One of the topics I’ll be teaching in our “Not Just Farmers” course at GRIP Genealogy Institute is on ranching. both cattle and sheep. We really want to cover as many agricultural pursuits as possible, and ranching and farming are interconnected.
One topic I’ll be discussing is “Texas Fever,” and unlike “gold fever” “Texas Fever” was a bad thing.
“Texas Fever,” or “Texian Fever” as the above article called it, sometimes also called “Spanish Fever” was a disease that Texas cattle carried. They thought the disease was tick-borne and spread in southern cattle because the weather was not cold enough to kill the ticks or disease. The cattle would carry this disease on the long cattle drives to the north. Reports in newspapers in towns all along the famous cattle drive trails reported on this disease. The Texas cattle seemed to be immune to it but when they intermingled with other breeds in the north, the northern cattle died from it, causing farmers and ranchers to lose thousands of dollars in their businesses and livelihoods.
The problem was so harmful to northern herds that vigilante groups took action on their own until laws were passed to stop the importation of Texas cattle. A law was passed in Missouri 1855 that made it illegal to bring diseased cattle into the state with a penalty of a fine and killing of the cattle.1 In 1861, another Missouri law was passed attempting to control Texas Fever. The law appointed “three competent and discreet persons” in each township to serve as cattle inspectors with the power to “examine all Texas, Mexican, or Indian stock” driven into the township. They could order the owner to removed the cattle and if the owner did not comply, they could call the sheriff to kill the cattle.2
Cattle tick fever is still a problem. “The pathogens that cause Texas cattle fever are transmitted from infected to non-infected cattle by two closely related tick species known as ‘cattle fever ticks.’ There are no vaccines or drugs available to prevent or cure Texas cattle fever.”3
1. Revised Statutes of Missouri, 1855, Volume 2 (Jefferson City, Missouri: 1856), 1104. ↩
2. Laws of the State of Missouri Passed at the Regular Session of the 21st General Assembly (Jefferson City, Missouri: 1861), 26. ↩
3. See “Eradicating Cattle Fever Ticks” from Texas A&M.]↩
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