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The loss of the Civil War meant the loss of property and citizenship for some and newfound freedom for others.
Times were hard even before the Civil War ended because money had become worthless. People had to barter for food or grow their own. Debts couldn’t be repaid.
The Civil War was devastating for most of the plantation owners in the area around Elgin because they lost their labor force, their slaves. In most cases, they also lost citizenship in the United States. To regain citizenship, they had to sign an oath. This included those leaving for California after the Civil War. Examples are the Leffingwells and Smiths from Post Oak Island.
White Texans were included among those who had borne arms against the U.S., and they were not eligible for the Homestead Act that became effective on Jan. 1, 1863. The act provided for 160 acres of land. It was available to Black people who moved out of the state. This led to the Exodus Movement, and the Black people who left the state were known as exodusters, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
After the Civil War, U.S. federal forces were deployed to Texas to aid in the transition. General George Armstrong Custer was headquartered in Austin at the Blind Asylum.
Not only the plantations owned by Austin’s Old Three Hundred around Brazoria and Fort Bend and the ones along the Colorado in Bastrop County were hard hit, but Post Oak Island’s Kidd plantation was wiped out. The plantation had flourished in the 1850s, but today, not a trace remains. Ibrey J. Kidd founded a post office in his store and Post Oak Island Lodge No. 181 in 1855. He was active in building the community, but by the early 1870s, he was bankrupt and financially ruined. He still had cattle in the agricultural census in 1870, but without more than one person to help him, he couldn’t control his herd of 700 unbranded cattle in a time before the introduction of barbed wire. There might have been several hundred calves born each year. His animals were wild on the prairie and were rounded up by people like the Olives and others who drove them up the trail to Midwestern markets and sold them.
One of the last events was the marriage of his daughter, Bettie, to James Smith Gatlin, the grandson of Mary Christian Burleson from Elgin, on Nov. 27, 1872. Ibrey and Celete Kidd left for Comanche in about 1873. He died in 1877 at the relatively young age of 61.
Charlene Hanson Jordan wrote the above narrative as the sixth of a weekly column. Her newest book, “Notes & Recollections, Post Oak Island & Elgin, Texas,” is available at the Elgin Depot Museum where exhibits, photographs and books on local history are also available. The museum is open on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. Watch for notices. Every Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m, “Notes & Recollections” may be purchased from the Niswanders at the Elgin Farmers Market in Veterans Memorial Park. The book is also available at the Elgin Courier office, 105 N. Main St. in Elgin or 512-285-3333 during business hours all week, or from Charlene directly at [email protected] or 512-856-2562.
