Lee County, Texas
History, Records, Facts and Genealogy

Lee County Facts

Lee County was created in April 1874 and formed from Burleson, Bastrop, Fayette and Washington Counties. Lee County was named for Robert Edward Lee, the commanding general of the Confederate forces during the Civil War. The County Seat is Giddings. The Official County website is located at http://www.co.lee.tx.us. See also Extended History for more historical details.

Areas adjacent to Lee County are Milam County (north), Burleson County (northeast), Washington County (east), Fayette County (southeast), Bastrop County (southwest), Williamson County (northwest)

The Lee County Courthouse in Giddings, Texas, stands on a public block that, unlike most squares in towns throughout the state, is surrounded by residential rather than commercial buildings. Designed by J. Riely Gordon in 1898 and built by Sonnefield, Emmins and Abright of San Antonio, the three-story red brick courthouse is located on the crest of the high divide that separates the Colorado and Brazos river basins. The building displays a combination of a variety of structural masses and is an imposing site in the predominantly residential area. Similar in design to many of Gordon's Texas courthouses, the Lee County Courthouse employs the Richardsonian Romanesque style. Cruciform in plan, the structure contains two story quarter-circular entrance galleries set into the front ells (northeast and northwest ells), while the rear ells (southeast and southwest) contain two three-story quarter- circular bays with open arcades on the first :Level and enclosed floors on the second and third levels. A brick parapet with punched brick detail crowns each bay. Each arm of the Greek cross is covered by a hipped roof. From three of the wings large, gabled wall dormers project, while a chimney rises from the rear (south) arm. Two additional dormers are set within the northeast and northwest ells above the two-story quarter-circular galleries. The three-story quarter-circular bays are crowned by cross hipped roofs. Rising from the center of the mass is a tall, square, brick clock tower with tall arcaded openings and a clock. The tower ends abruptly, however, for it lacks the pyramidal roof that Gordon typically employed.

The raised three-story red brick building rests on a raised limestone base and is decoratively trimmed with white rusticated limestone arches, foliated capitals, lintels and stringcourses. To this striking color contrast is added blue granite employed in the steps and in the polished columns supporting the arcades. A wide limestone band around the first and third floors forms the window lintels on these floors, while the second floor windows contain single stone lintels. A narrow limestone stringcourse below the second and third floors divides the building horizontally. Most of the windows are trabeated, but the large stone arches, typical of the Romanesque Revival style are present in the gallery arcades, entrance doors, dormers and the clock tower. The interior ornamentation displaying a variety of color is characteristic of Gordon's designs. The ground floor is finished with marble tile, border, and base, all of a different color. The district courtroom, enhanced by attractive woodwork, has a high stamped metal ceiling and a gallery, supported by iron columns. Besides a few minor changes, such as the removal of the iron fence which once surrounded the block and the replacement of the slate shingles with sheet metal simulating shingles, there have been no alterations to the original 1898 courthouse. The Lee County Courthouse is a fine example of a nineteenth century Texas courthouse. Designed in 1898 by J. Riely Gordon, a prominent Texas courthouse architect in the 1890's S, the building represents Gordon's version of the popular Richardsonian Romanesque style. In emphasizing the buildings role as the focal point of the community, Gordon utilized various Romanesque details and combined a variety of structural masses to give the courthouse a sense of weight and stability. Created from Bastrop, Burleson, Fayette, and Washington counties, Lee County was organized in 1874. Giddings and Lexington were the leading rivals for the selection of a county seat. Lexington, an older town surrounded by excellent farmland confidently laid out a courthouse square. But Giddings, settled chiefly by Wendish Lutherans in the 1850' S, was a railroad town and was proud of its high, healthy location astride the divide between the Brazos and Colorado Rivers watersheds. In the heated and bitterly contested election, Giddings was selected as the county seat.

The first Lee County Courthouse was completed four years later in 1878. Built on a public square just south of the business section, the courthouse was a two-and-a-half story, Second Empire structure with mansard roof. A fire in 1897 unfortunately destroyed the elegant building. As plans were being discussed for a new structure, several people in Lexington and other county residents urged that the new courthouse be located in the geographical center of the state. However, a popular election once again confirmed Giddings as the county seat.

