A
Brief History Of Gillespie County
From
The Handbook of Texas Online
is a joint project of The General Libraries at the University
of Texas at Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu)
and the Texas State Historical Association (http://www.tsha.utexas.edu).
Copyright ©, The Texas State Historical Association,
1997-2002
Gillespie County
is located in west central Texas. Fredericksburg, the
county's largest town and county seat, is seventy miles
west of Austin and sixty-five miles northwest of San Antonio.
The center point of the county is at 30°18' north
latitude and 98°55' west longitude, about two miles
west of Fredericksburg. Gillespie County comprises 1,061
square miles. Most of the county is on the Edwards Plateau,qv
except for the northeastern corner, which is in the Llano
River basin. The primary soils are generally shallow and
clayey and not particularly suited to intensive agriculture.
The soils in the bottomlands along the Pedernales River
and some major creeks are deeper and loamier and better
for crops, while the soils in northeastern Gillespie County
are generally shallow and loamy. The terrain features
plateaus and limestone hills broken by the Pedernales
River, with an elevation ranging from 1,100 to 2,250 feet
above sea level and averaging 1,747 feet above sea level.
The soils on Gillespie County's limestone hills support
growths of live oak, shin oak, and other browse plants,
as well as grasses and forbs well-suited for grazing.
The deeper soils in the valleys and plains produce a true
prairie of medium and tall grasses mixed with forbs and
woody plants. Some 573,000 acres (85 percent of the agricultural
land in the county) is rangeland, which constitutes the
county's major renewable resource. The recent trend in
Gillespie County has been to convert land previously used
for raising crops to improved pasture and hay culture
Cattle and sheep are raised throughout Gillespie County,
and Angora goats primarily in the southwest part of the
county. Among the numerous wild animals are white-tailed
deer, turkeys, quail, doves, foxes, ringtail cats, bobcats,
coyotes, ducks, and geese. Many farm and ranch tanks are
stocked with channel catfish, black bass, and sunfish.
The county's principal water source is the Pedernales
River, which flows from west to east across the width
of southern Gillespie County. Other major water sources
include Threadgill Creek in the northwest, North Grape
Creek in the east, and Crabapple Creek in the north central
part of the county. Mineral resources include limestone,
talc, gypsum, and metallic minerals. Temperatures range
from an average high of 95° F in July to an average
low of 36° in January; rainfall averages 27.45 inches
a year, and the growing season lasts 219 days. The first
known residents of Gillespie County were the Tonkawa Indians.
By the nineteenth century, Comanches and Kiowas had also
moved into the area. The future county was first settled
by Europeans in 1846, when John O. Meusebachq led a group
of 120 Germans sponsored by the Adelsvereinq to the site
of Fredericksburg, which became one in a series of German
communities between the Texas coast and the Fisher-Miller
Land Grant originally the immigrants' ultimate destination.
Fredericksburg and the surrounding rural areas grew quickly,
and on December 15, 1847, 150 settlers petitioned the
Texas legislature to establish a new county, which they
suggested be named either "Pierdenales" or Germania.
The legislature formally marked the new county off from
Bexar and Travis counties on February 23, 1848, named
it after Capt. Robert A. Gillespie a hero of the recent
Mexican War and made Fredericksburg the county seat. Gillespie
County originally included areas that today are parts
of Blanco, Burnet, Llano, and Mason counties. It underwent
the first of five boundary changes in 1858, when the legislature
formed Mason and Blanco counties, changed the Llano County
boundary and established the present northern and eastern
boundaries of Gillespie County. The last change came in
1883, when the county's boundaries were redefined and
its present limits set. In
1850, 913 of the 1,235 whites in Gillespie County were
of foreign extraction, almost all of them German. Because
Gillespie County was not well suited to cotton cultivation,
slaveholding was never an important part of the local
economy. There were only five slaves in Gillespie County
in 1850, ninety in 1858, and thirty-three in 1860. In
1860 the citizens of Gillespie County rejected secession
by a vote of 400 to seventeen. Despite the county's generally
pro-Union sentiment, however, some residents fought for
the South. By March 1862 fifty-four Gillespie County men
had joined the Confederate Army, and a total of some 300
men eventually volunteered for service in six home-defense
units to avoid conscription. But Gillespie Count y was
still regarded with suspicion and distrust by its pro-Confederate
neighbors. On May 30, 1862, Gen. Philemon T. Herbert imposed
martial law on Central Texas, and the notorious Confederate
irregular James Duff was put in charge of Gillespie and
Kerr counties. A number of Union loyalists chose to flee
to Mexico rather than swear allegiance to the Confederacy,
but Duff and his men caught up with them early in the
morning of August 10, 1862, in Kinney County. The cruelty
of Duff's men in the ensuing battle of the Nueces (they
killed thirty-five of the sixty-one fleeing Germans) shocked
the people of Gillespie County, a number of whom-some
2,000 in all-took to the hills to escape Duff's reign
of terror. Unfortunately, a number of others, either Southern
sympathizers who had not been commissioned by the Confederacy
or opportunists who were taking advantage of wartime disruption,
became outlaws, and during the Civil War Gillespie County
was swept by a wave of robberies and murders. Because
of their bitter experience during the war most Gillespie
County residents offered little objection to Reconstruction
measures. The county has traditionally been a Republican
stronghold in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. From
1880 to 1992 the county has only voted for Democratic
presidential candidates in 1888, 1892, 1932, and 1964.
