# A true Texas fact



## woodman6415

Texas has 254 counties ...
My dad always told the story that the reason for that is back in the day news traveled by horseback ... That each county courthouse would be a days ride ... 

The Arcane Texas fact of the day:

Collin Mckinney was not only the oldest signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence (at 70 years of age), but he also lived under at least seven sovereigns during his life. He was born in New Jersey in 1766, a subject of King George, and died in Confederate Texas in 1861, aged 95. During his life he was governed by England, the American Colonies, the United States, Mexico, the Texas provisional government, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States of America. Incidentally, it was McKinney who advocated making counties as nearly 30 miles square as possible, with the courthouse near the geographic center, so that citizens could vote without undue hardship. After he was 75 years old, he made eleven trips guiding Kentuckians and Tennesseans to new homes in North Texas, where he helped establish the Disciples of Christ.

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## Tony

Cool stuff, thank you Wendell! Tony

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## Kevin

Good stuff Wendell!

I'm going to post a thread sharing my own McKinney roots.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a Doozy:

In Brazoria, Texas, there is a park called the "Masonic Oak Park." It is named after a live oak tree that stands in the park. The tree is called the Masonic Oak because it was under that tree that Stephen F. Austin, Anson Jones (later President of the Republic of Texas), John A. Wharton (for whom Wharton is named), J.F. Caldwell (for whom Caldwell is named), A.E Phelps, Alexander Russell, and Asa Brigham met in March, 1835. to establish the first Masonic Lodge in Texas. Jones wrote, "The place of the meeting was back of the town of Brazoria near the place known as General John Austin's, in a little grove of wild peach or laurel, and which had been selected as a family burying ground for that distinguished soldier and citizen." They met underneath what was then a very prominent, 200 year-old live oak tree. The lodge was called the Holland Lodge, named for J.H. Holland who, at that time, was the Masonic Grand Master of Louisiana. The tree still stands and it is now estimated to be close to 400 years old. You can actually visit it. It's right here:

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.055...4!1sk8YlAS231ngqoTTI7DrU4A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


If you look you can see both a historical marker and a granite marker erected by the Masons to mark the spot. HOW COOL IS THAT?. To think that this tree bore witness to that meeting and to every second of Texas history since then is pretty mind-blowing. I told y'all it is a doozy of an Arcane Texas Fact!

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## Tony

Gotta plan a trip now! Tony

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## woodman6415

Was thinking the same thing @Tony

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Y'all realize, of course, that it took a Texan to kill Dracula, right? In Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel it was Texan Quincey Morris who ultimately kills the supernatural vampire. Stoker describes Morris as a rich young American from Texas, and one of the three men who proposes to Lucy Westenra. Quincey is friends with her other two admirers, Arthur Holmwood and Dr. John Seward, even after Lucy has chosen between them, as well as Jonathan Harker. He carries a rhino head Bowie knife at all times, and at one point he admits that he is a teller of tall tales and 'a rough fellow, who hasn't "perhaps lived as a man should." Anyway, it's Quincey who drives his Bowie knife through Dracula's heart at the end. Unfortunately, just prior to that, he had been attacked by gypsies and his wounds end up killing him. Mina and John Harker, two of the novel's main characters, memorialize him by naming their son "Quincey."

I was curious about all of this and wondered why Soker ---- an Irishman living in England ----- had made Quincey Morris a Texan. It turned out that Stoker was just as taken by the aura/mystique of Texas cowboys as anybody, for it was when he was writing "Dracula" that the first great wave of Texas "cowboy mythos" was washing over Europe. 

So, yeah. Quincey Morris, vampire slayer ---- and Texan.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Y'all realize, of course, that it took a Texan to kill Dracula, right? In Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel it was Texan Quincey Morris who ultimately kills the supernatural vampire. Stoker describes Morris as a rich young American from Texas, and one of the three men who proposes to Lucy Westenra. Quincey is friends with her other two admirers, Arthur Holmwood and Dr. John Seward, even after Lucy has chosen between them, as well as Jonathan Harker. He carries a rhino head Bowie knife at all times, and at one point he admits that he is a teller of tall tales and 'a rough fellow, who hasn't "perhaps lived as a man should." Anyway, it's Quincey who drives his Bowie knife through Dracula's heart at the end. Unfortunately, just prior to that, he had been attacked by gypsies and his wounds end up killing him. Mina and John Harker, two of the novel's main characters, memorialize him by naming their son "Quincey."
> 
> I was curious about all of this and wondered why Soker ---- an Irishman living in England ----- had made Quincey Morris a Texan. It turned out that Stoker was just as taken by the aura/mystique of Texas cowboys as anybody, for it was when he was writing "Dracula" that the first great wave of Texas "cowboy mythos" was washing over Europe.
> 
> So, yeah. Quincey Morris, vampire slayer ---- and Texan.



That's similar to how Holly Golightly's husband in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's ended up being written by Truman Capote as from Tulip, Texas. My dad was born there and it's where our cemetery is and where I'll end up. Truman became best friends with a man that was from Tulip Texas, a friend of dad's family that moved off and made good in the world. Funny how things like that influence larger things. I mean, how else could Tulip, Texas end up in one of the most of American film and novella classics eh.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of the building of the first Pecos High Bridge by a man who helped build it:in the early 1890s:

:"Three separate 'frogtowns' sprang into existence [frogtowns were camps that 'hopped along,' keeping up with construction]. Although these "towns" were only 300 feet apart they might as well have been 50 miles apart, for you had to go either up or down if you went visiting and it was dangerous climbing.

There were 13 saloons around the Pecos bridge while we were building it, some on the west rim of the canyon, some on the east rim and some down in the canyon. Blaine and Sinclair had a big tent saloon with boarded sides on the east rim and there was another operated by a man named Sikorski.

Supplies were let down from the west rim on a derrick. Torres, the justice of the peace who defeated Bean, had build a saloon and 'frontier amusement palace' down in the canyon. When he opened it up he let 13 women over the side on the derrick and was ready for business.

The saloon building and all of the smaller rooms were build of ocotillo stalks for walls, with brush roofs. There used to be some high old times in that place, I'll tell you, especially around pay day. Some of the boys who lost their money quickly at faro or monte could always sneak around and peak through the ocotillo stalks and see how the rest of the crew were spending their money."

----- James McMullen, interviewed by Sam Woodford and quoted in the "San Antonio Light," 1955

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## Wildthings

Just found this thread! Awesome! Here are a few ramblings about your info!




woodman6415 said:


> Texas has 254 counties ...
> 
> My dad always told the story that the reason for that is back in the day news traveled by horseback ... That each county courthouse would be a days ride ...
> 
> 
> The Arcane Texas fact of the day:
> 
> 
> Collin Mckinney was not only the oldest signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence (at 70 years of age), but he also lived under at least seven sovereigns during his life. He was born in New Jersey in 1766, a subject of King George, and died in Confederate Texas in 1861, aged 95. During his life he was governed by England, the American Colonies, the United States, Mexico, the Texas provisional government, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States of America. Incidentally, it was McKinney who advocated making counties as nearly 30 miles square as possible, with the courthouse near the geographic center, so that citizens could vote without undue hardship. After he was 75 years old, he made eleven trips guiding Kentuckians and Tennesseans to new homes in North Texas, where he helped establish the Disciples of Christ.




Through our (my wife and me) hobby of geocaching we are trying to complete the TX County Challenge geocache (GEOCACHE). Grant it we have slacked off quite a bit in the last year but still plan on completing it. We have been to 247 of the 254 counties in Texas and I have taken pictures of the courthouses in the majority of the counties.





woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a Doozy:
> 
> 
> In Brazoria, Texas, there is a park called the "Masonic Oak Park." It is named after a live oak tree that stands in the park. The tree is called the Masonic Oak because it was under that tree that Stephen F. Austin, Anson Jones (later President of the Republic of Texas), John A. Wharton (for whom Wharton is named), J.F. Caldwell (for whom Caldwell is named), A.E Phelps, Alexander Russell, and Asa Brigham met in March, 1835. to establish the first Masonic Lodge in Texas. Jones wrote, "The place of the meeting was back of the town of Brazoria near the place known as General John Austin's, in a little grove of wild peach or laurel, and which had been selected as a family burying ground for that distinguished soldier and citizen." They met underneath what was then a very prominent, 200 year-old live oak tree. The lodge was called the Holland Lodge, named for J.H. Holland who, at that time, was the Masonic Grand Master of Louisiana. The tree still stands and it is now estimated to be close to 400 years old. You can actually visit it. It's right here:
> 
> 
> https://www.google.com/maps/@29.055...4!1sk8YlAS231ngqoTTI7DrU4A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
> 
> 
> 
> If you look you can see both a historical marker and a granite marker erected by the Masons to mark the spot. HOW COOL IS THAT?. To think that this tree bore witness to that meeting and to every second of Texas history since then is pretty mind-blowing. I told y'all it is a doozy of an Arcane Texas Fact!




There used to be a geocache here, close to the tree to bring you to this site. It has since been archived but we visited the tree a couple years ago. Geocaching takes you to areas of coolness that you never would have known about





woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of the building of the first Pecos High Bridge by a man who helped build it:in the early 1890s:
> 
> 
> :"Three separate 'frogtowns' sprang into existence [frogtowns were camps that 'hopped along,' keeping up with construction]. Although these "towns" were only 300 feet apart they might as well have been 50 miles apart, for you had to go either up or down if you went visiting and it was dangerous climbing.
> 
> 
> There were 13 saloons around the Pecos bridge while we were building it, some on the west rim of the canyon, some on the east rim and some down in the canyon. Blaine and Sinclair had a big tent saloon with boarded sides on the east rim and there was another operated by a man named Sikorski.
> 
> 
> Supplies were let down from the west rim on a derrick. Torres, the justice of the peace who defeated Bean, had build a saloon and 'frontier amusement palace' down in the canyon. When he opened it up he let 13 women over the side on the derrick and was ready for business.
> 
> 
> The saloon building and all of the smaller rooms were build of ocotillo stalks for walls, with brush roofs. There used to be some high old times in that place, I'll tell you, especially around pay day. Some of the boys who lost their money quickly at faro or monte could always sneak around and peak through the ocotillo stalks and see how the rest of the crew were spending their money."
> 
> 
> ----- James McMullen, interviewed by Sam Woodford and quoted in the "San Antonio Light," 1955




How cool is this! My brother and I had a deer lease just north of the Pecos High Bridge. If you look north of the bridge there is a railroad bridge crossing of the Pecos. The old water tower that supplied the water for the railroad is still on the east side. Our camp was in the shadows of this tower and it supplied water for our use.
(BRIDGE and CAMP)
Another cool fact is that the military had a strong existence here to protect the bridge from saboteurs during the war (can’t remember which war) and we found old relics on our lease. (Buttons, etc) One day while enjoying viewing the bridge at the rest area we met an older gentleman that was by himself. Of course I had to engage with him and found out he and his brother worked at the construction site there at the bridge. His brother was killed there. He had some cool stories about the area. During our stay at the lease (7 years) Lake Amistad was down by 60ish feet. Since then it has filled back to pool but it caused the Pecos River to be way down and affecting the canyons on our lease. We found petroglyphs in a couple of them that are now covered back up by water. Seminole Canyon State Park is within spitting distance of our gate

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## woodman6415

How about this ... A woman could be a lawer and judge in 1925 but couldn't serve on a jury till 1954 

On January 1, 1925, Governor Pat M. Neff appointed an all-woman state Supreme Court, the first in Texas and in the nation. The case before the court involved the Woodmen of the World. All three justices belonged to this organization and were consequently disqualified. Since most of the other judges in Texas were also Woodmen, Neff decided to choose female lawyers as famales were ineligible for lodge membership. The special court first met on January 8, 1925. Women did not serve on juries in the state until 1954. Here we see Hattie Henenberg, Hortense Ward, and Ruth Roome. All three were well-established lawyers and all three had long, distinguished careers.

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## Kevin

Texas was also the first state to use the letters t, e, x, a, and s to spell its name. No other state before had thought of it. I didn't read that anywhere, I just sort of had a sudden moment of brilliance.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> Gotta plan a trip now! Tony





woodman6415 said:


> Was thinking the same thing @Tony



Here's a couple trees worth the field trip to check out the history involve with them.. I love this stuff!!

*Click on the title for links*

Hanging Tree - Hallettsville, Texas - Old Pockets hung from this tree -




Urrea Oaks - Refugio, TX - shade for a General





OK OK one more!

Lonely Grave, Spooky Site - another hanging tree with a twist!







OK Wendell I'll give your thread back to ya now! Sorry!

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> Texas was also the first state to use the letters t, e, x, a, and s to spell its name. No other state before had thought of it. I didn't read that anywhere, I just sort of had a sudden moment of brilliance.



Might stop touching those bare electric wires ..sudden moments of brilliance should stop ...

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## woodman6415

Please don't stop .. This stuff is so much fun and entertaining ..




Wildthings said:


> Here's a couple trees worth the field trip to check out the history involve with them.. I love this stuff!!
> 
> *Click on the title for links*
> 
> Hanging Tree - Hallettsville, Texas - Old Pockets hung from this tree -
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Urrea Oaks - Refugio, TX - shade for a General
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> OK OK one more!
> 
> Lonely Grave, Spooky Site - another hanging tree with a twist!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> OK Wendell I'll give your thread back to ya now! Sorry!

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## Mike1950

Thought this was appropriate here........

And God Created Texas . . .

God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel, found him, resting on the seventh day.

He inquired, "Where have you been?"

God smiled deeply and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds,
"Look, Michael. Look what I've made."

Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, "What is it?"

"It's a planet," replied God, and I've put life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a place to test Balance."

"Balance?" inquired Michael, "I'm still confused."

God explained, pointing to different parts of Earth. "For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, while southern Europe is going to be poor.
Over here I've placed a continent of white people, and over there is a continent of black people. Balance in all things."

God continued pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice."

The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a land area and said, "What's that one?"

"That's Texas, the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and plains. The people from Texas are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, humorous, but proud and they are going to travel the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of peace, and producers of good things."

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, "But what about balance, God? You said there would be balance."

God smiled, "I will create Washington, DC. Wait
till you see the fools I put there."

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## Kevin

We had a hanging tree here, I think most communities did. It was a massive white oak that started dying of old age in the late 80s.
I remember thinking around 90/91 "I better get some of that wood before it's all gone" but by the time I went to get some it was gone. I saw a tin type of it once from the late 1800s and it was almost as huge back then as it was before it started dying.

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## woodman6415

Do to the fact I started out as a pauper I hope the reverse is true !!!


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On October 21, 1970, at the age of 95, Abraham Lincoln Neiman died in a Masonic Home in Arlington. In September, 1907, with his wife Carrie and his borther-in-law Herbert Marcus, Neiman established the Neiman Marcus store in Dallas, and it immediately established a reputation for high quality at a high price. But in 1928, after frequent clashes with Herbert as well as with Herbert's son Stanley, he sold his share of the business to Marcus for $250,000. About the same time, he and Carrie were divorced. Neiman started several other business over the years, none very successful. At the time of his death he was utterly destitute, his only possessions being a pair of cuff links he kept in a cigar box. So, in a twist of fate, one of the founders of the world's foremost luxury store died a pauper.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Do to the fact I started out as a pauper I hope the reverse is true !!!



I'm in your corner. 

(@SENC would probably say you don't want me in your corner)

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

Folks around the world have a Texan named Daniel Haynes to thank for a good night's sleep. In the 1880s, the Austin County settler invented the process and the machinery for manufacturing the cotton mattress. This was the forerunner of today's modern bedding. Haynes named his company for the town where he developed the machinery ----- Sealy, Texas. Thus began the Sealy Mattress Company.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Just as I entered [San Antonio, June 18], the camels with their Arab attendants were coming in, causing a general excitement among the population, and a general stampede among all the horses within sight of the strange procession. It is not every town in the new world that can boast of having witnessed such a scene, and my own mind was carried away to Cairo and other cities of the East, where a caravan of some forty camels is nothing to stare at. The last I saw of the animals they were browsing among the mesquite trees near the San Pedro Springs, looking patient, contented, and apparently well reconciled to their new home."

----- George Wilkins Kendall, on the U.S. Army's experiment with camels in Texas, in a letter to the New Orleans Picayune, July 6, 1856

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## Kevin



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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The first movie to win an Academy Award for "Best Film" was shot in Texas. 1927's "Wings," a silent film starring Clara Bow and Buddy Rogers, was filmed in and around San Antonio and made it's world premier in the Alamo City.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"If we had arrested all the naked and drunk people I saw, we'd have filled our jail and yours and all of the jails from here to Dallas.. 

---- a Williamson County deputy sheriff talking to a reporter from the Austin American Statesman after Willie's 1975 4th of July picnic, held in Williamson County, Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1887, Comanche Chief Yellow Bear and his nephew, Chief Quanah Parker, went to Ft. Worth, Texas to discuss overdue money from leased tribal reservation lands. The two of them checked into the most modern hotel in the city, the Hotel Pickwick. Yellow Bear decided to retire early, but Quanah went with a friend for a social visit. Two hours later, Quanah returned to the hotel room, and retired for the evening. In turning off the gaslight, it is speculated that either he blew the light out, not realizing the consequences, or he did not turn the valve completely off. Whatever the reason, he awoke sometime later, roused Yellow Bear, and both struggled across the floor, Quanah falling near a window. Both lost consciousness. Almost 13 hours later, the scene was discovered. Yellow Bear was dead but Quanah survived.

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## Tony

Wendell, THANK YOU for posting these, great stuff man!!!! Tony

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas fact of the day: not only did Gail Borden lay out the first plan for streets in both Galveston and Houston and publish Houston's first newspaper, but he later went on to invent condensed milk, which found a huge market during the Civil War. The company that he founded, the Condensed Milk Company, became Borden's Milk. Borden himself, after a lifetime of struggling financially, died a very wealthy man in Borden, Texas. He was buried in his home state of New York and has a very nice marker, indeed:

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## Kevin

One riot. One Ranger.


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## woodman6415

Pretty sure I have at least half of the species growing in my yard 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Some 100 species of cactus are found in Texas, the most found in any state. They range from the common prickly pear cactus to a rare variety found only in El Paso. They come in radically different sizes, from the button cactus, which is no bigger than a dime, to the barrel cactus, also known as the fishhook cactus, which can weigh in at half a ton. Texas cacti have an interesting array of names as well, from pleasant to amusing to painful sounding. These include hunger, starvation, flapjack, dumpling, strawberry, blind pear, cow's tongue, night blooming cactus, devil's head, horse-killer, rainbow, pin cushion, porcupine, lady-finger, and "Glory of Texas."

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## Wildthings

Don't forget "Jumping Cactus (Cholla)" and " Dog Cactus"which I'm painfully aware of.

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## Kevin




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## woodman6415

I hate those jumping cactus most of all ...,


Wildthings said:


> Don't forget "Jumping Cactus (Cholla)" and " Dog Cactus"which I'm painfully aware of.


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## woodman6415

A little light reading about a bridge war ... And as an burnt orange blooded long horn fan ... I have to say ... OU still sucks 


Texans barricade the Texas side of the bridge that crossed the Red River between Durant, Oklahoma, and Denison, Texas, 1931. This was during the "Red River Bridge War" that erupted between the two states in the summer of that year. 

What happened was this: the Red River Bridge Company, a private firm owned by Benjamin Colbert, had been operating a toll bridge between Durant, Oklahoma and Denison, Texas, carrying U.S. Route 69 and U.S. Route 75. Texas and Oklahoma had jointly built a new, free span northwest of the existing toll bridge.

On July 10, 1931, the Red River Bridge Company obtained an injunction against the Texas Highway Commission (now Texas Department of Transportation), keeping them from opening the new bridge. The company said that the highway commission had promised in July 1930 to buy the old toll bridge for $60,000, equal to $849,920 today. In reaction to the injunction, the Governor of Texas, Ross S. Sterling, ordered that the new free bridge be barricaded from the Texas end.

On July 16, Oklahoma governor "Alfalfa Bill" Murray ordered the new bridge open, by executive order. Murray issued this order on the grounds that the land on both sides of the river belonged to Oklahoma, per the Louisiana Purchase treaty of 1803. Murray sent highway crews across the new bridge to destroy the barricades.

Governor Sterling sent Adjutant General William Warren Sterling and three Texas Rangers to the new bridge to defend the Texas Highway Commission workers enforcing the injunction and rebuild the barricade that night. The next day, Oklahoma crews under Governor Murray's order demolished the Oklahoma approach to the toll bridge, rendering that bridge impassable.

The Texas state legislature called a special session on July 23 to pass a bill allowing the Red River Bridge Company to sue the state over the issue, partially in response to meetings in Sherman and Denison, Texas, demanding the free bridge be opened. The next day, Governor Murray declared martial law at the site, enforced by Oklahoma National Guardsmen, and appeared at the site armed with a revolver, hours before a Muskogee, Oklahoma court issued an injunction prohibiting him from blocking the northern toll bridge approach. Murray directed the guardsmen to allow anyone to cross either bridge.

Murray discovered on July 27 that the free bridge was in danger of being closed permanently. He expanded the martial-law zone across the river, stationing guardsmen on both free bridge approaches. The injunction against the bridge opening was dissolved and the martial law order rescinded on August 6.

News of the dispute made national and international headlines. Adolf Hitler may have believed that the events were evidence of in-fighting between the American states, weakening the union.

The free bridge that was the cause of the dispute was opened on Labor Day, September 7, 1931. It was replaced in 1995, though a portion of the bridge was saved as a historical attraction and relocated to a park in Colbert, Oklahoma.

All of this is per the Wikipedia article, which I helped edit.

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## Kevin

I had forgotten about this! Will read it later. I had crossed that bridge many times. Haven't been over there in a few years and alrhough it closed in the 90's I *think* it is still standing.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Col. John Watkin and his wagon train were caught in a driving rain between Laredo and Uvalde. Camping out, the Colonel found that a roll of bills in his pocket was wet and placed them before the campfire to dry. While the party was eating supper, a jenny [female mule] on which they carried their packs very innocently protruded her tongue and took in her throat $785 of Uncle Sam's currency. The Colonel, by mere chance, happened to look that way just as the mule was swallowing his valuable rations, ran to her, put his hand down her throat, seized the greenbacks, and brought them forth intact."

---- the Uvalde Hesperian Newspaper, March 14, 1885

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## woodman6415

You know you're in Texas when it starts rainin' jalapeños.

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## Kevin




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## woodman6415

This is the burial marker for Emanuel Stance, who was a Buffalo Soldier in the United States Army and a recipient of America's highest military decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in during Indian conflicts in Texas. 

Stance joined the Army in October 1866, and was promoted to Sergeant just a few months later. At the time of his actions, Stance was serving in Company F of the 9th Cavalry Regiment at Fort McKavett, Texas. On May 20, 1870, he was sent with a patrol to find the Apaches who had kidnapped Herman Lehmann and his younger brother, Willie, four days earlier. Stance and his men located the raiding party near Kickapoo Springs, about fourteen miles north of Fort McKavett, and opened fire. The Apaches abandoned their stolen horses and fled, enabling Willie Lehmann to escape during the chaos. For his bravery on this mission, Stance was cited for "[g]allantry on scout after Indians" and became the first African-American regular to receive the Medal of Honor a month later, on June 28, 1870.

Stance reached the rank of First Sergeant before being murdered on Christmas Eve, 1887. His body was found on the road to Crawford, Nebraska with several bullet wounds; the probable victim of his own men. The whole story is much more interesting than the condensed version presented here, and you can read about it at this link: http://bit.ly/29qjQi3

He is buried at Fort McPherson National Cemetery, Maxwell, Nebraska

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Burkburnett, Texas, fourteen miles north of Wichita Falls in Wichita County, was originally called "Nesterville," as it was established by "nesters" on land that was part of Samuel Burk Burnett's vast Four Sixes ranch. It was later changed to "Gilbert." But then, in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt was Burk Burnett's guest for a wolf hunt at the ranch. Teddy had such a great time that he ordered the U.S. Postal Service to change the name of Gilbert to "Burkburnett" in honor of his host. The town thus became the only community in Texas to be named by a sitting U.S. President. Some sources say that Teddy didn't "order" the name change so much as "request" it and then pull some strings to make sure it happened. Other sources say that the change occurred by Presidential decree. No matter: it is still a neat story.

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## woodman6415

Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Duke Hudson in Del Rio, 1906. They are at the beginning of their careers. Hamer became perhaps the most famous Texas Ranger of all time and was nearly killed on several occasions. 28 years after this photo was taken, Hamer was put on the trail of Bonnie and Clyde and, along with several other men, killed the two outlaws in an ambush in Louisiana.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Duke Hudson in Del Rio, 1906. They are at the beginning of their careers. Hamer became perhaps the most famous Texas Ranger of all time and was nearly killed on several occasions. 28 years after this photo was taken, Hamer was put on the trail of Bonnie and Clyde and, along with several other men, killed the two outlaws in an ambush in Louisiana.
> 
> View attachment 108718



@Sprung, I think this is you and I in a previous life! Tony


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## Sprung

Tony said:


> @Sprung, I think this is you and I in a previous life! Tony



That other guy isn't short enough to be you!

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## Tony

Sprung said:


> That other guy isn't short enough to be you!



That's hurtful and I don't like you anymore. I'm taking my toys and going home!!!!!!!!!!! Tony

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## JR Parks

woodman6415 said:


> This is the burial marker for Emanuel Stance, who was a Buffalo Soldier in the United States Army and a recipient of America's highest military decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in during Indian conflicts in Texas.
> 
> Stance joined the Army in October 1866, and was promoted to Sergeant just a few months later. At the time of his actions, Stance was serving in Company F of the 9th Cavalry Regiment at Fort McKavett, Texas. On May 20, 1870, he was sent with a patrol to find the Apaches who had kidnapped Herman Lehmann and his younger brother, Willie, four days earlier. Stance and his men located the raiding party near Kickapoo Springs, about fourteen miles north of Fort McKavett, and opened fire. The Apaches abandoned their stolen horses and fled, enabling Willie Lehmann to escape during the chaos. For his bravery on this mission, Stance was cited for "[g]allantry on scout after Indians" and became the first African-American regular to receive the Medal of Honor a month later, on June 28, 1870.
> 
> Stance reached the rank of First Sergeant before being murdered on Christmas Eve, 1887. His body was found on the road to Crawford, Nebraska with several bullet wounds; the probable victim of his own men. The whole story is much more interesting than the condensed version presented here, and you can read about it at this link: http://bit.ly/29qjQi3
> 
> He is buried at Fort McPherson National Cemetery, Maxwell, Nebraska
> View attachment 108713


One of the best books on that time frame is The Last Captive by A C Greene. It details the capture and subsequent life of Herman Lehmann. A recommended good read for anyone.

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## Sprung

Tony said:


> That's hurtful and I don't like you anymore. I'm taking my toys and going home!!!!!!!!!!! Tony



Sorry, picking on short people runs in my blood! Just ask my oldest sister - grew up making fun of her for her lack of height. She's 5' 4 1/2" tall. She says when you're as short as she is, that 1/2" matters! My third sister, on the other hand, is a full 6' tall!


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## Tony

I'm 5' 5-1/2" and yes, it does make a difference!

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## woodman6415

I will look it up ... Thanks 



JR Parks said:


> One of the best books on that time frame is The Last Captive by A C Greene. It details the capture and subsequent life of Herman Lehmann. A recommended good read for anyone.


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## JR Parks

If you can't find it let me know ( at one time they were out of print) and I'll see if I can find mine and loan it to you. Jim -kinda the Wood Barter Library!

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## woodman6415

Just read this ... Pretty interesting 

Traces of Texas reader Agatha Jenkins let me know about this woman, Olive Oatman, who lived in Sherman, Texas, died there in 1903, and is buried there. I could tell you her remarkable story but it's better if you read it here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/81424/retrobituary-olive-oatman-pioneer-girl-who-became-marked-woman

Thank you, Agatha. Texas history is endlessly interesting!

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## Tony

Fascinating read Wendell! Tony

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## Wildthings

JR Parks said:


> If you can't find it let me know ( at one time they were out of print) and I'll see if I can find mine and loan it to you. Jim -kinda the Wood Barter Library!


You are right. I have read this book and it's well worth the time to read it!


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## woodman6415

when I first moved here to the beautiful hill country we leased a house in Comfort for a year so I look for a home to buy .... Comfort is a small town on interstate 10 about 40 miles west of San Antonio ... Awesome town with some of the friendliest folks in Texas ...

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Comfort, Texas (in Kendall County) was the sight of an amusing event in 1856. At that time the town had a cannon that was to be fired only in the event of an emergency, like a fire or an Indian attack. But on at least one occasion it was used for something quite different.

It seems that back in 1856 the little town of Comfort was preparing for its Fourth of July celebration and had ordered a wagon load of beer from the Menger Brewery in San Antonio. The wagon, unfortunately, arrived on July 2, two days early. At that time there was no cold storage in Comfort and the unpasteurized beer was basically a living organism just WAITING to spoil. Well, a wagon full of beer in such danger was judged by at least some of the Germans thereabouts to be a calamity of the first magnitude, so somebody fired the cannon and everybody came running to the cannon, where they learned the true nature of the emergency. 

Some of the citizens were miffed because, by strict definition, the firing of the cannon was a false alarm. But those voices were drowned out by (intoxicated?) voices of reason, who decided right there on the spot to celebrate the 4th of July on July 2nd. You've got to love that pragmatic way of thinking!

I was told this story several years ago by a man from Comfort. He was presented to me as somewhat of a local historian and told me this tale at a picnic. He was inebriated, though, and I never knew whether it was true. But I just received "A Treasury of Texas Trivia" by Bill Cannon, and this story is included. So apparently it IS true. And, if it isn't, it should be! The book comes highly recommended, by the way. Lots of interesting tidbits.

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## Tony

Going to have to pick that book up, as well as the one Jim mentioned earlier. Tony


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Duke Hudson in Del Rio, 1906. They are at the beginning of their careers. Hamer became perhaps the most famous Texas Ranger of all time and was nearly killed on several occasions. 28 years after this photo was taken, Hamer was put on the trail of Bonnie and Clyde and, along with several other men, killed the two outlaws in an ambush in Louisiana.
> 
> View attachment 108718



During my brief stint as an insurance salesman I sold a policy to a Hamer in rural Texas outside of Muenster that claimed to be a relative of Frank's (it was actually just a renewal). Frank only had one child who was KIA at Iwo Jima so this guy had to be a distant relative since the son didn't have time to start a family. I can't remember the connection he claimed maybe Frank was an uncle or something. 

The funny part of the story is this. I was still in training and my boss, Dave Moon that owned the insurance agency I worked for was with me. This was my first or second "solo" sale before Dave would turn me out on my own soon. As we were driving down the road after the sale Dave turned and said as an afterthought _"Oh I should have taken you out back and shown you "Johnny's" helicopter"_. I use the fictitious name "Johnny" because I googled the man and he is still alive so I don't want to use his real first name. Wouldn't be hard for you to google it up with the info given but anyway. Dave told me he used it to commute to his job in Dallas. He wasn't a wealthy or so I was led to believe, yet he owned and operated his own helicopter that he flew in to Addison airport every day and I never even heard a word about the helicopter the whole time we were there. Dave knew I was former USCG helo man and it was part of why he hired me - he employed vets as much as possible. Yet never thought to mention this to me while we there. Some things are just hard to figure out.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day concerns Judge Roy Bean's bear:

"When the smoke of the incoming train was seen [Judge Roy] Bean would lead the bear around in front of the saloon and tie it to a post. With the arrival of the crowd of sightseers the old frontiersman, or one of the Mexican mozos, would hand a bottle of beer to the animal and it would quickly drain it to the last drop down its capacious throat.

"Does the bear ever get drunk!" was usually the natural question of some curious-minded passenger.

"Enough beer would make anybody drunk," Bean would reply.

Beer bought over the bar cost a dollar a bottle, but there were always enough interested passengers to make the experiment. The bear was a big source of revenue to Bean, and the bruin seemed to thrive on the beverage. One day a traveling salesman overstepped the bounds of Bean's severe restrictions and was heavily fined. He vowed he would get vengeance. A few weeks later the traveling salesman found himself again in Langtry and at a time when Bean was in San Antonio on one of his periodical visits. The bear was in its accustomed place. A bright thought occurred to the seeker for revenge. He went to the telegraph station, wrote a telegram and signed the name of the Mexican who was in temporary charge of the saloon to the message. It was addressed to "Judge" Bean at his stopping place in San Antonio, and read :

"Bear died last night. What shall I do?"

The telegram was a severe blow to Bean. He wired back:

"Skin bear and ship skin to me here!'"

The Mexican knew what would happen to him if he disobeyed orders. He went out and looked at the bear. The animal was dozing peacefully in the shade. The Mexican went inside, picked up a rifle and shot the bear square between the eyes. He skinned the carcass, and the pelt went to San Antonio by the next train. Bean received it and sent it to a furrier to have it dressed. He came back to Langtry depressed and suffering more or less from a "hang-over."

"What in hell was the matter with the bear?" was the first question he asked.

The explanations which followed were accompanied by a stirring scene in which the Mexican narrowly escaped with his life."

---- New York Herald-Tribune, October 18, 1925

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## frankp

My grandfather had a pet bear as a young man in Arkansas. Still looking for the pictures of him in my grandmother's stuff but not something one could easily get away with these days.

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## Tony

@Kenbo have you seen this thread? Tony

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> @Kenbo have you seen this thread? Tony



He has.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> @Kenbo have you seen this thread? Tony


He probly hasn't had time to read this junk about Texas!

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## woodman6415

You might be trying to hurt my one feeling @Wildthings .... Junk ??? Am I wasting my time posting this stuff I find interesting ? Spent 6 hours with my granddaughter today at the Witte Museum and it's filled with interesting facts and exhibits about Texas ... @Tony if you have not checked this out I highly recommend it ... It's free on admission on Tuesdays ... Only charge for the special exhibits ...


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## Wildthings

HaHa no way my friend - this stuff is priceless. That was in reference to my previous TX Revolution thread that Kenbo had "no time to read that junk"....until he started reading it and got engrossed in it!!

Witte Museum - I sure have been wanting to stroll through there!

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## Don Ratcliff

I just read a couple pages of this thread.


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## Wildthings

Don Ratcliff said:


> I just read a couple pages of this thread.
> 
> View attachment 108880


I thought you didn't drink?

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## Don Ratcliff

Wildthings said:


> I thought you didn't drink?


I dont, but it's starting to look like the best option...

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## Don Ratcliff

Random monkey pic @Brink


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> You might be trying to hurt my one feeling @Wildthings .... Junk ??? Am I wasting my time posting this stuff I find interesting ? Spent 6 hours with my granddaughter today at the Witte Museum and it's filled with interesting facts and exhibits about Texas ... @Tony if you have not checked this out I highly recommend it ... It's free on admission on Tuesdays ... Only charge for the special exhibits ...



Wendell, Barry was making a joke, trust me. He's as big a Texas junkie as you and I. If you haven't read the thread he did about the Alamo you should, incredible stuff! I haven't been to the Witten in a few years, I need to go. I also want to go check out the new Battle for the Alamo exhibit down in River center mall, supposed to be pretty good. Keep these coming Wendell, very good stuff my friend! Tony

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## frankp

All knowledge is good knowledge @woodman6415. Keep it coming. I suspect @Wildthings didn't actually mean he wanted you to stop.

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## Wildthings

Hey where's the arcane fact for today!! I'm addicted!!


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## Tony

Maybe Wendell is busy, so I'll throw in one that I've always liked. Tony 


Texas hosted what was arguably the last battle of the Civil War.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Yet despite being fully aware of this, Northern and Southern forces squared off the following month in the Battle of Palmito Ranch. “It must have been just a giant mob fight,” McCaslin said in describing the battle, which took place on a coastal prairie east of Brownsville, Texas. Ironically, the Confederates won what is considered—in Texas, at least—the last land action of the Civil War. With cavalry and artillery, the Confederates killed or wounded some 30 opponents, captured more than 100 others and forced the remainder back to a base near the mouth of the Rio Grande. It was a short-lived victory, however, as they agreed to lay down their arms a couple of weeks later.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> You might be trying to hurt my one feeling @Wildthings .... Junk ??? Am I wasting my time posting this stuff I find interesting ? Spent 6 hours with my granddaughter today at the Witte Museum and it's filled with interesting facts and exhibits about Texas ... @Tony if you have not checked this out I highly recommend it ... It's free on admission on Tuesdays ... Only charge for the special exhibits ...



Barry loves this stuff. He was speaking from Ken's perspective, insinuating Ken considers anything about Texas history "Junk" but Barry surely doesn't. It was joke in two ways though because @Kenbo does appreciate the history. In fact he read Barry's entire Texas Independence thread and loved ot.

Keep this thread going most of us are loving it. Some members obviously haven't learned there's certain threads to just stay out of if they have nothing positive to offer but we can ignore them.

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> Maybe Wendell is busy, so I'll throw in one that I've always liked. Tony
> 
> 
> Texas hosted what was arguably the last battle of the Civil War.
> Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Yet despite being fully aware of this, Northern and Southern forces squared off the following month in the Battle of Palmito Ranch. “It must have been just a giant mob fight,” McCaslin said in describing the battle, which took place on a coastal prairie east of Brownsville, Texas. Ironically, the Confederates won what is considered—in Texas, at least—the last land action of the Civil War. With cavalry and artillery, the Confederates killed or wounded some 30 opponents, captured more than 100 others and forced the remainder back to a base near the mouth of the Rio Grande. It was a short-lived victory, however, as they agreed to lay down their arms a couple of weeks later.



I've always been fascinated by that bit of history. A full month afterward and they decided to fight anyway. The south won the first and last battles of the war, and won the most battles in general yet lost the war. When you run out of shoes and ammo you ain't got much chance of winning a war. Plus what we Rebs often don't like to acknowledge Grant was a great general. Without him there would be a starts and bars over the white house right now. No I take that back, without Grant there would be no white house, most likely the CSA would have reverted the country back the AOC or something similar and that would be a good thing.

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## woodman6415

Hey guys I did know @Wildthings was just joking ... Anytime I start by saying you hurting my one feeling ... That's me joking right back ... Because my boss tells me I have no feelings at all .... Thanks for that fact @Tony .... From what I have read about that little incident the union started that battle because the guy in charge I can't remember his rank right off hand ..set out to make a name for himself and was sorely embarrassed ... If I recall he was order to return to headquarters and either busted down in rank or court marshaled ... I need to look it up ... Yes busy today ... Making 2 bolt action pens from deer antler for a donation auction that will benefit children's wing of Shannon Hospital in San Angelo .... Auction is part of a very big skeet shoot ...

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## woodman6415

One of the fascinating tidbits out of hundreds I learned yesterday at the Witte was for 100 years San Antoino was the largest city in Texas ...

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## woodman6415

At the Witte Museum with this cutie Tuesday

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## Kevin

She's a doll Wendell. 

Hey that saddle rack would make a good mailbox, just nail some cedar shingles over it.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When I came to Tascosa (about 1880) there were only three other American women in the Panhandle country west of Fort Elliott. They were Mrs. Charles Goodnight (he was a big cattle man), Miss Lizzie Rinehart and Mrs. Tom Bugby, wife of another big ranchmen ... There was a Mexican girl here in Tascosa, Senorita Piedad Romero, the richest man around. She was called "The Belle of the Llano Estacado." She sure was pretty.

When I came here Tascosa was the only town in the western Panhandle of Texas. Where Amarillo is now there was a buffalo ranch then. The nearest town on the north was Dodge City, Kansas, 242 miles away ... Everything we used was freighted in from Doge. That why needles cost 10 cents apiece, and it took a small fortune to buy enough material for a new dress. To the south there were only cattle trils that led down over the wild and unsettled plains to the cattle ranches along the Gulf Coast and to old Mexico. Ive seen 10,000 cattle in one herd, all Longhorns, come driving up across the prairie to swim the Canadian River here, and go up to the railroad at Dodge Cty or up to summer in Montana. Ive seen one-fourth million cattle swim the Canadian here in one year. Now look at it. The railroad came through; it missed Tascosa; towns sprang up along the line; people moves out from here and Tascosa died."

----- Ms. Frenchy McCormick, faro dealer and last resident of Old Tascosa, interviewed in the Kansas City Star, December 1930

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## woodman6415

What this story doesn't tell us is that longhorn cattle were immune to this disease and were allowed to drive thru ... complete story at the Witte 


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The so-called Winchester Quarantine was an extralegal device instigated in the early 1880s by Panhandle ranchers to stop the northward movement of cattle that might be infested with disease-carrying cattle ticks. At that time many Panhandle herds were being decimated by Texas fever carried by these ticks, which were spread by cattle driven up from South Texas. When the Panhandle Stock Association was organized at Mobeetie in July 1880 the cattlemen designated certain routes as "lines of drive" to contain herds being trailed across the Panhandle to New Mexico and Colorado. Water tanks were built on these routes, and affected herds were allowed 1½ miles of range on either side of the trail. The Rath Trail was set aside for the "middle or distributing drive." Outfits trailing cattle via Fort Griffin to Kansas were strongly urged to stay on the Western Trail, which ran by Doan's Store on the Red River and through the Indian Territory, thus avoiding the Panhandle altogether. In 1882 the association met with trail drivers in Dallas to try to achieve that end. 

Not everyone was willing to cooperate with these measures. Accordingly, Charles Goodnight of the JA Ranch and Orville H. Nelson of the Shoe Bar Ranch posted guards along the forty-five-mile stretch between their ranches, so that nesters and cattle outfits from South Texas moving north were required either to go around the line or to turn their cattle over to the watchmen until after the first frost. These watchmen, who were paid seventy-five dollars a month for the job, were armed with Winchester rifles; hence the name Winchester Quarantine. The guards were instructed to use moral suasion, then bluff, but if both of these measures failed, they were to send for help from the nearest ranches to hold the recalcitrant drovers in check until an injunction could be obtained and served on the trail boss. Though this last resort took several days, it was always effective. Although lobbying efforts by J. F. (Spade) Evansqv and other cattlemen to secure a legal quarantine law for the Panhandle were unsuccessful, the Winchester Quarantine line was maintained for a few years in cooperation with the Spur and Matador ranches. By 1886, however, wide-scale fencing of Panhandle ranges served to lesson the problem of tick-infested herds.

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, H. Allen Anderson, "Winchester Quarantine."

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## Wildthings

Today's True Texas History of the Day fact

*Hughes ends record-setting round-the-world flight in New York*

On this day in 1938, Howard Hughes and a four-man crew landed their specially equipped Lockheed 14 in New York City, having circled the globe in three days, nineteen hours, and seventeen minutes. Along the way, they cut in half Charles Lindbergh's record for crossing the Atlantic. Hughes, born in Houston in 1905, inherited a fortune when he was orphaned at the age of eighteen. He moved to Hollywood in the 1920s to produce, and then direct, movies such as Hell's Angels (1930) and Scarface (1932). An aviation enthusiast since boyhood, he formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in the 1930s as a division of Hughes Tool Company and set two speed records as a pilot. In the 1940s, he landed several contracts to produce military aircraft, but with mixed results, as in the case of the famous HK-1 flying boat (the "Spruce Goose"). He remained active in the film and aeronautics industries in the 1950s and 1960s, but by 1970 he had become increasingly reclusive and conducted most of his business through memos. He died in 1976 on a plane from Acapulco, Mexico to Houston.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a great one. John A. Lomax describes his boyhood in Bosque County shortly after the Civil War:

"At the time we moved to Texas the rich black lands of Navarro and Hill counties were selling at 50 cents an acre. My father, raised on a creek where water and timber were plentiful, preferred to pay six dollars an acre for bottom land which had to be grubbed of thick trees before a plow could turn the soil. But his boys were numerous, and they did the job during a long period of back-breaking years. We went down into the soil around the trees with mattox and grubbing hoe and cut the tap-roots, sometimes two feet below the surface.

My first remembrance of Bosque County is centered around a visit of my great-uncle, Charlie, who lived on a large cotton plantation on the Brazos River near Independence, Texas. I can recall his bright blue eyes, his long, beautifully-kept beard, the black cord running around his neck and down over his white waistcoat, fastened to a heavy gold watch; but most clearly I remember the shine new Barlow knife that he gave to me.

Our home was on the big road north of Meridian, a sort of Broadway leading from Waco up the Bosque valley to the vast northwest sections of Texas. Along this road traveled settlers in covered wagons, herds of horses, cattle, sheep (in later years), and many men on horseback. Buggies and carriages were seldom seen. Frequently travelers spent the night in our home. I can feel yet the thrill at hearing some belated person, late at night, down at the big gate, shouting amid the barking of dogs, "Hello! Hello!"

The big outside world was knocking at my door. I had hunted and fished, went in swimming, and lived with my kind ----- Frank and Tom Gandy, Joe and Harvey Francis, Billy Dysart, Sherman Graves, John Hornsby. John Cochran, a relative by marriage, was the only "town boy" I was comfortable with. My brother, Richard, ran with an older crowd. I remember especially his friends Cy Dennis, Bob Hanna and Andy Jordan. One Saturday afternoon Andy Jordan, naked, stood on a sharp point of land around which swerved the clear deep water of Bosque River. His feet rested in soft, lush grass. Half a dozen companions, naked also, lay flat on the grass or squatted, cowboy fashion, idly watching. As Andy raised himself on the balls of his feet, dug in his toes, poised for a dive, he stopped, held up a finger, and spoke:

'I takes my text this evening, dearly beloved, from that portion of the Holy Scripture where the 'postle Paul pints his pistol to the 'Phesians. The thirty-third verse of the forty-second chapter reads: "Repent ye, for the Day of Judgement is at hand." Now these may not be the exact words or from the exact place, but you'll find something like that somewhere in the Bible.'

Some of the boys giggled and nudged each other. Andy ---- unpredictable Andy ----- was about to deliver one of his famous impromptu sermons. He went on:

'But first let me tell you why I am here instead of brother Gus. You know that brother Gus is studying to be a preacher in Baylor University; and some of you have heard him preach on a hot August Sunday until long past dinner time. You know and I know that Gus is a good boy but ain't much of a preacher. Somebody has made a mistake, my brethren, and I have come here to tell you how it happened: the Lord called me to preach but Gus answered.'

Shouts of merriment greeted this sally. Andy, both by looks and words, sternly rebuked this outburst and went on to describe the scoffer and his place of punishment:

'Hell is deep and Hell is wide
Hell ain't got no bottom or side ...
and you're on the way there,' Andy shouted: then he made his dive."

----- John A. Lomax, "Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, Boyhood in Bosque," Southwest Review, 1944.

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## Kevin

Wendell that was awesome. This perhaps my favorite entry yet out of the many great ones in this thread.


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## woodman6415

Kind of took me back to some of the things me and my friends did down at the river .... During those lazy days of summer ... 


Kevin said:


> Wendell that was awesome. This perhaps my favorite entry yet out of the many great ones in this thread.

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## woodman6415

This is the funeral of Francisco Antonio Ruiz, the alcalde (mayor) of San Antonio during the Battle of the Alamo. His TSHA biography is pretty great:

"Francisco Antonio Ruiz, alcalde of San Antonio, familiarly known as Don Pancho, was born in San Antonio between 1804 and 1811. He was the eldest son of Josefa Hernández and Col. José Francisco Ruiz, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Francisco Antonio was the alcalde of San Antonio during the battle of the Alamo and was held under house arrest until the Alamo fell. He was ordered by Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to identify the fallen Alamo leaders and to dispose of the dead. Ruiz left one of the most vivid eye-witness accounts of the fall of the Alamo. 

After the Republic of Texas was established, Ruiz served as alderman in San Antonio from 1837 to 1841. He was opposed to the annexation of Texas to the United States and strongly objected to anyone who had not participated in the Texas Revolution having any say in the matter. When Texas was annexed in 1845, Ruiz went to live among the frontier Indians as his father had once done. He may have been the Francisco Ruiz listed in the 1850 census as a resident of Bexar County, aged thirty-nine, with a wife, Concepción, and two children. In later years Ruiz returned to San Antonio, where he died on October 18, 1876. He was buried in the Ruiz-Herrera family cemetery near the Medina River in Bexar County."

I look at this and I think how remarkably fortunate we are to have had this moment preserved. I can also completely understand his idea that only those who had actually stood up and been counted during the Texas Revolution (which was only 9 years before) should have a say in whether or not it was annexed by the United States. Not saying he was right or wrong, just saying I can understand it. 

Handbook of Texas Online, Maria O. Gomez, "Ruiz, Francisco Antonio," accessed July 14, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fru31.

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## woodman6415

The Possum Kingdom Stone Arch Bridge completed in 1942 in Graford, Texas is the longest and most substantial masonry arch bridge in the Lone Star State. . Engineers chose the heavy masonry form to withstand flood waters released from the Morris Sheppard Dam, which lies one mile upstream. The bridge features fine craftsmanship and is argued to be one of the best examples of WPA road work in Texas. Many of the WPA laborers were unemployed coal miners who had acquired their stone-cutting skills underground. The bridge includes eighteen spans of locally quarried limestone varying in length from twenty-three to thirty feet. All piers are founded on bedrock; most are 3'-0" wide, although piers seven and thirteen are heavier "bracing piers," tapering to a 5'-0" width at the top. The structure's total length is 433'-4". Despite having been overtopped by floods, the bridge remains in virtually unaltered condition.

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## Kenbo

Wildthings said:


> HaHa no way my friend - this stuff is priceless. That was in reference to my previous TX Revolution thread that Kenbo had "no time to read that junk"....until he started reading it and got engrossed in it!!
> 
> Witte Museum - I sure have been wanting to stroll through there!




I have to say, that I don't ever recall calling the Alamo thread junk. I did request more photos Because I am one who doesn't have much time to read lengthy threads. That being said, I did read every word of that thread and was disappointed when it ended. Although (being Canadian), I can't relate to a lot of the history of Texas or the States for that matter, I find it extremely interesting. As far as this thread goes, I get lost sometimes trying to keep the names straight in my head because they are not familiar to me at all, but the history of it all and what it represents to the people of Texas is amazing. I just finished reading every post in this thread and as a Canadian, I say keep this thread going. Loving the stories, loving the history, loving the facts, loving learning about Texas. Keep up the great work.

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## Mike1950

Kenbo said:


> I have to say, that I don't ever recall calling the Alamo thread junk. I did request more photos Because I am one who doesn't have much time to read lengthy threads. That being said, I did read every word of that thread and was disappointed when it ended. Although (being Canadian), I can't relate to a lot of the history of Texas or the States for that matter, I find it extremely interesting. As far as this thread goes, I get lost sometimes trying to keep the names straight in my head because they are not familiar to me at all, but the history of it all and what it represents to the people of Texas is amazing. I just finished reading every post in this thread and as a Canadian, I say keep this thread going. Loving the stories, loving the history, loving the facts, loving learning about Texas. Keep up the great work.



I 2nd that- love the history about anything..

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## woodman6415

This is from the guy that posts these Texas facts ... Not me but I wish I was joining him at the comal river ... 


Y'all, I am going to take today off and go to the river. But I have been asked to post the Lasca poem again, so I thought I would leave you with it. It was written in 1882 about a man and his lover, Lasca, and describes how she loved him and what happened to her. It is VERY romantic. Read it to your sweetheart if you dare, but be prepared to be loved on!

LASCA

I want free life and I want fresh air;
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
The crack of the whips like shots in a battle,
The medley of horns and hoofs and heads
That wars and wrangles and scatters and spreads;
The green beneath and the blue above,
And dash and danger, and life and love --
And Lasca!

Lasca used to ride
On a mouse-gray mustang close by my side,
With blue serape and bright-belled spur;
I laughed with joy as I looked at her!
Little knew she of books or of creeds;
An Ave Maria sufficed her needs;
Little she cared, save to be by my side,
To ride with me, and ever to ride,
From San Saba's shore to LaVaca's tide.
She was as bold as the billows that beat,
She was as wild as the breezes that blow;
From her little head to her little feet
She was swayed in her suppleness to and fro
By each gust of passion; a sapling pine
That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff
And wars with the wind when the weather is rough
Is like this Lasca, this love of mine.
She would hunger that I might eat,
Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet;
But once, when I made her jealous for fun,
At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done,

One Sunday, in San Antonio,
To a glorious girl in the Alamo,
She drew from her garter a dear little dagger,
And -- sting of a wasp! -- it made me stagger!
An inch to the left, or an inch to the right,
And I wouldn't be singing here tonight;
But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound
Her torn reboso about the wound,
That I quite forgave her. Scratches don't count
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.
Her eye was brown -- a deep, deep brown;
Her hair was darker than her eye;
And something in her smile and frown,
Curled crimson lip and instep high,
Showed that there ran in each blue vein,
Mixed with the milder Aztec strain,
The vigorous vintage of Old Spain.
She was alive in every limb
With feeling to the finger tips;
And when the sun is like a fire,
And sky one shining, soft sapphire,
One does not drink in little sips.
The air was heavy, and the night was hot,
I sat by her side, and forgot - forgot;
Forgot the herd that were taking their rest,
Forgot that the air was close opprest,
That the Texas norther comes sudden and soon,
In the dead of night or the blaze of noon;
That, once let the herd at its breath take fright,
Nothing on earth can stop the flight;
And woe to the rider, and woe to the steed,
Who falls in front of their mad stampede!

Was that thunder? I grasped the cord
Of my swift mustang without a word.
I sprang to the saddle, and she clung behind.
Away! On a hot chase down the wind!
But never was fox hunt half so hard,
And never was steed so little spared,
For we rode for our lives, You shall hear how we fared
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.

The mustang flew, and we urged him on;
There was one chance left, and you have but one;
Halt, jump to ground, and shoot your horse;
Crouch under his carcass and take your chance;
And, if the steers in their frantic course
Don't batter you both to pieces at once,
You may thank your star; if not, goodby
To the quickening kiss and the long-drawn sigh,
And the open air and the open sky,
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.

The cattle gained on us, and just as I felt
For my old six-shooter behind in my belt,
Down came the mustang, and down came we,
Clinging together -- and, what was the rest?
A body that spread itself on my brest,
Two arms that shielded my dizzy head,
Two lips that hard on my lips were prest;
Then came thunder in my ears,
As over us surged the sea of steers,
Blows that beat blood into my eyes,
And when I could rise--
Lasca was dead!

I gouged out a grave a few feet deep,
And there in Earth's arms I laid her to sleep;
And there she is lying, and no one knows;
And the summer shines and the winter snows;
For many a day the flowers have spread
A pall of petals over her head;
And the little gray hawk hangs aloft in the air,
And the sly coyote trots here and there,
And the black snake glides and glitters and slides
Into a rift in a cottonwood tree;
And the buzzard sails on,
And comes and is gone,
Stately and still like a ship at sea.
And I wonder why I do not care
For the things that are like the things that were.
Does half my heart lie buried there
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande?"

----- by Frank Deprez (1882)

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## woodman6415



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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> The Possum Kingdom Stone Arch Bridge completed in 1942 in Graford, Texas is the longest and most substantial masonry arch bridge in the Lone Star State. . Engineers chose the heavy masonry form to withstand flood waters released from the Morris Sheppard Dam, which lies one mile upstream. The bridge features fine craftsmanship and is argued to be one of the best examples of WPA road work in Texas. Many of the WPA laborers were unemployed coal miners who had acquired their stone-cutting skills underground. The bridge includes eighteen spans of locally quarried limestone varying in length from twenty-three to thirty feet. All piers are founded on bedrock; most are 3'-0" wide, although piers seven and thirteen are heavier "bracing piers," tapering to a 5'-0" width at the top. The structure's total length is 433'-4". Despite having been overtopped by floods, the bridge remains in virtually unaltered condition.
> View attachment 109009



Until you cross that bridge you can't appreciate the work that went into it and the craftsmanship. I know there are taller bigger longer wider bridges, but every bridge has its own personality and appeal and the PK bridge certainly has its place among beautiful bridges.

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## Kevin

Speaking of the Comal River, each year since 1974 divers from around the state (and many states) converged on the river and spent the weekend taking all the trash out. The river was finally so clean by 2013 that Trashfest had to be cancelled. Until that time it was the lonbest running underwater cleanup effort in the USA. It was held again in 2014 because rumors had it someone threw a can in the river lol. Just made that up but it was held again in 2014. But it has been susoended 2 years in a row now. 

I participated in 1998 and bad a blast. The backyards of the homes that line the river often have the familis having a cookout and they will come down to the water's edge when you surface and offer food and drink. By "surface" I mean when you stand up to get your bearings because there's only frw places where it's ober your head. Well, over my head. My dive buddy was 6'7" and it wasn't ober his head anywhere we went. 

Kinda bummed out it's come to an end from consecutive years, but as the state of Texas officials who are in charge of our environment said, the river is amazingly clean and pristine. The divers have done Tecas a service over the decades of cleaning the river.

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## Tony

That poem is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Thank you Wendell!

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> That poem is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Thank you Wendell!



It's bummed me out. First I was thinking "To hell with Lasca I wouldn't want any part of a woman who stabbed me!". Then he goes slack on his duty to protect her on the trail and she lays down her life for his incompetence. You're supposed to camp outside the cattle not within them for the very reason you want to get a head start in the event of a stampede. Depressing poem.


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## Tony

Kevin said:


> It's bummed me out. First I was thinking "To hell with Lasca I wouldn't want any part of a woman who stabbed me!". Then he goes slack on his duty to protect her on the trail and she lays down her life for his incompetence. You're supposed to camp outside the cattle not within them for the very reason you want to get a head start in the event of a stampede. Depressing poem.



The stabbing thing, well, that happens. I thought the camping inside the herd was stupid too, but what can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic! Tony

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## woodman6415

I really thought if you were hearding cattle your were at the back ??? .. And as for as the stabbing ... If you never dated one of those hot blooded Hispanic fire crackers you haven't lived ....


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> If you never dated one of those hot blooded Hispanic fire crackers you haven't lived ....



I married one. Marriage didn't last a year she was nuts - for real nuts. She was actually my first wife but I rarely refer to her. I have a daughter by her and met her once when she turned 18. They both live in SA and she never remarried. Yes I have lived.

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> I married one. Marriage didn't last a year she was nuts - for real nuts. She was actually my first wife but I rarely refer to her. I have a daughter by her and met her once when she turned 18. They both live in SA and she never remarried. Yes I have lived.



I dated one ... After a while we moved in together ... Even went as for as got engaged ... Then the crazy came out ... We split but in later years we became close friends ... She died suddenly two years ago ... I got along really well with her family and especially her mom ... Went to the funeral was very sad .... I still miss her ...

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> I dated one ... After a while we moved in together ... Even went as for as got engaged ... Then the crazy came out ... We split but in later years we became close friends ... She died suddenly two years ago ... I got along really well with her family and especially her mom ... Went to the funeral was very sad .... I still miss her ...



Sorry to hear that Wendell. Mine was a true Hispanic bombshell. Turned heads wherever we went. I was 25 and decided it was time to marry and so I married wild and crazy. Dunno what it is with some of those Hispanic Catholics but man crazy is as crazy does.

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## Wildthings

Kenbo said:


> I have to say, that I don't ever recall calling the Alamo thread junk.



OK OK So I did misquote you a little LOL

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## Kenbo

So another true Texas fact is that good looking Hispanic Texan women are nuts. Got it.

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## woodman6415

Kenbo said:


> So another true Texas fact is that good looking Hispanic Texan women are nuts. Got it.


All the ones I know are ... Good looking or not

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## woodman6415

They can go from sweet as pecan pie to rattle snake mean in about .02 seconds flat

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> All the ones I know are ... Good looking or not



Honestly my experience is that most really are. One of our daughters married into a Mexican family and while my SIL is together and cool all but one of his sisters is just like my first wife. Hope I don't come across as bashing and sterotyping .... just my experience with them.


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## Kenbo

woodman6415 said:


> They can go from sweet as pecan pie to rattle snake mean in about .02 seconds flat



That's not a Texas fact........that's just FACT.

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## Kevin

The funniest part about my marriage to Lisa was that I was with a light skinned black girl at the time; now get this the bkack girl's name was Rose not the Mexican lol. She treated me like a king, but the buxom Lisa stole me away with her "charms". Should have stayed with Rose and made some mulattoes.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History!

