Origins of Floyd County, Texas

In May of 1875, Quanah Parker, a magisterial figure among the Quahadi Comanches, led more than 400 men, women, and children out of the Texas panhandle and into Indian Territory. At the end of the somber trek of some 200 miles, having traveled for nearly a month, the group arrived at a place called Signal Station just west of Fort Sill. Standing before U.S. military authorities, the Indians surrendered themselves, their weapons, and fifteen hundred horses.[1] The Red River War of the previous year had come to an end, and the region known as the Panhandle-Plains was now open land just waiting for white settlement.

The very next year, in 1876, the Texas legislature created Floyd County, which covers 992 square miles and includes approximately 500,000 acres of arable land. Already by that time, ranchers had moved their free-range cattle operations to the region. But the first settlers did not begin to arrive until the mid-1880s. By 1889, there were at least two communities in the county: Della Plain and its brand new rival, a town that was named for the father of one of the recently-arrived settlers, a Mr. J. F. Lockney.[2] During the 1890s, in spite of hardships brought on by drought, grasshopper plagues, and the financial downturn known as the Panic of 1893, Floyd County grew from 529 residents to more than 2,000, a growth rate for the decade of more than 280 percent.[3]

In 1910, the Santa Fe Railroad added to the excitement when the company built a branch line from Plainview, Texas, to Lockney and Floydada, the county seat. Around that same time, the future of agriculture in the region began to look brighter when local farmers began digging irrigation wells.[4]

Notes

[1] S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon (New York: Scribner, 2010), 286.

[2] Handbook of Texas Online, H. Allen Anderson and Christopher Long, "FLOYD COUNTY," accessed February 11, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcf05; and Kline A. Nall, "LOCKNEY, TX," accessed February 11, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hjl11

[3] Anderson and Long, "FLOYD COUNTY." See also, Wikipedia contributors, "Floyd County, Texas," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Floyd_County,_Texas&oldid=851509818 (accessed February 11, 2019).

[4] Anderson and Long, "FLOYD COUNTY," and Nall, "LOCKNEY, TX."

A History Project

Starting in about one month, I plan to dive head-first into one of the following historical studies: Some aspect of . . .

1. Quanah Parker and the Comanches, Texas, and Oklahoma

2. The King James Bible

3. John Glas, Robert Sandeman, and the Sandemanian movement in Great Britain and America

4. Alexander Campbell and his Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch

5. Italian immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth century.

So what sounds interesting to you? Which one would you pick? Is there a certain bit of history you'd love to explore and just haven't yet? Or maybe you're in the middle of something like that right now. Tell us about it.

Mexico, Comanche Bands, and the Culture of Texas

Among my summer reads, I'm especially enjoying S. C. Gwynne's new book, Empire of the Summer Moon. As readers have learned to expect, it's the subtitle that tells you what this one is about: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.

It's like David McCullough wrote a book about the Comanches. It's that good.

But the book isn't just about Quanah Parker and his father's tribe. It also relates a good bit about other Indian tribes, the Spanish in the American Southwest, and the early days of Texas. The following passage is a good sample and relates something that I think is very important about the history and culture of the Lone Star State:

Texas was never supposed to be its own sovereign country. After their victory at San Jacinto the vast majority of Texans believed that their territory would be immediately annexed by the United States. There were a few would-be empire builders like Mirabeau Lamar and James Parker (who volunteered to fulfill Lamar's grandiose vision by conquering New Mexico) who had other ideas. But mostly everyone else wanted statehood. They were soon disappointed. There were two main reasons it did not happen. First, Mexico had never recognized the Independence of its renegade northern province. If the United States added Texas it risked war with Mexico, something that, in 1836, it was not prepared to do. Nor could it easily admit a slave territory.

Texas was thus left alone, broke and militarily punchless, for ten years to confront two implacable enemies: Mexico on the south, and the Comanche nation on the west and north. The fledgling country would never know peace. Mexican incursions persisted; the city of San Antonio was captured twice by large Mexican armies in 1842. Raids were constant, as was the the predation of itinerant bandits from across the border. And Texas's western frontier was the scene of continuous attacks by Comanches. It is interesting to note Texas's peculiar position here: Neither of these enemies would have accepted peace on the terms the new republic would have offered them. Even more remarkably, neither would accept surrender. The Mexican army consistently gave no quarter, most famously at the Alamo. All Texan combatants were summarily shot. The Nermernuh, [i.e., Comanches] meanwhile, did not even have a word for surrender. In plains warfare there was never any such thing; it was always a fight to the death. In this sense, the Texans did not have the usual range of diplomatic options. They had to fight. (p. 131, emphasis is original).

One of many priceless passages.