Freestone County, Texas
Jury Lists

Background

District courts have a Grand Jury and multiple Petit Juries. The Grand Jury does not determine guilt or innocence, but probable cause. A Petit Jury is a trial jury for both civil and criminal cases. The petit jury listens to the evidence offered during a trial and returns a verdict.

The district courts for Freestone county are the 77th (Limestone and Freestone Co.) in Groesbeck and the 87th District court (Anderson, Freestone, Leon, and Limestone Co.) based in Palestine. The 77th court has two terms (6 months) and 87th court has four terms. The respective district court judge and their court reporter traveled to the affiliated county for its term. A court room is provided by the court house.

District court picks its jury pool for a particular term. The district courts normally has a grand jury pool of sixteen (16) in February and October terms and four weeks of jury pools of petit jurors of 36 per week in every one of the terms. So this is 608 names per year. Across a decade, that is 6,080 names.

The jury pool is from people that reside in the county. The jury pool is randomly selected from the voter registration lists. Therefore, the names will be skewed to literate English-speaking white males over the age of 21 (lowered to age 18 in 1971 in the 26th Amendment) that have voted and so doing paid the poll tax. (Texas had poll taxes since 1876 till effectively the 24th Amendment in 1964). Usually in the 1920s, they list the town or mail route for the person to reduce the chance of confusion for people with common names.

The actual selected jury that presides of the cases is smaller. For example, usually only ten (10) or twelve (12) serve on the grand jury out of sixteen (16) candidates. The goal for petit juries depended on the case, but usually was twelve (12) and a couple of alternates.

The primary source of the jury lists are the original record book of the District Court of Freestone County, Texas which contains the jurors from Spring 1852 to January 1870. The secondary source is a transcription found in various Freestone Frontiers issues by the Freestone County Genealogy Society.

There are two important dates: the selection date and then the actual court date.

Jury Lists of 1850-1859

Jury Lists of 1860-1869

Jury Lists of 1870-1879

Jury Lists of 1880-1889

Jury Lists of 1890 to 1899

Jury Lists of 1900 to 1909

Jury Lists of 1910 to 1919

Jury Lists of 1920 to 1929

Jury Lists of 1930 to 1939

Jury Lists of 1940 to 1949