On this day in 1839, the main engagement of the Cherokee War began. The battle was fought near the Neches River a few miles west of Tyler. T. J. Rusk, Edward Burleson, and Kelsey H. Douglass led the Texas troops against Cherokee warriors led by Chief Bowl (also known as Duwali, Bowles, or the Bowl). Also on the field were David G. Burnet, vice president of Republic of Texas, and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, secretary of war. The Texas troops numbered 500 and the Indians 700 to 800. The Indians were routed in the two-day fight, although pursuit continued until July 24. The battle virtually ended Indian troubles in the settled part of Texas

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## woodman6415

I think my fact of the day guy is still on the river ... So here goes 
Not about Texas .. But a true legend 

If you come to Bandera the best place to eat is OST ... Old Spanish trail ... Really great food and service ...It's divided into two dining areas ... The farthest area is called The John Wayne room ... It's wall to wall pictures of John Wayne ... And lots of facts about him and the movies he starred in .. Went there this morning for breakfast as we do at least once a week .. This picture is wall at booth we were sitting this morning 


 

This is a quote about how he got the name Duke

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Before he went to whip up on Hitler, Mussolini and the Axis in World War II, Col. George S. Patton commanded the 5th Cavalry at Fort Clark, in Brackettville, Texas. That was in July, 1938. He was commander there for six months before being transferred. Patton loved his time at Fort Clark. The quarters in which Patton lived are still there and can be toured.

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## Kevin

Texas had the highest number of POW camps in the USA during WWII – over 70. They housed German, Italian and Japanese soldiers. My dad remembers well the Germans working on their farm when my grandpa would go get some from the camp during harvest or some other big seasonal activity. He said they were all well-behaved, polite, and trustworthy. They were often left alone to do their work and he never heard of one trying to escape from any of the other farms. My grandma used to bring them dinner (called lunch by most of y'all) and dad said he loved that time talking to them in their broken English and that some could speak it perfectly. 

One of the funnier stories was how the Germans were really impressed by armadillos. He said they called them _panzer swine_ and that one of them said _"Vee cannot vin za var against za USA - even za pigs are armored!" _

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## woodman6415

In November, 1915, the Liberty Bell arrived in El Paso. It was on tour after being exhibited at a World's Fair. This is what the El Paso Times had to say about the event:

"El Paso saw the Liberty Bell yesterday afternoon. Twenty-five thousand people, including thousands of children, felt the thrill of patriotism as they passed in dense columns before the bell which proclaimed to the world the independence of the United States.

No other celebration in the Southwest ever called forth so many thousands of spectators — no other local event has been marked by such a unanimous display of patriotic reverence. Children and grown-ups, civilians and military, officials and private citizens alike turned out to welcome the venerable relic; and those who have traveled across the continent with the bell said during the reception that no other city on the route had surpassed El Paso in the enthusiasm of its greeting.

Although scheduled to arrive here at 2:30 p.m., it was not until 3:30 p.m. that the historic emblem of the revolution rolled slowly to the place of exhibition in front of the Stanton Street station of the Southern Pacific. Since noon the crowds had been gathering, and when the signal was given to let them pass before the bell there was a shuffling of thousands of feet along the railway right-of-way where the bell rested."

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Somewhere in America, 2007 ....

The sea of humanity swells and roils all the way to the horizon, thousands of eyes fixed on him, thousands of hands clapping, a chorus of voices cheering and yelling, lips whistle, feet stomping, smiles everywhere, all because of him. Lone Star flags and arms thrusting skyward, hands clutching cigarette lighters and cans of beer above heads bobbing like buoys because of the music. The old man with the wild white eyebrows and wrinkled skin, his long white hair pulled back into two braids, tries to make eye contact with as may eyes as he can in ten seconds before glancing off-handedly over his shoulder at the musicians standing and sitting behind him. He straps on his guitar and steps to the microphone with a casualness that betrays a lifetime of going through the same ritual night after night, year after year. He half sings, half talks five magic words that trigger a sonic roar: 'Whisk-key Riv-verrr take my miiiiind.'"

----- Joe Nick Patoski describes the beginning of a Willie Nelson concert in his wonderful biography of Willie, which is simply titled "Willie Nelson." A great book. Willie read it and had to ask his friends if all the stuff Joe Nick wrote about his life was true. They told him it was. All of it. ;)

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> I think my fact of the day guy is still on the river ... So here goes
> Not about Texas .. But a true legend
> 
> If you come to Bandera the best place to eat is OST ... Old Spanish trail ... Really great food and service ...It's divided into two dining areas ... The farthest area is called The John Wayne room ... It's wall to wall pictures of John Wayne ... And lots of facts about him and the movies he starred in .. Went there this morning for breakfast as we do at least once a week .. This picture is wall at booth we were sitting this morning .



I've eaten there a few times Wendell the latest last Jamuary while hunting at Hill Country Natural Area . Some good food!



woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Before he went to whip up on Hitler, Mussolini and the Axis in World War II, Col. George S. Patton commanded the 5th Cavalry at Fort Clark, in Brackettville, Texas. That was in July, 1938. He was commander there for six months before being transferred. Patton loved his time at Fort Clark. The quarters in which Patton lived are still there and can be toured.



I stayed at Fort Clark this last December while hunting at Kickapoo Caverns State Park. Stay in one of the barracks turned into a hotel. Also saw the quarters that you speak of. Here's the barrack I stayed in




Here's the Commanding Officer Quarters

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Arbuckle's coffee was the coffee of choice for cowboys along the various cattle trails that lead north out of Texas, but why? Well, the cook's coffee kept the cowboys going day and night. "Arbuckle Brothers," originated the idea of shipping coffee beans already roasted. Most of the coffee at that time was green and had to be roasted in the cook's skillet. Some of the descriptions of that coffee are downright unprintable in a PG forum like this one. When Arubckle's came on the scene, the brightly colored manila bag of that brand soon became a familiar sight on chuck wagons. The word "Arbuckle's," printed in bold letters across the front, had a picture of a flying angel in a long flowing skirt with a streaming red scarf around her neck. As a bonus, a stick of striped peppermint candy was in every one pound sack. When the cook hollered out, asking who wanted the candy that night, it was a comical sight to see those tough, rugged cowhands scuffle for the privilege of grinding the coffee beans in order to get the candy stick. If a cowboy had a cold or a cough, the cook could dissolve some of the peppermint in whiskey to make a remedy.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day is Jerry Flemmons' description of the cowboy. Jerry wrote for decades for the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

"He neither built nor explored nor populated the West but moved ever so briefly across it, as capricious and lonely as the blowing dust. Dime novelists and penny dreadful authors scribbled magniloquent lies about the cowboy for rapt eastern readers but saw him only in town, often ending long cattle drives with a few desperate hours of extravagant carousel before returning to a life of social desolation. Like a cloistered monk of some distant forgotten monastery, the cowboy served his god, the rancher, and toiled at labors decidedly unglamorous. Moving often from ranch to ranch, the cowboy made few lasting friendships. He was untutored and often illiterate. For endless months he lived on the range, burned in summer, frozen in winter, as punished as the cattle he attended. He slept on the ground under "hen--skin" blankets. He arose at 4:00 a.m., or earlier, and often was not asleep again until midnight. He was fed a constant diet of beans ------ "Pecos strawberries," greasy stews, and Arbuckle's coffee. His aches and sprains were treated with heavy coats of axle grease or prickly pear poultices. To stay away during long nights of riding herd, he rubbed tobacco juice in his eyes. He lived in a society of men and made love to the only available women, the ubiquitous "soiled doves" and "Fallen Angels" on almost a seasonal basis..."

------ Jerry Flemmons, "Plowboys, Cowboys and Slanted Pigs"

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! July 18th

On this day in 1918, Daniel R. Edwards of Mooresville, Texas, accomplished feats of valor near Soissons, France, that earned him the Medal of Honor. He was a member of Company C, Third Machine Gun Battalion, First Division. After undergoing treatment for battle wounds and suffering from a shattered arm, he crawled alone into an enemy trench, where he killed four and took four prisoners. While he was returning to his own lines with his prisoners, his leg was shattered by an enemy shell. His bravery and gallant acts greatly inspired his comrades. Edwards died on October 21, 1967, at Little Rock, Arkansas.
http://i261.Rule #2/albums/ii55/AustinKRMH/HorrorMovies/A1A1A1_zps05410186.jpg

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## Kenbo

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History! July 18th
> 
> On this day in 1918, Daniel R. Edwards of Mooresville, Texas, accomplished feats of valor near Soissons, France, that earned him the Medal of Honor. He was a member of Company C, Third Machine Gun Battalion, First Division. After undergoing treatment for battle wounds and suffering from a shattered arm, he crawled alone into an enemy trench, where he killed four and took four prisoners. While he was returning to his own lines with his prisoners, his leg was shattered by an enemy shell. His bravery and gallant acts greatly inspired his comrades. Edwards died on October 21, 1967, at Little Rock, Arkansas.
> http://i261.Rule #2/albums/ii55/AustinKRMH/HorrorMovies/A1A1A1_zps05410186.jpg



WHERE IS THE RESPECT ICON?!?!?!?

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## woodman6415

I wonder how many folks have been driving along on I-10 in Louisiana, minding their own business, heading out to Phoenix, maybe, or Los Angeles, crossed into Texas, saw this sign, and said to themselves "Oh my goodness." My guess is that, at times, something a little stronger may have been uttered. ;)

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> I wonder how many folks have been driving along on I-10 in Louisiana, minding their own business, heading out to Phoenix, maybe, or Los Angeles, crossed into Texas, saw this sign, and said to themselves "Oh my goodness." My guess is that, at times, something a little stronger may have been uttered. ;)



No pic Wendell . . . .


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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> No pic Wendell . . . .



You sure ?

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> You sure ?

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## woodman6415

Many Texans don't realize that Willie Shoemaker ---- perhaps the greatest jockey of all time, is also a Texan. Willie was born in Fabens, Texas—a border town near El Paso—August 19, 1931. Weighing one pound, sixteen ounces, he was not expected to live through the night. Maude Harris, Shoemaker’s grandmother, put him on a pillow in a shoebox and set it on the open door of an oven to keep him warm. Although he survived, Shoemaker was always small. He rode his first horse at seven and, after his parents divorced, moved to El Monte, California with his father. Shoemaker attended El Monte High School, where he boxed and was undefeated as an 80 pound wrestler before quitting school at 15 to work at a thoroughbred horse ranch. He mucked out stalls, working with yearlings, gained a great understanding of horses and the rest, as they say, is history. He ended up winning the Kentucky Derby four times, the Belmont Stakes five times, and the Preakness twice. His record of 8,833 career wins stood for 30 years. You know, now that I think about it, it sort of makes sense that a Texan would be such a great horseman, seein's how ubiquitous horses are hereabouts.




Hope the pic shows up for @Kevin

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## Kenbo

woodman6415 said:


> Many Texans don't realize that Willie Shoemaker ---- perhaps the greatest jockey of all time, is also a Texan. Willie was born in Fabens, Texas—a border town near El Paso—August 19, 1931. Weighing one pound, sixteen ounces, he was not expected to live through the night. Maude Harris, Shoemaker’s grandmother, put him on a pillow in a shoebox and set it on the open door of an oven to keep him warm. Although he survived, Shoemaker was always small. He rode his first horse at seven and, after his parents divorced, moved to El Monte, California with his father. Shoemaker attended El Monte High School, where he boxed and was undefeated as an 80 pound wrestler before quitting school at 15 to work at a thoroughbred horse ranch. He mucked out stalls, working with yearlings, gained a great understanding of horses and the rest, as they say, is history. He ended up winning the Kentucky Derby four times, the Belmont Stakes five times, and the Preakness twice. His record of 8,833 career wins stood for 30 years. You know, now that I think about it, it sort of makes sense that a Texan would be such a great horseman, seein's how ubiquitous horses are hereabouts.
> View attachment 109312
> 
> Hope the pic shows up for @Kevin




Quick Canadian fact.........Willie Shoemaker and The Moderator Kenbo share the same birthday. August 19th. Who knew?

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## Tony

Kenbo said:


> Quick Canadian fact.........Willie Shoemaker and The Moderator Kenbo share the same birthday. August 19th. Who knew?



And Canadians don't know that the lowly Full Member Tony was also born on August 19th!

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## Jim Beam

I could say so much about my contacts with Texans. But no doubt I would get banned. So, as my parents taught me, if you can't say something good about someone, don't say anything at all. SIUP


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## woodman6415

Put this on your brain this morning as you eat your Cheerios: tools more than 16,000 years old (pre-Clovis) have been discovered north of Austin. It's kind of crazy to think what might be just a few feet down under your feet right now!

http://westerndigs.org/16000-year-o...texas-among-the-oldest-yet-found-in-the-west/

A tip of the Stetson to TOT reader Ned Benson for bringing this great article to my attention. I love this stuff.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! July 19th

On this day in 1878, Sam Bass was mortally wounded when he and his gang of outlaws tried to rob the bank in Round Rock. The Texas Rangers were waiting for them. The next day Bass was found lying in a field outside of town. He was brought back to Round Rock, where he died two days later. Bass, an Indiana native, had worked in a sawmill, as a cowboy, and as a freighter. He also owned a fast racehorse. After squandering money earned on a trail drive, he recruited a gang and began robbing stagecoaches and railroads. He died at the age of twenty-seven.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Put this on your brain this morning as you eat your Cheerios: tools more than 16,000 years old (pre-Clovis) have been discovered north of Austin. It's kind of crazy to think what might be just a few feet down under your feet right now!
> 
> http://westerndigs.org/16000-year-o...texas-among-the-oldest-yet-found-in-the-west/
> 
> A tip of the Stetson to TOT reader Ned Benson for bringing this great article to my attention. I love this stuff.
> View attachment 109347



So you mean Colombus didn't "discover" this place?  

I remember raising my hand in history period when the teach first told us that. I asked how he could have discovered it when the Indians were already here.


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## woodman6415

Here is a nice trace of Texas for you: what is now Crested Butte, Colorado was part of Texas back in 1836.

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## Tony

They can have it, too much white stuff!!!!!!

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## Kevin

We sold it to the potheads when we discovered the white stuff wasn't cocaine.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Malakoff, Texas is one of four Texas towns named after places in the former Imperial Russia. The others are Odessa, Moscow, and Sebastopol. Early settlers preferred either "Mitcham" or "Purdon" as a name for what became Malakoff, but U.S. postal authorities told them those names were already taken. They suggested naming it after a Russian fort that had recently been captured by the British during the Crimean War. That was fine with the East Texans, despite having no ties to Crimea or the 1855 Battle of Malakoff.

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## Wildthings

I'm taking the family to the lake camping this morning and will drive through both Moscow and Sebastopol on the way! You made me go look up Malakoff though


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## woodman6415

As living most of my life 58 years in San Angelo .... Odessa is the arch rival ... Especially in high school sports .... Most everybody I know calls it HOdessa ...

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## frankp

San Angelo! I went to tech school there and loved that place. I actually tried to go back while I was in the AF but ended up with a different assignment.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day concerns camping in Texas in 1872:

“We have stationed mounted pickets on the summit of a neighboring bare hill whence they can view the country for many miles. This being on the direct path of Indian raids is a dangerous place and demands the above precaution.

It is truly a wilderness ---- no signs of human beings in any direction ----- it is indeed the limit line of civilization ---- where the scattered farmers labor with guns in their hands and others are killed or scalped or driven off ----- their females massacred or carried into captivity. This sad tale I hear from many who have once had homes upon this land [Palo Pinto County] ---- which is less inhabited than 20 years ago. Is it a humane policy to protect the savage and feed and arm him, whilst such atrocities are of common occurrence?

The hardy bold settler thinks not; and the question he will soon settle for himself. “Pleasant Cooley,” the young farmer here, is now sitting by me and giving me notes. His father was killed last year by a white boy --- and [the boy] was killed by some men from the farm as revenge. Cooley opened this farm last winter and the corn crop is finer than anything he ever saw. Corn is worth $2 a bushel at his door. It was he who killed the Indian whose bones graced the tree we passed yesterday. He (Cooley) had lost a mare and colt and in hunting the thieves came upon a body of Indians with the horses, among which he recognized his own. A fire commenced between the parties which resulted in the killing of two Indians and capture of two horses. Cooley scalped one of the Indians ---- the other was dragged off by his fellows.

The scalp was of long black hair, the scalp lock braided in with the beautiful locks of a white woman reaching to the waist. He took the scalp to Austin as proof that Indians were really killed in the region, a thing doubted by legislators.”

----- M.K. Kellogg, “Texas Journal,” June 27, 1872

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## woodman6415

And one more reason to like/love Texas 


http://www.weaselzippers.us/193177-shotgun-maker-mossberg-moving-operations-out-of-connecticut/

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> As living most of my life 58 years in San Angelo .... Odessa is the arch rival ... Especially in high school sports .... Most everybody I know calls it HOdessa ...


Hunted in the State park outside San Angelo and had a deer lease near there for 2 years. Really enjoyed that area. One evening we spent at the college at their planetarium enjoying a celestial show put on by the professor. It was great!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Hunted in the State park outside San Angelo and had a deer lease near there for 2 years. Really enjoyed that area. One evening we spent at the college at their planetarium enjoying a celestial show put on by the professor. It was great!


The home I sold to move here was in the home owners subdivision that borders that state park ... Lived there 8 years ... Was just a kid when that dam that runs on east side was built ... It was Built and and that park was run by the corp of engineers for years before donated to state ... My uncle ... My Dads only brother was killed building the damn ... Foot caught in a rock crusher ... Died of gangrene ... Only person killed working on what for years was the longest earthen dam in the world ... A big party place when I was in high school ... No gates ...

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## woodman6415

On Aug. 14, 1952, the Gulf Freeway, Texas' first freeway, was opened, and folks could drive on it from Houston to Galveston.

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## Kevin

Wendell, if I haven't thanked you for this thread yet, thank you sir. It's one of the best on the forum and not just because it's about Texas (although I am a bit biased). I would encourage members from other states & countries to start one about their state or country as well. Most of us won't bash your state or country we'll thank you for sharing it with us!

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## Don Ratcliff

Most of us won't bash your state or country we'll thank you for sharing it with us![/QUOTE]

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> Wendell, if I haven't thanked you for this thread yet, thank you sir. It's one of the best on the forum and not just because it's about Texas (although I am a bit biased). I would encourage members from other states & countries to start one about their state or country as well. Most of us won't bash your state or country we'll thank you for sharing it with us!


Thank you for the kind words my friend ... 
IMHO anybody that bashes this thread are either jealous or envious ... Or just have bad taste .... I don't bash any other State or country .. But then again I'm a born and bred Texan ...

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## woodman6415

Big Spring is a short 80 mile drive from San Angelo ... I've spent quite a bit of time there but never went to this dance hall ... I have danced to the great music of Jody Nix and the The Texas Cowboys many times in San Angelo ...


The Stampede, Big Spring

Hoyle Nix loved western stuff. He was a cowboy at heart. In May of 1954 when he opened his dance hall in Big Spring, he decided to call it THE STAMPEDE. It became a monument to Saturday night dances.

Hoyle was a legendary western musician. He was a fiddle player and had a band that played for weekly dances in Brownfield, San Angelo, Sweetwater, Abilene and Big Spring. Hoyle's song, BIG BALLS IN COWTOWN, was played on radio stations across the nation and has since been recorded by George Strait and Asleep At The Wheel. Hoyle's death in1985 was mentioned on NBC's Nightly News.

Hoyle's son Jody, who owns the Stampede now, and has a successful musical career of his own, was two years old when the dance hall opened.

"I was there, but t I don't remember much," says Jody. "It opened on May 8, 1954. Eleven hundred people paid to get in. I think the cover charge was a dollar or a dollar and a half."

When it opened, there were no tables, just benches around the wall. People came there to dance. There was a red line painted on the floor. If they weren't dancing, they had to stand behind the red line. The tables were added in 1957 or 58. That cut down on the size of the dance floor, but people could have a place to sit. There has never been any alcohol sold at the Stampede. Jody says it's always been a family place.

In the beginning, men couldn't wear their hats on the dance floor and their shirt tails had to be tucked in. Any man violating this rule was approached by the floor bouncer, usually an off-duty deputy sheriff.

The old dance floor has a few wobbles and warped spots in it now. Every once in awhile Jody has to get a hammer and knock a few nails down. But there's been many a boot sole scooted across that floor in fifty years. The Stampede has had birthday parties, wedding receptions, and homecoming dances. When it was built, the walls were not finished. Hoyle just left it that way and it's like that now.

"The Stampede is not a fancy place," says Jody. "It was built to dance in. It wasn't built for looks."

Thousands of people have learned how to dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe, the Texas Two-Step, Put Your Little Foot, Waltzes, Schottisches, the Paul Jones and all kinds of western dances at the Stampede. Jody says a million people have danced there.

Some well-known musicians have played at the Stampede. Bob Wills was there 4 or 5 times a year until he had his stroke in the late sixties. But people went there mostly to hear Hoyle Nix and His West Texas Cowboys, which were known all over the state.

Since 1996 Jody has put together an occasional reunion of some of the original members of Hoyle's band. When that happens, the place is packed with people of all ages. Last November's reunion was a sellout. Jody Nix and his Texas Cowboys played until 1:30 AM and didn't want to stop then. 


 

http://www.tumbleweedsmith.com/inprint.php?article_id=18

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## Wildthings

Back in the 60s when I was a wee one my best friend and I came up with the idea of sweeping the Gulf freeway where the construction was going on. The construction hasn't stopped to this day and we could have had a career job. I remember drag racing on parts of that freeway that were not quite finished and then running from the cops. Sure ain't the same nowadays.

Definitely have to agree with Kevin about this thread!!

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## Don Ratcliff

These real Texas laws are gold, apparently Texans do not like feather dusters or dildos.

It is illegal to milk another person’s cow.
A recently passed anticrime law requires criminals to give their victims 24 hours notice, either orally or in writing, and to explain the nature of the crime to be committed.
The entire Encyclopedia Britannica is banned in Texas because it contains a formula for making beer at home.
When two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.
It is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing.
Up to a felony charge can be levied for promoting the use of, or owning more than six dildos.
It is illegal for one to shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel.
*City Laws in Texas*
Abilene
It is illegal to idle or loiter anyplace within the corporate limits of the city for the purpose of flirting or mashing.
Austin
Wire cutters can not be carried in your pocket.
About this law.
Beaumont
Collegiate football is banned at Lamar University.
About this law.
Borger
It is against the law to throw confetti, rubber balls, feather dusters, whips or quirts (riding crop), and explosive firecrackers of any kind.
Clarendon
It is illegal to dust any public building with a feather duster.
Dallas
It’s illegal to possess realistic dildos.
El Paso
Urinating on the streets is illegal.
Full text of the law.
Appearing in public places wearing a “lewd dress” is prohibited.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The city of Kemah, Texas derives its name from a Karankawa Indian word that means "facing the winds." This is due, of course, to its position on Galveston Bay.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> The city of Kemah, Texas derives its name from a Karankawa Indian word that means "facing the winds." This is due, of course, to its position on Galveston Bay.



My wife grew up in Texas City, been to Kemah a few times. Tony


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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Larry Jolley kindly submitted this photo of Waylon Jennings in Littlefield, Texas, back in 1956 or '57. The photo was taken by Larry's father, James Jolley. James and Waylon were friends for many years and they worked at the radio station together. Waylon's first wife, Maxine, is in the front seat.

HOW AMAZING IS THIS LITTLE SLICE OF TEXAS HISTORY? I would never, ever have guessed that this was Waylon. Thank you, Larry, for sharing this remarkable image with the rest of us!

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## Tony

Texas Fact of the Day:

Size of the King Ranch- 825,000 acres
Size of Rhode Island-776,960 acres

Tony

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## woodman6415

A couple of days ago I posted a photo of a dust storm rolling into Stanton, Texas, that TOT reader Mike Maddux sent in. That prompted several of y'all to send in photos of the same dust storm. TOT reader Lisa Contreras graciously sent in this pretty awesome photo of that bad boy as it came into Lamesa, before it hit Stanton. LOOK AT THIS! Even as somebody who lives in Texas, I still find these events to be pretty incredible. I really wish I'd been able to be there with my camera.

Thank you, Lisa. Really great!

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day has John Graves describing a Texas rancher:

"If on a clear day in October there is a single dark puff of cloud on the northwestern horizon, he sees it within moments of coming outside (that swift eye-sweep of the sky that you find in old rurals, even those ending their days in rest homes and wheeled onto a terrace for air) and gauges its probable meaning.

Bouncing through a pasture in a pickup and passing a cow on her left side, he somehow discerns a wire cut on her right shoulder and checks it for screwworms, hemorrhage, or infection. At supper he may rise from the table in response to sounds that others have not heard, and go to the porch to learn where a pack of marauding dogs is running or a family of coyotes has its base.

On a dusty path in the hills he can tell you, if asked, what creatures meek or fierce have trotted and slithered and shuffled there the night before. Distant columns of smoke have messages for him, as do neighbors' tractor sounds, shots, the urgent cries of jaybirds and crows, the alarm coughs of unseen deer, hillside seeps, and the tinge of blooming sweetclover on damp evening air. All these things lodge in him and combine into understanding, for they are a part of his world, and so integrally is he."

----- John Graves, "From A Limestone Ledge," 1980

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## woodman6415

Did you know?
The world's first rodeo was held in Pecos on July 4, 1883.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Highland Park, an incorporated city with Dallas, and Beverly Hills, California, were both planned by the same man, landscape architect Wilbur David Cook. Incidentally, Highland park is 2.2 square miles and recently celebrated its 100th birthday, having been incorporated in 1913.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"He never killed a man that did not need killing."

------ inscription on the grave marker in Pecos, Texas of cattle rancher, cattle broker, and occasional gunfighter Clay Allison. For all his gunfighting, Allison died at the age of 46 when he was hauling a wagon load of supplies and the load shifted, causing a sack of grain to fall from the wagon. Allison fell from the wagon as he tried to catch it, and a wagon wheel rolled over him, breaking his neck. He was buried the next day in Pecos Cemetery. Here's a photo of his grave marker. 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Allison#/media/File:Clay-Allison-Tombstone1.jpg

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## Kevin

You know what they say:

_Live by the gun, die by the grain sack and wagon wheel...._


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## woodman6415

You know I have heard that several times ... 


Kevin said:


> You know what they say:
> 
> _Live by the gun, die by the grain sack and wagon wheel...._

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## woodman6415

The San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo ... A must do every year ... 


A boy in cowboy costume watches the rodeo at the 1939 San Angelo Fat Stock Show. This photo was take by Russell Lee and colorized by "Imbued with Hues," a Facebook page which takes old photos and does a bang-up job colorizing them: 

https://www.facebook.com/imbuedwithhues/?fref=ts

A fantastic photo and fine colorizing

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## Wildthings

Today's Texas History Challenge
@Kevin 
Bonham, county seat and commercial center of Fannin County, is on U.S. Highway 82 and State highways 78 and 121 on the northern edge of the Blackland Prairie twelve miles south of the Red River. Settlement began with the arrival in 1836 of Bailey Inglish from Butler County, Kentucky. In 1837 he built Fort Inglish, a blockhouse and stockade, on 1,250 acres of land located on Bois d’Arc Creek near timber and water supplies.

This historic home lies west of Bonham in Fannin Country and was home to which famous Texas politician?

Lyndon B. Johnson

Sam Rayburn

Dolph Briscoe

Sam Houston


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## Kevin

Mr. Sam geez that ain't even hard. I'm friends with Dolph's nephew. He's a good guy. Loves to hunt. He was one of my first customers when I started selling FBE. He was making duck calls before duck calls were cool. 

I metal detected the original Bailey Inglish site - were the historical marker places it is wrong. I know EXACTLY where it is. It's on the private land of someone I'm friends with. I never found anything worth bragging about but remember stuff back then was made of iron which doesn't last all that long in the ground. I guess they forgot to leave any gold or silver for me to find. 

As to Mr. Sam, I ain't got much use for him. He had a hand in many nefarious federal programs which squashed states rights even further than "reconstruction", especially getting the FEderal Reserve Act pushed through in a sneaky session when all but a handful of congressman were home on Christmas vacation. The Federal Reserve is the reason you cannot prosper easily as a small businessman. The Federal Reserve is the reason you have an IRS. Without the Fed you have a TRUE free market and a constitutionally sound money system (and NO it doesn't even have to be backed by gold or silver that's simply not possible). He's worshiped around here and they can have the asshat. Yes he did do some good things like most politicians because otherwise they don't stay in power that long. He was the longest ever speaker of the the house and it will never be topped. 

But his library is VERY impressive - one of only 3 places on the planet that has the congressional record from day one up until now - I assume they still keep it updated I haven't been in the library in about 4 years. I have used the library many times in the past. There's some really cool stuff in there like the the rostrum Lincoln (spit) and FDR (spit some too) stood behind when he gave his famous _"December 7th . . . a date . . . which will live . . . . in infamy . . . "_ speech. Either the anchor or the propeller or both from the submarine christened after Sam is on the grounds outside. I need to drive up to it and see which one or both it is and refresh my memory. The library is on the southwest part of town and I pass by it many times a month. Lot's more cool stuff in there but I am not a fan of Mr. Sam himself - he ran the country and made deals more than the presidents he served "under" usually. All roads ran through Mr. Sam for a long time. He was a quiet low key politician that wielded supreme political power. He was kind of a dickhead and I won't tell you what rumors about him and J. Edgar Hoover have been told for generations but I don't repeat rumors about him and J. Edgar Hoover that have abounded since as far back as the early 30's here in Bonham which frankly doesn't surprise me not bother me in the least. . 

So Barry did I win the prize?

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The population of Nacogdoches in 1850 was 468. 

The population of San Antonio in 1850 was 3,488

The population of Houston in 1850 was 2,396.

The population of Dallas in 1850 was 1,073.

The population of Galveston in 1850 was 4,177.

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## woodman6415

Like the rest of y'all, I have been reading back issues of Austin's Texas State Times newspaper, and I found this amusing notice in the January 13, 1855 edition:

“To Marriageable Young Ladies. A young gentleman of the city lately took the census of the bachelors of Austin. He counted all who are over twenty-one, both bachelors and widowers. The object was to find the number of those who ‘would like to marry.’ That number is at least one hundred! We are serious about this. Most of them are sober, industrious, good looking and sensible young men. They are not rich, but bid fair to be men of worth and independence. But few of them are able to lose the time and money to travel and hence the only chance to see them is to come to Austin.–Mahomet cannot go to the mountain, will not the mountain come to Mahomet? Young Ladies! We appeal to you in the name of suffering humanity–but we’ll preach no sermon on it. If you all throw away these chances, you deserve to drink tea with cold toast and backbite your neighbors the balance of your lives.”

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth235742/

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## Tony

That is one hell of a post Wendell, thank you!!!! Tony

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## woodman6415

Roy Rogers and Trigger in front of the Alamo during World War II.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"On January 7, 1874, [Clay] Allison killed a gunman named Chunk Colbert, who was known to have already fought and killed seven men by this time. After first racing their horses, Colbert and Allison entered the Clifton House, an inn located in Colfax County, New Mexico, where they sat down together for dinner. Colbert had quarreled with Allison years earlier, as Allison had physically beaten Colbert's uncle, Zachary Colbert, when he tried to overcharge Allison for a ferry ride across the Brazos River. During their meal, Colbert suddenly drew his pistol and attempted to shoot Allison; however, the barrel of his gun struck the dinner table, allowing Allison to quickly draw his own revolver. He fired one shot, which struck Colbert in the head. Asked afterward why he had accepted a dinner invitation from a man likely to try to kill him, Allison replied, 'Because I didn't want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach.'"

Allison later became a rancher and cattle broker in Pecos, where he was killed in a freak accident at the age of 46 and where he is buried.

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## Wildthings

Kevin said:


> So Barry did I win the prize?



DOH!!! YEAH!! I had to look it up but my first thoughts were him and it was correct!

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! July 26th

Sweethearts of the Cattle Trail Marry

On this day in 1870, rancher Charles Goodnight married his sweetheart Mary Ann (Molly) Dyer. The two first met at Fort Belknap about 1864. Goodnight, a veteran cattleman, helped blaze the Goodnight-Loving Trail in 1866. His wife Molly, orphaned in the 1850s, had worked as a schoolteacher to support her younger brothers. After their wedding, the couple settled on a ranch in Colorado for a few years before moving to the Palo Duro Canyon to help establish the JA Ranch. Charles managed the ranch, trailed cattle, and continued to upgrade the herds while Molly made a home on the solitary plains near the canyon. Her husband invented a two-horned sidesaddle so that she could more easily ride on the ranch. Though the couple had no children of their own, she became the “Mother of the Panhandle” to countless ranch hands. Her care for orphaned buffaloes encouraged her husband to establish a domestic buffalo herd. In later years the ranching couple supported numerous schools, churches, and other organizations, and they established Goodnight College in 1898.

edited to add a few pictures I took of his grave in 2012

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

There was a feller in Langtry who got to messin' around with one of 'those' women ---- the kind his mamma and papa told him to stay away from. Eventually, as tends to happen in cases like this, she let daylight through him with a six-shooter and the hole wasn't worth patching. The local justice of the peace,acting in his capacity as coroner, was called to make a ruling on the cause of death.

"This here feller," he announced, "went and committed suicide, that's what he done. That's my rulin'," the J.P. said.

There happened to be a lawyer in the crowd. "Judge,' he objected, "you can't rule suicide here! That woman shot him. This was murder."

"I kin and I did. I tole that damfool if he kept messin' around' with that chippy he'd be committing suicide and he kept messin' around with her and by God he committed suicide. That-air's my rulin', and that's the way she stands," the J.P. replied.

The J.P. in the story is, of course, the notorious Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos."

------- C.F. Eckhardt, "Tales of Badmen, Bad Women, and Bad Places: Four Centuries of Texas Outlaws," 1999

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The first American to walk in space, Ed White, was a Texan, having been born in San Antonio in 1930. White performed his spacewalk on June 3, 1965. Tragically, he died in a fire in the space capsule of Apollo 1 on January 27, 1967.

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## Tony

My son went to the middle school named in his honor. Tony


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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! July 27th

-- County government comes to a new area of the Panhandle--

On this day in 1888, Randall County was organized. It had first been settled by Lincoln Guy Conner and his wife, who moved their cattle to the vast Palo Duro Canyon area in the Panhandle. The Conners bought their land for three dollars an acre, built a half dugout, and established a general store and post office. When the county was organized, the dugout was a polling place. The Conners’ daughter was the first white child born in the county. In the spring of 1889 Conner laid out the townsite of Canyon City. He donated town lots to anyone willing to build a home or a business. Over the next two decades he became one of the growing city’s most prosperous citizens

Just in case you weren't aware of this!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History! July 27th
> 
> -- County government comes to a new area of the Panhandle--
> 
> On this day in 1888, Randall County was organized. It had first been settled by Lincoln Guy Conner and his wife, who moved their cattle to the vast Palo Duro Canyon area in the Panhandle. The Conners bought their land for three dollars an acre, built a half dugout, and established a general store and post office. When the county was organized, the dugout was a polling place. The Conners’ daughter was the first white child born in the county. In the spring of 1889 Conner laid out the townsite of Canyon City. He donated town lots to anyone willing to build a home or a business. Over the next two decades he became one of the growing city’s most prosperous citizens
> 
> Just in case you weren't aware of this!



Palo Duro Canyon is on my bucket list ... I've been close many times but have never visited or camped there yet,.. Thanks


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## woodman6415

Who knew what Palo Duro translated from ... But anybody who ever worked with mesquite will agree ... 

Palo Duro Canyon State Park opened on July 4, 1934 and contains 29,182 acres of the scenic, northern most portion of the Palo Duro Canyon. The Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930's constructed most of the buildings and roads still in use by park staff and visitors.

The Canyon is 120 miles long, as much as 20 miles wide, and has a maximum depth of more than 800 feet. Its elevation at the rim is 3,500 feet above sea level. It is often claimed that Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States. The largest, the Grand Canyon, is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft. deep.

Palo Duro Canyon was formed by water erosion from the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. The water deepens the canyon by moving sediment downstream. Wind and water erosion gradually widen the canyon.

Early Spanish Explorers are believed to have discovered the area and dubbed the canyon "Palo Duro" which is Spanish for "hard wood" in reference to the abundant mesquite and juniper trees.

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## woodman6415

Humans have resided in the canyon for approximately 12,000 years. Early settlers were nomadic tribes that hunted mammoth, giant bison, and other large game animals. Later, Apache Indians lived in the canyon, but were soon replaced by Comanche and Kiowa tribes who resided in the area until 1874. At that time, Col. Ranald Mackenzie was sent into the area to transport the Native Americans to Oklahoma. Col. Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry were able to capture more than 1,400 horses belonging to the tribe. After keeping some of the best horses for themselves, the remainder were taken to nearby Tule Canyon and destroyed. Cut off from their only means of transportation, the Native Americans soon surrendered.

In 1876, Charles Goodnight entered the canyon and opened the JA Ranch. At its peak, the ranch supported more than 100,000 head of cattle. Goodnight operated the ranch until 1890. Although only a fraction of its original size, the JA Ranch remains a working ranch today.

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## woodman6415

*Civil rights activist denied vote in Harris County primary*
July 27th, 1940
On this day in 1940, civil-rights activist Lonnie E. Smith attempted to vote in the Democratic primary in Harris County. Smith, an African-American dentist born in Yoakum in 1901, was denied a ballot under the white primary rules of the time. With the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (including the future United States Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall), Smith filed suit in federal district court seeking redress for the denial of his rights under the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Seventeenth amendments by the precinct election judge. Following an unfavorable ruling in the district court, Smith's attorneys lodged appeals that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. The court's 1944 decision in _Smith v. Allwright_ reversed the prior decisions against Smith by a margin of eight to one. Since that time, all eligible Texans have had the right to vote in the primary election of their choice. Smith later served as a Democratic precinct committeeman and an NAACP chapter president. He died in 1971.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Palo Duro Canyon is on my bucket list ... I've been close many times but have never visited or camped there yet,.. Thanks


You and me both! Been on the west side (Silverton, TX), south side (Quitaque, TX) and east side (Turkey, TX) of the canyon geocaching but haven't been to the canyon yet!! One day!!

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> You and me both! Been on the west side (Silverton, TX), south side (Quitaque, TX) and east side (Turkey, TX) of the canyon geocaching but haven't been to the canyon yet!! One day!!



That makes 3 of us, I've never been but have always wanted to. Tony

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## Kevin

Palo Duro Canyon is a must see Wendell, just trust me and bump it up on your list. Carve out as much time as you can. 2 weeks is not too long. I've been 4 times and I could easily move there and be happy as a lark. It's the 2nd largest canyon on the continent and the colors and features don't take a back seat to the Grand Canyon at all IMO and I have been to both. About the only thing in the US that can rival either in beauty is the Big Bend area but the canyons have a beauty all their own that nothing else can match. 

My wife lived 4 houses down from Hayden Goodnight in Amarillo on South Crockett street for 3 years and he took a shine to her and her young kids. He was in his 90's at the time and he told lots of Goodnight stories that were passed down from previous Goodnight generations in lore, bibles, and other written family history which he shared with Terry and she is telling me what she can remember right now. He lived eventually to be 101 and died in 2000. She had moved away by then though. She can't remember exactly how he was related but thinks he was the grandson of Charles' brother as Charles himself never had children that anyone knows of. Some of this is from things I have read online and some from Terry but everything she has told me lines up with what I have found online, so it doesn't appear that Hayden was the exaggerative type. 

The movie Lonesome Dove is based in part on the real life adventures of Charles Goodnight, especially the part where Cap'n Call takes Gus's body back to Texas after he dies a slow death from wounds inflicted when fighting indians. Oliver Loving, Charles' cattleman partner died the exact same way fighting Indians at the end of a trip to New Mexico. Charlie was really bummed out like Cap'n Call and refused to go on without his partner, so he abandoned the cattle drive and took his partner’s body back to Texas where he buried it. Charlie continued to divide his profits with Loving's family. Note: The wikipedia entry about this does not match the Goodnight family records. Wiki says Charle's finished the drive and temporarily buried Oliver at Ft Sumner then later exhumed him. As most of youo know I will believe Hayden over any wikipedia article. In either case, the fact remains Charles kept his word to Loving and returned him to Texas and buried him at Greenwood Cemetery in Weatherford Texas. I've passed through Weathorford dozens of times and always have intended to stop to look at the grave but never have as yet. We just went through Weatherford Sunday and again Monday and still didn't stop.  


This part I got from a genealogy site because Terry couldn't remember enough of the story, just that Charle's _"had a really smart bull"_ and I didn't want to misprint any facts. The story was easy enough to find:

_Goodnight created a trail named after him that extended from Alamogordo Creek, New Mexico, to Granada, Colorado. He had a lead steer named Old Blue that helped him lead several cattle drives along the trail. Once, this famous steer helped lead a thousand head 250 miles all the way to Dodge City. Once that was accomplished, Old Blue turned around and trotted back home with the cowboys._

Charlie Goodnight himself died on my wife's birthday Dec. 12th, which is also the same day my grandpa on my dad's side died. We have several births and deaths in my family through the generations just in my family cemetery alone, on Decemeber 12th. I guess it's a good day to be born and a good day to die.

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## woodman6415

During the period of July 24-26, 1979, the Tropical Storm Claudette brought 45 inches of rain to an area near Alvin, Texas, contributing to more than $600 million in damages. Claudette produced the United States 24 hour rainfall record of 43 inches.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> During the period of July 24-26, 1979, the Tropical Storm Claudette brought 45 inches of rain to an area near Alvin, Texas, contributing to more than $600 million in damages. Claudette produced the United States 24 hour rainfall record of 43 inches.


Whew that was a rough time. My FIL had a new house built in the Friendswood area and got about 40" of storm water in it from Tropical Storm Claudette. Spent some hot humid hours cleaning out that new house of mud and muck

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day describes two Galvestonians and their plight during and after the Great Fire of 1885:

"On the other hand, Louisa and her husband August were lucky to find the apartment ---- half the houses on the Island had burned during the Great Fire of 1885. It started on Friday, November 13, the evening before Louisa's wedding day. She was sewing her wedding dress when she heard the fire whistle and and saw flames in the direction of the business district. The fire began at a foundry near 17th and the Strand, and a stiff north wind swept it from rooftop to rooftop. She remembered looking at the night sky, sequined now with red and gold, and seeing a flock of seabirds drifting silently among the dancing sparks. 

Flames raged out of control, cutting a four-block-wide swath across the center of the Island ---- from the Strand, over Broadway, past Avenue O, nearly to the beach. Homeowners raced ahead to save what they could. August Rollfing was carrying his bride's sewing machine to the buggy when he realized that the second floor of their building was burning. Louisa escaped just before the ceiling caved in, the tail of her coat on fire. In the street, people stumbled about, dazed and bewildered. A neighbor woman wandered around carrying a single possession, a bowl of water on which orange blossoms floated. 

Galveston's first professional fire department was barely a month old and no match for the conflagration. The pressure of its newly installed saltwater system proved insufficient, and bits of shell clogged the nozzles of the firehouse. By the time it burned itself out, the fire had consumed forty-two blocks, destroying 568 buildings and homes, including the mansions of Leon Blum and Morris Lasker. Louisa Rollfing losther home, her furniture, even her trousseau. 'You can not imagine how sad it was,' she wrote. Amazingly, no one died. Churches and synagogues opened their doors to the homeless, as did the Beach Hotel, but it was months before the city recovered. "

------ Gary Cartwright, "Galveston: A History of the Island," 1998

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## El Guapo

I've only made it through page one (I'll go through the whole thread later), but this is a fantastic thread, @woodman6415 ! Thanks for taking the time to create and populate!

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## Tony

El Guapo said:


> I've only made it through page one (I'll go through the whole thread later), but this is a fantastic thread, @woodman6415 ! Thanks for taking the time to create and populate!



As an immigrant into this great state of ours you should pay extra close attention to this! Tony

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> As an immigrant into this great state of ours you should pay extra close attention to this! Tony



Where was that Guapo feller borned?

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## woodman6415

Is he one of those got here as fast as o could Texas?

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## Tony

Kevin said:


> Where was that Guapo feller borned?



I know he's tried to keep it quiet, but he's a dam Okie!

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> I know he's tried to keep it quiet, but he's a dam Okie!

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## Tony

He's a pretty good guy for a foreigner though!

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## Kevin

I tagged him in the Where were you born thread. It's time he was officially outed . . . . .

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## Tony

I just saw that, awesome!

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> I just saw that, awesome!



I gotta know where in OK he was hatched. If it's Tulsa or OKC or something that's nothing to make fun of but if it's Muskogee or something like that, that's gonna be rich. I bet he won't be honest. He'll say something cool like "Broken Bow". Just watch.


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## Tony

Kevin said:


> I gotta know where in OK he was hatched. If it's Tulsa or OKC or something that's nothing to make fun of but if it's Muskogee or something like that, that's gonna be rich. I bet he won't be honest. He'll say something cool like "Broken Bow". Just watch.



He told me, but I'm an  and have CRS, sorry.


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## woodman6415

This is James "Iron Head" Baker as photographed by pioneering musicologist John Lomax in June, 1934 at the Central State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas. Iron Head, who was 63 years old, was a habitual criminal who had been sentenced to 99 years for robbery. John Lomax made field recordings of many prisoners and Iron Head was one of them. Here is a brief recording of Iron Head singing "Black Betty," a song that has been covered by so many bands since, to include hard rock versions. But in this rendition one really gets a feel for what these songs sounded like when sung in the fields by prisoners. It's quite a fascinating story and I am grateful that somebody had the foresight to record these songs for posterity's sake. For more, read Iron Head's Wikipedia entry . Here's Iron Head singing "Black Betty."

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We had long hair in my band, and a couple of the guys got pulled over in a little town called Ralls. The cops kept them for three days, then shaved their heads. It was even that way around Austin. If you were driving in from Lubbock or Amarillo with long hair, you had to get down on the floorboard in places like Oak Hill because you’d get pulled over."

------ Alvin Crow, guitarist and fiddle virtuoso, describes the dangers inherent in being traveling hippie musicians in Texas during the 1960s.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The oldest European settlement in the area that is present-day Texas is the community of Ysleta, which is now part of El Paso. It was first established in 1680. .

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## woodman6415

Texas is the only state to enter the United States by treaty instead of territorial annexation.

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

Although six flags have flown over Texas, there have been eight changes of government: Spanish 1519-1685, French 1685-1690, Spanish 1690-1821, Mexican 1821-1836, Republic of Texas 1836-1845, United States 1845-1861, Confederate States 1861-1865, United States 1865-present.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! August 12th

Law arrives west of the Pecos

On this day in 1882, the commissioners of Pecos County officially appointed Roy Bean justice of the peace. He retained the post, with short interruptions, until he retired voluntarily in 1902. As he gained fame for being an eccentric and original interpreter of the law, the Kentucky native became known as the "Law West of the Pecos." For example, when a man carrying forty dollars and a pistol fell off a bridge, Bean fined the corpse forty dollars for carrying a concealed weapon. The forty dollars covered the man's funeral expenses. Bean died in his saloon on March 16, 1903, of lung and heart ailments and was buried in the Del Rio cemetery. His shrewdness, audacity, unscrupulousness, and humor, aided by his knack for self-dramatization, made him an enduring part of American folklore

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## SENC

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History! August 12th


Ummmmm. A little trigger happy?

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## Tony

SENC said:


> Ummmmm. A little trigger happy?



We're a lot trigger happy here, haven't you seen the numbers?

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## Tony

Today In Texas History 

On August 2,1951 my father Tony Sr. was born. He's not famous, but he is an incredible man. A craftsman in his own right, he can work with metal, wood, just about any material. He can tell you what's wrong with your car by hearing it run over the phone. He taught me work ethic, being proud of your family name and reputation, a million other things that I will carry to my grave. My son is named Tony III and I always say I named him after my father not me. I have not done anything worthy of having anything named after me, much less a human being. He'll never see this or know about it but this post is for him. Tony

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## Wildthings

OK back to the present!

Today in Texas History! August *3rd*

Murder of sheriff candidate kindles feud

On this day in 1898, the Colorado County Feud began. This murderous quarrel between rival local factions was ignited when Larkin Hope, a candidate for county sheriff, was shot and killed by an unknown assailant. Jim Coleman, a family friend of Sheriff Sam Reese, was immediately suspected. He was never charged. Less than a year later Reese was killed in a gun battle on the Columbus Street where Hope had died. Stray bullets killed Charles Boehme and wounded a boy named Johnny Williams. Even though evidence suggests that Reese had provoked the fight, his sons vowed to get revenge. In five more gunfights between May 17, 1899, and May 17, 1907, five more men were killed and several others wounded. No one was ever convicted of the killings. The feud also had a direct effect on the economic well being of Columbus. In 1906 the citizens voted to turn the administration of the city over to the county and Columbus remained unincorporated for twenty years.

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## woodman6415

The Flagship Hotel on Seawall Boulevard in Galveston is the only hotel in North America built entirely over the water.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

José Gregorio Esparza, also known as Gregorio Esparza, was the last Texan defender to enter the Alamo before the Mexican siege began and his was the only Texian body that was not burned in the pyres in the aftermath of the Mexican victory. After the battle, one of the Mexican soldiers, Francisco Esparza, began searching for the body of his brother, Jose Gregorio, who had fought on the side of the Texians. When he found his brother's body, Francisco and his widowed sister-in-law went to Santa Anna and begged permission to give Jose Gregorio a proper Christian burial. Permission was granted, and Jose Gregorio was buried in the Campo Santo cemetery in San Antonio. Incidentally, Jose Gregorio brought his family along with him when he entered the Alamo compound. They were able to survive the battle and were not executed by the conquering army.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

“I didn’t drive eleven hours across Texas to watch my cholesterol.” 

—— Robb Walsh, food writer and author of the fantastic cookbook, “Legends of Texas Barbecue.”

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Brewster County is the largest county in Texas, more than three times the size of the state of Delaware, and more than 500 square miles bigger than Connecticut. It is one of the nine counties that comprise the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas, and borders Mexico. Alpine, Texas, is the county seat. The county is named for Colonel Henry Percy Brewster, a Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Founder Harmon Dobson recorded that Whataburger #1 in Corpus Christi grossed 50 dollars on its first day of business. In those days, a Whataburger cost less than a stamp does today.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Mama, when I grow up I'm going to be a musician."

"Make up your mind, son, because you can't do both!"

------- Legendary fiddle player Johnny Gimble and his mother

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Founder Harmon Dobson recorded that Whataburger #1 in Corpus Christi grossed 50 dollars on its first day of business. In those days, a Whataburger cost less than a stamp does today.



I'll have to ask my parents if the original Ayers location was still open when we were there. We used to eat at Whataburger all the time but back then I remember them as drive ins like sonic.

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## woodman6415

A crowd gathered on Houston Street in Dallas reacts to the news that suspected JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot by Jack Ruby. This was taken on Sunday morning, November 24, 1963. 

Image courtesy the 6th floor Museum in Dallas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Brazos river is the largest river between the Red River and the Rio Grande. It is 840 miles long and rises from three forks: the Salt, Clear, and Double Mountain Forks. According to legend, the Brazos saved Coronado's expedition of 1540-1542 from dying of thirst, so the men thankfully named it "Los Brazos de Dios" ( The Arms of God). So if you ever wondered how it got its name, well there you go.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day brings some good advice from one of the great philosophers:

"Lorie darlin', life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it's likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself."

------ Augustus McCrae, "Lonesome Dove," 1989

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day concerns legendary ranger Jack Coffee Hays. Hays was so widely known by reputation that people were surprised by his appearance when they met him for the first time. Pioneer John W. Lockhart (for whom Lockhart, Texas is named), who met Hays in a hotel lobby in Washington-on-the-Brazos, had this to say:

"I thought that my eyes had deceived me. Could this small, boyish-looking youngster, not a particle of beard on his face, homely palefaced young man, be the venerable Jack Hays, the celebrated Indian fighter, the man whose name was sung by all the Texians? It could not be, I thought, but I soon found out that it was the venerable Captain Jack."

---- John W. Lockhart, "Jack Hays' Visit to Washington, Texas"

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Nearly 40 years before the Wright brothers flew their plane at Kittyhawk in 1903, a Texan flew a fixed-wing powered airplane near Fredericksburg in 1865. Newspaper accounts reveal that Jacob Brodbeck successfully flew an airplane that he had built which was powered with coil springs. Some accounts say that the plane reached an altitude of 12 feet, others say that it reached "tree top" height. It crashed into a hen house, killing numerous chickens and scaring many children. Brodbeck, a teacher and inventor, came to Texas from Germany in 1846 and lived in Luckenbach.

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## woodman6415

Jiles Perry Richardson aka J.P. Richardson but better known as "The Big Bopper," He. was born in Sabine Pass, Texas, in 1930 and was a musician, songwriter, and disc jockey whose rockabilly look, style, voice, and exuberant personality made him an early rock and roll star. He is best known for his 1958 recording of "Chantilly Lace".

On February 3, 1959, Richardson died in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa, along with music stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, and pilot Roger Peterson. The accident was famously eulogized as "The Day the Music Died" in Don McLean's 1971 song "American Pie."

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## woodman6415

On a side note ... A town in Texas I have little use for ... 



The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

“Ore Diggers” and “Muckers” were names considered for the University of Texas at El Paso before they became they settled on “Miners.” I'm glad, too. "El Paso Ore Diggers" just doesn't have the same ring.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

In 1863, a British officer named Arthur J.L. Fremantle toured the southern United States, including Texas, for three months and wrote an account of it. Here's one of his diary entrees:

"28th April (Tuesday).—We crossed the river Guadalupe at 5 a.m., and got a change of horses.

We got a very fair breakfast at Seguin at 7 a.m., which was beginning to be a well-to-do little place before the [Civil] war dried it up.

It commenced to rain at Seguin, which made the road very woolly, and annoyed the outsiders a good deal.

We dined at a little wooden hamlet called Belmont, and changed horses again there.

The country through which we had been traveling was a good deal cultivated, and there were numerous farms. I saw cotton-fields for the first time.

We amused ourselves by taking shots with our revolvers at the enormous jack-rabbits which came to stare at the coach.

In the afternoon tobacco-chewing became universal, and the spitting was sometimes a little wild.

It was the custom for the outsiders to sit round the top of the carriage, with their legs dangling over (like mutes on a hearse returning from a funeral). This practice rendered it dangerous to put one's head out of the window, for fear of a back kick from the heels, or of a shower of tobacco-juice from the mouths, of the Southern chivalry on the roof. In spite of their peculiar habits of hanging, shooting etc..., which seemed to be natural to people living in such a wild and thinly-populated country, there was much to like in my fellow-travelers. They all had a sort of bonhommie honesty and straightforwardness, a natural courtesy and extreme good-nature, which was very agreeable."

--------- Lieutenant Col. Arthur J.L. Fremantle, "THREE MONTHS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES," 1863

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## woodman6415

Jacy, Sonny, and Duane drive away in "The Last Picture Show." The movie was filmed in Archer City and directed by Peter Bogdonavich. I believe it remains the only movie to be nominated for four Academy Awards for supporting performances, as Jeff Bridges and Ben Johnson were nominated for best supporting actor and Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn were nominated for best supporting actresses. Johnson and Leachman won.

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## woodman6415

Black bear killed near Marfa, circa 1915. I always debate whether or not to put up such photos because folks have mighty strong feelings regarding hunting. But this page is apolitical and devoted to all aspects of Texas history and this was a historical moment in time. I'm happy to report that. slowly but surely, black bear numbers are on the increase in Texas.

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## woodman6415

THE OLDEST KNOWN IMAGE OF EL PASO, TEXAS, 1850!!!

Our friend and colleague Joel Guzman recently rediscovered this extremely precious image in the John Russell Bartlett Archive of Brown University. Apparently it had been published previously, some decades ago. It depicts the "Post Opposite Paso del Norte" in approximately December 1850. In those early days, El Paso was known as "Franklin," named after Benjamin Franklin Coons, who leased the adobe buildings you see in the image to the United States Army. The Army occupied the site in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Some of the buildings you see here were constructed in the 1830s by Ponce de Leon and once formed the core of his ranch, but they were sold to Coons in 1849. Coons built the corral on the far side of the building in 1850. The civilian population of Franklin at that time was under 100 inhabitants!

The open space in front of the fort is the future San Jacinto Plaza, so the view is to the southwest. A portico would later be built near the main building, which would be demolished in 1883 and replaced by the Grand Central Hotel. Later, Trost's Anson Mills Building (1911) would be erected very near the site.

The future "El Paso Street" is to the left of the image. In those days, the Rio Grande was located approximately where Paisano Dr. is today. The future Segundo Barrio and Chihuahuita were on the south side of the river in Mexico and connected to Paso del Norte (the future Ciudad Juarez).

Many thanks to Joel Guzman for this research!






All these years and it hasn't changed much at all ... That's just my opinion

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> All these years and it hasn't changed much at all ... That's just my opinion


Someone don't like El Paso....

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## Wildthings

Kevin said:


> Someone don't like El Paso....


Two of us don't like El Paso!

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## woodman6415

It's not that I don't like El Paso it's just the crotch of Texas ...

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## woodman6415

A woman in Windy Point, Texas, with her new Maytag washing machine in May, 1934. I imagine she thought she was in high cotton after this thing was delivered!





Where is Windy Point, Tx ... Hope it's not close to El Paso

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Where is Windy Point, Tx ...



Lake Travis has a Windy Point. It's just west of Hippy Hollow nudist beach. It's the most popular SCUBA park on the lake or at least it was in the late 90s through early 00's - I have been scuba diving there several times. You have probably rode your bike right past the entrance more than once if you've ever rode the cool roads in that part of the lake.

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## Tony

No wonder SCUBA diving is popular around the nude beach!!

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## woodman6415

@Kevin .... I'm pretty sure that Windy Point outside of Austin is not the same. That one was founded in 1980, by Bob Barstow and his family. 
And yes I have been there quite a few times ... In the late 70s and the 80s hippy hollow was a fun place to ride to on bike and boat ... Lots of fond memories boating there ... But alas the LGBT club kind of took it over ... That was before that acronym was even used ... I was a lot less tolerant back then and really didn't want to see it in the flesh .... So quit going ... I hear it's still that way today ... But then again it is " keep it weird " Austin .... @Tony if your scuba diving there we may have to rethink our friendship ... Just saying

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## Tony

Ha! Don't worry @woodman6415 , never been SCUBA diving on my life. Always wanted to try it though. Tony


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## woodman6415

There are many interesting tales that revolve around the San Bernard River, which rises from a spring near New Ulm and flows for 120 miles before it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. One of the most fascinating such tales is the mysterious wailing violin sound that has caused the San Bernard to be nicknamed "The Singing River." It has been reported for more than 120 years. Some believe the violin sound comes from the ghost of a violinist from Jean Lafite's band who was killed while playing the violin along the riverbanks. Another story is that it is the cries from a boatload of slaves who drowned at the mouth of the San Bernard. Yet another is that the sound comes from the spirit of a young musician whose bride-to-be died just hours before the wedding, so he consoled himself by playing his violin nightly. Scientists, however, believe that the sound may be that of swamp gasses escaping. Spooky stuff. I'm scared! ;)


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a great one:

"For two and one-half years I never went to the post-office ---- Colorado City, 115 miles away ----- nor looked upon the face of a woman. I allowed my beard to grow and never, never gave the matter a thought, must have become as tough looking a character as ever bestrode a horse in Texas. It is not strange that, when I did finally go to town and attend a "baile," Eliza Hudgins would not see fit to favor me, when I sought a dance. Late in the evening, the party broke up in a fight and it was several months before I saw the fair young lady again. But the memory of her drew me back to town and on to Plainview, where her family resided. The time I was shaved and slicked up like a city dude, or as nearly so as a sunburned, calloused cow-hand could be. She smiled upon me and I rushed the case as rapidly as her breadcrumbs of encouragement would justify. We were married in her father's home and I took her back to the Elwood ranch as a new top-hand. As she accustomed herself to the rigors of the open range, she gradually became as good a hand with cattle as many of the men we had. At the time, she was the only woman in four counties and very rarely did she see another of her sex, except on occasions when we could tear ourselves away from ranch duties to ride a hundred miles or so to a dance. 

Later our savings enabled us to buy sixteen sections, which we fenced, the two of us, almost entirely by our own labor ... Then we got a windmill. I will never forget how happy we were, standing at the door of the little dugout, watching the flow of the first water the new windmill pumped for us. Then came the cattle, slowly. We'd buy a cow here and a cow there; then we got a good bull and a few young steers for fattening ... Our first baby, Mary, was born .... She died at seven years ... Then came little Bob Lee, who drowned when he was three years old. Later, after we had proudly built a new house with several rooms, Ruth was born and we were blissfully happy.. 

From this time on, it seemed like everything to which we placed our hands prospered and multiplied."

-------- Frank Norfleet, "Norfleet," 1924

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## SENC

woodman6415 said:


> I imagine she thought she was in high cotton after this thing was delivered!


I imagine she thought her husband was in deep poo for giving her a washing machine for her birthday.


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## woodman6415

I would bet it beat the heck out of a wash tub and washboard ... I'm amazed you can buy new washboards ... Amazon ...
Behrens BWBG12 Galvanized Washboard, Large










SENC said:


> I imagine she thought her husband was in deep poo for giving her a washing machine for her birthday.


