Peggy Martindale Collection

Summary: Donor purchased a copy of the Tarrant County Texas Census of 1850 and donated it to the Tarrant County Archives. The 1850 census shows 599 white settlers and 65 slaves as living in Tarrant County. By 1860 the number of whites had grown to 5,170 and the number of slaves had increased to 850. Even though Fort Worth was abandoned as a military outpost in 1853, the settlers who had made their homes near the fort remained. Old fort buildings were turned into a hotel, a general store and a doctor's office. In the western part of the county, White Settlement was formed by people from Tennessee. In the southeast, settlers of predominantly Scotch-Irish background founded Gipson. The fastest growing area was in the northeast, near Grapevine Prairie.