A History of Texas and Texans Volume 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... the county's area of 568,960 acres, 101,603 acres were occupied as farms, with about twenty thousand acres classified as ' improved land.' The number of farms in 1910 was 891, while in 1900 there were 921 farms enumerated. Stock raising was considerably more important then field crops. The figures for 1909 were: Cattle, 14,695; horses and mules, about one thousand six hundred; swine, 32,844; sheep, 5,218; goats, 3,449; poultry, 28,683. The acreage of the chief crops was: Corn, 9,132; cotton, 1,533; peanuts, 977; sweet potatoes and yams, 717; besides a considerable acreage in sugar cane and oats. About 20,000 trees were in orchard fruits, and the growing of figs and pecans has received most attention in tropical fruits and nuts. Jasper County This is one of the original counties of the Texas republic. Its area was included in the De Zavala empresario grant of 1829, though settlement had begun previously. In the Texas Almanac for 1858, George W. Smyth, who had lived in that vicinity since 1830, said that when he came there was a settlement of about thirty families scattered from the Sabine to the Neches and known as "Bevil's settlement," from John Bevil, the original settler. A wilderness of forty miles separated that settlement from the "Ayish Bayou settlement" near San Augustine, while it was seventy miles to the "Cow Bayou settlement" on the south. In this account the first comers were named John Bevil, James Cheshire, Thomas Watts, John Watts, John Saul, Isaac Isaacs and Hardy Pace, who settled about 1828 or before. In 1830 this settlement was organized as a precinct of the municipality of Nacogdoches. The municipality of San Augustine was constituted in March, 1834, and the municipality of Bevil was probably created in the same year....