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The Creation and Organization of Ellis County, Texas
(Researched and Prepared by Joe F. Grubbs)
       With the words "[a]t a session of the County Court of Ellis County began and held at the Town of Waxahachie in the County of Ellis in the State of Texas at the house of E. W. Rogers (there being no Court house or place designated by Law for holding
Courts in said County) on Monday the nineteenth day of August in  the year of our Lord one thousand Eight Hundred and fifty"l the county of Ellis was organized. Such organization represented a culmination of efforts by several individuals who had sought to form Ellis County and the fulfillment of the mandate of the legislature of Texas.


       The first order of business for the newly formed county was that "Richard Donaldson be and he is hereby employed to survey
 and layoff the County Seat, comprising sixty acres of land in a public square, lots, streets and allies [sic] of size and dimensions as may be determined by the Court."2


      The question of the county seat has been an interesting and an important one as the issue of the relocation of county buildings and where such buildings may be constructed has become vi tally important. The "creation" and the "organization" of a county are very different terms and in this case that difference is significant. Counties are, by their nature, artificially fashioned, statutorily drawn areas designed to carry out such services as the state may require. Cities generally are not initially similarly created in that they usually represent a collection of citizens who first become a community and who may  or may not formally become a town or ultimately a city.   Waxahachie is an exception to the general rule of the formation
of cities.


      Ellis County was created on December 20, 1849, from Navarro County upon approval by the legislature of Texas of an act drawn up and presented to them by General E. H. Tarrant (as in Tarrant County) .3 " The act of the State Legislature creating Ellis 
County became effective by signing of Governor Peter Hansborough Bell on Dec. 20, 1849."4 The act not only described the county     
 but appointed a board of commissioners, "with power anq authority to ascertain the center of said county, and nominate any three places, within five miles of the center so ascertained, for the county seat of said county. ..,,5 Section 4 of the act states, in part, that after the commissioners have found the center of the county "and designated the places to be run for the county seat   of said county of Ellis, shall cause an election to be held at
 the several precincts in said county".6 Anyone who could vote  for the State Legislature could vote in the election. "[T]he
,. place receiving a majority of the whole vote shall be the county seat of said county, and called Waxahachie."7 "The next act of the Legislature, which was approved by the governor on Feb. 5, 1850 covered the organization of the county, by requiring the chief justice of Navarro County (then C.A. Cross) to issue  notices of an election to be held at E. W. Rogers' house on Monday, August 5, 1850, to canvass the return, to issue certificate of election, and qualify and install all duly elected officers, as if they were duly commissioned by the governor~ and then make customary returns to the Secretary of the State." 


             On the first Monday in August, 1850, which was August 5, 1850, the election was held. 96 votes were cast in the entire county.9 Three sites were voted on and the one on and around the present site of the Rogers Hotel where E. W. Rogers house (cabin) was located was the winner over a place on Grove Creek and one at the Reagor place.10 Since the name of the county seat had been predetermined by the legislature to be "Waxahachie", as soon as the election was held and the outcome determined, the site at or near Rogers' House became Waxahachie. That is why on August 19, 1850 when the county was organized at a meeting held at Rogers' cabin, the organizers of said county correctly stated that it
   took place in the "town of Waxahachi.e".ll August 5, 1850, the  date of the election, would be the official date of the beginning of Waxahachie even though there was not a significant community  of individuals living there at that time and in all likelihood the exact terra firma of the original town was yet to be determined. R.C. Donaldson, the surveyor employed to layout the Town of Waxahachie in his report to the County Court in the February Term of 1851 in effect confirms that the actual land which would be Waxahachie was not known until he surveyed it. He further confirms that he followed the plan for the map of the  city adopted by the Court.12 In the minutes of the Court which
 is an account of the formal presentation of Surveyor Donaldson to the Court it states "the town map is complete and accompanies
   this report. ,,13 Incidentally, i t was not until the April 28,  1871 that the Legislature of the State passed an act to incorporate the town.14


