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The original inhabitants of what is now Kaufman County were Caddo, Cherokee, Comanche, Delaware, and Kickapoo Indians. By 1840, the Cherokees had been driven into East Texas by the Caddoes. According to the Handbook of Texas Online: Henderson County, "The Caddoes had the highest cultural development of any Texas Indians. They were agriculturalists and raised corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. Men and women shared garden work, used dogs for hunting bears, consumed small mammals, fish, and birds, ran trot lines baited with doughbait, and gathered nuts, berries, and wild fruits. The Spanish and French explorers described these people, who called themselves the Tejas, as friendly." The name Texas is derived from tejas or teyas, the rendering by the Spanish in the mid-16th century of the Caddo people’s word for friends or allies. The Caddoes were easily pacified by offerings of jewelry and trinkets so the settlers of Kaufman County experienced few problems with the Native Americans. The first Kaufman County settlement was started in 1840 when William P. King built a fort on a hilltop that overlooked a tributary of the East Fork of the Trinity River to offer shelter for land surveyors. In his honor the outpost that provided security for the the land surveyors and earliest settlers was called King's Fort, and the stream that ran nearby became known as King's Creek. During the next five years several buildings were built near the fort. Gradually a community developed and was named Kingsboro. Because of readily available land grants and because the land had been praised in eastern towns, the area around King's Fort, or Kingsboro, or Fort de Kingsboro, attracted settlers rapidly. Kaufman County was settled predominately by natives of the South, particularly from the states of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. William P. King died in 1841. On July 27, 1846, William King's widow, Frances, patented the survey that included King's Fort with the government of the new State of Texas. (At that time Kingsboro was part of Henderson County which was established by the state legislature in 1846.) In February 1848, Kaufman County was established from land in Henderson County. Kaufman County was named for David Spangler Kaufman, a diplomat and member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, the legislature of the state of Texas, and the Congress of the United States. Kingsboro was renamed Kaufman and became the county seat in March 1851. Mrs. Frances Taber, former wife of William P. King, donated much of the land for the new county seat. In 1849 postal service to the community began. In 1860 the first newspaper, a weekly called the Kaufman Star, began operating. Though slaves were brought to the county, slavery was never widespread in Kaufman County. In 1850 there were only 65 slaves counted on the Kaufman County Census Slave Schedule; however, an additional 61 slaves counted in the Henderson County census should have been included in the Kaufman County census. There were 533 slaves (15 percent of the population) counted in the 1860 Kaufman County Census Slave Schedule. Kaufman County's citizens voted in favor of secession of Texas from the Union by a three-fourths majority in 1861. During the Civil War, the county contributed several companies of soldiers, most of whom fought in Elkanah B. Greer's regiment. (See Kaufman County Civil War Units for information on the Companies.) The war did not come to Kaufman County in terms of actual combat but slave patrols were established in each precinct and Kaufman County's citizens' tax dollars were used to purchase supplies for county companies in the war and to arm the county. Although the requirements of congressional Reconstruction were unpopular in the county, there were few incidents of violence against either freedmen or white Unionists during this period. By the late 1800s, Kaufman County had obtained a relatively good transportation system. In 1873, when the Texas and Pacific Railway was completed through the northern part of the county linking Longview to the east and Dallas-Fort Worth to the west, two enterprising Kaufman County citizens, Charles Cornelius "C. C." Nash and John G. Moore, purchased 320 acres in the J. W. Cude survey and laid out streets and lots for business and home sites. In 1881 the tracks of the Texas Trunk line reached the city of Kaufman; two years later the Texas Central Railroad connected Kaufman with Dallas. The two railroad lines established Kaufman as the shipping point for county farmers and contributed to the growth of the community. During the mid-1890s, the Texas-Midland Railroad was completed through Kaufman County to Garret in the south and Paris in the north. The Texas-Midland Railroad, which had been purchased by Hetty H. R. Green in 1892 and was run by her son, Edward Howland Robinson Green, established its shops and offices in Terrell. In 1883 the county was chosen as the site of the state's second hospital for the mentally ill and a state committee purchased a 655-acre site near Terrell. The North Texas Insane Asylum (now known as Terrell State Hospital) was opened in Terrell in 1885 to help relieve overcrowding at the state institution in Austin. Today, Kaufman county is within the Dallas metropolitan area which consists of the counties of Denton, Collin, Dallas, Ellis, Rockwall, Henderson and Hunt as well as Kaufman. Kaufman County shares borders with the counties of Rockwall, Hunt, Van Zandt, Henderson, Ellis and Dallas (see map on the home page of this site). Rockwall County was formed in 1873 when Kaufman County's northern boundary was reduced to establish this new County; Kaufman County's limits have since remained unchanged. Kaufman County comprises 788 square miles of the Blackland Prairie region of Northeast Texas; the larger communities in the county include Terrell, Kaufman, and Forney. Kaufman, the county seat, is 34 miles east of Dallas near the center of the county. Terrell, named in honor of Robert A. Terrell, a pioneer settler, is Kaufman county's largest town; it is 30 miles east of Dallas in northern Kaufman County. Forney, 23 miles east of Dallas in northwestern Kaufman County, was originally known as Brooklyn; it was renamed Forney on December 29, 1873, after the Pennsylvania journalist, politician, and member of the board of directors of the T & P line, John Wien Forney, then employed as a civil engineer to direct the Texas and Pacific in the area. Kaufman County's terrain is for the most part level, with an elevation ranging from 300 to 550 feet above sea level. The soils are slightly acidic, with dark to light loamy surfaces and clayey subsoils. Mineral resources include limestone, sand and gravel, oil, and gas. Average temperatures range from a low of 72° F to a high of 97° in July and from 33° to 54° in January. There is an average rainfall of 39 inches each year and the growing season averages 245 days each year. Prairie grasses and mesquite, oak, pecan, and elm trees grow along the streams of the county. Corn was the county's main crop before the Civil War and production continued a steady growth until 1910 when production declined. The county's cotton crop, which was minimal before the Civil War, grewn steadily from 1860 untill 1930; wheat production varied drastically. The number of beef and dairy cattle raised in Kaufman County increased from 1860 to 1880 but fell drastically between 1880 and 1890. Kaufman County is located in the Trinity River watershed and is drained, in its western half, by the East Fork of the Trinity River and its tributaries, and, in its eastern half, by Cedar Creek and its tributaries, which flow into Cedar Creek Reservoir which is in the southern part of the county. The county is between two large rivers, the Trinity (which is 360 miles long and is formed, near Dallas, where the East Fork and the West Fork flow together and empties into Trinity Bay) and the Sabine (which is 380 miles long and flows from northeast Texas to the Louisiana boundary and then south (it forms the state line between Texas and Louisiana) and eventually empties into the Gulf of Mexico). Sources"KAUFMAN COUNTY." The Handbook of Texas Online. "KAUFMAN, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. "TERRELL, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. "FORNEY, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. "HENDERSON COUNTY." The Handbook of Texas Online. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v., http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/fgr33.html (accessed August 19, 2007). "Dallas (Texas)" Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. "Texas" Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. The 1850 Kaufman County, Texas, Federal Slave Schedule |