The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969 Page: 109

Book Reviews
ROBERT C. COTNER, Editor
Bounty and Donation Land Grants of Texas, 1835-1888. By Thomas
Lloyd Miller. Austin (University of Texas Press), 1968. Pp. xiii+
894. Illustrations, appendices, bibliography, glossary, index.
$25.00.
This compendium of the bounty and donation grants of Texas is
the result of four years of dedicated research in the records of the
General Land Office of Texas. The author, a history professor at Texas
A8cM University, completed this study in 1956 for his doctoral dis-
sertation. It has awaited publication these many years.
The history of Texas is largely the history of the land that is Texas.
From the earliest day, settlers were attracted to Texas because of cheap
land, and the promise of free land motivated many of the volunteer
soldiers to fight for independence. Speculating and trading in Texas
land has been a favored vocation since the first Anglo-American ar-
rived. This book, which deals with records and documents comprising
the history of the land, makes a definite contribution to Texas history.
A bounty was a land grant made for military service, promised in
advance of the service as an inducement for enlistment. A donation
was a grant for service already rendered which had not been promised,
but was made out of gratitude after the military service had been
performed, such as service in the battle of San Jacinto, the siege of
Bexar, the Alamo, and Goliad. The Republic and State of Texas has
granted 5,354,250 acres based on 7,469 bounty warrants, and has issued
1,816 donation certificates of 640 acres each for a total of 1,162,240
acres.
To learn whether a person served in the Texan military forces during
the struggle for independence from Mexico, it was necessary to
search laboriously the comptroller's Military Service Records in the
Texas State Archives and the individual file of each soldier-grantee in
the General Land Office, Austin. In this handy volume one now has
in alphabetical order the name of each original grantee of a bounty
or donation, number of acres, county where located, date of warrant
or certificate, military service for which granted, date and number of