Historic Walker County

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Above: “A typical Texas cotton
field at picking time,” Keystone
View Company.
FROM THE EDITOR’S COLLECTION.
Right: Jim and John “Tip” Hightower.
COURTESY SAMUEL WALKER HOUSTON MUSEUM
AND CULTURAL CENTER.
known as the Walls Unit and sits only a few
blocks off the town square behind the modern
headquarters of the Texas Criminal Justice
System. Leading local figures including John
Slater Besser and Thomas Jewett Goree worked
as administrators with the prison system in the
mid-nineteenth century, and hundreds of local
residents are employed by the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice today. 24
S L A V E R Y I N W A L K E R C O U N T Y
Between 1821 and 1836, Anglo Americans
forcibly brought thousands of enslaved African
Americans into Texas to perform agricultural
and domestic work. Although the Mexican
government threatened to restrict or even end
black slavery, the Texas Revolution and
Constitution of the Republic of Texas (1836)
specifically guaranteed the rights of
slaveholders. After Texas joined the United
States in 1845, the institution of slavery
solidified and expanded as more slaves entered
the system. 25
In Walker County the number of enslaved
African Americans grew from 1,301 in 1850 to
4,135 in 1860. Local slaves outnumbered white
residents in the county, and they performed the
vast majority of the agricultural work in the
area. 26 Obviously, there were great differences in
the daily experiences of enslaved African
Americans. Some, like Joshua Houston and Jeff
Hamilton, had a comparatively good
experience, since they were owned by the
principled Sam Houston. Joshua Houston
received a rudimentary education and became a
skilled blacksmith, a craft which would
ultimately garner him great respect among the
white citizens of Huntsville. Even so, Joshua
Houston could not marry the woman whom he
loved or act as a father to his children because
his family lived on a distant plantation and slave
marriages were forbidden by Texas law. 27
Other enslaved African Americans toiled in
obscurity for owners who could buy, sell,
mortgage, and hire them out at a moment’s
notice. The vast majority of slaves in Walker
County worked as field hands, performing the
back-breaking agricultural work required to
produce the cotton and corn crops on which the
local economy depended. There were, of course,
craftsmen, house slaves, and livestock handlers,
but these individuals were smaller in number
and represented a kind of privileged class
among the slave community.
The slave diet consisted primarily of corn
and pork, although many slaves supplemented
their masters’ offering with a collection of sweet
potatoes, garden vegetables, wild game, and fish
that they provided for themselves. Slave houses
were small, log cabins with dirt floors, a
fireplace and bed. Slave clothing was generally
made of inexpensive, crude material, and shoes
were rarely fitted. Little medical care was
available for slaves, and they suffered through
all types of common illnesses as did their
masters during the antebellum era. 28
1 4 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y