Gillespie County voted against a prohibition measure in
1887 by a margin of 1,186 to 59. A sense of community
and social responsibility was very important to the Germans
of Gillespie County, who placed great emphasis on the
traditional values of church and school. Fredericksburg's
characteristic Sunday houses reflect the diligence with
which the farmers practiced their religion, and the Zion
Lutheran Church in Fredericksburg, built in 1853, was
the first in the Hill Country But the Germans also had
a tradition of religious tolerance that persuaded the
renegade Mormon leader Lyman Wight to found the Zodiac
settlement near Fredericksburg in 1847. By 1945 there
were nine Lutheran, three Catholic, and four Methodist
churches in Gillespie County. In 1984 there were twenty-two
churches in the county, and the Lutherans were still the
largest communion. The Germans also valued education highly.
Gillespie County's public and parochial schools were among
the best in the state in the nineteenth century. The earliest
was established by the Adelsverein in Fredericksburg almost
immediately after the town's founding, and in 1854 a mass
meeting of Germans held in San Antonio demanded that the
state establish tuitionless public schools without military
training or sectarianism and a tax-supported state university.
When the state school law was passed later that year the
Gillespie County Commissioners Court divided the county
into five school districts, and by the end of 1858 there
were five free public schools in Gillespie County with
a total enrollment of 250. In 1875 there were 1,496 white
and 26 black students in Gillespie County; the county's
one organized public school for blacks was still operating
seventy years later. In the 1980s Gillespie County had
three school districts with four elementary, one middle,
and two high schools. The average daily attendance in
1981-82 was 2,173. There was also one private elementary
school, with 163 pupils.
Along with their emphasis
on religion and education the settlers of Gillespie
County brought with them a strong interest in social
progress. In the latter half of the nineteenth century
residents formed a number of athletic clubs, reform
clubs, reading societies, farmers' associations, political
unions, and fraternal organizations. These clubs and
societies played an important role in the social life
of the county, especially in the farming and ranching
communities, where other forms of entertainment and
cultural activity were often unavailable. A number of
such communities were founded in Gillespie County in
the late nineteenth century. Most of these were centers
for either processing or transporting agricultural products.
Grapetown, in southern Gillespie County, was founded
around 1850 on the old Fredericksburg-San Antonio road
and settled by freight drivers who carried produce from
Fredericksburg to San Antonio and on to Indianola. Much
later, after State Highway 87 was rerouted through Comfort
in 1932, Grapetown began to decline in size and importance.
Doss and Lange's Mill, in northwestern Gillespie County,
grew up around saw and grist mills. Albert, founded
in the late 1870s in southeastern Gillespie County,
and Harper, in western Gillespie County, both owed their
growth to ranchers seeking new rangeland on which to
graze their cattle; the latter community, established
in 1863, has usually ranked second only to Fredericksburg
in size and business activity among Gillespie County
towns. Later, after the Fredericksburg and Northern
Railway was built into Gillespie County in 1913, railroad
towns such as Bankersmith and Cain City enjoyed brief
periods of prosperity. After 1917, however, when state
and federal funds added to the county funds hastened
highway development the truck and automobile doomed
this railroad to failure and the railroad towns to obscurity.
The Fredericksburg and Northern finally folded in 1942.
Gillespie County has remained
primarily a rural, agricultural area. By 1850 county
farms were producing more than 15,000 bushels of Indian
corn annually; in another ten years the production of
wheat climbed from eighty bushels to 18,136. Agricultural
production increased dramatically in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, with the corn crop reaching
476,168 bushels in 1920 and the production of oats 634,163
bushels in 1959. The number of farms in the county nearly
tripled between 1860 and 1890, from 327 to 930, and
has remained fairly stable throughout the twentieth
century, with a low of 1,153 in 1900 and a high of 1,444
in 1930. In 1982 there were 1,285 farms in Gillespie
County, with land and buildings valued at $443,203,
and agriculture provided about $30 million in annual
income to the county-90 percent from livestock. Gillespie
County ranked first in the state in production of peaches
(more than two million pounds in 1982), second in turkeys,
sixth in hogs, ninth in oats, and tenth in Angora goats
and mohair production. According to the 1982 census,
the 13,532 human beings in Gillespie County were outnumbered
about three to one by goats, six to one by sheep, and
four to one by cattle; there were also about 250 more
hogs than people.
