Bowie County, Texas
History, Records, Facts and Genealogy

Bowie County Facts

Bowie County was created in December 1840 and formed from Red River County. Bowie County was named for James Bowie, the legendary knife fighter who died at the Battle of the Alamo. The County Seat is New Boston . The Official County website is located at http://www.co.bowie.tx.us. The Bowie County courthouse was built in 1985 in Contemporary style of concrete and glass while the architectural firm of Thomas & Embeton designed it. The previous 1891 courthouse, situated in nearby Old Boston, burned in 1987 after sitting empty for several years.

Areas adjacent to Bowie County are McCurtain County, OK (north), Little River County, AR (northeast), Miller County, AR (southeast), Cass County (south), Morris County (southwest), Red River County (west)

See also Extended History for more historical details.

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Bowie County Court Records

Bowie County Vital Records

Bowie County Census Records

Bowie County Maps & Atlases

Bowie County Military Records

Bowie County Tax Records

Bowie County Genealogical Addresses

Bowie County Church & Cemeteries

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

The use of published genealogies, electronic files containing genealogical lineage, and other compiled sources can be of tremendous value to a researcher.

When view family trees online or not, be sure to only take the info at face value and always follow up with your own sources or verify the ones they provide. Below is a list of online resources for Bowie County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Bowie County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Bowie County, Texas Family Books at Amazon.com

Extended History

Bowie County is in the far northeastern corner of the state, bordered by the Red River on the north, with Arkansas and Oklahoma across its northern boundary and Arkansas to the east.

Archeological evidence in contiguous Red River County indicates that this portion of Texas was occupied by Indians as early as the Late Archaic Period, ca. 1500 b.c. At the time of first European contact, the area was occupied by the Caddo Indians, an agricultural people with a highly developed culture. During the last decade of the eighteenth century, due to epidemics and problems with the Osages, the Caddos abandoned the villages they had occupied for centuries. During the early 1820s bands of Shawnee, Delaware, and Kickapoo Indians immigrated to the area, but they had abandoned their settlements by the mid-1830s. Although white settlement of the county had already begun when these later bands of Indians arrived, relations between the Indians and settlers were relatively peaceful.

The time of the earliest European exploration of the county cannot be conclusively determined. The northernmost of the numerous routes attributed to the Moscoso expedition in 1542 crosses Bowie County; if the expedition actually took this route, the area was among the earliest explored parts of the state. The first European contact with this region more likely occurred, however, between 1687, when Henri Joutel traveled north in search of Henri de Tonti, and 1690, when Tonti returned to Texas in search of survivors of the La Salle expedition. Prolonged European activity in the area began in 1719, when Le Poste des Cadodaquious was founded by Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe. American exploration of the area began in 1806, when President Thomas Jefferson, eager to strengthen the American claim to the area, dispatched Thomas Freeman and Dr. Peter Custis to explore the area. Following the Red River, the Freeman and Custis expedition reached Spanish Bluff, almost due north of the site of present New Boston, before being forced to turn back by Spanish soldiers.

Because the area of Northeast Texas encompassing present Bowie County was considered by many to be part of Arkansas, it was the site of some of the earliest white settlement in Texas. Hunters and traders were active in the area by 1815, and in contiguous Red River County permanent settlement was underway by 1818. Although the details of earliest settlement in Bowie County are not clear, the area was probably settled around 1820, when Miller County, Arkansas, was organized. This county encompassed not only what is now Bowie County, but all of the Red River settlements.

Although the early settlers seem to have regarded the area as part of the United States, when the United States government refused to issue them land titles many of these settlers turned first to the Mexican government and then to Arthur G. Wavell's agent, Benjamin R. Milam,q in an attempt to obtain valid land titles. While doing so, they continued to send representatives to the Arkansas legislature. When the Convention of 1836 met at Washington-on-the-Brazos, the Red River settlements were represented by Richard Ellis, Samuel P. Carson, Robert Hamilton, Collin McKinney, and Albert H. Latimer.q Three of these men–Ellis, Carson, and McKinney–were living within the confines of the future Bowie County. That year Red River County, which included all the territory now in Bowie County, was established.

