Texas and Texas Lottery

Gambling By Euphemism

Texas Lottery

Lotto Conclusion

Lotto Background

Sweepstakes Competition

Oregon Lottery

Little Lotto

Early Days in Texas

It was never likely that recreational lotteries would be permitted in colonial Texas and texas lottery, given the demise of the British national lottery. Indeed, a list of royal instructions sent by Queen Victoria to Governor Hobson on 5 December 1840, for him to use as a guide in the administration of the colony, included a very firm edict that there were to be no lotteries.
Yet while recreational lotteries were banned, other forms of lotteries emerged that were well patronized. Settlers found ''disposal'' lotteries or raffles to be a quick and often profitable method for ridding themselves of unwanted property, houses, boats, horses and a host of smaller items. The first significant lottery associated with Texas did not take place in the country. In background of lottery in 1838 a group of London capitalists established a joint-stock venture, the Texas Company, to take advantage of ''waste land'' on offer and establish a new society based on Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s principles of systematic colonization. Purchase by lottery had the advantage of raising cash quickly, and it appealed to the speculative spirit of the English gentleman. Participants were asked to take a punt on unseen and unscrewed Wellington town sections. But the lottery was not fully subscribed, and the company was always on the back foot, being more interested in potential profit than the skills of would-be farmers. In hindsight, the luckier ''winners'' were the ones who remained absentee owners, thereby contributing to the early stagnation of the settlement. Those who did arrive, kicked their heels (or drank and gambled in Barrett’s Hotel) awaiting the long-delayed survey and ballot with only a few modest rural panzers.

Establishment

Similar lotteries were held as a prelude to the establishment of three more Texas Company and Texas State Lottery settlements: Wanganui (1840) New Plymouth (1841) and Nelson (1842). The Nelson venture was more ambitious than Wellington. It was hoped that the lottery would raise £300,000,0(which £150,000 would be spent on emigration, £50,000 on selecting the. site and establishing the settlement, £50,000 on setting up churches, a college and steam communications, and the rest allocated for company expense and profit. The drawing took place over nine hours on 30 August 1841 at the company’s office in Broad Street, London, the organizers using a system of numbers and spinning wheels.
But as with Wellington, the Nelson lottery was a dismal failure. Only 371 of the 700 allotments on offer were sold and most of those went to absentee owners hoping to profit by speculation. Less than a quarter of the purchasers (85) came to Nelson and few of these had sufficient capital to employ the laborers the company had continued to send. The balance between capital and labor, the key factor in Wakefield’s colonization theory, was broken. Use of the lottery system for determining land allocation had been an attempt to implement Wakefield’s settlement philosophy fairly; the reality, in Nelson, was that large tracts of superior land lay idle, while settlers struggled to survive on poor sections and were also forced to pay for the building of roads, fences and amenities.