Burnet County, TX - Bios: Samuel Eli Holland, 1826-1917 June 18, 2000 Submitted by: gregg49@bigfoot.com (R. Bruce Gregg) ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ************************************************ Samuel Eli Holland Samuel ELi Holland's ancestry was rooted in the great political dispersal in Great Britain when, according to family tradition, three Holland brothers fled their homeland - one going to the Netherlands, one to Germany, and one to Wales. The Welsh Holland was the forbear of Samuel E. Holland, who was born on a plantation in Georgia, on December 6, 1826. In 1846, Samuel, along with some other young Georgians, began their trek to Texas, and by February 1847 had arrived in what was then the village of Austin. Camping near where the state capitol now stands, they began cutting cedar for use in construction of buildings in Austin. In July 1848 S. E. Holland set out on horseback from Austin to visit his brother-in-law, W. B. Covington, who was with Captain Henry McCulloch's Rangers then camped on Hamilton Creek some three miles south of present-day Burnet. On July 3, 1848, Samuel purchased 1280 acres of land, twenty-five miles from his nearest neighbor, with Captain McCulloch acting as attorney for John P. Rozier, owner of the land. The following week, Samuel drove his scantily laden wagon back from Austin to his purchase, pitched camp across Hamilton Creek from the Ranger camp, and began clearing land along the creek bank. At night he worked at assembling a log cabin, which would become the first permanent home and farm in the area. With the coming of the U. S. Dragoons (Cavalry) with plans to establish and build Fort Croghan, Samuel protested the fort being located on his land and the location was moved some three miles up the creek where the town of Burnet was later built. By 1852 the population had increased, and Samuel helped to circulate a petition which resulted in the Fourth Texas Legislature creating Burnet County on February 5, 1852. He became the first treasurer of the county and set to work inducing other settlers to come into the area. In later years Samuel was elected to the Texas State Legislature from Burnet County. S. E. Holland was the first permanent home builder in the county, put in the first cultivated farm, strung the first wire fence and built the first all stone house for his home. He was a veteran of the Mexican War, an Indian fighter, a colonel during the War Between the States and a factor in the Reconstruction period which followed. Samuel Holland and Peter Kerr reportedly brought the first white faced cattle into this section, which later became the famous Hereford strain. He was interested in nearly every major enterprise in Burnet County. In politics, Samuel was a "Greenbacker"; he was a Mason, in later years a member of the Church of Christ, and a humanitarian. He died November 19, 1917, in Burnet County and was buried in the Holland Cemetery some three mile south of Burnet just off Mormon Mill Road. ================================================== PIONEER SETTLERS OF BURNET COUNTY (IN MEMORY OF) - LOCATION: NE corner of court house lawn in Burnet. Erected by the State of Texas 1936, with funds appropriated by the Federal Government to commemoriate 100 years of Texas Independence. Samuel E. Holland, first settler, 1848, Logan Vandeveer, Peter Kerr, William H. Magill, Noah Smithwick, Jesse Burnam, R. H. Hall, General Adam R. Johnson, Captain Christian Dorbandt, and to those pioneers who pushed into this wilderness and established here the first traces of human habitation, unknown planters sowing seeds for a new civilization. They marked for us our channels of trade and industry. (They) Built the first schools and churches and after the tumult of Indian depredations and the terrible scars of Civil War, returned and again took up the ax and plow and brought new acres into cultivation. Most of them died in obscurity and were laid to rest in the county of their adoption. As the rank and file of our pioneers, we honor their memory for the deeds they performed and the doctrines they taught. The Holland Clan