Texas General Land Office awesomeness

I drove the million miles into downtown Austin today and went to the Texas General Land Office's Archives and Records department. I wanted to see what they had on my ancestors Alexander Hodge and James Kegans. Both of these men were settlers in Austin's first colony (which makes them part of the Old Three Hundred), and I had already seen a digitized copy of Hodge's original land grant petition online, so I knew I would find some good stuff there.

I had no idea what to expect when I went down there. For starters, when you enter the General Land Office building, you have to sign in and get a visitor's badge. That makes sense, it being a government building. Then you enter the Archives and Records department (hee, I first typed "Archivers" -- you can tell I'm an avid scrapper/stamper person!). They have their own security methods in there -- you have to put all purses, backpacks, etc. and cell phones in a locker before you can begin to look at anything. Computers are okay. You may only use a pencil to take notes, and you have to take notes on the yellow paper they provide (unless you've brought your own note paper). When you're ready to leave, they'll inspect your notes (I'm assuming this is to make sure you aren't trying to sneak anything out).

I asked for help finding any documents pertaining to Hodge and Kegans, as original settlers, and they directed me to one of their "librarians" (for lack of a better word) who specialized in the Spanish section of the records. (For those of you who may not know Texas history, Austin's colony was officially in the State of Coahuila y Texas, Mexico, so all documents from that period were written in Spanish.) He brought out an index book, we found some things and then he set off into the back to pull them for me. When he brought them out, he went through and explained each document to me before leaving me to my research.

I have to tell you, it was so amazing to see these original documents! The land grant petitions are in individual folders, and are protected by a kind of sleeve that looks like see-through parchment (probably some form of archival paper). So you can see the documents, but not touch them. Again, this makes perfect sense. I was impressed with the good condition these documents were in! Although the edges were worn, they weren't ragged, and there were only a couple of stains from where someone awhile back had stamped a number on one of them in ink that bled. Originally, these had been pages in a book, but now they're individual documents.

They provided translations for me of the land grant petition documents. I ordered a copy of Hodge's, but hand-wrote bits of the other two I was interested in.

There were also smaller documents placed in a book with protective "parchment" over each of them. In these we found hand-drawn maps showing the land Hodge was given before it was parceled out (it had originally belonged to Stephen F. Austin himself), then a map showing the five leagues he gave (or sold) to Hodge and four others, with the designations as to whose land was whose, and including little notes like "Peaches" or "Cane" to show where this kind of vegetation was located. There were also "field notes" -- notes taken by the original surveyors on pocket-sized paper (originally small notebooks).

I ordered copies of all these documents. I ended up spending about $41, but it will be SO worth it to have true first-generation copies of them. (I think the pricing was $2 per page if you want color, and $1 per page for black and white -- that was for the documents. Not sure how much the pages of the translation cost. They were just typed out on regular paper.) It's going to be so amazing to have these copies in my possession!

The documents themselves are interesting. Here's what the digitized version of Hodge's original petition looks like:



So at the top you have the seals and fee rate (it cost 2 reales to have these drawn up). Underneath that you have the name of the commissioner to which they petitioned. The man at the Land Office told me that they couldn't apply for land grants unless there was a commissioner in office. Austin was the Empresario of the colony, but he didn't have the right to actually grant land. So that's why, even though they came to Texas in the early 1820s, they weren't able to apply for their allotted league until later because there was no commissioner. In fact, I believe Hodge's petition for land for his orphaned grandchildren (not my directs) was begun in one year, but had to be re-done in 1831 because the commissioner had been accused of murdering his mistress' husband, so he was in jail!

Anyway, they put in their petition, then someone had to vouch for their right to have the land. Once that was okayed, they had the land surveyed, and eventually, if all was in order, they were granted the land ("tax, title and license not included," lol -- they had to pay fees, etc., so the land wasn't technically "free"). All of this is included in the land grant petition.

What's really cool are the signatures -- right there, in their own handwriting, are the siggies of my actual ancestors! And, of course, all the other people involved. One of the commissioners (you can see his siggy on the left-hand side of this document) had a very fancy rubric he included with his signature -- it must've taken a few minutes to draw it, with all those squiggly lines!

So I'm going back on Friday to pick them up (I have to be in town, anyway). Hopefully the copies are excellent quality. I thought it would even be cool to frame some of them if the copies were good enough.

That's what I've been up to lately, in addition to just doing a lot of data entry and transferring into the Family Tree Maker program. I need to get back to scanning photos and posting them into the program. *SIGH* So much to do! But it's all worth it, even if nobody else but me appreciates it all. (Fortunately, several in my family are appreciating it!)