Meixner Family History #19 - Epilogue - Part 2

By 1901 Harmon Meixner was ready to move west permanently.  He moved to the Concho county area to work for ranchers in Concho and Tom Green Counties.  In 1900 the population of Concho County was 1427 and the town of Paint Rock had a population of 323. (1)

                                        Bell County to Concho County on a present day map.

Why did Harmon choose Concho County?  I don't know the answer to that question.  Was it possibly due to a connection to the German community or perhaps some influence by a relative?  Maybe it was just because it was the next frontier and that's where he could go and find work and a place to make a living.  First I'll examine the opening of this area to settlement.

In the book A New Land Beckoned the authors stated "The largest colonization project in Texas history was the mass immigration of Germans to Texas in the years 1844-1847."  On April 20, 1842 the "Verein zum Schutz deutscher Einwandrer in Texas" was organized by a group of German noblemen.  Known by it's shorter name "Verein", it was created for the purpose of facilitating the immigration of Germans to Texas. (2)

                                                                 Symbol of the Verein. (3)

The Verein sought land grants from the Republic of Texas without much success so in June of 1844 it purchased an interest in the Fisher-Miller colonization contract.  Henry Fisher and Burchard Miller originally made application with the Republic of Texas in 1842 for this land grant.  This grant was known as the Fisher-Miller grant and was for 3,800,000 acres of land between the Colorado and Llano Rivers.

                                 Approximate area of the Fisher-Miller Grant on a present day map.

Shiploads of immigrants arrived in Texas in the fall of 1844.  "Each verein immigrant had signed an Immigration contract (Einwanderungs Vertrag) in Germany at the port of embarkation before he boarded the ship on which he would make the journey to Texas.  This contract entitled him to 320 acres of land if he was a married man and 160 acres if he was single."  Between the years of 1844-1847 there were more than 7,000 German immigrants to Texas. (4)

There was a problem with the Fisher-Miller grant, however.  It was nearly 300 miles from the coast, the land was not fertile and the Comanche Indians still roamed the area.  Extreme difficulties were faced by the Verein in trying to transport the immigrants inland.  Their route took them from Indianola up to Victoria and then through Gonzales and Seguin, finally arriving at a location along the banks of the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers where they established the town of New Braunfels.  The immigrants suffered greatly from disease and the elements.  Hundreds died.  Some of the immigrants would push on farther up to establish the town of Fredricksburg. (5)

Route from Indianola to Victoria, Gonzales, Seguin, New Braunfels, and Fredricksbug that I traced on a present day map.  Source:  A New Land Beckoned.  (6)

Poor planning, unexpected expenses, and the extreme difficulties encountered all contributed to the Verein going bankrupt and ceasing operations.  Few of the original immigrants settled beyond Fredricksburg.  In 1858 the Texas Legislature would carve 10 counties out of the Fisher-Miller lands:  Llano, San Saba, McCulloch, Mason, Menard, Kimble, Sutton, Tom Green, Schleicher, and Concho.  Though the original German immigrants did not settle in these counties, many of the descendants of the German immigrants did settle there in years to come in towns such as Mason, Boerne, Comfort, Llano, Brady, San Saba, and Paint Rock.  (7)                                      

                        The 10 counties carved from the Fisher-Miller Grant on a present day map.

An intriguing side note to this story is that on one of the early immigrant ships that came in 1844 was a man named Andreas Meixner.  He brought with him his wife, Marianna (Pohlert/Bohlert) Meixner, and three children.  They were listed as being from Forcheim, Bavaria.  He was one of the group that founded New Braunfels.  He is listed in the 1850 census in New Braunfels and died there in 1855.

                                       1850 United States Census for Comal County, Texas.  (8)

A listing of the original grantees in Concho County shows two sections, #30 & #31, as being granted to Andreas Meixner.  So I assume this was his original land grant from the Verein.  He most likely never set foot in Concho County.  Most of the immigrants sold their land grants for small sums of money and did not go further into that area because it was still inhabited by Comanche Indians.  I have not been able to trace his ancestors in Germany nor have I made any connection to him with my Meixner family.  Andreas' descendants lived in San Antonio and other areas and some probably still reside in Texas.  I think it is very interesting that a Meixner owned land in Concho County 45 years before Harmon Meixner arrived on the scene.  Who knows, maybe they are long lost cousins and I just have not found the connection yet.

                                       Map of Original Grantees of Land in Concho County.  (9)

Concho County was formed by the Texas Legislature in 1858.  It's name is derived from the Concho ("shell") River which is named for the large number of mussels found there.  Large-scale cattle ranchers, such as John S. Chisum and others, began to establish cow camps along the Concho River in the 1860s.  Settlement didn't begin in the county until after Ranald S. Mackenzie's campaign in 1874 drove out the remaining Indians and forced them onto reservations.  (10)

In 1879 Concho County was finally organized and the site for a county seat was selected on the Concho river "twelve miles west of the confluence of the Concho and Colorado Rivers and five miles south of the Concho-Runnels County line".  The county seat was named Paint Rock after the nearby Indian pictographs. (11)

Harmon Meixner moved to Concho county in 1901.  The swiftest population growth in Concho County history occurred between 1900 and 1910 when the number of farms went from 119 to 865.  More than half the farms in 1910 were tenant farms.

One of the ranchers Harmon Meixner worked for, according to my Dad, was D.E. Sims.  Next time I'll have more on him and some of the stories Harmon told about his adventures as a cowboy.

References:
(1)  www.texasalmanac.com/topics/population
(2)  Geue, Chester W. & Ethel H., A New Land Beckoned, German Immigration to Texas 1844-1847, Baltimore, Maryland:  Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1966. pg ix.
(3)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelsverein
(4)  Geue, pg 7.
(5)  Ibid. pg 13.
(6)  Ibid. plate #8.
(7)  Ibid. pg 14-15.
(8)  Ancestry.com. 1850 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.  Original data: Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
(9)  Dietz, O.. Concho County, Map, March 1862; digital image, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth88451/ : accessed January 09, 2013), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas General Land Office, Austin , Texas.
(10)  Mary M. Standifer, "CONCHO COUNTY," Handbook of Texas Online(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcc21), accessed December 12, 2012. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
(11)  Ibid.