" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.
Trammel’s Trace tells the story of a borderlands smuggler and an important passageway into early Texas. Trammel’s Trace, named for Nicholas Trammell, was the first route from the United States into the northern boundaries of Spanish Texas. From the Great Bend of the Red River it intersected with El Camino Real de los Tejas in Nacogdoches. By the early nineteenth century, Trammel’s Trace was largely a smuggler’s trail that delivered horses and contraband into the region. It was a microcosm of the migration, lawlessness, and conflict that defined the period. By the 1820s, as Mexico gained independence from Spain, smuggling declined as Anglo immigration became the primary use of the trail. Familiar names such as Sam Houston, David Crockett, and James Bowie joined throngs of immigrants making passage along Trammel’s Trace. Indeed, Nicholas Trammell opened trading posts on the Red River and near Nacogdoches, hoping to claim a piece of Austin’s new colony. Austin denied Trammell’s entry, however, fearing his poor reputation would usher in a new wave of smuggling and lawlessness. By 1826, Trammell was pushed out of Texas altogether and retreated back to Arkansas Even so, as author Gary L. Pinkerton concludes, Trammell was “more opportunist than outlaw and made the most of disorder.”
The Kickapoo Indians, members of the Algonquian linguistic community, resisted white settlement for more than three hundred years on a front that extended across half a continent. In turn, France, Great Britain, the United States, Spain, and Mexico sought to placate and exploit this fiercely independent people. Eventually forced to remove from their historic homeland to territory west of the Mississippi River, the Kickapoos carried their battle to the plains of the Southwest. Here not only did they wage active and imaginative war, but certain bands became area merchants, acting as middlemen between the Comanche and Kiowa Indians and the United States government. They developed a flourishing trade in plunder and stolen livestock, but their most lucrative "goods" were the white captives whom they obtained from the Comanches and others. In 1873, after several profitable years of raiding in Texas for the Mexican Republic, the Kickapoos reluctantly settled on a reservation in Indian Territory. Corrupt politicians, land swindlers, gamblers, and whisky peddlers preyed on the tribe, and it was not until the twentieth century that the Kickapoos received just treatment at the hands of the United States government.
The Red River's dramatic bend in southwestern Arkansas is the most distinctive characteristic along its 1,300 miles of eastern flow through plains, prairies and swamplands. This stretch of river valley has defined the culture, commerce and history of the region since the prehistoric days of the Caddo inhabitants. Centuries later, as the plantation South gave way to westward expansion, people found refuge and adventure along the area's trading paths, military roads, riverbanks, rail lines and highways. This rich heritage is why the Red River in Arkansas remains a true gateway to the Southwest. Author Robin Cole-Jett deftly navigates the history and legacy of one of the Natural State's most precious treasures.
Positioned along the legendary Southwest Trail, the town of Washington in Hempstead County in southwest Arkansas was a thriving center of commerce, business, and county government in the nineteenth century. Historical figures such as Davy Crockett and Sam Houston passed through, and during the Civil War, when the Federal troops occupied Little Rock, the Hempstead County Courthouse in Washington served as the seat of state government. A prosperous town fully involved in the events and society of the territorial, antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras, Washington became in a way frozen in time by a series of events including two fires, a tornado, and being bypassed by the railroad in 1874. Now an Arkansas State Park and National Historic Landmark, Washington has been studied by the Arkansas Archeological Survey over the past twenty-five years. Digging for History at Old Washington joins the historical record with archaeological findings such as uncovered construction details, evidence of lost buildings, and remnants of everyday objects. Of particular interest are the homes of Abraham Block, a Jewish merchant originally from New Orleans, and Simon Sanders from North Carolina, who became the town’s county clerk. The public and private lives of the Block and Sanders families provide a fascinating look at an antebellum town at the height of its prosperity.
Contains extensive data about population in all of the states and counties of the U.S. from 1790-1990. Contents: population of the U.S. and each state; population of counties, earliest census to 1990; and historical dates and Federal information processing standard (FIPS) codes. Information presented in tabular form.
"The indefatigable T. Lindsay Baker has now turned his enormous mental and physical energies to the subject and has brought to view - if not to life -eighty-six Texas ghost towns for the reader's pleasure. Baker lists three criteria for inclusion: tangible remains, public access, and statewide coverage. In each case Baker comments about the town's founding, its former significance, and the reasons for its decline. There are maps and instructions for reaching each site and numerous photographs showing the past and present status of each. The contemporary photos were taken, in most instances, by Baker himself, who proves as adept a photographer as he is researcher and writer....Baker has done his work thoroughly and well, within limits imposed by necessity. He obviously had fun in the process and it shows in his prose."---New Mexico Historical Review
All of what is now Arkansas was once owned by the federal government - it is a public domain land state. People who purchased land from the federal government received documents called land patents. Land was obtained through purchase, military warrants, homesteads, scrip acts and other laws that allowed the land to be transferred out of federal hands. The county volumes of land patents list patentee's name, volume and page of the patent book, land office, document and miscellaneous document numbers, type of transaction, precise legal description, and number of acres. Introductory information describes in great detail how to get copies of the patents and land entry case files, how to use other land record sources, how to integrate the information with other sources, what is found in a typical homestead case file, where and when the Arkansas land offices operated, and a selected bibliography. 1919 era county maps are also included. The time period covered by this information is earliest settlement through 30 June 1908. Information from 156,784 patent documents is included. These county volumes are based on current-day county boundaries. - publisher notes
