History of Argyle
History of Argyle
Written and compiled by:
Yvonne A. Jenkins
Updates provided by Chief William T. Tackett
To understand the history of the settlement of any area of Texas, one needs a brief introduction into the history of Texas, which is replete with adventure and heroic action. "The reader meets with self-denying priests and mailed-fisted conquerors of Spain, with filibuster and 'empresarios' from beyond the Mississippi, with frontiersmen from Tennessee and planters from Alabama. The Anglo-Americans vied with the Mexicans for supremacy until 1848 and took the country from the Indians by 1875. Thereafter came the struggle for law and order, the lusty cattle industry, the surge of land-hungry farmers seeking virgin soul, the rapid approach of the railroads, and the discovery of oil fields. In recent time the challenge of space travel and the explosive growth of urban Texas have continued the tradition of adventure and progress."
"The name Texas come from ‘Tejas’, meaning ‘friends or allies,’ a word applied by Spanish explorers and missionaries to and Indian confederacy, the Hasinai, that they found in this country. With its 267,339 square miles of territory, extending from the High Plains of the Panhandle to the Gulf of Mexico, Texas is, except for Alaska, by far the largest state in the Union. One can travel 800 miles in a straight line within its borders; Texarkana, on the Arkansas border, is closer to Chicago that it is to El Paso, on the Rio Grande River. The Central Texas Prairies extend from the Colorado River in the vicinity of Austin northward to the Red River; the same type of terrain continues on into Oklahoma. The prairie is broken by the Eastern Cross Timbers, (where Argyle is located) a thin wedge of trees extending northward from the vicinity of Waco through the Dallas country to the Red River valley. East of this narrow belt of timber is the Blackland Prairie, and to the west lies the Grand Prairie. Rich, black soils predominate, now largely cultivated except where too thin producing grain and cotton and supporting livestock. Dallas, Fort Worth, and the ten or so lesser cities lie within this region, and Austin and San Antonio share its trade and draw on its resources. The Cross Timbers, lying between Fort Worth and Abilene and extending from the vicinity of the Colorado River to the Red River and beyond, is a farming and stock raising country, producing peanuts, vegetables, dairy products, and poultry. Its soils range from belts of loose, blowing sand to black clays."
The History and the Development of Texas can be divided into several eras:
(1) the exploration and occupation of Texas from 1519 to 1763 with the establishing of the mission system; (2) Spanish Texas from 1763 to 1821; (3) the Anglo-American colonization of 1820 to 1835 with the ‘empresario’; contracts and the colonization program; (4) the development of the Texas Revolution from 1827 to 1835; (5) the Texas Revolution from 1835 to 1836; (6) the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1846 which supplies the first documentation of the settlement of the Argyle community through the government land policy.
"The public land policy of the Republic of Texas had far-reaching consequences on the development of the state. The old Texans had hardly returned from the army or from the ‘runaway scrape’ before their kinsmen from east of the Sabine began to join them. Following the summer of 1837, it was reported that 6,000 immigrants crossed the Sabine at one ferry. The explanation for this phenomenal migration is to be found in the liberal land policy of the Republic and the early state government and in the Anglo-American lust for free or cheap virgin land. The government was generous with its public lands. The constitution specified that heads of families (Negroes and Indians excepted) living in the Republic on March 2, 1836, might receive free a square league and labor of land (4,605 acres) and that single men above 17 years of age might receive one-third of a square league. The recipients of constitution grants were not required to reside on their lands. The Congress of the Republic then granted to immigrants who came after March 2, 1836, and before October 1, 1837 - 1,280 acres for heads of families and 640 acres for single men. It was required of citizens who had arrived after March 2, 1836, that they reside in Texas three years before their title was completed. In their determination to make Texas a nation of homeowners, the legislators went even further. They enacted a limited homestead law in 1838 to make the home secure from seizure for debt. The Republic also granted land to its veterans. The law of December 1837 provided for a board of land commissioners in each county, before whom claimants should appear to obtain certificates designating the amount of land to which they were legally entitled. The system, drawn partly from the Old South and partly from the Spanish and Mexican practice, had the merit of costing the public little as the people who got the land paid the cost. No residence requirements were attached to certificates issued to old settlers and to soldiers for military service. Speculators and men who made a business of locating lands went into the Indian country, far ahead of the settlements, and surveyed and secured title to lands, so that bona fide settlers who came later found the best country already alienated. An examination of a land map of any county in Central Texas will reveal that the choicest land, that along the streams, passed into private ownership from ten to thirty years before the county was actually settled."
"Contracts with immigrant agents was another phase of the land system of the Republic. In its eagerness to secure citizens and to increase its slender income the government granted contracts to immigrant agents much like the ‘empressario’ agreements under the Mexican regime. These contracts were authorized by an act of Congress in February 1841 and by a general colonization law on February 5, 1842. One of the most important was one made with W.S. Peters and Associates, afterwards known as the Texas Emigration and Land Company. Although contracts with various companies differed in certain details, they were alike in all essentials. A given area was designated as ’the colony’ and within the boundaries thus indicated all unappropriated public domain was closed to entry by others until the proprietor had completed his contract, or it had been declared forfeited. The contractor was allowed ten premium sections for each 100 families. He also might secure additional compensation from his colonist for surveying the land, erecting cabins, moving the colonist to Texas, and supplying certain necessities. The Republic, and afterward the state, retained alternate sections, and it was from the sale of these that it expected to secure a money income. The contract with W.S. Peters and Associates set aside for the colony more than 16,000 square miles, bounded on the east by a line extending from or near present-day Dallas northward to the Red River. The company met with difficulties posed by dissatisfied colonists, by holders of certificates eager to locate on vacant lands within its boundaries, and by an unfriendly government. By order of the Constitutional Convention of 1845, the attorney general instituted proceedings to cancel the contract and the subsequent legislation and litigation is too vast to describe here. A legislative committee found that by July 1848 the company had introduced 2,205 families."