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## Wildthings

A little bit more on Frank Norfleet - don't get on his bad side

Identity thieves, credit card counterfeiters, and fly-by-night contractors wouldn’t have troubled pioneer rancher J. Frank Norfleet.
He would have troubled them, instead. And his wife, Mattie E. Norfleet, would have, too. 
After he had been swindled out of a fortune by con men in what has become the Metroplex, he decided to go after them personally. And his wife supported the decision. She said to him, “Frank, go get those miserable crooks! I will manage the ranch and keep you in expense money.”

Knowing that he carried a gun, she did advise a measured retaliation: “Bring them in ALIVE. Any man can kill, but it is the part of a brave man to capture the criminals and let the courts avenge his wrongs.” Tanner Laine, 20th century author who was a reporter at The Avalanche-Journal, once summed up the character of Norfleet this way: “The indestructible little rancher had the unerring instinct of a bloodhound; the uncanny intuition of a prophet; and the resolution of a tiger following prey.”

In his book, “Cow Country,” Laine added, “Although he was blazing fast on the draw and a deadly shot with a pistol, he never killed anyone.”
That didn’t mean the confidence men who stole his money could rest. They were in fact restless for more than four years while he dogged their tracks across a continent. Norfleet was 54 in 1919 when he went to Dallas to buy land from investors to add to his Hale County ranch. But he casually met a man who claimed to be a mule buyer, and they struck up a conversation.

Norfleet at that moment had already been singled out as a mark. Before they were done with him, he would have been taken for $45,000 — some of which he had borrowed from a bank and some from a family member — and left with a $90,000 debt for 10,000 acres of land that he wanted to add to his ranch in Hale County.

The scam progressed to a point of sending more money to gain back money that was already at risk. The five perpetrators began with Norfleet’s honesty in returning a planted wallet that had $100 and important papers in it. Norfleet declined to accept a reward, and the grateful recipient made a stock market investment of his own money on Norfleet’s behalf. The investment paid big, and Norfleet was willing to risk the profit plus more.

They seemed to be men of their word, and besides, one was a fellow Mason who eventually used the “distress” signal to dispel Norfleet’s doubts. When they didn’t show up as promised — and had his $45,000 — he was devastated and angry beyond words.

In a 1924 book that recounted the experience, titled “Norfleet,” he recalled burning into his memory every detail of the faces and characteristics of the men who had taken his family’s years of work.

Norfleet had been a very young man when he set out to join buffalo hunters on the Llano Estacado in 1879. Then he began working for various ranching outfits as a cowboy. He was so good at his work that he was eventually hired as foreman of the Spade Ranch in Lamb and Hockley Counties soon after the ranch was formed.

He had an association with law enforcement, too. His father had been a Texas Ranger and had fought in the Indian wars as the Civil War was ending.

Norfleet didn’t get into town much, and when he did go to Plainview in 1894, he met Mattie. They married June 23, 1894, and made their home on the Spade Ranch. Of their four children, Mary died of diphtheria at 7, and Robert died by drowning when he was 3. They stayed on the Spade Ranch until 1904, then filed on a homestead at Catfish draw near the present-day Cotton Center.

The family prospered by hard work and skill in operating a ranch. Then, to see it end this way when he felt past the age of beginning again, was something he couldn’t let pass.

When Norfleet got up from his bed in a hotel room in Fort Worth, he had so etched into his mind every detail of the men who betrayed him and impoverished his family, that he couldn’t erase the pictures.

He longed to see his wife and tell her everything that had happened. She met him in Dallas, and his book recounts it this way:

“Wife,” I said, my voice so husky I could scarcely speak, “I don’t know how to look you in the face when I remember my vow at the altar to ‘cherish and protect’ you, and now to realize after all we have gone through together, I have let these crooks ruin us: have condemned you to an old age of poverty.”

She saw it another way:

“We are a long, long way from poverty, Frank! You always have found a way to handle things, and I am confident you can meet the debt when it comes due.”

Norfleet was a hunter. He had followed buffalo and other wild game. He knew how to follow a trail. And whether it was tracks on the ground or a string of eyewitness interviews across a nation, he could follow justice for himself and Mattie, and for others who might suffer at the hands of the criminals.

His search for the confidence men became legendary — and tenacious beyond belief. According to an article by H. Allen Anderson in the Handbook of Texas, Norfleet’s manhunt took him throughout the United States, and ranged from Mexico to Canada.

A Texas Historical Marker in Hale County mentions that the search even included Havana, Cuba, and adds, “His determination won him the nickname of ‘Little Tiger.’ ”

In a little less than five years, Norfleet saw all of the men safely to prison, except for one who chose suicide. Along the way, two peace officers who aided the criminals were jailed on his testimony.

Laine wrote, “His fame spread. He was besieged with requests for his services as a manhunter. For the amazing number of criminals he apprehended, he received a special certificate from the FBI.”

The number of criminals he captured has been estimated at between 75 and 100.

Along with the $45,000 he had already lost, Norfleet spent another $30,000 in apprehending the confidence gang.

The running of the $45,000 game on Norfleet cost the criminals $82,900 in purchased protection from peace-officers, lawyer fees and cash bonds forfeited, according to calculations in Norfleet’s book.

The scam and the nearly five years spent in securing justice was costly to the Norfleets, but it did nothing to abridge their lives. Frank died at 102 in 1967, and Mattie at 101 in 1972.

Justice was theirs.

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## woodman6415

Great reading ... It's amazing how life was then ... Thanks @Wildthings for the story ...

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## woodman6415

66 years ago today, on August 8th, 1950, Harmon Dobson --- a bold man, a man with a clear vision ----- opened this little 'ol burger stand at 2609 Ayers street in Corpus Christi. The price of the original Whataburger was 25 cents and the stand took in fifty dollars on its first day of business. To paraphrase Bob Slydell in "Office Space," I celebrate their entire catalog. I believe I'm going to go out and get me a double meat Whatburger with cheese, jalapenos, an order of fries and a Coke.

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## SENC

Whataburgers with cheese, mustard, jalapenos, and pickles are among the things I miss most about Texas.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> @Kevin .... I'm pretty sure that Windy Point outside of Austin is not the same. That one was founded in 1980, by Bob Barstow and his family.
> And yes I have been there quite a few times ... In the late 70s and the 80s hippy hollow was a fun place to ride to on bike and boat ... Lots of fond memories boating there ... But alas the LGBT club kind of took it over ... That was before that acronym was even used ... I was a lot less tolerant back then and really didn't want to see it in the flesh .... So quit going ... I hear it's still that way today ... But then again it is " keep it weird " Austin .... @Tony if your scuba diving there we may have to rethink our friendship ... Just saying



I've never been to Hippy Hollow Wendell. My understanding is from where we would enter the water at Windy Point HH was a long way down the beach. I don't ever remember anyone swimming down there from our dive spot. Divers are a partying lot for the most part - we don't need to swim up on a nude beach in order to see naked bodies. If we're so inclined, we're the type to create our own on nude beach spontaneously if we so desire, but diving is usually the focus of our activities not frolicking in our birthday suits.

Here's one for ya though. There's a subculture of nude diving within the dive community and they don't limit it to fresh water. It's fairly popular in the Caribbean and Florida. IMO you have to be an idiot to expose your penis in salt water where fish investigate possible food sources by biting. Even small fish bite HARD. And there's many idiot tourist non-nude divers that feed fish hot dogs because they think it's cool to "interact" with the fish so closely. I guess those nude divers better hope they never swim with fish that relate hot dogs to food.


When I dive I try to wear thin skins even in tropical waters because I don't like being stung by jellyfish and man o' wars. Can you imagine swimming through a stream of venomous tentacles getting them in every nook and cranny, on your junk, over your entire body and having to do your decompression ascent before finally getting on the boat and hopefully getting some medical attention on your now super swollen, deathly painful Johnson? Dollars to donuts there wouldn't be a safety stop involved in that ascent. Takes all kinds of idiots I guess.


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## woodman6415

Thanks for that info @Kevin ... Now I don't even want to go swimming at the river with my blue jean pants on ...

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## JohnF

Kevin said:


> I've never been to Hippy Hollow Wendell. My understanding is from where we would enter the water at Windy Point HH was a long way down the beach. I don't ever remember anyone swimming down there from our dive spot. Divers are a partying lot for the most part - we don't need to swim up on a nude beach in order to see naked bodies. If we're so inclined, we're the type to create our own on nude beach spontaneously if we so desire, but diving is usually the focus of our activities not frolicking in our birthday suits.
> 
> Here's one for ya though. There's a subculture of nude diving within the dive community and they don't limit it to fresh water. It's fairly popular in the Caribbean and Florida. IMO you have to be an idiot to expose your penis in salt water where fish investigate possible food sources by biting. Even small fish bite HARD. And there's many idiot tourist non-nude divers that feed fish hot dogs because they think it's cool to "interact" with the fish so closely. I guess those nude divers better hope they never swim with fish that relate hot dogs to food.
> 
> 
> When I dive I try to wear thin skins even in tropical waters because I don't like being stung by jellyfish and man o' wars. Can you imagine swimming through a stream of venomous tentacles getting them in every nook and cranny, on your junk, over your entire body and having to do your decompression ascent before finally getting on the boat and hopefully getting some medical attention on your now super swollen, deathly painful Johnson? Dollars to donuts there wouldn't be a safety stop involved in that ascent. Takes all kinds of idiots I guess.



Couldn't be a lot worse than a good dose of poison ivy on the old weiner, could it?


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## Kevin

JohnF said:


> Couldn't be a lot worse than a good dose of poison ivy on the old weiner, could it?



Oh yes it could! Poison ivy or poison oak doesn't bite it off . . . .

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## JohnF

Kevin said:


> Oh yes it could! Poison ivy or poison oak doesn't bite it off . . . .



It just feels like it for a few days

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> 66 years ago today, on August 8th, 1950, Harmon Dobson --- a bold man, a man with a clear vision ----- opened this little 'ol burger stand at 2609 Ayers street in Corpus Christi. The price of the original Whataburger was 25 cents and the stand took in fifty dollars on its first day of business. To paraphrase Bob Slydell in "Office Space," I celebrate their entire catalog. I believe I'm going to go out and get me a double meat Whatburger with cheese, jalapenos, an order of fries and a Coke.
> 
> View attachment 110972



You gotta have onion rings man!!!!!!!!!

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## Wildthings

SENC said:


> Whataburgers with cheese, mustard, jalapenos, and pickles are among the things I miss most about Texas.


My brother lives in Colorado for the past 10 years and when he comes back into Texas the first Whataburger he sees it's an automatic stop. A double meat mustard Whataburger all the way with cheese and a side of fries!! He gets his fix and gets back on the road!

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day comes from a French journal and was written in 1839:

"Although mountains are rare in Texas, hills abound. In most places the terrain offers to the eye irregular and picturesque undulations, which extend like solid waves on a troubled sea ...
The forests which Texas possesses are usually located on river banks. More than in any other part of American one finds there those secular giants precious for ship building when their timber has been hardened by the elements. Forests of future masts rise up to the sky as they await the ax of the Americans, who have so far left them untouched. The products of Texas will, as time goes on, become infinitely more varied. The fertility of the soil, which in all of North America, is perhaps unequaled except in the states of Indiana and Illinois; the mildness of the climate, Texas' heat being tempered by a steady cool breeze; these factors make it suitable for all types of agriculture, whether colonial or European."

-------- From an article in "journal des Debats," by Theodore-Frederic Gaillardet, Ocotber 26, 1839

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## Tony



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## Tony




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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> View attachment 111074


Look at all those foreigners

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one and describes a woman's journey through Texas in the 1850s. 

In two weeks our leave was up, and we left for the Western frontier. We traveled two days, without incident or trouble, from San Antonio towards Fort Inge [near Uvalde]. Though the drive on the third day was long and tedious, we hoped to reach the post soon after dark. The roads were heavy from recent rains; any one at all familiar with the black and sticky Texas mud can understand the meaning of "heavy roads.'' Evening came upon us when we were still many miles from the fort The mules showed signs of giving out, and the prospect of reaching home that night was anything but bright.

Husband and the driver held a consultation on the situation; it was certain the mules could travel no farther. The driver thought there was a placee not far off the road, where we might be allowed to spend the night; so we turned into a dim path, following it until we came to the house. It was so dark by this time we could scarcely see where we were going; but the door was found at last, and, after thundering on it with tremendous force time and again, a voice called out, "What do you want ?" Husband answered, "To stay all night." "You can't do it." "But we must; there is a lady here, our mules are broken down, and we cannot go on." "That makes it worse; having a lady, you can't stay." More parleying followed, when finally a reluctant consent was given for me to go into the house, and the door was opened. As the driver turned the wagon into the corral, a voice called to him "to be careful, as there was a bit of a bank near," which in the morning we found to be a sheer descent of at least two hundred feet to the river below, and we had gone close to the edge in the night, never dreaming of its vicinity.

We were taken into a small room, where a fire of 
big logs burned brightly. By the light of it I studied the owner of the voice who had talked in the darkness to us. It was a superb-looking old man I saw, with snow-white beard to his waist His mild, benevolent gaze gave me confidence at once, and his 
manner was kind and gentle.
There were several awkward girls and young men 
in the room, who were his children, he told us. 
Without asking permission, the old man mixed me a 
drink of whiskey and honey, which I declined ; but 
he insisted so much on my tasting it, I did so, rather 
than hurt his feelings. One of the girls was pre- 
paring supper for us, of which we were much in 
need, and when ready we did full justice to it, simple 
as it was, — corn-bread, bacon, and coffee, but no 
butter nor milk.
In the course of the evening, one of the sons, 
recently married, came in, leading his bride by the 
hand. Her appearance was so ludicrous I could 
not repress a smile. Her frock came about to her 
knees, and below it appeared pantalettes to her heels. 
A large sun-bonnet, entirely concealing her face, 
completed her costume.
When time came to retire, we found we were to 
share the common sleeping-room of the family, there 
being no other. Indeed, we were fortunate to have a bed to ourselves! Besides the one given to us 
were several others, which were filled by two old 
men, two young men, two girls, and two boys, ten 
people in one small room ; only three were women, 
of whom I was one!
There was no sleep for me that night. It turned 
out the old men had been to a horse-race the day 
before, and they were going over it in their dreams, 
shouting and swearing incessantly. My faith in the 
patriarchal-looking old man was destroyed as I 
listened to his loud and angry voice while he slept. 
I lay watching for the dawn, and could plainly see 
the stars through the cracks in the roof. As they 
disappeared and morning broke, we got up and made 
hasty preparations for departure, and, after paying 
for our night's lodging, we left, very thankful to 
escape from such a place.
We heard, afterwards, the true character of these 
people. They were outlaws of the worst description ; 
but while we were under their roof they treated us 
well. "
---- Lydia Spencer Lange describing a journey in the 1850s, "I Married a Soldier," 1893


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Look at all those foreigners



At least you're surrounded by South Carolinians - I am besieged on all sides by Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, and Okies to my north!

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> At least you're surrounded by South Carolinians - I am besieged on all sides by Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, and Okies to my north!


If it was me ... I would break out the weapons or move ... Prob both

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> If it was me ... I would break out the weapons or move ... Prob both



It appears you're actually in unoccupied territory as well. We've held them at bay but our lines are about to break down and we need to skedaddle while skedaddlin' is good. I'm going to grab the guns, ammo, dogs, and wife, in that order, and float down the river tonight under cover of darkness through that NE Maylander hook that has the river guarded. I have a plan to get past them though. Once we've cleared the Yanks, well pick our way through the slivers of Texas-held freeland as shown and hook up with your Pipe Creek contingent. Once we're there, we can organize a TET-like offensive against the Yanks and expel them from our lands yet again, once and for all. If the Carolinians ally with us, we'll spare them.





Keep an eye out for us in about 3 weeks . . . . .

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## Tony

Kevin said:


> It appears you're actually in unoccupied territory as well. We've held them at bay but our lines are about to break down and we need to skedaddle while skedaddlin' is good. I'm going to grab the guns, ammo, dogs, and wife, in that order, and float down the river tonight under cover of darkness through that NE Maylander hook that has the river guarded. I have a plan to get past them though. Once we've cleared the Yanks, well pick our way through the slivers of Texas-held freeland as shown and hook up with your Pipe Creek contingent. Once we're there, we can organize a TET-like offensive against the Yanks and expel them from our lands yet again, once and for all. If the Carolinians ally with us, we'll spare them.
> 
> View attachment 111077
> 
> Keep an eye out for us in about 3 weeks . . . . .



That sounds like a dam fine plan, but what to do about the crazy Islander @Don Ratcliff just to the side of us?? Tony

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Look at all those foreigners


You noticed how a big chunk of Hawaii fits in the crotch area?

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## Wildthings

Crud I got those New Jersey type all over the top of me YIKES.. Good thing it's just a picture

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> You noticed how a big chunk of Hawaii fits in the crotch area?

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## Don Ratcliff

Okay, HAHAHA... You have had your fun. NOW PUT MY ISLAND BACK WHERE IT GOES!

This is why I do not look at this thread; Children, you are all children...

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## Kevin

He doesn't look at this thread he says. Oh sure, he pays someone else to look at it, and make his posts for him in this thread at which he never looks. Sure he does. He's a fake. I bet he doesn't even live in Hawaii. I bet he's a poor 15 year old kid living in Jalingo, Nigeria with nothing to do except use the only computer in the UN-funded library pretending he's a successful property manager on a Hawaiian island. 

Guys, let's let the poor African kid have his fantasy. It may be the only thing keeping him alive. Let's play along and pretend we believe him. What can it hurt?

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## Tony

Kevin said:


> He doesn't look at this thread he says. Oh sure, he pays someone else to look at it, and make his posts for him in this thread at which he never looks. Sure he does. He's a fake. I bet he doesn't even live in Hawaii. I bet he's a poor 15 year old kid living in Jalingo, Nigeria with nothing to do except use the only computer in the UN-funded library pretending he's a successful property manager on a Hawaiian island.
> 
> Guys, let's let the poor African kid have his fantasy. It may be the only thing keeping him alive. Let's play along and pretend we believe him. What can it hurt?



I do need some brownie points with the Big Guy so I'll play along. It's okay @Don Ratcliff, we all believe you're a successful hotel mgr. with a hot wife, don't be angry and break the public, err, I mean your, computer!

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## Don Ratcliff

Kevin said:


> He doesn't look at this thread he says. Oh sure, he pays someone else to look at it, and make his posts for him in this thread at which he never looks. Sure he does. He's a fake. I bet he doesn't even live in Hawaii. I bet he's a poor 15 year old kid living in Jalingo, Nigeria with nothing to do except use the only computer in the UN-funded library pretending he's a successful property manager on a Hawaiian island.
> 
> Guys, let's let the poor African kid have his fantasy. It may be the only thing keeping him alive. Let's play along and pretend we believe him. What can it hurt?



I do not have to live a lie now...

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## Kevin



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## Don Ratcliff

Tony said:


> I do need some brownie points with the Big Guy so I'll play along. It's okay @Don Ratcliff, we all believe you're a successful hotel mgr. with a hot wife, don't be angry and break the public, err, I mean your, computer!



You, backing me up...? You must want a kidney or something...

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## Don Ratcliff

Kevin said:


> View attachment 111085


I got nothing, that is the pinnacle of jocularity that can be achieved with this topic. With a painful belly from laughing at that I bow to your joke.

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## Kevin

Don Ratcliff said:


> ...You must want a kidney or something...



He don't want a kidney from someone likely to go on the recipient waiting list soon. Rules us both out.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum. .

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum. .



Thanks Wendell for keeping us abreast of these things! Tony

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum. .



Here's a picture of the front of the museum. Not sure what those big dark mounds imply!

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! August 11th - while you were sleeping

Decline continues as Spanish officer leaves San Xavier missions

On this day in 1754, Pedro de Rábago y Terán took over as commander of San Francisco Xavier de Gigedo Presidio, the military post at the San Xavier missions. He replaced José Joaquín de Ecay Múzquiz, who had been sent in 1753 to assist Capt. Miguel de la Garza Falcón in investigating the murder of a priest and a soldier at Candelaria Mission. Nothing better illustrates the animosity that often existed between missionaries and soldiers than events at the San Xavier missions. Felipe de Rábago y Terán, Pedro's nephew, had served so poorly that conditions at the missions were deplorable when Ecay Múzquiz arrived. The nadir had come with the murder of Father Juan José Ganzabal and the soldier Juan José Ceballos, on May 11, 1752. Commandant Felipe, who had debauched Ceballos's wife, blamed the violence on the Coco Indians. But evidence uncovered by Ecay Múzquiz and others strongly suggested that Felipe himself was behind the murders. When the elder Rábago y Terán replaced Ecay Múzquiz, he was unable to reverse the general decline. The San Xavier missions were abandoned in 1756, and their property was moved to Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission, which was itself destroyed by Indians in 1758

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I'm from Texas, and one of the things I like about Texas is there's nobody in control." 

------- Willie Nelson

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## Don Ratcliff

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "I'm from Texas, and one of the things I like about Texas is there's nobody in control."
> 
> ------- Willie Nelson


I guess that's why he moved to Maui...


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## woodman6415

Don Ratcliff said:


> I guess that's why he moved to Maui...



Untrue fact ... He was just passing thru getting some of that gold smoke

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Untrue fact ... He was just passing thru getting some of that gold smoke



He definitely lives there. His neighbors are Owen Wilson, Kris Kristofferson, and the swanky sexy Maya Ratcliff and her man-boy servant Don the Ho.

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## woodman6415




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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> He definitely lives there. His neighbors are Owen Wilson, Kris Kristofferson, and the swanky sexy Maya Ratcliff and her man-boy servant Don the Ho.



Read this : http://www.answers.com/mobile/Q/Were_does_willie_nelson_live_now


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Read this : http://www.answers.com/mobile/Q/Were_does_willie_nelson_live_now



I am pretty sure that's quite outdated. His primary residence is now Maui and I'm not relying on Don the Ho for that info.


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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> I am pretty sure that's quite outdated. His primary residence is now Maui and I'm not relying on Don the Ho for that info.


That may be true but he has 28 tour dates between now and November the 19 mostly in the Yankee states ... Would be an awful lot of plane rides ... And he shows up unannounced about once a month somewhere in Austin ..


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## Don Ratcliff

My wife is an insurance inspector and about a month ago she inspected his house. She couldn't go before 11 because he had a poker game the night before. She hit it off with his wife and chatted for a while. I can tell you that he lives here.

@Kevin I'm not sure if I should thank you for the compliments or worry... lol

Thank you is what I'm going with

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## woodman6415

Don Ratcliff said:


> My wife is an insurance inspector and about a month ago she inspected his house. She couldn't go before 11 because he had a poker game the night before. She hit it off with his wife and chatted for a while. I can tell you that he lives here.
> 
> @Kevin I'm not sure if I should thank you for the compliments or worry... lol
> 
> Thank you is what I'm going with



I'm not saying he does not own a house and live there part time ... But he has more than one home ... Look it up

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> But he has more than one home ... Look it up



I don't think anyone is arguing that. 



woodman6415 said:


> ...and live there part time ...



This I might be willing to discuss. Not counting tour days on the bus, if by "part time" you mean he lives on his Texas ranch more days of the year than he does Maui, I think that is no longer the case as it once was. I am almost certain Maui is now his go-to hacienda.


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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> I don't think anyone is arguing that.
> 
> 
> 
> This I might be willing to discuss. Not counting tour days on the bus, if by "part time" you mean he lives on his Texas ranch more days of the year than he does Maui, I think that is no longer the case as it once was. I am almost certain Maui is now his go-to hacienda.



I don't disagree with you ... Most likely closer to the gold smoke he's so fond of ...

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## woodman6415



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## Don Ratcliff

woodman6415 said:


>


There were areas my she was not allowed to take pictures of. I'll leave it at that...


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## woodman6415

Don Ratcliff said:


> There were areas my she was not allowed to take pictures of. I'll leave it at that...


This is Gary P Nunn

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! August 12th 

Raiding Comanches soundly defeated at Plum Creek

On this day in 1840, Gen. Felix Huston, Col. Edward Burleson, and others, including Ben McCulloch, fought a running battle with a large party of Comanche Indians. The battle of Plum Creek occurred as a result of the Council House Fight, in which a number of Comanche leaders were killed. Chief Buffalo Hump led a retaliatory attack down the Guadalupe valley east and south of Gonzales. The band numbered perhaps as many as 1,000, including the families of the warriors, who followed to make camps and seize plunder. The Comanches swept down the valley, plundering, stealing horses, and killing settlers, and sacked the town of Linnville. The Texans' volunteer army caught up with the Indians on Plum Creek, near present-day Lockhart, on August 11 and soundly defeated them the next day.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day references the fact that the slightest thing could set off a cattle stampede back in the days when cattle were being driven north from Texas for shipping to the east: Here, a cowboy named Frank Benton recalls a stampede set off by a tenderfoot named Curley striking a match on his saddle horn:

"When that match popped, there was a roar like an earthquake and the herd was gone in the wink of an eyelid; just two minutes from the time Curley scratched his match, that wild, crazy avalanche of cattle was running over the camp outfit, two and three deep. But at that first roar, I was out of my blankets, running for my hoss and hollering, "Come on, boys." with a rising inflection on "boys." The old hands knew what was coming and were on their hosses soon as I was, but the tenderfeet stampeded their own hosses trying to get onto them, and their hosses all got away except two, and when their riders finally got on them, they took off across the hills as fast as they could go out the way of that hoard of oncoming wild-eyed demons. The men who lost their hosses crawled under the front end of the big heavy roundup wagon, and it is a wonder the herd didn't overturn the wagon, although lots of them broke their horns on it and some broke their legs."

----- Frank Benton, "Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack," 1903

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## woodman6415

The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden is the world's largest rose garden. It contains 38,000 rose bushes representing 500 varieties of roses set in a 22-acre garden.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden is the world's largest rose garden. It contains 38,000 rose bushes representing 500 varieties of roses set in a 22-acre garden.



And if you've never been to it put it on your bucket list. I'm not even much of a flower guy, but you can't comprehend how visually and aromatically arousing it is to stand in the midst of such splendor.

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## Kevin

Guys if you take your girlfriend to it, or any arboretum or flower garden you can expect to get lucky that night and I'm not referring to scratch-offs. It turns some switch inside the wiminz . . .

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## SENC

Today in Texas History! August 12th

Law arrives west of the Pecos

On this day in 1882, the commissioners of Pecos County officially appointed Roy Bean justice of the peace. He retained the post, with short interruptions, until he retired voluntarily in 1902. As he gained fame for being an eccentric and original interpreter of the law, the Kentucky native became known as the "Law West of the Pecos." For example, when a man carrying forty dollars and a pistol fell off a bridge, Bean fined the corpse forty dollars for carrying a concealed weapon. The forty dollars covered the man's funeral expenses. Bean died in his saloon on March 16, 1903, of lung and heart ailments and was buried in the Del Rio cemetery. His shrewdness, audacity, unscrupulousness, and humor, aided by his knack for self-dramatization, made him an enduring part of American folklore

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## SENC




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## woodman6415

In my home town ... San Angelo,Tx.
Lot of businesses have sheep on display 


Traces of Texas reader Guy Choate graciously sent in this touching photograph and accompanied it with the following wonderful story:

"This statue is called 200%. Means the ewe has had twins which is a 200% lamb crop. The dog was a stray who came upon them and decided to "guard" the ewe and lambs. He stayed about a week. We fed and watered him and tried to get him to come with us but he was having none of it. I took this photo of him "standing guard". 

He left like he came and we haven't seen him since.

The statue is in an esplanade between Bryant Thruway where it enters San Angelo (US 87/277). Is is a bronze done by Don Bowen, a great gentleman who died not long after it was placed. He was a rancher through to his socks and took up sculpting late in life. Famed sculptor Glynna Goodacre was a great friend of Don's and was present for the official unveiling of the statue. "

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## Mike1950

Thought this might be appropriate here.

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## Wildthings

2 of those Texas Golds are from Simone Bile. My granddaughter's BFF works out at the same place as Simone and is good friends with her. So she took my granddaughter to meet her the week before they left for Rio. My granddaughter is twelve yo and is a little thing! In the picture she took with Simone she's a head taller than her. It's pretty cool! Now my wife and I act like we're personal friends of Simone when we see her on TV. LOL

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Filming 'Giant' was essentially a dawn-to-dusk affair, with few breaks. But the one break all looked forward to was lunch. The company erected a large tent behind the "Reata" set where the Gillespie Catering Service served both cast and crew in that common area. Actress Carroll Baker remembered the repast with great enthusiasm: "We ate the catered noonday meal at long picnic tables, and that made every lunchtime a party. The buffet was sumptuous: caldrons of stews and curries; serving planks with roasts and fish and chicken, mashed, baked, boiled and fried potatoes; a wide variety of vegetables and salads, assorted cheese, freshly baked rolls, and bread; and dozens of yummy desserts. I had never seen such a quantity of delicious foods.' " 

------- Kenneth B. Ragsdale "Big Bend Country: Land of the Unexpected," 1998. Ragsdale is referencing the 1955 filming of "Giant," which starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, in Marfa, Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Alexander Franklin James --- the brother of notorious outlaw Jesse James and participant in at least four robberies that resulted in the deaths of bank employees or citizens ----- later worked innocuously as a shoe salesman at Sanger Brothers in Dallas. It's true. What happened is this:

Five months after the killing of his brother Jesse in 1882, Frank James boarded a train to Jefferson City, Missouri, where he had an appointment with the governor in the state capitol. Placing his holster in Governor Crittenden's hands, he explained,

"I have been hunted for twenty-one years, have literally lived in the saddle, have never known a day of perfect peace. It was one long, anxious, inexorable, eternal vigil.' He then ended his statement by saying, 'Governor, I haven't let another man touch my gun since 1861."

Accounts say that James surrendered with the understanding that he would not be extradited to Northfield, Minnesota.

He was tried for only two of the robberies/murders – one in Gallatin, Missouri for the July 15, 1881 robbery of the Rock Island Line train at Winston, Missouri, in which the train engineer and a passenger were killed, and the other in Huntsville, Alabama for the March 11, 1881 robbery of a United States Army Corps of Engineers payroll at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Among others, former Confederate General Joseph Orville Shelby testified on James' behalf in the Missouri trial. He was acquitted in both Missouri and Alabama. Missouri accepted legal jurisdiction over him for other charges, but they never came to trial. He was never extradited to Minnesota for his connection with the Northfield Raid.

His New York Times obituary summarized his arrest and acquittal:

In 1882 ... Frank James surrendered in Jefferson City, Mo.
After his surrender James was taken to Independence, Mo., where he was held in jail three weeks, and later to Gallatin, where he remained in jail a year awaiting trial. Finally James was acquitted and went to Oklahoma to live with his mother. He never was in the penitentiary and never was convicted of any of the charges against him. 

Set free. Frank James drifted to Dallas, where he worked for Sanger Brothers in the later 1880s. A manuscript written by a co-worker described him as "friendly and generous." He passed away on Feb. 18, 1915.

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## SENC

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "Filming 'Giant' was essentially a dawn-to-dusk affair, with few breaks. But the one break all looked forward to was lunch. The company erected a large tent behind the "Reata" set where the Gillespie Catering Service served both cast and crew in that common area. Actress Carroll Baker remembered the repast with great enthusiasm: "We ate the catered noonday meal at long picnic tables, and that made every lunchtime a party. The buffet was sumptuous: caldrons of stews and curries; serving planks with roasts and fish and chicken, mashed, baked, boiled and fried potatoes; a wide variety of vegetables and salads, assorted cheese, freshly baked rolls, and bread; and dozens of yummy desserts. I had never seen such a quantity of delicious foods.' "
> 
> ------- Kenneth B. Ragsdale "Big Bend Country: Land of the Unexpected," 1998. Ragsdale is referencing the 1955 filming of "Giant," which starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, in Marfa, Texas.


GREAT movie!

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## Kevin

Wildthings said:


> 2 of those Texas Golds are from Simone Bile. My granddaughter's BFF works out at the same place as Simone and is good friends with her. So she took my granddaughter to meet her the week before they left for Rio. My granddaughter is twelve yo and is a little thing! In the picture she took with Simone she's a head taller than her. It's pretty cool! Now my wife and I act like we're personal friends of Simone when we see her on TV. LOL

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## Tony

@Wildthings


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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

This incredibly sharp photo of President Theodore Roosevelt in his tent was taken at a Rough Riders reunion in San Antonio, 1906. Everybody say, "Bully!"

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> @Wildthings


Working on it!


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## Wildthings

Kevin said:


>





Tony said:


> @Wildthings





Wildthings said:


> Working on it!



GOT IT!! Had my daughter send it to me.

Just an FYI - my granddaughter is the one on the left!!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Folks who like spicy food can thank their lucky Texas for much of their eating pleasure, as the first commercially available packaged chili-powder came from Texas. William Gebhardt, German-born New Braunfels restaurant owner, sold the first commercial chili powder in 1894. Before that, chili, which is the state dish, was served only when fresh chilis were available. By 1896 there was enough demand for the spice that Gebhardt established a factory in San Antonio. Later, Gebhardt added the nations first canned chili con carne and canned tamales to his product line. You can still buy Gebhardt's chili powder to this very day.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is humorous but you have to know this first: the first Texas cookbook, which also known as "A Thorough Treatise on the Art of Cookery," was published in 1883 by the First Presbytarian Church of Houston, Texas. It was edited by the Ladies Association of the church and many of the church's members contributed. This is one of the recipes submitted:

"How To Cook Cornfield Peas:

Go to the pea-patch early in the morning and gather the peas, taking them home in a split basket. Take them in the left hand and gouge them out with your right thumb until it gets sore, then reverse hands. Look the pea well in the eye to see its color, but cook them anyway, as no color exempts the pea from domestic service, still the grey eye and white lips and cheeks are to be preferred. Throw the shelled peas mercilessly into hot water and boil them until they "cave in." When you see they are well subdued, take them out and fry them about ten minutes in gravy ----- a plenty of gravy, good fat meat gravy, and try to induce the gravy to marry and become social with the peas. When you see that the union is complete, so that no man can put them asunder, and would not wish to if he could, put them in a dish and eat them all."

------ The Hon. J.C. Hutcheson, "The First Texas Cookbook," 1883

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## woodman6415



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## Fsyxxx

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Folks who like spicy food can thank their lucky Texas for much of their eating pleasure, as the first commercially available packaged chili-powder came from Texas. William Gebhardt, German-born New Braunfels restaurant owner, sold the first commercial chili powder in 1894. Before that, chili, which is the state dish, was served only when fresh chilis were available. By 1896 there was enough demand for the spice that Gebhardt established a factory in San Antonio. Later, Gebhardt added the nations first canned chili con carne and canned tamales to his product line. You can still buy Gebhardt's chili powder to this very day.


i put a sound system in the building that housed that store... not sure if the bar is still there but it was pretty cool..

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History! August 15th

Philip Sublett nominates Sam Houston for president of the Republic of Texas

On this day in 1836, Philip Sublett nominated Sam Houston for president of the Republic of Texas. Sublett, a Kentucky native, had participated in the battle of Nacogdoches in 1832 and was a delegate to the conventions of 1832 and 1833. In 1835 he was elected chairman of the San Augustine Committee of Safety and Correspondence. On October 6 he submitted a resolution appointing Houston commander-in-chief of the forces of San Augustine and Nacogdoches until the Consultation should meet. Sublett was commissioned lieutenant colonel in October and in December 1835 was present at the siege of Bexar. He returned to his farm east of San Augustine after the battle of Concepción. Sam Houston resided in Sublett's home while recuperating from wounds received at San Jacinto. Sublett died in San Augustine on February 25, 1850.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Folks who like spicy food can thank their lucky Texas for much of their eating pleasure, as the first commercially available packaged chili-powder came from Texas. William Gebhardt, German-born New Braunfels restaurant owner, sold the first commercial chili powder in 1894. Before that, chili, which is the state dish, was served only when fresh chilis were available. By 1896 there was enough demand for the spice that Gebhardt established a factory in San Antonio. Later, Gebhardt added the nations first canned chili con carne and canned tamales to his product line. You can still buy Gebhardt's chili powder to this very day.



My mom has always used Gebhardts. She inherited my grandma's chili recipe and so I have it now- my mom added the notation in it that Gebhardts was to be used where available.

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## Wildthings

2 days ago in Texas history - August 17th

Davy Crockett born (so was my dad and his mother but not in the same year)

On this day in 1786, frontier icon and Alamo defender Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee. He began his military career as a scout in the Tennessee militia in 1813 and was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1821. After a turbulent political career, during which he split with President Andrew Jackson, a fellow Tennessean, and acquired a national reputation as a sharpshooter, hunter, and yarn-spinner, Crockett grew disenchanted with the political process and decided to explore Texas. He set out in November 1835 and reached San Antonio de Béxar in February 1836, shortly before the arrival of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Crockett chose to join Col. William B. Travis, who had deliberately disregarded Jackson sympathizer Sam Houston's orders to withdraw from the Alamo, and died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. No matter how many fabrications gathered around him, the historical David Crockett proved a formidable hero in his own right and succeeded Daniel Boone as the rough-hewn representative of frontier independence and virtue.

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## Wildthings

Yesterday in Texas History - August 18th

Gutiérrez-Magee expedition squashed in bloodiest Texas battle

On this day in 1813, the Spaniards defeated a would-be Texas republic in the bloodiest action ever fought on Texas soil. The battle of Medina ended the filibustering efforts of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition. The expedition collided with the Spanish royalist army twenty miles south of San Antonio in an oak forest then called el Encinal de Medina. The republican force of 1,400 men was under the command of Gen. José Alvarez de Toledo y Dubois. The royalist army of some 1,830 men was commanded by Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo and included the young Lt. Antonio López de Santa Anna. On the morning of August 18, royalist scouts lured the republican army into an ambush. A four-hour slaughter ensued. Only 100 of the defeated republican army survived, whereas Arredondo lost only fifty-five men. The dead royalists were buried the next day on the way to San Antonio. The bodies of the fallen republicans were left to lie where they fell for nine years. The first governor of the Mexican state of Texas ordered a detachment of soldiers to gather the bones and give them an honorable burial under an oak tree growing on the battlefield

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## Tony



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## Kevin

Wildthings said:


> 2 days ago in Texas history - August 17th
> 
> Davy Crockett born (so was my dad and his mother but not in the same year)
> 
> On this day in 1786, frontier icon and Alamo defender Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee. He began his military career as a scout in the Tennessee militia in 1813 and was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1821. After a turbulent political career, during which he split with President Andrew Jackson, a fellow Tennessean, and acquired a national reputation as a sharpshooter, hunter, and yarn-spinner, Crockett grew disenchanted with the political process and decided to explore Texas. He set out in November 1835 and reached San Antonio de Béxar in February 1836, shortly before the arrival of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Crockett chose to join Col. William B. Travis, who had deliberately disregarded Jackson sympathizer Sam Houston's orders to withdraw from the Alamo, and died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. No matter how many fabrications gathered around him, the historical David Crockett proved a formidable hero in his own right and succeeded Daniel Boone as the rough-hewn representative of frontier independence and virtue.



Davy Crockett was an impressive frontiersman to be sure, but there were many even more worthy of the fame that he and Boone received. I have mentioned my admiration for Simon Kenton here before - I know of no other frontiersman as impressive as he. Anyone wanting to learn what life on the frontier was really like then read the linked book. It's one of the best books you'll ever read. Simon was friends with Daniel Boone and in fact saved Boone's life in 1777. He was one of the greatest Indian fighters who ever threw a tomahawk. Yes he was as skilled with Indian weapons as his nemesis Shawnee warriors. He survived their usually-deadly gauntlet not once, but twice. The gauntlet lasted for days. They came to respect him and a Shawnee squaw finally decided to adopt him. He was friends with the great Tecumseh - my favorite Indian figure in history. His life is documented in the linked book - his accomplishments were superhuman and adventures were akin to something out of a marvel comic book.

Crockett and Boone may have gotten the fame but Kenton was the man they looked up to, especially Boone. Crockett wasn't in the same league as Boone and Kenton. Kenton and Boone were heroes of the Revolution; prototypes of the strong but silent frontier warrior/explorer. Crockett was more a frontier jokester. Someone who patterned himself superficially on Kenton and Boone, but who was by comparison a loudmouth and a braggart. A punster who did surely do brave things and had an impressive skill set, but simply could never measure up to men such as Kenton and Boone.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 19th

Pioneer Methodist missionary enters Texas

On this day in 1837, Robert Alexander, Methodist minister, crossed the Sabine River into the Republic of Texas. The Tennessee native had been appointed missionary to Texas with Martin Ruter and Littleton Fowler. Alexander arrived first and preached his way westward. During a camp meeting at the McMahan settlement, he held a "quarterly conference" and formed the San Augustine circuit on September 16, 1837. In mid-October he formed the first Methodist missionary society in Texas during a camp meeting held at Caney Creek, southwest of Washington-on-the-Brazos. Alexander later played a leading role in the establishment of Rutersville College and its successor, Southwestern University. He was instrumental in establishing the _Texas Wesleyan Banner_ (now the _United Methodist Reporter_), and he held pastoral positions in a number of Texas districts. His ministry in Texas lasted forty-five years

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 20th

Peace--finally!--between the U.S. and Texas

On this day in 1866, President Andrew Johnson, declaring that "the insurrection in the State of Texas has been completely and everywhere suppressed and ended," officially ended the Civil War by issuing a proclamation of peace between the United States and Texas. Johnson had declared a state of peace between the U.S. and the other ten Confederate states on April 2, 1866. The last land battle of the Civil War took place at Palmito Ranch near Brownsville on May 13, 1865, more than a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.


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## Kevin

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History - August 20th
> 
> Peace--finally!--between the U.S. and Texas
> 
> On this day in 1866, President Andrew Johnson, declaring that "the insurrection in the State of Texas has been completely and everywhere suppressed and ended," officially ended the Civil War by issuing a proclamation of peace between the United States and Texas. Johnson had declared a state of peace between the U.S. and the other ten Confederate states on April 2, 1866. The last land battle of the Civil War took place at Palmito Ranch near Brownsville on May 13, 1865, more than a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.

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## CWS

woodman6415 said:


>


Now this is what Texas music should sound like.


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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 21st

Texan's sacrifice in Vietnam earns Medal of Honor

On this day in 1968, Staff Sgt. Marvin Young died near Ben Cui, Vietnam. The native of Alpine, Texas, had graduated from Permian Basin High school and attended Odessa Junior College. He enlisted in the army in 1966. On August 21, 1968, he was leading a patrol of Company C, Fifth Infantry, Twenty-fifth Infantry Division when they were attacked by a large force of North Vietnamese. When the squad leader was killed, Young assumed command and repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire, while encouraging his men. Despite orders to pull back, he remained behind to assist several of his men who were unable to withdraw. He received a critical head injury. Refusing assistance, he still stayed to cover the withdrawal and was killed. His parents were presented the Medal of Honor at the White House on April 7, 1970, by President Richard Nixon. Marvin Young is buried in the Sunset Cemetery at Odessa, Texas.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"In bowing her acknowledgements, Miss Bloodgood had the misfortune to spill herself out of her corsage, upon which a fair debutante from Temple, with the naivete' of a little child, observed that "a bust of that kind should be carried in a bucket."

------ William Cowper Brann, "The Iconoclast," 1897

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "In bowing her acknowledgements, Miss Bloodgood had the misfortune to spill herself out of her corsage, upon which a fair debutante from Temple, with the naivete' of a little child, observed that "a bust of that kind should be carried in a bucket."
> 
> ------ William Cowper Brann, "The Iconoclast," 1897


Pictures Man, Pictures! We need pictures!

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 24th -

Treaty grants Mexican independence

On this day in 1821, Juan O'Donoju met Agustín de Iturbide in Córdoba and signed a treaty granting Mexico independence from Spain. The treaty ended the Mexican War of Independence, which grew out of political turmoil in Spain and Mexico in the early nineteenth century. Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla formally began the rebellion with his famous _grito_ on September 16, 1810, from the steps of his parish church in Dolores, a small town east of Guanajuato. Only in Texas, however, which in the summer of 1812 suffered an invasion from the United States under the leadership of José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and Augustus Magee, was royal authority seriously threatened. In August 1813, Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo defeated the rebels at the battle of Medina and secured Texas for the Spanish crown. The struggle for independence broke down into a series of local revolts and guerrilla actions that did not seriously threaten royal authority in Mexico until 1820, when the formerly royalist officer Iturbide came to terms with insurgent leader Vicente R. Guerrero. By July 1821, when O'Donoju arrived to take over the colonial government, the royalists controlled only Mexico City and Veracruz.

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## Tony

True stuff, every word of it! 

The Texas Quote of the Day is a humorous description of typical Texans that was written in 1882:

The typical Texan is a large-sized Jabberwock, a hairy kind of gorilla, who is supposed to reside on a horse. He is half alligator, half human, who eats raw buffalo, and sleeps out on a prairie. He is expected to carry four or five revolvers at his belt, as if he were a sort of perambulating gun- rack. He also carries a large assortment of cutlery in his boot. It is believed that a failure to invite him to ' drink is more dangerous than to kick a can of dynamite. The only time the typical Texan is supposed to be peaceable is after he has killed all his friends, and can find no fresh material to practice on. It is also the belief in the North that all the Texans are typical Texans, it being utterly impossible for a Texan to be anything except a desperado...

----- Alexander Sweet, "Texas Siftings," 1882

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## woodman6415

Lesson # 5,745,328 in why not to mess with Texas women.

San Antonio's Plinky Toepperwein was one of the greatest shooters of all time.

Famed female shooter Annie Oakley once told Plinky, “Mrs. Top, you’re the greatest shot I’ve ever seen.”

She was born Elizabeth Servaty in Connecticut in 1882, and married Adolph “Ad” Toepperwein in 1903. They were based in San Antonio for 40+ years. She met her future husband while he performed with a vaudeville circus shooting act.

Adolf gave Plinky her first shooting lesson. Within three weeks, she was able to shoot one-inch pieces of chalk from between his fingers.

The Toepperweins began touring together as a husband and wife act and performed at the St. Louis World Fair. They had a career that spanned more than 40 years.

Plinky earned the nickname “Plinky” after she shot a tin can once and shouted, “I plinked it!” So when you hear somebody say they went out plinking with their .22, it's because of her. 

She broke many shooting records throughout her lifetime. She was the first U.S. female to qualify as a national marksman with a military rifle. She also was the first woman to break 100 straight targets while trapshooting.

After shooting 1,952 out of 2,000 targets in five hours and 20 minutes, Toepperwein broke the world endurance trapshooting record.

Plinky is buried in San Antonio’s Mission Burial Park South. A display in San Antonio’s Buckhorn Saloon is dedicated to her and her husband.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We don't have a monopoly. Anybody who wants to drill an oil well without a Hughes drill bit is welcome to use a pick and shovel."

------- billionaire Howard Hughes

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 26th -

Provincias Internas divided into three sectors

On this day in 1786, the Provincias Internas were divided into three military regions. The original authorization of the Provincias Internas by Spain occurred in 1776 and comprised a massive, semiautonomous administrative unit that included Texas, Coahuila, Nueva Vizcaya, New Mexico, Sinaloa, Sonora, and the two Californias (Baja and Alta). Officials wished to promote administrative efficiency on the frontier, far removed from the government center of Mexico City, as well as spark economic development and protect Spanish lands from England and Russia. Texas, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Nuevo Santander were included in the easternmost of the three regions, under the command of Juan de Ugalde. The three regions were again reorganized into two provinces, eastern and western, in 1787. The Provincias Internas would undergo periodic reorganization until Mexican independence in 1821. Joaquín de Arredondo was the last commander of the Eastern Province, from 1813 to 1821.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

On March 15th, 1860, Robert E. Lee left San Antonio for duty at Fort Ringold, located on the Rio Grande at Rio Grande City. His objective was to capture Mexican folk hero/freedom fighter/bandit Juan Cortina, who had been stirring up trouble in response to violations of the rights of Tejanos in South Texas. Although experienced in Indian warfare, Lee was unable to catch Cortina, who proved to be quite elusive, retreating into the mountains during the time Lee was there.

You can read a LOT more about this very interesting history on the Texas State Historical Association's website.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> You can read a LOT more about this very interesting history on the Texas State Historical Association's website.



GOOD LORD MAN- don't leave me hanging! That's like telling a joke and walking out without giving the punch line

Juan Nepomuceno Cortina

Robert E Lee

Fort Ringgold


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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 27th (12 more day til we close on a new house after 28 yrs)

Stevie Ray Vaughan dies in crash

On this day in 1990, Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash on the way to Chicago from a concert in Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin. Vaughan was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on October 3, 1954. His exposure to music began in his childhood, as he watched his big brother, Jimmie, play guitar. Stevie's fascination with the blues drove him to teach himself to play the guitar before he was an adolescent. By the time he was in high school, he was staying up all night playing guitar in clubs in Deep Ellum, a popular entertainment district in Dallas. Vaughan moved to Austin in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s he and his band, Double Trouble, had a solid regional reputation. His career took off in the 1980s, and his work eventually garnered four Grammy Awards. Vaughan was killed at the height of his career. More than 1,500 people, including industry giants such as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder, attended his memorial service in Dallas.

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## woodman6415

Y'all, it was 26 years ago yesterday that Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin. Here's a special treat ... a recording of that last show as done by a fan. Literally within a couple of hours of playing this music, Stevie was gone. This is what Eric Clapton had to say about this night: "I have to tell this story: We played on the same bill on his last two gigs. On the first night, I watched his set for about half an hour and then I had to leave because I couldn't handle it!. I knew enough to know that his playing was just going to get better and better. His set had started, he was like two or three songs in, and I suddenly got this flash that I'd experienced before so many times whenever I'd seen him play, which was that he was like a channel. One of the purest channels I've ever seen, where everything he sang and played flowed straight down from heaven. Almost like one of those mystic Sufi guys with one finger pointing up and one finger down. That's what it was like to listen to. And I had to leave just to preserve some kind of sanity or confidence in myself."

Here's the recording. Thanks to TOT reader Curtis George for sending me this link!

http://www.panicstream.net/vault/stevie-ray-vaughan-and-eric-clapton-8261990-east-troy-wi/

Really great stuff.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> GOOD LORD MAN- don't leave me hanging! That's like telling a joke and walking out without giving the punch line
> 
> Juan Nepomuceno Cortina
> 
> Robert E Lee
> 
> Fort Ringgold



Sorry bud ... In Alaska ... Very Limited phone and Internet services


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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 28th (11 more day til we close on a new house after 28 yrs)

Texas sub commander receives Medal of Honor

On this day in 1945, Edwina Dealey, the widow of Navy Commander Samuel David Dealey, received his posthumous Medal of Honor. A member of the prominent Dealey family of Dallas, Samuel was born in 1906. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1930, and took command of the submarine USS _Harder_ in December 1942. He quickly proved to be one of the most aggressive and successful American submarine commanders of World War II. He took the ship in 1943 to the Pacific and made five highly successful patrols, but failed to return from a sixth. He was particularly noted for heading toward enemy destroyers and discharging the sub's forward tubes before making the standard maneuver of diving into silent running; this effective but dangerous maneuver, which Dealey used by permission from the commander of the Pacific Fleet, sank five Japanese destroyers in four days. Dealey officially sank sixteen enemy vessels in all. He was group commander of a submarine "wolf pack" consisting of the _Harder_, the _Hake_, and the _Hado_ in waters off Luzon, Philippines. On August 24, 1944, the _Harder_ was heavily and fatally depth-charged. Commander Dealey was declared missing in action and presumed dead on October 2, 1944

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 28th

Houston Academy chartered

On this day in 1856, the Houston Academy, a prominent antebellum school, was chartered. Its incorporators included Houston civic leaders William Marsh Rice, Peter W. Gray, Cornelius Ennis, and Thomas W. House. A building plan was developed by 1857, and the school opened in 1858. By 1859, with the help of a bequest of $5,000 from James H. Stevens and $20,000 raised by public subscription, the school occupied a two-story brick building and accommodated 400 students, with separate classrooms for boys and girls. Ashbel Smith served as superintendent. In addition to the usual academic subjects, classes were held in fencing, painting, and gymnastics. Sam Houston gave a speech at the school in December 1860, when it had 150 pupils. The academy was closed during the Civil War, and the building converted into a military hospital. The school's 600-volume library was used by wounded soldiers. In 1866 the academy reopened with W. J. Hammock as principal, 205 students, and a faculty of six. When the public schools opened in 1876, Owen L. Cochran presented the academy library to the Houston Lyceum. The school operated as part of the public school system thereafter and in 1878 was remodeled and renamed Clopper Institute, in honor of Professor E. N. Clopper.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - August 31st

Asa Borger murdered (Who you say!)

On this day in 1934, town builder Asa (Ace) Borger was shot to death in the Hutchinson County town that bore his name. Borger was shot by Hutchinson county treasurer Arthur Huey, who was upset with Borger over the failure of the Borger State Bank and for failing to post his bail when he was arrested on an embezzlement charge. Huey also wounded another man, who died five days later. At his trial Huey claimed that he had shot in self-defense, arguing that Borger was gunning for him. The jury believed him and acquitted him. Three years later, however, he was sent to the state penitentiary for theft of county funds. Borger was born in Missouri in 1888 and successfully promoted several boomtowns in Oklahoma as a young man. In 1926 he purchased 240 acres in the Panhandle and organized the Borger Townsite Company. The company began selling lots in the town of Borger in March of that year and grossed between $60,000 and $100,000 on the first day. After six months Borger sold out completely, for more than a million dollars. The two-story dream house he built in 1929 was the first brick residence in Borger and is now a Texas historical landmark.







Boomtown Borger during late 29's (texasescapes.com)

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 1st

Benavides crosses Rio Grande in pursuit of Mexican "Unionists"

On this day in 1863, Maj. Santos Benavides, the highest-ranking Mexican American to serve in the Confederacy, led seventy-nine men of the predominantly Tejano Thirty-third Texas Cavalry across the Rio Grande in pursuit of the bandit Octaviano Zapata. Union agents had recruited Zapata, a former associate of Juan N. Cortina, to lead raids into Texas and thus force Confederate troops to remain in the Rio Grande valley rather than participate in military campaigns in the east. Zapata was also associated with Edmund J. Davis, who was conducting Northern-sponsored military activities in the vicinity of Brownsville and Matamoros. For these reasons, and because his men often flew the American flag during their raids, Zapata's band was often referred to as the "First Regiment of Union Troops." Benavides caught up with Zapata on September 2 near Mier, Tamaulipas. After a brief exchange of gunfire, the Zapatistas dispersed, leaving ten men dead, including Zapata. Benavides later defended Laredo against Davis's First Texas Cavalry, and arranged for the safe passage of Texas cotton to Matamoros during the Union occupation of Brownsville. He died at his Laredo home in 1891

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 2nd

Texan signs peace treaty with Japan

On this day in 1945, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed the treaty with Japan that ended World War II. Nimitz, born in 1885, was the descendant of German pioneer settlers of Fredericksburg. He was named commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet shortly after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and later commander in chief of Pacific Ocean Areas as well. With authority over the entire Pacific theater except for Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific sector and the inactive southeast, Nimitz coordinated the offensive that brought the Japanese to unconditional surrender. He signed the peace treaty aboard the battleship _Missouri_ in Tokyo Bay. Nimitz later spent two years as commander in chief of the United States Fleet, and also served as a roving ambassador for the United Nations and chairman of the Presidential Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights. He died in 1966. In 1964 a local citizens' group established the Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum in the old Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg. The project evolved into the National Museum of the Pacific War

If you like that type of Museum plan on spending 2 whole days there -- DAMHIK

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History - September 2nd
> 
> Texan signs peace treaty with Japan
> 
> On this day in 1945, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed the treaty with Japan that ended World War II. Nimitz, born in 1885, was the descendant of German pioneer settlers of Fredericksburg. He was named commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet shortly after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and later commander in chief of Pacific Ocean Areas as well. With authority over the entire Pacific theater except for Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific sector and the inactive southeast, Nimitz coordinated the offensive that brought the Japanese to unconditional surrender. He signed the peace treaty aboard the battleship _Missouri_ in Tokyo Bay. Nimitz later spent two years as commander in chief of the United States Fleet, and also served as a roving ambassador for the United Nations and chairman of the Presidential Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights. He died in 1966. In 1964 a local citizens' group established the Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum in the old Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg. The project evolved into the National Museum of the Pacific War
> 
> If you like that type of Museum plan on spending 2 whole days there -- DAMHIK



The museum is something to see. They do live re-enactments complete with tanks!! Tony

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 3rd (3 more days til we close on the house)

Last surviving signer of Texas Declaration of Independence dies

On this day in 1895, William Carrol Crawford, the last surviving signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, died while visiting his son in Erath County. Crawford, a native of North Carolina, moved to Texas in 1835 and settled near Shelbyville. He and Sydney O. Penington represented Shelby County at the Convention of 1836, which wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas and established the ad interim government. Crawford, who later lived in Camp, Hill, and Johnson counties, died ten days before his ninety-first birthday

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 4th (day after tomorrow we close on our house)

Fort Sam hospital renamed in honor of military physician

On this day in 1942, the station hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio was designated Brooke General Hospital, in recognition of Gen. Roger Brooke. Brooke entered the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1901 and became a specialist in infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis. He served as commanding officer of the hospital at Fort Sam from 1928 to 1933. He died in 1940. The hospital's roots go back to 1870, when the Post of San Antonio was established on the Texas frontier; at that time the medical facility was a small dispensary in a log cabin. The first permanent hospital was built in 1886, and a new structure in 1936-37. Brooke General Hospital was expanded in 1946 to become Brooke Army Medical Center and was at one time responsible for all of the medical training in the army. Today, Brooke, with a newly-constructed hospital and world-class burn treatment center, covers almost every aspect of health care, postgraduate medical education, medical training, and medical research.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 5th (tomorrow we close on our house)

Sam Houston elected first president of the Republic of Texas

On this day in 1836, Sam Houston, the victor of San Jacinto, was elected president of the newly founded Republic of Texas. Candidates for the office had included Henry Smith, governor of the provisional government, and Stephen F. Austin. Houston became an active candidate just eleven days before the election. He received 5,119 votes, Smith 743, and Austin 587. Mirabeau B. Lamar, the "keenest blade" at San Jacinto, was elected vice president. Houston received strong support from the army and from those who believed that his election would ensure internal stability, hasten recognition by world powers, and bring about early annexation to the United States. He served two terms as president of the republic and was subsequently a United States senator and governor of the state of Texas

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## SENC

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History - September 3rd (3 more days til we close on the house)
> 
> Last surviving signer of Texas Declaration of Independence dies
> 
> On this day in 1895, William Carrol Crawford, the last surviving signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, died while visiting his son in Erath County. Crawford, a native of North Carolina, moved to Texas in 1835 and settled near Shelbyville. He and Sydney O. Penington represented Shelby County at the Convention of 1836, which wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas and established the ad interim government. Crawford, who later lived in Camp, Hill, and Johnson counties, died ten days before his ninety-first birthday


No surprise from these quarters that a Carolinian made Texas great!

@Kevin's post in the quickie paddle thread reminded me of that one of the characters, Pappy O'Daniel, was (very loosely) based on a Governor of and US Senator from Texas. One of my favorite things about Coen Brothers' movies are the use (and often intentional misuse) of obscure historical facts and people, like this.

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## Wildthings

Good stuff Henry. Those first Texans had to come from somewhere

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Good stuff Henry. Those first Texans had to come from somewhere



But he got here a fast as he could !!!

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 6th (we close on our house at 1:30 today!!)

Jaybirds order black leaders out of Fort Bend County

On this day in 1888, white members of a political association known as the Jaybirds held a mass meeting in Richmond, Texas, and ordered Charles Ferguson and several other black political leaders to leave Fort Bend County within ten hours. The so-called Jaybird-Woodpecker War was a feud between two political factions for the control of Fort Bend County. The Jaybirds, representing most of the white population, were the regular Democrats who sought to rid the county of the Republican government that had gained control during Reconstruction. The Woodpeckers, numbering about forty persons and also claiming to be Democrats, were the officials and former officials who held office as a result of the black vote for the Republican ticket. Former friends, neighbors, and relatives became bitter enemies as a result of the feud. The election of 1888 engendered much bitterness. After one Jaybird leader was killed and another wounded, the party met in Richmond and expelled a number of Woodpecker leaders. The Woodpeckers won the election in spite of this, and the violence continued. After the riot known as the "Battle of Richmond" in 1889, the Woodpeckers were driven from office. In October a further series of meetings in Richmond established the Jaybird Democratic Organization of Fort Bend County. The whites-only organization dominated Fort Bend County politics for the next seventy years

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## woodman6415

Remembering Charles Hardin Holley, the legendary Buddy Holly. Born September 7, 1936 in Lubbock, Texas.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 10th (let's go waaaaayyy back before even when  was born!!)

