Early Settlers, also, Mercer Colony. Gone to Texas (GTT), also, Charles Fenton Mercer. "Gone to Texas" was the popular slogan for settlers during the 1830s who immigrated from numerous countries and states to the newly formed Republic of Texas (1836-1846). Although the Republic of Texas struggled, the desire for vast amounts of cheap land and new opportunities lured settlers to Texas., At their start in 1836, the Republic of Texas, covering an estimated 251,579,800 acres of land, established the General Land Office to help establish land grants. The early settlers of Hunt County first came between 1839 and 1846 from Kentucky, Tennessee, and other parts of Texas., The first permanent settlers in Hunt County, after the Native American inhabitants, were John W. Lane just three miles south of present-day Wolfe City, James Hooker south of present day Lone Oak, and Isaac Banta in the south in 1843. Others were John W. Stewart in 1843 and Meredith Hart in 1846., While you often think of cattle and Texas being synonymous, that was not always the case. In Hunt County raising sheep was very popular and at one time sheep actually outnumbered horses and mules. According to the 1860 tax rolls there were 11,057 sheep, which averaged 27 per farm, but only 4,458 horses and 299 mules. In addition, very little cotton was grown until the arrival of the railroads in Greenville and the rest of the county in the early 1880s. Before then, cotton had to be transported by wagon down to Jefferson, which was not economically feasible. Once the railroad arrived, cotton became the major agricultural crop of the county and became the economic frontrunner for the area., Captions , (Photo #1) 1844 Republic of Texas Map , , Reverse Side , The Mercer colony was in North Central Texas. It lay roughly between the Brazos and Sabine rivers, north from Waco to McKinney in Collin County, skirting to the south and east of what is now the Dallas metropolitan area. Its boundaries encompassed portions of eighteen future Texas counties, including Hunt County. One of the boundaries ran along what is today Washington St. in Greenville. The colony grew out of a statute enacted by the Texas Congress on February 4, 1841, restoring the Mexican policy of granting empresario contracts to persons who promised to settle individuals and families on the unclaimed public land of the republic. Despite growing opposition to such contracts, President Sam Houston granted Charles Fenton Mercer a contract to settle at least 100 families a year for five years, beginning on January 29, 1844. Mercer soon organized a company, the Texas Association, to advertise and promote colonization, and sold shares at $500 each to investors in Virginia and Florida as well as in Texas., One day after the execution of Mercer's contract, the Congress of the Republic passed, over President Houston's veto, a statute outlawing colonization contracts. Congressional resentment culminated in an investigation during 1844-45 of Mercer's contract and his efforts to fulfill its terms. Meanwhile, squatters moved into the Mercer survey and denied the claims of settlers who held Mercer colony certificates. Settlers also discovered land speculators and holders of bounty and headright certificates already claiming the land for which they had contracted, and Mercer's surveyors reported that Robertson County, joining the colony on the south, was sending its surveyors into the limits of the empresario grant and claiming the land they surveyed. Finally, Mercer surveyors and settlers clashed with both civil and military forces when they attempted to penetrate that portion of the grant lying west of the Trinity River., On February 2, 1850, the Texas legislature, seeking to quiet the confusion within the colony, guaranteed all land claims made by settlers in the Mercer colony before October 25, 1848. By virtue of this legislation, 1,255 land certificates were recorded in the General Land Office, but the measure failed to settle all conflicting land claims, some of which were still in process of litigation as late as 1936.