Wilson County Texas Archives History .....Wilson County 1916
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Nan Starjak http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006329 February 6, 2009, 2:47 pm

   This county, lying to the southeast of San Antonio, belongs in a district
which until recent years was almost wholly devoted to the live stock industry,
but has now become one of the attractive centers for settlement and the
enterprise of the small agriculturist. Many of the farms have been developed by
the thrifty German and Bohemian stock, and the county also contains a large
element of Mexican population.
   Wilson County was created in 1860 from portions of Bexar and Karnes counties,
but remained unorganized until 1870. Its population through successive decades
since organization has been : In 1870, 2,556 ; in 1880, 7,118; in 1890, 10,655;
in 1900, 13,961; and in 1910, 17,066. At the last census there were 956 negroes,
while a little more than a thousand of the inhabitants were natives of Mexico,
and next to the Mexicans the Germans were the chief foreign element.
    In 1882 it was estimated that only about 20,000 acres of the county were in
cultivation, while 125,000 were enclosed in fence for pasturage. At that time
live stock constituted more than a third of the taxable wealth of the
inhabitants. In 1870 the value of taxable property was assessed at $400,836; in
1882, $1,551,624; in 1903, $4,749,452; and in 1913, $10,254,470.
   The last census showed 2,130 farms in Wilson County. Out of a total
approximate area of 520,320 acres, about 400,000 acres were occupied as farms,
and 140,000 acres classified as "improved land." Both numerically and in value
live stock is still the main business. Live stock statistics in 1910 were:
cattle, 24,854; horses and mules, about 9,500; hogs, 8,639; and poultry, 66,916.
In Wilson County are located several diaries, mostly with Jersey herds, the
products of which are sent to San Antonio.
   Among the crops cotton is the chief, with an acreage in 1909 of 62,541; corn,
32,288 acres; hay and forage crops, 2,090; and peanuts, 1,415. The county has
also become noted in later years for the growing of melons, onions and the
general orchard fruits. An important industry is bee culture, the products of
which are estimated at between $30,000 and $40,000 annually.
    Wilson County has two railroad lines, the San Antonio and Aransas
Pass, constructed in 1886, and a branch of the Southern Pacific, originally
known as the San Antonio and Gulf, which was begun in 1893 and constructed from
San Antonio as far as Sutherland Springs in the same year. It was extended to
Stockdale, also in Wilson County, by 1898, and the remaining link to Cuero was
furnished in 1905. The oldest towns in the county are Floresville, the county
seat, which had a population in 1910 of 1,398; and Stockdale and Lavernia.
Sutherland Springs and Calaveras are other important towns.

Additional Comments:
A History of Texas and Texans, by Frank W. Johnson, A Leader in the Texas
Revolution.  
Edited and brought to date by Eugene C. Barker, Ph.D., 
with the assistance of Ernest William Winkler, M.A.
The American Historical Society, Chicago and New York, 1916

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