The gently rolling hills and valleys that surrounded Coupland provided a beautiful wilderness home for the American Indians for many centuries before the white people ever dreamed of crossing the sea to the A new world@ . The Indians who inhabited the Coupland area were more or less independent tribes, and they called themselves TICKAMWATIC, a name which meant, A the most human of people@ . Perhaps that Indian word is a clue as to how they liked to picture themselves. Their Indian neighbors to the north called them TONKAWEYA which has a similar sound but a different shade of meaning-a clue, perhaps, to the way they were viewed by their closest neighbors. The word means A they all stay together@ . From these two Indian words TONKAWA is derived, the label most commonly given to these people by historians and others who study their culture and write about them today.

As the years went by their life and their culture were gradually squeezed out by the raiding parties of their more war-like Indian brothers on the one side, and the advance of white man= s civilizations, his diseases and his bullets on the other. By 1840 all the TONKAWA Indians had been destroyed or pushed out of the area. By 1948 only about 50 Tonkawas were left in existence, and they had long since been moved to a reservation in a northern State.

The beautiful stream that meanders its way around the north side of Coupland was christened by the Spanish A The Creek of the Blessed Souls@ . It is now known as Brushy Creek. One story passed down through the generations is about a battle that took place a few miles north of Coupland. On January 25, 1839, word was passed around the white communities that a band of Comanches were encamped on the San Gabrial river. Captain John D. Moore organized three companies of volunteers from Colorado River settlements to conduct a search and destroy mission against them. They chased the Indians through the area that is now Coupland and caught up with them near what is now Brown= s gin and Battle Ground Creek. There followed a confusing and bloody confrontation known in history as the Battle of Brushy.

The first white settlers to the Coupland area were homesteaders from the southeast United States. They took up residence on land they got from colonist Stephen F. Austin. The Spanish government had granted Austin a huge area of central Texas land and royal permission to settle families in Texas to create a

buffer zone between the Spanish settlements and the Indians. These colonists were given a square league (4,428 acres) of land per family at a price of 12 2 cents per acre, an attractive deal compared to the public lands in the US selling for one to two dollars per acre. During just a few years of this rapid march of history, the settlers became citizens first of Spain, then of independent Mexico, then of independent Texas and finally back again as they had started as citizens of the US. From the time of the original Austin Grant, the land in the area was repeatedly subdivided and changed ownership frequently through the years.

As Coupland, according to its founders, was the future city of promise, so Texas was viewed as the land of promise flowing with milk and honey to a new breed of homesteaders who were now moving to Texas by the thousands from Germany and Switzerland. A GEH MUT INS TEXAS@ was the popular slogan heard on street corners all over Germany and other European countries. By this time (1880s) the wild longhorns on the seas of grass had been all but depleted. The windmill and the barbed wire fence introduced a new method of agriculture. The larger blocks of land around Coupland were even further subdivided to accommodate the new agricultural style and the new people who were moving in. These immigrants were hard workers and hardy people. They had to be to survive the monumental tasks which confronted them. Mesquite and cactus had to be grubbed out by hand. Rattlesnakes and coyotes were a constant concern. The heat in the summer time was oppressive to people who had come to a cold climate. The land had to be turned over for the first time by ox-drawn ploughs. During all this travail their native language, German, became a kind of glue that held these people together in a close-knit and morale-boosting community of which the new city of Coupland became the center. These people left the familiar old world and ventured forth into the unknown new world for many and varied reasons. By far the most common motive for the change was disenchantment with the regimentation and growing militarism of society in their homeland and especially the policy of compulsory military training for the youth. Another motive that brought some families here was the dream of getting rich quick or at least of bettering their lot.

The main source of livelihood in this area during the period 1831-1835 was livestock. The Spanish had introduced the longhorn cow in the country during their rule. Then after the Mexicans abandoned the land in 1842, these cows that were left behind in the wilderness multiplied phenomenally and spread over the countryside until they numbered in the millions. They became wild, dangerous and tough with horns that spread as much as eight feet from tip to tip. These wild cows and also wild mustangs drifted at will over the great A sea of grass@ as the rugged prairie was called. The laws of the Republic of Texas had made unbranded stock A public property@ so they became the private property of any cattle hunter who caught them and put his brand on them. This A free for all@ system raised about as man thorny questions as it settled.

