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 July 24, 2008 | Hamilton County Courthouse Texas County Courthouse Project #22: Hamilton County (Hamilton, Texas) In 1858 the county of Hamilton was formed from the surrounding counties of Comanche, Bosque, and Lampasas. The county seat of Hamilton was first settled in 1855 with the first store opened that year by James M. Rice and Henry Standefer. Both the county and the county seat are named in honor of James Hamilton, Governor of South Carolina, veteran of the War of 1812 and a diplomatic agent to the Republic of Texas in France, Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands. Hamilton was declared a perpetual citizen of the Republic of Texas after he loaned the struggling country $216,000 of his own money and, as their agent in Europe, worked to secure more loans. Upon his return to Texas, however, Hamilton’s work in Europe was undone when Sam Houston repealed all laws relating to the loans in Europe. Hamilton spent the next decade attempting to recover money owed to him by Texas. He moved to Texas in 1855 where he owned several large land grants, including one in Harris County. While in Washington, Hamilton learned that Texas had finally agreed to negotiate a repayment. He quickly settled his matters and began his journey home…he never made it. He died in the Gulf of Mexico on November 15, 1857 when his steamboat sank on its way from New Orleans to Galveston. He gave up his seat on the life boat to a woman and child and drowned as the boat went down. In the summer of 1867 at the Leon River School northeast of Hamilton, one of the students noticed men approaching from the distance. Her teacher, Miss Elizabeth Ann Whitney, assuming it was the father of one of her other students, ignored the warning. When the girl that had seen the men escaped through a window with her younger brother, Miss Whitney came to the door and witnessed Indians, led by a white man, taking her horse. She quickly turned and told her class to escape through the back window. She was helping the last two out when the Indians came through the door, killing Miss Whitney. As she lay dying on the floor, she noticed two of her students, a boy and a girl, hiding under the floor of the school. She spread her skirt to hide them but they were both captured. The girl was able to escape from her captors once outside of the school, but the boy was not seen again for two years. A monument at the courthouse was erected in her honor by the school children of Hamilton County. The Hamilton County courthouse was built in 1886 but has little resemblance to the original structure. In 1931 the building was drastically remodeled to the current classical style. Today the courthouse is really showing its age, but… In 1998 the National Trust of Historic Preservation named Texas courthouses on the list of the top 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. In 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush and the Texas Legislature created the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program. In January of 2008, Hamilton County received approval for grant money to restore their courthouse to its original state. Hamilton is one of 124 counties that have been approved for funding. The Hamilton County courthouse as it appeared before the remodeling in 1931 
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