In order to choose an architectural style suitable for a new courthouse, a fund was set aside to enable the County Commissioners to visit various county seats in central and south Texas. The Commissioner's chose the work of the San Antonio architect, J. Riely Gordon. A native of Winchester, Virginia, Gordon had no formal architectural training. At the age of 18 he began his career in Texas by study and apprenticeship with the Waco architect, W. C. Dodson and in 1883 he went to Washington, D. C. to work under the supervising architect of the Treasury. Returning to Texas in 188 7 Gordon opened an office in San Antonio and soon became popular as a courthouse architect. His courthouse designs which preceded the Lee County Courthouse were in the counties of Fayette (1892), Victoria(1892), Bexer (1892-95), Era the (1892), Hopkins (1894-95), Gonzales (189496), Ellis (1895-96), Wise (1895-97) and Comal (1898). The contracting bid went to the San Antonio firm of Sonnefield, Emmins and Abright, whose bid for $32,270 was approved April 22, 1898. Other bids included those for a tower clock, hot air heating system, furniture, windmill and well, plumbing, concrete walk, and iron fence. The Sonnefield firm used county convicts at $1.00 per day to remove the burnt bricks from the old courthouse and the new building was constructed on the same location. Completed in 1899, and received by the Board of Commissioners on June 3, 1899, Gordon's design was nearly identical to the Comal County Courthouse built the year before. The building is still used as the courthouse and has had only minor alterations.

Lee County, Texas History Books at Amazon.com
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Lee County Court Records

Lee County Vital Records

Lee County Census Records

Lee County Maps & Atlases

Lee County Military Records

Lee County Tax Records

Lee County Genealogical Addresses

Lee 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 Lee County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Lee County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Lee County, Texas Family Books at Amazon.com

Extended History

The region has been the site of human habitation since at least 4500 B.C. and possibly even earlier than that. The earliest known historical inhabitants of the future county, the Tonkawa Indians, were hunter-gatherers who followed the buffalo on foot and sometimes set fire to the prairie to aid them in their hunts. The Tonkawas were generally friendly toward European settlers, but many fell prey to European diseases and to raids by the Comanches and Cherokees. Those who survived were removed by the United States government in 1855 to the Brazos Indian Reservation.

The area was probably first explored by Europeans around 1691, when Domingo Terán de los Ríos sought a direct route between San Antonio de Béxar and the newly founded Spanish missions in East Texas. The route he laid out, a camino real later known as the Old San Antonio Road, passed through the site of present Lincoln in what is now central Lee County. In the mid-eighteenth century the Spanish also established the San Xavier missions along the San Gabriel River in what is now Milam County, and the area was extensively explored during the colonial period. During the era of Mexican rule the Lee County area was part of the Milam District, a region extending from El Paso to the Navasota River. After Texas gained independence, the region was a part of the five adjacent counties, Bastrop, Burleson, Fayette, Milam, and Washington.

The first known white settler was James Gotier, who settled on Rabbs Creek in southern Lee County in 1835. Before being killed by Indians in 1837, he laid out a pioneer trail known as Gotier's Trace, which is believed to have led from his cabin on Rabbs Creek to San Felipe and Bastrop, thus linking the lower and upper Austin colonies. Settlement in the area, however, remained sparse until after the Texas Revolution. Then immigrants from the Southern states began moving in. Though population figures for the area that later became Lee County are unavailable for the antebellum period, statistics for the surrounding counties suggest that the population grew fairly rapidly between 1850 and 1860. Before the Civil War there was also a sizable black population, as many of the new settlers brought their slaves with them. In later antebellum Texas, in addition to the Anglo and black populations, there was a large influx of Germans into Bastrop County, some of whom settled in the Lee County area. In 1854 a large group of Wends bought a league of land along Rabbs Creek in southern Lee County and settled in and around Serbin. The agricultural economy of the region was varied and reflected its geographical and ethnic diversity. Wheat and corn were the two major cash crops, and cattle ranching was widespread throughout the county before 1860. Cotton growing was introduced in the 1850s, but the amount of acreage devoted to it remained small.

