Console 50-lines at bootup?

[Jay O'Brien]

I ran FreeBSD for the first time last week; I have 4.10 working. 
Following http://users.rcn.com/rneswold/fbsd-init.html I have set up 
console fonts in /etc/rc.conf and set up 50-line mode in /etc/ttys. 
I can use vidcontrol VGA_80x50 and vidcontrol green black from the 
console to set ttyv0 or whatever virtual terminal I'm using. 

I cannot make it set up the VGA_80x50 and 'green black' parameters 
when booting up. I've tried many iterations of the text in 
/etc.rc.local or /etc.rc.conf.local and I get errors and failures 
to boot that forced me to learn about single-user mode to recover. 
(Probably a good thing that I had to learn about single-user!)

I would like the system to boot up into VGA_80x50 and green on 
black, and I'm stumped.

Jay O'Brien
Rio Linda, CA, USA