About This Site

Introduction To The Site

At the May 6, 2000 East Boone Prairie annual cemetery meeting, Dora Jean Duncan Nobles was busy passing out copies of an updated cemetery list, jotting down notes, and asking the 49 people who attended to review information about family members buried there. The same thing was happening at the recent Camp Creek, Shiloh, and other cemetery gatherings around Robertson County. Most of the people who attended these meetings never would have imagined that the quiet and picturesque cemeteries where their ancestors and loved ones are buried have a presence on the Internet.

In today’s Electronic Revolution, it’s not just the heavily advertised "dot com’s" that are going online. Genealogy information is quickly being added to the Internet to help researchers track down ancestors and relatives in Texas, all over the country, and around the world. Robertson County’s genealogy website, which is part of the rapidly growing TXGenWeb Project, is located at www.robertsoncounty.info. Once there, you will see a Texas flag waving in the breeze and hear a brief audio clip of "Cattle Call," which was written and first recorded by Tex Owens (who’s buried at the Franklin Cemetery).

If you’ve ever wondered about your ancestors, where they came from, or when they arrived in Robertson County, this is the site for you. A handy Local Resources Guide provides information on what’s available at the Robertson County Courthouse, Robertson County Library in Franklin, & Smith-Welch Memorial Library in Hearne. This guide links you to the Bremond, Calvert, Franklin, and Hearne Chamber of Commerce websites. A Library & Archive Collection link identifies resources available at the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints Family History Centers in Bryan & Rockdale, Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M University, Texas Collection at Baylor University, Center For American History at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas State Library & Archives Commission, Carnegie Center of Brazos Valley History in Bryan, National Archives Regional Office in Fort Worth, U.S. Library of Congress, and other relevant libraries/archives.

Robertson County is rich in Local History. The Robertson County genealogy website lists all county-related articles that are included in “The New Handbook of Texas Online.” This resource provides valuable information on important people in Robertson County’s past, historic events and activities (like the Brazos Flood of 1899 and Camp Hearne), interesting places (like Wootan Wells and other vanished communities), and geographic features. A special Towns & Communities section attempts to identify all of Robertson County's towns and communities - past and present. Information is also provided on Historic Places in the county, including the four National Register of Historic Places (including the Calvert Historic District), two historic courthouses, and 71 historic markers.

The Robertson County site was one of the first sites in Texas to have all of the available information from the Texas Department of Health on births, marriages, divorces, and deaths online. This information is at Vital Statistics. In July 2002, Robertson County became the first of Texas' original counties (created in 1837) to have all of its available handwritten census records online. Nine years of census records totaling 3,183 pages await review at 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1890 Veterans, 1900, 1910, 1920, & 1930. In addition, a dozen or so out-of-print, unpublished, or hard-to-find Books & Master's Theses are available online.

Robertson County has 155+ cemeteries within its borders. These are listed at Cemeteries along with burial lists, GPS longitude and latitude coordinates, maps, and driving instructions to most cemeteries. Many of the individual cemetery lists go beyond name, birth/death dates to include parents, spouses, children, & other information. A successful Adopt A Cemetery program has yielded quite a few volunteers who update & expand their family information, serve as look-up contacts for local cemeteries, update inventories, & provide information about upcoming cemetery association meetings.

If you’re interested in collaborating with others, you can post Queries about long-lost relatives or identify research you’ve done that may connect with information a distant cousin has discovered. There’s also a place to post and read biographical information, obituaries, bible records, deeds, pensions, and wills. You can subscribe to an E-Mail List to compare notes with other Robertson County researchers or provide links to Family History websites you have created.

If you don’t have copies of books relating to Robertson County, Look-Up Volunteers are available to conduct limited research. Given Robertson County’s agricultural roots, you can even get current Weather conditions and a five-day extended forecast.

William Kent Brunette is the volunteer coordinator for the Robertson County genealogy website. Although Brunette lives and works in Washington, D.C., his roots are in Robertson County. Brunette also maintains a Related Robertson County Families website on his own family that includes over 8,000 people as well as a searchable GEDCOM Site that contains many surnames from Franklin and surrounding areas.

Information at www.robertsoncounty.info is heavily dependent upon volunteers who are willing to inventory cemeteries, transcribe vital statistics information, and help bring valuable census data online. The information currently available at the site is the result of lots of hard work by lots of volunteers. But, much more needs to be done. Individuals, families, cemetery associations, fraternal organizations, civic, church, and school groups are all encouraged to volunteer at Volunteer Opportunities.

The Site Continues To Grow

Slowly but surely, permissions are being granted and entire books and master's theses about Robertson County are being placed online. The following works are now online; several more will be added in the coming months:

Hearne On The Brazos
Early Development Of Robertson County
The Irish Of Staggers Point
Ghost Towns Of Robertson County
Deutsch Colony Of New Baden
A History Of Cotton Culture Along The Middle Brazos River
Men & Women From Robertson County In World War II
Robertson County War Activities 1917-1919
History Of Robertson County
1941 WPA County Inventory
My Tall Mountain