Spanish colonizer of South Texas dies in Mexico City

On this day in 1770, José de Escandón, the "father" of the lower Rio Grande valley, died in Mexico City. Escondón was the colonizer and first governor of Nuevo Santander, a colony that extended from Mexico across the Rio Grande to the Nueces River. He founded over twenty towns or villas and a number of missions in the colony, including Camargo, Reynosa, Mier, and Revilla south of the Rio Grande, and Laredo and Nuestra Señora de los Dolores Hacienda north of the Rio Grande

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: The San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad constructed a depot in what is now Alice, Texas, in 1888 and called the resulting place "Bandana, Texas." After awhile the community's name was changed to "Kleberg" and then, in 1904, to "Alice," in honor of Alice King Kleberg, daughter of Richard King of the King Ranch. At first the town grew as a function of livestock interests, and Alice grew into the world's largest cattle shipping center, despite a fire that destroyed its downtown in 1909. Later Alice became known for its fruits and melons and, after that, in the 1930s, for oil. That's when Alice became a hub for oil interests. Incidentally, Alice is also the place where the breed of cattle called the Beefmaster was developed.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On July 8, 1860, the temperature reached 105 degrees in Dallas. In front of the W.W. Peak and Brothers Drug Store, a box of wood shavings somehow ignited. Within five minutes, Peak's went up in flames and in only two hours the fire consumed 25 business establishments, including every store in Dallas, the post office etc... Dr. Charles R. Pryor, editor of the Dallas Herald, reported:

"A terrible disaster has befallen our once-flourishing little city. Dallas is in ruins ---- burned to the ground ---- not a business house left standing, hotel, shop, printing office, or anything ...."

The Houston Telegraph offered its "heartfelt sympathies" to their Dallas friends and noted that, "They are all men of pluck, however, and such men as nothing can ruin."

The people of Dallas wasted no time rebuilding their city and by October, when the Herald was able to resume publication, it noted:

"The sound of the hammer is heard from morn till night, and scores of industrious, active, competent mechanics are busily forwading on the work."

The same day as the Dallas fire, there were other fires of dubious origin in Denton, Pilot Point, Milford, Austin, and several other cities. Houses in the area were torched during the week following the fire.

The general consensus in Dallas was that the fires were deliberately set by slaves plotting the overthrow of their masters. Accordingly, three slaves were hung and two abolitionist preachers from Iowa were whipped and run out of town. Contemporary historians are reluctant to believe that there was such a plot, but many who have studied the facts in great detail believe that the attempted insurrection was genuine.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: The San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad constructed a depot in what is now Alice, Texas, in 1888 and called the resulting place "Bandana, Texas." After awhile the community's name was changed to "Kleberg" and then, in 1904, to "Alice," in honor of Alice King Kleberg, daughter of Richard King of the King Ranch. At first the town grew as a function of livestock interests, and Alice grew into the world's largest cattle shipping center, despite a fire that destroyed its downtown in 1909. Later Alice became known for its fruits and melons and, after that, in the 1930s, for oil. That's when Alice became a hub for oil interests. Incidentally, Alice is also the place where the breed of cattle called the Beefmaster was developed.



Awesome post! There is an an Beef masters award that is given out to breeders and cattlemen, and I've built plaques for them about 5 different years. One year it was given to Nolan Ryan. I wish I had a picture of him getting it, it's cool thinking my work is in Nolan's house.

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## woodman6415

Jim Reeves in Rome, Italy, 1962. Reeves was born in 1923 in Galloway, Texas, a small rural community near Carthage. Winning an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas, he enrolled to study speech and drama, but quit after only six weeks to work in the shipyards in Houston. Soon he resumed baseball, playing in the semi-professional leagues before contracting with the St. Louis Cardinals "farm" team during 1944 as a right-handed pitcher. He played for the minor leagues for three years before severing his sciatic nerve while pitching, which ended his athletic career.

Reeves began to work as a radio announcer, and sang live between songs. During the late 1940s, he was contracted with a couple of small Texas-based recording companies, but without success. Influenced by such Western swing-music artists as Jimmie Rodgers and Moon Mullican, as well as popular singers Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold and Frank Sinatra, it was not long before he was a member of Moon Mullican's band, and made some early Mullican-style recordings like "Each Beat of my Heart" and "My Heart's Like a Welcome Mat" from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.

He eventually obtained a job as an announcer for KWKH-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the popular former radio program, the Louisiana Hayride. According to former Hayride master of ceremonies Frank Page, who had introduced Elvis Presley on the program in 1954, singer Sleepy LaBeef was late for a performance, and Reeves was asked to substitute.

Reeves' first successful country music songs included "I Love You" , "Mexican Joe", and "Bimbo" which reached Number 1 in 1954 on the U.S. Country Charts, and other songs with both Fabor Records and Abbott Records. Abbott released his first album in November 1955, Jim Reeves Sings, which was the label's only album release. Earlier in 1955, he was signed to a 10-year recording contract with RCA Victor by Steve Sholes, who produced some of Reeves' first recordings at RCA and signed Elvis Presley for the company that same year. Also in 1955, he joined the Grand Ole Opry and made his first appearance on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee, where he was a fill-in host from May–July 1958.

For his earliest RCA recordings, Reeves was still singing with the loud style of his first recordings, considered standard for country and western performers at that time. He decreased his volume, using a lower pitch and singing with lips nearly touching the microphone, although there were protests at RCA. During 1957, with the endorsement of his producer Chet Atkins, he used this style for his version of a demonstration song of lost love intended for a female singer. "Four Walls" not only scored No. 1 on the country music charts, but scored No. 11 on the popular music charts. Reeves had helped begin a new style of country music, using violins and lusher background arrangements soon known as the "Nashville sound."

Reeves became known as a crooner because of his rich light baritone voice. Songs such as "Adios Amigo", "Welcome to My World", and "Am I Losing You?" demonstrated this. His Christmas songs have been perennial favorites, including "C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S", "Blue Christmas" and "An Old Christmas Card". He is also responsible for popularizing many gospel songs, including "We Thank Thee", "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", "Across The Bridge", "Where We'll Never Grow Old" and many others.

Reeves scored his greatest success with the Joe Allison composition "He'll Have to Go", a great success on both the popular and country music charts, which earned him a platinum record. Released during late 1959, it scored number one on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Songs chart on February 8, 1960, which it scored for 14 weeks consecutive. Country music historian Bill Malone noted that while it was in many ways a conventional country song, its arrangement and the vocal chorus "put this recording in the country pop vein". In addition, Malone lauded Reeves' vocal styling—lowered to "its natural resonant level" to project the "caressing style that became famous"—as why "many people refer to him as the singer with the velvet voice." In 1963, he released his well proclaimed "Twelve Songs of Christmas" album, which had the well known songs "C.H.R.I.S.T.M.A.S" and "An Old Christmas Card". During 1975, RCA producer Chet Atkins told an interviewer, "Jim wanted to be a tenor but I wanted him to be a baritone... After he changed his voice to that smooth deeper sound, he was immensely popular."

Reeves' life was tragically cut short on July 31, 1964, when the private plane he was piloting went down in a storm in Brentwood, Tennessee. He is buried near Carthage, Texas in a small roadside memorial park.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Sabine River forms two-thirds of the border between Louisiana and Texas. In recent historical times the 360-mile waterway has been an international line between the United States and Spain, the United States and Mexico, and the United States and the Republic of Texas. Sabine is Spanish for "cypress," a reference to thick growths along the final course of the river. The Sabine River forms Sabine Lake, which is drained out into the Gulf of Mexico. Before trucks and railroads took over, the Sabine was an important route for floating logs out of East Texas down to the gulf, where they could be hauled away in ships.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 12th

*Early colony holds first election*

On this day in 1844, just nine days after reaching their new settlement, Henri Castro, empresario of the Republic of Texas, and his first thirty-five colonists held an election to choose two justices of the peace, a constable, and the settlement's name, Castroville. Henri Castro, a learned, wise, and humane man, received contracts for two grants of land on which he was to establish 600 families. In the management of his colonies, he is more comparable to Stephen F. Austin than any other Texas empresario. He had an unbounded faith in the capacity of intelligent men for self-government. During Castro's colony's first year the population grew to 2,134. Although the colony suffered from Indian depredations, cholera, and the drought of 1848, the population increased sufficiently for the formation of Medina County in 1848.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Matt Egloff was so kind as to send in this photo of his father, his grandfather, and his grandmother with actor William Boyd aka "Hopalong Cassidy." It was taken in San Antonio in 1949. Here's part of Hopalong's Wikipedia entry:

"In 1935, he was offered the supporting role of Red Connors in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy, but asked to be considered for the title role and won it. The original Hopalong Cassidy character, written by Clarence E. Mulford for pulp fiction, was changed from a hard-drinking, rough-living wrangler to its eventual incarnation as a cowboy hero who did not smoke, swear, or drink alcohol (his drink of choice being sarsaparilla) and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Although Boyd "never branded a cow or mended a fence, cannot bulldog a steer", and disliked Western music, he became indelibly associated with the Hopalong character and, like rival cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, gained lasting fame in the Western film genre.

The films were more polished and impressive than the usual low-budget "program westerns." The Hopalong Cassidy adventures usually boasted superior outdoor photography of scenic locations, and "name" supporting players familiar from major Hollywood films. Big-city theaters, which usually wouldn't play westerns, noticed the high quality of the productions and gave the series more exposure than other cowboy films could hope for. Paramount Pictures released the films through 1941, then United Artists handled them from 1943.

Producer Harry "Pop" Sherman wanted to make more ambitious epics and abandoned the Hopalong Cassidy franchise. William Boyd, determined to keep it alive, produced the last 12 Cassidy features himself on noticeably lower budgets. By this time, interest in the character had waned and, with far fewer theaters still showing the films, the series died a quiet death in 1948.

Boyd insisted on buying the rights to all of the Hopalong Cassidy films. Harry Sherman no longer cared about the property -- he thought both the films and the star were played out -- and regarded Boyd's all-consuming interest with skepticism. Boyd was so single-minded about his mission that he sold or mortgaged almost everything he owned to meet Sherman's price of $350,000 for the rights and the film backlog.

In 1948 Boyd, now regarded as a washed-up cowboy star and with his fortunes at their lowest ebb, brought a print of one of his older pictures to the local NBC television station, and offered it at a nominal rental, hoping for new exposure. The film was received so well that NBC asked for more, and within months Boyd released the entire library to the national network, where they became extremely popular and began the long-running genre of Westerns on television. Boyd's desperate gamble paid off, making him the first national TV star and restoring his personal fortune. Like Rogers and Autry, Boyd licensed much merchandise, including such products as Hopalong Cassidy watches, trash cans, cups, dishes, Topps trading cards, a comic strip, comic books, cowboy outfits, home-movie digests of his Paramount releases via Castle Films, and a new Hopalong Cassidy radio show, which ran from 1948 to 1952.

The actor identified with his character, often dressing as a cowboy in public. Although Boyd's portrayal of Hopalong made him very wealthy, he believed that it was his duty to help strengthen his "friends" – America's youth. The actor refused to license his name for products he viewed as unsuitable or dangerous, and turned down personal appearances at which his "friends" would be charged admission.

Boyd appeared as Hopalong Cassidy on the cover of numerous national magazines, including the August 29, 1950 issue of Look[10] and the November 27, 1950 issue of Time.[5] For Thanksgiving in 1950, he led the Carolinas' Carrousel Parade in Charlotte, North Carolina and drew an estimated crowd of 500,000 persons, the largest in the parade's history.

Boyd had a cameo as himself in Cecil B. DeMille's 1952 circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth. DeMille reportedly asked Boyd to take the role of Moses in his remake, The Ten Commandments, but Boyd felt his identification with the Cassidy character would make it impossible for audiences to accept him as Moses."

Then there is this poem, which was written by Don "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" McLean and included on the inner lining of the smash 1971 hit LP "American Pie:"

NO MATTER HOW SCARY LIFE GOT I COULD DEPEND ON YOU
YOU HAD THAT EASY SMILE AND WHITE, WAVY HAIR
YOU WERE MY FAVORITE FATHER FIGURE WITH TWO GUNS BLAZING
NOT EVEN VICTOR JORY COULD STAND UP TO THOSE 44-40'S YOU PACKED
AND THAT STALLION YOU RODE, I THINK HIS NAME WAS TOPPER
HE WAS SO BEAUTIFUL AND WHITE. HE EVEN CAME WHEN YOU WHISTLED
I'VE ALWAYS LIKED BLACK AND I LOVED YOUR CLOTHES
BLACK HAT, BLACK PANTS, AND SHIRT
SILVER SPURS AND TWO GUNS IN BLACK HOLSTERS WITH PEARLY-WHITE HANDLES
BLACK AND WHITE, THAT WAS YOU HOPPY
THE BAD MEN FELL THE GOOD GUYS LIVED ON
THE LADIES TOUCHED YOUR HAND BUT NEVER KISSED
WHENEVER JOHN CARRADINE ASKED A QUESTION YOU'D SAY
'THAT COMES UNDER THE HEADING OF MY BUSINESS'
THEN YOU'D CALL FOR ANOTHER SASPARILLA
I BELIEVED IN YOU SO MUCH THAT I'D TAKE MY STETSON
OFF AND PUT IT OVER MY HEART WHENEVER ANYBODY DIED
MY HAT'S OFF TO YOU, HOPPY
SAY GOODBYE TO ALL THE BOYS AT THE BAR-20
THE BLACK AND WHITE DAYS ARE OVER
SO LONG HOPALONG CASSIDY. 

----- Don McLean writing on the inner sleeve of 1971's monster smash LP album "American Pie."

Thank you, Matt. What a neat family artifact to have!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

At nine years of age, future legendary Texas rancher Charles Goodnight rode bareback 800 miles on a white-faced mare named Blaze. behind his mother and stepfather as they moved from Illinois to what is now Milam County, Texas.

Tough people.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: The San Antonio River begins with a group of springs just north of San Antonio. It flows for about 200 miles to the east before it joins the Guadalupe River. One of the chief reasons San Antonio became the principal city in early Texas was because of the plentiful, constant water.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one:

"I guess [my son will] be a cowboy, too," Glenda says. "I hate for him to do it, but that's what Bigun would want , and I know Banty (Bigun's daddy) is going to have it that way. Bigun was never allowed to be a little boy. Banty had him out breaking horses when he was old enough to ride. I mean breaking horses .... colts ... not riding old nags. Bigun and Banty and all their people, cowboying is all they've ever known or wanted. To be on a horse chasing a cow was what Bigun enjoyed. Kent has already turned that way. Unless I remarry and my husband is so different .... but I don't think I'd like any other life except cowboying."

------ Glenda Bradley, widow of Bigun Bradley, The Marlboro Man, quoted by Gary Cartwright in "Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter," 1982

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## woodman6415

133 years ago today, on Sept. 15th, 1883, the University of Texas opened in Austin. Traces of Texas reader Wiley Clarkson generously sent in this wonderful photo of "Old Main" on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Wiley's grandfather took this shot in 1906. The building, which was completed in 1884, stood where the current UT Tower now stands. Regarding it, one of the first students to enter wrote, "It was a proud day indeed, when the announcement was made that the University was ready for us. It was not quite complete, but it seemed wonderful indeed to us, and we felt that every other student in the country would envy us in the possession of such a magnificent building." ------ Will L. Vinning, student in 1884

Thank you, Wiley! Fantastic image! Happy Birthday University of Texas!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day? Early Texas land measures:

A Caballeria: 125 acres

A League: 2.63 miles

A Sitio: one square league (4,428 acres)

A Labor: 177.1 acres

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## woodman6415

A little historical background before the Texas Quote of the Day:

The Texan Santa Fe Expedition was a commercial and military expedition to secure the Republic of Texas's claims to parts of Northern New Mexico for Texas in 1841. In response to the Santa Fe Expedition, the Mexicans made several raids into Texas. In September 1842, General Adrian Woll occupied San Antonio for nine days and carried off several prominent Texans when he withdrew. Angry Texans hurriedly answered President Houston's reluctant call for volunteers to punish the raiders. General Alexander Somervell led them as far as the Rio Grande but finding that the Mexicans had retired to the other side of the river, he ordered the expedition home. About three hundred of his men, however, refused to obey, choosing Colonel W. S. Fisher as their leader, and started down the river toward Matamoros. On December 26 they lost a desperate battle at Mier to General Pedro Ampudia, and were started as prisoners toward Mexico City, but at Salado, south of Saltillo, they escaped. After nearly starving in the arid mountains, 176 of the 193 to escape were recaptured and returned to Salado. Only three reached Texas. Seventeen black and 159 white beans were placed in a vessel and each man required to draw one out. Those drawing black beans were summarily shot. Ewen Cameron, who had engineered the escape, drew a white bean but was afterwards executed by special order. The survivors were taken to Mexico City and imprisoned in Castle Perote with the prisoners of the Santa Fe Expedition and from San Antonio.

The following account of the drawing of the bean, is from the pen of General Thomas J. Green, a participant. This is the Texas Quote of the Day. It's harsh stuff.

"Soon after they arrived [at the Salado on March 25, 1843], our men received the melancholy intelligence that they were to be decimated, and each tenth man shot. It was now too late to resist the horrible order. Our men were closely ironed and drawn up in front of all their guards, with arms in readiness to fire. Could they have known it previously, they would have again charged their guards, and made them dearly pay for this last perfidious breach of national faith. It was now too late! A manly gloom and a proud defiance prevaded all countenances. They had but one alternative, and that was to invoke their country's vengeance upon their murderers, consign their souls to God, and die like men . . .

The decimator, Colonel Domingo Huerta, who was especially nominated to this black deed after Governor Mexier refused its execution, had arrived at Salado ahead of our men. The "Red-cap" company were to be their executioners; those men whose lives had been so humanely spared by our men at this place on the 11th of February.

The decimation took place by the drawing of black and white beans from a small earthen mug. The white ones signified exemption, and the black death. One hundred and fifty-nine white beans were placed in the bottom of the mug, and seventeen black ones placed upon the top of them. The beans were not stirred, and had so slight a shake that it was perfectly clear they had not been mixed together. Such was their anxiety to execute Captain Cameron, and perhaps the balance of the officers, that first Cameron, and afterward they, were made to draw a bean each from the mug in this condition.

He [Cameron] said, with his usual coolness, "Well, boys, we have to draw, let's be at it;" so saying, he thrust his hand into the mug, and drew out a white bean. Next came Colonel Wm. F. Wilson, who was chained to him; then Captain Wen. Ryan, and then Judge F. M. Gibson, all of whom drew white beans. Next came Captain Eastland, who drew the first black one, and then came the balance of the men. They all drew their beans with that manly dignity and firmness which showed them superior to their condition. Some of lighter temper jested over the bloody tragedy. One would say, "Boys, this beats raffling all to pieces;" another would say that "this is the tallest gambling scrape I ever was in," and such remarks.

Poor Major Cocke, when he first drew the fatal bean, held it up between his forefinger and thumb, and with a smile of contempt, said, "Boys, I told you so; I never failed in my life to draw a prize;"

Just previous to the firing they were bound together with cords, and their eyes being bandaged, they were set upon a log near the wall, with their backs to their executioners. They all begged the officer to shoot them in front, and at a short distance; that "they were not afraid to look death in the face." This he refused; and, to make his cruelty as refined as possible, fired at several paces, and continued the firing from ten to twelve minutes, lacerating and mangling these heroes in a manner too horrible for description . . .

During the martyrdom of these noble patriots, the main body of our men were separated from them by a stone wall of some fifteen feet high, and heard their last agonized groans with feelings of which it would be mockery to attempt the description. The next morning, as they were marched on the road to Mexico, they passed the mangled bodies of their dead comrades, whose bones now lie bleaching upon the plains of Salado."

--------- General Thomas J. Green

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## woodman6415

I was reading the always-fascinating Texas Escapes website when I came across this nugget. In 1906, the community of Rochester, Texas, hired a school teacher. These were the terms of her contract:

"You will not marry during the term of your contract. 
You are not to keep company with men. 
You must be home between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 a.m., unless attending a school function. 
You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. 
You may not travel beyond the city limits, unless you have permission of the chairman of the [school] board. 
You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man, unless he is your father or brother. 
You may not smoke cigarettes.
You may not dress in bright colors.
You may under no circumstances dye your hair. 
You must wear at least two petticoats. 
Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle.
To keep the school room neat and clean, you must: sweep the floor once a day; scrub the floor once a week with hot soapy water; clean the blackboards once a day; start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m."

Wow ...I knew that teachers were under strict rules for public decorum but I never knew exactly HOW strict.

You can read Mike's article here:

http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/Rochester-Teacher.htm

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is pretty dang good:

"I had succeeded in transplanting myself from a state [Michigan, about 1875] where the people .... good citizens who loved God and nature ----- had accepted and, as a rule, lived up to the Ten Commandments; where, when trouble arose between men, it seldom was carried to a point beyoind a fist fight. But in the section of Texas I had now entered, different conditions and codes prevailed. The War of Rebellion [Civil War] then so recent, had caused numerous men who had survived it and who had committed all sorts of desperate crimes, to seek refuge in the wilds of the land of chapparal and cactus, where the strong arm of the law seldom entered, and where, when it did, the refugee would be apt to have the best of it. A majority of the ranchmen in the country preferred aiding a white refugee to helping bring him to justice. The preference sprang from a motive of self-protection, for the enmity of such characters was a most dangerous thing. As there was in that section but little employment other than working with stock, naturally these men took up the life of the cowboy ---- when their time was not occupied dodging State Rangers or robbing stages and small settlements. Almost every dispute had to be settled with a gun-or-knife fight or else assassination. Such people, added to thieving bands of Mexicans and Indians, wild beasts of many sorts, and other terrors such as centipedes, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes, were a help in making life interesting ...

I did not let anyone know where I hailed from. A 'blue-bellied Yankee,' even if he were but a boy, was about the most unpopular thing in Texas at that period. With many people, anyone who came from the country lying to the north of the Red River was a Yankee."

--------- James H. Cook, "50 Years on the Old Frontier," 1923

Most Texans I know still think this way : " anyone who came from the country lying to the north of the Red River was a Yankee."

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Belton, Texas, had an early reputation as a rowdy place, particularly after the Chisholm Trail was established. In 1874, nine men were jailed in Belton and charged with horse thievery. Vigilantes executed all nine in their cells.


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas fact of the Day:  Although the population of Jefferson, Texas, is now roughly 2,000 people, at one point back in the 1800s the population was 30,000. That was when Jefferson was a thriving riverport. Today, the remnants of all that activity still remain. You'll find more than one hundred buildings in Jefferson that have been awarded historical markers, and there are over forty bed and breakfasts, along with two historic hotels.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

It was in that common area [on the set of the movie "Giant"] that Marfa got to know Hollywood, and vice versa. Most agreed movie people were "very fine people." Actor Robert Nichols, who played Pinky, emerged as one of the local favorites. :"With that first filmed sequence being the barbecue scene, which was so much fun, and we all got to know one another at that point," he later recalled. "And it was like a big party: it went on for a week .... It sort of opened things up." The "big party" continued during breaks. Cast members not involved in a particular scene headed for a big tent where the snacks and cool refreshments were always available. This was indeed a common area; stars and extras met and conversed on a casual basis. Rock Hudson and Jane Withers are remembered with special fondness. To extra Lee Bennett, Hudson was "just great. He was so casual, so charming. Just hung out with us and loved to talk." Jane Withers was "a great yakker, laughing and talking all of the time." And Mercedes McCambridge was "a lovely lady, sweet and charming. They all seemed to enjoy our company as much as we enjoyed theirs."

The one person who did not mix well with the locals was Elizabeth Taylor. Unlike other cast members, she is remembered as "spoiled," "demanding," "arrogant beyond belief," and "an exhibitionist." According to one extra, she seemed to relish flaunting her sexuality. On one occasion, the evocative star emerged from her air-conditioned trailer dressed in short shorts and, in lieu of a blouse and brassiere, had wrapped a loose fitting bandana around her breasts. To some of the women extras, it was an example of poor taste. The the men it was one of the more memorable days on the range."

---- Kenneth B. Ragsdale, "Big Bend Country: Land of the Unexpected," 1998

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## woodman6415

Back in my younger days there was Friday night high school football and once a month on Saturday night wrestling came to town ... My friends and I would always buy ringside seats .. Yes we knew it was fake .. We didn't care .. Was entertainment ... As the Von Erich's were good guys we totally loved to cheer for them .. Had all of their autographs at one time .. Lost over the years ...



 

A 1980 photo of Dallas wrestler Fritz von Erich aka Jack B. Adkisson with three of his sons, Kevin, David, and Kerry. David died of an intestinal disorder while wrestling in Japan in 1984 and Kerry later committed suicide, as did two of his brothers. Jack, the father, saw the deaths of five of his sons before he passed away in 1997. Only Kevin remains. The tragedy of the Von Erichs is Greek mythological in its sadness. You can read more about them here, but it is NOT an easy read:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/six-brothers/

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Many Texans do not realize that Liquid Paper was invented by Bette Nesmith in Dallas in 1951 and that Bette's son Mike was a member of The Monkees, the pop band responsible for such hits as "Last Train to Clarksville," "Daydream Believer" "Then I Saw Her Face" etc... 

Bette was divorced and approaching a new secretarial job; she had learned to type on manual machines and now faced electric typewriters. (If you don't know what I'm talking about here, ask your parents to explain.) A light touch caused letters to appear on the paper, and the mistakes from a carbon ribbon didn't erase. So Bette put some white tempera water-based paint in a small nail polish bottle, painted over her mistakes, and voila! Liquid Paper.

'It was not quite that easy, of course. She moved to another secretarial job with her little "white over" bottle, and other secretaries requested some for themselves. She labeled the bottles "Mistake Out." Friends and an office supply dealer suggested she market more broadly, and she changed the name to Liquid Paper and started to experiment with the formula.

In 1957, IBM rejected her product. Undaunted, she continued to turn out Liquid Paper one bottle at a time with the help of her son and his friends. By the end of 1957, she was selling about 100 bottles a month.

Over the next few years, word spread; by 1962, she was up to 5,000 bottles a week (having recruited part-time help) and by 1966 she moved Liquid Paper to a modernized production facility outside Dallas and produced 9,000 bottles a week, selling beyond just Texas.

Eventually, Nesmith hired marketers and sales and finance folk, and automation took over. Gillette purchased the company in 1979 for $48 million, when it was generating $38 million in sales.

Unfortunately, Bette Nesmith died in 1980 just a few months after selling her company to Gillette. She was 56 years old and left about $50 million, half to her son and half to philanthropic foundations. Another Texas success story, a cottage industry operating out of a kitchen, growing to an international company. 

Note: Most of this information comes from a book called "Why Didn't I Think of That? by Allyn Freeman and Bob Golden

.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Back in my younger days there was Friday night high school football and once a month on Saturday night wrestling came to town ... My friends and I would always buy ringside seats .. Yes we knew it was fake .. We didn't care .. Was entertainment ... As the Von Erich's were good guys we totally loved to cheer for them .. Had all of their autographs at one time .. Lost over the years ...
> 
> View attachment 113871 A 1980 photo of Dallas wrestler Fritz von Erich aka Jack B. Adkisson with three of his sons, Kevin, David, and Kerry. David died of an intestinal disorder while wrestling in Japan in 1984 and Kerry later committed suicide, as did two of his brothers. Jack, the father, saw the deaths of five of his sons before he passed away in 1997. Only Kevin remains. The tragedy of the Von Erichs is Greek mythological in its sadness. You can read more about them here, but it is NOT an easy read:
> 
> http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/six-brothers/



When I was a kid my Dad worked for a beer distributor and worked a lot of special events, many wrestling matches. He would take me with him, we'd be there 2 hours before it started. He would tell me to just walk around and stay out of trouble. I was a big wrestling fan so I loved it. Spent a lot of time with all the guys before the matches, had a few meals with the Von Erichs, David was my favorite. Good memories, thanks for that Wendell! Tony

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

“I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk.”

------ Stevie Ray Vaughan

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas history - September 20th

Texan flies in first airship?

On this day in 1865, pioneer aviator Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck may have made the first flight in an airplane--almost forty years before the Wright brothers--in a field about three miles east of Luckenbach. The Württemberg native settled in Fredericksburg in 1847. He had always had an interest in mechanics and inventing; in Germany he had attempted to build a self-winding clock, and in 1869 he designed an ice-making machine. His most cherished project, however, was his "air-ship," with a propeller powered by coiled springs. The 1865 model featured an enclosed space for the "aeronaut," a water propeller in case of accidental landings on water, a compass, and a barometer. The machine was said to have risen twelve feet in the air and traveled about 100 feet before the springs unwound completely and the machine crashed to the ground. Another account, however, says that the initial flight took place in San Pedro Park, San Antonio, where a bust of Brodbeck was later placed. Yet another account reports that the flight took place in 1868, not 1865. All the accounts agree, however, that Brodbeck's airship was destroyed by its abrupt landing, although the inventor escaped serious injury. After this setback, his investors refused to put up the money for a second attempt, and he embarked on a unsuccessful fund-raising tour of the United States. Brodbeck returned to Texas and lived on a ranch near Luckenbach until his death in 1910.

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas history - September 20th
> 
> Texan flies in first airship?
> 
> On this day in 1865, pioneer aviator Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck may have made the first flight in an airplane--almost forty years before the Wright brothers--in a field about three miles east of Luckenbach. The Württemberg native settled in Fredericksburg in 1847. He had always had an interest in mechanics and inventing; in Germany he had attempted to build a self-winding clock, and in 1869 he designed an ice-making machine. His most cherished project, however, was his "air-ship," with a propeller powered by coiled springs. The 1865 model featured an enclosed space for the "aeronaut," a water propeller in case of accidental landings on water, a compass, and a barometer. The machine was said to have risen twelve feet in the air and traveled about 100 feet before the springs unwound completely and the machine crashed to the ground. Another account, however, says that the initial flight took place in San Pedro Park, San Antonio, where a bust of Brodbeck was later placed. Yet another account reports that the flight took place in 1868, not 1865. All the accounts agree, however, that Brodbeck's airship was destroyed by its abrupt landing, although the inventor escaped serious injury. After this setback, his investors refused to put up the money for a second attempt, and he embarked on a unsuccessful fund-raising tour of the United States. Brodbeck returned to Texas and lived on a ranch near Luckenbach until his death in 1910.



I remember seeing that statue here, very interesting. Tony


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## woodman6415

It was 58 years ago yesterday that Elvis finished his basic training at Fort Hood. Here's a photo of him in class there. Thanks to TOT reader Jason Eisenberg for this historical tidbit. It must have been something to see "The King" walking around Fort Hood just like it was another ordinary day.





Thank you, Jason! A tip of the Stetson to you!

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## woodman6415

Really great old gas station in Decatur all gussied-up for Christmas. There are several of these petrified wood stations in Texas but if I am not mistaken this one is the one that is best preserved.

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## woodman6415

This is Timothy Isiah Courtright, better known as Longhaired Jim Courtwright. He was gunned down in an alley in Fort Worth by Luke Short in what is one of the most famous gunfights in "Wild West" history. Here is what happened:

On February 8, 1887, "Longhair" Jim Courtright and Luke Short engaged in one of the few "old west style" gunfights that ever occurred on Texas soil. It happened in Fort Worth and ended with Short killing Courtright.

Short was a gunfighter, gambler and bar owner who had drifted down to Fort Worth from Dodge City, Kansas. While in Dodge City, Short had dabbled in gambling, and became friends with several other noted Old West figures, such as Bat Masterson, Jim Masterson and Wyatt Earp, who had also become friends with Courtright. In Fort Worth, Short managed the White Elephant, a saloon/gambling house.

Longhair Jim Courtright was Fort Worth's Marshal. Some claim that Marshal Courtright was running a protection racket at the time, and needed to make an example of Short, who also had a sizable reputation as a gunfighter mostly due to an 1881 gunfight with a gunslinger named Charlie Storms at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona. Most historians tend to support the claims that Courtright had previously offered his protection to the White Elephant, and that Short informed him that he did not need his protection. Whatever the case, the two men did not get along.

On February 8, 1887, at about 8:00 p.m., Courtright called Luke Short out of the White Elephant. When Short walked outside, both men walked up the street one block, until they were in front of bar and brothel owner Ella Blackwell's Shooting Gallery. According to reports, few words had been spoken, and the two men moved apart facing one another. Words were passed, and evidently Courtright, who had been drinking considerably, had made some indication about Short having a gun. Short assured Courtright he was not armed, although he was, of course.

Short moved slowly toward Courtright, saying that he could have a look himself, at which point he pulled open his vest. Probably mostly for the sake of bystanders and justification, Courtright said loudly "Don't you pull a gun on me.

With that statement, Courtright drew his pistol, but according to reports it hung for just a second on his watch-chain, and in that second Short produced his pistol and fired one shot, which took off Courtright's thumb on his shooting hand. As Courtright attempted to shift his pistol to his other hand, Short fired four more shots in quick succession. Courtright fell backward and died shortly thereafter.

Short was placed on trial for the shooting, but it was ruled justified self defense, and that was the end of it. The gunfight became the story of a famous showdown because of the notoriety of both men as gunmen. Unfortunately for Courtright, that fame was posthumous.

Despite Courtright's reputation for strong-arming local businesses with his protection service, he did reduce Fort Worth's murder rate by more than half the previous level during his time there as the marshal. He built a small force that included himself and two deputies which eventually grew into today's Fort Worth police force.

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## woodman6415

Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson, who survived the Alamo and was sent by Santa Anna to Sam Houston with a letter of warning dated March 7, 1836. It was she who delivered news of the fall of the Alamo to the outside world. Here is her TSHA entry:

Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson (Dickenson), survivor of the Alamo, was born about 1814 in Tennessee, perhaps in Williamson County. Her first name has also been recorded as Susan, Susana, and Suzanna; her maiden name is sometimes given as Wilkinson. On May 24, 1829, she married Almeron Dickinson before a justice of the peace in Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tennessee. The couple remained in the vicinity through the end of 1830. The Dickinsons arrived at Gonzales, Texas, on February 20, 1831, in company with fifty-four other settlers, after a trip by schooner from New Orleans. On May 5 Dickinson received a league of land from Green DeWitt, on the San Marcos River in what became Caldwell County. He received ten more lots in and around Gonzales in 1833 and 1834. The Dickinsons lived on a lot just above the town on the San Marcos River, where Susanna took in at least one boarder. A map of Gonzales in 1836 shows a Dickinson and Kimble hat factory in Gonzales. Susanna's only child, Angelina Elizabeth Dickinson, was born on December 14, 1834.

Susanna and her daughter may have joined other families hiding in the timber along the Guadalupe River in early October 1835, when Mexican troops from San Antonio demanded the return of an old cannon lent to Gonzales four years earlier. The resulting skirmish, the battle of Gonzales, was the first fight of the Texas Revolution. Susanna said goodbye to her husband on October 13 as the volunteers left for San Antonio under command of Stephen F. Austin. She remained in Gonzales through November, when newly arriving troops looted her home.

She joined Dickinson in San Antonio, probably in December 1835, and lodged in Ramón Músquiz's home, where she opened her table to boarders (among them David Crockettqv) and did laundry. On February 23, 1836, the family moved into the Alamo. After the battle of the Alamo on March 6, Mexican soldiers found her-some accounts say in the powder magazine, others in the church-and took her and Angelina, along with the other women and children, to Músquiz's home. The women were later interviewed by Santa Anna, who gave each a blanket and two dollars in silver before releasing them. Legend says Susanna displayed her husband's Masonic apron to a Mexican general in a plea for help and that Santa Anna offered to take Angelina to Mexico.

Santa Anna sent Susanna and her daughter, accompanied by Juan N. Almonte's servant Ben, to Sam Houston with a letter of warning dated March 7. On the way, the pair met Joe, William B. Travis's slave, who had been freed by Santa Anna. The party was discovered by Erastus (Deaf) Smith and Henry Wax Karnes.qqv Smith guided them to Houston in Gonzales, where they arrived after dark about March 12.

Susanna Dickinson probably followed the army eastward in company with the other Gonzales women. Illiterate, without family, and only twenty-two years old, she petitioned the government meeting at Columbia in October 1836 for a donation, but the proposed $500 was not awarded. She needed a male protector, and by June 1837 she was cohabiting with John Williams, whom she married about November 27, 1837. He beat her and Angelina, and she petitioned in Harrisburg (later Harris) County for a divorce, which was granted on March 24, 1838-one of the first divorces in the county.

By 1839 Almeron Dickinson's heirs had received rights to 2,560 acres for his military service; they sold the land when Angelina reached twenty-one. Subsequent requests to the state legislature in November 1849 were turned down. Susanna tried matrimony three more times before settling into a stable relationship. She wed Francis P. Herring on December 20, 1838, in Houston. Herring, formerly from Georgia, had come to Texas after October 20, 1837. He died on September 15, 1843. On December 15, 1847, Susanna married Pennsylvania drayman Peter Bellows (also known as Bellis or Belles) before an Episcopalian minister. In 1850 the couple had sixteen-year-old Angelina living with them. But by 1854 Susanna had left Bellows, who charged her with adultery and prostitution when he filed for divorce in 1857. Susanna may have lived in the Mansion House Hotel of Pamelia Mann, which was known as a brothel, before marrying Bellows. The divorce petition accuses her of taking up residence in a "house of ill fame." Nevertheless, Susanna received praise from the Baptist minister Rufus C. Burleson for her work nursing cholera victims in Houston, where he baptized her in Buffalo Bayou in 1849.

Susanna's fifth marriage was long-lasting. She married Joseph William Hannig (or Hannag), a native of Germany living in Lockhart, in 1857. They soon moved to Austin, where Hannig became prosperous with a cabinet shop and later a furniture store and undertaking parlor; he also owned a store in San Antonio. Susanna became ill in February 1883 and died on October 7 of that year. Hannig buried her in Oakwood Cemetery, and even though he married again, he was buried next to Susanna after his death in 1890.

Citation: Margaret Swett Henson, "DICKINSON, SUSANNA WILKERSON," Handbook of Texas Online
Image may contain: 1 person

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## Wildthings

Wheew there were some rough looking women back then!!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Approximately 30,000 square miles of Texas is classified as desert The Chihuahuan Desert, to be more specific. This area is bounded by the New Mexico state line, the Rio Grande, and (approximately) the Pecos River. Incidentally, as recently as 4-5000 years ago it was covered by leafy woodlands. It is the highest desert on the continent.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Wheew there were some rough looking women back then!!



Guess you don't go to biker rallies ?


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> It is the highest desert on the continent.



And the largest.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Guess you don't go to biker rallies ?


AND that's the reason I don't!!

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## SENC

The not so arcane Texas Fact of the Day: SENC is in STx.


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## Tony

SENC said:


> The not so arcane Texas Fact of the Day: SENC is in STx.



Where?


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## SENC

Tony said:


> Where?


Concan/Uvalde/Batesville - dove hunting

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## Wildthings

SENC said:


> Concan/Uvalde/Batesville - dove hunting


With who? I'll be in Concan about noon tomorrow starting a three day dove hunt with Chris Crocker


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## SENC

We are hunting with Jason Schneeman (Down South Adventures). We've hunted with him for about 4 years - great guy and we've never had a bad hunt. Three of us got down early enough for an afternoon central zone hunt yesterday, which turned out to be the best white wing hunt I've had - just an amazing concentration of birds. Good luck, and maybe we can connect.


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## Tony

We've had plenty of rain this year, should be plenty of birds. Good luck Henry and Barry, limit out guys! Tony


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the day:

In 1851, boundary commissioner John Bartlett came upon a wagon train stalled near what is now Salt Flat, Texas and in desperate need of fresh water. He road about 90 miles west to Fort Bliss in El Paso and notified the soldiers there. They rescued the travelers and then placed barrels of water every 10 miles on the way to El Paso. Everybody survived.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I believe musicians can run this state a lot better than politicians. We just won't get much done in the morning."

----- Kinky Friedman, musician, raconteur, and former candidate for governor of Texas

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "I believe musicians can run this state a lot better than politicians. We just won't get much done in the morning."
> 
> ----- Kinky Friedman, musician, raconteur, and former candidate for governor of Texas



When Kinky was running for Governor a reporter asked him what his stance was on gay marriage. He said, " I'm all for it. They have just as much right to be miserable as anybody else". Tony

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## woodman6415

The Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas is now the largest freeway on the planet


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## Kevin

I counted 3497 vehicles including partials - can anyone concur?


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## mdlbldrmatt135

Kevin said:


> I counted 3497 vehicles including partials - can anyone concur?



I think I see several hiding partially behind tress that you missed.... for a total of 3521

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## Kevin

mdlbldrmatt135 said:


> I think I see several hiding partially behind tress that you missed.... for a total of 3521



I was only counting the ones on the highway.


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## mdlbldrmatt135

Ahh, then yes, I concur the count is accurate!


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## Spinartist

Kevin said:


> I counted 3497 vehicles including partials - can anyone concur?




Read the fine print on about the side effects of that morphine you're on... shouldn't you be unconscious by now??


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## Spinartist

Texas fact - cutting Flame Box Elder can be a lesson for us all!!


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## woodman6415

How harsh was South Texas back in the day? I think we would all agree that Robert E. Lee was no wussy. The Texas Quote of the Day is a little excerpt from a letter Lee wrote in August, 1856, while stationed at Ringgold Barracks, near present day Rio Grande City:

"The sun was fiery hot and the atmosphere like a blast from a hot air furnace, the water salt. Every branch and leaf in this country, nearly, are armed with a point and seem to poison the flesh. What a blessing the children are not here! They would be ruined."

----- Robert E. Lee in a letter to his wife, August 25th, 1856

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1926, Columbus "Dad" Joiiner ---- in his mid-60s's and suffering from rheumatism ----- walked into Rusk County and began talking of his dream of tapping into the largest oil field in the world. For four years he searched the county for just the right spot, finally settling on the Daisy Bradford farm near Henderson, Texas. Following two dry holes, the Daisy Bradford # 3 produced a promising core sample. That was all it took. Within one week, 5,000 people converged on the Bradford farm, waiting for a gusher and even burning their truck tires to keep warm. A few days later the drill penetrated the trapped reserves and the gusher roared forth. Besides the oil, a huge supply of coal reserves was also discovered, adding to Henderson's economy.

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## woodman6415

The ferry boat "Nicholaus" on Buffalo Bayou at San Jacinto State Park circa 1910. This park was the first official state park in Texas and was created after about 30 years of agitating by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. This must have been taken when the park was brand new. Wonder what that ferry sounded like?

Courtesy the Digital Archives of the Houston Public Library.

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## woodman6415

I may have posted this before. I don't care. I will defend to the death my decision to re-post it. What a great version of this song. It's Saturday night in Texas, y'all!






'Cause when a Texan fancies he'll take his chances, chances will be taken ....

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

When Spanish explorer Alonso de Leon passed by what is now the Medina River in 1689, he named it for Pedro Medina, a Spanish engineer of his acquaintance. In 1721 the Marquis de Aguayo defined the Medina as the western boundary of Texas. It remained so until 1836. On August 18, 1813, the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition met defeat by Spanish royalist forces at the Battle of the Medina River. Of the nearly 3,000 men who took place in that battle, about 1/10th hightailed it to Louisiana.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.

It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.” 

----- Larry Mcmurtry, "Lonesome Dove," (the book ... not the movie!)


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## SENC

woodman6415 said:


> How harsh was South Texas back in the day? I think we would all agree that Robert E. Lee was no wussy. The Texas Quote of the Day is a little excerpt from a letter Lee wrote in August, 1856, while stationed at Ringgold Barracks, near present day Rio Grande City:
> 
> "The sun was fiery hot and the atmosphere like a blast from a hot air furnace, the water salt. Every branch and leaf in this country, nearly, are armed with a point and seem to poison the flesh. What a blessing the children are not here! They would be ruined."
> 
> ----- Robert E. Lee in a letter to his wife, August 25th, 1856


Not so different today!

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.
> 
> It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.
> 
> It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.”
> 
> ----- Larry Mcmurtry, "Lonesome Dove," (the book ... not the movie!)



The Lonesome Dove books are excellent, all of them. I highly encourage everybody to read them. Tony

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## woodman6415

Sam Houston in 1861, two years before his death. This portrait was taken by Matthew Brady. To me, even though this image shows an aged Sam Houston, it also really captures his determination and strength. Those eyes and that expression say "do not trifle with me."

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## woodman6415

Fossati's Delicatessen in Victoria is the oldest deli in the state. It was opened in 1882 by Italian immigrant Fraschio ("Frank") Napoleon Fossati. He had this building constructed in 1895 and moved the deli from a nearby downtown location. After more than 130 years in business, it is still owned by the same family. I'd say they must be doing something right!

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## woodman6415

Many Texans know that Robert E. Howard, pulp fiction writer and creator of Conan the Barbarian, is a Texan, having been born in Peaster and having grown up in Cross Plains and Brownwood. But how many know about the tragic circumstances surrounding his death and the note he left in his typewriter, which is shown here?

Howard committed suicide in 1936. Six years prior, his mother had been diagnosed with the cancer that would ultimately kill her. The Great Depression was deepening at the time of her diagnosis and Howard's father's medical practice was nearly ended as a result, leaving Howard the chief breadwinner for his family as he churned out story after story for the pulp magazines. Anyway, by 1936 his mother's cancer worsened. Robert was writing 18 hours a day, sending a huge volume of stories each week. When his mother entered her final coma, Robert asked the Dr. if there was any hope. Told that there was not, and that his mother had only hours to live, he went upstairs, typed the bit of poetry that you see here, left it in his typewriter, went out to his car, took a Colt .32 automatic pistol out of the glove compartment, put it to his head just over his right ear, and pulled the trigger. He lived for about two hours and his mother passed the next day. Robert was only 30 years old.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

North Street in Nacogdoches looks like an ordinary street, but it has the unique distinction of being the oldest public thoroughfare in the United States. Long before the Spanish discovered it and called it "La Calle del Norte," it was a major Native American road.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> North Street in Nacogdoches looks like an ordinary street, but it has the unique distinction of being the oldest public thoroughfare in the United States. Long before the Spanish discovered it and called it "La Calle del Norte," it was a major Native American road.



You ought to take a trip and see that Wendell!


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## woodman6415

Lou Currier said:


> A dedicated shop with air conditioning





Tony said:


> You ought to take a trip and see that Wendell!



On my bucket list ... Would be awesome bike ride


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## Tony

It's a nice town, rich in history.


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## woodman6415

Got her all shined up last week ... But now all this rain .. Quick ride to homedepot .. Not picking up quickrete !!!

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## woodman6415

Oh, the Texas Quote of the Day is so great. It appears that some folks were glad when the second Texas State Capitol went up in flames in 1881. This is a blurb from "Texas Siftings," a weekly satirical journal published in Austin. I just love the way they wrote back them ..... so adjectival. 

"The architectural monstrosity [the state capitol building] that has so long disfigured the crown of the heaven-kissing hill at the head of Congress Avenue in Austin, is no more. The venerable edifice that bore such startling resemblance to a large sized corn crib, with a pumpkin for a dome, and whose halls have so often resounded with legislative eloquence, reminding the distant hearer of a dog barking up a hollow log, is gone [destroyed by fire].

It was a thrilling scene. The fire demon's cruel tongues licked the fair proportions of the historic pile, while huge volumes of black smoke poured from the doomed building, and settled over the fair city of Austin, like a sable funeral pall, enveloping in its somber folds the spires and domes that glitter on the seven hills of the Capital City of Texas, while the toot, too, toot of the fire engine and the hoarse profanity of the enthusiastic volunteer firemen, seemed a solemn and appropriate dirge as the old sarcophagus crumbled into etc... etc... But we are getting poetical and encroaching on the province of the local reporter. What we have written in the above paragraph will, however, demonstrate that we can be sentimental and pathetic when we want to. Those who imagine that the Sifters have no pathos or poetry inside them are requested to read the foregoing about the "doomed building" and the "funeral pall" over and over again. 

When the alarm was given, it was supposed by a great many that the treasury, containing the million and a half cash balance, was in danger. The anxiety on the part of all classes to assist in removing the silver to a place of safety was touching. Wealthy men, who had failed in business, got up from champagne and oysters, and, bareheaded, distanced impecunious candidates and speedy journalists, who were also rushing to the front to remove the cash balance to a place of great safety ...."

------- from "Texas Siftings," a satirical weekly published in Austin, 1881. The editors apparently resented the fact that strong policemen turned back "even newspaper men" who offered to help save the Treasury's silver.

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## woodman6415

Well this pretty much blew me away; Holly Tatnell's grave lies in the middle of a street in Hearne, Texas. It is all that's left of what was once a cemetery for African Americans. Those houses are built on an old burial ground, a reminder that history is everywhere around us, including right under our feet. 

http://www.ripleys.com/blog/hollie-tatnell/

A tip of the Stetson to TOT reader Libby Samford for sending this in. I had no idea that it exists but now that I know I am going to have to go and look at it.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> North Street in Nacogdoches looks like an ordinary street, but it has the unique distinction of being the oldest public thoroughfare in the United States. Long before the Spanish discovered it and called it "La Calle del Norte," it was a major Native American road.


Been ther done that. Nice weekend adventure! Had a deer lease five miles south of there back in '89

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 27th

First TV station in Texas goes on the air

On this day in 1948, WBAP-Fort Worth became the first television station in Texas--and indeed in the whole South--to go on the air, carrying a speech by President Harry Truman. The station grew out of Fort Worth's first radio station, also called WBAP, established in 1922 by Amon Carter, owner of the Fort Worth _Star-Telegram._ By 1950 six TV stations were operating in Texas, including three in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In the early 1950s stations in San Antonio and Fort Worth began broadcasting live programs by use of coaxial cable. In 1953 four major television networks served Texas: the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and Dumont. In that year network broadcasting was made possible across the state via Bell Telephone System facilities

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day serves as a reminder that only a galoot would steal another man's watermelon:

"Some big-footed long-legged galoot with more stomach than conscience stole Prof. J.E. Farrow's watermelon on Friday night. This was no ordinary melon. It was the pride of the Prof.'s heart. Farrow does not regret the loss of the melon as much as he does the loss of the seed. If some of the seed will be returned to the professor no questions will be asked."

----- Dalhart newspaper, 1907

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Early Texas trail drivers, while herding the giant herds of Texas cattle over the historic trails of Texas, were sometimes treated during storms to a bizarre phenomena in which eerie luminous flashes of yellow-green tongues lightning-like fire arced from the horns of one steer to that of one nearby. Often this early day "laser show" continued until the entire herd was bathed in an incandescent glow. This phenomena, although a mystery to those old cowboys, is today most often associated with ships, masts and aircraft and is known as "St. Elmo's Fire."

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## woodman6415

Sometimes it's the photo, sometimes it's the story behind the photo, and sometimes it is both. Traces of Texas reader David Hensley generously sent in this really great "After the Posse" photo. David's mother gave it to him and it has a fascinating backstory: It shows David's great grandfather, Ed Hooper, on the far right and Ed's stepfather, J.T. Pollard, with the white beard standing in the doorway. J.T. was a Texas ranger and Indian fighter who was with Charles Goodnight and Sul Ross when Cynthia Parker was captured. David's grandmother, Alberta, saw J.T. die in 1909 on a kitchen table from wounds that he received while fighting Indians in the late 1850s and early 1860s ----- some 50 years before. He had 8 arrowheads in his body at the time of his death. He was also a business partner of Charles Goodnight. 

Here's J.T..'s entry on Find A Grave:

"Birth: Nov. 25, 1834
Death: Sep. 20, 1909
Gray County
Texas, USA

James T. Pollard served in the company commanded by Sul Ross in the regiment of Texas Rangers in the Texas Indian War of 1859. He enlisted at Ft. Belknap, Young County on October 12, 1859 and was honorably discharged in Palo Pinto March 11, 1861. At the time of his enlistment he was 27 years old and 6'1" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion. Occupation was Farmer and Stock raiser.

During the Civil War he remained in Texas in the Frontier Regiment defending the settlements from Indian attacks. He served and was associated with noted Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight. 

He was born in Rome, Georgia. When he left military service, he resided in Hopkins County for 5 years, Johnson County 4 years, Palo Pinto County 5 years, Johnson County 7 years, Montague County 6 years, Palo Pinto County 12 years, Greer County Texas 13 years, and the balance in Gray County Texas. The maiden name of his second wife is McKinney and he married her on October 13, 1886 at Mineral Wells, Texas. His former wife whose maiden name was Nancy Jane Hart. They divorced in September 1884."

Thank you, David. This is truly great stuff!

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## Kevin

Spinartist said:


> Read the fine print on about the side effects of that morphine you're on... shouldn't you be unconscious by now??



That stuff did't hardly faze me. Relaxed me a little and that's about it.


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## Kevin

If J.T. is 6'1" that makes Ed look 7 feet tall. Or more.

J.T.'s second wife was a McKinney eh? Interesting.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day, the sequel:

At the Witte Museum in San Antonio you will find a bench that used to be on The Riverwalk in that fair city and upon which Johnny Cash once etched "Johnny luvs Vivian" with his pocket knife. That was in 1951 and the "Vivian" was Johnny's first wife. Here is a close-up of the inscription. Because of decades of weathering and additional carving, only a few letters are now visible, including the "J" in "Johnny" and part of Vivian's name. After becoming aware of the bench’s historical significance, city officials removed it from the River Walk, eventually giving it to the Witte Museum, where it is on permanent display. You can read the story of Johnny's time in San Antonio here:

http://www.expressnews.com/150years...d-SA-woman-while-at-6294562.php#photo-8066190

Pretty cool artifact!

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## SENC

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 114129 Sometimes it's the photo, sometimes it's the story behind the photo, and sometimes it is both. Traces of Texas reader David Hensley generously sent in this really great "After the Posse" photo. David's mother gave it to him and it has a fascinating backstory: It shows David's great grandfather, Ed Hooper, on the far right and Ed's stepfather, J.T. Pollard, with the white beard standing in the doorway. J.T. was a Texas ranger and Indian fighter who was with Charles Goodnight and Sul Ross when Cynthia Parker was captured. David's grandmother, Alberta, saw J.T. die in 1909 on a kitchen table from wounds that he received while fighting Indians in the late 1850s and early 1860s ----- some 50 years before. He had 8 arrowheads in his body at the time of his death. He was also a business partner of Charles Goodnight.
> 
> Here's J.T..'s entry on Find A Grave:
> 
> "Birth: Nov. 25, 1834
> Death: Sep. 20, 1909
> Gray County
> Texas, USA
> 
> James T. Pollard served in the company commanded by Sul Ross in the regiment of Texas Rangers in the Texas Indian War of 1859. He enlisted at Ft. Belknap, Young County on October 12, 1859 and was honorably discharged in Palo Pinto March 11, 1861. At the time of his enlistment he was 27 years old and 6'1" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion. Occupation was Farmer and Stock raiser.
> 
> During the Civil War he remained in Texas in the Frontier Regiment defending the settlements from Indian attacks. He served and was associated with noted Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight.
> 
> He was born in Rome, Georgia. When he left military service, he resided in Hopkins County for 5 years, Johnson County 4 years, Palo Pinto County 5 years, Johnson County 7 years, Montague County 6 years, Palo Pinto County 12 years, Greer County Texas 13 years, and the balance in Gray County Texas. The maiden name of his second wife is McKinney and he married her on October 13, 1886 at Mineral Wells, Texas. His former wife whose maiden name was Nancy Jane Hart. They divorced in September 1884."
> 
> Thank you, David. This is truly great stuff!


This indeed is fascinating - but if JT really is the white beard by the door and really was 6'1", the Ed must have been 8' tall!

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## SENC

Kevin said:


> If J.T. is 6'1" that makes Ed look 7 feet tall. Or more.
> 
> J.T.'s second wife was a McKinney eh? Interesting.


Oops, should have read further before posting - but this immediately stuck out to me, too. Before I got to the height part I was thinking what a small guy he was.

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## mdlbldrmatt135

Y'all gots yer own dictionary.

http://i60.Rule #2/albums/h23/mdlbldrmatt135/misc%20stuff/38ee6cc3-9454-4085-868a-e4f7208321dc.jpg 

I found these in a "common area" of the Office. I can say I knew all (or damn near all) of them.

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## Wildthings

Yep and it takes _at least_ 3 volumes!!

edited in the italic words


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## mdlbldrmatt135

Wildthings said:


> Yep and it takes 3 volumes!!



I googled... there's actually 4 or 5!!!

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## woodman6415

This is the pocket calculator that sparked a revolution. The Texas Instruments TI-2500 Datamath calculator was first announced in April ,1972, with a suggested retail price (SRP) of $149.95. Beginning in June, 1972, the first customers were able to buy them in Neiman-Marcus and Sanger-Harris department stores in Dallas. The calculator had a formal introduction on September 21, 1972, by which time the price had dropped to 119.00. It was a four-function calculator and I remember my father being so excited to be able to buy one after either Popular Mechanics or Popular Science had a cover article about them. It required 6 AA batteries.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day shows that things have always been a bit wild here in Texas:

"Whether traveling or at home, we had no peace. Not even the church was free of their antics. In many instances it might have been just horseplay, but it had serious effects on the victims. These cowboys entered the church during the services with their hats on and smoking cigarettes. They would come around the altar during the Mass and curiously examine the contents of the chalice. One of them wanted to ride into the church on horseback and see how many targets he could shoot on the walls. On the road they would shoot at the Polander's feet, in many instances wounding him. A woman, caught alone on the road, was found with a knife-stab in her back. These and many other calamities we endured. As a protection against such and against the snakes that crawled everywhere, I provided myself with a revolver. With a rosary in my pocket and the revolver hanging in a scabbard on my saddle, I went along that everyone who did not believe the word of God would believe the word of my revolver......"

-------- Father Adolf Bakanowski, the spiritual head of the Polish colony of Panna Maria, on relations with neighboring ranch hands, 1866

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

At one point after "Dad" Joiner struck oil and brought in the Daisy Bradford # 3 well that ushered in the oil boom in East Texas back in 1930, 24 oil derricks stood on a little more than one acre of land in downtown Kilgore. This was at the corner of Main and Commerce in that bucolic little town. One of the wells was drilled through the terrazzo floor of the Kilgore National Bank. Over 40 years of production more than 2.5 million barrels of oil were produced. It was called "The World's Richest Acre" and was the greatest concentration of oil wells in history. All but one of the derricks were dismantled in the early 1960s. But since then a park has been created, using that original derrick and 36 new ones, a restored pumpjack, and a granite monument to the pioneer oil families of East Texas. Brick walkways help make the park a monument to the oil boom of 1930s. The main derrick and several other derricks are capped with lighted stars during the Christmas season, sparking the city's nickname "City of Stars."

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day reminds us to let he who is without sin cast the first noose ;). 

"It was right funny. [About 1871] I knew a fellow by the name of Denny Murphy, who drove off more cattle than anybody else ... He was just a better rustler. The cattlemen decided that Denny had better be killed. He had just left a few days before with a big herd of cattle for Denver, Colorado. The boys at Fort Griffin made up a posse, loaded up on whiskey, and started after Denny. They tried to get some of us to go, but we wouldn't go. They overtook Denny's outfit out on the Pecos about 12:00 o'clock one day. Denny had an idea they were up to something, but he had his cook prepare a good dinner for the boys. After dinner they told Murphy what they had come for. He just sort grinned and said, "Now, boys, I don't mind you fellows hanging me, but I have one request to make. I want an honest man to do it. If there is a single man in the crowd that hasn't done what I have, I want him to put the rope around my neck." The boys began to grin and look at each other. After a hearty laugh they all got back on their horses and rode back to Fort Griffin."

------- Ernesto Roberts, from an interview in the "The Anson Western Enterprise," 1923

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - September 29th

First Polish church in America consecrated

On this day in 1856, Father Leopold Moczygemba consecrated the first Polish Catholic church in the United States at Panna Maria, Texas. Father Moczygemba, a native of Silesia born in 1824, came to Texas in 1852 and began urging his fellow countrymen to leave the harsh economic conditions of their homeland and settle in Texas. In 1854 Polish immigrants had journeyed to Karnes County in South Texas and celebrated Christmas Mass with Moczygemba under a live oak tree at the future church site. They founded the community of Panna Maria, Polish for “Virgin Mary.” In addition to the church, pioneers also established St. Joseph’s School, the first Polish school in America, and new waves of immigration after 1865 led to the settlement of other Polish communities in the area such as Cestohowa, Kosciusko, and Falls City. Panna Maria remained a rural hamlet in the twentieth century but enjoyed the distinction of being the oldest permanent Polish settlement in the United States

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

The last public hanging in Texas took place on July 30, 1923, in Waco, when Roy Mitchell was executed for one of eight murders he committed during a reign of terror.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from longtime Houston Post/Chronicle columnist Leon Hale and it is a dandy. Leon is 95 years old and still writing. 

