Statewide Texas Voter Registration for 1867
Brenda Kellow
March 11, 2012
On March 23, 1867, Congress passed legislation that called for a registration of qualified voters in each military district. The text of this legislation can be found in the Statutes at Large in volume 15, page 2 (15 Stat 2). The commanding officer in each district was required to have, before September 1, a list of these voters from each county. These lists would be used to determine all who would be eligible to vote for any proposed Constitutional Convention in the state.
The northern population was concerned about the race riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866. They were also concerned with Andrew Johnson, the militant successor to Abraham Lincoln. Within the next two years, the congress, feeling betrayed by the president, enacted four military Reconstruction acts to deal with the rebel States. These divided the South into five military districts with Texas and Louisiana as the Fifth Military District. The new laws would suppress the insurrection, protect civil and property rights and punish all criminals. These insured that the state governors call for new elections in which black and white men would be registered to vote if they took an oath of loyalty to the United States. By using the civil and criminal courts, the Freedmen’s Bureau courts and military tribunals, Congress felt they could better control the situation. This resulted in removing state officials who made overtures to obstruct registration.
Because of the numbers of white males who registered but refused to vote, Congress passed a final act to correct the flaw in the first law. This stipulated that state constitutions be approved by a majority of those casting votes. By 1868, Congress and the Republican Party wanted to quickly bring the Southern states back into the Union and courted the black male vote in the South.
The 1867 voter registration list for Texas contains the voter’s name, registration number, the county in which they registered, their race, place of birth, length of residence in the state, county, and precinct, where naturalized. If the male voter could write his name, then he wrote it in the last column. Sometimes that is the only place where a signature of the individual is found.
Prior to the publication of “The Index to the 1867 Voters’ Registration of Texas” researchers could only access the information by perusing the registration person by person. It has great historical and genealogical value. It is as important as a federal, state or sheriff’s census index because it names maybe for the first time the males living after the Civil War. This is immensely important because some males died of war injuries or natural causes before the enumeration of the 1870 census.
For African American researchers, it is a statewide listing of newly freed slaves, distinguishable by an asterisk following their names. A few counties do not indicate race, but other counties like Matagorda provide the plantation names from which the slaves came. Every genealogist researching in this state should use this source and every library should have it in its collection.
The original Voters’ Registration of 1867 is housed in the Texas State Library and Archives and available on microfilm to those visiting Austin or through inter-library loan. The microfilm collection and a written publication is available in the Genealogy Library collection. The original volumes have been microfilmed, and the film copies are available to be viewed onsite at 1201 Brazos in Austin, Texas. They may also be requested through interlibrary loan, www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/votersreg.html.
PATRIOTS OF COLOR DATABASE: Because African Americans were not well documented, it is challenging to find them in census and customary databases. Archives.com released their Patriots of Color Database in honor of Black History Month. By using primary records such as pension, bounty land application files, muster and pay rolls, lists of troops, court records, legislative records and census records, researchers are not able to document those who contributed so much to American history in the original 13 colonies. This collection documents soldiers, skilled craftsmen and servants providing so much to American Independence. It is now available without cost on their site, www.Archives.com/Patriots.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history, teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s histories in 2007, Brenda held certification as a Certified Genealogist and as a Certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunion announcements, books to review, and genealogy queries to: [email protected].