Texas 1840

By G. A. Scherpf and Stephen Engelking

Anyone who is as fascinated about the era surrounding the establishment of the Republic of Texas as I am, will understand my excitement on discovering this book in German written in 1840. G.A. Scherpf was a German who had been living for some time in New York and decided to undertake an expedition to see with his own eyes which of the conflicting reports about Texas were true. He became so enamored with the country that he decided to settle there himself.As an economist and a highly educated person, he has taken painstaking trouble to collect all the data which would be relevant to anyone considering emigration from Germany. This was a time when conditions in Prussia and Germany as a whole were anything less than comfortable. It was marked with wars and deprivation. Many, especially of the lower working classes, were living under oppressive domination in what was still basically a feudal system, with no hope of bettering themselves.At that time, land was the number one priority if one wanted to gain some independence and a minimum of prosperity. The chances of attaining that were just about zero as most land was in the hands of an inflexible and self-sufficing aristocracy. A bureaucratic state and a military culture were further hindrances to any kind of progress.The offer of land up for grabs, even in a far away country, was extremely tempting and if one could raise the capital for the arduous sea journey, possibly the only alternative to a miserable life at the edge of starvation.So the stories of the opportunities of Texas abounded and many wrote pamphlets and books, often colored and biased to encourage emigration.Scherpf tries to bring clarity amongst all of this and claims to paint an unbiased picture. However, he had obviously fallen completely in love with Texas and his bias often shines through his attempted objectivity at times. He also obviously strictly abhors the use of alcoholic drinks (liquor) and uses every opportunity to convince the reader of the necessity for abstinence. It certainly did play a negative role among the early colonists and it is understandable that he would want to warn his readers of the dangers of its abuse.As well as a detailed description of the country's historical, political and economic situation, he offers detailed records of the climate at the time.Here, the potential emigrant of 1840 would have had a handbook at his fingertips which would give him all the necessary information to make the life-changing decision of going to Texas.Thus it provides today's reader with a fascinating insight into the world of the Republic of Texas in 1840.Readers of German in today's Texas have become rare and emigration to Texas for Germans is no longer an issue. It is for that reason that I decided to translate this enormously important work into English to give the opportunity of sharing this discovery to those who would like to better understand the world of their ancestors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texianer Verlag
• Release date: Aug 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386274292

Book preview

TEXAS 1840

Origin and Current State of the New, Independent State of Texas

G.A. Scherpf - Translated by Stephen A. Engelking

Texianer Verlag

TEXAS 1840

Origin and Current State of the New, Independent State of Texas

A Contribution to the History / Statistics and

Geography of this Century

Collected in the Country Itself by

G. A. Scherpf

Originally published in Augsburg 1841 in German by Verlag der Matth. Rieger’s Bookshop

Translated from the original German and edited by

©Stephen A. Engelking 2020

Texianer Verlag

Tuningen, Germany

www.texianer.com

All rights reserved

Contents

Title Page

Title Page

Translator’s Preface

Foreword

The Genesis of Texas

Introduction

Colonization under the Mexican Republic

History of the Revolution

Current state of Texas

Political existence

Borders

Population and way of life

Climate and products

Products of the Animal Kingdom

Products of a Vegetable Nature

Mineral Kingdom

Areas

Rivers

Seaports

Cities

Trade

Business

Finance

Concluding Remarks for Those Wishing to Emigrate

Attachments

I. The Capture of Santa Anna

II. Excerpt from a report of a trip to Texas, published in the United States as early as 1831, the a

III. The following, literally translated letter of two Irish peasant women, written in 1832 to thei

IV. Abbreviated extract from the diary of a travel companion of the author in 1840 from Houston to A

V. Meteorological journal, maintained in Anahuac on the flat, large Galveston Bay, 30 miles from the

Translator’s Preface

Anyone who is as fascinated about the era surrounding the establishment of the Republic of Texas as I am, will understand my excitement on discovering this book in German written in 1840.

G.A. Scherpf was a German who had been living for some time in New York and decided to undertake an expedition to see with his own eyes which of the conflicting reports about Texas were true.

He became so enamored with the country that he decided to settle there himself.