By Leon Hale

"Did I ever tell you about Brother Foster's Thanksgiving prayer? Long ago, out in that West Cross Timbers country beyond Fort Worth, Brother Foster was famous for prayers that showed scope and style. I once heard him send up a thanksgiving prayer that was major league in all respects, and he did it standing in the kitchen door on Gramdma Hale's farm.

This old fellow was not really a preacher. But in rural regions at the time I am talking about, purebred and registered preachers were scarce and people made do with the nearest they had to the real article.

Brother Foster taught Sunday School, and did funerals, and went around comforting the sick and sorrowful, and generally made a satisfactory substitute for a preacher. My father used to say you could put a black hat on Brother Foster and hand him a Bible and a collection plate and he could pass for a preacher.

His specialty was prayers on special occasions, like at Fourth of July Picnics, ice cream suppers, Christmas gatherings, and other holiday affairs. It must have been in '31 or '32 that Brother Foster came to Gramdma Hale's farm for Thanksgiving dinner. All the women, especially, counted it a social victory to have Brother Foster for Thanksgiving. I don't know how we got him, as he was spread pretty thin over that region.

The meal was the occasion for the prayer, so it was delivered as the blessing. Or, asking the blessing, as we said, or returning thanks.

When the formal invitation was issued - "Brother Foster, will you return thanks for us?" - that luminary backed away from the table and took up a position in the doorway that led into Grandma's kitchen. Evidently he felt a need to be isolated from the general bunch.

He was a big, heavy-shouldered fellow with deep-set eyes and wavy white hair and a mighty voice. My father used to say that they ruined a first-rate preacher when they put Bro. Foster to following a mule across a cotton patch.

He waited for silence before he began. If silence took a full minute to arrive, still he waited. We were supposed to keep our heads bowed and our eyes closed but by that time I had perfected a system of looking around at things through eyes that seemed closed but really weren't.

Bro. Foster stood with his legs slightly apart and his hands behind him and his chin elevated and his eyes closed. Just when you thought he would begin, a foot would scuff or a throat would clear and he would hold off a while longer. Even a calf, bawling for its mama out at the barn, would delay his beginning.

He started out quietly, and built volume as he went along. He began with the food and the blessed hands that prepared it. He called Grandma by name, and I learned later that this was a high blessing, to get your name sent up in a prayer by Brother Foster, and on Thanksgiving Day, at that.

From the women he went to the men who tilled the land and brought forth its fruits. He went on to thank the Lord for the beasts that pulled the plows, and those that sacrificed their lives to give us sustenance.

Then he took up the children, and asked the Lord to bless their little hearts and keep them safe.

He went into the field of medicine and thanked the Lord for protecting those of us who hadn't caught terrible diseases or suffered crippling injuries. He got into agriculture and mentioned the good corn crop, and the cotton crop which was fair. Went then to meteorology and pointed out to God that the rains came a little too late in the season but were appreciated anyhow. He called the names of people who had died during the year, people we knew, and he gave thanks for their lives. He gave thanks for breezes that turned windmills, for pretty music, for the love of friends and kinfolks, for the very roof over our heads, for feather mattresses on cold winter nights.

This litany went on until the dressing was cold and I thought it was more a sermon than a prayer. Not until a good many years later did I understand why Bro. Foster's long prayers were sought and appreciated:

Life in that country was hard, and those folks needed somebody to remind them that they had a lot to be thankful for."

------ Leon Hale, Houston Chronicle, Nov 24, 1988

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## Wildthings

On this day in Texas History - September 29th

Guadalupe Mountains National Park established

On this day in 1972, Guadalupe Mountains National Park was established. The 76,293-acre park in Hudspeth and Culberson counties includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at over 8,700 feet. Indian rock art sites indicate Native American occupation as far back as 12,000 years, and the Apaches lived in the Guadalupe Mountains as late as the 1880s. In the 1920s J. C. Hunter purchased the Guadalupe Mountain Ranch and raised Angora goats there. Efforts to preserve the land as a park date to the 1930s when Hunter’s son offered to donate 300 acres of scenic McKittrick Canyon to the state of Texas. By the 1960s land donations and sales to the National Park Service paved the way for the establishment of a national park. Guadalupe Mountains National Park contains eighty miles of trails, and the maple and hardwood trees of McKittrick Canyon offer brilliant fiery hues for hikers in the autumn

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## woodman6415

The first time an American Indian chief was put on trial in the United States, the case was heard in Jack County, in 1871, when Kiowa chief Satanta (pictured) went before a jury on a murder charge. Satanta, a legendary fighter, was also a politician who negotiated treaties with the white man. But in 1871 he led a group in an attack on a wagon train west of Jacksboro. Seven men were killed.

He was captured, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged until, as court documents show, he was "dead, dead, dead." Governor Edmund Davis, hoping to keep the peace with the Kiowas, commuted the sentence to life in prison., then paroled him after two years in Huntsville. However, Satanta was subsequently arrested after taking part in the second Battle of Adobe Walls and returned to Huntsville. In 1878 he threw himself from a prison window and died. 100 years later, Larry McMurtry would model the character "Blue Duck" in "Lonesome Dove" after him.

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## woodman6415

I had read about this years ago ... but this story has a lot of facts I didn't know ..


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

It is true that it took a Texan, Thomas V. Munson, to rescue not only the French wine industry, but the entire European wine industry. This was during the latter years of the 1800s. What happened was this:

In the 1840s European vineyards had been ravaged by the fungus parasite oidium. During that time France suffered losses of nearly 80 percent of its vines. The European wine industry imported native labrusca rootstock from the United States, but these cuttings brought in phylloxera, a plant louse, which attacked the slowly recovering vineyards. In 1868 phylloxera was discovered in southern France and more than 6 million acres of vineyards were destroyed in France, Germany, and other regions of Europe. That is an area roughly 8 times the size of Big Bend National Park ---- a LOT of grapes!

Enter Thomas Munson, a botanist in Denison, Texas. Munson had been working to develop phylloxera-resistant grapes using native Texas mustang grape rootstock. The French wine industry, learning of Munson's expertise, requested that he send to France some of the grape hybrid rootstock that he had developed during his studies. He shipped the rootstock to France, where it was grafted with varieties of European vinifera. Munson's work saved the European wine industry from total devastation. Because of Munson's role, the French government in 1888 sent a delegation to Denison to confer on him the French Legion of Honor Chevalier du Mérite Agricole. Munson also received numerous other awards and honors. In 1898 he was elected as a foreign corresponding member of the Société Nationale d'Agriculture de France and as an honorary member in the Société des Viticulteurs de France. When Munson discovered wild Texas grapes, he wrote, "Here were six or eight good species of wild grapes, several of which had not been seen by me previously. I had found my grape paradise! Surely now, I thought, "this is the place for experimentation with grapes!"

I'm betting those Europeans were mighty glad that Munson came along and saved them, being that many of them are known to be pretty fond of wine.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

After the transcontinental railroad was completed in the 1890s, passenger travel from Texas to California via the Southwestern states was a long, dusty, uncomfortable trip, with few opportunities for eating or resting from the tiring, upright seats. That was alleviated when Fred Harvey made a contract with Santa Fe Railroad officials to build restaurants and hotels at various stops along the way in Texas and throughout the Southwest. This made train travel more marketable, and "Harvey Houses," as they were called, became a household phrase among train travelers.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Did we have a dance? Just two days and two nights! And did we eat? We had Delmonico beat two to one, for our chef was none other than Billy Dixon, noted scout, Indian fighter, and hero of the Adobe Walls fight. 

Romance was in the air, so it was quite natural when one of the handsome Turkey Track boys should toss his loop over one of our prettiest girls' wedding bells were ringing shortly after for two couples at least who were at the party.

When we got home we maybe looked and felt like the last petal of the last rose of summer in late twilight of a stormy day, but we wouldn't have missed it for anything. "

----- Mollie Montgomery remembers a fandango at the Turkey Track Ranch near Mobeetie, during the town's brief heyday in the mid-1880s.

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## Wildthings

On this day in Texas History - October 2nd

Texas Revolution begins at Gonzales

On this day in 1835, fighting broke out at Gonzales between Mexican soldiers and Texas militiamen. When Domingo de Ugartechea, military commander in Texas, received word that the American colonists of Gonzales refused to surrender a small cannon that had been given that settlement in 1831 as a defense against the Indians, he dispatched Francisco de Castañeda and 100 dragoons to retrieve it on September 27. Though Castañeda attempted to avoid conflict, on the morning of October 2 his force clashed with local Texan militia led by John Henry Moore in the first battle of the Texas Revolution. The struggle for the "Come and Take It" cannon was only a brief skirmish that ended with the retreat of Castañeda and his force, but it also marked a clear break between the American colonists and the Mexican government.

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## Wildthings

On this day in Texas History - October 3rd

Joiner becomes "Dad" of East Texas Oilfield

On this day in 1930, Columbus Marion "Dad" Joiner brought in the famous Daisy Bradford No. 3, thus opening up the East Texas Oilfield, the largest in the world up to that time. Joiner, an Alabama native, had moved in 1897 to Oklahoma, where he made and lost two fortunes in oil before moving to Texas in 1926. Despite the contrary opinion of geologists, Joiner was convinced of the possibility of oil deposits in Rusk County. In 1930 he drilled eight miles east of Henderson, using a flimsy pine rig and battered tools. His first two unsuccessful efforts drove him and his associates further into debt, but the third well, Daisy Bradford No. 3, changed everything. Joiner's nickname came from the fact that he was "father" of the rich East Texas field. But his prosperity faded as he became involved in several lawsuits and lost his wealth. He died in 1947.

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## Wildthings

Also On this day in Texas History - October 3rd - This took me by surprise since I thought I knew my area well!!

Japanese colony honored

On this day in 1982, a marker was erected at the site of the Kishi Colony to honor Japanese pioneer Kichimatsu Kishi and the settlement he founded. The colony was one of at least three small Japanese settlements established on the Texas coastal plain during the early twentieth century. The community, about ten miles east of Beaumont in central Orange County, was founded by Kishi, a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War. He purchased the land in 1907, and in the following year he and other Japanese immigrants planted their first rice crops. Several, including Kishi, brought their families to the United States. The Japanese colony at Kishi eventually included thirty-two men, five women, and four children. Although the Great Depression led to the Kishi Colony's collapse, a few of the former immigrants remained in Southeast Texas. Many of their descendants still live in the area.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Every guitar has its own unique character and personality, which can be magnified once you commence to beating it up."

----- ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons

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## woodman6415

Bonus Texas Quote of the Day:

"You just can't live in Texas if you don't have a lot of soul."

----- the immortal Doug Sahm, musician extraordinaire

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## woodman6415

Texas Tiny with a huge burger at the Buffalo Ranch Restaurant in Newport Beach, California, 1955. On Tiny's left , Buffalo Ranch owner Gene Clark points at the burger. The other man is renowned saddle maker Harold Porter. "Texas Tiny," whose real name was Guy Cherry, was a radio disc jockey in Southern California at this time, but he was was born in Tolar, Texas and raised on a farm there. He had a remote broadcast on KGER 1390 in Long Beach, Ca. This station was 5000 watts and covered the entire West Coast at night. Truckers loved his program.For awhile his schtick was that he was "the world's biggest cowboy" when he was said to weigh 640 .lbs. He was 53 years old when he died of a heart attack in 1971 and is buried at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside, California.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is Texas beer consumption in 1963, as shown by this card sent in by Traces of Texas reader Robert Lowery. It's fascinating to see how many of the top brands either are not around anymore or have faded into bland corporate brews. Thank you, Robert!


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## Wildthings

On this day in Texas History - October 4th

Texas hero falls at Battery Robinett

On this day in 1862, on the second day of the battle of Corinth, Mississippi, Confederate general Earl Van Dorn called for a series of headlong frontal attacks against a heavily fortified federal position. Col. William Peleg Rogers of the Second Texas Infantry was ordered to lead the vanguard of the assault on Battery Robinett, a small fort anchoring the center of the Union line. After one bloody repulse, Rogers led a second desperate charge. Remaining on horseback in the face of a barrage of cannon and musket fire, and finally carrying the regimental colors himself, Rogers reached the deep trench fronting Battery Robinett, dismounted, and led several hundred Texans and Alabamans down into the trench, up the steep embankment, and into the fort. Suddenly federal reinforcements closed in from both flanks. Rogers shouted, "Men, save yourselves or sell your lives as dearly as possible." A few seconds later he was struck by multiple rifle shots and died instantly. Scores of others fell with him, and the battle soon ended. The Second Texas Infantry had lost more than half its numbers in casualties. The failure of Rogers's attack sealed Van Dorn's defeat at Corinth. In a remarkable tribute to Rogers's personal bravery, Union general William S. Rosecrans ordered his burial attended with full military honors, a ceremony normally reserved only for Confederate general officers.

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## Wildthings

Also On this day in Texas History - October 4th

Smallpox breaks out in Laredo

On this day in 1898, doctors in Laredo began noticing an outbreak of smallpox among the city’s children. The first death occurred in late October, and by January 1899 physicians reported more than 100 cases. Texas health officer W. T. Blunt advocated strict measures to control the epidemic, including house-to-house vaccination and fumigation and the establishment of a field hospital to function as a quarantined area. When some Laredo residents resisted the vaccinations, Blunt requested that the Texas Rangers assist with the health care measures. Friction between some of the residents and the rangers culminated in a gunbattle and ensuing riot in March 1899, and the Tenth United States Cavalry was called in to help maintain the peace. By May the quarantine was lifted

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## woodman6415

Y'all may remember that a couple of days ago I posted a photo of the Kiowa Chief Satanta who, among other things, was the inspiration for "Blue Duck" in "Lonesome Dove." The Texas Quote of the Day finds Satanta confessing to murder and explaining why he did it:

"Once the Kiowas were seated, Tatum [the Indian agent] inquired whether they knew anything about the destruction of a wagon train near Fort Richardson. After a silence the man who rose to reply was Satanta (White Bear), who of all the Kiowa leaders was best known to the whites. Satanta looked straight at Tatum and thumped his chest.

'I have heard that you have stolen a large portion of our annuity goods and given them to the Texans; I have repeatedly asked you for arms & ammunition, which you have not furnished, and made many other requests which have not been granted, You do not listen to my talk. The white people are preparing to build a railroad through our country, which will not be permitted. Some years ago we were taken by the hand & pulled here close to Texans where we have to fight. But we have cut that loose now and are all going with the Cheyennes to the Antelope Hills.

When Gen Custer was here two or three years ago, he arrested me & kept me in confinement several days. But arresting Indians is played out now & is never to be repeated. On account of these grievances, I took, a short time ago, about 100 of my warriors, with the Chiefs Satank, Eagle Heart, Big Tree, Big Bow, & Fast Bear, & went to Texas, where we captured a train not far from Ft Richardson, killed 7 of the men, & drove off about 41 mules. Three of my men were killed, but we are willing to call it even. If any other Indian come here & claims the honor of leading the party he will be lying to you, for I did it myself.'

--------- "Satanta and Big Tree," unpublished manuscript, Oklahoma Historical Society

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Y'all may remember that a couple of days ago I posted a photo of the Kiowa Chief Satanta who, among other things, was the inspiration for "Blue Duck" in "Lonesome Dove." The Texas Quote of the Day finds Satanta confessing to murder and explaining why he did it:
> 
> "Once the Kiowas were seated, Tatum [the Indian agent] inquired whether they knew anything about the destruction of a wagon train near Fort Richardson. After a silence the man who rose to reply was Satanta (White Bear), who of all the Kiowa leaders was best known to the whites. Satanta looked straight at Tatum and thumped his chest.
> 
> 'I have heard that you have stolen a large portion of our annuity goods and given them to the Texans; I have repeatedly asked you for arms & ammunition, which you have not furnished, and made many other requests which have not been granted, You do not listen to my talk. The white people are preparing to build a railroad through our country, which will not be permitted. Some years ago we were taken by the hand & pulled here close to Texans where we have to fight. But we have cut that loose now and are all going with the Cheyennes to the Antelope Hills.
> 
> When Gen Custer was here two or three years ago, he arrested me & kept me in confinement several days. But arresting Indians is played out now & is never to be repeated. On account of these grievances, I took, a short time ago, about 100 of my warriors, with the Chiefs Satank, Eagle Heart, Big Tree, Big Bow, & Fast Bear, & went to Texas, where we captured a train not far from Ft Richardson, killed 7 of the men, & drove off about 41 mules. Three of my men were killed, but we are willing to call it even. If any other Indian come here & claims the honor of leading the party he will be lying to you, for I did it myself.'
> 
> --------- "Satanta and Big Tree," unpublished manuscript, Oklahoma Historical Society



It is said that Santana - White Bear - was a visionary who could see the future as clearly as we can see the present, and that he named himself after his favorite Latin Rock group, Santana.

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## woodman6415

Big Tree, a Kiowa warrior and chief who was born in 1850. He lead quite an adventurous life. Here's what the authorities at the Texas State Historical Association have to say about him:

(ca. 1850–1929). Big Tree (Ado-Eete), Kiowa warrior, chief, and cousin of Satanta, was born somewhere in the Kiowa domain at the time when pressures from the expanding Caucasian population were threatening the tribe's traditional way of life. By the late 1860s the embattled Kiowas were forced to seek an accord with whites. The agreement, arrived at during the Medicine Lodge Treaty Council in 1867, forced Big Tree and the Kiowas to move to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Frustrated by the confinement, Big Tree came under the sway of leaders of the tribal war faction at an early age. He joined Satank, Lone Wolf,qqv and Satanta in raids on settlements inside Indian Territory and across the Red River in Texas. He reputedly was involved in an abortive attack on Fort Sill in June 1870 but really gained notoriety as a result of his participation in the Warren Wagontrain Raid, or Salt Creek Massacre, of May 18, 1871. After this incident, at the urging of Gen. William T. Sherman, the army moved to suppress the Kiowas.

Army activity proved to be unnecessary, however, because, within days of the raid, Satanta, Satank, and Big Tree arrived at Fort Sill to collect their rations. There Satanta boasted of his role in leading the Warren raid and implicated Big Tree and Satank. Sherman had the three chiefs arrested. Big Tree attempted unsuccessfully to escape by diving through a window. He was transferred with the others chiefs, in handcuffs and leg irons, to Jacksboro, Texas, to stand trial for murder. At Jacksboro, in the first instance where Indian chiefs were tried before a civil court, Satanta and Big Tree (Satank had been killed on the way to Jacksboro) were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. However, the federal government, fearing Indian reprisals following the scheduled executions, pressured Texas governor Edmund J. Davis to commute the death sentences to life imprisonment. Davis took that action despite vocal opposition from General Sherman and large segments of the Texas population, and in September 1871 Big Tree and Satanta were transferred to the state prison at Huntsville (see TEXAS STATE PENITENTIARY AT HUNTSVILLE).

The principal effect of this sequence of events was to divide the tribe more firmly between war and peace factions. In Indian Territory federal agents recognized the danger and, hoping to control what promised to be a volatile situation, promised the tribe that the two chiefs would be released and returned upon promises of good behavior. On August 19, 1873, after two years of serving as "hostages" to ensure Kiowa passivity, Big Tree and Satanta were paroled. Their continued freedom, however, was conditional and could be revoked by any hostile acts committed by the Kiowas, even if the two chiefs were not involved.

Yet, despite the stiff parole terms, the Kiowas, allied with Quahadi Comanches, resumed raiding in the winter of 1873–74, and by the next summer Big Tree and Satanta seem to have joined in the attacks. On August 22, 1874, a number of Kiowas, led by Satanta and Big Tree, combined with Quahadis and skirmished with troops during ration distribution at Anadarko Agency, Indian Territory. From there the Indians moved onto the Llano Estacado in Texas, where, on September 9, 1874, a party of 200 Kiowas, including Lone Wolf, Satanta, and Big Tree, attacked Gen. Nelson A. Miles's supply train, some thirty-six wagons escorted by a company of the Fifth Infantry and a detachment of the Sixth Cavalry. For three days the army held off the Indians until, unable to overwhelm the soldiers, the Kiowas drew off and returned home.

This was to be Big Tree's last military venture. The latest series of confrontations convinced the army to step up its patrols across the Llano Estacado, an effort that made life miserable for the constantly fleeing fugitives. Satanta and Big Tree turned themselves in at the Cheyenne Agency in Darlington, Indian Territory, in late September. From there they were transferred in chains to Fort Sill, and on October 6 Satanta was returned to Huntsville, where he committed suicide in 1878.

Big Tree remained imprisoned at Fort Sill until the Kiowas were finally defeated in December 1874. After his release, he spent the remainder of his life counseling peace and acceptance of the white man's ways. His new direction was especially manifested in his drive to discredit the revivalist doctrine preached by the prophet P'oinka in 1887 and in his decision not to participate in the Kiowa Ghost Dance of 1890. He was among those who requested a missionary and was instrumental in establishing the first Baptist mission on the Kiowa reservation. By 1897 Big Tree's conversion was complete; he became a member of the Rainy Mountain Baptist Church and served as a deacon for thirty years. He died at his home in Anadarko on November 13, 1929, his last act of leadership being his unsuccessful opposition to the allotment of Kiowa lands in 1901. He was buried near his home in the Rainy Mountain Cemetery.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On July 5, 1883, Joseph Brinster was legally hanged at the county seat of Ysleta, having been convicted of rape. He had been charged with raping the wife of a non-commissioned officer at Fort Davis and was the first man ever legally hanged in El Paso County. He had to be dropped twice because the first drop did not cause death.

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## woodman6415

I'm not sure but they could have been talking about me !!! Arkey Blues ... right here in my back yard ... 



The Texas Quote of the Day is a snippet of conversation between two ladies that was overheard by a Traces of Texas reader a few weeks ago at Arkey Blues' honky-tonk in Bandera: 

"I ain't saying he's fat. I'm just saying he's warm in the winter and shady in the summer."

You've got to love Texas women for at least TRYING to be polite! :)

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## Wildthings

Yesterday in Texas History - October 5th

Hall for freethinkers burns down in Waco

On this day in 1889, Liberal Hall, the Waco home of the Religious and Benevolent Association, burned to the ground. The association was chartered by a group of Waco citizens led by James D. Shaw in 1882 "for the worship of God, benevolent and religious works." Membership was drawn from a cross-section of the population of Waco, including lawyer Edward J. Gurley. The association began to publish a monthly magazine called the _Independent Pulpit_ in 1883. Edited by Shaw, the publication served as a forum for many of the members' freethinking views. The introduction of such an association was bitterly opposed by churchmen across Central Texas. B. H. Carroll, a Baptist pastor in Waco, preached a sermon entitled "The Agnostic," in which no attempt was made to veil the animosity felt by many members of the community. J. B. Cranfill, editor of the Gatesville _Advance_, called the association the "Hell and Damnation Society" and told his readers that Shaw would turn them from the truth. He described the association as an "asylum for erratic thinkers on religious subjects." Due to financial difficulties and the destruction of Liberal Hall the association faded away after 1889.

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## Wildthings

*Back to Today in Texas History - October 6th*

Freethinker whipped in Bell County

On this day in 1877, botanist and doctor Levi James Russell was whipped for being an infidel and free thinker. The Georgia native was born in 1831 and in 1868 moved to Harrisville, Texas, where he bought a farm and practiced medicine. Russell was for several years the chairman of the committee on medical botany of the Texas State Medical Association (now the Texas Medical Association), which published his report in the _Transactions_ for 1886. He was an incorporator of the Little River Academy, devoted to the study of science; in 1875 he became a charter member and president of the Association of Freethinkers of Bell County. Because of his radical views he was expelled from the Masons and Knights of Pythias. On the night of October 6, 1877, Russell was assaulted for being an infidel. He continued his medical practice and his natural-science collection in Bell County until his death in 1908 at Temple.

*Also Today in Texas History*

Clyde Littlefield, future UT coach, born in Pennsylvania

On this day in 1892, Clyde Littlefield, athlete and track coach, was born in Oil City, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Spindletop, Texas, in 1904. He was an outstanding athlete at the University of Texas, to which he returned as a coach in 1920. Littlefield served as track coach for the next forty-one years. His teams won twenty-five Southwest Conference titles, and many of his athletes became NCAA champions, All-Americans, and Olympic contestants. He was cofounder in 1925 of the Texas Relays. He was on the coaching staff for the United States at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki. Not only was he a track coach, but he served from 1927 to 1933 as UT's head football coach and won two Southwest Conference championships. He died in 1981.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader George Richeson's father, also George Richeson, was the very first employee of HEB in Kerrville. As readers of this page are no doubt aware, HEB was started in Kerrville by Florence Butt. George's father boarded at Mrs. Butt's house and here he is shown standing on the front porch after a freak March snowstorm there, 1915. I ask y'all ... is this not just an AMAZING capture? The woman who lived in this house started a company that now has 80,000+ employees ... and this is the very first one, on her porch. 

Thank you, George. Bravo! Bravo!

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas reader George Richeson's father, also George Richeson, was the very first employee of HEB in Kerrville. As readers of this page are no doubt aware, HEB was started in Kerrville by Florence Butt. George's father boarded at Mrs. Butt's house and here he is shown standing on the front porch after a freak March snowstorm there, 1915. I ask y'all ... is this not just an AMAZING capture? The woman who lived in this house started a company that now has 80,000+ employees ... and this is the very first one, on her porch.
> 
> Thank you, George. Bravo! Bravo!
> 
> 
> View attachment 114584



This is one of the better posts in this thread - a thread chocked full of great posts. That picture, the story behind it, and having the first employee in it - priceless! 

I have a thing for HEB stores. bought my first 33 1/3 LP at an HEB store in Flour Bluff Texas in 1972. This one . . .






It still holds water today, and I still have the album. It's one of the few that didn't get stolen during a storage unit break-in I suffered years ago.


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In October, 1886, El Paso had one saloon for every 232 inhabitants, including women and children. The chances of dying of thirst were pretty slim thereabouts, I reckon.

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> This is one of the better posts in this thread - a thread chocked full of great posts. That picture, the story behind it, and having the first employee in it - priceless!
> 
> I have a thing for HEB stores. bought my first 33 1/3 LP at an HEB store in Flour Bluff Texas in 1972. This one . . .
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It still holds water today, and I still have the album. It's one of the few that didn't get stolen during a storage unit break-in I suffered years ago.



My wife and I love to shop at HEB ... really nowhere else ... the original one is still in Kerrville .... but out of all the different ones we've been in it's by far the worse one at how it's set up inside ... very confusing floor plan ...
the one on 1604 and Bandera rd in Helotes is by far the biggest I've ever been in ... it's huge ... behind it is the very first HEB convenience store .. just completed this year ... it's truly amazing how many of the items they sell are made by HEB right here in San Antonio ...

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> My wife and I love to shop at HEB ... really nowhere else ... the original one is still in Kerrville .... but out of all the different ones we've been in it's by far the worse one at how it's set up inside ... very confusing floor plan ...
> the one on 1604 and Bandera rd in Helotes is by far the biggest I've ever been in ... it's huge ... behind it is the very first HEB convenience store .. just completed this year ... it's truly amazing how many of the items they sell are made by HEB right here in San Antonio ...



HEB, Brookshires, and Sprout's are my favorite big chain grocers. I really liked Delchamps when I lived in Alabama too but we don't have them here, and I think Walmart and Publix have put the whammy on them and other smaller chains. 

But farmer's markets, co-ops, and mom and pop shops get our business first, and what we can't get there we get at Brookshires or Walmart.


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## Wildthings

We were excited when we heard a HEB was coming to our little community. But alas that has fallen thru but rumors are back up again. I love their olive bar OMG!

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> We were excited when we heard a HEB was coming to our little community. But alas that has fallen thru but rumors are back up again. I love their olive bar OMG!



Ya, the olive bar at Central Market is the only place I've found Alfonso olives, the best type! Tony


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## Kevin

Tony said:


> Ya, the olive bar at Central Market is the only place I've found Alfonso olives, the best type! Tony



WTF would you know about olives? 

Oh, never mind.

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## Tony



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## Tony

Kevin said:


> WTF would you know about olives?
> 
> Oh, never mind.



When I was growing up, one of my favorite relatives to visit was my great aunt Stella Callamars, my grandfather's sister. She passed away 3 years ago at the age of 89. When I went there, she would bring me a plate of feta cheese, Alfonso olives and Club crackers. It didn't matter if I had eaten a whole pizza standing on the porch before I went in, I could find room for that. Still one of my favorite meals. Tony

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> When I was growing up, one of my favorite relatives to visit was my great aunt Stella Callamars, my grandfather's sister. She passed away 3 years ago at the age of 89. When I went there, she would bring me a plate of feta cheese, Alfonso olives and Club crackers. It didn't matter if I had eaten a whole pizza standing on the porch before I went in, I could find room for that. Still one of my favorite meals. Tony


Great minds think alike!! I love feta cheese and olives on crackers

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1970, but the trees in question still stand tall.

"Most Christmas Eve services are held within the protective walls of a church building, but one such service, conducted 116 years ago in Texas, was not.

The year was 1854 and the place was a small hill in central Texas overlooking the junction of the San Antonio and Cibolo rivers. The time was midnight. Assembled under these live oak trees on a broad, almost treeless plateau, a strangely garbed group of seven or eight hundred settlers bent in prayer as a young priest conducted Mass before an altar set under the trees.

After the service a few spent the night huddled together under the oaks, while others slept amid their belongings in shallow trenches or in the profusion of tall grass. Thus with little more than a spark of hope and the Holy Spirit to comfort and sustain them, the first emigration of Polish settlers to America passed their Christmas Eve in a strange land.

Nine weeks on a sailing ship and three weeks of foot travel through a hostile land in the dead of winter had left an indelible impression on the minds and bodies of these Polish settlers. Many later moved to other areas of Texas, but some remained to build and establish homes.

During the first year, these sturdy oaks witnessed deprivation, fever, and dissension among the settlers, who by now had little food and no money, and who spoke neither English nor Spanish. Their first homes were of pickets or sticks driven in the ground and covered with mud. The roofs were of grass, and the floors were of dirt covered with grass.

In spite of their many hardships and a dwindling population, the deeply religious people made plans to build a church that first spring. Work began in the summer, and the first Polish church in America was built beside these historic live oaks, which sheltered the first Mass.

Panna Maria, conceived of man's burning love for liberty and freedom, and born of hardship and deprivation, grew in humble and reverent obedience to God. Death of the little community is not imminent, and though these ancient oaks may never see a great city develop, Panna Maria carries the distinction of being the first Polish settlement in the New World and of having contributed to the growth of a great state. "

---------- From "Famous Trees of Texas," third edition, published by the Texas Forest Service

Note: The Panna Maria Oaks can be found on the north side of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, which is located along FM 81 in Panna Maria, Texas. I have seen and photographed this group of oaks and it is gorgeous.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Jed Moorhouse kindly submitted this dynamite photo of the "Giant" set west of Marfa, Texas, as it appeared in 1966 ----- eleven years after the film was made. Jed's mother took this as a snapshot back then. 50 years later, her little Kodak moment is being seen around Texas and around the world. 

Thank you, Jed. What a cool shot!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 90 miles east of El Paso on US 62/180 are extensive surface salt deposits in a desert bolson (a depression with no natural drainage) at the foot of the Guadalupe Mountains. White men first used those flats in mid 1600s, and the Indians likely used them, too. Salt served an important function in meat preservation, in addition to its value as a seasoning. Perhaps more crucial to the men who dug precious metals from the ground , salt was necessary for smelting silver. Silver mines in northern Mexico consumed tremendous quantities, and to meet this need at least two well-traveled salt trails jutted up from Mexico and fanned out though the region.

Flash forward to the 1860s, when corrupt El Paso politicians formed a "salt ring" and began charging fees for salt removal, the injustice of which led to the infamous salt wars of the 1860s and 1870s. The fighting ended in San Elizario with the surrender of a squad of Texas Rangers. Political assassinations and a congressional investigation followed, leading to numerous indictments and the resurrection of Fort Bliss.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one:

"Smoking, while universal, was practically restricted to cigarettes, which were pronounced cig-a-reets, and were handmade by the cowboy. Although in fact the great majority of cowboys had to use both hands in the operation of rolling and lighting, consummate elegance dictated that but a single hand should be employed; and that the rolling should be effected by the finger-tips of this single hand, or, better still, through a method which was successfully followed by some of the cowboys and was studiously attempted by all of them.

In this latter method, the paper, laid above the knee, received a charge of tobacco, and then, without change of position, was rolled into shape by a quick sweep of the ball of the thumb. Next, with the finished cigarette held between the fourth and fifth fingers of the rolling hand, the thumb and forefinger of that hand grasped one loop of the tobacco-sack's draw-string, the puncher's teeth seized the other loop, and a whirling of the sack like a windmill closed its aperture. A dab by the tongue along the papered cylinder, a match drawn by that same rolling hand across tightened trousers, and the cigarette was "working." The performance of this feat was one of the conventional ways of exhibiting ostensible nonchalance when on the back of a moving horse."

------ Phillip Ashton Rollins, "The Cowboy," 1922

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> ---------- From "Famous Trees of Texas," third edition, published by the Texas Forest Service
> 
> Note: The Panna Maria Oaks can be found on the north side of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, which is located along FM 81 in Panna Maria, Texas. I have seen and photographed this group of oaks and it is gorgeous.



I haven't seen these oaks but they are now on my bucket list! Thanks Wendell!

Ahh there's a geocache there and numerous waymarks I've now put on my watch list including this one for the oaks

Panna Maria Oaks

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History -- October 8th

Witte Memorial Museum opens

On this day in 1926, the Witte Memorial Museum opened in San Antonio. The museum was largely the brainchild of Ellen D. Schulz Quillin, who helped start the San Antonio Museum Association and raised $5,000 to purchase Henry Philemon Attwater's collection of natural history specimens. She initially stored the collection at Main Avenue High School, where she was a science teacher, but successfully petitioned the city for a site and funds for a museum to showcase the collection and others like it. The building was constructed with public funds and a $65,000 bequest to the city from local businessman Alfred G. Witte, who stipulated that a museum be built in Brackenridge Park in memory of his parents. The facility was known as the Witte Memorial Museum until 1984, when the name was simplified to Witte Museum. The San Antonio Museum of Art, which opened with much fanfare in 1981 in a former brewery, was originally an outgrowth of the Witte.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History -- October 8th
> 
> Witte Memorial Museum opens
> 
> On this day in 1926, the Witte Memorial Museum opened in San Antonio. The museum was largely the brainchild of Ellen D. Schulz Quillin, who helped start the San Antonio Museum Association and raised $5,000 to purchase Henry Philemon Attwater's collection of natural history specimens. She initially stored the collection at Main Avenue High School, where she was a science teacher, but successfully petitioned the city for a site and funds for a museum to showcase the collection and others like it. The building was constructed with public funds and a $65,000 bequest to the city from local businessman Alfred G. Witte, who stipulated that a museum be built in Brackenridge Park in memory of his parents. The facility was known as the Witte Memorial Museum until 1984, when the name was simplified to Witte Museum. The San Antonio Museum of Art, which opened with much fanfare in 1981 in a former brewery, was originally an outgrowth of the Witte.



One of the most interesting placing I've visited since moving here ... Will be taking my granddaughter back very soon .. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting San Antonio ...

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> One of the most interesting placing I've visited since moving here ... Will be taking my granddaughter back very soon .. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting San Antonio ...



It is a great place to go. It's under renovation right now, check before you make the drive Wendell. There was a Western or Texas Ranger museum next to it, can't remember exactly which that was very good too. Not sure if it's still there with the remodel. Tony

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## woodman6415

You are just not going to believe this. As I've said a million times, the stuff y'all send in never ceases to amaze me. Traces of Texas reader Chris Gerald kindly sent in these three photos of something I never knew existed: photographs of what was no doubt the most unusual Post Office, ever, in the state of Texas. It is the old Dean Post Office in rural Deaf Smith County. I'll let Chris pick up the narrative:

"Like most other counties in the State of Texas, Deaf Smith has had it's share of Post Offices. More that have been abandoned than are still operational. In Deaf Smith County. Ayr, which was the first county seat until it lost that status to La Plata. La Plata (formally known as Grenada) a major stop on the New Mexico to Amarillo road. It also served as the county seat of Deaf Smith County until in 1898 when its 28 houses and businesses were moved to Hereford. Others include Escarbada (on the XIT ranch) in 1889, Kelso from 1907-1908, and the subject of this brief study, the Dean Post Office 1892-1899.

What is especially notable about the Dean Post Office is that it was located in a caliche rock cave on the North bank of the Palo Duro Creek. Individual “boxes” were hand dug into the wall for the settlers in the area to come by and pick up their mail. This location is near the site of an old Indian campground and reliable live water spring. The site made for a perfect resting point for horses and dependable water going from Amarillo area to Hereford. Near the spring, two brothers by the name of Isaach had built a two-room picket house (posts set in the ground, plastered with mud and roofed with sod). They eventually abandoned the house and in 1890 the Dean family occupied the house along with a tent which they had ordered from Montgomery Ward. J.R. Dean was the first Deaf Smith County judge and his son, Thomas served as the first postmaster of this post office. The two postmasters that served there were Thomas H. Dean in 1892, and Edward H. Frillwood, 1895 until it was abandoned.

Mail was delivered from Amarillo to Dean and then on to La Plata. Mr. J.H. Parrish, who had settled on a ranch Southeast of present day Dawn, opened a general store and unofficial post office there. In order to secure regular delivery to Dawn he secured Thomas Dean's help to demonstrate that the route needed to connect through Dawn. Parrish and Dean took turns for six months, delivering mail to Dawn via horseback. They also answered advertisements, and wrote to relatives in order to generate mail volume. The authorities were eventually convinced and designated Dawn a post office also.

This wonderful piece of panhandle history is located on private land that is still farmed and ranched actively. The owners have graciously allowed me to give this history of the site. It is not open to the public as open gates and sight seeing can create problems."

Chris runs the Panhandle Postcards Facebook Page, which is a "must see" for all Texas history buffs. Worthy of a "like" if you are so inclined:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/381851215339659/?__mref=message_bubble

An unbelievable set of photographs. I had never heard of this any of this before. Thank you, Chris, and thanks to the ranch owners for allowing you to tell this amazing story. What a treasure

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Built from the same pink granite from central Texas that the state capitol building is made from, the Tarrant County Courthouse In Fort Worth was completed in 1895 after more than two years of construction. Although the Courthouse building project came in early and nearly 20 percent under budget, the citizens of Tarrant County were outraged by the perceived extravagance, and responded by voting the County Judge and all of the Court Commissioners out of office during the next election. Be that as it may, it's a gorgeous building and I'm glad it turned out the way it did.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...County_Courthouse_Full_E_Fort_Worth_Texas.jpg

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## Wildthings

One of my geocaching challenges is signing at least one cache in all the 254 Texas counties. We have 247/254 completed. It quickly became a County Courthouse run also. Here are a couple of my favorites:
*Ellis County*




*Parker County


 

Sutton County


 *

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## Wildthings

_*Today in Texas History - October 9th*_

*Houston Direct Navigation Company chartered*

On this day in 1866, the Houston Direct Navigation Company was chartered to improve transportation and navigation on Buffalo Bayou and avoid wharfage charges at Galveston. It replaced the Houston Navigation Company, which dominated shipping in the 1850s but failed to survive the Civil War. Under an agreement with the C. H. Mallory steamship line, the new company shipped freight between Houston and New York. In 1869 it transported an estimated 11,554 passengers and 815,466 barrels of materials, including those used in the construction of the International-Great Northern Railroad. The company was operating four passenger steamers, eighteen barges, and three tugs by 1872, when it grossed $165,000 in a single month. When Charles Morgan of the Morgan Lines bought the company in 1873, six steamers, forty barges, and five tugs were in operation. In 1896 the name of the company was changed to Direct Navigation Company by the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, which purchased it from Morgan. Rail competition made the company increasingly unprofitable, and it was abandoned in 1927, when terminal facilities were built at Clinton to serve steamers operating as the Southern Pacific Atlantic Steamship Lines.

_*A Bonus -- Today in Texas History - October 9th*_

*Legendary West Texas historian dies*

On this day in 1995, legendary West Texas historian J. Evetts Haley died in Midland. Haley, born in Belton in 1901, graduated from West Texas Normal College at Canyon in 1925 and subsequently received a master's degree in history from the University of Texas, where he studied under Eugene C. Barker. His book _The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado_ (1929) established him as a premier interpreter of the western range cattle industry. The book was also the subject of libel suits totaling $2.2 million, and set the tone for an often controversial career. Haley's books, including _Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman_ (1936), won critical acclaim, but his conservative political views and outspoken nature often landed him in hot water. He lost his job at UT shortly after becoming chairman of the anti-Roosevelt Jeffersonian Democrats of Texas in 1936. In the early 1940s he sided with the university's board of regents in their notorious dispute with UT president Homer Rainey. In 1956 Haley ran unsuccessfully for governor on a platform that endorsed segregation and opposed labor unions. His book _A Texan Looks at Lyndon,_ issued during the 1964 presidential campaign, was also controversial. Haley's library and personal papers became the cornerstone of the Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, which opened in 1976 in Midland.

and we can't forget also on *Today in Texas History - October 9th

Governor imposes martial law on Freestone County
*
On this day in 1871, Governor Edmund J. Davis imposed martial law on Freestone County in response to reports of coercion and fraudulent voting in the county seat, Fairfield, during the election of October 3-6. Martial law was lifted a month later, on November 10. Freestone County was one of four Texas counties in which martial law was declared during Reconstruction.

What a busy day in Texas History -- carry on!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> One of my geocaching challenges is signing at least one cache in all the 254 Texas counties. We have 247/254 completed. It quickly became a County Courthouse run also. Here are a couple of my favorites:
> *Ellis County*
> View attachment 114719
> 
> *Parker County
> View attachment 114720
> 
> Sutton County
> View attachment 114721 *



Many moons ago I did some cabintry work in the Sutton county courthouse ...

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is super:

"The 'catching of fire' by a pioneer plainsman became almost a science within itself ....As matches were unknown, other means of obtaining fire were necessary, the most common of which was the use of punk [ decayed wood, used as tinder] and steel. But in the prairie country, where there was no punk, the frontiersman had to turn to other ways of catching fire. A substitute for punk was frequently prepared as follows: Red corn cobs were burned to ashes, then the ashes were put in a tin plate and made into a very thin mush with water. Into this mush colored calico was put; when dried, this would readily catch fire from flint and steel.

In spells of rain the rangers were soaked and a fire became a matter of serious concern. Perhaps their powder alone was dry. As a last resort, the scout rubbed a damp rag through powder held in the palm of his hand, until it was saturated with half-melted explosive. Then he slipped off one of his Spanish spurs, placed a percussion cap at the end of a rowel, and wrapped the powder-laden rag around the rowel below the cap. He hit the cap sharply with the back of his Bowie knife. The rag caught the sparks and flashed into a blaze and burned; from this blaze the kindling was set."

----- legendary rancher Charles Goodnight in an interview with historian J. Evetts Haley, 1925

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## woodman6415

Wrestler Dory Funk Sr. after a steel cage death match with Fritz von Erich. Funk was a native of Indiana but moved to Amarillo in 1949. He wrestled primarily in the Texas territories and the Central States territories during his career. Mainly a junior heavyweight, he fought Iron Mike DiBiase, Mike Clancy, Danny Hodge and Verne Gagne. After Dory Jr., his son, . won the NWA Heavyweight championship in 1969, he was at ringside for many of his son`s title defences.

After retirement he became a promoter with Doc Sarpolis in Amarillo, Texas, where he led a thriving wrestling scene which produced many stars, including his sons Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk, as well as Stan Hansen, Harley Race, Gene Kiniski, Tully Blanchard, Ted DiBiase, Tito Santana, Bruiser Brody, Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu. Many of his wrestlers had played football at West Texas State University in nearby Canyon. Funk had a good business relationship with All Japan Pro Wrestling founder Shohei Baba, which led Funk's talent pool to useful international experience.

Funk was also heavily involved with the Cal Farley Boys Ranch in Amarillo.

Funk died on June 3, 1973 at the age of 54 of a heart attack while demonstrating a wrestling hold at his home to a visitor. He was buried at Dreamland Cemetery in Canyon, Texas.

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## woodman6415

This hand-colored tintype is of Pease Ross, a young Comanche boy who was captured at the Battle of the Pease River in 1860 by Texas Ranger and soldier Sul Ross (1838-1896) during the raid when Cynthia Ann Parker was taken from the tribe. The Ross family raised the boy. So if you ever wanted to see a clear image of what an actual Comanche child looked like, one who was born on the plains to a Comanche mother and father, this is it. It is circa 1861 and almost certainly the earliest known photographic image of a full-blooded Comanche. Interestingly, for the life of me I can't figure out what became of him after this photo was taken.

Courtesy of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - October 10th*

*First issue of Telegraph and Texas Register published*

On this day in 1835, the _Telegraph and Texas Register_ published its first issue at San Felipe de Austin. The earliest Texas newspaper to achieve a degree of permanence, it was founded by Gail Borden Jr., Thomas H. Borden, and Joseph Baker and became the official organ of the Republic of Texas. By December 14 the paper claimed a circulation of 500. The advance of Antonio López de Santa Anna's force compelled the publishers to retire after issuing their paper on March 24, 1836. The press was removed to Harrisburg, and the issue for April 14 was being readied when publication was again interrupted by the Mexicans, who captured the printers and threw the press into Buffalo Bayou. During the summer of 1836 Gail Borden obtained a new press in Cincinnati and resumed publication of the _Telegraph_ at Columbia, to which place the Congress of the Republic was summoned. The first Columbia number contained a copy of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. In 1837 the _Telegraph_ was removed on board the _Yellow Stone_ to Houston, the new capital. The paper continued under a variety of names and a series of editors until its final demise in 1877.

*Also on Today in Texas History - October 10th

First Bloys Camp Meeting held in Big Bend region
*
On this day in 1890, forty-three people gathered under a brush arbor in the Davis Mountains for the first Bloys Camp Meeting. The site was Skillman's Grove, sixteen miles southwest of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County. The annual revival was still going strong at the end of the twentieth century, sponsored by Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Disciples of Christ.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - October 10th - oops can't forget this one

Salt War turns bloody
*
On this day in 1877, Charles H. Howard shot and killed Louis Cardis in a store in El Paso. The killing was merely the latest, though hardly the last, violent episode in a long dispute known as the Salt War of San Elizario. The trouble began in 1866 when a group of prominent El Paso Republicans, including Cardis, W. W. Mills, and Albert J. Fountain, sought to acquire title to the salt deposits at the foot of Guadalupe Peak, 100 miles east of the city, and to begin charging fees of the local Mexican Americans, who had for years collected salt there free of charge. The so-called Salt Ring fell apart in 1868, but the plan persisted, and in 1872 Cardis allied himself with Howard, a transplanted Missouri lawyer and a Democrat. After Howard became district judge in 1874, however, he and Cardis had a falling-out of their own. Howard filed on the salt lakes in the name of his father-in-law and set off a riot in September 1877 by arresting two men who had threatened to go for salt. After being held for three days by a mob at San Elizario, Howard agreed to give up his claim and leave the country, but sought out and killed Cardis instead. Howard was arraigned for murder, but in early December returned to San Elizario to press trespassing charges against a caravan of salt-seekers. There he was besieged by a mob. After five days and the deaths of two men, Howard gave himself up to save the lives of his party, but he and two allies were shot by a firing squad of men from Mexico. Although more violence ensued, no one was ever arrested or brought to trial. A congressional investigation attempted to get at the facts, but no positive action was taken except the reestablishment of Fort Bliss, which had been abandoned earlier in the year.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Interestingly, for the life of me I can't figure out what became of him after this photo was taken.
> View attachment 114756


Here's a little info I found

Pease Ross (Comanche surname unknown)
Also Known As: "Willie"
Birthdate: circa 1851
Death: Died 1883
* Immediate Family: *
Husband of Texana Ross Thomas (nee Manning) 
Father of Samuel David Ross

This is a pretty good read

One Little Indian Boy

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## woodman6415

SAN ANTONIO – Alamo City get ready because Willie Nelson is returning to the Majestic Theatre.

In a press release on Monday, The Majestic Theatre announced Willie Nelson will be performing on Nov. 22.

Willie is a seasoned veteran with a six-decade career and numerous albums. According to the release, the iconic Texan is the genius behind the historic recordings of _Crazy_, _Stardust_, and _Red Headed Stranger_. He has earned almost every award given to a musician as well as being an author, actor, and activist. He continues to thrive as a relevant and progressive musical and cultural force.

Willie tours tirelessly, taking his music and fans on a seemingly endless journey to places that are well worth the ride, according to the release.

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## woodman6415

Col. Robert Hall with his dogs in Cotulla, Texas, 1885. Note the powder horn around his neck and the carbide lantern by his side. He was a veteran of three wars. Here is his "Find a Grave" entry:

"Birth: Apr. 8, 1809 South Carolina, USA
Death: Dec. 19, 1899 Cotulla
La Salle County Texas, USA
Married Mary Minerva "Polly" King 6/20/1837 in TX

Robert Hall was a veteran of three wars, a "Minuteman", farmer, rancher, Indian fighter, cavalryman, scout, husband, father, and a proud member of Colonel John Gladden King's Family.

Born April 14, 1809 one of five children, to James B. Hall and Rebecca Gassaway in the Rocky River District of South Carolina on the Charleston Road.

1828 Robert Hall's family moved to the new District of Tennessee and built the first house by White's on the Choctaw Bluffs in Memphis at the mouth of Wolf Creek.

1834-Employed by Mississippi planter, Charles McGee to oversee his plantation.

Enlisted at Natchez with Captain Earl's company as an enrolling officer in New Orleans.

Joined the Texas Army at Camp Johnston commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston.

Robert Hall settled in Montgomery County and made a crop on the Clark plantation and married Mary Minerva "Polly" King, daughter of John G. King Sr. Their marriage license was issued and recorded in Gonzales County May 31, 1838

1850 he and his family were living on Sandies Creek in Gonzales County. He and Polly were on the Guadalupe in 1860 with ten children. He spent three years in the Confederacy and settled later at Indian Bend on the Nueces River at Rock Crossing between Carrizo Springs and Cotulla, Texas. After his wife died Robert made his home in Cotulla.

In later years, he frequently wore Indian suits which he had made and beaded. They were later displayed in the Hall of State in Dallas along with the carved ivory powderhorn. A sword he confiscated at Buena Vista plus his picture were in the Nogales Museum in Seguin.

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## woodman6415

Two future presidents of the United States at home in Midland circa 1955. I'll bet if you'd told them that BOTH would be President they would not have believed you. I know I don't have to remind y'all that his page is politically non-partisan and friendly so kindly leave your soapbox at the door. No matter what you think of the Bushs', they are both indeed Traces of Texas.

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> Two future presidents of the United States at home in Midland circa 1955. I'll bet if you'd told them that BOTH would be President they would not have believed you. I know I don't have to remind y'all that his page is politically non-partisan and friendly so kindly leave your soapbox at the door. No matter what you think of the Bushs', they are both indeed Traces of Texas.
> 
> 
> View attachment 114845



I can't stand either one of them any more than I could LBJ and wish none of the scoundrels had any connection to Texas. I didn't bring out my soapbox.


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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day comes from 1857 and finds Frederick Law Olmsted describing the gunplay that frequently occurred in San Antonio back then:

"More often than otherwise, the parties meet upon the plaza by chance, and each, on catching sight of his enemy, draws a revolver and fires away. As the actors are under more or less excitement, their aim is not apt to be of the most careful and sure; consequently it is, not seldom, the passers-by who suffer. Sometimes it is a young man at a quiet dinner in a restaurant who receives a ball in the head, sometimes an old negro woman returning from market who gets winged. After disposing of all their lead, the parties close to try their steel, but as this species of metallic amusement is less popular, they generally contrive to be separated ('Hold me! Hold me!') by friends before the wounds are mortal. If neither is seriously injured, they are brought to drink together on the following day, and the town waits for the next excitement."

------ Frederick Law Olmsted, "A Journey Through Texas," 1857

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## Wildthings

_*Today in Texas History - October 13th * (a busy day in history)_

*Voters overwhelmingly approve annexation*

On this day in 1845, the voters of the Republic of Texas approved an ordinance to accept annexation by a vote of 4,245 to 257. They also adopted the proposed state constitution by a vote of 4,174 to 312. The annexation of Texas to the United States had been a topic of political and diplomatic discussions since the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Although most Texans had been in favor of annexation and had voted for it as early as 1836, constitutional scruples, fear of war with Mexico, and the controversy of adding another slave state to the union prevented the acceptance of annexation by the United States until 1845.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - October 13th*

*New Orleans Greys assemble in historic meeting*

On this day in 1835, the New Orleans Greys, two companies of United States volunteers that served together in the Texas Revolution, were organized at a meeting held in the grand coffee room of Banks's Arcade in New Orleans. Although the disasters at the Alamo and Goliad destroyed the Greys as military units, at least seven of them were present at the battle of San Jacinto. The Greys were one of the few volunteer units able to claim Bexar, the Alamo, San Patricio, Refugio, Coleto, Goliad, and San Jacinto as battle honors.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - October 13th*

*Alexander Gregg consecrated first Episcopal bishop of Texas*

On this day in 1859, the Rev. Alexander Gregg was consecrated as the first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. The diocese was actually organized in 1849 at a meeting in Matagorda, but several candidates had declined the position of bishop due to concerns about the young diocese's financial status before Gregg finally accepted. Gregg, born in 1819 in South Carolina, had been serving as rector of a parish in Cheraw in that state. He was consecrated at the General Convention in Richmond, Virginia, and moved to Texas in January 1860. Gregg was a slaveholder and an ardent supporter of the Confederacy; with the coming of secession, he held that the church in the Confederacy must follow the government and separate itself from the church in the United States, though after the Civil War he favored reuniting them. Gregg also established the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. He died in Austin in 1893.

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## Kevin

This is a great thread. I'm not crazy about the title but the thread itself is full of great stuff.


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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> This is a great thread. I'm not crazy about the title but the thread itself is full of great stuff.



What's wrong with the title ?


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> What's wrong with the title ?



I didn't say there's anything "wrong" with it, just never been crazy about it personally. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it.


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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> I didn't say there's anything "wrong" with it, just never been crazy about it personally. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it.



I copied it from Traces of Texas Facebook page . Seemed to fit at the time


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## woodman6415

I went to the chili cook off 8 years running 1995 to 2003 ... always camped at the "behind the store " but always spent time at the big one "CASA" it is about 8 more miles down the highway ... anytime you get between 40000 to 60000 partyers camping in a small area it's going to be a fun week ... seen some things I never thought I'd see ... some I can't unsee or forget ...The DPS uses it as a training for DUI stops and arrest ... send in a bunch of troopers .. the campgrounds are on private land but lots of highway in between ... if arrested the jail is in Alpine 80 miles away ... never me but have had to bail stupid friends out ...

Ah, it is October, that time in Texas when a young man's heart turns to thoughts of football and hunting and .... chili. That's right, folks, it's just about time for the world championship chili cookoffs in Terlngua, which happen the first weekend in November. There are actually two world championship chili cookoffs, the result of a feud that resulted in a "chili divorce" quite a few years back. I took this photo of cookoff contender "Queen Beef" at the Frank Tolbert-Wick Fowler "Behind the Store" cookoff out there in 2014, but both are just about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. I notice that both the Texas Tornadoes AND Gary P. Nunn are playing at the Tolbert-Fowler "Behind the Store" cookoff this year. What could be more fun than being in the desert and dancing to the Tornadoes or Gary P.? Just about nothing, is what. See y'all out there!

The chili teams also compete on showmanship ... it's amazing the time and money spent on props .... if you have never been to dessert area there is absolutely nothing but rocks here ... if you want it you have to haul it...

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The old Taylor County jail was built in 1879 in Buffalo Gap, Texas. Buffalo Gap, you will recall, was the county seat before it was moved to Abilene. The jailhouse, which still stands, was built on unstable soil, so the builder hollowed out pockets in the limestone blocks and put in cannonballs hauled from Vicksburg, Mississippi after the Civil War to lock the blocks together. It is said that today, well more than 100 years later, the building, now a museum, has no cracks in it.

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## woodman6415

Florence Butt, the founder of what became the HEB grocery stores, behind the counter of her very first store in Kerrville, circa 1910. I see Kellog's Corn Flakes, National Oats, some kind of biscuits etc... Florence started the store with a nest egg of exactly $60, which was a tidy sum in 1905. The store was first called the C.C. Butt Grocery Store and occupied just 750 square feet at the time. It sold bulk food on credit and also made deliveries. Florence made $50.60 in sales in the first month. And the rest, as they say, is history. 111 years later, HEB has annual revenues of close to 25 billion dollars. Billion.... with a "b." Florence passed away in 1954 at the age of 90.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> I copied it from Traces of Texas Facebook page . Seemed to fit at the time


I like it!! Pay no attention to that crazy leprechaun!

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## SENC

Wildthings said:


> Pay no attention to that crazy leprechaun!


That goes without saying.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

If you would like to appear especially gracious, bodacious, vivacious, sagacious, ostentatious, capacious, and perspicacious over dinner tonight, inform your dining companions that it was in 1906 that former Governor James Hogg’s last wishes included being buried with a walnut tree at his feet and a pecan tree as a headstone, the nuts to be “given out among the plain people so that they may plant them and make Texas a land of trees.”

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - October 14th*

*Inventor and early settler born in Norway*

On this day in *1843*, Ole Ringness was born in Norway. He and his parents arrived in Texas in 1852 and eventually settled in a Bosque County Norwegian community. As the community's first mail carrier, Ole made a regular four-day round trip between Norman Hills, seven miles west of Clifton, and Fort Worth. In his work on the family farm, he observed a wheel of his wagon cup on the axle. As the wheel became more cupped, it moved larger amounts of mud. Thus he conceived the idea of a disc plow and disc harrow and made models of them in his father's blacksmith shop. On July 26, 1872, as he journeyed to Washington, D.C., to present his case for a patent on his inventions, he died under mysterious circumstances. The family never pursued a patent for his inventions, and similar farm equipment was patented by a plow company. A model of one of Ringness's three original disc plows is in the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin.

*Frustrated ex-ranger killed when he smashes his malfunctioning rifle against rock*

On this day in *1867*, Lt. James Pike of the First United States Cavalry allegedly died when his rifle, which had malfunctioned during an Indian attack, accidentally discharged when he smashed it against a rock in frustration. Pike, whose birth date is unknown, arrived in Texas in 1859 and joined John Henry Brown's company of Texas Rangers. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Pike left Texas and went to Ohio, where he passed himself off as the nephew of Albert Pike. He joined the Fourth Ohio Cavalry in 1861 and saw considerable action as a scout, spy, and courier under Gen. William T. Sherman, who praised his "skill, courage and zeal" but warned him to "cool down." Pike was captured in 1864 and imprisoned in South Carolina, but escaped and returned to Ohio, where he wrote his memoirs of ranger and army service. In the reorganization of the army after the war, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the First U.S. Cavalry and saw at least some duty in California. _The Scout and Ranger: Being the Personal Adventures of Corporal Pike, of the Fourth Ohio Cavalry_ (1865) is highly readable and thought to be generally factual, though many of Pike's claims are demonstrably false. J. Frank Dobie and John H. Jenkins both praised it highly.

*Future general and president born in Denison*

On this day in *1890*, Dwight David Eisenhower, general of the army and thirty-fourth president of the United States, was born in a two-story frame house in Denison, Texas. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas. Other presidents have had strong ties to the Lone Star State. Lyndon Baines Johnson was born near Stonewall in the Texas Hill Country, and George H. W. Bush and son George W. Bush have called Texas home for many years.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day: 

"There are very few things in life I cannot afford, but patience is one of them."

------ Larry Hagman, aka J.R. Ewing aka Major Tony Nelson aka ... you get the picture. Larry was born in Fort Worth and died in Dallas.

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## woodman6415

Never been ... on my to do bucket list now ...

It's Friday night in Texas y'all! I took this photo in Walnut Springs on just such a night about five months ago. A great place to wet your whistle and highly recommended should you find yourself out thataway. Time to put on your boogie shoes. Or boots, as the case may be.

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## woodman6415

*Craddock: Curious case of the purloined possum*

On an October morn in 1909, President William Howard Taft was in a bad mood as his train left Dallas and headed east toward Longview.

Now, it was bad enough that the usually jovial Taft had a severe sore throat. But even worse, someone had stolen the possum the president intended to have for lunch later that day.L

Inaugurated in March 1909, Republican Taft was making his first trip to Texas as chief executive. On Oct. 23, Taft's train, the "Mayflower," had pulled into Dallas for a banquet and presidential visit to the State Fair of Texas.

The next morning the train left Big D for East Texas. That's when it was discovered the possum had somehow made his escape from a cage in the "Mayflower" baggage car.