Website visitors may have noticed the Robertson County Cemetery List growing in recent years. Originally totaling 50 cemeteries, this list now includes over 155 cemeteries and burial locations. This list expansion is due, in large part, to the efforts of Volunteer County Coordinator William Kent Brunette and his Robertson County-based dad, Bill Brunette, who have spent lots of time trying to locate and record the geographic coordinates of all of Robertson County's cemeteries. With a global positioning system (GPS) unit in hand, the Brunettes, Robertson County Historical Commission Chair Cathy Lazarus, and other volunteers have been looking at land records, knocking on doors, badgering relatives, calling property owners, traipsing across pastures, wading through creeks, and fighting underbrush to find lost or forgotten cemeteries. Cemetery locations have also been identified through word-of-mouth, burial lists on file at the Robertson County Library, Texas Department of Transportation Online Robertson County Highway Map, TopoZone.com Robertson County Map, U.S. Census Bureau Robertson County TIGER Map, Geographic Names Information System Of The U.S. Geological Survey For Cemeteries In Robertson County, & cemetery references in publications & on websites. Articles in local newspapers about these efforts along with Find That Cemetery responses have resulted in discoveries of additional cemeteries.

The fruits of these labors were turned over to the Texas Department of Transportation (TDOT) which has updated the Robertson County map to reflect all of the county's known cemeteries. This map and an inset map for Hearne are available online at Robertson County and Hearne. At some point in the near future, the county's 70+ historic markers will be added to these online maps. The ultimate goal is to create a clickable, interactive, online county map where visitors can click on the names of different cemeteries and be linked to their burial lists. Similarly, visitors can click on historic markers or the names of historic towns/communities and be linked to relevant information from the Texas Historical Commission and the Handbook of Texas Online. For example, clicking on "Wootan Wells" will link a visitor to the Handbook of Texas Online article about this now vanished, once famous, turn-of-the-century spa/resort.

The following special collections have been created at the site to celebrate the unique history of diverse ethnic and racial groups in the county:

Camp Hearne Collection - provides information on the old WWII German prisoner of war camp outside of Hearne;
New Baden Collection - provides information on the Deutsch-speaking colony of New Baden;
African American Collection - commemorates the heritage of the county's African American citizens;
Italian Collection chronicles the Brazos River bottom's Italian settlers; &
Polish Collection preserves the history of Bremond's Polish immigrants.

Two additional collections - an Hispanic Collection celebrating Robertson County's Spanish-speaking residents & an Irish Collection honoring early Benchley settlers - are envisioned.

These collections include materials that have been located in Texas library collections. For example, a copy of the Deutsch Colony of New Baden, written in 1882 by John George Meyer, the founder of the colony, was located at the University of Texas at Austin and is now online at Deutsch Colony New Baden. This booklet was translated from its old-style German by volunteer Jens Heik; its frail map of original landowners was photocopied by UT then digitally reproduced at a commercial photo shop for online display.

The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, this site will continue to grow and provide even greater information in the future.

Master Plan

Though overly ambitious, the master plan for the Robertson County TXGenWeb site includes the following:

Place county, city, school (e.g., high school year books), library, church, family history, and other records online;
Obtain copies of all existing local newspapers (copy to CD from microfilm or microfiche/copy to CD from actual newspapers) and place them online;
Place Robertson County history books (including master's theses) online;
Obtain microfilm & microfiche copies and place online vital statistics & other information that the State of Texas has placed at the nearest regional repository;
Obtain microfilm & microfiche copies and place online information located at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Scour state archives and nearby university & other library collections to obtain & place copies of holdings online;
Research local title and abstract companies to obtain and place maps online showing property ownership and other local information;
Create an interactive map that identifies the locations of all known cemeteries, historic markers, places, towns, and vanished communities;
Produce four short videos which showcase the history and settling of Bremond (Polish), Mumford (Italian), New Baden (Deutsch speaking), & Staggers Point (Irish) by different immigrant groups;
Develop special online collections for Robertson County's four immigrant communities and link these with other Texas immigrant organizations (like Germans in Texas).
Develop a special online collection for Camp Hearne -- the WWII prisoner of war camp outside of Hearne;
Produce four other short videos which showcase the history and settling of Calvert, Franklin, Hearne, & Wootan Wells;
Develop an online oral history library of interviews with local historians to preserve their recollections for future generations;
Create audio clips of music that typify different time periods in Robertson County’s past;
Showcase Robertson County’s own country western singers and Grand Ole Opry stars (i.e., Tex Owens, Curly & Texas Ruby Fox, Dick & Laura Lee McBride);
Feature literary works that are based in Robertson County and written by local authors (e.g., Jewel Gibson’s Joshua Beene & God, Reba Rushing Alsup’s Calvert Diary);
Place old photographs of buildings, places, and people online;
Take new photos and create an online photographic inventory of historic cemeteries, buildings, and places of interest (e.g., the homes in Calvert’s historic district);
Produce an online slide show featuring a variety of pictures of different towns & communities;
Create artist sketches and plats of important buildings and places that no longer exist (e.g., the long-gone town of Sterling outside of Calvert, a bustling New Baden at the turn of the century, Wootan Wells when it was a nationally recognized spa resort);
Provide information that will help media representatives cover Robertson County history & genealogy topics; and
Create a website for the Robertson County Historical Commission. Get all Robertson County-related websites to link to one another.

The above activities would be accomplished via the active involvement of Robertson County elected officials, Robertson County Historical Commission (the web site is the Commission’s official site), local businesses, historians, libraries, newspapers, educational institutions, church/community/fraternal organizations, and individuals.