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County
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Description
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Bandera
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Bandera County was formed in 1856 from Bexar County. The first Europeans to
set foot in what is now Bandera County were the Spanish, who
probably explored the region in the early eighteenth century and named the
county after the Spanish word "Bandera" which means
"flag."
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Blanco
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Blanco County, named for
the Blanco River, was formed in 1858 from parts of Burnet County, Comal
County, Gillespie County and Hays County. Originally the county
seat was in the town of Blanco, but in 1891 there was a
special election and Johnson City became the new county
seat.
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Burnet
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Burnet County was formed
in 1852 from parts of Bell County, Travis County and Williamson County. Burnet county was named
for David Gouverneur Burnet, the first
(provisional) president of the Republic of Texas.
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Comal
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Comal County was formed in 1846 from
part of Bexar County. New Braunfels, the county
seat and largest community in Comal County, is located where the Guadalupe River crosses the Balcones
Escarpment.
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Crockett
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Crockett County was formed in 1876 from
part of Bexar County. The county which is
named for David Crockett, the legendary frontiersman who died at the Battle
of the Alamo, is located in the southwestern part of Central Texas on the
east side of the Pecos River, at the western edge of the Edwards Plateau. Its
county seat is Ozona.
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Edwards
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Edwards County was formed in 1858 from
part of Bexar County. Edwards County has more
than fifteen natural springs that flow year-round and the headwaters of the
Llano, Nueces, and West Nueces rivers are in the county.
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Gillespie
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Gillespie County was formed in 1848 from
parts of Bexar County and Travis County. Gillespie County is
named for Robert Addison Gillespie, who came to Texas in 1837, was an
original Texas Ranger, an Indian fighter, a merchant and a soldier in the
Mexican-American War. The seat of the county is Fredericksburg.
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Hays
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Hays County, named for the famous
Texas ranger John Coffee Hays, was formed in 1848 from part of Travis County. The county seat is San Marcos.
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Irion
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Irion County, named for
Robert Anderson Irion, was formed in 1856 from part of Tom Green County.
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Kendall
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Kendall County was formed in 1862 from
parts of Blanco County and Kerr County.
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Kerr
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Kerr County was named for
James Kerr, an Old Three Hundred colonist and an important figure in the Texas Revolution. The county
seat of Kerr County is Kerrville, and Ingram is the only
other incorporated community.
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Kimble
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Kimble County was formed in 1858 from
part of Bexar County.
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Kinney
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Kinney was formed in 1913
from part of Bexar County, and its county seat and largest town is
Brackettville. It is possible that Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca traversed the county from east to west in 1535.
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Lampassas
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Lampasas County was formed
in 1856 from parts of Bell County, Coryell County and Travis County. Settlers were drawn to
the area after Moses Hughes and his invalid wife, Hannah (Berry), moved near the site of
what is now Lampasas in November 1853, seeking to take advantage of the
medicinal springs.
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Llano
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Llano County was formed in 1856 from
parts of Bexar County and Gillespie County. After Meusebach's treaty, five settlements were established on
or near the Llano River in what later became the
western part of the county, but the town of Castell was the only one of these
to survive.
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Mason
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Mason County was formed in 1858 from
part of Gillespie County. In the mid-1840s the
overflow of German colonists from Fredericksburg and New Braunfels, under the direction of
John O. Meusebach, began to move into what became Mason County, risking the dangers of
the wilderness for the opportunity to own larger tracts of land. The
establishment of Fort Mason in 1851 and the resulting
greater protection against Indian attacks encouraged more rapid settlement of
the county by Germans, Irish, and English.
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McCulloch
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McCulloch County, named
for Benjamin McCulloch, a famous Texas Ranger and Confederate general, was
formed in 1856 from Bexar County. Extensive settlement of McCulloch County began in the 1870s and
most of the growth was from relocation of people already living in Texas and the southern United States rather than from an
increase in immigration from other countries.
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Medina
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Medina County was formed in 1848 from
part of Bexar County.
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Menard
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Menard County was formed in 1858 from
part of Bexar County. The area included in Menard
County was part of the Fisher-Miller Land Grant, made by the Republic of
Texas in 1842, but few if any of the German immigrants who settled within the
limits of the grant came to this area, and little settlement occurred until
several years after the annexation of Texas to the United States. In 1852, in
order to protect settlers from Indian attacks, the United States War
Department established Camp San Saba, later known as Fort McKavett, near the head of the San
Saba River.
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Reagan
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Reagan County was carved
from Tom Green County in 1903 and named for Senator John H. Reagan, the first
chairman of the Railroad Commission. Stiles became the first county seat.
