Follow
Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in San Saba County, Texas.
History
Early Native American inhabitants of the area included Tonkawa, Caddo, Apache, and Comanche. In 1732, Governor of Spanish Texas, Juan Antonio Bustillo y Ceballos, arrived on the feast day of sixth-century monk St. Sabbas, and named the river Río de San Sabá de las Nueces. Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission was established in 1757. In 1788, José Mares led an expedition from San Antonio to Santa Fe.
In 1828, 28 people from Stephen F. Austin's group passed through. A portion of the county was included in Austin's grants from the Mexican government. The Fisher–Miller Land Grant in 1842 contained most of later land deeds. Five years later, the Meusebach–Comanche Treaty was signed in San Saba County. In 1854, the Harkey family settled at Wallace and Richland Creeks. The David Matsler family moved from Burnet County to Cherokee Creek.
San Saba County was organized and named for the San Saba River in 1856.
In 1874, Edmund E. Risen devoted his work to improving local nuts, in particular the pecan. San Saba eventually billed itself as the Pecan Capital of the World.
In the 1880s-'90s, mob rule not only whipped and forced out numerous people in towns throughout Texas, but also took 140 lives in Texas following the Civil War. San Saba County had the worst of the violence, with 25 lives taken by lynching from 1880 to 1896. Mob killings in Texas in the years after the war were often racially motivated crimes committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan against suspected slave rebels and white abolitionists. An investigation led to the Texas Rangers restoring order. United Confederate Veterans organized a chapter known as the "William P. Rogers Camp" in San Saba County after the death in 1889 of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Rogers, a hero of the Battle of Corinth in Mississippi, was a native of Georgia. He did not live in San Saba, but his daughter, Fannie, married one of Rogers' officers, George Harris, who moved there in 1880. A former county judge, Harris served as a commander of Rogers Camp, named for his father-in-law. The veterans' organization lasted until the early 1930s.
During the 1880s, a vigilante mob, organized like a fraternal lodge, killed a number of San Saba County settlers. In 1896, the Texas Rangers began an investigation. Uluth M. Sanderson, editor of the San Saba County News, ran editorials against the mob. Ultimately, the mob was broken by the Ranger Captain Bill McDonald and District Attorney W.C. Linder.[citation needed] Many of the mob executions committed throughout Texas in the time following the Civil War were racially motivated and often committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which formed in Shelby County, Texas. Most of the people killed by vigilante mobs in the five years after the war were "suspected slave rebels and white abolitionists". Although the KKK in Texas was less active by the 1870s, lives continued to be taken each year. In 1885, for the state of Texas, "...an estimated 22 mobs lynched 43 people, including 19 blacks and 24 whites, one of whom was female". "The San Saba County lynchers, the deadliest of the lot, claimed some 25 victims between 1880 and 1896. Vigilante lynching died out in the 1890s, but other varieties of mobs continued."
Adjacent Counties
Towns & Communities
- Bend (part)
- Bowser
- Cherokee
- Elm Grove
- Richland Springs
- San Saba (County Seat)
Links