John Tarleton's Land Patent

About a month ago, the library's archives received some documents from the President's Vault pertaining to the history of Tarleton State University.

This is the 1861 patent for some of the land that became part of Tarleton's estate, the sale of which helped create John Tarleton Agricultural College .  This describes a 1605-acre parcel in Erath and Palo Pinto Counties (click on all images to view them larger):

The certificate describes the boundaries of the "Nine and 060.000/1000.000 labors of land, situated and described as follows:  In Palo Pinto County, on the waters of Buck and Sunday Creeks.  Tributaries of the Brazos River, about 18 ½ miles S. 19° E. from the Town of Palo Pinto.  Known as Survey No. 36."  Actually, though, most of the land is in Erath County.

A labor was a Spanish land unit measuring 177.1 acres, so 9.06 labors is equal to 1604.526 acres.

Here is a map of the land it refers to - it's the part outlined in purple.  There are two parcels in Survey #36, 1407 acres (designated G. W. Treighen A-758 on the map) in Erath County, and a smaller 198-acre parcel (designated G. W. Treighen A-1937 on the map) in Palo Pinto County.  This map was created using the Land/Lease Mapping Viewer of the Texas General Land Office.

Glued to the bottom-right edge of the certificate pictured above is a Certificate of Record, showing that the information on the patent certificate "was duly and correctly recorded...., on the 9th day of May 1877...., in [Deed] Record Book H Page 415" of Erath County.

The land grant process in Texas (both as a Republic and in early statehood) involved three basic steps.

First, individuals received a land certificate for a specified amount of land if certain qualifications were met.  Texas created a variety of programs with different qualifications for land.  Land grant certificates were not issued for a specific tract of land. After a certificate was issued, it was the responsibility of the certificate holder to find vacant public land, obtain a survey, and apply for the patent.

A grantee (the person who was originally awarded the land certificate) could transfer (assign) the land certificate to another individual (called the assignee), by sale or gift. As a result, many people who received land certificates did not actually settle on the tract of land which bears their name, as those tracts were named for the original grantee.

Next, the grantee or the assignee would locate available land from the public domain. It did not have to be in the same county where the certificate was issued.  Using the certificate, a grantee or assignee could have the desired land surveyed. The field notes were sent to the Texas General Land Office and filed.

Finally, after fulfilling any conditions of the particular land grant program, such as making improvements to the land, and paying any required fees, the individual could then apply for a patent from the Texas General Land Office.  Once that patent was issued, this person was referred to as the patentee.

So George W. Treighen was the original grantee, but the certificate was apparently "transferred by said Treighen to C. S. Brown May 1st 1845, by him transferred to Jno. D. Brown January 3rd 1854, by him transferred to said Tarleton March 24, 1859."  John Tarleton was the final assignee, who found available land, had it surveyed, and then did what he needed to do by September 20, 1861, to get the land patent.

Tarleton Thursday: Alum Donates Ancestor's 1870s Texas Emigrant Journey Memoir to Library

Above:  Alan Easterling '90 with his ancestor's memoir

It's very appropriate that we get to announce an exciting donation to our archival collections on Texas Independence Day!  Yesterday, Tarleton alumnus Alan Easterling, Class of 1990, donated the original handwritten account of the mid-1870s journey from southern Illinois to northern Texas made by his great-grandfather, Nelson Fleming Rudolph (1861-1937), and his great-great uncle and Nelson's brother, Charles Francis Rudolph (1859-1929).

As can be seen in the photograph, the approximately 139-year-old document has been a little torn and taped on its first (and last) few leaves, but the remaining leaves (there are 100 pages) are in remarkably good condition.  Charles, who later became a newspaper editor, wrote the account of the journey and gave it as a Christmas gift to two of his sisters, Serena Estella "Stella" Rudolph Dort (1855-1932), who also moved to Texas, and Louisa Catherine "Lou" Rudolph Lee (1857-1930).

Easterling also donated three family photographs (two are originals from the late 1880s).  Watch for future posts featuring these images, as well as excerpts from the memoir.

