The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923 Page: 225
324 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath
miles below the boundary of the colony who had been there thir-
teen years and raised his large family there. He had a league of
land and an unfinished house of one room. Ten acres of the
land in the Brazos bottom had been overflowed that year and his
corn drowned out. His force in his own family of four grown
sons would have been sufficient for all the land he had in use, but
he offered us one-fourth of his cleared land free for clearing as
much more. This would be only five acres for us, but it seemed
our best chance to get land, and the Brazos bottom was considered
certain to make forty or fifty bushels to the acre. We could at
least make a start so as to have grain near at hand when moving
into the new colony. Besides there was a dilapidated field nearby
which we could use free by rebuilding the fence washed down
against the trees. So we accepted the offer, moved some time
in January, 1834, and went to work, and in a manner carried out
our contract during the year. The labor came awkward to me,
as I had never done anything of the kind before; besides I was
sick the whole summer, still not having recovered from the ac-
climating bilious attack, and the place was considered a sickly
one. Porter moved his family in August to Tenoxtitlan.
I traded my clothes brought from Germany for cattle and hogs;
I have mentioned the coat, which was my father's in Vienna;
the sow I bought with it died at once, and a horse which I had
traded for corn went the same way. Still as a result of my trad-
ing I had a very good start of hogs in the fall. Porter, too, ac-
cumulated cattle for articles he could trade. He gave an ox for
a sow valued at five dollars, a feather bed for three cows and
calves, a gun for a mare, and another gun for a cow, calf and
yearling. Buying and selling was generally by exchange of prop-
erty. To a certain extent a cow and calf had come to be used as
legal tender for ten dollars. If a man wished to say he had paid
fifty dollars for a yoke of steers, very likely he said, even if he
had paid in money, that he gave five cows and calves for them.
The observation that cows and calves were ten dollar bills and
hogs and chickens silver change was common. i
The government at that time demanded no taxes. Anything to
be done for the common good was done voluntarily. Every man
of family arriving in the country was entitled to a league of land
(4428 acres), by paying about fifty dollars on an average for sur-225
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923, periodical, 1923; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101084/m1/231/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.