The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 194
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
hand count of the manuscript schedules of the United States census
for that year revealed that the actual proportion was only 7.5 percent.
Nor did the influx of Germans end with the 189o's. New agricul-
tural colonies were founded in the state as late as the 192o's, a fact
largely overlooked by all but local historians. Of the 26,000
German-born persons living in Texas in 1930, over 3,70o had immi-
grated to the United States between 1901 and 1914, and over 1,800
had come in the decade 1920o-193o. Even these figures, which repre-
sent nothing more than a tapering off from the mass immigration of
the 1865-1890 period, are comparable to the total of 2,134 settlers
brought to Texas by Henri Castro, the mere 600o Wendish immigrants
who came in the 1850's, or even the 7,380 brought by the Adelsverein."
One can only speculate concerning the reasons for the scholarly
neglect of the later German immigration. It may be due to the less
romantic nature of the postwar colonization. In contrast to the Ger-
mans who came in antebellum times, those arriving after 1865 went
not as pioneers to subdue the wilderness on the Texan Indian frontier,
but as secondary settlers who expected to continue the market-oriented
agriculture they had known in Germany. They did not undertake a
dangerous journey in wooden sailing ships and ox-wagons to lands
largely unknown, but rather were carried swiftly and safely by steam-
ship and railroad to destinations of proven desirability. But whatever
the causes of the neglect may have been, it is the purpose of the pres-
ent essay to correct the traditional overemphasis on the pre-Civil War
migration and to place in proper perspective the German settlement
activity of the period 1865-1930. By way of introduction, however, a
brief description of the results of the antebellum German colonization
is necessary. It can be said that by 186o a fragmented "German Belt,"
stretching from the vicinity of Houston and Galveston in the east into
the Texas Hill Country in the west, had been created. Contained
within it were a number of nuclei of German settlement, including
(1) the concentration between the lower Brazos and Colorado rivers
around Industry, Cat Spring, Cummins Creek, and other communities
dating from the 1830o's; (2) the Wendish area in the post-oak lands
along the present-day border between Lee and Fayette counties; (3)
the northwestern quarter of Harris County, near Houston, where
GU.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: z93o. Population
(Washington, D.C., 1932), II, 523.
GJulia N. Waugh, Castro-ville and Henry Castro, Empresario (San Antonio, 1934),
68; George C. Engerrand, The So-Called Wends of Germany and Their Colonies in
Texas and in Australia (Austin, 1934), 91-92.194
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970, periodical, 1970; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117147/m1/216/?rotate=270: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.