 The county was one of the original Republic of Texas Counties, formed in 1836.Following the American Civil War, the county had one of the larger populations of African American freedmen in the state, and was granted a Freedman's Bureau office in Columbus.Many European settlers, particularly Germans, and Moravians and Bohemians from what is now Czechoslovakia, began to settle in the county after the civil war, although Germans had settled in the area as early as 1830.