Telegraph
"A fat, sleek, shiny looking possum was put aboard the train yesterday at Hempstead," the Houston Post explained. "He occupied one-half of an orange crate, while on the other side was a 'mess' of sweet potatoes intended to be served as a concomitant of the feast. Then came the astonishing news that the possum had disappeared." 

Tongue-in-cheek, the paper noted the possum's theft had come despite the presence of "at least a million policemen, special officers, plain clothes men, deputy sheriffs and militiamen on guard." 

During a brief stop at Wills Point, someone sent a telegraph ahead to Longview, where Taft was scheduled to make a speech. Could Longview present a cooked possum-and-tater meal during the train's Gregg County stop? 

The "Mayflower" pulled into Longview's downtown Texas and Pacific depot at high noon. Some 6,000 people (Longview's population was barely 5,000 in 1909) were on hand to welcome Taft. It was, after all, the town's first-ever visit by a U.S. president.

Mayor G.A. Bodenheim welcomed Taft to town. The president seemed genuinely pleased with the impressive decorations, including a 25-foot-tall "WELCOME" arch covered with bunting and U.S. flags.

Despite his sore throat, Taft delighted the crowd with a speech. "I have enjoyed greatly my trip through Texas, and I appreciate the cordial, sincere expressions of good will and welcome by the people of Texas," he said.

Taft also joked that he likely had "more friends and fewer votes" in Texas than any other state in the Union. (He only got 22 percent of Texas' presidential votes against his Democrat opponent, William Jennings Bryan.) Taft said he was pleased to be in Longview, the hometown of Texas Gov. Thomas Mitchell Campbell. 

After Taft's talk, Bodenheim invited Longview resident Cooper Sheftall to the podium. Sheftall presented a freshly prepared possum-and-tater lunch to the president.

The "Mayflower" continued on to Marshall, where another large audience waited for the president. "The president apologized for his inability to make a speech," said the Dallas Morning News.

The train slowed to a crawl at Jefferson and Atlanta, allowing Taft to step to the train's rear platform to wave at the crowds.

That afternoon the train pulled into Texarkana where an "immense crowd" had gathered.

"But the president's voice was so far gone, owing to his earlier attempts to speak, that he could hardly say a word or two," reported the Houston Post.

Supreme Court

Taft lost his 1912 re-election race to Theodore Roosevelt, then became professor of constitutional law at Yale University.

The former president was appointed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1921, retiring from the bench in early 1930. He died on March 8 that year at age 72.

William Howard Taft enjoyed meeting people but the U.S. presidency had worn him down. When he welcomed incoming President Woodrow Wilson to the White House in 1913, Taft said, "I'm glad to be going. This is the lonesomest place in the world."

— Van "Bon appétit" Craddock's newest book is "East Texas Tales, Book 2," available at Barron's, Gregg County Historical Museum and East Texas Oil Museum. His column appears Sunday. Email [email protected]

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## woodman6415

The events of the Texas War for independence from Mexio are well known. What is less well known is that these events were actually the SECOND attempt by Anglos in Texas to secede from Mexico. The Fredonian Rebellion (December 21, 1826 – January 23, 1827) was the first attempt by Anglo settlers in Texas to secede. The settlers, led by Empresario Haden Edwards, declared independence from Mexican Texas and created the Republic of Fredonia near Nacogdoches. The short-lived republic encompassed the land the Mexican government had granted to Edwards in 1825 and included areas that had been previously settled. Edwards's actions soon alienated these established residents, and the increasing hostilities between them and settlers recruited by Edwards led Victor Blanco of the Mexican government to revoke Edwards's contract.

In late December 1826, a group of Edwards's supporters took control of the region by arresting and removing from office several municipality officials affiliated with the established residents. Supporters declared their independence from Mexico. Although the nearby Cherokee tribe initially signed a treaty to support the new republic because a prior agreement with the Mexican government negotiated by Chief Richard Fields was ignored, overtures from Mexican authorities and respected Empresario Stephen F. Austin convinced tribal leaders to repudiate the rebellion. On January 31, 1827, a force of over 100 Mexican soldiers and 250 militiamen from Austin's colony marched into Nacogdoches to restore order. Haden Edwards and his brother Benjamin fled to the United States. Chief Richard Fields was killed by his own tribe. A local merchant was arrested and sentenced to death, but later paroled.

The rebellion led Mexican President Guadalupe Victoria to increase the military presence in the area. As a result, several hostile tribes in the area halted their raids on settlements and agreed to a peace treaty. The Comanche abided by this treaty for many years. Fearing that through the rebellion the United States hoped to gain control of Texas, the Mexican government severely curtailed immigration to the region from the US. This new immigration law was bitterly opposed by colonists and caused increasing dissatisfaction with Mexican rule. Some historians consider the Fredonian Rebellion to be the beginning of the Texas Revolution. In the words of one historian, the rebellion was "premature, but it sparked the powder for later success.

As an aside, I have always loved the name/word "Fredonia." It's just a great-sounding word. Like maybe if I ever get another dog I'm naming him/her "Fredonia" or something.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 15th*

*First state Sängerfest held in New Braunfels *(I've been to the Wurstfest there)

On this day in *1853*, the first state _Sängerfest,_ or singers' festival, began in New Braunfels. After a successful Fourth of July celebration in 1853, the New Braunfels Germania male singing society invited similar organizations from Austin, San Antonio, and Sisterdale to a two-day festival held in New Braunfels on October 15 and 16, 1853. Each group sang a cappella separately and joined together for works by Felix Mendelssohn and Heinrich Marschner. At the second _Sängerfest,_ held in San Antonio in May 1854, when the societies formed the Texas State Sängerbund (Deutsch-Texanischer Sängerbund or German Texan Singers' League), participation extended to singers from Coletoville, La Grange, Indianola, and Victoria. Succeeding _Sängerfeste_ were held in New Braunfels and Fredericksburg and brought added members or increased musical sophistication. Despite interruptions caused by the Civil War and World War I, the _Sängerfeste_ survived and continue to this day. Wherever held, the festivals became the impetus for expanded musical activity on the purely local level, while they themselves ceased to be the sole property of the Germans as progressively more outsiders participated in the concerts and attended them.

*Hearst hosts New York benefit for Galveston orphans*

On this day in *1900*, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst hosted a charity bazaar at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City to benefit children orphaned by the hurricane that had devastated Galveston on September 8. The hurricane did considerable damage to the Island City Protestant Orphans Home and, though none was injured, the children were temporarily removed to the Buckner Baptist Children's Home in Dallas. In 1901 the Island City Protestant Orphans Home was renamed the Galveston Orphans' Home; the $50,000 Hearst had raised was used for rebuilding, and the new structure opened in 1902. The institution, which had begun accepting children other than orphans during the Great Depression, was formally renamed the Galveston Children's Home in 1976. In 1984 the Galveston Children's Home, along with the Lasker Home for Homeless Children and other children's facilities in Galveston, merged to become the Children's Center, Inc

*Emmett Scott appointed to reduce racial tension*

On this day in *1917*, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker appointed Emmett Jay Scott his special assistant to urge the equal and impartial application of Selective Service regulations, to improve the morale of black servicemen, and to investigate racial incidents and charges of unfair treatment. For Scott, born in Houston in 1873, the appointment became a small part of an outstanding career as a public servant, editor, and author. He was awarded a master of arts degree from Wiley College in 1901 and an LL.D. by Wiley College and Wilberforce University (Ohio) in 1918. He founded the Houston _Texas Freeman_, the oldest black newspaper published west of the Mississippi, which he edited from 1894 to 1897. He then moved to Tuskegee, Alabama, where he worked with Booker T. Washington until 1915; he became Washington's chief adviser, confidant, and even ghostwriter. Scott also served as secretary of the National Negro Business League from 1902 to 1922, as a member of the American Commission to Liberia in 1909, as secretary to the International Conference on the Negro in 1912, and as secretary-treasurer of Howard University from 1919 to 1934. During World War II he was personnel director for the Sun Shipbuilding Company in Chester, Pennsylvania. His books include _Booker T. Washington: Builder of a Civilization_ (1916), which he coauthored with Lyman Beecher Stowe; _Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War_ (1919); and _Negro Migration During the War_ (1920). Scott died on December 11, 1957, at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., after a long illness

*Texas native given command of both American air forces in England*

On this day in *1943*, Texas native Ira Eaker was promoted from commander of the Eighth Air Force to assume command of both American air forces in England, the Eighth and the Ninth. Eaker, an aviation pioneer, joined the army in 1917 and transferred to the Army Air Corps in 1918. He was one of ten pilots chosen to make the Pan American Goodwill Flight in 1926, and pioneered in flight refueling in the inter-war years. During his World War II service in England between 1942 and 1944, Eaker was instrumental in the development and application of daylight precision bombing in the European Theater. He went on to command the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces in 1944-45. He died in 1987.

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## woodman6415

*My mother was from Eden. 
The city park is named after the General.
My home town is San Angelo and I can remember reading his columns in the Standard Times. 

EAKER, IRA CLARENCE*(1896–1987). Ira Clarence Eaker, aviation pioneer and United States Air Force general, was born on April 13, 1896, at Field Creek, Texas, the eldest of five boys born to Young Yancy and Dona Lee (Graham) Eaker. In 1906 the family moved to Concho County, where they spent three years in the rural community of Hills before moving to a farm a mile outside of Eden. They moved to southeastern Oklahoma in 1912 and returned to Eden ten years later. Ira attended public school at Hills, in Eden, and in Kenefic, Oklahoma. He graduated from Southeastern State Teachers College (now Southeastern Oklahoma State University) at Durant, Oklahoma, and entered the United States Army in 1917.

Eaker was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Infantry Section, Officers Reserve Corps, on August 15, 1917, and assigned to the Sixty-fourth Infantry at Fort Bliss, Texas. He received a similar commission in the regular army on October 26, 1917. His aviation experience began in March 1918, when he was directed to attend ground school at the University of Texas in Austin and flight training at Kelly Field at San Antonio. He received his pilot rating and a promotion to first lieutenant on July 17, 1918. After training, he was sent to Rockwell Field, California, where he met Col. H. H. "Hap" Arnold and Maj. Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz, two men with whom he had a close military relationship for the rest of his life. In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the Second Aero Squadron and sent to the Philippines for a two-year tour. In 1920 he was reassigned as commander of the Third Aero Squadron and promoted to captain. Upon return to the United States in 1921 he was assigned to Mitchel Field, New York; while there, he attended Columbia Law School. He subsequently spent three years to the staff of Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, chief of air service, in Washington, D.C.

Captain Eaker was one of ten pilots chosen to make the Pan American Goodwill Flight in 1926. During the flight both members of one crew died in a crash. Eaker and his copilot were the only team to complete the entire 23,000-mile itinerary, which included stops in twenty-three countries. The flight left San Antonio on December 21 and ended at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., where President Calvin Coolidge presented the pilots with the Distinguished Flying Cross, a new award authorized by Congress just a few months earlier. In 1929 Eaker, with Tooey Spaatz and Elwood R. Quesada (both of whom were later generals), flew a Fokker tri-motor named the _Question Mark_ for 150 hours, 40 minutes, and 15 seconds, shuttling between Los Angeles and San Diego, refueling with a hose lowered from a Douglas C-1. They set an endurance record that endured for many years. In 1930 Eaker flew the first transcontinental flight that depended solely on aerial refueling. Eaker was promoted to major in 1935. Beginning on June 2, 1936, he flew blind under a hood from Mitchel Field, New York, to March Field, Riverside, California. Maj. William E. Kepner (who also became a general) flew alongside in this experiment in instrument flight as a safety observer. He stated that Eaker "was under the hood and flying blind" the entire time except for eight take-offs and landings.

During the middle to late 1930s Eaker attended the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, and the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He also served on the Air Staff in Washington. He was promoted to full colonel in December 1941 and to brigadier general in January 1942, when he was assigned to England to form and command the Eighth Bomber Command. He was instrumental in the development and application of daylight precision bombing in the European Theater. This tactic was a major factor in the defeat of the Germans. In December 1942 Eaker became commander of the Eighth Air Force in England. On September 13, 1943, he received promotion to lieutenant general, and on October 15, 1943, he assumed overall command of both American air forces in the United Kingdom, the Eighth and the Ninth. He took over as commander of the joint Mediterranean Allied Air Forces on January 15, 1944. With 321,429 officers and men and 12,598 aircraft, MAAF was the world's largest air force. On March 22, 1945, Eaker was transferred back to Washington to become deputy chief of the army air force under Gen. H. H. Arnold. In that position, representing the air force, he transmitted the command from President Harry Truman to General Spaatz, who was then commanding the Pacific Air Forces, to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. Eaker announced his plans to retire from the army in mid-June 1947, saying that he felt he could do more to provide security for the United States out of uniform.

After retirement he was associated with Hughes Aircraft from 1947 to 1957. In 1957 he became a corporate director of Douglas Aircraft Company, a post he held until 1961, when he returned to Hughes as a consultant, with the freedom to pursue a long-desired goal of being a journalist. He had already coauthored three books with H. H. Arnold: _This Flying Game_ (1936), _Winged Warfare_ (1941), and _Army Fliers_ (1942). In 1964 he began a newspaper column in the San Angelo _Standard Times_ that continued for eighteen years and was syndicated by Copley News Services in 700 newspapers. In 1974 he transferred to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. He wrote from the point of view of a military man on security matters. Between 1957 and 1981, 329 of his articles appeared in military periodicals. In 1972 he became the founding president of the United States Strategic Institute.

Among his more than fifty decorations were the Congressional Gold Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Order of the Partisan Star (First Class), the Silver Star, and the Wright Trophy; he was also made a Knight of the British Empire. He was promoted from lieutenant general to general by an act of Congress in 1985.

Eaker married Leah Chase about 1930; the couple had no children, and the marriage ended in divorce the year it began. On November 23, 1931, he married Ruth Huff Apperson. General Eaker died on August 6, 1987, at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. He was survived by his wife.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 
Fort Worth _Star-Telegram_, August 6, 1987. James Parton, _"Air Force Spoken Here": General Ira Eaker an_

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Gulf Coast in Texas extends some 367 miles as the crow flies, but along the major highways between Brownsville and Orange you will have to drive 460 miles to cover that distance. In Texas, the gulf's total shoreline ----- including bays, islands, river mouths etc... ----- measures some 3,360 miles.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day:

"In the absence of an act of God, serious family injury, or some other emergency, I pledge to stay here as the last man and to do everything I can to help other last men remain in this country. We promise to stay here ’til hell freezes over and skate out on the ice."

----- The oath of the "Last Man Club," organized by John McCarty of the Dalhart Texan during the dust bowl. The Last Man Club was a mutual support group for farmers who chose to stay in the American Great Plains in spite of the devastation caused by the Dust Bowl natural disaster of the 1930s. McCarty, an editor of the Dalhart Texan, formed the Last Man Club in Dalhart, Texas to support farmers fighting to remain in the drought-swept Great Plains or, as he called it, "Grab a Root and Growl." Members of the club pledged to help each other remain on the land for as long as possible and that each would be the last man standing.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> The Gulf Coast in Texas extends some 367 miles as the crow flies, but along the major highways between Brownsville and Orange you will have to drive 460 miles to cover that distance. In Texas, the gulf's total shoreline ----- including bays, islands, river mouths etc... ----- measures some 3,360 miles.




I bet I've been to 3,321 miles of it!!

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## Wildthings

*On this day in Texas History -- October 17th*

*President Lamar and cabinet arrive in new capital of Austin*

On this day in 1839, Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, and his cabinet arrived in the new capital city of Austin. Lamar had appointed Edwin Waller to lay out the new capital at the site of the community of Waterloo, on what was then the Indian frontier, as the first step in a grand scheme to extend the republic all the way to the Pacific Ocean. When Sam Houston was elected president for the second time, in 1841, he feared a Mexican attack on Austin. Houston declared Washington-on-the-Brazos the capital of the republic and ordered the government archives removed from Austin, but his order touched off the Archive War, and Austin was ultimately reaffirmed as capital in 1844.

*Sam Houston issues passport*

On this day in 1844, Republic of Texas president Sam Houston wrote a passport for the widow of Ben-Ash, chief of the Battise Village of the Coushatta Indians. The passport states: "Know Ye that the bearer hereof, the widow of Ben-Ash who died lately at this place (Washington-on-the-Brazos), is on her way home to the Coshattee tribe of Indians...near Smithfield on the Trinity river; and they are hereby recommended to the hospitality and kind treatment of the good people of the Republic on the road." Battise Village was on the west bank of the Trinity River at the Coushatta Trace crossing of the Trinity, near the site of present Point Blank in San Jacinto County. Records of the Republic of Texas indicate that Ben-Ash participated in the nation's activities relating to Indian affairs. The passport not only gave his widow safe passage, but also gave future historians his year and place of death.


*Texans found first black police organization in the country*

On this day in 1935, black police officers in South Texas organized the Texas Negro Peace Officers Association, the first black police organization in the United States. Its early efforts included overcoming hostility toward black peace officers, providing burial and defense funds for its members, and promoting the hiring of black officers. Improvement in race relations and the formation of local black police associations have allowed the organization to concentrate on scholarships and assistance to the needy. In 2001 state headquarters of the organization, now called the Texas Peace Officers Association, were in Dallas.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the day comes from Noah Smithwick's classic account of early Texas, "The Evolution of a State." Smithwick knew Travis and Houston and fought under Jim Bowie at the Battle of Concepcion a few months before the fall of the Alamo. Here, Smithwick is describing Webber's Prairie in Travis County (Austin) in 1853:

"The country was wild, and infested with predatory beasts, the most troublesome of which were the big gray wolves — lobos — 'the Mexicans called them. Many of them stood three feet high, measuring six or seven feet from tip to tip, with powerful jaws, which enabled them to drag down a grown cow single-handed if they could separate it from the band. Their endurance and speed were such that one could run down a deer.

Between my house and the timber belt of the Colorado river, stretched a prairie about a mile across. One evening near sundown, myself being away from home, my wife, looking across the prairie, saw the milk cows coming on a run and behind them two big wolves. One cow, falling a little behind the band, was seized by the foremost of the wolves, but her calls for help caused the other cattle to turn and fight the fierce brutes back. The cows then started again for home, but the wounded one again fell behind and again was seized, but she managed to tear herself loose. By this time the chase had reached half across the prairie, and my wife, unable to stand and see one of her favorites torn to pieces by their ferocious pursuers, calling to the dogs, started to the rescue.

The dogs, seeing the oncoming chase, dashed away and my wife after them, an unsafe thing, as the lobo had been known to make a stand and whip off dogs, and being intent on their victim, whose blood had already whetted their appetites, it would not have been surprising if they had refused to be vanquished. The dogs, encouraged by the presence and voice of their mistress, sped away on their mission of rescue, and, though wary of attacking the enemy, checked their advance, giving their torn and bleeding victim a chance to escape, till the wolves, catching sight of my wife, turned and made off to the timber. The cow was frightfully torn and died from the effects. After losing several cows and a number of calves, many of the latter being killed within a few hundred yards of the house, I began to treat the lobo family with strychnine, which noticeably decreased the loss of my cattle.

These wolves were a distinct species, having long, shaggy hair about the neck and shoulders, something like a lion's mane ; they did not hunt in packs, like the northern wolf, but rather in pairs. Wild cattle when attacked by them would form a ring around their calves, and presenting a line of horns fight them off; but gentle cattle were wont to break for home when frightened, as if understanding that they would be safe there, and woe to the unfortunate that fell behind. Milk cows lived on the range and were only separated from their calves during the intervals be- tween milkings, the calves being kept up during the day while the cows went out to feed, and the cows kept in at night to give the calves the benefit of pasture; so that the little bovines were at the mercy of the prowling lobos, who, under cover of darkness, ventured quite near to the house; and sometimes before we had gone to bed we would be startled by a piteous bleating, followed by an answering bellow from the cows, which would break from the inclosure and rush to the rescue, together with dogs and men; but though the wolf was cheated of his prey, he had inflicted fatal injuries, not one of the victims ever recovering."

----- Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State, 1899

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The fossilized skeletons of creatures such as woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths, horses, camels, and many extinct smaller mammals have been discovered in the El Paso area. They are typically found in what's referred to as the Fort Hancock Formation, which is described as "lacustrine and play sediments predominantly consisting of interbedded clays and silts." Examples of the fossils can be seen in the Centennial Museum on the UTEP campus. They are part of an excavation of mammoth bones from a sand quarry near the present site of Vista Hills Hospital.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day regards the Torrey brothers and a series of trading houses they established in the 1840s to trade primarily with Native Americans but also with anybody else who happened by:

The firm of Torrey and Brothers traded widely with the Indians for about ten years, from John F. Torrey's arrival in Houston in 1838 until 1848, when the Torreys sold the major trading house to George Barnard and move to California. The Torreys' trading activities were a vital part of Sam Houston's peace policy and acted as a civilizing agent for the Indians. The Torreys conducted a significant fur trade, assisted in the establishment of New Braunfels, recovered stolen horses and captives from the Indians, and established what was perhaps the first regional bank in the United States. John Torrey and his brothers David K. and Thomas S. Torrey built the first frame house in Houston and used it as a trading post and as a supply center for their other posts. David purchased goods in Boston and New York. George Barnard and Sam Houston may have been stockholders in the enterprise. 

The Torreys operated a trading house on the Bosque River in 1842 and established houses at Austin, San Antonio (1844), New Braunfels (1845), and Fredericksburg. Barnard opened a branch store on the Navasota River in 1843, and, at Houston's request, the firm opened a branch at the falls of the Brazos. The Brazos post, on Tehuacana Creek in McLennan County, received a license in December 1843 after the Torreys made bond for $10,000. With its official status under a law of the Republic of Texas passed in 1843, the post had a near monopoly of the Texas Indian trade. 

In 1846 Dr. Ferdinand von Roemer made a trip from New Braunfels to the Brazos post with John Torrey and described the trading house as standing in a post oak grove on a high, pebble-covered hill overlooking Tehuacana Creek. The post comprised six or seven houses built of rough-hewn logs. The largest house held pelts, another contained trade goods for the Indians, and the remaining served as living quarters. In 1846 Paul Richardson built an additional building for a fee of $100. The post traded goods to the Indians and, for a price, recovered stolen horses, runaway slaves, and captured Mexicans from the Indians. Indians frequently met at a council ground some four miles west of the trading post. In May 1845 about 1,000 lodges, or 4,000 persons, camped near the post. On November 16, 1845, Thomas I. Smith and George W. Terrellqqv made a treaty with the Kichai, Tawakoni, Waco, and Wichita groups at the post. In 1844 the Torrey brothers furnished Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels with weapons for the Adelsverein. The brothers contracted with John O. Meusebach to provision and transport German immigrants from the coast inland.

The Torreys had an unusual banking and credit system. The Tehuacana post served as a clearinghouse for the notes of rangers and Indians in the immediate area and for the entire border from the western edge of what is now Hood County almost to New Braunfels. The trading company sometimes paid advances to Indians for deerskins; the debts could then be paid at the posts on the Navasota River, at the falls of the Brazos, or at New Braunfels. Debts were sometimes paid by supplying six shaved skins for each dollar borrowed. Sam Houston signed and witnessed receipts for the Torrey Company at New Braunfels in 1846 and 1847. From 1844 to 1853 the trading house handled at least 75,000 deerskins. William N. P. Marlin and Leonard Williams, freighters, traveled an estimated 15,000 miles collecting and delivering pelts to Houston at $1.50 a hundred pounds in 1846 and $2 a hundred pounds in 1848. 

Williams was the Indian agent assigned to the post in April 1845. Grant and Barton, commission furriers in New York, sold at auction for Torrey and Brothers and later for George Barnard more than seventy-five lots of skins. Barnard bought the Brazos post and moved it to Comanche Peak in Hood County in 1849. Torrey and Brothers entered into a partnership with the J. C. Spencer Company of Robinson County and dissolved this alliance in 1846. By 1849 the Torrey Brothers had sold their remaining interests to Barnard and moved out of Texas toward California.

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, Henry C. Armbruster, "Torrey Trading Houses."

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 19th*

*Earliest known explorer carves name in Devil's Sinkhole*

On this day in 1889, H. S. Barber, the earliest known explorer of the Devil's Sinkhole, carved his name in the cave. Located southeast of Rocksprings in Edwards County, the Devil's Sinkhole was named in 1876 by the wives of Ammon Billings and other men who had discovered the entrance after an encounter with Indians. The pit entrance is sixty feet in diameter and expands downward into an oval room, 240 by 360 feet, that is partly filled with fallen rock. The cave is 310 feet deep. Cave explorers from all over the United States have been drawn to it because of its impressive size and rumors of lost bat rooms. Guano has been removed sporadically from the cave for use as fertilizer. The cave was added to the National Registry of Natural Landmarks in the early 1970s. It and the surrounding land are owned by the state of Texas.

*League of Women Voters of Texas organized in San Antonio*

On this day in 1919, the League of Women Voters of Texas, a nonpartisan political organization, was formed at San Antonio, when the Texas Equal Suffrage Association was dissolved to reorganize for a new purpose. Under the forceful leadership of its first president, Jessie Daniel Ames of Georgetown, the LWVT focused its efforts on educating the newly enfranchised women voters of the state. The permanent offices of the LWVT are located in Austin.

*Presidents of U.S. and Mexico dedicate International Falcon Reservoir*

On this day in 1953, presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States and Adolfo Ruiz Cortines of Mexico dedicated International Falcon Reservoir. The huge lake is bounded by Starr and Zapata counties, Texas, and the county and city of Nuevo Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The dam and reservoir provide for water conservation, flood control, hydroelectric energy, and recreation. The project is owned, authorized, and operated by both nations through the International Boundary and Water Commission. The project is named for the town of Falcon, which was relocated to the Starr-Zapata county line upon completion of Falcon Dam in 1952. Falcon State Park, on the reservoir's southeastern shore, opened to the public in 1965. The area of the lake varies from 87,000 acres at elevation 301.2 feet to 115,400 acres at the maximum elevation of 314.2 feet. The reservoir has a summer storage capacity of 2,371,220 acre-feet.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the day comes from 1843:

"Wild Pigeons ---- large flocks of these birds have been wheeling and circling above in the last few days, seeking roosts and food. They make a noise in their passing like the rushing of a heavy wind, and there is a degree of grandeur in the regularity and rapidity of their movements, combined with the immensity of their number. They have made one roost about ten miles from town, and some of our neighbors went out and got some. Knocking down pigeons, netting partridges which are also in immense numbers, and hunting buffalo which range within 50 miles of town are three sources of amusement which would be considered great fun in most settled countries."

------ The Clarksville Northern Standard newspaper, 1843

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## woodman6415

The gallows on which Robert Rodgers (a soldier), Florencio Garza, Vicente Garcia, & Juan Vela were hanged at Brownsville, Texas in 1866. Rodgers, a private in the 77th Ohio Infantry Regiment, was part of the Federal occupation forces stationed in Texas after the Civil War. He was serving at Fort Brown, Texas, when he was condemned for the brutal murder of a civilian sutler. The same gallows would be used eleven days later to hang three Mexican men, Florencio Garza, Juan Vela and Vicente Garcia, who were also condemned for murder. Garza, Vela and Garcia were Cortinistas who were convicted of murder and legally hanged June 22, 1866. They rode with the legendary Mexican general and warlord Juan N. Cortina. Their murder convictions came as a result of Cortina's 1859 cross border raid on Brownsville.

This photo comes from the awesome Degolyer collection in SMU's central libraries.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 20th

In letter to king of Spain, Coronado is first to describe Llano Estacado*

On this day in 1541, the Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, in a letter to the king of Spain, became the first man to describe the vast Llano Estacado. The Llano Estacado (Staked Plains), the southern extension of the High Plains of North America, is a high mesa lying south of the Canadian River in northwest Texas and northeast New Mexico. Coronado had been appointed in 1540 to lead an expedition to the Seven Cities of Cíbola, wondrous tales of which had been brought to Mexico by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Coronado found no gold at Cíbola, in western New Mexico, but he was led on by stories of Quivira, a region far to the east. It was during his search for Quivira that Coronado came upon the Llano Estacado, which he described thus: "I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I travelled over them for more than 300 leagues ... with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea .... [T]here was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by." Future explorers echoed his impressions of the region, and development did not begin until the 1870s, though it proceeded rapidly thereafter. Indeed, the Llano witnessed the most rapid development of any section of the state, progressing from an economy based on unfenced public grazing land to a modern industrial economy within half a century. The region's population in 1880 was only 1,081; a century later it was more than 900,000.

*Aaron Burr acquitted of charge of treason*

On this day in 1807, the treason trial of Aaron Burr, former vice president of the United States and a minor player in Texas history, came to a characteristically ambiguous ending. After leaving the vice presidency in 1804, Burr made a tour of the western states and became leader of a conspiracy supposed to have been aimed toward an invasion of Texas. He was arrested for treason and, after a prolonged trial, Justice John Marshall ruled that while Burr was not guilty of treason, he was guilty of contemplating an invasion of Spanish territory. Burr's exact intentions have never been ascertained, but they probably included crossing the Sabine River and marching across Texas.

*Community leader foresees her own death*

On this day in 1874 Susanna O'Docharty, pioneer woman and community leader, asked a priest to prepare her for death. Although she was ill, the padre saw no signs of death. "This is why I sent for you, I die tonight," she told him curtly, which she did. The Indiana native, born in 1804, moved with her husband to Texas sometime before 1831 to join the McMullen-McGloin colony, where they helped establish the town of San Patricio. Susanna helped establish a meeting between the people of Matamoros and the San Patricio colonists in 1832 at Banquete Creek. This grew into an annual festive occasion called El Lugar del Banquete. Mrs. O'Docharty became a leader of a group of San Patricio residents loyal to the Centralist Mexican government and influenced several other families to move with her family to Matamoros, where they lived until 1845, when Gen. Zachary Taylor's army brought a semblance of law and order back to the old city of San Patricio. Upon her family's return, she returned to her role of community leader and began teaching in her home when the community school closed. She gave her two sons a basic law background that enabled them to become respected lawyers and judges in San Patricio and Nueces counties. Tales of her strong character still exist, including that of how she retrieved her infant daughter's remains from Mexico. About a year after returning to Texas, she enlisted the aid of twelve-year-old Hubert Timon, and the two disappeared early one morning riding south. Two weeks later they reappeared with Susanna balancing a small coffin on her saddle horn.

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## woodman6415

My hometown .. wonder if the great TexMex food San Angelo restaurants are famous for is on the menu? 
A plate of cheese enchiladas sounds good right about now ...

Unbelievable. A restaurant at Fort Concho (San Angelo) in 1875. As you can see, it's made of adobe and it appears that one wall is being supported by a wooden post. But I look at this photo and I think of the remarkable human ingenuity displayed and about how what we call history is simply our present response to what came before. Here, there was nothing. Then somebody came along and built a fort. And then, seeing the opportunity represented by the fort, somebody built this restaurant in response to the fort. Then somebody else built something else in response to the fort and the restaurant. Cascade those responses down through time and you end up in present-day San Angelo.

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## Kevin

The thing I find most fascinating about that picture is the use of the word "Restaurant". The word wasn't even part of common vernacular in the USA until the 19th century, and usually only found on the west coast in places like San Fran or the east coast big metro cities, but never the south at that time. Before the term "restaurants" started to spread across the prairies most eating establishments used regional names. The term was so novel the owner didn't even attach his name or some local name to it - _Restaurant_ - was enough. The fact that they even spelled it correctly is somewhat impressive.

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## woodman6415

Fort Concho is now a museum... most of the buildings are rebuilt ...
During December they have Christmas at Old Fort Concho ... reneactors...arts and craft booths ... authentic wagon train cooking ( with scheduled classes ) biscuits in Dutch over on camp fire ... can't be beat ... 
cannons fired ... Indians in full dress camping in teepees ... a good family time .. 


After the restaurant at Fort Concho (shown two photos below) was established, the seeds of San Angelo began to sprout. Another super photo. I wonder what that stone structure without a roof is on the right. It looks like a church ... but with no roof? Maybe it was being built when this shot was taken. I notice that the restaurant in this photo has the words "lunch" and "hours" on the sign. There is also a bakery toward the back, as well as a larger store that has "Jas Moorekens & Co." on its sign. That is Fort Concho in the background and what I love is how this shows the geographic relationship between the fort and the nascent town.

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## Wildthings

Kevin said:


> The thing I find most fascinating about that picture is the use of the word "Restaurant". The word wasn't even part of common vernacular in the USA until the 19th century, and usually only found on the west coast in places like San Fran or the east coast big metro cities, but never the south at that time. Before the term "restaurants" started to spread across the prairies most eating establishments used regional names. The term was so novel the owner didn't even attach his name or some local name to it - _Restaurant_ - was enough. The fact that they even spelled it correctly is somewhat impressive.


They are probably from California trying to make a buck in Texas

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## JR Parks

woodman6415 said:


> I went to the chili cook off 8 years running 1995 to 2003 ... always camped at the "behind the store " but always spent time at the big one "CASA" it is about 8 more miles down the highway ... anytime you get between 40000 to 60000 partyers camping in a small area it's going to be a fun week ... seen some things I never thought I'd see ... some I can't unsee or forget ...The DPS uses it as a training for DUI stops and arrest ... send in a bunch of troopers .. the campgrounds are on private land but lots of highway in between ... if arrested the jail is in Alpine 80 miles away ... never me but have had to bail stupid friends out ...
> 
> Ah, it is October, that time in Texas when a young man's heart turns to thoughts of football and hunting and .... chili. That's right, folks, it's just about time for the world championship chili cookoffs in Terlngua, which happen the first weekend in November. There are actually two world championship chili cookoffs, the result of a feud that resulted in a "chili divorce" quite a few years back. I took this photo of cookoff contender "Queen Beef" at the Frank Tolbert-Wick Fowler "Behind the Store" cookoff out there in 2014, but both are just about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. I notice that both the Texas Tornadoes AND Gary P. Nunn are playing at the Tolbert-Fowler "Behind the Store" cookoff this year. What could be more fun than being in the desert and dancing to the Tornadoes or Gary P.? Just about nothing, is what. See y'all out there!
> 
> The chili teams also compete on showmanship ... it's amazing the time and money spent on props .... if you have never been to dessert area there is absolutely nothing but rocks here ... if you want it you have to haul it...
> 
> View attachment 114933


That' what I like about Texas-

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

America's most purchased and favorite food, the hamburger, was invented in Texas. The hamburger got its start in the Henderson County town of Athens in the 1880s, when Fletcher Davis served up a meat patty with mustard, pickles and onions between two slices of bread. The sandwich caught on, and Davis introduced the hamburger at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904.

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## JR Parks

Wildthings said:


> *Today in Texas History -- October 15th*
> 
> *First state Sängerfest held in New Braunfels *(I've been to the Wurstfest there)
> 
> On this day in *1853*, the first state _Sängerfest,_ or singers' festival, began in New Braunfels. After a successful Fourth of July celebration in 1853, the New Braunfels Germania male singing society invited similar organizations from Austin, San Antonio, and Sisterdale to a two-day festival held in New Braunfels on October 15 and 16, 1853. Each group sang a cappella separately and joined together for works by Felix Mendelssohn and Heinrich Marschner. At the second _Sängerfest,_ held in San Antonio in May 1854, when the societies formed the Texas State Sängerbund (Deutsch-Texanischer Sängerbund or German Texan Singers' League), participation extended to singers from Coletoville, La Grange, Indianola, and Victoria. Succeeding _Sängerfeste_ were held in New Braunfels and Fredericksburg and brought added members or increased musical sophistication. Despite interruptions caused by the Civil War and World War I, the _Sängerfeste_ survived and continue to this day. Wherever held, the festivals became the impetus for expanded musical activity on the purely local level, while they themselves ceased to be the sole property of the Germans as progressively more outsiders participated in the concerts and attended them.
> 
> *Hearst hosts New York benefit for Galveston orphans*
> 
> On this day in *1900*, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst hosted a charity bazaar at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City to benefit children orphaned by the hurricane that had devastated Galveston on September 8. The hurricane did considerable damage to the Island City Protestant Orphans Home and, though none was injured, the children were temporarily removed to the Buckner Baptist Children's Home in Dallas. In 1901 the Island City Protestant Orphans Home was renamed the Galveston Orphans' Home; the $50,000 Hearst had raised was used for rebuilding, and the new structure opened in 1902. The institution, which had begun accepting children other than orphans during the Great Depression, was formally renamed the Galveston Children's Home in 1976. In 1984 the Galveston Children's Home, along with the Lasker Home for Homeless Children and other children's facilities in Galveston, merged to become the Children's Center, Inc
> 
> *Emmett Scott appointed to reduce racial tension*
> 
> On this day in *1917*, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker appointed Emmett Jay Scott his special assistant to urge the equal and impartial application of Selective Service regulations, to improve the morale of black servicemen, and to investigate racial incidents and charges of unfair treatment. For Scott, born in Houston in 1873, the appointment became a small part of an outstanding career as a public servant, editor, and author. He was awarded a master of arts degree from Wiley College in 1901 and an LL.D. by Wiley College and Wilberforce University (Ohio) in 1918. He founded the Houston _Texas Freeman_, the oldest black newspaper published west of the Mississippi, which he edited from 1894 to 1897. He then moved to Tuskegee, Alabama, where he worked with Booker T. Washington until 1915; he became Washington's chief adviser, confidant, and even ghostwriter. Scott also served as secretary of the National Negro Business League from 1902 to 1922, as a member of the American Commission to Liberia in 1909, as secretary to the International Conference on the Negro in 1912, and as secretary-treasurer of Howard University from 1919 to 1934. During World War II he was personnel director for the Sun Shipbuilding Company in Chester, Pennsylvania. His books include _Booker T. Washington: Builder of a Civilization_ (1916), which he coauthored with Lyman Beecher Stowe; _Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War_ (1919); and _Negro Migration During the War_ (1920). Scott died on December 11, 1957, at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., after a long illness
> 
> *Texas native given command of both American air forces in England*
> 
> On this day in *1943*, Texas native Ira Eaker was promoted from commander of the Eighth Air Force to assume command of both American air forces in England, the Eighth and the Ninth. Eaker, an aviation pioneer, joined the army in 1917 and transferred to the Army Air Corps in 1918. He was one of ten pilots chosen to make the Pan American Goodwill Flight in 1926, and pioneered in flight refueling in the inter-war years. During his World War II service in England between 1942 and 1944, Eaker was instrumental in the development and application of daylight precision bombing in the European Theater. He went on to command the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces in 1944-45. He died in 1987.



@Wildthings Barry I sent the info on sangerfest to a friend who does part of the fest for the city of NB and she was intrigued by the info and wondered where you got- I said I would ask. Jim


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## Tony

JR Parks said:


> @Wildthings Barry I sent the info on sangerfest to a friend who does part of the fest for the city of NB and she was intrigued by the info and wondered where you got- I said I would ask. Jim



Knowing Barry the info is sketchy at best!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"You give your hand to me
Then you say hello
I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me"

------- Cindy Walker, "You Don't Know Me" Cindy was born near Mexia, lived most of her 87 years there, and wrote top-10 hit songs in five different decades. This one, of course, has been covered by everybody from Ray Charles to Michael Buble. Here's a short video in which Cindy describes writing the song:

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## woodman6415

Let me try that again. Joe Maudlin, Jerry Allison and Buddy Holly at Ray Miller Triumph Motorcycles in Dallas on May 13, 1958. Buddy had just bought that 1958 Ariel Cyclone motorcycle that he's sitting on, far right. After he was killed, his father held onto the bike until 1970, when he sold it to a collector in Austin. The two remaining Crickets found it in Austin and gave it to Waylon Jennings on his birthday in 1979. Waylon finished a show and there it was in his hotel room. He fired it up right then and there, the roar echoing off the walls. The motorcycle recently sold at auction for 475,000 dollars and will be housed in the Buddy Holly Museum in Lubbock. Here's a very good essay about it:

http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/buddy-holly-motorcycle-waylon-jennings-lenny-kaye-essay/

It's really worth reading.


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## Wildthings

JR Parks said:


> @Wildthings Barry I sent the info on sangerfest to a friend who does part of the fest for the city of NB and she was intrigued by the info and wondered where you got- I said I would ask. Jim



@JR Parks
It comes from the TSHA website - TSHA I get the daily TITH email



Tony said:


> Knowing Barry the info is sketchy at best!



Thanks BUDDY!! but you know me well HeHeHe

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## Wildthings

JR Parks said:


> @Wildthings Barry I sent the info on sangerfest to a friend who does part of the fest for the city of NB and she was intrigued by the info and wondered where you got- I said I would ask. Jim



Here's some more info on it: @JR Parks 

*TEXAS STATE SÄNGERBUND*.
The Texas State Sängerbund is an association of German singing societies. After a successful Fourth of July celebration in 1853, the New Braunfels Germania male singing society invited similar organizations from Austin, San Antonio, and Sisterdale to a state _Saengerfest_ (singers' festival), held in New Braunfels on October 15 and 16, 1853. Each group sang a cappella separately and joined together for works by Felix Mendelssohn and Heinrich Marschner.

At the second _Saengerfest_, held in San Antonio in May 1854, when the societies formed the Texas State Sängerbund (Deutsch-Texanischer Sängerbund or German Texan Singers' League), participation extended to singers from Coletoville, La Grange, Indianola, and Victoria. The next year's and each succeeding _Saengerfest_ before the Civil War (New Braunfels, May 1855, October 1856, October 1858, and Fredericksburg, May 1859) brought added members or increased musical sophistication. In 1860 the first participating mixed chorus (male and female) contributed excerpts from Franz Joseph Haydn's _Creation_.

The Civil War disrupted plans for an 1861 _Saengerfest_ in Austin, for which orchestral participation had been planned, and the festivals did not begin again until September 1870 in San Antonio on a more modest scale. There was a _Saengerfest_ in New Braunfels in May 1873. The festival in San Antonio in October 1874 was a milestone. An orchestra of symphonic proportions, conducted by Professor Müller, participated in the public concert. When San Antonio hosted the state festival again in 1877 because New Braunfels could no longer afford the burden, the city added an enlarged orchestra of nearly forty musicians under Emil Ludwig Zawadil. Mixed choruses and massed choruses began to take some of the emphasis from individual singing societies, but each local group had an opportunity to sing at the banquet.

Not to be outdone, Austin imported the orchestra of the National Theater of New Orleans from St. Louis, Missouri, for the April 1879 _Saengerfest_. With the addition of out-of-state musicians and non-Germanic politicians to speak, the festivals now became more oriented to the entire community rather than primarily to the German element.

When distant and wealthy Galveston invited the singing societies for a _Saengerfest_ of two massive concerts in May 1881, the choruses of the New Braunfels-Fredericksburg area felt disfranchised and seceded from the state Sängerbund to found their own West-Texanischer Gebirgs-Sängerbund (West Texas Hill Country Singers' League), which has held modest but musically and socially satisfying festivals for more than a century. While hosting the state festival in May 1883, Dallas added a third concert and an English-language chorus to the program for the first time and attracted audiences of up to 4,500 for the performances. Later that same year the Houston Sängerbund was founded.

At that time the state festivals, held at two-year intervals, began to rotate between Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Galveston, and Dallas. With minor variations this practice continued until 1916. The number of concerts ranged up to five for each festival; choruses of school children began to participate; the massed male choruses and larger mixed choruses shared with the orchestra and imported soloists (often of world fame) the increasingly sophisticated content of the festival concerts, while individual male choruses were almost totally relegated to the jovial _Kommerse_.

Wherever held, the festivals became the impetus for expanded musical activity on the purely local level, while they themselves ceased to be the sole property of the Germans as progressively more outsiders participated in the concerts and attended them. During World War I, the _Saengerfest_ ceased when German Texans were suspected of "Hunnish" collaboration. They began again in 1921 and continued on a modest scale resembling the social and musical meetings of the early 1870s: individual choruses from San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Houston; massed choruses; a band concert; and an evening dance to celebrate a rich German heritage in Texas.

Individual Sängerbunds continued to meet in cities throughout Texas in the twentieth century, and in many cases, benefitted from both non-German membership as well as new German immigrants who sought membership. _Saengerfests_ took place into the twenty-first century to carry on the German cultural traditions that had begun in the Lone Star State more than 150 years earlier.

*GERMAN MUSIC IN TEXAS*.
The earliest reference to music among Texas German immigrants dates from 1834, when the elder Robert Justus Klebergqv imported a piano and music books to Harrisburg. In 1837 Mary Austin Holley enjoyed the informal singing of some Germans on a boat trip between Galveston and Houston. Two years later German musical soirées were held at Kessler's Arcade in Houston, and in 1840 Emil Heerbrugger gave recitals on violin, horn, and guitar, with piano accompaniment, at the Capitol.

With colonization by the Adelsverein after 1844, German music began to flourish in Texas, and German musicians became more influential, even in the centers where the population was not primarily German. Johann N. S. Menger was active in San Antonio as a piano teacher in 1847, and Franz Xavier Heilig became a music teacher for the city's public schools in 1853, to be joined later by Christoph Plagge and Henry Grossmann. Likewise Joseph Petmecky, and later Udo Rhodius, J. Messner, and William Besserer taught in Austin, and other Germans taught in Houston, Galveston, Dallas, and other cities. About 1879 Julius Weiss, from Saxony, went to Texarkana, where he taught a young student named Scott Joplin, destined to become "King of Ragtime."

Singing was among the earliest leisure activities, first with informal groups in Galveston, Houston, and New Braunfels in the mid-1840s, and then with formal male singing societies, including the San Antonio Männergesang-Verein (1847), New Braunfels Germania (1850), Austin Männerchor (1852), and Houston Männer-Gesangverein. In 1853 the societies held a _Saengerfest_ (singers' festival) in New Braunfels and formed the Texas State Sängerbund (singers' league). Throughout the years other singers' leagues followed, such as the Houston Sängerbund, founded in 1883. The German singing societies ultimately became the prime promoters of serious music in Texas before World War I.

Other leagues served their respective locales: the Hill Country, Gillespie County, Guadalupe Valley, and South Texas. Singing societies existed at one time or another in roughly ninety Texas communities. The oldest surviving singing society is the Beethoven Männerchor (San Antonio), founded in August 1865. Mixed choruses were begun outside of church settings: the New Braunfels Concordia (1860), San Antonio Mendelssohn (1872), Houston Philharmonic Society (1872), and Austin Musical Union (1888), for instance. These often signaled increased participation by non-German Texans and wider musical education throughout the community.

Opera arrived early in Texas in one form or another; Emil Heerbrugger's 1840 Houston recitals contained overtures and potpourris of popular operatic airs. Musical immigrants brought opera scores and selections with them from Europe and often sang them around the family piano. Frederic Law Olmstedqv heard excerpts from Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ during a social gathering in Sisterdale in 1854, and operatic choruses were standard repertoire for singing societies before the Civil War. Carl Maria von Weber's _Der Freischütz_ (or extensive portions of it) was reputedly staged by the Casino Club in San Antonio in the late 1850s. Dallas saw a complete local production of Friedrich von Flotow's _Martha_ with piano accompaniment in 1868 and again, with orchestra, in 1875. San Antonio opened its Grand Opera House in 1886 with Gaetano Donizetti's _Lucrezia Borgia_, performed by the Emma Abbott Opera Company, and later witnessed Richard Wagner's _Lohengrin_ in the same theater. The final State Saengerfest (1916) before World War I included extensive selections from Wagner's _Die Meistersinger_, which was not performed whole in Texas until 1974.

Musical instruments among the Germans in early Texas were often of high quality: Heinrich Backofen, son of a prominent Darmstadt clarinet maker, brought "a whole chest" of instruments with him to Bettina in 1847. A piano trio consisting of the violinist Listich, cellist Scheliche, and pianist C. D. Adolph Douai was active in San Antonio and New Braunfels in 1852–53. Bands ranged from a single fiddler playing for dances in the 1840s to full concert ensembles by the 1880s and were often connected with the conductor's teaching activities, either in school or private studio. The German band tradition survives today in the American Legion bands of Seguin and New Braunfels, as well as the Beethoven Concert Band of San Antonio. In the 1870s the Germans were responsible for the first symphony orchestrasqv in Texas.

The Texas German population included a number of composers. Gottfried Joseph Petmecky (New Braunfels), Adolph Douai (San Antonio), Simon Menger (San Antonio), and C. Wilke (La Grange) all wrote works for male chorus in the 1850s. The last also composed and arranged the music for _Texas Fahrten_, a song pageant written by Friedrich Hermann Seele. Adolph Fuchs wrote and composed several songs in the 1840s and later. Menger wrote a few piano pieces, as did Gabriel Katzenberger and John M. Steinfeldt in the 1880s and 1890s. W. C. A. Thielepape of San Antonio left twenty-seven compositions dated from 1840 to 1899, and conductors Carl Venth and Arthur Claassenqqv were already noted composers when they arrived in Texas during the decade before World War I.

In Victoria, the Hauschild Music Company, owned by German descendant George Hermann Hauschildqv, established itself as one of the largest publishers of sheet music throughout the Southwest from 1891 to 1922.

Popular German folk music and dances, such as the polka and schottische, and the use of instruments such as the accordion, not only imparted the German musical influence to younger generations but also influenced other musicians who incorporated some of these sounds into their own musical styles (such as Texas-Mexican conjunto).

The long-term impact of German musical culture throughout Texas is also present through the numerous dance halls constructed across the state. Some of these early community centers remained throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first as popular music venues for a variety of genres, from country to blues to Tejano to rock.qqv Gruene Hall, Anhalt Hall, Dessau Dance Hall, and Luckenbach Dance Hall are all examples of buildings constructed by German settlers in German communities.

For a time, World War I and World War II led to a decline in the open display of German customs and music. Some dance halls closed, and singing societies and other music organizations folded. During the latter part of the twentieth century, however, German Texans made efforts to preserve the history of their music. Numerous festivals, including Wurstfest in New Braunfels, Oktoberfest in Fredericksburg, and Maifest in Brenham, paid homage to German music and dance, as Texas maintained its German music heritage into the twenty-first century.

*And of course the Wurstfest which I've been to on 4 different occasions. The first being with my 7th grade girlfriends family. We camped at Landa Park and walked to each day.*

*WURSTFEST*. Wurstfest is an annual celebration of food and music, held on the Wurstfest grounds beside Landa Park in New Braunfels. The fest commemorates the German heritage of the city and the surrounding region. German foods and musical traditions have played an important role in the cultural life of New Braunfels since it was founded by Germans in 1845. In 1961 the mayor issued a proclamation setting aside one Saturday in November to celebrate the town's cultural heritage. Held in the National Guard Armory, the inaugural event attracted about 2,000 visitors. This celebration came to be known as Wurstfest and has increased in popularity among both residents and tourists every year since.

In 1963 the festival was held in the_ Rathskeller _or what many locals referred to as “Eiband’s Hole,” the burned-out basement of the old Eiband & Fischer Department Store (currently the site of the New Braunfels Utilities parking lot). Attendance was estimated at 10,000; that number tripled to 30,000 in 1964. The event moved into the Wursthalle in 1967, and in 1968 it was expanded to its current ten-day length. Attendance reached more than 160,000 in 1975. Purchase of the adjacent Dittlinger Feed Mill property and the sub-lease of part of the LCRA property tripled the size of the Wurstfest grounds in 1978. By the late 1970s, with the increasing concern over large and sometimes unruly crowds, organizers enacted a series of strict policies and a grounds admission charge to enhance the festival’s appeal as a family event.

In the early 1990s attendance had leveled off to just over 100,000. In spite of a devastating flood just thirteen days before the festival opening in 1998, Wurstfest Association members and local businesses pitched in to clean the festival grounds, and the event began as scheduled. By the early 2000s the festival had expanded from a single weekend event in the early 1960s to a ten-day extravaganza filled with special events, food, and musical groups. Opening day at Wurstfest was featured in a nationwide live broadcast on ABC’s _Good Morning America_ in 2006.

Wurstfest visitors are treated to a variety of German and German-inspired dishes, including sauerkraut, _kartoffel "puffers"_ (potato pancakes), strudel, bread pudding, funnel cakes, pretzels, and pastries. The ubiquitous sausage, including bratwurst and knackwurst, is perhaps the most popular food item of all. Beer is the drink of choice for many visitors, but nonalcoholic beverages are available. The Wursthalle, the largest of the music venues on the fairgrounds, hosts both traditional and modern bands. German polka music is especially popular, but traditional Mexican-American and country performers also draw large crowds, both in the Wursthalle and in smaller tents throughout the grounds. In 1968 accordionist Myron Floren of the _Lawrence Welk Show_ performed the first of many annual appearances that spanned three decades at Wurstfest. In 1972 the _Lawrence Welk Show_ featured a segment of Floren's performance at the festival.

The Wurstfest also provides area craftsmen and artists an opportunity to sell their wares. The Sophienburg Museum and the Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture host special events during Wurstfest to introduce tourists to German culture, and the tour of Conservation Plaza offers visitors a taste of the old city with its restored buildings. From the 1970s through the 1990s the Heritage Exhibit in the city's civic center presented displays on the history of New Braunfels. In addition, Wurstfest stages dramas produced by the city's Circle Arts Theater, the Tour de Gruene bicycle classic, the Wurstfest Five-Mile Run, the Wurst Motorcycle Run, and the Wurstfest Regatta, featuring more than 200 sailboats on nearby Canyon Lake. In 2001 a new attraction was the Wurstfest Review variety show, staged in the Wursthalle. The festival introduced a special children’s entertainment area known as Kinderhalle in 2007.

Since its inception, Wurstfest has raised millions of dollars for community projects. The celebration is directed by a board of more than 200 "Opas," or honorary "grandfathers." These directors are members of the nonprofit Wurstfest Association, dedicated to promoting local business and tourism and preserving German heritage. New Braunfels held its 50th Celebration of Wurstfest in 2010 and commemorated the history of the festival with a book, _Wurstfest, New Braunfels, Texas: The First Fifty Years…Since 1961_, prepared by local writer and historian Alton J. Rahe and photo compiler Darvin Dietert—both members of the longtime German dance and polka band the Hi-Toppers, which was a popular headliner at Wurstfest for many years. . In 2014 Wurstfest added craft beer from more than a dozen American craft breweries in addition to the German lagers served. The addition of the _Stelzenplatz_ increased the overall space of the festival location by almost two acres. It included a vendor market, music stage, and craft beer garden. The annual celebration is held in early November, rain or shine.


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 21st*

*First bank in Texas founded*

On this day in 1822, the Banco Nacional de Texas, or Texas National Bank, was established as a bank of issue--the first in Texas--by Governor José Félix Trespalacios in San Antonio. Shortly after arriving in Texas in August, Trespalacios hit upon the idea of issuing paper money, to be backed by the specie due from the central government, as wages to the province's demoralized soldiers. Members of the city council were made officers in the bank, and four soldiers were given the task of hand-producing the notes. Just under 12,000 pesos was issued in two installments on November 1 and December 1, 1822, before the bank was suspended. The short-lived experiment in emergency financing proved costly to most noteholders, who had to wait until 1830 for redemption of the Texas money by the Mexican government. Despite its failure, this institution claims the title of the "first chartered bank west of the Mississippi."

*New oil well starts Ranger boom*

On this day in 1917, McClesky No. 1 came in. This oil well began the boom in Ranger, Texas. By June 1919 twenty-two wells were being drilled in the area and eight refineries were open or under construction. Ranger may have had 30,000 residents at one time. Pictures from the boom days show derricks sprouting up like trees throughout the town. The boom also brought the usual social accompaniments--gambling houses, brothels, and frequent killings in the oilfields. By 1921, however, the boom was over.

*Robert McKee, El Paso contractor, dies*

On this day in 1964, Robert E. McKee, one of America's most important contractors, died in El Paso. The Chicago native moved to Texas in 1910 and started his own contracting firm three years later. By 1935 he had built the naval docks and the Marine Hospital at the naval base in San Diego. In Hawaii he built various military facilities, including the power plant at Pearl Harbor and the Air Corps Double Hangars and a 3,200-man barracks at Hickam Field. He built the largest military center in Texas, Camp Bowie, near Brownwood, in a record time of ten months. He constructed large military installations in the Panama Canal Zone. During one year he had 42,000 workers on his payroll. He was responsible for building the facilities for the Los Alamos Atomic Energy Project in New Mexico, for which he received the Army-Navy "E" award for high achievement in October 1945. In the 1950s McKee constructed several large facilities at the United States Air Force Academy. In 1959 he was the major contractor for the new Los Angeles International Airport. His company also built a large percentage of El Paso's major structures. McKee was a philanthropist and patron of the arts in El Paso, and was honored as a "conquistador" by the city in 1962. Santa Fe Industries, a holding company of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, acquired Robert E. McKee, Inc., in 1972.

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## JR Parks

Wildthings said:


> @JR Parks
> It comes from the TSHA website - TSHA I get the daily TITH email
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks BUDDY!! but you know well HeHeHe


Thanks Barry. Jim


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## woodman6415

Everybody who has driven the Fort Davis scenic loop has driven right past this famous rock at Rockpile Park. What most people don't realize is that in 1941 it was discovered that, more than 100 years before, the famous frontiersman Kit Carson left his name and the date inscribed on this rock. I had always heard about this but wondered if it was a myth or not. Imagine my surprise when Traces of Texas reader Richard Simpson sent in this glorious photo.

Thank you, Richard. This is truly amazing!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The last man to be killed by "Wild Bill" Hickock, Phillip Houston Coe, is buried in the Prairie Lea cemetery in Brenham, Texas. Phillip "Phil” Coe was a soldier, a gambler, a businessman, and called the famous Ben Thompson, gunman and gambler, one of his best friends.

Born Phillip Houston Coe in July, 1839 in Gonzales, Texas, to Elizabeth Parker Coe and Phillip Houston Coe, Phil would grow up to be called one of the greatest gunfighters of Texas.

In September, 1861 he joined the Confederate forces in Houston, Texas to fight in the Civil War and was quickly made a 3rd Lieutenant. However, just a few months later, in December, he was mustered out due to illness.

In March, 1862, he re-joined the Confederate forces, enlisting in the 36th Texas Cavalry, fighting for over a year, when he left the force in April, 1863.

After the war over, it is thought that he served with Ben Thompson under Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. It was under famous gunfighter and gambler, Ben Thompson, that Coe would hone his shooting and gambling skills.

By late 1869 he was in Brenham, where his sister, Delilah, and her family lived. There, he met and gambled with such notorious individuals as James Madison Brown, John Wesley Hardin, and William P. Longley. Next he went to Salina, Kansas in 1870, but by May, 1871 he had moved on to the wild Kansas cowtown of Abilene. Also there were Ben Thompson and Bill Hickok, who was serving as city marshal.

Coe and Thompson soon went into a partnership operating the Bull’s Head Saloon, one of the wildest places in the already wild cowtown. This, of course, created dissension between Thompson and Coe with City Marshal, Bill Hickok. Though there were a number of disagreements, tension rose again when Thompson and Coe hanged an oversize painting of a Texas Longhorn, complete in its "full masculinity” at the Bull’s Head Saloon. Most Abilene townspeople were offended by the sign and demanded the animal’s anatomy be altered. As a result, Hickok stood by with a shotgun as the necessary deletions were made to the painting. The tension was, no doubt, so thick it could be cut with a knife, and the alteration was made without serious incident. 

Though Coe and Hickok continued to have a number of disagreements, and it was well known the two disliked each other, Thompson and Hickok never had problems with each other, seemingly having a mutual respect for each other’s reputations.

Later, Thompson left town and Coe sold his interest in the saloon, although he remained on as a gambler.

When Hickok and Coe began to court the same woman, rumors started to circulate that each planned to kill the other.

At one point, Coe and Hickok passed words during a disagreement, during which Coe bragged of his expertise in shooting, with Coe reportedly stating he could "kill a crow on the wing", to which Hickok replied: "Did the crow have a pistol? Was he shooting back? I will be."

Eventually, the tension between the Phil Coe and Wild Bill Hickok would culminate in the ultimate gunfight. On the night of October 5, 1871, the trouble came to a head.

It was the end of the cattle season and Coe, along with a number of Texas cowboys were celebrating by drinking and carousing in Abilene's numerous saloons. As the cowboys neared the Alamo Saloon a vicious dog tried to bite Coe, and the gunman took a shot at him. Though he missed the dog, Hickok appeared just minutes later to investigate the gunfire.

The marshal demanded that Coe surrender his firearms, as an ordinance prohibited carrying them in the city. But instead of giving over his weapons Coe sent a bullet Hickok's way, to which the marshal returned fire, shooting Coe twice in the stomach. At about the same time, Hickok heard footsteps coming up behind him and turning swiftly; he fired again and killed Deputy Mike Williams, who had been coming to his aid. Williams' death haunted Hickock for the rest of his life. 

