Historical Documents
The Historical Document Room was opened to the public on October 24, 2006. The room
is available for viewing historical documents from 1837—1925. These court records
are not just paper, they are valuable sources of Texas' and Houston’s history. Some
of the most badly deteriorated records have been restored and preserved by the Harris
County District Clerk's Office. Those efforts have been honored with a 2004 Good
Brick Award from the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance.
What Can I do to Help Save Harris County’s History?
The Harris County District Clerk’s Office has teamed with the Houston Bar Foundation to raise the funds
needed to continue restoring and preserving Harris County’s past. The Houston Bar Foundation is
accepting tax-deductible donations to preserve records. We do not suggest an amount for your donation
as any amount is greatly helpful and appreciated.
Checks can be made payable to: Houston Bar Foundation Records Preservation and mailed to P.O. Box 3552,
Houston, TX 77253. For a contribution form to include with your check,
please
click here.
In addition to preserving case files, bound volumes such as criminal case indexes, minute books, fee docket books
and accounting books from as early as the Republic of Texas days are being saved. Costs for preserving these
invaluable historical documents range from $10 for a file to as much as $2,500 for a civil index book. Donors
who contribute an amount necessary to preserve one entire book may, if they wish, be recognized on the spine or
outside cover of the book. Standard wording for such recognition will be, “In memory of _________,” “Graciously
donated by ________,” etc. Other wording desired by the donor will be taken into consideration.
The process for preservation requires experts trained in handling historical documents, as the documents must be
handled with extreme care. They are unfolded, pacified, then encapsulated in special Mylar plastic sheets to
protect them from further damage caused by exposure to air and moisture. The process being used will preserve
these records for up to 300 years and prevent further deterioration of our historical records.
Services Available in the Historical Document Room
- Public viewing of original documents
- Requested copies for $1.00 per page
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As a public service, the documents that are made available over the Web are provided
at no charge. Please note, while the clarity of some of the documents is exceptional,
the quality of others is poor. This is directly related to the quality of the original
document as well as the penmanship of the scribe in some instances. Click below
to begin viewing these priceless historical documents.
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Historical Case Of The Month
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The Honorable Judge Mark Davidson has been instrumental
in the development of the Harris County District Court Historical Document Project.
An avid legal history buff, Judge Davidson continues to write and serve as a special
advisor to the ongoing Case Of the Month articles.
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February is Black History Month. Recognizing that the Nineteenth Century Court records are the best available resource to research the experiences of the first generations of African Americans to live in Harris County, this article tells the lawsuits brought by three “Free Men of Color” before the Civil War.
The Cases of Free Men Who Chose to Become Slaves
Through the perspective of our 21st Century lives, it is impossible to try to understand the institution of slavery or how otherwise moral people could rationally believe it to be ethically appropriate. Reading the case files in lawsuits involving slaves and the laws those cases interpreted and applied requires an “Alice in Wonderland” sense of reality. Nothing seems real, and one is constantly trying to understand how the people that we honor as the founders and first settlers of our state could justify servitude of other human beings.
Three of the hardest cases to understand in our courts’ files are the cases in which “Free men of color” brought civil actions to be allowed to be converted to slaves and pick their masters. In three separate cases, free men brought civil actions in the District Court of Harris County to be named a slave. The three cases were:
State of Texas v. Bob Allen;
State of Texas v. Charles G. Amos
State of Texas v. Charles F. Revelson   Court Minutes from the 11th Distrinct Court Vol. J The Amos and Revelson cases were filed the same day, and ruled upon the same day by Judge Edward Palmer. Other than their temporal identity, there is one other common thread between the two cases – the person who the men chose to be their new master – General J. Bankhead Magruderi.[i] Magruder had been a highly decorated officer during the Mexican-American War of 1848, but had resigned his commission at the beginning of the Civil War to join the Southern forces. After falling out of favor with General Robert E. Lee, he was transferred to be in charge of the Confederate efforts in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. His primary military success was the recapture of Galveston from union forces on January 1, 1863. We cannot state why he needed slaves, since his family lived in Baltimore, and General commonly used privates to attend to their personal needs. It can be said that Magruder was a person of influence in Texas during the war.
The three cases were all brought after the enactment in 1858 of a bill in the Texas Legislature which expressly allowed this practice.[ii] The terms of the statute limited the opportunity to exercise this “right” to males over the age of fourteen, and only after the District Attorney of the County had been given the opportunity to investigate the circumstances of the suit to ascertain that no fraud or compulsion was involved. Subsequent interpretations of the statute by the Supreme Court of Texas held that a free person of color had no such right before enactment of the statute, but we are aware of at least one such case that occurred during the Republic of Texas.
The statute and most of the cases brought under the statute were publicized with glee by the pro-slavery press of pre-war Texas. Southerners, and especially the monied class of southerners in the years just before the war, often tried to show that slavery was good thing for the African-Americans. The publicity given the cases was part of the effort to convince the non-monied white population of the wisdom of preserving slavery as an institution.
Why did the men bring these suits? We know it must have been difficult for free men of color to make a living in Texas. Many cities (but not Houston) enacted “removal ordinances”, prohibiting persons of color from living in their cities. Some cites (including Houston) placed an 8:00 o’clock p.m. curfew on Blacks being on the streets unescorted. Often, free men would have started families with slave women, and threats to sell a man’s wife and children might have provided motivation to bring a free man into slavery.
The servitude of the three men was (relatively) short-lived. Slavery was abolished in Texas at the conclusion of the Civil War, and the three men were freed. The public record is as silent as to whether and how they enjoyed their freedom as it is to why they chose to give up that freedom.
ii Gammel (comp), Laws of Texas, IV, 947-949.
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