Whitfield and Merrill — Fayette County Meteorite. 113 



Art. XII. — The Fayette County, Texas, Meteorite • by 

 J. E. Whitfield and G-. P. Merrill.* 



The meteorite described below was found some ten years 

 ago at Bluff, a settlement on the Colorado River about three 

 miles southwest of the town of LaGrange, in Fayette county, 

 Texas. Bluff cannot boast of being a village as it is simply 

 made up of a few farms scattered within a radius of two miles. 

 The farmers are mostly Germans or Bohemians, and as they are 

 generally of the superstitious class, it is not strange that the 

 finder, a Bohemian, named Haniosek, should have been struck 

 by the appearance of the stone, and especially by its weight. 

 As it is probable that he never heard of such a thing as a me- 

 teorite it is safe to say that he did not know the nature of 

 his find ; still he seems to have come to the conclusion that it 

 was something foreign to the soil* 



There is a tradition in Fayette County that Santa Anna, 

 at the time of his flight after the battle of San Jacinto, buried 

 his war-treasures somewhere near LaGrange, and the belief 

 has so fixed itself in the minds of the inhabitants that many 

 fruitless attempts have been made to discover it. The finder 

 of the meteorite, with the tradition fresh in his mind, reasoned 

 that so large and heavy a stone must mark the place where 

 some treasure was deposited ; he therefore rolled the stone a 

 few feet aside and dug a deep hole at the exact spot where the 

 stone had been, without finding anything to pay him for his 

 labor. 



For several years the stone lay where the Bohemian had left 

 it ; then he sold the piece of land to Mr. C. Hensel, who still 

 owns it ; but before the latter had taken possession, Raniosek 

 removed the stone to his own farm, about a mile away, where 

 for five years more it lay neglected in his yard. His reason for 

 removing it was that its weight led him to suspect it contained 

 some valuable metal. 



About three years ago Mr. H. Hensoldt took charge of the 

 school at Cedar, two and one-half miles from Bluff settlement. 

 By spending his spare time in hunting over the ground for 

 fossils, minerals, etc., the attention of the farmers was drawn 

 to him, and in January, 1888, he was informed of the strange 

 stone in Mr. Raniosek's yard. Immediately on seeing it he 

 recognized it as a meteorite, and a very fine specimen of its kind. 



After obtaining possession of the stone Mr. Hensoldt dis- 

 posed of it to Messrs. Ward and Howell, of Rochester, IST. Y., 



* The chemical work was done in the laboratory of the U. S. Geological Sur- 

 vey ; the petrographical work in the laboratory of the U. S. National Museum. 



Am. Jour. Scl— Third Series, Vol. XXXVI, No. 212.— August, 1888. 