Coe lingered in agony for days and finally died on October 9th. His body was transported back to Brenham and buried in Prairie Lea Cemetery.

In the meantime, Hickok drove the rest of the cowboys out of town. But the city of Abilene had had enough. Before long, the city fathers told the Texans there could be no more cattle drives through their town and dismissed Hickok as city marshal.

Though some thought that Ben Thompson would retaliate against Hickok for the shooting, he did not, and by some estimations seemed to believe the shooting was justified

Coe's body was returned to Brenham, where he was buried.

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## woodman6415

Y'all are simply not going to believe the Texas Quote of the Day. I posted this about eight months ago but I've had about 15 requests for a re-post since then, so here it goes...

TOT reader Robert Berryman's great aunt, Marie, was 12 years old when the great storm of 1900 destroyed Galveston. Her father was the assistant lightkeeper at the Bolivar lighthouse and the family survived the storm by riding it out in the lighthouse. She kept a diary of the events of that time and Robert's cousin posted some excerpts from it. This is an incredible read. Can you imagine being a 12-year old girl and witnessing this? It's a little gruesome so be forewarned.

From Marie's Diary: "It began at 7 am and ended at 6am the next morning. We lived in one of the lighthouses; my father was assistant keeper of the light. There were but a few residents near us and the business part was about a mile away. We had a pretty little home with two acres of beautiful lawn. We were in our home and a great many people came to us for refuge, and they stayed there as long as they could stay in the houses. At 6pm the water was 8 feet deep and it was coming in the house, se we all went to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse was about 150 feet from our house, so a lifeline was stretched from our house to the lighthouse. The ladies were carried there on men’s backs, while the men held on to the lifeline. After we had been in there long enough to get comfortable as anyone could expect at such times, some one cried from below that the water was rising and to move further up. But we did not move because we were fixed comfortable. We stayed where we were, but the water did not reach us.

We were sitting in a small window and it was so hot that a great many ladies wanted to break the window open. But if they had done so they would have been still hotter than ever because the door above would have had to been closed and that would close off all the air. Many children were crying for water and my brother got outside on top of the tower 125 feet high and caught the dirty water that fell off the roof. When they got the water they found it was very salty from the surf that dashed from below one hundred and twenty five feet high, and that is why the water was salty.

We had a boat and when we saw the storm was coming, we pulled it to shore and when the water got high enough we pulled the boat in our yard and tied it to the trees. But in spite of everything the boat was lost and we never saw anything of it since.

After the storm was over, many a man would have given a hundred dollars to have someone to take them to Galveston to get to their families. When we came out of the lighthouse the place was nothing but a mass of ruin. Our house was wrecked, and when we entered it we found a white pekin duck, and how he got there would be hard to say. A cow was on our back porch, and also a chicken, a dog, and a cat. All the stores had floated away and all the groceries were in the mud or floating around. Only one store was saved and it was about one mile away and that’s the only place we could get things to eat.
And when people went on the beach, they found dead people, cows, chickens, dogs, horses, birds, turtles, fishes, snakes, cats, and almost everything you could think of. The people would take the jewelry off the ladies’ fingers, and would even tear the ears to get the earrings. And to get the rings, they would pull them off with skin and all.

Many a man was shot for robbing the dead. There were so many dead people that they could hardly find room to bury them, and they had to throw them in the Gulf. They had some barges and they would put seven hundred people on a barge at a time, and throw them all in the Gulf of Mexico. They would ask a man to help bury the dead, and if he refused they would shoot him on the spot. So rather than get killed, they would try to help, but they would faint.
They burned most of the people to get rid of them and many a person noticed that they were burning their own parents or cousins, or perhaps their sisters. There was an old man with a wife and daughter that kept the life saving station. He was there alone – his wife and daughter had gone to town to do some shopping and they were drowned. After he found that he could not find their bodies he went to Port Bolivar where they kept the rings that belonged to the dead. When he went there he found his wife’s ring and he said that it was his wife’s ring, and to show him her body. They had buried her on the beach and he had her taken up and buried in the Galveston Cemetery. But if he found his daughter’s body, I do not know.

There was an old couple that kept the lighthouse in Galveston, who was worried about her son in Galveston. When the storm came up he tried to keep his light burning, but it was of no use. He had been a fine soldier in the Confederate army, and became a lighthouse keeper. The wind blew so hard it blew down a piece of slate and hit him on the head and injured him. He watched the light until it went out and of course there was no use in trying to make it burn any longer. Se he went downstairs with his wife in the front room and they stayed there together, thinking every minute they would go with the rest. But they were saved, and the next morning they could see dead bodies floating around their house. Her son was saved also.
The forts were a short distance from our house. The night of the storm the guns went boom! Boom! All night and we heard them and would say someone is in trouble. The next morning we found out it was the poor soldiers who were crying for help. When the people went on the beach, the soldiers were among the rest, and they were taken up and buried in Galveston at government expense. The way we knew about the soldiers was from only one who had escaped. He floated by the lighthouse and tried to reach it, but could not, so he floated away on the roof of an old house. Some people say they saw him riding the waves on the back of a dead mule that belonged to the soldiers.

There was a lady who stayed with us, by the name of Douglas, with her people until they could get her home, and they had a little boy that was in Galveston during the storm, and it was about a month before they ever found him. Many people were almost crazy trying to get to Galveston to get to their families. Many tried to get aboard the big vessels out in the Gulf because they thought it safer than on land.

There was a trestle that had two coal cars in the middle of it, and after the storm they had crossed the trestle, broke the switch, upset all the coal, and broke the car all to pieces. But the coal was no where to be seen – it had blown everywhere. You cannot imagine such a storm. I walked out on the beach near the wharf, and the wharf was torn off at the end where a ship had gone through."

I told y'all that it is an incredible read! Thanks to Robert and his cousin for sharing his great aunt's diary with us. I am blown away by reading this. That poor child!

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## woodman6415

This is the grave of "Grandma Ziff" Dockery, who lived in three different centuries and who was the oldest person in Texas when she passed away in 1903 at the age of 106. Shown also is a photo of Grandma Ziff, who is buried at the Shady Grove Cemetery in Pattonville, Texas. I guarantee that if you spend five minutes reading this article about her, written when she was alive, you will be glad you did.

GRANDMA DOCKERY - She lived in Three Centuries and Expects to Attend the Confederate Reunion, The Dallas Morning News, January 17, 1902

Special to the News. Paris, Texas, January 12 - A month ago The Dallas News published a brief notice from Paris of Grandma Zilpha Dockery being in town. She enjoys the distinction of being, so far as is known, the oldest living person in North Texas. On the occasion of her visit here she was on the way to the southwest corner of the county to visit a grandson, and had a photograph of herself taken, from which the accompanying cut is reproduced.

From behind the initial milepost planted by old Time to mark her first stride into the twentieth, Grandma Dockery looks serenely across the years of the nineteenth and into the twilight of the eighteenth century, the three cycles in which her heart has pulsed, and of which her memory yet retains distinct impressions. When she was born, Sept. 8, 1796, George Washington had not completed his second term as the first President of the American Republic. George III was on the British throne bemoaning the loss of the colonies as a disaster of yesterday. Napoleon Bonaparte, but recently married to the ill-fated Josephine, was not yet first consul of France, nor had he begun to evolve from the ashes of the Rein of Terror those majestic dreams of empire and conquest which were realized a few years later in the transformation of the map of Europe, the overthrow of ancient dynasties and the erection upon their ruins of new systems of government - all to be involved in turn, in as brief a period, in the mightiest of all history.

Although she has lived in three centuries and hasn't a single acquaintance of her girlhood days left surviving, Grandma Dockery, all things considered, is a remarkably well-preserved old lady. She is free from organic maladies and from most of the devilties common to accumulated years. She is enjoying good general health still, but during the past year or two has rapidly grown more feeble. She walks about without a crutch, but recently has begun to experience what she calls 'drunk and swimming' spells in the head, and when she walks she uses a stick, which she calls her 'horse,' to steady herself and feel her way. Her hearing is nearly perfect, but she is gradually growing blind. Her appetite is good and, as she says, she eats meat and anything else other folks eat. She has never had a stomach trouble, but takes salts now and then to aid digestion. She clings tenaciously to old-fashioned clothes, the styles of seventy-five years ago, and knits her own stockings and gloves, but since her eyesight has begun to fail she experiences trouble in 'picking up' her stitches when she 'drops' them.

Despite her old age, Grandma Dockery is very fond of traveling and spends a good portion of her time visiting her descendants, of whom she has more than a hundred in Lamar County alone, scattered from near Detroit, in Red River County, to Dial, in the edge of Fannin County. Sometimes she travels twenty miles a day in a wagon and stands the trips remarkably well, a little brandy being given her along the road to stimulate and keep up her spirits. Through the kindness and hospitality of C. W. Driskell, her son-in-law, who lives at Roxton, The News correspondent had the privilege last week of enjoying a visit to the remarkable old lady, who is at present visiting Sam Dockery, one of her numerous grandsons, in the southwest corner of the county, in the Union Academy neighborhood. The correspondent found about her no trace of the senility popularly supposed to attend extreme old age. On the contrary, she is strikingly vivacious, talks readily and at times with animation and laughs heartily. She says that she has no desire to die, and thinks that 'anybody with a grain of sense and in their right mind would much rather live.' After an exchange of greetings Grandma Dockery proceeded to give the correspondent a sketch of their life, prompted at intervals by questions.

She was born in Virginia, but does not know in what county. She was the daughter of John Scott, who was a farmer, and moved to Spartanburg district, South Carolina when she was 3 years old. She says that she can remember when the family moved as well as if it had been yesterday. It was her earliest recollection. She had three brothers and seven sisters, all of whom are dead. None of them or either of her parents were long lived. She has never had a serious spell of sickness, never took a dose of morphine in her life, and says that doctors are one class of people she never had any use for. She uses snuff yet, but had to give up smoking a short time ago on account of the 'drunk and swimming spells' in the head which it produced. She cannot yet altogether resist the temptation to smoke, however, and while the correspondent was engaged in conversation with her she reached over and borrowed a cigar from the mouth of her son-in-law, Mr. Driskell, who was smoking, and took half a dozen puffs with manifest satisfaction.

She married at Spartanburg, S. C. when she was 22 years old to William Dockery, with whom she lived many years and had nine children, six sons and three daughters. Two of the sons and three daughters are still living. One of the sons, B. C. Dockery lives at Killeen, Bell County and Samuel R. Dockery, the other son, lives at Nelanvilie, Bell County. The daughters are Mrs. Jane Gibson, who lives at Pattonville, this county, with whom the mother makes her home most of the time; Mrs. C. W. Driskell of Roxton and Mrs. B. Newton, who lives near Gadsden, Ala. Mrs. Driskell and Mrs. Newton are twins.

From Spartanburg district, South Carolina, grandma moved with her husband to Alabama and settled among the Cherokee Indians when there were scarcely any other white persons among them. The Cherokees lived like white folks, some of them being very rich and owning Negroes. Her husband was one of the party hired by the Government to move the Cherokees in wagons from Alabama to Texas and the Indian Territory. They didn't want to leave, and a great many of them committed suicide rather than do so, but the white people wanted their country and they bought and bribed the chiefs into making the treaty to leave. Her husband died from contracting swamp fever on the trip soon after getting back from moving the Cherokees, and some years afterward she married John Diffy, who lived a little over a year. Mr. Diffy was a soldier in the War of 1812, and was a great personal friend of Gen. Hickory [Andrew] Jackson, who made him a present of a walking stick with his name on it. She gave the stick years afterward to his grandson. After her second husband's death she resumed the name of her first husband as that was the name of her children. Long years after the death of her second husband she moved from Alabama with her descendants to this county. They chartered a special coach and filled it. Since then others of her descendants have moved out to Texas, and the connection is perhaps the most extensive in the State.

Asked by the correspondent to mention some of the incidents of her girlhood days, grandma became very animated, and began:
'My people were hard-working people. We worked in the fields with plows drawn by oxen and made crops that way for my father the year before I was married. I never saw a cotton patch till I went to Alabama. In my girlhood days they wore flax cloth dresses, and they were just as pretty as anything they wear nowadays. (At this point she became very animated and gesticulated a great deal while describing how they frailed the flax against the hackies to separate the fiber, and spun and wove it into cloth.) We had a-plenty clothes in them days to wear, and bed clothes, too, piled up to the jists.'
'Grandma, tell me how the young folks used to court,' the correspondent said. 'That reminds me of when I got my first calico dress and my first pair of Sunday shoes. I wore them to church and thought I was the finest lady in the land. I ketched me a beau too. I was only 13 years old then. The shoes were green morocco and the stockings white. Calico was so skeerce and expensive we couldn't afford any frills and trains them days. I got the dress by weaving some flax cloth warp and filling and taking it to Spartanburg and trading it to a merchant yard for yard for the calico. My calico dress was made low 'neck' and short sleeves, narrer, and like a meal sack, the same width from end to end. When I got it on I could hardly bend my knees and couldn't climb a fence at all. Still it was purty - purtier than the new fangled trapping of today. Yes, siree, Columbus!'
'We didn't wear shoes and stockings them days except when we went to church or corn shuckings or logrollings, or weddings or fairs. And we didn't wear them all the way then. We carried our shoes and stockings under our arms until we got near by the church, and then sat down on a log and put them on. After meetin' we stopped on the road and took 'em off again. Made no difference if we had a beau. They had to do that a-way themselves. Them new fangled styles and begotty girls nowadays makes me sick.' 'Grandma, do you reckon it was your new calico dress that caused you to catch a beau that Sunday at church?' the correspondent asked.

'Well, it might have had something to do with it, but I was naturlay purty when I was a girl. And, I tell you, we had to mind our mammies and daddies in them days. We certainly did. Columbus. They didn't allow us to go with just any kind of a rag-tag of a fellow, and I never stayed away from home at night until I was 21 years old.'

'I think you've got enough put down there to tell them folks about me already to make them laugh at me,' she observed as the correspondent was proceeding to make notes of her remarks.
'They didn't have any divorcing when I was young,' she resumed, 'and couldn't get any if they wanted one. They didn't have any marriage licenses either, but when a couple wanted to get married they went to a Justice of the Peace and paid him 50 cents to marry them.'

Grandma was a great cook and used to be engaged by people for miles around to cook for weddings and in fairs. She was a great gingercake baker and made her pin money by selling gingercake and cider. On muster days and at other public gatherings she could cook a good square meal until she was 100 years old. In her early days it was the custom to have cotton pickings, like quiltings, to pick the seed out of cotton before hand gins and regular cotton gins were invented. After picking the seed out of the cloth they spun and wove it into cloth. It was not unusual to see corn shuckings, logrollings, cotton pickings, quiltings and grubbings going on all at the same farm, with everybody, men women and children taking a hand. 'And, my Columbus!' she exclaimed, 'how they did eat! Folks are afraid nowadays when anybody comes to their house they will have to feed them.'

'Grandma, did folks believe in witches when you were young?' she was asked.

'I don't know, but I used to go to mammy's cowpen at night to milk and the next morning it would be full of balls that were not there the night before. Now, do you reckon them fool folks will believe that?' she asked with mock impatience as the correspondent was taking her answer down. Seeing that he continued to write, she continued:
'I know my cows was witched once. They commenced to give bloody milk and it smelled bad. An old lady who lived neighbor to me said if the cows had been witched if I would put milk in a vessel and put it on the fire and get a bundle of willow switches and whip the milk out in the fire while it was boiling, whoever put the spell on the cows would come to the door. I put the children out of the room, and while I was whipping the milk in the fire who do you reckon stepped in the door? Nobody but Bessie Gilbert, my sister-in-law. She stopped in and said: Zilph, what in the devil are you doing there?' I said 'Well the devil has come.'

'Grandma, do you think your sister-in-law bewitched the cows?' the correspondent asked.

'Well anyhow the milk got better,' she replied, evading a direct answer.

'Now ain' t that a purty thing to have folks read way yonder?' she interposed, as the correspondent recorded her remarks. 'You've writ a whole book there that ain't any use under the sun. They'll think that old woman's a fool, but, they'll miss it there. I ain't no fool yet.' 

Continuing she said: 'My mammy had a witch spell put on her once by her mouth being turned to one side. A neighbor who had two old women living in a house on his place and daddy believed they were the ones who did it. He went to the man who owned the place and cursed them to him. He said if mammy's mouth didn't get straight somebody was going to die. After that mammy's mouth turned tother way and never did get straight.'

She finished her talk about witches with the exclamation that she wouldn't want to talk any more for about a week.

Grandma is a devout member of the Baptist Church and up to a year or two ago was a constant attendant, frequently walking half a mile or more to preaching. Speaking on this subject she said:
'I have no patience with the common run of preachers of these days. In my time they preached the Bible without any put on, and show to plain, sensible people, many of whom attended in their shirtsleeves barefooted, in a log cabins and under trees. The preacher was not too good to preach in his shirtsleeves with a handkerchief around his neck. Next day he tackled the field and plow for a living and didn't charge anything for preaching. It's the almighty dollar with them now, and it is dragging many of them down to torment.

'I've got a plumb contempt for them styles and fashions now,' she remarked, reverting in memory to her first calico dress and first pair of Sunday shoes, 'but I reckon the reason the girls are so foolish is they are uglier than in my day and it takes more fine dressing to make them look purty. If they weren't so biggoty and had more sense they would look a heap purtier. But I'm tired of talking.'
As has been stated, Grandma Dockery belonged to a family of plain, hard working people, and it may he due to the primitive mode of living that her days have been so prolonged. It was a dismally raw, cold and cloudy day when the correspondent visited her. With the wind whistling through the cracks and the door left open, half the time he sat shivering, while she paid not the least attention to the cold. One of her sons in Bell County in a prosperous circumstances offered her a good, comfortable home the rest of her days, but after remaining with him a short while she preferred living in the primitive style to which she had always been accustomed. Mr. Driskell, her son-in-law, expressed the belief that if she was kept in a close room heated by a stove she would catch her death of cold the first time she poked her nose out of the door. Despite all the family can do she insists on going barefooted in the summer, claiming that shoes burn her feet.

One of the most remarkable things about her is that she learned to read after she was a hundred years old. She never went to school a day in her life, and has accomplished the feat of learning to read only within the past four or five years, absolutely without any assistance except to be taught the alphabet. She picked it up as a diversion when she could not work any longer.

Mr. Driskell, who is an ex-confederate, told that correspondent that he expected to take her to the national reunion at Dallas in the spring if conditions were favorable, and it is an event to which she is eagerly looking forward.

A tip of the Stetson to TOT reader Kelly Herd, who let me know of the existence of this. I found the photos and the article on the Find-A-Grave website.

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## woodman6415

This is Madam Candelaria, one of the most unusual people related to the Alamo. Per the TSHA: "She was born Andrea Castañón Villanueva (Madam Candelaria), and died at age 113 in San Antonio. She claimed she had been born in Laredo in 1785, though other sources say she was born at Presidio del Río Grande. She came to San Antonio when she was about twenty-five and married Candelario Villanueva, who she said was her second husband; thereafter she became known as Madam or Señora Candelaria. She was the mother of four children and raised twenty-two orphans. She nursed the sick and aided the poor. She claimed to have been in the Alamo during the 1836 battle and to have nursed the ailing Jim Bowie. Since evidence of survivors is sparse, her claims may never be confirmed, but in 1891 the Texas legislature granted her a pension of twelve dollars a month for being an Alamo survivor and for her work with smallpox victims in San Antonio. Madam Candelaria is buried in San Fernando Cemetery.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 23rd*

*First Texas Cavalry, USA, embarks on Rio Grande campaign*

On this day in 1863, the First Texas Cavalry, USA, left New Orleans for South Texas as part of the Union effort to interdict the lucrative trade between Confederate Texas and Mexico. The First was one of two regiments of Unionist cavalry from Texas to serve in the Civil War; the Second was formed in Brownsville after the Rio Grande campaign got underway. Loyalty to the Union was anything but a major consensus in Texas during the Civil War. A total of 1,915 Texas men served the Union cause, in contrast to the many thousands who served the Confederacy. Brownsville was a center of Unionist sentiment. Significant numbers of civilians who supported the North fled to the lower Rio Grande, where a provisional state government was set up under Andrew J. Hamilton, and where Edmund J. Davis and others recruited cavalrymen for the North. Davis had formed the First Texas Cavalry, USA, in New Orleans in 1862. In November 1864 the regiment was merged with the Second into the First Texas Volunteer Cavalry. This new twelve-company regiment engaged in patrolling and reconnaissance duties until the end of the war, and was mustered out of service on November 4, 1865.

*Abilene replaces Buffalo Gap as seat of Taylor County

*
On this day in 1883, the new railroad town of Abilene became the Taylor county seat. Taylor County was organized in 1878 with Buffalo Gap as the original seat. When the Texas and Pacific Railway began to push westward in 1880, several ranchers and businessmen met with H. C. Whithers, the Texas and Pacific track and townsite locator, and arranged to have the railroad bypass Buffalo Gap. They agreed that the route would traverse the northern part of the county and consequently their own land, and that a new town would be established between Cedar and Big Elm creeks east of Catclaw Creek. C. W. Merchant apparently suggested the name Abilene, after the Kansas cattle town. By 1890 the city had a population of 3,194; in 2000 it had 115,930 residents.


*Plane crashes into religious shrine*
On this day in 1970, the lower Rio Grande Valley town of San Juan made international headlines when Francis B. Alexander smashed a rented single-engine plane into the Virgen de San Juan del Valle Shrine. The town of San Juan was organized in 1909 by John Closner near his San Juan Plantation. In 1949 Father Joseph Azpiazu brought to his San Juan parish a replica of the image of Our Lady of San Juan, venerated at San Juan de Los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico. The image is a statue about three feet high, clothed in traditional robes. Soon the church became a place of pilgrimage for many Mexican Americans in Texas; on weekends hundreds of pilgrims would come to San Juan to pray. The crowds grew, and in 1954 the construction of a larger shrine was completed and dedicated by Father Azpiazu. On the day of the 1970 crash the pilot had reportedly radioed a warning that all Methodist and Catholic churches in the lower Rio Grande Valley should be evacuated, then twenty minutes later struck the shrine, which at the time was occupied by more than 130 people. The pilot was the only fatality. Two priests were able to save the statue of the Virgin, but damages to the shrine were estimated at $1.5 million and were a devastating blow to the community. A mass effort was initiated to reconstruct the church. In April 1980 San Juan again made international headlines when the new shrine was dedicated; the televised ceremonies were shown nationally on the Spanish Information Network.

*Now if you made it through the above events let me tell you about an event I witnessed in Today in Texas History*

27 years ago at 1:05 pm October 23rd 1989, Many of my friends and coworker died in a tragic explosion that ripped through my place of employment, the Phillips 66 Chemical Plant located in Pasadena, TX. 23 people were killed and hundreds injured when a live polyethylene reactor emptied its contents to the atmosphere and shortly after that found an ignition point. Those reactors are double loop, 15 stories high, 20" inside diameter and run at about 700 psia containing mostly isobutene. That day I happen to be off work and was at the deer lease in Nacogdoches with some of my coworkers. Some of my coworkers left the day before and were back at work on Monday when it happened. We worked in the Polypropylene unit which is about 2,000 feet away from the actual unit that released and exploded. The devastation I encountered when returning back to work on Wednesday, 2 days after explosion, was unfathomable.

Here's a couple pictures of the event:

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## woodman6415

Bruce Robison singing a song that has meant a lot to me at various times in my life. Here he's singing with his wife, Kelly Willis, singing harmony. Bruce was born in Bandera, Texas.

Here we are
What is left of a husband and a wife
Four good kids
Who have a way, of getting on with their lives
I’m not old
But I’m gettin’ a whole lot older everyday
It’s too late to keep
From goin’ crazy I’ve got to get away

C H O R U S :
The reasons that I can’t stay
Don’t have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin’ a man
Shouldn’t have to be this rough
You ain’t the only one
Who feels like this world left you far behind
I don’t know why you gotta be
Angry all the time

Our boys are strong
A spittin’ image of you when you were young
I hope someday
They can see past, what you have become And I remember

Every time I said I’d never leave
What I can’t live with
Is memories of the way you used to be

C H O R U S :

Twenty years
Have came and went since I walked out of your door
I never quite
Made it back to the one I was before
And God it hurts me
To think of you For the light in your eyes was gone
Sometimes I don’t know why
This old world can’t leave well enough alone

C H O R U S :

I don’t know why you gotta be
Angry all the time

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 24th*

*Llanos-Cárdenas expedition begins mapping Matagorda Bay
*
On this day in 1690, the ship _Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación_ anchored off Cavallo Pass, the natural entrance to Matagorda Bay, and its crew began mapping the bay. The ship was under the command of Francisco de Llanos, and the mapmaking was assigned to the engineer Manuel José de Cárdenas y Magaña. The expedition had left Veracruz on October 12. Its mission was to evaluate the environs of the defunct French Fort St. Louis as a site for a Spanish presidio, to seek a water route to the new San Francisco de los Tejas Mission, and to map Espíritu Santo (i.e., Matagorda ) Bay. The expedition determined that neither the Lavaca River nor the Colorado afforded a water route to the mission. The reconnaissance map--one of a series of Spanish cartographic representations of the Texas coast--gave twentieth-century historian Herbert E. Bolton reason to place the site of Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek in Victoria County.

*Pioneer German authors killed by Indians
*
On this day in 1845, two pioneer German-Texans, Friedrich Wilhelm von Wrede Sr. and Oscar von Claren, were killed and scalped by Indians at a place referred to as Live Oak Spring, ten to twelve miles from Austin, probably near Manchaca Springs. Wrede made an initial trip to Texas in 1837 and traveled and made notes of his observations in America. He returned to Germany in 1843 and compiled and published _Lebensbilder aus den vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika und Texas_ (1844). Wrede's travel book is a generally realistic account of the opportunities and difficulties of colonists on the American frontier, especially in Texas. The book helped to influence prospective German settlers to come to Texas, despite the negative effect of Wrede's own violent death in Texas the following year. Wrede returned to Texas in 1844 as an official of the Adelsverein. His companion in death, Oscar von Claren, immigrated from Hannover to New Braunfels, Texas, probably early in 1845. His family correspondence indicated his interest in the botany and wildlife of the New Braunfels area, and he collected turtles and snakes to sell to naturalists in Germany. He wrote _Indianer bei Neu Braunfels im Jahre 1845_ (1845), a group of essays depicting Texas Indians.The two authors were buried at the site of the massacre by United States soldiers, who gave them military honors. Wrede's son, Friedrich Wilhelm von Wrede Jr., settled in Fredericksburg but returned to Germany after the Civil War.

*Austin African-American colleges merge*

On this day in 1952, two historically black Austin institutions of higher education, Samuel Huston College and Tillotson College, merged to form Huston-Tillotson College. Tillotson College had opened its doors in 1881, and Samuel Huston College in 1900. Huston-Tillotson College is a coeducational college of liberal arts and sciences, operated jointly under the auspices of the American Missionary Association of the United Church of Christ and the Board of Education of the Methodist Church.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day describes an event that took place in 1885:

"Once when [freight driver Bill Harelson and I] stopped for dinner at a little hotel at Paint Rock [near San Angelo], Bill began his meal by gulping down a cup of coffee, and then, searching for his sixshooter, shot a hole in the dining room floor. Whereupon the girl waiter placidly emerged from the kitchen. Holding out his cup and saucer at arm's length toward her, Bill smilingly said, "Another cup, please." It appeared that I was the only one to sense anything extraordinary about this mode of calling a waiter."

----- S.J. Houghton of Dallas, Texas, 1936

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## woodman6415

Yum Stubbs ... now I'm hungry

Traces of Texas reader Andrew Buelter kindly submitted this AWESOME early 1900s photo of the of the Horn Palace Saloon in Yorktown, TX. Shawn's friend Cynthia Lawyer sent the photo to Shawn. The proprietor, J.W. Neumayer is behind the bar. Believe it or not, the bar seen in the photograph is currently being used at Stubbs BBQ in Austin, Texas. HOW COOL IS THAT? I think I am going to go down there and photograph it for this page. And look at all the horns and the tarpons suspended from the ceiling. I wonder how or why it became "a thing" to decorate bars with stuffed animals and horns. 

Thank you, Andrew and Cynthia. This is KILLER

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## Wildthings

I'm checking out the size of the rattlesnake skins on the wall behind the guy in suspenders. Wow

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a list of early Texas newspapers and the year in which they were founded:

The Cotton Plant: San Felipe, 1829

The Mexican Nation: San Felipe, 1831

The Redlander: San Augustine, 1837

The People: Brazoria, 1837

The National Banner: Houston, 1837

The Civilian: Houston, 1838

The Intelligencer: Houston, 1838

The Western Texan: San Antonio, 1848

The Flea: Jacksboro (Fort Richardson), 1869

The Plowboy: Lubbock, 1871

The Busy Bee: San Marcos, 1874

The Iron News: Llano, 1884

The Kicker: Ozona, 1891

The Spy: Mason, 1893

The Daily Thomas Cat: San Marcos, 1898

The Pointer: Dripping Springs, 1905

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I'm checking out the size of the rattlesnake skins on the wall behind the guy in suspenders. Wow



Those must have been babies :



 

That's not me ... some guy in Oklahoma

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## Wildthings

My kind of man - wearing flip flops while snake hunting. Ahh the old fish trick - hold it out at length toward the camera to make it bigger!! LOL


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> My kind of man - wearing flip flops while snake hunting. Ahh the old fish trick - hold it out at length toward the camera to make it bigger!! LOL



Funny I didn't notice flip flops ...
But fact remains he's holding it about shoulder hight and nose and tail almost touching ground ...


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## woodman6415

Hold my beer Jim Bob ... gonna rassel me some dinner

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Those must have been babies :
> 
> View attachment 115686
> 
> That's not me ... some guy in Oklahoma



That's a good meal right there! Tony


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 25th*

*Texas State Fair opens in Dallas
*
On this day in 1886, the Texas State Fair opened on a section of John Cole's farm in north Dallas. A rival organization, the Dallas Exposition, opened its first fair the following day. Both fairs were successful and together drew over 35,000 people a day. Eventually, the two groups decided to merge and form the Texas State Fair and Dallas Exposition, which eventually became the State Fair of Texas.

*Up-and-down entrepreneur Franklin Shaeffer dies
*
On this day in 1886, Franklin Wingot Shaeffer died as a result of a broken leg. This Ohio native had operated a freight line in northern California during the gold rush of 1849, had lost his money on the stock exchange in New York in the 1850s, and had moved to Texas in 1857. From Boerne, where he bought 40,000 acres, he moved to Nueces County to start a sheep ranch. Shaeffer invested in the Corpus Christi ship channel but lost his money after the Civil War. He tried raising sheep in fenced pastures with regularly spaced wells--a technique that failed with sheep but subsequently succeeded with cattle. His ancillary discovery of artesian water in South Texas promoted growth in the region. Shaeffer died because the surgeon working on his leg, broken accidentally in a carriage accident near San Diego, Texas, muffed the job.

*"Star Trek" creator beamed from Earth*

On this day in 1991, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry died in Santa Monica, California. Roddenberry was born in El Paso in 1921, and grew up in Los Angeles. He began writing for television in the 1950s and his scripts were produced on "Dragnet," "Naked City," "The U.S. Steel Hour," and "Goodyear Theater," among other series. He received his first Emmy award as head writer for "Have Gun, Will Travel," a western series, and produced the television series "The Lieutenant" in 1960-61. Roddenberry is best remembered, however, for "Star Trek," which premiered in 1966 and ran until 1969. The series became a cult favorite, spawned numerous fan clubs, products, and conventions, and later became one of the most popular syndicated shows in reruns. Roddenberry once deprecatingly described "Star Trek" as "'Wagon Train' to the stars," but one critic wrote that Roddenberry "establish[ed] a new level of quality for television science fiction." He received awards from the Writers Guild of America, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and other television organizations, and "Star Trek" won an Emmy, an international Hugo Award for outstanding science fiction writing, and an Image award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Funny I didn't notice flip flops ...
> But fact remains he's holding it about shoulder hight and nose and tail almost touching ground ...



Yessir! Here's one I mounted and that's my work boot next to it to show size

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Yessir! Here's one I mounted and that's my work boot next to it to show size
> View attachment 115692
> 
> 
> View attachment 115693



Great job Barry! Tony


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 26th*


*Camp Gates established in Coryell County*

On this day in 1849, Camp Gates, the predecessor of Fort Gates, was established by Capt. William R. Montgomery as a stockaded United States cantonment on the north bank of the Leon River above Coryell Creek, about five miles east of the site of present Gatesville. The installation was named for Bvt. Maj. Collinson Reed Gates of New York, who won distinction in the Mexican War. The last of a cordon of posts established in 1849 to protect settlers on the frontier from Indians, the fort was also the first of the line of posts to be abandoned. It was closed in March 1852, once the Indian threat had been removed. Lt. George Pickett, later a Confederate general and leader of "Pickett's Charge" at Gettysburg, was stationed at Fort Gates in 1850-51.


*First football game played at Cotton Bowl*

On this day in 1930, the Southern Methodist University Mustangs beat the Indiana Hoosiers 27-0 in the first football game at the brand-new Cotton Bowl in Dallas's Fair Park. The 46,000-seat stadium was on the site of Fair Park Football Stadium, built in 1921 with a seating capacity of 15,000. A milestone in the history of the stadium occurred on January 1, 1937, when the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs beat Marquette University 16-6 in the first Cotton Bowl Classic. The classic became a New Year's Day tradition matching the Southwest Conference champion against a highly rated opponent. The stadium was renovated extensively in 1948 and 1949, bringing its capacity to 75,504. The Cotton Bowl was also the home of the Dallas Texans of the National Football League in 1952, the Dallas Texans (now the Kansas City Chiefs) of the American Football League from 1960 to 1962, and the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL from 1960 to 1970. The stadium was renovated again in 1994 in preparation for soccer's World Cup. The Dallas Burn of Major League Soccer is currently the only professional sports franchise to call the Cotton Bowl home, though the annual clash between the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Oklahoma is still played there.


*Texas native dies in heroic action
*
On this day in 1944, Horace S. Carswell, Jr., died in China. He was flying a B-24 on a single-aircraft night mission against a Japanese convoy in the South China Sea. After his plane was seriously damaged--three of its engines were knocked out--instead of parachuting, he managed to gain enough altitude to reach land, where he ordered his crew to bail out. Carswell stayed with the B-24 and attempted a landing, but crashed with his copilot into a mountain. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1946, for giving "his life...to save all members of his crew" and for "sacrifice far beyond that required of him." In addition to the Medal of Honor, he received numerous other posthumous honors. In 1948 Fort Worth Army Airfield was renamed for Carswell, who was buried at a Catholic mission in Tungchen, China.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day comes from legendary rancher Charles Goodnight:

"When the Indians robbed houses they invariably took all the books they could find, using the paper to pack their shields. They knew, as well as we did, the resistance paper has against bullets. Paper offered more resistance to a bullet than anything to be had upon the frontier, unless it was cotton. The Indians knew this and stole all the books and paper they could find ...

Their shield was made by forming a circular bow of wood two or three feet across, over each side of which was drawn untanned buffalo hide from the neck of the buffalo, the toughest and thickest they cold get. They filled between the hide with paper. In times of action, the Indian had this on his elbow and always aimed to keep it at an angle between you and him. Very few of the old fashioned rifles would penetrate these shields. The rifle I carried then [1861], and still have, would knock a hole right through them at any angle. I once shot an Indian down on the Quitaque. I did not kill him, but he dropped his shield. Between the folds of hide was a complete history of Rome, and the boys had considerable fun passing the sheets around and reading them.

----- Charles Goodnight, as quoted in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review, 1928

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The U.S.-Mexican war that began in 1846 lasted less than 18 months and yet the ramifications were enormous. In defeat, Mexico forfeited more than one million square miles of territory that it had laid claim to. In time, those vast lands became the states of California, Arizona and New Mexico, with large portions of Colorado, Utah and Nevada thrown in. Texas, then only recently annexed into the Union, was made by treaty free of the long-standing claim of ownership by Mexico. And the Rio Grande was formally fixed as the boundary between Texas and the United States. Incidentally, freshman U.S. Congressman Abraham Lincoln, then only 38 years old, railed against the war so often and with such vigor that his loyalty to the Union was called into question.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 27th*

*Pride of Galveston launched in Scotland*

On this day in 1877 the _Elissa_, an iron-hulled, three-masted barque built at the Clyde River shipyard of Alexander Hall and Company of Aberdeen, Scotland, was launched. After a long and varied career the vessel was purchased in 1974 by the Galveston Historical Foundation as a restoration project to complement the Strand Historic District, the Victorian market center of the city. The restored nineteenth-century full-rigged sailing ship is now berthed at Pier 21 in Galveston, just off the Strand, and is visited by 60,000 to 70,000 tourists a year.

I've been one of those 60,000 tourist. It's really cool!





*Company chartered to connect Texas and Brazil by rail
*
On this day in 1891, the Pan American Railway was chartered by a group of Boston investors to connect Victoria, Texas, with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The residents of Victoria, anxious to have an independent rail outlet to compete with the Southern Pacific-controlled lines radiating from the city, offered a $150,000 bonus to the company. By August 1892 the line had been completed from Victoria to the Guadalupe River, a distance of ten miles, but funds were not available to bridge the river. Victoria refused to pay any installment on the bonus until additional mileage had been constructed. No regular trains were ever operated on the Pan American, and the track was soon abandoned.


*Pioneering panoramic photographer dies
*
On this day in 1986, photographer E. O. Goldbeck died. The San Antonio native, born in 1892, decided to pursue a career in photography in 1901 after he captured a candid shot of President McKinley in a San Antonio parade. Within weeks he had purchased his own camera and was taking and selling impromptu portraits of his classmates and teachers. After graduating from Main Avenue High School in 1910, he traveled extensively, purchased his first Cirkut camera, and began experimenting with the panoramic format. Known as the "unofficial photographer of America's military," Goldbeck pushed the limits of his craft by working with ever larger groups in striking designs. For his largest group shot, in which 21,765 men were arranged to represent the Air Force insignia, he spent more than six weeks building a 200-foot tower and making blueprints of the formation and attire of his subjects. The photograph was subsequently featured in _Life_ magazine and became the most frequently reproduced of his prints. In 1967 Goldbeck discovered that many of his early negatives had deteriorated in storage. He subsequently donated 60,000 of his negatives and more than 10,000 vintage prints to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When the roundup was over we went back to our routine work, but before getting down to routine duties, the waddies always took a little spell in Amarillo to shake off the roundup fever.

Amarillo was a pure cow-town those days [pre-1900] and run by stage. There were just a few womenfolks in the town, and they were at a premium. Most of the waddies would make the town after the roundup, and some of the boys would stay until all their money was gone. Some of the boys played the gambling joints, some just soaked themselves in the "pizen," and some went sally-hooting in the sally joints. Any kind of joint that a fellow wanted was in the town to satisfy the waddies' wants.

I was just a kid, but the older waddies took charge of me so I wouldn't get taken in, or get in wrong, and the boys held me down to earth, but I watched and saw the op'ra.

I saw some shootings and many bear fights. Nearly all the saloons in Amarillo, at that time, had bull-pens at the rear of the joints. The purpose for which the bull-pens were built was to have a place to shunt the fellows who became overloaded where they could sleep off the load of "pizen"; also to prevent interference from the law or meddling gentry who were looking for a chance to swipe a roll of money. The bull-pen was also used for a battle ground. When a couple of fellows got riled at each other they were shunted into the bull-pen to cool off. The saloon bouncers would take the guns away from the riled men and push them into the bull-pen to settle the argument, bear-fight fashion. That method saved a lot of shooting but could not always be worked in all cases, and there was an occasional shooting."

---- ancient trail cowboy Richard Murphy, as quoted in "Texas Cowboy," edited by Jim and Judy Lanning, 1984

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 28th 

Battle of Concepción ignites siege of Bexar*

On this day in 1835, Texans and Mexicans skirmished near San Antonio at the battle of Concepción, the opening engagement in the siege of Bexar. Some ninety Texans under the command of James Bowie and James W. Fannin, Jr., defeated a force of 275 Mexican soldiers and two cannons. Mexican losses included fourteen killed and thirty-nine wounded, some of whom died later. Texas losses included one killed and one wounded.


*German newspaper ceases publication
*
On this day in 1945, the German-language San Antonio _Freie Presse für Texas_, one of the leading Republican papers in the South in the years after the Civil War, ceased publication. August Siemering and Company started the paper in 1865, a few months before starting the San Antonio _Express._ Two years later James P. Newcomb became involved in the operation of both papers. The German paper, with Siemering as editor, was a five-column, four-page publication issued bi-weekly, tri-weekly, and, at times, daily. Siemering, who had been a vocal opponent of slavery, was a staunch Unionist despite having been impressed into the Confederate army. The company sold the English paper, the _Express,_ in 1877, but continued to do the mechanical work until the _Express_ bought its own presses some years later. Siemering died in 1883; the _Freie Presse_ continued as an eight-page, six-column weekly until it was discontinued.


*Chamizal Dispute finally settled
*
On this day in 1967, U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson and Mexican president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz formally settled the so-called Chamizal Dispute by agreeing that Mexico should receive 7.82 acres of the Ponce de León land grant. The dispute between Mexico and the United States involved about 600 acres at El Paso between the bed of the Rio Grande as surveyed in 1852 and the present channel of the river. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 and the Treaty of 1884 had specified that the boundary between the two nations should be down the middle of the river along the deepest channel, regardless of any alterations in the banks or channels. By 1873, alterations in the river's course had carved out a 600-acre tract known as the Chamizal that became de facto U.S. territory. In 1895, however, Mexico argued that the boundary had never changed and that the Chamizal was therefore technically Mexican territory. In 1911, the International Boundary Commission proposed dividing the disputed territory, but the U.S. rejected the proposal. The dispute continued until President John F. Kennedy agreed to settle it on the basis of the 1911 arbitration award. In January 1963, the United States and Mexico ratified a treaty that generally followed the 1911 arbitration recommendations. The small portion of the Ponce de León grant that changed hands in 1967 officially ended the dispute

*Son born to Barry Buras in Houston
*
On this day in 1979, a son was born to Barry and Ranet Buras in Houston TX

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The bloodiest battle in Texas history was the Battle of Medina, fought on August 18, 1813 ---- and nobody knows exactly where it took place. Here's what happened:

The early 19th century was a time of political upheaval, and in 1812, while the U.S. was at war with England, Spain faced revolts throughout Latin America, including Mexico. In this revolutionary climate, Americans and others began efforts to influence the fate of Mexico, of which Texas was a province. Bernardo Gutiérrez and Lt. A.W. Magee marched from Louisiana to Texas in 1812 with their Republican Army of the North. Capturing Nacogdoches and Trinidad, they moved on to Presidio La Bahía, where they survived a four-month siege by Spanish governors and their Royalist forces. The Royalists retreated toward San Antonio in February 1813, and in March the Republican Army followed them and was ambushed in the Battle of Rosillo. The Republicans persevered, captured San Antonio and executed the Spanish governors. 

Gutiérrez's new Republic of Texas, with its green flag, was marked by internal political problems. Spain sent troops under Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo to retake Texas. Among his men was Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Yes .... THAT Santa Anna. The Republicans marched from San Antonio on Aug. 15, 1813 with about 1,400 troops: American volunteers, Tejanos, Mexicans and Native Americans. Led across the plains south of the Medina River, the fatigued army faced Spanish troops on Aug. 18 and was soundly defeated. Fewer than 100 escaped; most were executed. The Spanish left the decimated Texans on the battlefield and proceeded to San Antonio to punish citizens who supported independence. Eight years later, Mexican leaders ordered the remains of the fallen soldiers to be buried under an oak tree on the battlefield. But here's the thing: nobody knows for sure exactly where that oak tree was. It is believed to have taken place about 20 miles northwest of what is now downtown San Antonio, but no archaeological evidence has been found.

Incidentally, José Antonio Navarro, a founding father of Texas, and José Francisco Ruiz ----- both future signers of the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence ----- fought in the Battle of Medina, as did at least one man who had fought in the American revolutionary war against the British in the previous century.

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## Wildthings

Great Post Wendell! This battle has always intrigued me. Here's a little more reading on it

Battle of Medina

Here's the location of the historical marker per Google maps but Robert Marshall says he's found the actual location



 



Robert Marshall


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Great Post Wendell! This battle has always intrigued me. Here's a little more reading on it
> 
> Battle of Medina
> 
> Here's the location of the historical marker per Google maps but Robert Marshall says he's found the actual location
> 
> View attachment 115877 View attachment 115878
> 
> Robert Marshall



Barry, you need to come down one day and you, I and Wendell can go check it out. Tony

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## woodman6415

Being that next weekend is the weekend of the big chili shindig with Gary P. Nunn and the assorted revelry out in Terlingua, it's only fitting that I re-post Bones Hooks' classic chili prayer. Bones was an old black cowboy, range cook, and civic leader who lived in Amarillo. He was revered by all who knew him, so much so that there is now a park in Amarillo that is named after him. Here is the prayer. WARNING! It is not politically correct by today's standards!

"Lord God, you know us old cowhands is forgitful. Sometimes I can’t even recollect what happened yestiddy. We is forgitful. We jes' know daylight and dark, summer, fall, winter, and spring. But I sure hope we don’t never forgit to thank you before we is about to eat a mess of good chili.

We don’t know why you have been so doggone good to us. The heathen Chinee don’t have no chili, ever. The Frenchmens is left out. The Rooshians don’t know no more about chili than a hog does about a side saddle. Even the Meskins don’t get a good whiff of it unless they stay around here. Chili eaters is some of your chosen people. We don’t know why you so doggone good to us. But, Lord God, don’t ever think we ain’t grateful for this here chili we’s about to eat. Amen.”

For more about Bones Hooks, read this article:

http://amarillo.com/stories/051900/his_hooks.html

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## Kevin

Wildthings said:


> *Son born to Barry Buras in Houston
> *
> On this day in 1979, a son was born to Barry and Ranet Buras in Houston TX



Happy Birthday Barry! 


@Wildthings


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## Tony

Kevin said:


> Happy Birthday Barry!
> 
> 
> @Wildthings



I've met Barry, he wasn't born in 1979! I think that is his son.

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> ....I think that is his son.



Yes, I got that. His name is . . . . . . . Barry!


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## Tony

Kevin said:


> Yes, I got that. His name is . . . . . . . Barry!



My apologies. Who names their son after themselves??????


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## Kevin

Tony said:


> My apologies. Who names their son after themselves??????



Kings, mostly. And George Foreman.


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## Tony

Kevin said:


> Kings, mostly. And George Foreman.



I didn't go that route, I named mine after his grandfather.


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## Kevin

Tony said:


> I didn't go that route, I named mine after his grandfather.



I named mine after someone else's grandfather. Not anyone I know but I mean, surely someone has a grandfather named Garrett.

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## Tony

When I was born, my father wasn't at the hospital. He got there later, and my mother had named me Travis after her father. He had it changed, and my original birth certificate won't work anywhere because they altered it at the hospital. Tony

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## Wildthings

I didn't go that route either...We went with Jeremy Roy.....jeeeeesh who would name their son Barry


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 29th*

*State legislature receives proposal for Indian reservation
*
On this day in 1854, a petition for a permanent reservation for the Alabama Indians, signed by tribal leaders, was presented to the Texas legislature. This petition was approved, and the state of Texas purchased land in Polk County for a reservation the same year. The reservation was expanded in 1928, when the federal government purchased an additional 3,071 acres adjoining the original 1,110-acre plot. The deed for this additional land was issued to the Alabama and Coushatta tribes, and the name "Alabama-Coushatta" has been used since 1928 as the official title of the enlarged reservation.

*Colorado City-Snyder route inaugurates intercity bus service in Texas
*
On this day in 1907, inventor W. B. Chenoweth inaugurated intercity bus service in Texas by driving his six-cylinder "motor driven stage coach" from Colorado City to Snyder. He abandoned this line and another operation from Big Spring to Lamesa before leaving the bus business. The first regularly scheduled, successfully maintained, and more or less permanent intercity bus line in Texas began operating between Luling and San Marcos in 1912. The Texas busing industry grew rapidly over the next few years, spurred in part by the passage of the Federal Highway Act in 1916 and the rise of oil boomtowns such as Ranger, Breckenridge, Eastland, Mexia, and Desdemona. In 1927 the state legislature passed a law giving authority over the state's bus lines to the Railroad Commission. The busing industry suffered during the Great Depression but rebounded vigorously during World War II, when tire and gasoline rationing encouraged would-be motorists to travel by bus instead. Both ridership and revenues declined after the war, however, and most of the small lines ceased operation or sold out to the larger networks of Trailways and Greyhound, which merged in 1987.

*Father of conjunto born in Reynosa*

On this day in 1911, Narciso Martínez was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. His parents immigrated to the United States that year and settled in La Paloma, a town outside Brownsville. Martínez took up the accordion in 1928. Around the same time he moved to Bishop and absorbed the accordion-playing traditions of the local Czechs and Germans. Martínez and his partner, _bajo sexto_ player Santiago Almeida, established the accordion and _bajo sexto_ as the basic instruments of the _conjunto_ and became well regarded as a team. Their pairing led to Martínez's major innovation in the development of the _conjunto:_ he emphasized the right-side melody and treble notes of the accordion, leaving the left-side bass notes to the _bajo sexto_ player. All other _conjunto_ accordionists soon adopted this change. Martínez made his first recording with Almeida for Bluebird Records in 1936, but switched to Armando Marroquín's Ideal label in 1946. Nicknamed "El Huracán del Valle" ("The Hurricane of the Valley") for his fast-paced playing, Martínez remained a popular performer throughout the 1950s, but worked as a field hand in Florida after a new generation of _conjunto_ musicians emerged in the mid-1960s. His career revived, however, after he was featured in _Chulas Fronteras ("Beautiful Borders"),_ a 1976 documentary film about Texas-Mexican music. He was inducted into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in 1982, received a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1983, and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1989. He was scheduled to appear at the annual Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio in May 1992 but was prevented by illness. He died the following month.

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## SENC

Tony said:


> I didn't go that route, I named mine after his grandfather.


I named mine after his great grandfather. As it turns out, he is also named after his grandfather and, by some unintended coincidence, me. How's that for baggage!


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## Kevin

SENC said:


> I named mine after his great grandfather. As it turns out, he is also named after his grandfather and, by some unintended coincidence, me. How's that for baggage!



So you're saying the creator of the candy bar was the original Henry in your lineage?

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## Tony

SENC said:


> I named mine after his great grandfather. As it turns out, he is also named after his grandfather and, by some unintended coincidence, me. How's that for baggage!



Mine is the 3rd, you've got me beat by one generation. Tony

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## Tony



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## SENC

Tony said:


> View attachment 115995


Everyone I know from Texas thinks that's all it takes. Including me.

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## Kevin

SENC said:


> Everyone I know from Texas thinks that's all it takes. Including me.



And everyone I know that isn't from Texas, that dislikes Texans, dislikes us because of that attitude. But I guess we don't really give two shakes of a rabbit's tail do we......

Regards, Perfect Native Texan



(I only say that because about the only members reading this thread are us Texans and even quite a few of us aren't doing so but I won't mention any names ahem! @El Guapo - last read this thread July 20th!!! )

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Behind the speaker's desk in the House of Representatives chamber at the state capitol in Austin hangs the oldest artifact in the capitol, a battle flag that was carried by Texian forces at the battle of San Jacinto in 1836. The flag, also known as the Newport Rifles Company Flag, is the only existing flag carried by the Texian army at the Battle of San Jacinto to remain in Texas. The charging Lady Liberty with sword drawn and “Liberty or Death” emblazoned on her sash originally had a blue background. The Newport Rifles of Kentucky, a 52-man company of volunteers carried the flag into battle. Before their departure for Texas, the unit received the flag from the ladies of Newport, Kentucky who had the painting of Liberty done by the 22 year old artist, James Henry Beard.

Led by Captain Sidney Sherman, the volunteer soldiers’ journey to Texas was not easy. They left Kentucky aboard the steamer Augusta on December 31, 1835 in the middle of a snowstorm. They traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, then up the Red River to Natchitoches, Louisiana. The unit reached Texas later in January and proceeded to San Felipe, Texas. There, the Newport soldiers became part of the First Texas Regiment. As the number of volunteers grew, Sherman quickly rose to the rank of Colonel and received command of the Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers. It was Sherman who began the attack at San Jacinto, and who is credited with shouting the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo!"

After the battle, the Newport volunteers returned this flag to Sherman and his family. His three daughters gave the tattered silk to the State of Texas on August 8, 1896. It has been restored and now hangs in its position of honor.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Poor meals and poor horses were constant companions of negro troopers The post surgeon [in 1870] at Fort Concho put it bluntly. The food was inferior to that provided at other posts. The bread was sour, beef of poor quality, and the canned peas not fit to eat. There were none of the staples common at other posts – molasses, canned tomatoes, dried apples, dried peaches, sauerkraut, potatoes, or onions. The butter was made of suet, and there was only enough flour for the officers. Certainly there were no visions of a sumptuous repast in the minds of worn-out troopers coming in to Concho after days or weeks in the field.

Off-post recreation, of a sort, was available in the sordid little towns that blossomed around the posts, but a good soldier had no cause to seek trouble, as it was already awaiting him. If a trooper was unfortunate enough to lose his life in a clash with a white citizen, his comrades could hardly expect that justice would be served. One such citizen, John Jackson, a settler near Fort McKavett, murdered a negro infantryman, private Boston Henry, in cold blood, long eluded the law and in the process shot and killed Corporal Albert Marshall and Private Charles Murray of F Compny, stationed at Fort Mckavett. When finally apprehended and brought to trial, a jury quickly set him free." 

------- Willim H. Leckie, "The Buffalo Soldiers, a Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West," 1967

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## NYWoodturner

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Behind the speaker's desk in the House of Representatives chamber at the state capitol in Austin hangs the oldest artifact in the capitol, a battle flag that was carried by Texian forces at the battle of San Jacinto in 1836. The flag, also known as the Newport Rifles Company Flag, is the only existing flag carried by the Texian army at the Battle of San Jacinto to remain in Texas. The charging Lady Liberty with sword drawn and “Liberty or Death” emblazoned on her sash originally had a blue background. The Newport Rifles of Kentucky, a 52-man company of volunteers carried the flag into battle. Before their departure for Texas, the unit received the flag from the ladies of Newport, Kentucky who had the painting of Liberty done by the 22 year old artist, James Henry Beard.
> 
> Led by Captain Sidney Sherman, the volunteer soldiers’ journey to Texas was not easy. They left Kentucky aboard the steamer Augusta on December 31, 1835 in the middle of a snowstorm. They traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, then up the Red River to Natchitoches, Louisiana. The unit reached Texas later in January and proceeded to San Felipe, Texas. There, the Newport soldiers became part of the First Texas Regiment. As the number of volunteers grew, Sherman quickly rose to the rank of Colonel and received command of the Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers. It was Sherman who began the attack at San Jacinto, and who is credited with shouting the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo!"
> 
> After the battle, the Newport volunteers returned this flag to Sherman and his family. His three daughters gave the tattered silk to the State of Texas on August 8, 1896. It has been restored and now hangs in its position of honor.
> 
> View attachment 116008



I know its a Texas thread but never underestimate them Kentucky boys!!!

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## woodman6415

Texas Rangers W.H. Putnam and Captain Phillips circa 1895.

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## woodman6415



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## Wildthings

Whataburger is rightly at the top of the list!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- October 31st (Happy Halloween)*

*Military commander removes Texas Supreme Court justice*

On this day in 1869, Colbert Caldwell was removed from his position on the Texas Supreme Court, a victim of the political infighting that characterized the Reconstruction period in Texas. The commander of the Military District of Texas took the action in response to complaints by Radical Republicans that Caldwell, though a member of the party, was unsympathetic to freedmen's aspirations and the goals of congressional Reconstruction. Caldwell, born in Tennessee in 1822, moved to Texas in 1859, and Gen. Phil Sheridan appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1867. Caldwell's outspoken Republican partisanship earned him a reputation among Democrats as a rabble-rouser; he was the subject of death threats in the Stockade Case, and successfully campaigned for a seat at the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69 despite an assassination attempt in Marshall. Radicals elected E. J. Davis over Caldwell as president of the convention, at which Caldwell led the moderate Republicans. Caldwell died in 1892.

*Leading black politician dies*

On this day in 1882, George Ruby, black Reconstruction politician, died of malaria in New Orleans. Ruby was born and educated in the North. He moved to Galveston in 1866 and served with the Freedmen's Bureau. He was elected to the state Senate in 1869 and became one of the most influential men of the Twelfth and Thirteenth legislatures. As Reconstruction came to an end in Texas in 1872-73, Ruby moved to Louisiana. One historian has described Ruby as "the most important black politician in Texas during Reconstruction in terms of power and ability."


*Gulf Coast promoter and inventor dies
*
On this day in 1893, George Ware Fulton, founder of the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, died. Fulton, born in Philadelphia in 1810, first came to Texas in 1837 and served in the Army of the Republic. In 1840 he married Harriet G. Smith, the daughter of friend and politician Henry Smith. Fulton acquired Smith’s land after his death, and between that property and additional grants and purchases owned some 25,000 acres in the Aransas Bay area on the Texas Gulf Coast. He founded the town of Fulton and helped organize the Coleman, Mathis, Fulton Cattle Company in 1871 (which became the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company in 1879). Fulton was a skilled engineer, surveyor, inventor, and businessman and received a patent for shipping beef under artificial cooling. His mansion, built in Fulton, featured indoor plumbing and ventilation and food preservation systems—advanced marvels for that day. Fulton promoted the development of the area and laid out the towns of Sinton, Gregory, and Portland. He was also a strong advocate for the construction of a deepwater port on the Texas Coast.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I'm not saying it's windy out here, but I will say that in 1951 I was at a drive-in theater in Odessa that was showing a Western picture. At one point the wind outside my pickup got to blowing so strong it blew Gene Autry clean out of the saddle."

------ an old cowboy that I met in a honky-tonk in Midland back in 1986. I kind of didn't believe him, but I kind of did. ;)

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Vernon, Texas, began life as Eagle Flat, Texas, on account of numerous eagles that nested in the vicinity. It wasn't until the 1870s that they changed the name to "Vernon" in honor of George Washington's home, Mount Vernon.

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## Wildthings

_Good Morning!! Already November and still in the 80's *HELLLO TEXAS*!!_

*Today in Texas History -- November 1st*

*Like joins like as Belle Starr marries horse thief Jim Reed*

On this day in 1866, Myra Maybelle (or Belle) Shirley, better known as Belle Starr, married outlaw Jim Reed. Reed eventually became involved with the Younger, James, and Starr gangs, which killed and looted throughout Texas, Arkansas, and Indian Territory. Accounts differ as to Belle Reed's participation in these activities. At least one claims that she disapproved of Reed's actions; more suggest that she operated a livery barn in Dallas where she sold the horses Reed stole. Jim Reed was killed by a deputy sheriff at Paris, Texas, in August 1874; Belle went on to other husbands, lovers, and crimes until she was gunned down herself in 1889.

*Blues queen born in Houston*

On this day in 1898, blues singer Sippie Wallace was born in Houston. Beulah Thomas Wallace was part of a large and musically talented family; her older brother George W. Thomas, Jr., was a pianist, songwriter, and publisher, and her younger brother Hersal was a jazz piano prodigy who died in his mid-twenties. In 1916 Sippie moved to New Orleans to work with George; there she met such jazz pioneers as Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and King Oliver. In 1923 she moved to Chicago, where she made her recording debut on the Okeh label; three months later, she was a star with a national reputation. Her songs, such as the classics "Mighty Tight Woman" and "Woman Be Wise," spoke with earthy directness about love and relationships. After her brother Hersal and her husband both died in 1936, however, Wallace moved to Detroit and gave up blues in favor of gospel music. Victoria R. Spivey, another Texas artist, persuaded her to return to performing in the 1960s. The "tough-minded" lyrics of some of Wallace's songs transcended the blues era in which they were written and appealed to younger audiences, including most notably the singer Bonnie Raitt, who in the 1970s and 1980s almost singlehandedly revived the older woman's career. Wallace's 1983 comeback album, _Sippie,_ was nominated for a Grammy Award, and in 1985 she made her first appearance in Texas in more than sixty years. Coincidentally, she died in Detroit on her eighty-eighth birthday, November 1, 1986.