             On November 19, 1850, Emory W. and Nancy Rogers deeded to Ellis County the land which became the Original Town of
, Waxahachie. In the deed the Rogers recited that they had "offered a donation of sixty acres of land to the County of Ellis aforesaid for a county seat thereof, excepting and reserving out of the same every fourth alternate lot, conditioned that said
   donation would be elected the County Seat of said County. ,,15 The Rogers in the deed describe the property by metes and bounds and they then state "containing Sixty two acres more or less which survey includes Block No (1) one, and Block No (40) forty, as represented on the map of the Town of Waxahachie, the County Seat of said County surveyed laid out and included in the aforesaid survey. The said party of the first part excepting and reserving the aforesaid Block No (1) One and (40), which contains two acres more or less as not included in said donation and said party of the first part excepts and reserves the following numbered  Blocks, parts of blocks, and lots out of said donation of lands, being the fourth thereof as agreed upon by the parties  aforesaid. ,,16 The Rogers then have a list of ci ty lots excepted from the transaction. Although I haven't found the first    recorded city map, it is obvious from this transaction, that    there was one. Even today maps of the city display the "Old
   Town" where one may trace the systematic numbering of blocks the central core of which were also drawn into lots, and see the numbering begins at the Roger's house with Block No. One. They, of course, excepted that block on which their house sat from the conveyance to Ellis County.
             The argument that 60 acres and not the town of Waxahachie  was selected to the be the County seat of Ellis County is historically flawed. The legislature determined that the county seat when selected would be Waxahachie. The intent of the legislature, that "Waxahachie", wherever it may be, is and will    be the county seat, could hardly be more clear. Further because of the election of August 5, 1850 and the enabling legislative action, Waxahachie, the city, is clearly a municipality designated as a county seat.     
                                    

            The Rogers in their deed to Ellis County indicate that a contingent sixty acres was offered but 62 acres was recited as actually conveyed while many tracts are reserved from that conveyance. The legislature of Texas in the very act that created Ellis County predetermined that Waxahachie would be the county seat. Whether the geographic location of Waxahachie would be in its current location, at Reagor Springs or on Grove Creek was   held in suspense until the elections was held. Simultaneous with , the selection of the county seat said area selected was
  determined by the legislature to be Waxahachie. In the absence    of records to the contrary, the exact location of the land to be donated was not determined and certainly not confirmed until November 19, 1850, when Mr. and Mrs. Rogers made the conveyance   of property to Ellis County. Logic certainly indicates in light of the conveyance of the 62 rather than 60 acres and with the reservations of two blocks and many lots that the Rogers probably did not know themselves exactly where the land to be donated from their 640 acres would be until after the election when it was surveyed.
            As an example, it was interesting to note that "Rogers'   house stood on a line with the streets as they are now laid off, and, rather than move his cabin around in line with north and south, had the county seat surveyed northeast and south, [sic] west [ sic] and northwest and southeast. 1117. By a survey done    after the election, Mr. Rogers ability to delineate the laying   out of the town from northeast to southwest and from northwest to southeast is a further indication of the inexactness of the precise location of the sixty acres of the county seat at the
  time the election was held.
            To attempt to bring computer age preciseness to the acts of the founders in 1850 is to invite problems. By way of illustration, the original legislative act that created Ellis County used as its beginning point a description that said "[b]eginning on the west bank of Trinity river, at a point one mile north of Robert H. Porter's house. ,,18 As time passed    several issues arose about that description. Was one mile understood to mean one air mile or did it mean one mile with the meanders of the river?19 The description came up for question further as to what part of the house was the point of beginning   to measure the mile. When that issue was resolved in the 1880's by the General Land Office ruling that the point was one mile north of an east and west line passing through Porter's house, it was again complicated in that the house had by then disappeared  "by reason of the caving of the bluff. ,,20 Over the years the imprecise descriptions and the disputes, primarily with Johnson County, generated by those descriptions have through legislative act and agreements dispossessed Ellis County of slightly more than 100 of the 106621 s~uare miles of the land originally described to it in 1849.2

                1 Volume A, Page 1, Minutes, Ellis County Commissioners
              Court.
                2 Id. at 1.
                3 Page 104 , A _M_e~~ri~l- ~!:!~ BiogEaph!c_a.!History of Ellis
                County, Texas published 1892, Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois.
                4 Organization of the County by Ruth Stone, History of Ellis
              County, Texas by the Ellis County History Workshop, copyright

              1972, Texian Press, Waco, Texas.
                5 See supra p. 105 at note 3.
                6 Id. at page 105.
                7 Id. at page 105.
                8 See supra p. 15 at note 4.
                9 See supra p. 108 at note 3.
              10 Id. at. p. 78.
              11 See supra p. 1 at note 1.

              12  Id. at p. 17.
              13 Id. at p. 17.
              14 See supra p. 179-180 at note 3.
              15 Vol A Page 4, Deed Records of Ellis County, Texas, Recorded January 9, 1851
              16 
5 Id. at p. .

              17 See supra p. 108 at note 3.
              18 Id. at p. 108.
              19 Id. at p. 78.
              20   See supra p. 15 at note 4.
              21 p. 285 .The History and Ge~~~aehy. 9;~ _~ex~~ as- To~d _in
              " County Names by Z.T. Fulmore, published 1935, .The .Steck Company, Austin, Texas.
                22 See supra p. 16 at note 4.
                             .