After constructing two temporary frame courthouses, county officials built a
striking two-story white stone building in 1911.
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Real
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Real County was formed in 1913 from
parts of Bandera County, Edwards County and Kerr County. In 1762 El Gran Cabezón, a powerful Lipan
band chief seeking protection from the Comanches and their allies to the
north, persuaded Franciscans and elements of the Spanish military to
establish San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz Mission on the Nueces River near the
site of present Camp Wood. Anglo settlers arrived in the Frio Canyon in 1856
when John and Nancy Leakey, along with several others, settled near the town
that now bears their name. Sometime between 1856 and 1860 a settlement was
also established downriver at Rio Frio.
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San Saba
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San Saba County was formed
in 1856 from part of Bexar County. The Fisher-Miller land
grant, ceded by the Republic of Texas in 1842, can also be
included in this category. Most of the later land deeds for San Saba County
were out of the Fisher-Miller surveys, but the original members of this group
of German-Texan pioneers did not stay in the area. Early permanent settlers
included the Harkey family, who settled at Wallace
and Richmond creeks in the fall of
1854.
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Schleicher
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Schleicher County was
formed in April 1887 from part of Crockett County, and named it in honor of
Gustav Schleicher, an early surveyor, engineer, and politician. Schleicher
County was part of the Fisher-Miller Land Grant, made by the Republic of
Texas in 1842, but none of the immigrants who settled within the limits of
the grant came so far west. Settlement of Schleicher County occurred well after the
annexation of Texas to the United States. Some people may have
moved into the easternmost part of the county after the United States War
Department opened Camp San Saba in western Menard County in 1852, but it was not
until the mid-1870s that permanent ranches were established.
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Sutton
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Sutton County was formed in 1876 from part
of Crockett County. Anglo-Americans began
moving into the area in the early 1870s. Initially attracted by the
availability of water in various places along the Devils River, ranchers were soon drawn
by the rich, unoccupied pastureland of the western Edwards Plateau. So successful were the
herds that grazed in Sutton County, then a part of Crockett County, that by 1878 the region
was known as Cattleman's Paradise, a nickname that was soon
changed to Stockman's Paradise, since both sheep and
cattle ranching were important.
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Travis
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In June 1835 Thomas
Jefferson Chambers surveyed part of an eight-league grant covering the
present site of Austin and the Capitol. Sometime before 1837 William Barton
settled near the springs that were to bear his name. In 1837 or 1838
President Mirabeau B. Lamar was on a buffalo hunt
in the area and commented on its possibilities as a site for the permanent
capital. In 1838 the community of Waterloo (Austin) consisted of four
families; about twenty families established homes at nearby Montopolis in 1839. When the Congress of the Republic of Texas chose Waterloo as the site of the new
capital, opponents were quick to point out the disadvantages: the site's
proximity to the frontier, the lack of timber, the poor soil, and the threat
of Indian raids. In spite of this opposition, however, the new
capital—renamed Austin in honor of Stephen F.
Austin — was approved on January 19, 1840. A few days later the
Congress established Travis County, naming it in honor of
William Barret Travis and making Austin its county seat.
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Uvalde
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Uvalde County, named for
Spaniard Juan de Ugalde, was formed in 1850 from
part of Bexar County. Although the huge tract
of land granted by the Mexican government to John McMullen and James McGloinq in the 1820s included a portion of the area of
present Uvalde County, the area remained
unsettled until the late 1840s. A trail used by Gen. Adrián
Woll's Mexican army on its way to attack San Antonio in 1842 crossed the territory of Uvalde County and became the main
highway between San Antonio and the Rio Grande. Fort Inge, established in 1849, was
one of many frontier forts commissioned to repress Indian depredations on the
international border with Mexico. One of the first
settlers to the area was William Washington Arnett, who arrived in the winter
of 1852.
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Williamson
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Williamson County was formed in 1848 from
part of Milam County. Anglo settlement began
during the Texas Revolution and the early days of the Republic of Texas, when
the area was part of Milam County. In 1835, in an attempt
to strengthen the frontier against Indian attack, a military post was built
near the headwaters of Brushy Creek in what would become southwestern
Williamson County and was named for Capt. John J. Tumlinson,
Jr., the commander of the company of Texas Rangers who garrisoned the post.
The Indian threat eased after 1846, and part of the influx of settlers who
came to Texas after its annexation
traveled to the frontier along Brushy Creek and the San Gabriel River. By 1848 there were at
least 250 settlers in what was then western Milam County, and in the early months
of that year 107 of them signed a petition to organize a new county.
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