Bowie County was demarked in December of 1840 and named for James Bowie. As originally delineated, the county included all or part of the territories of present Cass, Titus, and Morris counties. In 1846 the county was reduced to its present size and boundaries with the establishment of Cass and Titus counties. DeKalb, in the western part of the county, was designated temporary county seat, while a commission was appointed to choose a more appropriate permanent site. The commission chose the town then named Boston (see old boston, texas), which became the county seat in 1841. In the mid-1880s the citizens of Texarkana conducted a successful campaign to make Texarkana the county seat. About five years later residents of the western and central parts of the county campaigned successfully for yet another county seat, this one to be at the geographic center of the county. The new courthouse was constructed in 1890, and the town that grew up around it was named Boston. The county seat has remained at this location. Shortly before Texarkana ceased being the county seat, the courthouse burned and almost all the county records were destroyed.

In antebellum Texas Bowie County was overwhelmingly rural and agricultural. At the time of the Civil War, Boston, the county's largest town, had a population of only 300 or 400. Most county residents were employed in agriculture, and cotton was the county's most important cash crop. The production of cotton began in the 1830s and expanded steadily. The county's farmers reported a crop of 1,113 bales in 1849 and 6,874 bales in 1859. Although cotton was clearly predominant, livestock was also important to the county's economy. In 1860 Bowie County farmers reported a total of 12,819 swine, 3,281 milk cows, 1,160 working oxen, 7,601 other cattle, and 1,331 sheep. Even though cotton was the principal cash crop, the largest crop was corn; the harvest amounted to 218,289 bushels in 1859. The self-sufficient county raised more than enough corn and hogs for subsistence.

Bowie County was largely settled by Southerners, and, as in most other areas in the cotton South, slavery was a vitally important economic and social institution. Throughout the antebellum years slaves outnumbered free inhabitants. In 1850 there were 1,641 blacks in the county and 1,271 whites. During the 1850s, although the white population grew at a slightly faster rate than the black, in 1860 slaves outnumbered whites 2,651 to 2,401. Of the county's 145 slaveholders in 1850, twenty-two (15 percent) owned more than twenty slaves each. These planters owned more than half of all the slaves in the county. During the 1850s slaveholding became more concentrated. While the free population of the county grew by 89 percent between 1850 and 1860, the number of slaveholders in the county increased by only 30 percent. Within the slaveholding class the distribution of slaves remained about the same. Roughly 23 percent of the slaveholders present in 1860 were of the planter class, and they owned 65 percent of all slaves in the county.

Bowie County's white population overwhelmingly supported the secession movement during the winter of 1860-61. When the Ordinance of Secession was voted on in February 1861, Bowie County residents approved it by a vote of 208 to 15. They also wholeheartedly supported the war effort of the Confederacy.

Bowie County was never invaded, and it thus escaped the physical destruction that devastated other parts of the South. Nonetheless, the war years were trying times for the county's citizens. In addition to concern for loved ones on the battlefield, citizens were forced to deal with disruptions to the local economy caused by the unstable Confederate currency and the lack of a market for their cotton. The end of the war brought wrenching changes in the county's economic foundation. While the end of slavery meant freedom for the black, to the white slaveholder it was a serious loss of capital. In 1859 Bowie County slaveholders had paid taxes on 2,269 slaves appraised at $1,167,139, a sum that represented 64 percent of all taxable property in the county. After the war economic loss, the widespread belief that free blacks would not work, and the uncertain status of the South in the nation led to a loss of confidence that caused property values to plummet in 1865.

