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How to Research Your Family History in Texas

Texas kept something at annexation that no other state did: its public land. That single fact gives Texas genealogy its signature institution – the General Land Office, whose archives run unbroken from Spanish titles through empresario colony contracts, Republic-of-Texas headrights, and statehood grants, all searchable free with the original documents imaged. Around the GLO sit freely imaged death certificates for most of the 20th century, a one-stop County Clerk in each of 254 counties, mission registers from 1718, and the layered communities – Tejano, German, Czech, Black Texan – whose records interlock with the land story.

Start With Vital Records

Statewide registration began in 1903 under what is now DSHS Vital Statistics, with rural compliance weak into the 1930s – delayed birth certificates are a mass source class. The research gift: Texas death certificates for 1903 through the early 1980s are indexed with free images on FamilySearch, and the birth and death indexes circulate widely. Start every 20th-century line at the death certificates.

Marriages are County Clerk records from each county’s organization – and earlier, in the Spanish and Mexican eras, church records (marriage required the sacrament); statewide marriage indexes cover the modern century. Divorces are District Court files with the District Clerk.

The County Clerk: The One-Stop Office

Texas concentrates the courthouse in the County Clerk, who records deeds and mortgages (no separate recorder), holds the probate records (County Court probate historically; the metros now run statutory probate courts, but the Clerk keeps the files), the marriage books, and much else – one office, most of the paper. The District Clerk adds divorces, civil and criminal district cases, and naturalizations. With 254 counties formed across seventy years, parent-county discipline is constant work – and one boundary surprise: Greer County was administered as Texas until the Supreme Court awarded it to Oklahoma in 1896, so its earliest records are Texas records.

The General Land Office: The Spine

Because Texas retained its public domain, the GLO Archives (Austin) hold the complete original-title record: Spanish and Mexican titles, empresario colony papers (Austin’s Old Three Hundred and the later colonies, with each settler’s contract and character certificates), Republic-era headright and bounty/donation grants (land for immigration and for military service – the class of grant itself tells you when a family arrived), and statehood-era scrip and homestead files. The GLO’s online search serves indexes, document images, and the county maps free. For any Texas family before roughly 1880, the land file is the origin document – often naming arrival dates, family size, and prior residence – and the county deed books carry the chain forward.

The Republic And The State Archives

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC, Austin) holds the Republic of Texas record (1836–1845): audited claims (payments for service and supplies, name-indexed), muster rolls of the revolution and the ranging companies, passports and customs papers – plus the state era’s Confederate pension applications (free index online), voter registrations of 1867–1869 (naming Black Texans before the 1870 census), and county microfilm. Houston’s Clayton Library, one of the largest genealogy libraries in the nation, and the Briscoe Center and Institute of Texan Cultures round out the research map.

The Spanish, Mexican, And Tejano Deep End

San Antonio’s missions and parishes kept sacramental registers from 1718 (San Fernando’s books are a Tejano genealogical cornerstone), with Nacogdoches, Goliad/La Bahía, and the Rio Grande settlements (Laredo and the villas of the lower river, 1750s) adding their own runs. Tejano research works both banks: Mexican parish and civil registers across the border are massively digitized on FamilySearch, and the borderlands societies’ publications bridge the two. Spanish-era censuses of the settlements (18th-century padrones) survive and are published.

Community Paths

German Texas: the Adelsverein migration of the 1840s built New Braunfels and Fredericksburg; immigration contracts, the verein’s own records, Lutheran and Catholic registers, and German-language newspapers document the colonies to the home villages. Czech Texas: parish and fraternal (SPJST, KJT) records around Fayette and Lavaca counties connect to digitized Moravian registers. Black Texans: begin with the Freedmen’s Bureau’s Texas field offices (free on FamilySearch) and the 1867–1869 voter rolls; work backward through the enslaving families’ probate and deed records at the County Clerk, and forward through the freedom colonies (hundreds of Black-founded rural communities, with a dedicated documentation project), Juneteenth-era county records, and the urban directories. Galveston: the “Ellis Island of the West” – passenger manifests for the Gulf’s main immigration port are indexed online, the entry point for Germans, Czechs, and the early-1900s Jewish “Galveston Movement.”

Online And Free

GLO’s land records and maps are free. The death certificates are free on FamilySearch, alongside bulk county marriage, probate, and deed runs and the Mexican collections. TSLAC’s Confederate pension and Republic claims indexes are free. Subscription platforms add city directories and newspapers, free through Texas libraries (and in person at Clayton).

Research Checklist

  1. Start at the free death certificates; harvest parents’ names and birthplaces.
  2. Pull the family’s GLO file – the grant class dates the arrival.
  3. Work the County Clerk as the one-stop: deeds, probate, marriages.
  4. Tejano line: mission and parish registers both sides of the river.
  5. Black Texan line: Bureau records and 1867 rolls forward; County Clerk probate and deeds backward; check the freedom colonies.
  6. Republic-era ancestor? Audited claims and muster rolls at TSLAC.

Sources and References