Part 5, Note 81
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Colorado Citizen, January 12, 1861, February 16, 1861; Colorado
County Election Records, [Book 1] 1854-1866. Since 1861, the Colorado County
secession referendum results have been printed at least four times in historical
works: first in the September 26, 1931 issue of the Eagle Lake Headlight,
in a story which carried no byline and gave no source for the figures; second,
in chart form, in 1936, in a footnote on page 245 of Leonie Rummel Weyand and
Houston Wade's An Early History of Fayette County (La Grange: La Grange
Journal Plant, 1936), and again with no attributed source; third in 1939, by
Norma Shaw, in her masters thesis, "The Early History of Colorado County" (p.
42), wherein she erroneously credits "Commissioners Court Records, Colorado
County, Texas. Not indexed until 1880. These records are known as 'Police
Records;'" and finally, on page 99 of Colorado County Chronicles (Austin:
Nortex Press, 1986), wherein An Early History of Fayette County is cited.
In all previous publications, the precinct numbers have been omitted, and two
errors, albeit minor ones, have been made. The vote total in Precinct 8 has
always previously been given as ten for and one against, when in the original
chart it is quite clearly given as fourteen for and zero against.
Mention should also be made of the variant spelling of the
names given to Precincts 5 and 6. In the original, they are called "Harvey
Creek" and "Dunleavy." The spellings used herein, which are the same as those
used in all previously published versions, are the more common ones now and were
more common in the 1860s. Both Harvey's Creek and Dunlavy, as well as Sandies,
refer to school houses bearing the same names at which the residents of the
various precincts voted. As has been seen, the people near the Dunlavy School
had already adopted the name New Mainz for their community. The residents of
Precinct 7, which evidently included Walnut Bend and the plantations just
upriver, went to the home of Andrew Crier to vote; therefore the election
records give the precinct name as "Crier's."