Part 5

Part 5, Note 52

Colorado Citizen, June 19, 1858, July 3, 1858, August 7, 1858, August 14, 1858, August 20, 1859, September 29, 1859, November 3, 1859, November 17, 1859, December 8, 1859; Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 271: State of Texas v. Daniel W. Shaver; William Henry Harrison, Alleyton, Texas "Back Door to the Confederacy," Alleyton: Show Me Type & Print, 1993, p. 72. Shaver was convicted of the murder and sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary, however, in the summer of 1859, responding to a petition signed by most of the qualified voters in Colorado County, Governor Hardin R. Runnels pardoned Shaver (see Colorado Citizen, June 11, 1859).
Though buildings were certainly erected earlier, the earliest recorded sale of a lot in Eagle Lake is dated May 31, 1860 (see Colorado County Deed Records, Book K, p. 734). The records of the Railroad Commission of Texas, as transcribed and published by Charles P. Zlatkovich, refer to Eagle Lake as "Milepost 65," reflecting, presumably, the town's largely theoretical nature when the track was completed (see Zlatkovich, Texas Railroads A Record of Construction and Abandonment, pp. 26, 63). In her 1879 article entitled "Sketch of Colorado County," Laura Jack Irvine reported that the first house in Eagle Lake was built by "Vandervier." Certainly, there were two early residents of the city named J. P. and Catherine Vandeveear, however, the earliest verifiable date on which they owned land in Eagle Lake was not until September 22, 1866, well after the first buildings are known to have been constructed (see Irvine, "Sketch of Colorado County," American Sketch Book, vol. 5, no. 3, 1879, p. 95; Colorado County Deed Records, Book M, p. 283).