The city and county of Hamilton were created in 1858 by the Seventh Texas Legislature, which specified that both the county and county seat would be named for General James Hamilton. Hamilton was a former congressman and governor of South Carolina who took an interest in Texas during the 1836 war for independence, and loaned the new republic $216,000 to help finance its struggle. After Texas became independent, he invested heavily in Texas land, and although he never set foot in Hamilton County, he owned several sections of land in the county that would bear his name. He also worked to obtain favorable treaties of commerce for Texas with England and the Netherlands.

On a voyage to Texas in 1857, his ship was wrecked, and Hamilton drowned after giving his life preserver to a woman with a small child. His friends in Texas wanted to honor his memory, and named the new county after him the next year.

Of course, there were a few pioneers in the area before it ever became a county. The first permanent settlers arrived in the early 1850s, and a small group of families settled at the site of the present town in 1855. Among these were the families of James M. Rice, Henry Standefer and Ezekiel Manning. The log cabin of the Manning family was the first home built in Hamilton; Rice and Standefer (who had been to California for the gold rush in 1849, but had come back to Texas) built the first store (on what would later become the southeast corner of the Hamilton square) later that year. The two storekeepers were part of a committee to find a county seat when the state required a site within five miles of the county’s geographic center; the committee chose the present site because its location on Pecan Creek provided plenty of water, and Hamilton remained the county seat despite several efforts over the next few years to have it moved.

Isaac Skelton Standefer was a former Texas Ranger who came to the Hamilton area in 1857. He and John A. Baughn carried the chains when the original town site was laid out on land donated by land agent J.H. Isbell.

Before the Civil War, there were several slaveowners in Hamilton County. These were obviously more prosperous than their neighbors, and used the slave labor to clear fields for growing corn and to build solid rock houses and barns. They had corrals for their horses and calves, to which their milk cows would return every night. Many of the other settlers earned their living by raising beef cattle on the open range.

Hamilton’s first school opened in 1859, and Professor J.J. Durham taught 40 sporadically-attending children in a primitive building; other similar schools opened around the county. Francis Marion Graves was a fourteen-year-old from Alabama who came to Hamilton by himself, attended Professor Durham’s school, and eventually (after serving three years in the Confederate army) became one of Hamilton’s leading citizens.

By 1860, there were 463 people living in Hamilton County, and there was a “road” (Ezekiel Manning and I.S. Standefer marked it by dragging a heavy log behind a wagon) to Gatesville, but the county seat was just a tiny village, with a converted livery stable for a courthouse and no jail at all. The first post office was opened in 1861. Ezekiel Manning became the county’s first sheriff; he was an honest and brave man, but didn’t have much to work with in the wild and isolated little town. Indians made regular raids into town, stealing horses and anything else they could find; outlaws also frequented the wilderness around Hamilton, making travel risky and committing various crimes in town. Fist fights and gunfights were fairly regular occurrences.

As with most towns in the Texas Hill Country, Hamilton suffered a major setback during the Civil War. With many of the men gone to fight for the Confederacy, Indian depredations became a constant threat and disrupted most social activity; schools were closed for several years. The first courthouse burned (with all the county records) in 1863; for a time, the court was held “in the store house of J.M. Rice.” The “Jones Store House” and then the Hamilton School also served as temporary courthouses in the 1860s.

One of the first schools to re-open after the war was a one-room log building on the Leon River, about seven miles northeast of Hamilton. The teacher was a young lady from Massachusetts, named Ann Whitney. She was killed by Comanche warriors on July 9, 1867 (school was open only during the summer months), but not before helping almost all her students escape. A marker in her honor now stands in front of the Hamilton County Courthouse, and Hamilton’s elementary school is named for her.

A concerted effort was made to rid Hamilton County of Comanches, and the last major raid was made at the ranch of Andrew Miller in 1868. That was also the year that F.M. Graves set off to California on a historic cattle drive. After almost two years of hardship and danger, he returned to Hamilton with thousands of dollars in gold.

In 1871, a young lawyer named James Allen Eidson arrived in Hamilton; he would become another of the town’s leading citizens. That same year, the county sold a lot to “F.M. Graves & Co.,” with the understanding that Graves would build a suitable building and rent it to the county as a courthouse for $300 per year. Outlaws had free rein in Hamilton County during those days, and judges had to be accompanied by armed guards when they came to town.

The county’s first jail was built in 1875, of 1 x 12s laid flat and nailed together until the 12”-thick walls reached the desired height. It was not enough to restore law and order, and the county seat was still a dusty little town of less than 200 population. C.K. Bell, a young attorney who would become the county attorney the next year, built a law office on the south side of the square that year. In 1876, the first newspaper (called Hamilton Herald) was founded, and W.T. Saxon, a school teacher and a former captain in the Confederate army, became the first editor. The newspaper’s arrival was greeted enthusiastically by the citizenry.

In 1877, an arsonist burned the Graves building to the ground; the county rented a room in the Crescent Saloon while the next courthouse was built, this time in the middle of the square. A stone jail was also built in 1877, and Captain Saxon became the county surveyor, a post which he held for the next 47 years, surveying every property line in the county during his tenure.

A flood of newcomers began to arrive in Hamilton from all over the United States, including many of Hamilton’s future leaders: doctors, bankers, lawyers and other professionals. And even though the new courthouse only lasted eight years before it, too, was burned, the town and county were flourishing by that time. Undaunted by two years of severe drought and the loss of yet another courthouse, Hamilton built a beautiful new stone courthouse in 1877, a building which still serves as the center of today’s stately edifice. Solid rock buildings soon surrounded the square, and Hamilton became a regional center of commerce with excellent schools and dignified churches. Many of Hamilton’s historic buildings date from that growth period in the late 1800s.

