Part 8

Part 8, Note 44

Colorado County Election Returns, Lavaca County Election Returns, Senatorial Election Returns, 27th District, 1876, all in Secretary of State Records (RG 307), Archives Division, Texas State Library, Austin; Colorado County Election Records, Book 1874-1884; Colorado Citizen, January 13, 1876, February 3, 1876, February 24, 1876, March 2, 1876, March 9, 1876, March 23, 1876, April 20, 1876; Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 1876-1879, pp. 21, 23. Three of the 1875 candidates for the state legislature, Arnim, Ballard, and Whitfield, were from Lavaca County. Two more early candidates for sheriff in the 1876 county elections, W. H. Eason and Sumner H. Townsend, withdrew from the race shortly before the election. Eason may have been a black man.
Perhaps there is no clearer indication of the change in the political attitude of the Germans than the election of Mike Muckleroy, a virtual outcast in the community ten or fifteen years earlier, as county commissioner. Thirteen years after the emancipation of the slaves, and thirty years or more after the establishment of the German community, new German voters, many of whom were born in Texas and knew little or nothing about the pre-war slavery debates and concerns, were allying themselves with the conservatives.