During the Civil War and Reconstruction the Lee County area was politically divided. As voting records demonstrate, residents of the area were sharply at odds on the secession issue. Although Bastrop and Fayette counties both voted against secession by small margins, Burleson and Washington counties voted overwhelmingly in favor of it. Among those speaking out against secession was Tirus H. Mundine of Lexington, a leader of the Constitutional Union party, who as a representative to the Texas legislature voted against secession. When the war broke out the majority of the residents in the region supported the Confederacy, and a number of companies were raised in the area. Company H of the Second Texas Infantry was organized in Burleson County, which included Lexington and the surrounding region. Many other Lee County men served in Company E of the Fifth Texas Infantry, the "Dixie Blues," who were recruited in Washington County. Although no battles took place in this area during the Civil War, the war and its aftermath depressed the local economy. Not until the early 1870s did the economy begin to recover. In 1871 the new town of Giddings was founded, in what was then Washington County. Discussion began about the need for a new county so that residents would not have to travel so far to the county seat. A meeting of citizens from western Burleson and Washington counties and northeastern Bastrop and Fayette counties, held in January 1873, resulted in a resolution calling for the establishment of a new county to be named in honor of Robert E. Lee. The legislature passed the bill by April 1874. A boundary dispute, however, began over the western segment of Burleson County, which lawmakers had originally intended to include in a new county called Franklin County, to be formed just north of Lee County. When the Franklin County bill was indefinitely postponed, questions arose about what to do with the territory. Senator Seth Shepard introduced a bill to make the disputed area part of Lee County. The measure passed quickly and became law on May 2, 1874.

The new county included portions of Burleson, Washington, Bastrop, and Fayette counties and was bounded on the east by East Yegua Creek and on the southeast by Cedar Creek. The two leading contenders for county seat were Giddings and Lexington. An election was held in 1874 after a heated and bitter campaign. Although Lexington was the older town and was surrounded by better farmland, Giddings won, primarily because it was a railroad town. A two-story courthouse with a mansard roof was completed in 1878. After the first courthouse burned in 1897, a new Romanesque Revival structure, designed by famed San Antonio courthouse architect James Riely Gordon, was built in 1899.

The county prospered between 1874 and 1900. The United States census of 1880, the first to include Lee County, reported a total population of 8,937. In 1890 the population was 11,952; by 1900 it was 14,593. The number of African Americans grew even more rapidly, from 1,956 in 1880 to 3,102 in 1890 and to 4,343 in 1900. Large numbers of Germans and Czechs, as well as smaller numbers of Moravians and Danes, moved into the county during the 1880s and 1890s. The 1890 census reported nearly 1,500 people of foreign birth living in the county. Though many of the new immigrants came directly from Europe, a sizable number moved to the area from the surrounding counties because of the availability of inexpensive land. Mexican immigration began to reach significant levels just after 1900. By 1930 Hispanics in the county numbered 469.

The last decades of the nineteenth century were a period of general economic growth. Farms in the county increased from 1,095 in 1880 to 1,699 in 1890 and 2,266 in 1900. Their total acreage grew from 187,331 in 1880 to more than 300,000 in 1900, and their total value from $947,405 in 1880 to $2,305,450 in 1900. Lee County agriculture was fairly diversified, in contrast to that of many other Texas counties in this period. Although cotton ranked first in total acreage, substantial land was also dedicated to the production of corn, oats, and other grains. In 1890 cotton was grown on 31,561 acres, corn on 18,749, and oats on 945. After 1900, however, cotton became increasingly important as a cash crop, and by the 1920s more than half of all cropland was used for cotton production. In 1930, during the peak period of the cotton boom, cotton was raised on 57,446 of the roughly 110,000 acres of cropland in the county. By the late 1920s, however, cotton culture began to fall on hard times. Overproduction, soil depletion, the boll weevil, and the effects of the Great Depression combined to depose King Cotton. During the depression years production fell dramatically, and by 1940 corn had replaced cotton as the leading cash crop in the county. After World War II the cropland in Lee County decreased steadily, and in 1969 county farmers harvested only 31,715 acres. In 1989 roughly 16 percent of the county's farmland was under production. Hay, peanuts, oats, corn, wheat, and sorghum were the leading cash crops. Though cash crops declined, cattle ranching, swine raising, and poultry production became an increasingly important part of the county's agricultural economy. With the coming of the railroads in the 1870s cattle ranching and hog production boomed; by 1890 there were 18,420 cattle and 19,027 hogs in the county. Similarly, poultry production expanded, reaching a high point around 1910, when the number of chickens and turkeys in the county was 248,705. Livestock production declined sharply during the 1930s and 1940s, but by 1950 it was again a major part of the county's economy, and in 1969 county ranchers owned a record 58,774 cattle and 19,775 swine. By the early 1980s, 92 percent of Lee County agricultural receipts were from livestock and livestock products.

