A Survivor from 1890: Texas’ Forgotten Union Veterans
The 1890 Special Veterans Schedules Open a Window on Texas’s Civil War Generation.
In 1921, a devastating fire destroyed most of the 1890 federal census records. Yet, remarkably, many of the Special Veteran Schedules of that census from Texas survived. Today, these records provide an extraordinary window into the lives of Union veterans who lived in Texas during the years following the Civil War. For researchers, these schedules can reveal a veteran’s name, military service, and post office address — valuable clues for locating the men who wore the Union blue and later made their homes in Texas. One such veteran was Dominick H. Regan of Victoria, whose entry identifies him as a Private in a U.S. Volunteer Regiment and places him in Victoria County.
Records such as these are especially important to the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. They help us identify our Union ancestors, discover forgotten comrades, and connect military service with the lives veterans built after Appomattox.
The 1890 Texas Special Veterans Schedules are more than old census pages. They are surviving pieces of the Union veterans’ story — and an invitation to discover the men behind the records. Below you'll find available schedules organized by Texas county. For each county, the PDF contains images of the original handwritten census pages, while the accompanying Excel spreadsheet provides a transcription of those records to make the information easier to read and research.