History
Baylor County Courthouse, with drawings and photosLake Creek Bridge, with photos
Tom Johnson in Korea with Ike, with photos
Salt Pork to Sirloin: The History of Baylor County, Texas from 1879 to 1930, Volume 1
An excerpt from the article at the Handbook of Texas Online
"Before it was settled, the area that is now Baylor County lay within the range of the Wanderers, a nomadic Comanche band, who relied upon buffalo for food, clothing, shelter, tools, and ornaments. In 1848 special Indian agent Robert S. Neighbors found 250 Comanche, fifty Tonkawa, and ten Wichita lodges on Lewis Creek at the site of present-day Seymour. When the first surveys were made in the area in 1853 the Indians were still using it as a major hunting ground for buffalo, a fact that made settlement nearly impossible. This continued until the final defeat of the Comanches in 1874 by the United States Army and their removal to a reservation in Indian territory (see RED RIVER WAR). Baylor County was separated from Fannin County in 1858 and named for Henry W. Baylor, a surgeon in a regiment of Texas Rangers during the Mexican War. The county was attached to Jack County for administrative and judicial purposes.
"The first settlement was at Round Timber, nineteen miles southeast of the site of present Seymour. Tradition holds that the first settler was Col. C. C. Mills, who may have been at Round Timber during the Civil War and was certainly there by 1870. He was driven out by Indian raids, but returned by 1875 to join J. W. Stevens, who had arrived a year earlier.
"This was the era of free-grass ranches, a time in which farmers and ranchers sometimes violently contested for land. Settlers from Oregon, led by Col. J. R. McClain, moved to the site of Seymour in 1876, for example, but were driven off when cowboys ran cattle over their corn. In 1879 the Millett brothers - Eugene C., Alonzo, and Hiram - came from Guadalupe County to begin ranching in Baylor County. They ran a tough outfit and used their armed cowhands to intimidate would-be settlers and the citizens of newly founded Seymour. Violence and contention plagued the county during the first years of settlement. Baylor County's first two county attorneys were forced to resign, and in June 1879 County Judge E. R. Morris was shot and killed by saloon keeper Will Taylor. Later the Texas Rangers gradually brought peace."