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Texas Counties

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Texas Counties

Texas is divided into 254 counties, more than any other U.S. state Texas was originally divided into municipalities, a unit of local government under Spanish and Mexican rule. When the Republic of Texas gained its independence in 1836, there were 23 municipalities, which became the original Texas counties. Many of these would later be divided into new counties. The most recent county to be created was Kenedy County in 1921. The most recent county to be organized was Loving County in 1931

Van Zandt County, Texas

Van Zandt County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Canton
Year Organized: 1848
Square Miles: 849

Court House:

121 E. Dallas Street, Room 201
County Courthouse
Canton, TX 75103-1497

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Isaac Van Zandt, early Texas settler, attorney, Texas legislator, and diplomat, considered by many to be the founder of Marshall, Texas

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Van Zandt County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas.Its county seat is Canton. The county is named for Isaac Van Zandt, a member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas.

Van Zandt County was established by the legislature in 1848 from part of Henderson County and named for Republic of Texas leader Isaac Van Zandt.^qv Sabine Lake (Jordan's Saline) was named the county seat, a crude log courthouse was built, and court was held for the first time in December 1848. In 1850 Wood County was carved out of Van Zandt County, and the Van Zandt county seat was moved to Canton. The 1850 census indicated that the recently established county had 1,348 residents. The overwhelming majority of the residents (92 percent) came from the states of the Old South, with the largest number from Tennessee and Alabama. In addition, there were a small number of recent immigrants from Europe, including a Norwegian colony settled by Johan Reierson at Four Mile Prairie in the southwestern portion of the county. In its early years the economy was largely subsistence farming, though some settlers also engaged in the salt trade. The salt in the area had been known to the Indians, who extracted it in the northeastern part of the county near the site of present Grand Saline. Jordan had a salt extraction operation at Jordan's Saline in 1845. Plantation farming did not prove profitable, and slave population dropped to 322 in a total population of 6,494 in 1860. A cotton gin, built at Hamburg by Burrel H. Hambrick in 1853, was moved to Tyler prior to the Civil War.^qv Despite the small number of slaves, a majority of Van Zandt's citizens (181 of 308) voted for secession^qv in 1861, and local men volunteered for service in the Confederate army in sizeable numbers. Many enlisted in the Tenth Texas Cavalry under Col. M. F. Lock, while others joined the Sixth Texas Cavalry, the Third Texas Cavalry,^qv the Fifteenth Texas Cavalry, and the Eleventh Texas Infantry. Not all of the citizens, however, supported the Southern cause. Many of the Norwegian settlers, who were opposed to slavery on moral grounds, and a number of small farmers, who resented the power and influence of the state's large plantation owners, spoke out against the war. In 1864 three of the Unionists were lynched, and some of the Norwegian settlers were arrested, effectively quelling the opposition. The anti-slavery stance of this vocal minority, however, reportedly gave rise to the practice of calling the county the "Free State of Van Zandt." According to one story, the name arose when Sidney S. Johnson^qv of the Canton Times wrote that one slave driver seeking a site in Texas to bring his slaves to safety said that he would rather settle in a free state than bring his slaves to Van Zandt because of its Unionist reputation

More at Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/VV/hcv2.html (accessed November 9, 2008).

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 859 square miles (2,226 km²), of which, 849 square miles (2,198 km²) of it is land and 10 square miles (28 km²) of it (1.26%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Rains County (north)
Wood County (northeast)
Smith County (east)
Henderson County (south)
Kaufman County (west)
Hunt County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Canton (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Edgewood	town	Incorporated Area
- Fruitvale	city	Incorporated Area
- Grand Saline	city	Incorporated Area
- Van	city	Incorporated Area
- Wills Point	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."