Republic of Texas: Poll Lists for 1846

Book excerpt: Arranged alphabetically, this work lists the names and counties of residence of approximately 18,000 Texas taxpayers. (A "poll" tax of one dollar was levied on every white male resident over the age of twenty-one and on women who were heads of household.) By 1846, when Texas became the thirty-sixth state in the Union, there were sixty-seven county governments already organized as functioning units of the state, yet no authorized census of the state was undertaken until 1850. This 1846 poll list, compiled from the original tax rolls housed in the Texas State Archives, is actually the nearest thing we have to a complete census of the period.