Alan Easterling's nephew, Grayson Easterling, is a student at our Stephenville campus.  We also discovered another family connection here in the Dick Smith Library.  Jennifer Barrera, Assistant Director for User Services, is also a descendant of Nelson Fleming Rudolph.  He is Jennifer's great-great-grandfather, which makes Jennifer and Grayson third cousins, and Alan and Jennifer are second cousins once removed. 

Dark Side of the Archives

Archives sustain civilization. Civilization is the total of human experience. Archival repositories hold the records of that experience, good or bad, gained over time. Archives orient people in society, and create a foundation for profiting by historical context. Archives touch peoples’ lives when individuals are introduced or connected to the documents we hold in our collections. Sometimes it is finding information about an ancestor that brings joy. Other times the documents bring up memories of a darker time in our past. 

As we come to the end of Black History Month, the document featured is one of those records that document a darker time in the history of America. It is a receipt from 1847 for the purchase of a female slave named Silvy. The receipt states that on April 3, 1847, in Union County, North Carolina, John S. Leany paid $213 ($6,000 in 2015 dollars) for a “Negro girl Silvy” who was lately sold as the property of another individual. It further states that she is healthy and in sound condition. In addition, it transfers the title to Silvy to John S. Leany and his heirs and offspring.
    

In this one document, the whole issue of an individual owned by another is summed up. It is clear that slaves had no rights and were thought of as nothing more than a piece of property to be bought and sold as one would do with land.

For more information about slavery from those in bondage, the Dick Smith Library has The Slave Narratives of Texas by Ron Tyler, and from the Federal Writers Project, Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves. This 17-volume set is also available online from the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/.

 

The Texas Slavery Project, http://www.texasslaveryproject.org/, explores slavery in Texas in the years between 1820 and 1850.

The Texas State Historical Association has a free eBook on the trials and triumphs of African Americans in Texas at https://tshaonline.org/membership/african-american/.

Throwback Thursday: The Bankhead Highway in Texas

The Bankhead Highway was an automobile route from Washington, D.C. to San Diego, mainly through southern states.  It was the second national cross-country highway and the first that could be used year-round. It was named for Alabama senator John Hollis Bankhead, a leader in the early national road building ("Good Roads") movement.  Work on the route began in 1916, and its about-850 miles across Texas run from Texarkana to Dallas, and then west more or less near the routes of Interstates 20 and 10 today.

Retired meteorologist Daniel L. Smith spoke to the Dick Smith Friends of the Library this past weekend about his book (pictured above), The Bankhead Highway in Texas.  In the second half of the book, Smith took the 1921 Authentic Roadmap and Tourist Guide of the Bankhead Highway  by Thomas A. Dunn, and marked its routing on 1936 county maps of Texas.  Those maps show roads that may no longer exist today, but even by 1936, a few parts of the 1921 Bankhead Highway no longer existed - or could not be definitively identified.  And of course, today the interstates and other highways have obliterated parts of the Bankhead.

One of the Bankhead routes in western Tarrant County went right down today's Camp Bowie Boulevard, past the location of today's Hickman Building of the Tarleton Southwest Metroplex Center in Fort Worth.  The route also went through downtown Weatherford in Parker County.  Much of the road through Eastland County was paved with red brick made in Thurber, and you can easily see these segments in Cisco and Ranger.

Old photos, ads, and postcard images of bridges, signage, hotels, tourist courts, service stations, and other businesses along the Bankhead route, and recent photos of remnants of the road, buildings, landmarks, and other features that remain today are available in a Bankhead Highway in Texas group on Flickr started by the Texas Historical Commission as part of its Bankhead Highway Project.

This book can be found in the General Stacks on the upper level, call number HE356 .B36 S65 2013.

Grassburrs from 1970 through 2012 Now Online!

You can now view the 1970 through 2012 Grassburr yearbooks on the Portal to Texas History!

You can use the search box at the top of the page to look for a particular organization or name (try your own!), or you can click on the title of a yearbook and browse through it page by page.

