About 1885, Civil War veterans in gray and blue came into the western part of Texas to tame the wilderness. They grazed cattle where drought parched the grass, lived in dugouts, and found daily existence a siege that reminded them of war hardships. On occasional trips into town, they verbally refought the war on the Courthouse Square, but lived peacefully together to build a great county. In Cottle County, 85 percent of the early pioneers had worn the gray, and one out of three had been in Texas units; others were from Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Of the great early brands, most were owned by Confederate veterans, but one in Cottle was run by a strong pro-Unionist. In 1890, 8,722 Union veterans lived in Texas. One example in Cottle County at this time was Union veteran William Frederick Liedtke (1836-1914), who had migrated to the U.S. from Prussia in 1856. He served as a county official and then as state auditor of Nebraska before settling in Paducah, where he was legal advisor, abstractor, and Justice of the Peace. Gray or blue in the 1860s, the 1890 uniform tended to be cowman's regalia on an American looking to the future rather than at the past.