Robertson County, Texas

Robertson County, located in east central Texas, is surrounded by Limestone County to the north, Leon County to the northeast, Brazos County to the southeast, Burleson County to the south, Milam County to the southwest, and Falls County to the northwest. Franklin, the county seat, is about 100 miles northeast of Austin.

Cities, Towns and Communities

Bremond | Calvert | Easterly (Acorn) | Franklin – county seat | Hammond | Hearne | Lake Station | Mumford | New Baden | Owensville | Ridge | Tidwell Prairie | Wheelock

History

December 14, 1837, the First Texas Congress passed a measure establishing Robertson County from portions of Milam, Bexar, and Nacogdoches counties and naming it in honor of Sterling Robertson. When the county was organized the following year, the settlement of Franklin (usually referred to as Old Franklin today to differentiate it from the present county seat also named Franklin), which served as headquarters for surveyors of a land district including present Leon, Freestone, Limestone, Navarro, and other counties, became the county seat. Over the next nine years sixteen counties were carved from its original jurisdiction, and the county only assumed its present limits in 1846. In 1850 the county residents voted to move the county seat from Old Franklin to Wheelock because the town was closer to the most heavily populated areas of the area. Six years later the county seat was once again moved, this time to a new town, Owensville, near the geographical center of the county, where it remained until after the Civil War. During the mid-1830s Robertson County was the scene of numerous battles between Anglo-American settlers and Indians.

Robertson County 1858. The 31st parallel of latitude runs through the centre of this county, and, being situated very nearly in the centre of the settled portion of the State, equidistant from the Gulf of Mexico on the south, the grain region on the north, the Sabine on the east, and the Rio Grande on the west, many advantages are combined that are rarely to be found in any other section of our State. This county is bounded on its entire west, for over thirty miles, by the Brazos River, and on the east by the Navasoto. It is calculated that the Brazos valley, so far as it bounds this county, will average four miles wide, and in point of fertility of soil is unsurpassed by any lands, not only in Texas, but in the world. The face of the upland country, as the traveller leaves the Brazos valley, is exceedingly beautiful and desirable. The ascent to the divide between the two rivers (the Navasoto and Brazos), is an almost imperceptible rise through a succession of beautiful sweeps, or long slopes of country, gradual in rise and declivity, till you reach the ridge that separates their waters. The uplands each way, or to either stream, are heavily set with fine post oak timber, and are of a deep mulatto or yellow cast, interspersed with creeks running through at convenient intervals, affording good bottom lands and plenty of stock-water in the driest season.

The lands of this county are well adapted to the production of the finest cotton raised in the cotton‑growing States. Unimproved lands are now worth $1.50 to $3.50; these lands, in a year or two, will be worth three or four times as much.

The new county-seat of Robertson County is Owensville [1858], situated sixteen miles north of Wheelock, on a beautiful, elevated spot of ground, pretty nearly in the centre of the county, and on the dividing ridge between the Brazos and Navasoto [sic], and within one mile and a half of the proposed route for the Houston, Red River, and Central Texas Railroad. A fine court-house, a jail, and female academy, have already been erected. Emigrants will do well to turn their attention in this direction.

County Histories

History of Robertson County, Texas, 1970, by J. W. Baker, Robertson County Historical Survey Committee.

Historical Recollections of Robertson County, Texas, 1955 by Richard Denny Parker.

Location

Franklin, TX 31° 1′ 33.6684″ N, 96° 29′ 6.8784″ W

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