Grassburrs going back to the first one in 1916 are in the process of being added. It is taking a bit longer with these older yearbooks as many of them are more fragile and must be scanned using a different process.  We will also continue to add the yearbooks from more recent years (2013 and onward).

Celebrate Texas History RHRD Style

The Dick Smith Library is one of twenty four depositories in the Regional Historical Resource Depository (RHRD) program located throughout the state at academic and other institutions that meet requirements of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to house historical records of local governments. The purpose of the Regional Historical Resource Depository (RHRD) program is to collect, preserve, and make available the historic records of local governments to the public. The majority of the records have fulfilled their administrative, fiscal, and legal values and are permanent only because of their historical value. Without the RHRD program many of these records would not be publicly accessible if the local government still possessed them.

The Dick Smith Library holds records for the following counties: Brown, Callahan, Coleman, Comanche, Eastland, Erath, Shackelford, and Stephens Counties. The records are either microfilm or actual textual records. Records of Erath County can be found in both microfilm and textual format (sometimes both for the same record). While Coleman, Comanche, and Eastland counties are available only as textual records, Brown, Callahan, Shackelford, and Stephens counties records are on microfilm.

The different types of records, which may not be available for all time periods or counties, include tax records, probate, civil and criminal court minutes, birth and death records, deed records, marriage, naturalization, marks and brands, school records, and sheriff's jail dockets, to name a few. Records on microfilm can be borrowed using the Interlibrary Loan system. For a list of county records that are available on microfilm, see  https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/local/index.html.  For a list of institutions that hold records and what counties they hold, see, https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/local/depositories.html . For information on the microfilm and textual holdings of the Dick Smith Library and how to use them, contact either Gary Spurr, spurr@tarleton.edu, or Amanda Pape, pape@tarleton.edu.

Cause for Revolt

The Declaration of November 7, 1835 or as it is otherwise known, The Declaration of Causes adopted by the Consultation at San Felipe was a declaration of reasons for taking up arms against Mexico prior to the Texas Declaration of Independence. The war had already begun with Mexican forces marching on San Antonio. The document explained Texas actions and made it clear to Federalists in Mexico that Texas desired only to preserve the Mexican constitution of 1824. The Declaration had eight points. First that Texas had taken up arms in defense of their rights and liberties and the republican principles of the Constitution of 1824. Second, Santa Anna's actions meant that the government of Mexico was no longer considered legal by Texas and therefore Texas was no longer bound by agreement made at the time Texas was settled. Also as long as Centralist forces were in Texas they would be attacked. In addition Texas had the right to establish an independent government, Texas was responsible for the debts of her armies and pledged to pay these debts. The last point was that Texas would reward with land and citizenship those who aided her in this fight. This last point would aid in the settlement of Texas, as the longer one fought for Texas the more land you would receive. Pictured is a image of Lorenzo de Zavala's copy of the declaration in Spanish. The document was printed in English and Spanish. The Handbook of Texas Online has more information at http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mjd02

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has a translation at https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/giants/zav-declaration.html

Tarleton Thursdays: Did You Know?

Tarleton athletics was in the beginning stages of development in the early 1900s. "Begun in 1901, these football, baseball, and track meets were held on an intramural basis. It was not until 1904 when Tarleton joined the West Texas College League that the school’s organized athletic tradition officially began."

"These early teams did not possess an official name. A campus legend contends that in 1925, Athletic Director W.J. Wisdom offered a five-dollar prize to the person who thought of the best mascot for the teams. However, Wisdom himself came up with the title of Plowboys.” (Chamberlain, The Early Years of Tarleton Athletics, Dick Smith Library Cross Timbers Historic Images Project)

In October 1908, one hundred years ago this month, Tarleton held a track meet. Our library website has a photograph of this track meet which shows how the people, the area, and our campus looked 100 years ago. To view this photograph, and to read the narrative The Early Years of Tarleton Athletics, by Frank Chamberlain in its entirety, go to the Dick Smith Library homepage and under Special Collections and Archives, click on Cross Timbers Historic Images Project. Search by: John Tarleton College Track Meet 1908. (http://www.tarleton.edu/library )