Grayson County TXGenWeb

Spain first opened Anglo colonization in Texas in 1820; these foreigners were recruited to develop the Spanish frontier. The settlers in Spanish Texas were to be industrious, Catholic and willing to become Spanish citizens in exchange for generous land grants. The purposes of allowing Anglos to settle Texas was to increase economic development and to help deter the aggressive Plains Indians.
In 1821 Mexico gained its independence but also continued the same policy towards Anglo settlement in Texas. Anglo-Americans were attracted to Texas because of inexpensive land.

In the Constitution of 1846 the new country of Texas encouraged settlement of Texas by offering homesteads. A homestead consisted of up to 200 acres of rural land with its improvements as a family home and business. The homestead exemption from creditors was the most important feature of the Texas law. This exemption protected the home of a family from seizure from creditors. Consequently, many individuals and families moved to Texas with the hope of having a new home and were assured that creditors from their former states could not take their homestead from them for debts they owed.

From 1845 to 1898 the state made available to settlers all vacant and unappropriated land within its boundaries. Until 1870 homsteads were available only to heads of families and single men and women. In 1870 the Texas legislature made homesteads available to every head of a family (including women) and all single men aged 21 or older.

The Denison Daily News
April 16, 1873
Texas is the only State in all the South which is receiving a steady and reliable class of immigrants. It has been estimated that the average weekly immigration to Texas is between 1,500 and 8,000.
First there is the Southern planter of former prosperity, who wants to put his family again in easy circumstances. Next is the business drover of the North West, who sees that Texas is the cattle and horse land. Then there is the poor white class of the South, the bone-weary and trouble-tried who say, "It is as good to die and go as die and stay."
To these classes may be added a restless movement of boys, refugees, and people worn out at the edges of character who go to swell the white population of the state.

Denison Daily News
May 27, 1873

Grayson County, situated on the northern line of Texas, on the Red River, adjoining the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, was organized in 1846. The county covers an area of 960 sq miles.
This county, for about four miles along the Red River, is heavily timbered, the balance is equally divided between prairie and timber. The soil's black waxy and black sandy, of highest fertility, ranging in depth from three to ten feet.
Timber, such as hickory, white oak, ash, walnut, cottonwood, post oak, bois d'arc, pecan and other varieties is in abundance; wheat, oats, corn rye, barley, Irish and sweet potatoes, cotton, tobacco, sorghum cane, castor beans, broom corn, and all kinds of garden vegetables and fruits do well. Corn, wheat and cotton are the principal crops. Small fruits all produce well, while grapes seem to prosper here better than in any portion of the Union.

The Denison Daily News
May 31, 1873
The three great wants pressing upon Texas are - Population, Education and Communication; on the last we are rapidly beginning to realize; the first is being attracted by our grand and boundless resources.
The soil of Texas is directly or indirectly the source of nearly our entire wealth. What is more wanted is productive labor - agricultural, mechanical, and capital. Without these Texas is great only in name and resources; with them she is destined to beomce the most wealthy and prosperous of States.