County names

1,989 Views | 8 Replies | Last: 7 yr ago by Corporal Punishment
$240 Worth of Pudding
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AG
Why were a few counties in Texas given the first and last names of the men they're named after? Jeff Davis, Jim Wells, Jim Hogg, Tom Green. Why not just Davis, Wells, etc.?

More importantly, why do I think about this crap?
dcbowers
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AG
I encourage you to read T. R. Fehrenbach's book Lone Star. There are a lot of "aha moments" that explain how certain cities and counties were named.
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Rabid Cougar
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AG
Interesting note: last county to be established in Texas is Loving County Est.1931. Pop. 82. Although it was initially incorporated in 1893. Formerly part of Tom Green County and Bexar County.

Wiki has a neat site for Texas Counties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Texas.
Lots of information there.
p_bubel
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Rabid Cougar said:

Interesting note: last county to be established in Texas is Loving County Est.1931. Pop. 82. Although it was initially incorporated in 1893. Formerly part of Tom Green County and Bexar County.

Wiki has a neat site for Texas Counties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Texas.
Lots of information there.

Yeah, Bexar County comprised a large chunk of West Texas ( 128 separate counties today ) up until the 1850s/1860s.
Liquid Wrench
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Makes genealogy confusing at times, when so many small towns (many of which are hard to find these days) just get lumped into Bexar County or San Antonio for records purposes.
aalan94
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AG
When Texas was first divided up along Anglo "counties", they were carved out of the populous parts of East Texas that had been the old Empresario grants, and everything not reaching a population threshhold was thrown into Bexar administratively, since they already had something of an infrastructure for managing the frontier.

Counties were established at different times by different generations of Texans with different ideas. Not sure about Tom Green and others, but Jeff Davis was done that way specifically as an F U to the Federal government after the Civil War. Most Southern states did this, and in many cases renamed existing counties. (See the movie "Free State of Jones" for a scene where they do this).

I've always been fascinated by the fact that so many cities do not in fact match the counties with the same name. This is because many are named after the same person and in many cases, that person had a city named after him first and then a county later on when they were finally cutting up Bexar.

My favorite is Jones County, which has Anson as the county seat. And of course, they're named after Anson Jones.
commando2004
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AG
aalan94 said:

I've always been fascinated by the fact that so many cities do not in fact match the counties with the same name. This is because many are named after the same person and in many cases, that person had a city named after him first and then a county later on when they were finally cutting up Bexar.
Yeah, it's weird. The city of Houston is in Harris County, not be confused with Houston County whose county seat is Crockett, not to be confused with Crockett County way out west.

Similarly, there's the city of Austin in Travis County, not to be confused with Austin County whose county seat is Bellville.
BQ78
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AG
Well until the railyards burned up afte the Civil War Harrisburg was the big town in Harris county. After the turn of the century it got swallowed by the beheomoth now called Houston.
Of course Austin was once Waterloo and 60 years after they renamed it for the father of Texas, Williamson County gave Waterloo a recycle for one of its commnities between Thrall and Taylor but it is now long gone.
Rabid Cougar
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AG
commando2004 said:

aalan94 said:

I've always been fascinated by the fact that so many cities do not in fact match the counties with the same name. This is because many are named after the same person and in many cases, that person had a city named after him first and then a county later on when they were finally cutting up Bexar.
Yeah, it's weird. The city of Houston is in Harris County, not be confused with Houston County whose county seat is Crockett, not to be confused with Crockett County way out west.

Similarly, there's the city of Austin in Travis County, not to be confused with Austin County whose county seat is Bellville.
Milam County took up a huge part of Central and North Texas from 1837 until the early 1850's.

Confusing? Here you go.....the county seat of Milam County is Cameron. There is Cameron County in which the county seat is Brownsville and also a Milam, Texas which is in Sabine County.

Ben Milam was killed during the Texas Revolution when he was shot in the head through the door of the Alamo when the Texian revolutionaries initially captured San Antonio .

Cameron is named after Ewen Cameron who was part of the Meir Expedition. He was captured and part of the "Black Bean" incident. Even though he drew a white bean Santa Ana ordered him executed anyway.

He refused to confess his sins to a priest and before he was shot he proclaimed "For the liberty of Texas, Ewen Cameron can look death in the face." He then ripped his shirt open and yelled "Fuego!"

I imagine he told Santa Ana to bugger off one to many times.
Corporal Punishment
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AG
My favorite Loving County anecdote...

1991 Texas Monthly Bum Steer Awards:

"NOT THIS 39 YEARS, DEAR, I'VE GOT A HEADACHE
Amanda Nicole McVay became the first baby born in Loving County since 1951."

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-31/magazine/tm-848_1_yankee/10
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