As an economist and a highly educated person, he has taken painstaking trouble to collect all the data which would be relevant to anyone considering emigration from Germany.

This was a time when conditions in Prussia and Germany as a whole were anything less than comfortable. It was marked with wars and deprivation. Many, especially of the lower working classes, were living under oppressive domination in what was still basically a feudal system, with no hope of bettering themselves.

At that time, land was the number one priority if one wanted to gain some independence and a minimum of prosperity. The chances of attaining that were just about zero as most land was in the hands of an inflexible and self-sufficing aristocracy. A bureaucratic state and a military culture were further hindrances to any kind of progress.

The offer of land up for grabs, even in a far away country, was extremely tempting and if one could raise the capital for the arduous sea journey, possibly the only alternative to a miserable life at the edge of starvation.

So the stories of the opportunities of Texas abounded and many wrote pamphlets and books, often colored and biased to encourage emigration.

Scherpf tries to bring clarity amongst all of this and claims to paint an unbiased picture. However, he had obviously fallen completely in love with Texas and his bias often shines through his attempted objectivity at times. He also obviously strictly abhors the use of alcoholic drinks (liquor) and uses every opportunity to convince the reader of the necessity for abstinence. It certainly did play a negative role among the early colonists and it is understandable that he would want to warn his readers of the dangers of its abuse.

As well as a detailed description of the country’s historical, political and economic situation, he offers detailed records of the climate at the time.

Here, the potential emigrant of 1840 would have had a handbook at his fingertips which would give him all the necessary information to make the life-changing decision of going to Texas.

Thus it provides today’s reader with a fascinating insight into the world of the Republic of Texas in 1840.

Readers of German in today’s Texas have become rare and emigration to Texas for Germans is no longer an issue. It is for that reason that I decided to translate this enormously important work into English to give the opportunity of sharing this discovery to those who would like to better understand the world of their ancestors.

Stephen A. Engelking

Foreword

It is certainly wonderful that events could have happened in this century, such as they are described in this work, of which the European public in General and especially the German takes so little notice and their importance only becomes known when the understanding of circumstances is lost for some, once the fleeting god of the moment it has flown away.

Here, in the past 15 years on one of the most beautiful spots in the New World, has been a country larger than all of the German states including Bohemia and Switzerland put together, having a climate like Italy, fertility and beauty incomparable to any part of Europe far surpassing all.  It was absolutely given away to a few thousand individuals who, with courage and entrepreneurship created a new state, while probably many German scholars were still trying to lift and discover the veil of the past in their study rooms—musing on such things as how this or that European state started, or which way the Asians went when populating Europe and so on.

This is not the place to explore the causes of this unfamiliarity of the German public with the present but so that, when in a few centuries the emergence of this new state belongs to history, the scholars of that time will find sources in Germany from which they can lecture on the miracles of the past, I offer the reading public of Germany this small contribution, the content of which is partly the result of personal observation and own research and partly collected from reliable and credible sources. Without doubt, for the time being it will belong only to ephemeral literature and, although I may take the liberty of calling it a contribution to the history of the time, it will soon be forgotten, just as the readers of the moment will have satisfied their curiosity. But perhaps some of the copies will find a place in some library, where they will perhaps be rediscovered after half a millennium, when the greatness, power and riches of this state will catch the eyes of the world, and its history of origin will be picked out of the dust of the past.[1]

If the fleets of America and its armies perhaps exceed those of today’s Europe in number, the historian in A.D. 2840 will then find with astonishment that a few hundred barbarians first conquered the country and had to drive Comanches out of it as well as a nation called Mexicans and a different race, whose appearance will then no longer be known.

Likewise, today’s military will smile when they read here how a collection of volunteers, who would hardly form a full European battalion, conquered a country of this size and decided an event of such importance at the outdoor theater of San Jacinto, just as in the same way the events of the past are decided on a big European stage as in some big opera spectacle.

However, the event itself will not lose any importance, and only appear even stranger.

For those readers who think of emigration to the western part of the world, I add nothing more than that I sketched the country as I saw it. Of all who saw more of it than I, they described almost unanimously much the same. But I do not want to encourage emigration through exaggerated descriptions by those who do not not feel the desire arise in themselves, yet I have chosen my future place of residence to be in Texas.

