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Official Website
History
The county was founded in 1846 and is named after Guadalupe River.
In 1846, during the war between the United States and Mexico, a wagon train of German immigrant settlers bought Guadalupe land from August Schumann. The following year the town of Schumannsville was established by German immigrants and named after him. Numerous German immigrants entered Texas at Galveston following the revolutions of 1848 in German states, settling in Guadalupe County and central Texas. After their own struggles, they tended to oppose slavery.
The last Indian raid into the area was made by the Kickapoo in 1855.
By 1860, there were 1,748 slaves of African descent in the county, generally brought in from the South by slaveholder migrants. In 1861, the people of the county voted 314–22 in favor of secession from the Union. Guadalupe County sent several troops to fight for the Confederate States Army. Following the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves (1865), a Freedmen's Bureau office opened in 1866 in Seguin to supervise work contracts between former slaves and area farmers. Together, German Americans and black Americans joined the Republican Party, leading Guadalupe County to be a reliably Republican one into the 20th century.
By 1876, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway reached Seguin. It was completed as far as San Antonio the following year. By 1880, ethnic Germans accounted for 40 percent of the county population. Tenant farming and sharecropping accounted for the operation of 25 percent of the county's farms. By 1910, immigrants from Mexico accounted for 11½ percent of the country’s population.
In 1929, oil was discovered at the Darst Creek oilfield. By 1930, tenant farming and sharecropping comprised 64 percent of the county's farms.
Over the next five decades, the economy changed markedly as the area became more urbanized and less dependent on agriculture. By 1982, professional and related services, manufacturing, and wholesale and retail trade involved nearly 60 percent of the work force in the area.
Adjacent Counties
Cities
- Cibolo (part)
- Kingsbury
- Marion
- New Berlin
- New Braunfels (part)
- San Marcos (part)
- Santa Clara
- Schertz (part)
- Seguin (County Seat)
- Selma (part)
- Staples
- Universal City (part)
Other Towns & Communities: Barbarosa, Clear Springs, Concrete (Ghost Town), Geronimo, Lake Dunlap, Leesville, McQueeney, Northcliff, Redwood, Schumansville, Zorn and Zuehl
Links
National Register of Historic Places
