Texas, 1850–1900

Counties are the Newberry Library's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, Texas dataset, sliced at 1 June of each census year by src/land/texas.py. Every polygon there carries the dates between which that boundary stood, and the act that drew it; the popups quote both. The atlas also keeps the ground that had no county: the Fannin Land District of 1850, the Bexar Land District and Young Territory west of the settled line from 1858, the small numbered non-county areas, and a sixty-square-mile overlap between Clay and Jack that took until 1895 to settle. Greer County, created by Texas in February 1860 from Young Territory, is drawn where Texas put it — in what is now Oklahoma; the Supreme Court gave it to the United States in 1896.

Towns are the 1850 through 1900 columns of the Texas Almanac's City Population History from 1850–2000, which is the fullest single list there is, and — before 1880 — an uneven one. The Almanac prints the federal census where a town was enumerated separately, and otherwise fills in from an 1858 count of incorporated towns made by the county tax assessors, or an estimate; its 1850 column is mostly the 1858 count. The basis column carries the Almanac's own flag for each figure. In 1860, eight of the fifteen are census counts; the others are the Almanac's estimates — including Dallas, which the Almanac puts at 2,000 where the census counted 678 — and one, Weatherford, whose figure the Almanac flags as an 1870 count printed in the 1860 column. From 1880 on every figure in the fifteen is a census count. The tables take the Almanac at its word and say which is which; they do not correct it. The full columns are in src/land/texas/towns.json. Town positions are the modern city centres from the Census Bureau's place gazetteer.