The growth of the agricultural economy in the late nineteenth century was aided by improvements in the transportation network. The Houston and Texas Central Railway extended its lines from Brenham through Giddings to Austin in 1871, and Giddings became a major shipping point for county farmers and businesses. In 1890 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway, later consolidated with the Southern Pacific, was constructed across the south central half of the county to connect with the Houston and Texas Central at Giddings. Roads were generally poor throughout Lee County until the 1930s, when extensive improvements, including the paving of all major roads, took place.

The first industry in the county was a chair-making business founded by William Jackson in the 1840s in the community of Blue, near Lexington. The business, which was carried on by Jackson's sons and grandsons, continued to operate until 1970. The construction of railroads in the late 1800s encouraged the establishment of a number of other small industries around 1900. An oil mill was built in Giddings in 1900, a creamery in 1908, and an ice factory and electricity-generating company in 1911. In 1912 the Giddings Produce Company was founded and began shipping plucked turkeys. Manufacturing, nonetheless, played only a small part in the county's economy. The number of manufacturing establishments reached a high of sixty-six in 1900, when sixty employees were reported. By 1940, in part due to the effects of the depression, the number of factories had dropped to three and the employees to seven. Several new industries were founded after World War II, including two furniture factories and a boat-building company. After 1960 the oil and gas industry grew in the area. In 1982, 14,894,878,000 cubic feet of well gas, 816,198 barrels of condensate, 9,984,813 barrels of crude oil, and 31,380,100,000 cubic feet of casinghead gas were produced. But despite the gains in the industrial sector, in 1980 only 13 percent of the county's labor force were employed in manufacturing; 16 percent were self-employed, 18 percent were employed in professional or related services, 19 percent in wholesale or retail trade, and 19 percent in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, or mining; the remaining 15 percent were employed outside the county.

Politically, Lee County remained largely Democratic for 100 years after Reconstruction, although a third party took the 1920 presidential election and the Republicans won in the elections of 1940 and 1956. The county changed to Republican presidential candidates in the 1970s; it supported only one Democrat, Jimmy Carter (in 1976), between 1972 and 1992.

In the mid-1980s Lee County had three school districts and three elementary, two middle, and three high schools. In 1950 only 4.5 percent of the county's residents over the age of twenty-five had completed four years of high school. By 1980 the number had grown to 43.5 percent. Twenty-eight percent of the 159 high school graduates in 1982 planned to attend college. The composition of the school body reflected the growing ethnic diversity of the county's population. In 1982-83, 71 percent of the students were white, 20 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic, 0.1 percent Asian, and 0.1 percent American Indian. In 1990 whites comprised 78.2 percent of the population, blacks 13.8 percent, Hispanics 11 percent, American Indians .1 percent, and Asians .1 percent.

Between 1970 and 1980 Lee County experienced its first growth in population in fifty years. By 1982 the estimated population was 11,693, nearly matching its highest figure of 14,593 in 1900. The greatest increase was in the county's towns, which by 1989 included roughly half of the population. In 1990 the county population was 12,854. Giddings remained the largest city, with a population of 4,093; Lexington, Dime Box, Fedor, Hills, Leo, Lincoln, Loebau, Manheim, Northrup, Serbin, Tanglewood, and The Knobbs are the principal other communities. A weekly newspaper, the Times and News, is published weekly in Giddings. In 1982 the county supported thirty churches with an estimated combined membership of 7,154. The largest denominations were Missouri Synod Lutheran and Southern Baptist.

Lee County, Texas
History, Records, Facts and Genealogy

Lee County Court Records

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

Lee County Vital Records

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Lee County Census Records

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Lee County Maps & Atlases

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Lee County Military Records

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Lee County Tax Records

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Lee County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Texas Genealogical Addresses

Lee County Church & Cemeteries

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Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Extended History

Lee County, Texas History, Records, Facts and Genealogy

Lee County Court Records

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

Lee County Vital Records

See Also Vital Records in Texas

Lee County Census Records

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

Lee County Maps & Atlases

See Also Research In State Map Collections

Lee County Military Records

See Also Military Records in Texas

Lee County Tax Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Lee County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Texas Genealogical Addresses

Lee County Church & Cemeteries

See Also Church & Cemetery Records in Texas

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Extended History

Lee County, Texas
History, Records, Facts and Genealogy