NOTES AND FRAGMENTS.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CASTRO'S COLONY.

—When Henri Castro, in February, 1843, brought his first colonists to the village of San Antonio, no white settlement existed west of the San Pedro Creek in San Antonio, to the Rio Grande, and the various Indian tribes nomadically occupied the country, the Comanches, Apaches, Tonkawas, Lipans, Kickapoos, and others. The grant known as Castro's Colony, included portions of Medina, Uvalde, Zavalla, La Salle, McMullen, Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar counties. Through his agents and his own efforts, in France and Germany, in the Rhenish provinces, four hundred and eighty-five families, and four hundred and fifty-seven single men, amounting to five thousand two hundred people, were brought in twenty-seven ships to Texas. Quite a number of them never went to the colony, only five hundred and fifty-eight certificates for land being issued. On the 1st of September, 1844, Henri Castro left San Antonio, at the head of his colonists and established his first settlement on the Medina River, twenty-five miles west of San Antonio, the town being named Castroville after the founder, by a unanimous vote of the colonists. It was the county seat of Medina county until 1892, and a prettier location for a town can hardly be found in Texas. In 1845 he founded the town of Quihi, on the banks of Quihi Lake, distant nine miles west of Castroville; in 1846 he founded the town of Vandenburg, five miles northwest from Quihi. Vandenburg, however, was abandoned; the water in Verde Creek, upon which the town was situated, having dried up, on account of a protracted drought, the inhabitants moved two and one-half miles below to New Fountain. In 1847 he founded the town of D'Hanis, twenty-five miles west from Castroville. These settlements prospered, and immigrants continued to arrive, and had Mr. Castro not been prevented by many obstacles, Mexican War, drought, debts and litigation and marauding Indians and Mexicans, his intentions were to surround his colony grant with villages. Two more were to be located, one on the lower Seco, below D'Hanis, to be called Osy, and one on the Laguna San Miguel, to be named St. Louis.

The cost of transporting the immigrants from the coast of Europe to that of the Gulf of Mexico then averaged thirty dollars for each person, exclusive of provisions; some of the colonists paid their own way, but Mr. Castro advanced the money, for a great many, and as early as 1844 in a letter to the President of Texas he said that he had spent over forty thousand dollars, in expense, for his colony, and he later claimed that for his services to the Republic of Texas. For colonizing the country west of San Antonio he received from the State of Texas in all thirty-eight thousand four hundred acres of land, but no other indemnity nor relief, and the land, through mortgage, debts, and litigation, was largely wrested from him, so that he died a poor man. A few of the original colonists are still living; their descendants, however, are found in every county in West Texas. The writer is gathering material for a detailed history of Castro's Colony, and would like to get possession of the original "Colony Register," and also a book, "Henry Castro's Memoirs on Texas," 1845, in French and German, with maps, 12mo. Any reader, knowing of either, will confer a favor by corresponding with

H. E. HAASS, Hondo, Medina Co., Texas.

A CORRECTION.

—In my article, Presidential Reconstruction in Texas, printed in the last (April) issue of the QUARTERLY, the statement on page 313 of the total amount of State warrants issued during the war should be "about eight and one-half millions of dollars," instead of "nearly fifteen million." Moreover, these figures are for the total State debt contracted during the war, not merely issues of Treasury warrants. They are taken from the report of E. M. Peaseand Swante Palm to Governor Hamilton.

CHARLES W. RAMSDELL.