Around the county, the earliest log cabins were being replaced with frame houses of planks and bat boards. The advent of barbed-wire in 1885 led to the fencing of most of the county, and small farms and sheep-herding began to displace some of the large cattle operations. Work horses were used for plowing and pulling heavy wagons; firewood was a much sought-after commodity, and the town blacksmith was a very important man. The population mushroomed from 733 to 6,365 during the 1870s; most of that decade’s growth came in the last four years.

The first sermon in Hamilton County was reportedly preached by a Methodist minister named Hugh M. Childers, but several churches sprang up in the early days of the settlement. In 1868, Episcopal services began in the home of Mrs. E.D. Bell, and what is now Hamilton’s oldest church was built in 1891 on the hillside where Ezekiel Manning and his wife first camped in 1855.

By 1896 Hamilton had a population of 1,100, with one grocery store, two saloons, and three general stores. In 1899, a devastating flood on Pecan Creek destroyed many of the homes in Hamilton and drowned one resident, but growth continued, even accelerating a little when the railroad came to town in 1907. In 1910, there were 1,548 people in town and 15,315 in the county. Hamilton was incorporated as a city in 1911. Trade Days in Hamilton became a huge celebration for the whole area; one of the activities recorded in century-old newspapers was throwing turkeys from the roof of the McKinley-Corrigan Store with $1 bills tied to their legs. A crowd gathered on the street below, hoping to catch the turkey and retrieve the bill.

Hamilton’s streets were still unpaved in the early days of the 20th century, and the town had a distinctly different atmosphere even though many of the buildings were the same as what we see today. The streets were either dusty or muddy, depending on the weather, horses and wagons were the common methods of transportation, and herds of cattle or flocks of sheep often could be seen coming through town. The five cotton gins were always busy, and a row of saloons and pool halls on the north side of the square kept women and children away.

It was in 1911 that one of Hamilton’s most noteworthy citizens arrived from Minsk, Russia, and started his business career by selling bananas to local grocers. Haskell Harelick soon sent for his family (a complicated and dangerous proposition back then), and opened a grocery store in Hamilton with the help of his father and two brothers. Eventually, he added dry goods and operated Hamilton’s finest general mercantile store. He was involved in every aspect of the Hamilton community, and became legendary for his neighborliness and good citizenship. His three sons went into the retail business in separate towns.

After World War I, the town began to change. Automobiles began to replace horses and wagons, and prohibition closed the saloons. The streets were paved, beginning in the 1920s, and public utilities helped civilize life in Hamilton – first in town, then in the countryside. The population of Hamilton County began to fall, as farms became less labor-intensive. Local businessman W.P. “Bill” Lawson helped make local farmers more productive with his new farm implement business in 1938. It soon became one of the area’s larger employers.

Even though the railroad was closed down in 1941, the population in town had increased to 3,080 by 1950. In 1954, another flood in the Pecan Creek valley caused a million dollars in damages to area businesses, but in 1958, the county celebrated its 100th anniversary with great enthusiasm. One of the highlights of the celebration was a parade about three miles long, cheered on by a crowd of more than 8,000. Another was the unveiling of a monument to heroic teacher Ann Whitney, and several of her relatives were on hand for the occasion. After a rowdy youth, Hamilton had become a stable, mature community.

The population didn’t change much over the next few decades, so Hamilton escaped much of the urban sprawl (and the rural migration) that ruined so many other small towns. New businesses came to town, but not too many and not many national chains at all. In recent years, new shops, museums, art galleries and bed-and-breakfasts have helped shift Hamilton’s economy more toward the tourist and retirement trade, as more and more folks from the cities begin to appreciate the charms of a small town. And Hamilton is, as its motto says so succinctly “what a hometown should be.”

The safe, quiet, tree-lined streets go up and down the hills that line Pecan Creek. The business district that surrounds the regal county courthouse offers almost all the goods and services that anyone would need for daily life, plus a good number of unique shops, galleries, restaurants and museums within easy walking distance of the square. The schools and library are excellent; there’s a state-of-the art 34-bed hospital and a user-friendly airport with a 5,000 foot runway. There’s an old-fashioned theater that still shows current movies, as well as a civic theater with live productions and a fine-arts center. There are several parks and recreational areas (including a new sports complex with multiple sports fields), plus one of the finest rodeo arenas anywhere.

Hunting is a major attraction; Hamilton calls itself the “Dove Capital of Texas,” and the community’s exuberant annual “Dove Festival” is timed to coincide with the beginning of dove season each September. Other popular events are historic tours, antique tractor shows, the Veterans Day “Anvil Shoot,” Market Days on the Square, Spring Fling, golf tournaments at Perry Country Club, the Fourth of July Parade, etc., etc.

Hamilton’s moderate climate affords the possibility of year-round fishing, boating and other water sports at City Lake, Cowhouse Creek, the Leon River and nearby Lake Proctor. And the beautiful scenery and abundant wildlife in every direction make Hamilton a photographer’s dream. A couple of years ago, The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce selected sixteen local photographs and sketches to form a mural, visible to south-bound travelers on 281. In the center of the mural is the city’s logo and slogan: “What a hometown should be.” We think they got it right.