1867 Voter Registration, Comanche Co., TX

Nathanb1

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Silver Patron
Retired Moderator
Joined
Dec 31, 2009
Location
Smack dab in the heart of Texas
Last month I obtained the voter registration records from Comanche County, Texas. First, let's look at Texas overall in 1867.....

From The Handbook of Texas article on Reconstruction:

Congress brought the course of Throckmorton, the legislature, and Presidential Reconstruction to an end on March 2, 1867, with its First Reconstruction Act. The law broke the South into military districts under the command of the army and declared the existing governments to be provisional. Texas was placed in the Fifth Military District. From the beginning General Griffin, commander in Texas, differed from Throckmorton on policy, and on July 30, 1867, at the request of Griffin, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, commander of the district, removed Throckmorton from office as an "impediment to Reconstruction."

In his complaints to Sheridan, Griffin cited Throckmorton's failure to qualify for office under the "military bill" (the First Reconstruction Act) and his refusal to cooperate in the punishment of those who had committed outrages against loyal men, white and black. Following Throckmorton's removal, complaints from Unionists, blacks, and Freedmen's Bureau officials about local officials who refused to protect their lives and property continued to pour into military headquarters. Griffin began to move toward removing these local officials, but little was done toward this end before his death in the yellow fever epidemic that swept through the eastern portions of the state that summer and fall.

His successor, Joseph J. Reynolds, continued to receive complaints, and with a series of special orders began wholesale removals in the fall of 1867. The most sweeping of these special orders, No. 195, issued on November 1, 1867, removed more than 400 county officials in fifty-seven counties across the state. Four days later Reynolds removed the elected city officials of San Antonio, and the day after that, their terms having expired, he replaced the officials of Austin. The men Reynolds appointed to replace these removed officials had to be capable of taking the "Test Oath," passed by Congress on July 2, 1862, stating that they had never voluntarily borne arms against the United States or given "aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto." The removals continued until most counties in the state had had at least one county official removed. Many local elected officials who remained in office after Reynolds's removals of late 1867 and early 1868 were forced to leave office in April 1869, when Gen. Edward R. S. Canby ruled that every office filled by an elected official incapable of taking the Test Oath would be considered vacant on April 25, 1869.

The first person to register to vote in Comanche County in 1867, which was on the edge of the frontier, was my gggrandfather, Alexander Powers, a native of Maine....and yes, a Unionist. His registration was recorded August 6th; #2 was Tobias Briles, a Confederate veteran and Powers' son in law. #3 was Orlando Whitney, a Massachusetts native whose daughter, Ann, gained posthumous fame as the only schoolteacher to be killed by Comanches in her school one month earlier, on July 9, 1867. #5, the next day, was my ggrandfather, S.H. Powers, born in Mo.....Unionist who served in the Confederate militia fighting Comanches. #13 & 14 were ancestors of the great baseball player Rogers Hornsby (one of his relatives later married into my family); #56, on 8/22/1867 was Hiram Barbee, born in NC and Alexander's son in law to be (he will marry Sam's sister Candace in September)....and a Confederate veteran. 8/23 sees Kelly Rigsby, a Confederate veteran and another future son in law registered; and on January 31, 1868, # 119....my other gggrandfather, Richard Kizer, born in Arkansas.

These records were later removed from Comanche County to the 5th Military District HQ in Austin (1870), and I found the transcript this year.

If all these guys could put down their guns and be family, why oh why can't we all discuss things peaceably and get along here?
 
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