels of oil had been taken from county lands since 1941.

School Districts

Hallettsville Independent School District

Moulton Independent School District

Novohrad School

Shiner Independent School District

Sweet Home Independent School District

Vysehrad Independent School District

Yoakum Independent School District

Ezzell Independent School District

Highways

• U.S. Highway 77
• U.S. Highway 90 Alternate
• Texas State Highway 95
• Texas State Highway 111

Cities

• Hallettsville (county seat)
• Shiner
• Yoakum (partly in DeWitt County)

Town

• Moulton

• Breslau
• Sweet Home
• Speaks
• Sublime

Formed From

• 1846--Lavaca County was created 6 April 1846 from Colorado, Gonzales, Fayette, Jackson, and Victoria Counties.

Resources

• Nonfarm revenues near last of 1900's came largely from light manufacturing, leather goods
• Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner.
• Oil and gas

Census

1850 --- 1,571 —

1860 --- 5,945 278.4%

1870 --- 9,168 54.2%

1880 --- 13,641 48.8%

1890 --- 21,887 60.5%

1900 --- 28,121 28.5%

1910 --- 26,418 −6.1%

1920 --- 28,964 9.6%

1930 --- 27,550 −4.9%

1940 --- 25,485 −7.5%

1950 --- 22,159 −13.1%

1960 --- 20,174 −9.0%

1970 --- 17,903 −11.3%

1980 --- 19,004 6.1%

1990 --- 18,690 −1.7%

2000 --- 19,210 2.8%

2010 --- 19,263 0.3%

Est. 2015 --- 19,836

Notables

Lavaca County Antebellum Settlers

TXGEN biographies of Lavaca County settlers

WILLIAM M. ALLEN

W. EMIL APPELT

EDWARD BOEHM

EMIL G. BUSKE

D. CICERO DANIEL

HENRY DREYER

EDWIN THOMAS DOOLEY

PROF. WILLIAM EILERS

FRANK L. ERMIS

FREDERICH T. FEHRENKAMPFrederich Fehrenkamp

OTTO C. HENKHAUS

JOHN ABNER FOWLKES

CHARLES J. GARBADE

DIETRICH GARBADE

JAMES D. GRAY, M.D.

HARRIS TAYLOR GREEN

JOHN G. GUENTHER, M.D.

Cemeteries

• Hallettsville City Cemetery
• Saint Marys Catholic Cemetery
• Old Moulton Cemetery
• Restland Cemetery
• Colemann Cemetery
• Hebron Cemetery

• Cemeteries of Lavaca County
• FindaGrave cemeteries
• Lavaca County Cemeteries Gloria Mayfield

Sources

1. ↑ https://texasalmanac.com/index.php?q=topics/government/lavaca-county
2. ↑ http://www.texasescapes.com/TRIPS/GreatAmericanLegendTour/LavacaHallettsvilleTx/LavacaCountyCourthouse.htm
3. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavaca_County,_Texas

• https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcl05
• Cemeteries of Lavaca County
• FindaGrave cemeteries
• FamilySearch genealogy
• TXGen cemeteries, genealogoy
• Lavaca County Cemeteries Gloria Mayfield
• TXGEN biographies of Lavaca County settlers