The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, July 1966 - April, 1967 Page: 185

                                
Migration Into Texas, z86o-z88o

graphic, lines of demarcation cut through borderline counties,
but in this study regional and sub-regional boundaries have been
slightly altered to conform with county boundaries for more con-
venient use in the tables.
In 188o Texas had 225 counties, for eighty-two of which there
are no previous census figures. About four-fifths of the eighty-two
were newly created western counties, most of them still unorgan-
ized and attached to other counties for judicial purposes. The
remainder consisted of thirteen new counties, to a large extent in
East Texas, created from parts of twenty-two old counties.
A comparison of aggregate population by counties for the
entire state in 1870 and i88o shows that most of the substantially
populated counties of the state were not affected by changes in
county lines.5 Among them the eastern and southern counties
showed comparatively small increases in aggregate population dur-
ing the decade-ranging commonly from about 25 per cent to 75
per cent-whereas fifty-nine western counties showed relative in-
creases of more than i oo per cent, with eight in excess of 1,ooo per
cent. Eastland County in 1870 had an aggregate population of
eighty-eight, which by 188o had grown to 4,855, a relative increase
of 3,400 per cent. Ten of the twenty sub-regions showed relative
increases of more than i oo per cent, while the aggregate growth
for the state as a whole during the decade was 94.6 per cent.
By 188o settlers had moved into West Central Texas in such
numbers that the triangular area formed by Montague County
on the northeast, Wichita County on the northwest, and Mason
County on the south was fairly well settled. In fact, farm settle-
ment had even begun to encroach upon the cattle regions of
West Texas.
In 188o Texas had a ratio of 89,982 females to loo,ooo males,
signifying immigration of a fairly large number of single men.
The proportion of foreign-born to natives of the United States in
the entire state at that time was 7,759 to I00,000.6
Schedule 1 of free inhabitants in the Tenth Census,7 as in pre-
5U. S. Bureau of the Census, The Tenth Census of the United States: x88o.
Population (Washington, 1883), Vol. I, 78-81, 408-411.
6lbid., xxxv-xxxix.
7U. S. Tenth Census, 188o (MSS., Returns of Schedule No. i, Free Inhabitants,
for all counties of Texas, microfilm, University of Texas Library). The returns

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