Fredericksburg remained
unchallenged as the most important center of population
and commerce. The original settlers had been yeoman
farmers, and the terms of their agreement with the Adelsverein
specified that each was to receive both a town lot and
a ten-acre parcel of nearby land to farm. But Fredericksburg
became more than simply a farming community, due to
the establishment in 1848 of nearby Fort Martin Scott,
which provided a market for labor and services. Fredericksburg
was also the last town before El Paso on the Emigrant
or Upper El Paso Road and therefore an important retail
supply center. A number of businesses, including the
Nimitz Hotel, grew up in Fredericksburg to serve and
supply travelers bound for the West. Fredericksburg
grew steadily throughout the late nineteenth century
and into the twentieth, although its citizens did not
vote to incorporate the town until 1928; previously
they had reasoned that the county government could administer
the town as well. Today Gillespie County still attracts
travelers, tourists, and hunters from across the state
and caters to them with a number of historic buildings,
museums, antique stores, bakeries, and restaurants.
Among the notable tourist attractions in Gillespie County
are the Admiral Nimitz State Historical Park and the
Pioneer Museum, housed in a replica of the old Vereins-Kirche
both in Fredericksburg; the Lyndon B. Johnson State
Historic Park and Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical
Park in eastern Gillespie County; and Enchanted Rock
State Natural Area on the Gillespie-Llano county line.
Despite its reliance on agriculture and tourism, however,
Gillespie County has not been without other industries.
At various times Fredericksburg has been the site of
a granite works, a cement plant, a poultry-dressing
plant, a sewing factory, a tannery, a mattress factory,
a peanut and peanut-oil processing plant, a women's
handbag factory and, most recently, a metal and iron
works, a custom trailer manufacturer, and a saddlery.
In 1986 Gillespie County had three weekly newspapers:
the Fredericksburg Standard, established in 1888, and
Radio Post, established in 1922, and the Harper Herald,
also established in 1922. The people of Gillespie County
have always been proud of their German heritage and
pioneer history. In 1896 Robert G. Penniger a newspaper
publisher who later acquired the Standard, wrote a book
in German entitled "Fest-Ausgabe zum 50-jaehrigen
Jubilaeum der gruendung der stadt Friedrichsburg",
marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of
Fredericksburg and, with it, Gillespie County. The people
of Gillespie County marked this occasion with a gala
celebration at which the fifty-five surviving original
settlers were honored. The Gillespie County Historical
Society, based in Fredericksburg, was founded in 1934
to help preserve local customs and history, and today
a number of annual events commemorate the past. Gillespie
County also lays claim to the first county fair in Texas,
held at the site of Fort Martin Scott from 1881 to 1889,
when it was moved to new grounds in Fredericksburg.
The population of the county grew steadily from 1,240
in 1850 to 10,015 in 1920. Between 1920 and 1970 it
remained fairly stable, reaching a high of 11,020 in
1930 and a low of 10,048 in 1960. The number of residents
was 13,532 in 1980 and 17,204, an all-time high, in
1990. Of these, 16,325 were white, 2,246 were Hispanic,
and 34 were black.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rudolph L.
Biesele, The History of the German Settlements in
Texas, 1831-1861 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1930;
rpt. 1964). Sara Kay
Curtis, A History of Gillespie County, Texas, 1846-1900
(M.A. thesis,
University of Texas, 1943). Gillespie County Historical
Society, Pioneers in
God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960,
1974). Ella Amanda
Gold, The History of Education in Gillespie County (M.A.
thesis, University
of Texas, 1945). Sarah Sam Gray, The German-American
Community of
Fredericksburg, Texas and Its Assimilation (M.A. thesis,
University of
Texas, 1929). Terry G. Jordan, The German Element of
Gillespie County, Texas
(M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1961). WPA Historical
Records Survey,
Historical Sketch: Gillespie County (MS, Barker Texas
History Center,
University of Texas at Austin).
Martin Donell Kohout
Recommended citation:
"GILLESPIE COUNTY." The Handbook of Texas
Online.
<http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/hcg4.html>
[Accessed Fri Oct 1 11:29:50 US/Central 2004 ].
The Handbook of Texas Online is a joint project of The
General Libraries at
the University of Texas at Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu)
and the Texas
State Historical Association (http://www.tsha.utexas.edu).
Copyright ©, The Texas State Historical Association,
1997-2002
Last Updated: July 23, 2002
Comments to: comments.tsha@lib.utexas.edu
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