Richmond, Texas: Republic Town, Violent Feud, First Black Sheriff

Richmond, Texas has been around almost as long as Texas itself. Settled in eighteen twenty-two and incorporated in eighteen thirty-seven, it was among the nineteen cities first incorporated by the short-lived Republic of Texas. Early residents included Jane Long, Deaf Smith, and Mirabeau Lamar, all buried here.

After the Civil War, Walter Moses Burton, a formerly enslaved man, won election as sheriff of Fort Bend County, making him one of the first Black elected sheriffs in the nation. His tenure ended with one of the uglier episodes in Texas political history: the Jaybird and Woodpecker War of eighteen eighty-eight and eighteen eighty-nine, a violent feud between white Democratic factions fighting over whether Black Texans would have any role in local government. Armed men shot it out on the courthouse square in August of eighteen eighty-nine.

The Jaybirds, the all-white faction, prevailed, and Richmond would be a segregated Democratic stronghold for generations. The courthouse square still marks the center of town.