Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Dreams of a Sheep Ranch Sheep Raising Herding Sheep Something About Texas Land Grants The "Texas Fever" Why I wanted to Go Hunting in Texas Father Spys the Land Our Plantation Father Comes Home The Bigness of Texas Where We were Going What I Hoped to Do Cattle Driving How We Set Out A Laborious Journey Comanche Indians Father to the Rescue Arrival at Fort Towson Preparing for a Storm A Dry "Norther" Two Kinds of Northers How Turkeys Kill Snakes Deer and Rattlesnakes A Corral of Wagons On the Trail Again Mesquite A Texas Sheep Ranch Profits from Sheep Father's Land Claim Spanish Measurements The Chaparral Cock Night on the Trinity Standing Guard A Turkey Buzzard Plans for Building a House The Cook Shanty A Storm of Rain A Day of Discomfort Thinking of the Old Home Waiting for the Sun Too Much Water The Stream Rising Trying to Save the Stock The Animals Stampeded Saving Our Own Lives A Raging Torrent A Time of Disaster The Flood Subsiding A Jack Rabbit Reparing Damages Rounding up the Stock FAfter the Flood Waiting for Father Recovering Our Goods Setting to Work Sawing Out Lumber In the Saw Pit Wild Cattle A Disagreeable Intruder Odd Hunting A Supply of Fresh Meat "Jerking" Beef Searching for the Cattle Our New Home Planting and Building Bar-O Ranch An Odd Cart The Visitors Zeba's Curiosity Possible Treachery Suspicious Behavior Gyp's Fight With a Cougar In a Dangerous Position Hunting Wild Hogs Treed by Peccaries Gyp's Obedience My Carelessness Vicious Little Animals Father Comes to the Rescue Increase in my Flock Unrest of the Indians Texas Joins the Union War with Mexico Selling Wool Peace on the Trinity My Dream Fulfilled

Philip of Texas - James Otis




Land Grants

All this has little to do with what I am going to tell in regard to my going into the sheep business; yet if all those things had not happened, then President Lamar and President Houston might not have been able to make grants of land to people who were willing to come into the country and build homes.

There were a number of men who succeeded in getting so-called grants from the Texan government. Among these there was a certain Mr. Peters, I never knew his first name, who had obtained a grant of an exceedingly large tract of land in the northern part. It was, so father had been told, the best land in Texas; and in order to gain settlers, Mr. Peters agreed to give outright to the head of every family six hundred and forty acres of land, and to each single man three hundred and twenty acres.

Now, of course, my father was the head of a family, although mother and I were the only other members of it; nevertheless he would receive just as many acres of land as though he had a dozen children.

[Illustration] from Philip of Texas by James Otis

When the matter was first talked about among our neighbors in Mississippi, I hoped I might be counted as a single man; but I was very soon made to understand that a lad of twelve years was mistaken when he reckoned himself of sufficient age to have given him three hundred and twenty acres of land simply for going into a country and living there.