REGISTRY OF PIONEER FAMILIES
OF WALKER COUNTY
To celebrate the year 2000, the Walker County Genealogical Society began offering Commemorative Certificates to eligible persons. Anyone directly descended from an early Walker County settler is eligible to apply for one of these recognitions.
The data furnished by applicants as proof of lineage will become a valuable addition to the history of Walker County and will become a part of the Huntsville Public Library Johnnie Jo Sowell Dickenson Genealogy Room.
WAVERLY EMIGRATION SOCITY FAMILIES
On 19 September 1866, in Waverly, Walker County, Texas, twelve planters met at Meyer Levy's store and formed the Waverly Emigration Society for the purpose of acquiring foreign workers. Levy agreed to go to his native Poland and recruit workers. Forty-five families totaling 143 person arrived in New York on 9 April 1867, and from there they sailed to Texas. Because of this original group, so many Polish immigrants followed that New Waverly was called the "cradle of Polish immigration in the part of Texas". While almost all of the early immigrants first made their way to the homes of relatives and friends in New Waverly, many later journeyed into Montgomery, Grimes, Brazos, Robertson, Washington, Austin and other counties and further encouraged immigration to those areas.
WAVERLY EMIGRATION SOCIETY
Applicant must directly descend from
an ancestor who emigrated on the
steamship City of Antwerp which
arrived in New York on 9 April
1867.