Editing Colorado County, Texas (section)

== History ==
The territory that is now Colorado County has been continually inhabited by humans for at least 12,000 years. The Coco branch of the [[Karankawa people|Karaknawa]] are said to have hunted in the area, while [[Tonkawa]] crossed the area from the south.

[[File:Confederate Memorial Museum -- Colorado County, Texas.jpg|thumb|''[[Confederate Memorial Museum]]'', Colorado County, Texas]]

The first record of a European coming through the area that is now Colorado County was January 20, 1687, when [[René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle|René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle]], camped along Skull Creek. The party located an Indian village and named it Hebemes. The fourth expedition of Alonso De León may have crossed into the area while looking for Fort St. Louis in 1689.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcc18|title=COLORADO COUNTY|last=ODINTZ|first=MARK|date=June 12, 2010|website=tshaonline.org|language=en|access-date=June 4, 2019}}</ref>

The area was settled by Anglo colonists who were part of [[Stephen F. Austin]]'s [[Old Three Hundred]] starting in 1821. Some families settled near Beeson's Ford, a few miles south of Columbus' present day location. The area was active during the days of the [[Texas Revolution]].<ref name=":0" /> [[Dilue Rose Harris]] wrote her memoir of the [[Runaway Scrape]] from within the boundaries of Colorado County.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fha89|title=HARRIS, DILUE ROSE|last=LANG|first=HERBERT H.|date=June 15, 2010|website=tshaonline.org|language=en|access-date=June 4, 2019}}</ref>

The county was one of the original Republic of Texas counties when it formed in 1836.<ref name=":0" /> Following the American Civil War, the county had one of the larger populations of African-American freedmen in the state, and was granted a [[Freedmen's Bureau]] office in Columbus.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/freedmensbureaub00crou|title=The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans|last=Crouch, Barry A., 1941-|date=1992|publisher=University of Texas Press|isbn=0292724756|edition=1st|location=Austin|oclc=24320568|url-access=registration}}</ref>

Many European settlers, particularly Germans, as well as [[Moravians]] and [[Bohemia]]ns from what became [[Czechoslovakia]], began to settle in the county after the Civil War, although Germans had settled in the area as early as 1830.<ref name=":0" />