Two events occurring almost simultaneously in the summer of 1867 turned the bitterness of many of the county's discouraged white citizens into rage. First, it became obvious that the Radical Republicans were intent on providing blacks in the South a measure of legal and political equality. Second, in July 1867 federal troops were stationed in the county for the first time. Although local sources claim that the garrison in the county was composed of some eighteen to twenty men, federal records indicate that it never comprised more than twelve men. The soldiers were under the direction of William G. Kirkman, a former Union Army captain who was to act as an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau for the district. The number of troops in the county was just large enough to provide a galling reminder of the legal authority vested in the army of occupation, but not large enough to provide protection for area African Americans or Unionists. This was made evident during the army's first month in the county, when Kirkman and his men attempted to arrest the notorious killer Cullen Baker. Baker escaped the encounter, leaving one soldier dead and others wounded. As Baker and his gang increasingly restricted their killing to federal soldiers and freedmen, he gained the sympathy of many whites in Bowie County. Although few in the county would ever have ridden with Baker, many were willing to help him elude capture. A local writer stated years after the event that "this man Cullen Baker was hailed as a hero, and by many, even as a Moses who had appeared, to lead them out of the wilderness of Northern Political Tyranny and oppression." About a year after Kirkman and his men clashed with Baker they tried a second time, and one of Baker's men was killed. Shortly thereafter, Kirkman was indicted for murder by the civil authorities in the county. A local Unionist wrote army headquarters saying that events had left Kirkman "partially deranged and not capable of knowing what course to pursue." Kirkman was ordered to close his office and report to headquarters. The day he was to leave Bowie County he was murdered, and though Baker boasted of having committed the crime, the act was officially ruled "murder by person or persons unknown." The soldiers who had been stationed in the county to support Kirkman were removed, and no other agent of the Freedmen's Bureau was stationed in Bowie County.

In addition to the activities of Baker and his gang, armed bands of a county organization resembling the Ku Klux Klan patrolled the county killing or expelling blacks who were intent on exercising their political rights. At the same time, they worked to prevent most blacks from leaving the county, thus preserving a labor force to work the cotton fields. The operation of these bands, coupled with the failures of the Union military, made Reconstruction of short duration in the county. Whereas in Harrison County, a county with roughly the same proportion of slaves in 1860 located about eighty miles to the south, the Southern Democrats were unable to regain control of the county until 1878, Bowie County Democrats regained control of the county at the first election after the radical Constitution of 1869 was promulgated.

The turmoil of Reconstruction was probably largely responsible for the decline in the county's total population between the censuses of 1860 and 1870. In 1870, though the county's white population had risen slightly, from 2,401 to 2,434, the county's black population had dropped from 2,651 to 2,249. For the first time since annexation, whites were in a majority in the county. The census of 1870 registered what was the beginning of a long-term trend. With some exceptions, though the number of blacks in the county grew larger every ten years, as a percentage the black population declined. By 1980 the 16,498 blacks living in the county constituted a little less than 22 percent of the county's 75,301 residents.

For sixty years after Reconstruction the economic base of Bowie County remained largely agricultural. Cotton was still the principal crop, and following the disastrous 1869 harvest of 2,990 bales, production of the staple expanded steadily, to a high of 30,520 bales in 1929. The production of corn, the principal food crop, ranged from the 1869 low of 104,805 bushels to a high of 929,954 bushels in 1909. For many of the county's residents, cotton provided a livelihood but not prosperity. Beginning in 1880, when the statistics were first compiled, each census recorded a higher percentage of farmers who did not own the land they farmed. In 1880, 36 percent of all farmers in the county were tenants, the largest portion of whom farmed on shares. By 1930, 64 percent of the farmers in the county were tenants.

Bowie County, Texas
History, Records, Facts and Genealogy

Bowie County Court Records

See Also Texas Land Records, Marriage Records, Court & Probate Records

Bowie County Vital Records

See Also Vital Records in Texas

Bowie County Census Records

See Also Research In Census Records & Statewide Records that exist for Texas

Bowie County Maps & Atlases

See Also Research In State Map Collections

Bowie County Military Records

See Also Military Records in Texas

Bowie County Tax Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Bowie County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Texas Genealogical Addresses

Bowie County Church & Cemeteries

See Also Church & Cemetery Records in Texas

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Extended History

Bowie County, Texas History, Records, Facts and Genealogy

Bowie County Court Records

See Also Texas Land Records, Marriage Records, Court & Probate Records

Bowie County Vital Records

See Also Vital Records in Texas

Bowie County Census Records

See Also Research In Census Records & Statewide Records that exist for Texas

Bowie County Maps & Atlases

See Also Research In State Map Collections

Bowie County Military Records

See Also Military Records in Texas

Bowie County Tax Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Bowie County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Texas Genealogical Addresses

Bowie County Church & Cemeteries

See Also Church & Cemetery Records in Texas

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Extended History

Bowie County, Texas
History, Records, Facts and Genealogy