The war between the states not only divided the north from the south but it also divided Texan from Texan and the people of the Coupland area were as deeply and bitterly divided by the conflict as any other area in the state. Williamson County had by this time become settled by a number of European immigrants who had come to this country to escape such repressive policies in their homeland; so they wanted no part of either institution, slavery or war. It is instructive to note that Williamson County was one of the very few counties in the state that responded to Sam Houston@ s urgent appeal by voting against secession 480 to 349. The state as a whole, however, voted overwhelmingly for secession which paved the way for Texas= entrance into the war.

There were many young men in the area who refused to go along with the war. Some of them went into exile in the backwoods of Texas or across the border into Mexico rather than to serve in a cause they thought was wrong. Still others escaped from the area and joined the Union forces to fight on the other side. One anti-Confederate resister who managed to successfully escape the country was Theodore Van Buren Coupland, for whom the village of Coupland is name. He was born in 1836 in Alabama. Moving to Texas a few years before the Civil War, he settled in Austin where he became deputy sheriff of Travis County. When the war came he and his uncle, A.J. (Jack) Hamilton, stole away to Mexico then made their way by ship to New Orleans where they offered their services to the Union Army. Coupland was commissioned an officer, a major, to serve in the first Texas Cavalry of the Union Army. When the war ended in 1865 Major Coupland was mustered out of the Union in San Antonio and returned to New Orleans, where he served in US government appointments. Coupland= s uncle, A.J. (Jack) Hamilton, was appointed provisional Governor of the State of Texas. President Andrew Johnson made the appointment hoping that Hamilton would be able to bring Texas back peacefully into the Union and heal the wounds in Texas society inflicted by the war.

Morgan C. Hamilton, brother to the Governor was appointed the first US Senator from Texas after the Civil War. He owned the land on which the village of Coupland would eventually be built. In fact, had accumulated large blocks of land all along Brushy Creek from Shiloh to Rices Crossing and far north on the prairie.

After serving his term in Congress, Senator Hamilton moved from Texas to New York where in 1883 he died. He left his estate, including this land, to the five children of his deceased sister, Karen Hamilton Coupland. One of her sons was Theodor Van Buren Coupland. His inheritance of land and cattle on Brushy Creek motivated Major Coupland to move back to Texas with his wife and one son, Frank Hamilton Coupland.

On February 3, 1887, the Taylor, Bastop and Austin Railway bought a 100 foot right-of-way from Major Coupland to extend the rail line from Taylor to Boggy Creek toward Houston. Since the railroad cut right through his ranch, Coupland became inspired with a grandiose idea to build a city. So Coupland got together with two men from Taylor to form a corporation. Its name was A The Coupland City Company@ and its purpose, according to its charter, was A to purchase, subdivide and sell land in the town of Coupland.@

By 1909 A The Coupland City Corporation@ had long since forfeited its charter A by reason of failure to pay its franchise tax to the state of Texas and by reason of failure to elect officers to transact its business.@

The village that survives continued to grow modestly until by 1912 its borders were expanded to the south by the Muery addition to build a new two-story brick public school building. In 1913 the village of Coupland was probably at its peak with two hardware stores, two blacksmith shops and many other places of business. A steady decline set in about 1925 when automobiles and hard-surfaced roads made it possible for people to travel some distance to carry on their business.

In 1890 the budding village of Coupland lacked on important institution, a church. So the Swiss and German immigrants got together and arranged to have a German speaking minister visit the community from time to time to perform necessary religious rites and conduct religious services. The group met at the public school. There were several pastors throughout the years. In 1905 a new church building was started. In a jar current newspapers of the district and of the denomination was sealed and placed in wet concrete in the foundation as a cornerstone. The building was completed in 1906 at a cost of over $4000.00, including donated labor and furnishings. 69 years later when the congregation was preparing to celebrate its 80^th anniversary, the church council decided to open the cornerstone and examine the contents of the jar. They found that through the years, as the church settled, the top of the jar had broken and filled with water seriously damaging the papers inside. Some of the papers were salvaged.