The population database contains counts of slaves and slaveholders in each Texas county with surviving tax returns from the Republic of Texas era. During the years 1837 to 1845, residents of the Republic of Texas attempted to finance their new nation with taxes collected on a wide range of personal property held by local citizens. One of these categories of taxable property were the enslaved men and women held by planters in Texas, and listed in the surviving tax records. The project used these original records to count the number of slaves assessed in each county for the 1837-1845 period, as well as the slaveholders who held this property, to collect the numbers that make up the project's online database. This database forms the basis for the project's dynamic maps and the population search engine that allows you to explore these populations across the counties in 1837-1845 Texas.

The search engine allows you to search and parse the population database in a number of ways. You can search for slave and slaveholder populations for all counties in Texas, or search for individual ones. You can search for statistics on counties, or see the entire population database. The graphing interface also allows users to see these statistics and numbers plotted and charted in a number of ways.