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This is a copy of the 1899 Land Grant from
the State of Texas to my Great Grandfather, G.C. Harrison. This was part of the Texas School Lands program in which a person was granted permission to homestead State land for a period of three
consecutive years, making improvements and thereby being granted ownership. This was
to get land on the tax rolls and get Texas settled. Keep in mind this was only 33 years
after the battle at San Jacinto to win independence from Mexico. Texas was still wild and
untamed.
Anyway, the story goes that he was originally granted land
in Cass County, Texas in the "Piney Woods" but he wanted to be in West Texas. So, he found
someone who would switch grants with him. My grandfather told me and my father that when G.C.
arrived atop an area known as Albany Hill, outside Albany, Texas, he could see the Double
Mountains in Fisher County, a distance of some 70 miles as the crow flys, and made the statement to those with him,
that his land was a few miles (approximately 20) Northwest of those mountains. (There is
no way that one can see the this same distance today due to air pollution.)
G.C. died in 1927 and for a number of years, his widow, sons and daughters lived on the
"farm" of 432 acres. Realizing that the farm would not support the four families who were
living on the land, my grandfather began to purchase his mother and sibling's ownership
of the land. In some cases he bought comparable land elsewhere in the county and traded it
to whomever and in some cases he simply made the payments on other farmland and deeded it
to them when he had finished paying for it. He didn't want to see the original grant
broken up for several reasons. This property is now owned by the 6 grandchildren of
Robert and Beatrice.
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