The author.

The Genesis of Texas

Introduction

The now independent state of Texas forms the northeastern border province of Mexico and covers an area of 6 latitudes and 15 longitudes.

During the Spanish sovereignty in Mexico, the politics of Spain were directed to completely prevent the colonization of this border country by foreigners and even to limit the establishment of a Spanish-Mexican population, in order to erect a front against the growing power of the United States that could make an attack on land very difficult.

Only in the western part of the province of Texas did Spanish settlements exist around the cities of Bexar (founded 1692), Goliad (1716), Bahia and a military post in the eastern part of Nacogdoches. Several others existed earlier but were later abandoned. The whole country has essentially remained in its original natural state for almost two centuries and apart from the animals of the wild, hardly 6000 souls, the estimated population of Spanish descent, vegetated in it in complete seclusion from the rest of the world. It was punishable by imprisonment to strangers of every nation who were prohibited from indefinitely staying in Texas and even simple travelers were exposed to many dangers.

With the emergence of the Mexican Republic, a new period began in the history of this country, which is linked to the neighboring two provinces Tamaulipas and Coahuila, when it became a member of the Mexican Federal Republic.

During the war that ended with Mexico’s independence, a better relationship was established between the new republic and the United States, in which both the government and individuals of this last nation had contributed a great deal to the success of the revolution in Mexico and the new republic adopted a different policy regarding the colonization of this border country. Thus, the actual colonization of the province by immigrants from the United States and other countries began in this period.

Colonization under the Mexican Republic

The importance of this country has long been known both in the United States and in England and as early as 1820 the Congress of the former seriously discussed the acquisition of the country on the occasion of the acquirement of Florida.

When the United States bought Louisiana from France, it turned out that the borders of this country were never exactly defined and France always wanted to embrace the present Texas. This border dispute between France and Spain they thus acquired and after several years of attempts at a solution, it was finally decided in 1819 by the Florida session but with which several influential members of Congress were dissatisfied and considered it unfavorable.

The British agent in Mexico, Ward (in 1825, 26, 27) also speaks in his work on Mexico of the importance of this country for the United States and the likelihood of its future union with them,[2] and should under the strangest events of the present time in this part of the world, the famous Aaron Burrs’ shrouded attempt be heard, it would have matured and been crowned with success[3].

A union of individuals under favorable conditions finally brought about for their own benefit what the United States missed twice—the acquisition of the land of Texas—and from the tribe of the United States developed the seeds of a new nation, which will be the up till here and no further for the insatiability of American acquisitiveness, at least in the southwestern direction and will either separate the powerful northern republic forever from the weak southern one, or will one day absorb it into itself.

Already under the Spanish viceroyalty, single individuals from the southern states of Louisiana and Mississippi, individually and on their own, had moved to Texas and without further ado had settled in the solitude of nature on the most beautiful spots, without worrying for long about a bill of sale for the land taken possession of.

I have had the opportunity to get to know some of them, including having found some very respectable persons among them—from Connecticut or Massachusetts or other northern states. However, a significant number of them may seem adventurous arising from that character that belongs to the unknown persons of substance in Germany, a mixture of planters, players, hunters, robbers and killers that you only see and can get to know in the most remote outposts of American civilization on the western borders of the United States.

The Mexican struggle for independence was the means to make this Eldorado better known to those adventurous spirits of the United States. Cross country commercial ventures providing all kinds of needs to the parties in the dispute. The movements of voluntary militia across Texas to the place of war brought the characteristics of inner Texas—which few Europeans had visited since the discovery of America—into more general knowledge and Texas colonization became a favorite of the new government in the one-year imperial and subsequent republican form.

Laws on this have been promulgated, which can hardly be exceeded in liberality.

Nevertheless, the great advantages that the country offered to entrepreneurs only slowly became apparent in the United States. The European population probably could not even dream that there was a country where whole village areas, counties, and principalities would be just given away.

A special feature of these colonization laws was that they contracted with individual entrepreneurs called impresarios who chose an