*Burnet County powers up*

On this day in 1939, the first section of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative’s many miles of transmission lines was energized at Bertram in Burnet County, and the first of several thousand rural Hill Country families received electricity. During the 1930s farmers and ranchers across the Lone Star State banded together to form nonprofit electric cooperatives to apply for funds from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). With money from the REA, they constructed their own power lines and repaid the loans from sales of electricity. The Pedernales Electric Cooperative included a network that spanned parts of Blanco, Burnet, Gillespie, Hays, Kendall, Llano, and Mason counties. Their initial REA loan of over $1.3 million for more than 1,700 miles of electric lines was the most money and longest mileage ever granted in a single approval, but the effort brought modern conveniences to thousands of thankful folks.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> *Burnet County powers up*
> 
> On this day in 1939, the first section of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative’s many miles of transmission lines was energized at Bertram in Burnet County, and the first of several thousand rural Hill Country families received electricity. During the 1930s farmers and ranchers across the Lone Star State banded together to form nonprofit electric cooperatives to apply for funds from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). With money from the REA, they constructed their own power lines and repaid the loans from sales of electricity. The Pedernales Electric Cooperative included a network that spanned parts of Blanco, Burnet, Gillespie, Hays, Kendall, Llano, and Mason counties. Their initial REA loan of over $1.3 million for more than 1,700 miles of electric lines was the most money and longest mileage ever granted in a single approval, but the effort brought modern conveniences to thousands of thankful folks.



Still a member ... 30+ years with the Concho Valley Electric Cooperative 

And now a member of the Bandera Electric Cooperative

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from Houston singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell and is both beautiful and poignant:

"Not long after my second birthday, Hank Williams made his next-to-last public appearance at Cook’s Hoedown, East Houston’s premier hillbilly nightspot. Rejecting the notion that I was too young to enjoy the experience, my father appointed me his preferred companion for the evening. Hoisted high on his shoulders, my legs straddling his neck, I felt my senses dawning in this new world like the first few pieces being fitted into a puzzle. The eddy of cool air wafting down from overhead awakened the feeling I was somewhere very different from my usual surroundings, the hush of anticipation in the audience stirring the suspicion that I was part of something incomprehensibly great. A thunderous man-made roar tested the building’s rafters for structural weakness and overwhelmed my fledgling sensory receptors even further, but somehow I was made to understand that this kaleidoscope of sound, color and chaos was nothing I need fear. And then there was the light. Two weeks shy of fading away forever in the backseat of a powder-blue Cadillac convertible, Hank Williams was suddenly spotlit and burning on center stage, the embodiment of the lone flaming star. Visions of a distant paradise bobbed in the wake of his brilliance. I’d have joined the light then and there were it not for the scent of hair tonic and Old Spice aftershave that tethered me to my father’s shoulders.

The pulse of the music matched my beating heart perfectly, and I took comfort in this. And yet it’s the memory of my father that holds in place the memory of seeing and feeling a Hank Williams performance.

My father idolized him, and reminding me I once saw “ole Hank” sing was something he never tired of. It was the part of his legacy he savored the most. Knowing he’d exposed his only son to the greatness in another man that he imagined in himself served to soften the hard fact that his own dreams would never materialize. Hank Williams was what my father wanted to be—a Grand Ole Opry singing star. Taking me to see him perform was his way of saying, Look at me up there on that stage, son, that’s who I really am. This is the truest picture of my father that I own, though at times I strain to see it."

------- Rodney Crowell, "Chinaberry Sidewalks," 2011. By the way, the book, which is autobiographical, is HIGHLY recommended. Rodney is a beautiful writer.

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## woodman6415

In San Antonio beginning sometime in the 1870s, a group of women who were collectively called "The Chili Queens" began assembling in the late afternoon/early evening at the Alamo Plaza to begin serving chili con carne to hungry passersby. It took awhile for the scene to get going but by the 1890s life on the plaza and the chili queens were a staple of San Antonio civic life. In fact, "Red Badge of Courage" author Stephen Crane, who visited in 1895, wrote ""upon one of the plazas, Mexican vendors with open-air stands sell food that tastes exactly like pounded fire-brick from Hades -- chili con carne, tamales, enchiladas, chili verde, frijoles. In the soft atmosphere of the southern night, the cheap glass bottles upon the stands shine like crystal and lamps glow with a tender radiance. A hum of conversation ascends from the strolling visitors who are at their social shrine." How is THAT for a testimony? 

Concerned about public health and sanitation, the chili queens were closed down by public officials in 1937, given a brief reprieve, but finally shut down for good in 1943. 

I don't know when this particular photo was taken but my guess is that it was perhaps in the 1920s or early 30s. It is amazing to look at all that is going on here. I would like to see the chili queens brought back, wouldn't y'all? And to answer the question that I know is coming, it was chili con carne with no frijoles. Frijoles were served on the side, as is proper and righteous in all known places throughout the universe. :)

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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 116047



There's not a single thing on that list I don't love, except cowboy boots and I don't have anything against them, I just can't wear them myself. 

And you can bet your bippy every time I go through West I get several dozen kolaches to bring back and distribute to family members.


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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> There's not a single thing on that list I don't love, except cowboy boots and I don't have anything against them, I just can't wear them myself.
> 
> And you can bet your bippy every time I go through West I get several dozen kolaches to bring back and distribute to family members.


Love to go out 2 stepping in my boots ... it's Whataburger I don't really care about .. never liked them ...


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## Kevin

woodman6415 said:


> it's Whataburger I don't really care about .. never liked them ...



First Texan I can ever remember hearing say that. No joke. I know there must be plenty of other Texans who don't like WB but I just never met one until now. What's the dealio?


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## Tony

I love all things on that list, did a bunch of them this weekend. Ate at Whataburger, got kolaches in West, had sweet tea, bbq..........


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## woodman6415

The kindness of Texans is boundless. Traces of Texas reader Dana Ehrlich was nice enough to send in this nifty photo, accompanying it with this note: "Henry Killeen was a Chisholm Trail cowboy who was killed near Florence, Texas. His short life and death is somewhat of a mystery, but he was remembered by Ms. R. Kaskey, of Florence, Texas, who in 1974 at age 100, said that Henry was 16 when killed by lightning on a trail drive of Longhorns to Kansas on the nearby Chisholm Trail. A nondescript limestone rock under an oak tree in the Matsler Cemetery, south of Florence, Texas, not far from the Chisholm Trail, now marks his grave. My wife's parents are going to mark his grave with this granite marker, one of the kindnesses of strangers for which we are all grateful."

Thanks so much for sharing this, Dana. Your in-laws are wonderful for doing this. RIP Henry Killeen!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The lovely town of Fredericksburg, in the Texas HIll Country, has a friendly greeting built-in for folks who visit. The first letters of the street names going east along Main Street/290 from the Vereins Kirche spell "All Welcome." Those going west spell "Come Back." It's true. Going east we see Adams, Llano, Lincoln, Washington, Elk, Lee, Columbus, Olive, Mesquite, Eagle streets ("all welcome") and going west we see Crockett, Orange, Milam, Edison, Bowie, Acorn, Cherry, Kay ("come back"). I have met many folks who are from Fredericksburg who don't realize this, but it appears the city founding fathers were thinking ahead about hospitality!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 2nd*

*Spanish diplomat dies of head injury*

On this day in 1779, Athanase de Mézières died at San Antonio of lingering effects from a head injury suffered in a fall from a horse. Mézières was born to nobility in Paris in 1719 and served in the French army in Louisiana in the 1730s. In 1746, while stationed at Natchitoches, Louisiana, he married Marie de St. Denis, the daughter of Louis Juchereau and Manuela Sánchez Navarro de St. Denis; the marriage ended the following year, when Marie died in childbirth. In 1763, shortly after Louisiana had passed from French to Spanish control, Mézières offered his services to Spain. Skilled in Latin, French, and Spanish as well as in several Indian languages, he embarked on an extraordinary career as Spanish agent to the Indians of northern Texas. He negotiated several important treaties, and in 1772 made the earliest definite mention of the Texas Iron, which was for years the largest recorded meteorite in the world. In 1778 Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of Louisiana, assigned Mézières to forge an alliance among the Spanish, Comanches, and Norteños against the Apaches. To this end Mézières spent much of the next year traveling, and was en route from Los Adaes to Nacogdoches when he was thrown from his horse. He arrived in San Antonio, where he learned he had been appointed governor of Texas, in September 1779, but never assumed office. The proposed alliance with the Comanches and Norteños never came to pass.


*Voters ratify Better Schools Amendment
*
On this day in 1920, voters ratified the Better Schools Amendment to the Constitution of 1876. The amendment removed limitations on tax rates allowable by local school districts for support of their public schools, thus potentially easing the state's burden of school financing. Administrators also hoped the amendment would increase equality in school conditions by enabling each district to improve its facilities. The results of the amendment were mixed. Though it brought a 51 percent increase in local support for public schools by 1923, many local districts moved slowly to increase taxation while continuing to rely on the state as their primary source of financing.


*Cowboy poet goes home
*
On this day in 1940, the cowboy “poet laureate,” Lysius Gough, was found dead at his home in Amarillo. His latest poem, still scrolled in the typewriter, was appropriately titled “Gone.” Gough, born in Lamar County in 1862, was a man of diverse talents and interests. After running away from home as a teenager, he punched cattle on several drives and earned the nickname “Parson” at the T Anchor Ranch because he never swore. In the mid-1880s Gough obtained his teaching certificate and became principal of Pilot Point Institute. During this time he also published his first book of cowboy verse, _Western Travels and Other Rhymes_. Eventually he studied law, married Ida Russell, and was one of the first settlers of Castro County, where he taught school at Dimmitt. He later engaged in real estate, irrigation well drilling, and farming. In the 1920s Gough served as president of the Texas Wheat Growers Association and also helped organize the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society. He published _Spur Jingles and Saddle Songs_ in 1935.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> I love all things on that list, did a bunch of them this weekend. Ate at Whataburger,



I'll think I'll stop by for a double today

Breakfast

Lunch



Kevin said:


> First Texan I can ever remember hearing say that. No joke. I know there must be plenty of other Texans who don't like WB but I just never met one until now. What's the dealio?



Same here Kevin!! My brother and SIL, who reside in Colorado now, stop at the first Whataburger they see when they make the roadtrip back to their home state. Well she's originally from Arkansas but got here as fast as she could!

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## woodman6415

Spent a good portion of last night reading Johnny Bush's biography. Bush, as y'all recall, is a songwriter and musician who wrote "Whiskey River," among other gems. The book is filled with choice quotes that could serve as the Texas Quote of the Day, but I decided to use the forward, written by Willie Nelson. For mature audiences only!

"Johnny Bush.
Good friend. Good drummer. Good singer. Good levitator.
Johnny Bush and I go way back, at least 50 years, to when I was a deejay at KBOP in Pleasanton, Texas, and playing clubs in and around San Antonio. I played in his band, and at one time I was also his personal manager. I was mostly a guitar player and John was the singer.

I remember we played a club in San Antonio called "Al's Country Club." The owner later changed the name to Mugwomp's. We asked him why he changed the name. He said, "The mugwomp is the meanest animal on the planet. It is like a huge dog with a head on both ends." We asked him, "Well how does it crap?" He said, "He don't. That's what makes him so mean."

Later on, Johnny played in my band. We called ourselves "The Offenders." Then John started fronting my band, and Paul English played drums behind John until I came on, and Johnny went back and played drums. Then Johnny started recording on his own, and we started calling him "Winni Mac Pigs**t Bush," a name he still loves to this day.

And then Johnny wrote "Whiskey River." He has been exceedingly wealthy ever since. He doesn't need to sing anymore, or write books. He only does it to serve his public, which he deeply loves.

So John, in the words of Dr. Ben Dorsey, "If you ever need a friend, buy a dog." And if there is anything that I can ever do for you, forget it. 

Yours in country music,

Willie Nelson

P.S. Me and Texas and the rest of the world are very proud of Johnny Bush. Love forever. WN

P.P.S. Oh, about that levitation act. Apparently some stories cannot be told even in a tell-all book like this."

-------- Willie Nelson, writing the forward to Johnny Bush's autobiography "Whiskey River (Take My Mind)

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## Kevin

@Wildthings @Tony I guess his distaste for Whataburger is deep and personal - he can't even put it into words. I bet some cute blonde WB carhop broke his heart in high school and he's just never got over it. 

 


I bet this is the one where it happened - probably about the right year too. I bet he's in one of those cars waiting for her to come out so he can ask her to reconsider . . .

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## Kevin

Speaking of Whataburger and Texas. Only in Texas will yoou see this (and I have seen it at the Bonham Braums)......

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> Speaking of Whataburger and Texas. Only in Texas will yoou see this (and I have seen it at the Bonham Braums)......
> 
> View attachment 116167



Can see something like that every Saturday in Bandera ... but at Sonic ... no Whataburger here ... trail ride thru town ...

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## woodman6415

Kevin said:


> @Wildthings @Tony I guess his distaste for Whataburger is deep and personal - he can't even put it into words. I bet some cute blonde WB carhop broke his heart in high school and he's just never got over it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I bet this is the one where it happened - probably about the right year too. I bet he's in one of those cars waiting for her to come out so he can ask her to reconsider . . .
> 
> View attachment 116166



Dang @Kevin you must be psychic ... 
but no ... I just never thought the food was all that and the service was even worse ... my mom was head cook at A&W root beer during my young life .. up until my teenage years .. was a personal friend to the great people that owned and ran it ... I had plenty of great hamburgers and rootbeer floats ... if I stop for a burger now ( not very often ) I like the burgers at Sonic ...

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## Kevin

I remember stopping at A&W as a kid - we used to frequent them regularly. Probably more than any other drive-in at least that I remember. That frosty glass of "beer" was a huge treat for me and my sister.

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## Wildthings

Wildthings said:


> I'll think I'll stop by for a double today
> 
> Breakfast
> 
> Lunch



Well made it by for a Jalapeno Cheese Sausage Biscuit for breakfast but still need my hamburger fix

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## Wildthings

I've got a picture, somewhere, of a farm tractor going thru the drive thru at a Whataburger. I'll try to find it. But in the meanwhile

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Well made it by for a Jalapeno Cheese Sausage Biscuit for breakfast but still need my hamburger fix



We're simpatico Barry, had the same breakfast earlier! Tony

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Dallas' Swiss Avenue, which has long been one of the more fashionable addresses in that fine Texas city, was so named because it was originally settled by a group of Swiss immigrants who came to Dallas after Swiss-born Dallas mayor Benjamin Long, a former La Reunion colonist, returned to Zurich in 1870 and persuaded a group of his countrymen to immigrate. About three dozen arrived in December of that year and built homes along what would become Swiss Avenue. And this is not to say anything bad about Dallas, which I love dearly, but can you imagine the expression on their faces when they left their homes and those beautiful Alps in Switzerland, traveled across the ocean, and pulled up into ... Dallas? I wonder if there was any buyer's remorse? ;)

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 3rd* 

*High bridge sees its dawn over the Sunset Route*

On this day in 1891, construction began on the Pecos High Bridge in Val Verde County. Completed in early 1892, this structure was actually the second bridge built to serve trains traveling on the Southern Pacific's Sunset Route, and the new crossing greatly shortened the route of the rail line. Located at a deep gorge of the Pecos River, the mammoth structure was an engineering marvel supported by twenty-four towers and spanning a total length of 2,180 feet. Rising 321 feet above the river, the bridge was the highest railroad bridge in North America and third highest in the world. Judge Roy Bean of nearby Langtry served as coroner for workers killed during its construction. The Pecos High Bridge towered as a landmark for many years until a new bridge, located 440 feet downstream, opened in 1944.

One of my deer leases was at the base of that bridge.. Here's a shot of it with my son.. the river and the lake it fed (Amistad) was 45 feet below pool at this time




*

Cotton Palace attendance peaks
*
On this day in 1923, attendance hit a one-day record of 117,208 at the Waco Cotton Palace. By 1894 Waco had become one of the major inland cotton markets in the nation, and plans were laid for a fair and exposition center to be named the Texas Cotton Palace. A large main building was erected in Padgitt Park, where the first event, in November 1894, was highly successful. In January 1895 the building was destroyed by a spectacular fire, and the Cotton Palace was not reactivated until 1910. That year, with an elaborately expanded facility, the project was launched again. It continued uninterrupted for the following twenty-one years as one of the most successful such expositions in the nation. More than eight million people passed through its turnstiles. In addition to its spectacular opening-day parades, the exposition featured agricultural and livestock exhibits, competitions of many sorts, art shows, horse racing, athletic events, and operatic and concert attractions. In 1931, however, the palace became a casualty of the Great Depression.
*
Braniff Airlines incorporates
*
On this day in 1930, Braniff Airways was incorporated and went public as a subsidiary of the Universal Air Lines System, with Oklahomans Paul Braniff as secretary-treasurer and Thomas Braniff as president. In 1934 the airline moved company operations and maintenance facilities to Love Field, Dallas, from Oklahoma City, and its administrative offices followed in 1942. The airline was a pioneer in providing air service to Texas cities. After Thomas Braniff was killed in a plane crash in 1954, Charles Beard continued to expand the airline's routes. For a time Braniff was the world's sixth-largest airline. Braniff experienced severe financial difficulties in the late 1970s and ceased operations in 1982. Two attempts to resurrect the airline in the 1980s and 1990s were unsuccessful.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds J. Frank Dobie talking about the combination of venison and honey and how it was a staple dish in early Texas:

"Bread or no bread, the excellence of anything was summed up in the phrase, 'As good as venison and honey.' Nobody ever appreciated this particular goodness more than Gideon Linecum, unflagging in his passion for liberty and knowledge of nature, his genius flavored with a tang as sharp as the juice of the mustang grape. Of his wanderings through the Texas wilderness in 1835, he wrote: 'I lived plentifully all the while. Three or four times I found honey. Once I tried fish. I did not relish them ---- had no bread or salt. But every time I found honey I would have a feast of the first order. I could kill venison any time, and to broil the back-straps of a deer on the coals, dip the point of the done meat into the honey, and then seize it off in your teeth and saw it off with your knife, is the best and most pleasant way to eat it. I have often thought that there could be no other preparation of food for man that is so suitable, so natural, so agreeable, and so exactly suited to his constitutional requirements.'"

---- J. Frank Dobie, "Tales of Old Time Texas," 1928

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## woodman6415

The only international border marker within the United States is in Texas:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/...utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page 

A tip of the Stetson to TOT reader Joey Perry for sending in this link.


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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day comes from the El Paso Times newspaper and was written in 1894:

"Several of the young men have been in the habit lately of buying reserved seats in the opera house and presenting them to prostitutes. It is bad enough for them to buy the seats for these women at all, but it is a thousand times worse when they take advantage of the management to purchase seats in parts of the house where they know full well these women are not allowed to sit. Several prostitutes occupied such seats on the night of "Charley's Aunt," and the managers are anxious for the public to understand how it occurred, and to know exactly where the blame should rest. Fallen women are not allowed in any seats in the opera house except from the third dress circle row back, and in the gallery. And if they impose upon the management again as they have been doing, they will have to occupy the gallery or not enter the house. And further than this, the name of the person who buys tickets for them in the wrong part of the house will be published."

---- El Paso Times Newspaper, 1894

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The only international border marker within the United States is in Texas:
> 
> http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/...utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page
> 
> A tip of the Stetson to TOT reader Joey Perry for sending in this link.



That is awesome! I never knew about this, need to make a road trip. Tony

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 4th*

*Texans engage Mexican force in battle of Lipantitlán*

On this day in 1835, the battle of Lipantitlán was fought on the east bank of the Nueces River three miles above San Patricio in San Patricio County, directly across from Fort Lipantitlán. A Texas force of around seventy men under Adjutant Ira J. Westover engaged a Mexican force of about ninety men under Capt. Nicolás Rodríguez. The battle lasted thirty-two minutes, leaving twenty-eight Mexicans dead, including Lt. Marcellino García, second in command, who was mortally wounded and died two days later at San Patricio. The Texans suffered only one casualty, when a rifle ball cut off three of the fingers on William Bracken's right hand.

*Texas lumberman born*

On this day in 1836, Henry Lutcher, a leading Texas lumberman, was born in Pennsylvania. By 1865 he had become a partner with G. Bedell Moore in the Lutcher and Moore Company. When the rapid depletion of Pennsylvania timber threatened his lumber business, he and Moore made a grueling inspection tour of Texas in 1877 seeking a new location for their operations. Lutcher moved to Orange the following year, and he and Moore invested heavily in the timberlands of southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. Their plants at Orange and at Lutcher, Louisiana, were among the nation's largest, and helped set off a lumbering bonanza in the region. Lutcher diversified his industrial investments and helped finance the construction of both the Orange and Northwestern and the Gulf, Sabine and Red River railroads. He also lent powerful support to the deepwater movements in Jefferson and Orange counties that culminated in the construction of the Sabine-Neches Waterway. He died in 1912.

*Dance Queen is Born*

On this day in 1906, Gussie Nell Davis was born in Farmersville, Texas. She went on to gain fame as the organizer and leader of the Kilgore Rangerettes, the innovative dance-drill team at Kilgore College. First performing in 1940, the group achieved international recognition under Davis’s direction and appeared at such heralded events as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Inauguration and several Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades. The Rangerettes graced the covers of _Life_, _Newsweek_, the _Saturday Evening Post, _and other magazines. Davis guided the group until her retirement in 1979, and she served as a consultant for drill teams across the nation. This drill team pioneer was honored with induction into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1989.

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## Wildthings

*The only international border marker within the United States*

Last Remaining Boundary Marker for the Republic of Texas

The independent Republic of Texas had a good 10-year run in the middle of the 19th century. From 1836 to 1846 the Lone Star State wasn’t a state at all, but its own country. It had its own flags, currency, capital, and even its own embassies.

In order to show foreigners that they were entering sovereign land, granite markers were driven into the ground along the Republic’s borders. Today there is only one of these boundary markers still on the job.

Dating back to 1840, this last of the known markers is 10 miles southeast of Deadwood, Texas (yes, it really is called Deadwood) on Farm-to-Market Road 31. Its role is unofficial now, except to let you know when you’ve left Louisiana, and give you a little history of the old Republic and the disputed border along the Sabine River. There were many of these stone markers at the time, but this one, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is the only one that hasn’t either disappeared or sunk into the river.

The granite pillar is nine inches square, and sticks up about four feet from the ground. An accompanying plaque notes that it’s actually ten feet long, which means it’s buried several more feet—a feature that has kept it from being stolen, at least on one reported occasion. Three sides are engraved, providing all the necessary details: _Merid. Boundary, Established A.D., 1840_* on one side, and sides two and three simply say _U.S._ and _R.T._, just to make sure you knew which side you were on.

*Know Before You Go*
*The marker is dated 1840, but was actually planted in 1841.

From Deadwood, follow FM-31 south for 10 miles, until you reach the Louisiana border. The marker and accompanying plaques are inside some short square fencing.






Historical Marker(13056) text:

_In the early 1700s, France and Spain began disputing their New World international boundary that included this area; each nation claimed what is now Texas. When the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the boundary was still in dispute. Leaders agreed to a neutral area between the Arroyo Hondo and the Sabine River, and the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty formally defined the border. When Texas became a republic in 1836, it appointed a joint commission with the U.S. to survey and mark the established boundary from the Gulf of Mexico up the Sabine River and on to the Red River. John Forsyth represented the U.S., and Memucan Hunt represented Texas in the work, which proved to be long and difficult. The survey crew began the demarcation process on May 20, 1840 at the Gulf, placing a 36-foot pole in the middle of a large earthen mound. Proceeding north, they placed eight-foot posts denoting the number of miles from the 32nd parallel. Upon reaching the parallel, they placed a granite marker on the west bank of the Sabine River. From that point, they traveled due north to the Red River, completing their work in late June 1841. As a result of erosion, the first granite marker on the Sabine fell into the river long ago, but a second granite marker on the northward path of the surveyors had been placed here to mark the north-south meridian. This is the only known marker remaining, and it is believed to be the only original international boundary marker within the contiguous U.S. Today, the border between Texas and Louisiana follows the Sabine River to the 32nd parallel, at which point it connects to the boundary established by Hunt and Forsyth. The Texas Historical Foundation purchased this site to provide public access to the early boundary marker._


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 5th

Border between Texas and Louisiana declared Neutral Ground
*
On this day in 1806, the United States and Spain signed an agreement establishing the Neutral Ground. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 the United States and Spain were unable to agree on the boundary between Louisiana and Texas. In 1806, in order to avert an armed clash, Gen. James Wilkinson and Lt. Col. Simón de Herrera, the American and Spanish military commanders respectively, entered into an agreement declaring the disputed territory Neutral Ground. The boundaries of the Neutral Ground were never officially described beyond a general statement that the Arroyo Hondo on the east and the Sabine River on the west were to serve as boundaries. Ownership of the strip was awarded the United States by the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1821.

*
Bentsens move to Texas
*
On this day in 1918, Peter Bentsen and his family left their South Dakota homestead and headed for Sharyland, an irrigated citrus and vegetable utopia envisioned by John H. Shary and developed by him near Mission, Texas. It took the family seventeen days to drive the 1,675 miles to the Rio Grande valley by car. They arrived penniless. Bentsen's sons, Lloyd, Sr., and Elmer, joined him after they were mustered out of the service at the end of World War I. All saved diligently and invested in Valley land as soon as they could, and the two brothers became the premier colonizers and developers of Hidalgo County. Lloyd Bentsen, Sr., and his wife had four children, one of whom, Lloyd Bentsen, Jr., was a congressman, a United States senator, a vice-presidential candidate, and secretary of the treasury.

*November 5th, 1960 -- Johnny Horton dies*

On this day in 1960, singer Johnny Horton died in a car accident in Milano, Texas. Though he was born in Los Angeles in 1925, Horton grew up in East Texas and graduated from high school in Gallatin. He attended junior college in Jacksonville and Kilgore and eventually went to Seattle University. He worked in the fishing industry in California and Alaska but embarked on a country music singing career in 1950. In 1955 Horton joined the Louisiana Hayride under the stage name “The Singing Fisherman.” Recognized for his honky tonk sound, he scored his first hit “Honky Tonk Man” in 1956 and achieved his first number-one country recording with “When It’s Springtime in Alaska” several years later. The singer had crossover appeal on both country and popular-music radio stations and songs such as “The Battle of New Orleans” attracted a wide audience.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Stanley Kubrick attempted to cast Dan Blocker in his film Dr. Strangelove, after Peter Sellers elected not to add the role of Major T.J. "King" Kong to his multiple other roles, but Blocker's agent rejected the script. The role subsequently went to Slim Pickens, who played the iconic scene of riding an atomic bomb down while waving his cowboy hat.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is really pretty dang awesome:

"WHILE visiting his sister Mrs. Currie in San Angelo, a few years ago , W. N. Nicholas kindly furnished the following partial sketch of his eventful life on the early frontiers of Texas:

When I was sixteen years old, I went to Stephenville, Erath County, and entered a school taught by a Mr. Allard. I had been in school only two weeks, when a runner brought word that the Indians were in the country and had murdered the Woods family and that of Mr. Brumley, and had burned their houses. Two of the Brumley girls and the two Woods girls had been carried off by the savages. At the time of this occurrence all the available men were out in pursuit of another gang of Indians that had raided another settlement, leaving no man to take, the trail but the teacher, Mr. Allard. In his school there were sixteen boys from 12 to 17 years of age.

He explained the situation to us and said: "Boys, I'm going after those Indians, who'll go with me?" Every boy in school, even to the small boys, lined up and told him to lead out and we'd follow him to the jumping off place. He chose sixteen of us and in less than an hour were mounted and off. For the benefit of the youth of this degenerate age, it may not be amiss to state here that the boys and girls on the frontier in those days, were taught to ride and shoot from the time they were large enough to sit on a pony or hold a gun and when a little older, boys as well as men carried their guns everywhere they went, at church, at school, or a frolic. Their horses were always handy and when the word came that Indians were in the country the boys and men were ready to respond to the call for help. That's why the boys of Mr. Allard's school fell in line so quickly; they were minute men and ready.

But in this instance some of the boys had no guns. A Mr. Carter, who owned a hardware store in Stephenville, threw open his store and told Mr. Allard to help himself to all the guns and ammunition we might need.

About 10 a .m. we started all armed with double-barreled shot-guns and six shooters and after striking the Indians trail we came upon the dead bodies of the Woods girls. We wrapped these bodies in blankets and laid them side by side and stretched between two bushes and over the bodies a white shirt as a fright to keep the buzzards away until they could be removed. This was on the divide between Stephenville and Dublin.

Here, I will digress in so far as to say that after being stripped of every thread of clothing the Brumley girls were liberated some time during the night or early that night, and made their way back to Stephenville. Having cared for the bodies of these poor murdered girls to the best of our limited ability, we pushed on with a firm resolve to avenge their brutal murder if we ever came up with the inhuman butchers.

When we reached Leon creek, about twenty miles from Stephenville, the water in the creek was still muddy and we knew by that we were close on their trail. We hurried forward until we reached a slope that led off clown to Copperas Creek. Here we came up with the, Indians and charged them. There were eighteen of them and seventeen of us but, being armed with six-shooters, we had all advantage.

In the fight that ensued Mr. Allard's horse was shot through the neck with an arrow and fell. Mr. Allard was thrown with great force against the ground, and an Indian rushed upon him to finish him with a lance. Recovering himself almost instantly and seeing his peril, Mr. Allard seized a stone with which he knocked the Indian down and before he could rise the teacher was on him and gave the finishing touch.

The action became a running fight for about four miles and only two of the eighteen got away. Six of us were wounded, myself of the number, having stopped two arrows in my thigh. We got all of their horses, about 75 head, which they had stolen. One of the Indians killed had on one of the captured girl's dress, which was riddled with bullets.

On our return we came by where we had found the murdered girls and strapped their bodies on horses and reached Stephenville sometime after midnight. very well pleased with our day's work .
I had no further desire to attend school. I decided to go a ranging, and that two weeks in Mr. Allard's school was all the schooling, in a literary sense, I ever received.

* Note: Incidents like the one described in this article, occurred fairly often in the Frontier Counties of Brown, Coleman, Comanche, Eastland, Erath and others. Life was hard and tragedy struck without warning. These brave individuals, youths, men and women, tamed the frontier for others to follow."

----- W.N. Nichols, Frontier Times Magazine, February 1926

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is one of the coolest things ever posted on this page:

In 1810, Stephen F. Austin was a student at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. His best friend was a young man named Robert Todd. Stephen had a budding romance with a young lady named Eliza Parker but, alas, fate intervened when Stephen's father's lead mining business went sour in Missouri and his father, unable to afford tuition, called Stephen home. Before leaving, Stephen asked Robert Todd to keep an eye on Eliza, fully intending to come back to school and resume his romance with her when things got a little better, financially speaking, for his father. 'Twas not to be.

Robert Todd ended up marrying Eliza in 1812. They had a daughter, Mary, who was born in 1818 and ended up marrying Abraham Lincoln in 1842. Many historians consider her as one of the driving forces in Abe's political career, particularly at the beginning. So I always wonder how history would have been changed had Moses' lead mining business in Missouri not gone south. Stephen would no doubt have stayed in Lexington, finished his degree, and become the lawyer he wanted to be. He might have married Eliza himself and there would have been no Mary Todd to marry Abraham Lincoln. There might have been a Mary Austin but things would have been entirely different. And, of course, Austin would most likely never have been driven to move to Texas because his life in Lexington, or wherever, would have been settled. And since it was Austin who provided the impetus that got the whole Texas experiment going, there would have been no Battle at the Alamo, no San Jacinto ... nothing. 

The upshot is that Mary Todd Lincoln's mother was, at one time, Stephen F. Austin's sweetheart. And it's fun to ponder what might have happened had the bottom not fallen out of the lead mining business in 1809-1810.

As I often say, history combs the thinnest of hairs. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but it sounds deep.

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## Tony

My Texas Quote of the Day

We went to a Nick Offerman book signing in Austin yesterdayand he said this:

"I love Austin. To me, Austin is Texas going to the Prom after eating some mushrooms ".

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is one of the coolest things ever posted on this page:
> 
> In 1810, Stephen F. Austin was a student at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. His best friend was a young man named Robert Todd. Stephen had a budding romance with a young lady named Eliza Parker but, alas, fate intervened when Stephen's father's lead mining business went sour in Missouri and his father, unable to afford tuition, called Stephen home. Before leaving, Stephen asked Robert Todd to keep an eye on Eliza, fully intending to come back to school and resume his romance with her when things got a little better, financially speaking, for his father. 'Twas not to be.
> 
> Robert Todd ended up marrying Eliza in 1812. They had a daughter, Mary, who was born in 1818 and ended up marrying Abraham Lincoln in 1842. Many historians consider her as one of the driving forces in Abe's political career, particularly at the beginning. So I always wonder how history would have been changed had Moses' lead mining business in Missouri not gone south. Stephen would no doubt have stayed in Lexington, finished his degree, and become the lawyer he wanted to be. He might have married Eliza himself and there would have been no Mary Todd to marry Abraham Lincoln. There might have been a Mary Austin but things would have been entirely different. And, of course, Austin would most likely never have been driven to move to Texas because his life in Lexington, or wherever, would have been settled. And since it was Austin who provided the impetus that got the whole Texas experiment going, there would have been no Battle at the Alamo, no San Jacinto ... nothing.
> 
> The upshot is that Mary Todd Lincoln's mother was, at one time, Stephen F. Austin's sweetheart. And it's fun to ponder what might have happened had the bottom not fallen out of the lead mining business in 1809-1810.
> 
> As I often say, history combs the thinnest of hairs. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but it sounds deep.



HOLY MOLY!!!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"He's a carved-in-granite, samurai poet warrior Gypsy guitar-pickin' wild man with a heart as big as Texas and the greatest sense of humor in the West."

------- Kris Kristofferson, speaking about his friend Willie Nelson

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- N0vember 6th --- we go waaaaaayy back*

*Castaways begin amazing journey*

On this day in 1528, some eighty survivors of the Narváez expedition washed up on an island off the Texas coast. The castaways included Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three other men: the slave Estevanico, Alonso Castillo Maldonado, and Andrés Dorantes de Carranza. These "four ragged castaways" became the first non-Indians to tread on Texas soil and live to tell their remarkable story. Cabeza de Vaca, born about 1490 in Spain, recovered from an almost fatal illness shortly after landing on the coast and then traveled the Texas coast and interior as a trader with native groups, including the Karankawas. The Indians revered him as a medicine man. He eventually rendezvoused with the three other survivors, and their journey ended when they arrived at the Spanish outpost of Culiacán near the Pacific Coast of Mexico in 1536. Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his amazing odyssey in his _Relación_ detailed valuable ethnographic, geographic, and biotic information on Texas. He died in Spain in the mid-1550s.


*Forerunner of Daughters of the Republic of Texas founded
*
On this day in 1891, the organizational meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas was held in the Houston home of Mary Jane Briscoe. Mary S. M. Jones, widow of the last president of the Republic of Texas, agreed to serve as president. The name first chosen for this group was Daughters of Female Descendants of the Heroes of '36. The association was soon renamed Daughters of the Lone Star Republic, then Daughters of the Republic of Texas at the first annual meeting in April 1892. The objectives of the association are to perpetuate the memory and spirit of the people who achieved and maintained the independence of Texas and to encourage historical research into the earliest records of Texas, especially those relating to the revolutionary and republic periods.



*Silver-tongued orator murdered in Rio Grande City
*
On this day in 1906, Stanley Welch, South Texas politician and "silver-tongued orator of the Southwest," was murdered in Rio Grande City. After settling in Corpus Christi in the 1870s, Welch led the local Democratic party and was a personal friend of James B. Wells Jr., the regional Democratic leader. Welch was elected Nueces county attorney and then city attorney for Corpus Christi. In 1898, when an appointed incumbent declined to run, Welch won an election, succeeding John C. Russell as district judge of the vast South Texas Trans-Nueces region. He was reelected twice. While judge, Welch heard the case against Gregorio Cortez Lira for the murder of Sheriff W. T. Morris on April 25, 1904; the murder and trial eventually became the subject of a well-known _corrido_. Early on the morning of November 6, 1906, Welch was murdered as he slept in the Casa de los Abogados at Rio Grande City. In town to supervise a hotly contested election between factions known as the Reds and Blues, he had been accused of favoring local Democrats over the Republican "Red Club." In 1908 Alberto Cabrera of Starr County was tried in Cuero and convicted for the murder of Stanley Welch.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 7th*

*The Consultation takes a step toward the Texas Declaration of Independence*

On this day in 1835, at San Felipe, the Consultation adopted the Declaration of November 7, 1835, a statement of causes for taking up arms against Mexico preliminary to the Texas Declaration of Independence. The document declared that the Texans had taken up arms in defense of their rights and liberties and the republican principles of the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Among other assertions, the declaration stated that Texas was no longer bound by the compact of union, that Texans would not cease to carry on war against the Centralist troops in Texas, that the Texans had the right to establish an independent government, and that Texas would reward with lands and citizenship those who volunteered their services to her in the struggle.


*San Antonio lawman and folk painter expires
*
On this day in 1902, William G. M. Samuel died in San Antonio. He came to Texas sometime in the 1830s and gained a reputation as a fearless Indian fighter with William A. (Bigfoot) Wallace. He also served in Gen. John W. Wool’s Army of Chihuahua in the Mexican War and later as an ordnance officer for the Confederacy. Samuel held various jobs in law enforcement, including the positions of city marshall in San Antonio in 1852 and deputy sheriff in the 1880s and 1890s, but perhaps his true legacy rests in the folk paintings he left behind. Samuel painted a number of portraits, including the likenesses of Bigfoot Wallace, José Antonio Menchaca, and Rip Ford. Two of his oil paintings were exhibited at the San Antonio International Fair in 1888, and his four views of the buildings, landmarks, and daily activities of San Antonio’s Main Plaza preserved a valuable record of the downtown during the mid-nineteenth century.


*Two key Texas amendments passed
*
On this day in 1972, Texas voters passed the Texas Equal Rights and the Constitutional Revision amendments. The Texas Equal Rights Amendment, granting women and men equal legal rights, resulted from a fifteen-year campaign spearheaded by Hermine D. Tobolowsky and the Texas Federation of Business and Professional Women. A few months after its passage, women legislators employed the new amendment in preparing several laws to halt discriminatory practices. Successful bills included one prohibiting sex-based discrimination in processing loan and credit applications and another disallowing husbands from abandoning and selling homesteads without their wives' consent. The Constitutional Revision Amendment recognized the need for a new state constitution. As a result of the amendment, the Sixty-third Legislature convened as a constitutional convention on January 8, 1974. The convention carried out the first thorough attempt to draft a new constitution for Texas since the Constitutional Convention of 1875. After seven months, however, it ended, on July 30, 1974, having failed by three votes to produce a document to submit to the voters. In 1975 the legislature did approve a new constitution in the form of eight amendments approved by the normal amendment process. The Bill of Rights remained unchanged, but the eight amendments went before the voters on November 4, 1975, in a special election. They were all defeated

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: the largest raid ever mounted by Native Americans on white cities in what is now the United States occurred in 1840 in Texas. It followed the Council House Fight, in which Republic of Texas officials attempted to capture and take prisoner 33 Comanche chiefs who had come to negotiate a peace treaty, killing many of them together along with two dozen of their family and followers. The Texas Officials were determined to force the Comanche to release all white captives among them. To avenge what the Comanche viewed as a bitter betrayal by the Texans, the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump raised a huge war party of many of the bands of the Comanche, and raided deep into white-settled areas of Southeast Texas. Victoria was the first town attacked, on August 7th. The next day, Linnville was sacked and burned in a scene that was tragicomedic. That afternoon, the Comanches withdrew, taking with them more than 3,000 horses and mules and hundreds of thousands of dollars of other plunder, ranging from silver to cloth and mirrors. Unfortunately for them, the sheer volume of loot slowed them down, and made them vulnerable to attack from a militia that otherwise would never have caught them. A combined force of Texas Rangers and militia volunteers caught up with the Comanches at Plum Creek near what is now Lockhart and engaged them in a running battle in which the Texans attempted to kill the raiders and recover loot and the Comanches simply attempted to get away. Equally, the militia missed an opportunity to destroy the bulk of the raiding party when they concentrated on recovering and dividing the recovered bullion and other plunder.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> . The next day, Linnville was sacked and burned in a scene that was *tragicomedic*........



I wonder what the comedy was?


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I wonder what the comedy was?



I was wondering the same thing

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 8th* 

*The circus comes to town!*

On this day in 1852, the first recorded mention of the distinctive Mexican circus in Texas appeared in the San Antonio _Ledger_. Though the performing groups may have been in Texas prior to this date, this newspaper report marked the first documentation of the circuses in the Lone Star State. The Mexican circuses evolved over the years from sixteenth-century performers called _voladores_ (flyers) and Spanish minstrels and jugglers to include _maromeros_ (acrobats) by the seventeenth century and dramatic performers in the eighteenth century. By the time they got to Texas, the Mexican circuses had incorporated Italian, English, and American influences, including the English clown. _Carpas_ (tent circuses) proved popular into the twentieth century throughout the Rio Grande Valley and South and Central Texas, and several companies made San Antonio their home base. The _carpas_, often family-based, delivered commentary on Tejano social life and influenced the development of Mexican-American theater.


*Cavalry column discovers German sisters in Cheyenne camp
*
On this day in 1874, a cavalry column under Lt. Frank D. Baldwin charged a Cheyenne encampment north of McClellan Creek, about ten miles south of the site of present-day Pampa. The surprised Indians abandoned the village and left most of their property intact. Riding through the deserted camp, Billy Dixon and other army scouts noticed movement in a pile of buffalo hides; they were astonished to find two white captives, Julia and Addie German, both emaciated and near starvation. They and their two older sisters, Catherine and Sophia, had been captured when their family was attacked on September 10, 1874. Catherine and Sophia were subsequently rescued from another band of Cheyennes, and the four German sisters were reunited at Fort Leavenworth.


*Ferguson Forum begins publication
*
On this day in 1917, the _Ferguson Forum_, a weekly political newspaper, began publication in Temple, Texas. The paper was the organ of Governor James E. Ferguson throughout eighteen years of his stormy political life. He considered it necessary because Texas newspapers had "submarined the truth" concerning his impeachment. Ferguson and his wife, Miriam Amanda (Ma) Ferguson, used the paper to generate campaign funds as well as to present their views to the public. During Ma Ferguson's first term as governor in the 1920s, her administration was criticized for awarding lucrative highway contracts to firms that purchased expensive advertising space in the _Forum_. The paper continued publication until April 11, 1935.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 9th* 

*Pioneer Texas inventor born in New York*

On this day in 1801, Gail Borden, Jr., inventor, publisher, surveyor, and founder of the Borden Company, was born in Norwich, New York. He came to Texas in 1829 and became surveyor for Austin's Colony in 1830. In 1835-37 the ubiquitous Borden published the _Telegraph and Texas Register_, prepared the first topographical map of Texas, and helped lay out the site of Houston. In the middle 1840s he began inventing. He is supposed to have experimented with large-scale refrigeration as a means of preventing yellow fever and with a terraqueous machine, a sort of prairie schooner that would go on land or water. In 1849 he perfected a meat biscuit, made of dehydrated meat compounded with flour, which he tried to market on a worldwide scale in partnership with Ashbel Smith. In 1853 he sought a patent for his most famous invention, a process for condensing milk in vacuum. After several unsuccessful attempts, he opened a condensed milk factory in Connecticut in 1858. When the Civil War brought intensified demand for condensed milk, sales grew so much that Borden's success was assured. After the war he returned to Texas and founded the community of Borden, where he established a meat-packing plant. He died in Borden on January 11, 1874.

*Oblate missionary begins final tour
*
On this day in 1872, Oblate missionary Pierre Yves Kéralum set out from Brownsville on what would be his last tour. The pioneer Catholic missionary had made many circuits ministering to people throughout the lower Rio Grande. Kéralum, a Frenchman born in 1817, had worked as a carpenter and architect before his calling to the priesthood and ultimate acceptance into the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He sailed to Galveston in 1852 and helped establish the first college-level Catholic seminary there before he was transferred to Brownsville. His architectural knowledge served well a number of building projects in the Valley, including the design and construction of churches in Roma, Brownsville, and Laredo. On that fateful mission in the fall of 1872, Kéralum, known as _El Santo Padre Pedrito_ to the Mexican people, never arrived at his scheduled destination. Though foul play was suspected, his fate remained unknown for ten years until cowhands discovered his remains. His death is still shrouded in mystery.

*Texas Institute of Letters holds first meeting*

On this day in 1936, the organizational meeting of the Texas Institute of Letters convened in the lecture room of the Hall of State on the grounds of the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. The idea for the organization came from William H. Vann, a professor of English at what is now the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, in Belton. He and others had been inspired by the celebration of the Texas Centennial to form an organization to promote interest in Texas literature and to recognize literary and cultural achievement. The institute, whose official address varies according to residence of the secretary-treasurer, meets each spring to present awards and transact business. The members are novelists, poets, essayists, historians, journalists, playwrights, and other writers. The requirement for membership has always been quality writing.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day may or may not describe certain Texans whom I know:

"The typical Texan is big and breezy, fond of strong language and strong drink ... Above all, Texans are lusty he-men."

-------- Life Magazine, 1939

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day may or may not describe certain Texans whom I know:
> 
> "The typical Texan is big and breezy, fond of strong language and strong drink ... Above all, Texans are lusty he-men."
> 
> -------- Life Magazine, 1939



Thanks Wendell, I'm touched by the compliment! Tony

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## Kevin

Tony said:


> Thanks Wendell, I'm touched by the compliment! Tony



Have you seen the movies about Greek Mythology? 

No?, well you odyssey them.

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## Tony

Kevin said:


> Have you seen the movies about Greek Mythology?
> 
> No?, well you odyssey them.


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## woodman6415

Bonus Texas Quote of the Day:

"When General Houston's army was retreating from Gonzales, some of his men camped near a widow's home and made fire of her fence rails. The brave woman gave the culprits a piece of her mind, and just then General Houston rode up and tried to pacify her by saying that as soon as he whipped Santa Anna, he would return and compel his men to make rails for her until she was satisfied. "You'll never come back," she screamed. "You cowardly old rascal. You'll come a runnin' as long as your lazy legs will carry you. You look like whuppin' Santa Anna, you a-runnin' like hell and a' goin' so fast your men can't keep up with you, just stoppin' long enough to burn a poor woman's rails!" General Houston rode away smiling, and when he became President of Texas he sent her a fine clock as a gift and saw that she was paid for her rails."

------- Frontier Times magazine, March, 1926

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 10th* 

*Battle of Stone Houses*

On this day in 1837, eighteen Texas Rangers fought 150 to 180 Kichai Indians in present-day Archer County in a conflict called the battle of Stone Houses. In mid-October 1837, a ranger company pursued the raiding Kichais up the Colorado River. Lt. A. B. Van Benthusen and seventeen men split from the main group and headed north to the Brazos. Eventually, they found the Kichais. Cherokee and Delaware Indians who were present attempted to act as peace agents, but when one ranger killed an Indian and took a plug of tobacco from the dead man’s body the infuriated Kichais attacked. The rangers sought cover in a shallow ravine, but after fierce fighting, the Kichais set fire to the prairie and smoked them out. In the ensuing chaos, some rangers escaped into the woods. Eight rangers survived the battle, which was so named after three stone mounds that looked like houses to the Indians.

*Mexican War memoirist and rogue dies*

On this day in 1908, soldier-adventurer-artist Sam Chamberlain died at the age of seventy-eight. Chamberlain was born in New Hampshire in 1829, moved to Boston with his family at an early age, and ran away to Illinois in 1844. Shortly after the outbreak of the Mexican War he joined a volunteer regiment and came to Texas, where he transferred to the First United States Dragoons of the regular army. Chamberlain had many rollicking adventures in Mexico, fighting guerillas, drinking in cantinas, and having countless love affairs with Mexican women. He also participated in and painted numerous pictures of the battle of Buena Vista. In 1849 he was listed as a deserter, and subsequently rode with the notorious scalp-hunter Jack Glanton all over northern Mexico. Chamberlain had moved back to Boston by 1854. He returned to military service during the Civil War and rose to the rank of brevet brigadier general. He led the all-black Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry to Clarksville, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, after the war had ended. Chamberlain's _My Confession: the Recollections of a Rogue,_ published in 1956, is perhaps the most vivid, revealing, earthy account of the life of an enlisted soldier in the war with Mexico.



*The President's Ranch Trail is dedicated to LBJ
*
On this day in 1967, the President's Ranch Trail was dedicated at Wimberley. The trail is a ninety-mile route through Hays, Blanco, and Gillespie counties. It extends from the LBJ Ranch, located on Ranch Road 1 near Stonewall, to San Marcos. The route touches places important in the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, including the Lyndon B. Johnson Birthplace, Boyhood Home, and Ranch; the Johnson family cemetery; Lyndon B. Johnson State Historical Park; the Pedernales Electric Cooperative in Johnson City, which was brought into being under Johnson's influence in the United States Senate; the First Christian Church in Johnson City, to which Johnson belonged; the Hye Post office, where he mailed his first letter; the Albert post office, general store, and school building; and his alma mater, Southwest Texas State University, in San Marcos, where his student dwelling is also located

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

It's further around the state of Texas than it is from New York to Liverpool.


I'm not sure why anyone would want to go to New York or Liverpool ....

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day: 

I thought: Now I know why I am not a revolutionary ---- have never had a desire to kick over old, established things. It's because The Hill Country does not teach you the need for change. The land is always so satisfying that you want it to remain the same forever as a kind of handy immortality.""

----- Elroy Bode, "This Favored Place," 1983

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is an obituary for Sam Houston that appeared in the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph after he passed away in 1863:

"DEATH OF GEN. HOUSTON
It is with deep and heartfelt sorrow that we announce the death of Gen. Sam Houston. It took place at his residence in Huntsville, on the 26th inst, at a quarter past 6 P. M. A letter from his physician, says:

"He died after an illness of five weeks. At one time during his sickness, hopes were entertained of his recovery, but his improvement was only apparent and it soon became evident that the band of death was upon him. To his numerous friends it will doubtless be a matter of great satisfaction to care that in his last hours he was sustained by the christian's hope and that he died the death of the righteous."

Thus has passed away one of the great men of the age. Say what we may of General Houston, we can but accord to him the merit of having filled his full share of the history of the last forty years. His life has been a remarkable one. Whether as Governor of Tennessee, when he was but a little over thirty years of age, or as chief of the Cherokees, or as a hero of the Texas revolution, or still later in the political arena of these last past years, he has always occupied a high place in the public consideration. He has not always been right, nor has he always successful, but he has always left the impress of his mind upon the times in which he has acted.

What were the springs of action to his mind, who dare undertake to tell? What drove him when he was on the high road to fame, and the enjoyment of life, the governor of a great State, the idol of a great people, to cast himself loose from them all and plunge into the wilderness of the West, and become the companion of savages? What led him afterwards, restated in the paths of civilization, honored Senator of another great State, and the beloved idol of its people, to again cast himself loose from their convictions of right, and in defiance of their feelings yield his assent to the designs of their enemies? Who can tell? What ever it was, the ease with which he regained of his fellow citizens, in both these instances, are among the most remarkable incidents in history.

After being lost for years in the wilderness, he re-visited Tennessee, and was received with the most flattering attentions by the whole people. He entered Texas, and was made little less than dictator. After being repudiated by the people of Texas twenty years later, denied his seat in the Senate, cast off by many who had always before voted for him, he took the field against a powerful and well organized party, and again the people flocked to his support and made him Governor.

Such power over men is unquestionably the most remarkable trait of his character. There in lay the greatness of Sam Houston. It was not in his virtue, for in the course of his life he has passed through what would have been degradation to other men and from the couch of the debauchee he has risen to the throne of power, his faculties unimpaired and his authority unquestioned. It was not in his generosity of heart, for a man who is slow to forgive as was General Houston, is not a natural lover of his kind. But it was in the certain power of discovering the springs of human action, a knowledge of human nature, and an ability to use his knowledge which few men possess.

To write a history of the life of Sam Houston is not our part. His history is too well know to make it necessary. To picture his character is also a task that may well be left to the public at large, to whom he is as well know as to us. We pity the heart that could now conceive evil of him. His noble qualities are before the people.

Let us shed tears to his memory, due to one who has filled so much of our affections. Let the whole people bury with him whatever of unkindness they had for him. Let his monument be in the hearts of those who people the land, to which his latter years were devoted. Let his fame sacredly cherished by Texans, as a debt not less to his distinguished services than own honor, of which he was always so jealous and so proud."

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## Wildthings

*Hard to follow that ^^*

*Today in Texas History -- November 11th -- Happy Veteran's Day*

*Beales Colony leaves for Texas
*
On this day in 1833, the _Amos Wright_ sailed from New York for Texas with fifty-nine men, women, and children aboard, the vanguard of a proposed colony backed by the Rio Grande and Texas Land Company and under command of John Charles Beales. In 1832 Beales and James Grant had acquired two tracts and obligated themselves to settle 800 families in the region between the Rio Grande and the Nueces; they set up the joint stock company to promote their venture. The first colonists landed at Copano Bay in December 1833 and journeyed in ox wagons to their destination on Las Moras Creek in present-day Kinney County. Here, in March 1834, the emigrants planted their settlement and named it Dolores, in honor of Beales's Mexican wife. But the colony was doomed to failure. The outbreak of the Texas Revolution caused a general exodus. One large wagon train was attacked by Comanche Indians on the Matamoros road, and all the settlers were massacred except two women and their small children, who were taken captive.

*East Texas church draws Daniel Parker's ire
*
On this day in 1843, Bethel Church in Sabine County joined four other East Texas Baptist churches in organizing the Sabine Baptist Association. Representatives of the five founding churches met at Union (Old North) Church, four miles north of Nacogdoches. The other churches were Union and Mount Zion, Nacogdoches County, and Border and Bethel, Harrison County. The participation of the Sabine County Bethel Church, located between Milam and Sexton in the county's "dark corner," drew the ire of Daniel Parker, under whose authority it had been constituted in 1841. Parker, his Predestinarian brethren in the Pilgrim Primitive Baptist Church, and the Union Association opposed missionary societies and boards, Bible societies, Sunday schools, and secret organizations, all of which were claimed to be purely devices of man with no scriptural authority for their existence. In August 1844, the Pilgrim Church called upon the Bethel Church to surrender its authority as a church, since it had "departed from the faith and order." Less than two months later, however, thirty-six persons were baptized into the Missionary Baptist faith at Bethel Church. The oldest Baptist church in Sabine County, it has remained in continuous operation since its founding, though its name has been changed to New Hope Baptist Church.

*World War I ends*

On this day in 1918, World War I came to an end. The armistice found the two most prominent Texas units on active service in France. The Ninetieth Division was fighting its way through the Meuse-Argonne, while the Thirty-Sixth Division was resting behind the lines after suffering heavy casualties in the same offensive. A total of 198,000 Texans saw service in the armed forces during the course of the war. Five thousand one hundred and seventy-one Texans, including one nurse, died in the armed services; 4,748 of the dead served in the army. More than a third of the total deaths occurred inside the United States, many of them as a result of the influenza epidemic of 1918. Four Texans were awarded the Medal of Honor. In a trend that would become even more marked during World War II, military camps were established in Texas to train men for service and the state was the main location for pilot training for military aviation.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

It sounds like a tall tale to say that the Academy Awards statuette, the Oscar, was named for a Texan, but although he was known to a limited few, Oscar's namesake is indeed a Texan. A man named Oscar Pierce had a niece who worked for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in Hollywood. When she saw the gold statue for the first time she said "That looks like my uncle Oscar!" The name stuck.

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## woodman6415

Thanks to all of our veterans... past and present ... God bless them all !!!


Texan Roy Benavidez, Jr. receives the Medal of Honor from President Ronald Reagan in 1981 for valor displayed in Vietnam in 1968. Roy was born in Lindenau, Texas and was raised in Cuero and El Campo. He was the son of a sharecropper who died when he was two years old and orphaned at the age of 7 when his mother passed away. From his medal of honor citation:

"Master Sergeant Benavidez, a Green Beret fighting in the Vietnam War, learned that a small recon team had been surrounded, and all members had been killed or wounded. He got on a bird, and all by himself, jumped off and ran through enemy fire to reach the team. From his medal of Honor citation:

“Prior to reaching the team’s position he was wounded in his right leg, face, and head. Despite these painful injuries, he took charge, repositioning the team members and directing their fire to facilitate the landing of an extraction aircraft, and the loading of wounded and dead team members… Despite his severe wounds and under intense enemy fire, he carried and dragged half of the wounded team members to the awaiting aircraft. He then provided protective fire by running alongside the aircraft as it moved to pick up the remaining team members. As the enemy’s fire intensified, he hurried to recover the body and classified documents on the dead team leader.

When he reached the leader’s body, Sergeant Benavidez was severely wounded by small arms fire in the abdomen and grenade fragments in his back. At nearly the same moment, the aircraft pilot was mortally wounded, and his helicopter crashed. Although in extremely critical condition due to his multiple wounds, Sergeant Benavidez secured the classified documents and made his way back to the wreckage, where he aided the wounded out of the overturned aircraft, and gathered the stunned survivors into a defensive perimeter. Under increasing enemy automatic weapons and grenade fire, he moved around the perimeter distributing water and ammunition to his weary men, re-instilling in them a will to live and fight. Facing a buildup of enemy opposition with a beleaguered team, Sergeant Benavidez mustered his strength, began calling in tactical air strikes and directed the fire from supporting gunships to suppress the enemy’s fire and so permit another extraction attempt.

He was wounded again in his thigh by small arms fire while administering first aid to a wounded team member just before another extraction helicopter was able to land. His indomitable spirit kept him going as he began to ferry his comrades to the craft. On his second trip with the wounded, he was clubbed from behind by an enemy soldier. In the ensuing hand-to-hand combat, he sustained additional wounds to his head and arms before killing his adversary. He then continued under devastating fire to carry the wounded to the helicopter. Upon reaching the aircraft, he spotted and killed two enemy soldiers who were rushing the craft from an angle that prevented the aircraft door gunner from firing upon them. With little strength remaining, he made one last trip to the perimeter to ensure that all classified material had been collected or destroyed, and to bring in the remaining wounded. Only then, in extremely serious condition from numerous wounds and loss of blood, did he allow himself to be pulled into the extraction aircraft.”

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## woodman6415

Here is an interesting article about an incident that happened in La Grange in 1883:

"After emancipation the State of Texas began to pass Jim Crow laws (laws requiring racial segregation). The Lone Star state eventually passed 27 of these laws which were not repealed until 1964. Blacks were segregated in schools and when using public transportation. Voting rights were curbed. Interracial marriage was outlawed and, by 1915, violating this law could bring you a prison sentence of two to five years. 

Despite the contentious relationship between the races, an extraordinary event occurred in La Grange late one spring evening in 1883. Mr. J.F. McClatchy, a white man from Mississippi, found his livery stable ablaze. It was located on the east side of the town square. He lost 23 horses to the fire and nearly all his buggies. At one point the fire threatened to destroy the square’s entire east side. However, both African American and white citizens joined together to fight the flames and limited the damage to McClatchy’s property and several other small buildings. Sadly, the fire was thought to be the work of an arsonist. 

Unfortunately for Mr. McClatchy, insurance covered less than half of his loss. However, local African Americans came to his aid. Having no money to give, they donated their time and labor to help him build a new stable:

Johnson Miller 6 days
Reuben Pierce 6 days
Jack Blocker 2 days
W. A. Schropshire 2 days
Granderson Lindsay 3 days
Sam Rogers 1 day
George Holmes and team 1 day
Nathan Powel 2 days
Bob Lyles 1 day
Richard Smith 1 day

Mr. McClatchy was able, within 36 hours, to open another stable with 18 stalls on the same lot.

White citizens expressed their appreciation to those who helped put out the fire in a May 25, 1883 letter to the editor of the La Grange Journal:

“We, the signers hereto, desire through the columns of your paper, to express our sincere thanks to the citizens, white and colored, who came to our relief on the occasion of the recent destructive fire. Your prompt and continuous efforts saved, not only the property of the signers hereto, but the property of many others. For the prompt, noble, and untiring efforts of the citizens and visiting friends, we do most sincerely tender our grateful acknowledgements.”

White & Bradshaw,
Aug. Kleinert
Chas. W. Gregory
H. Scholz & Co.
A.L.D. Moore
Wm. Hermes
Kruschel & Schmidt
H. Harigel
B. Willenberg
A.E. Willenberg
B. Zander
W. Karges
Wm. Logan"

This comes verbatim from the "Footprints of Fayette County" webpage. You can find this and many other really interesting articles and photos about La Grange and Fayette County at this link: http://www.fayettecountyhistory.org/la_grange_footprints.htm

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 12th -- a busy day*

*Diplomat and agriculturalist dies
*
On this day in 1844, John Stryker died of a fever at his home in Victoria County. Stryker, born in New Jersey in 1803, entered into a business partnership with James Wiley Magoffin in the late 1820s. They purchased the sloop _Washington_ and arrived in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in February 1830 with a newly designed cotton gin and several hundred bags of upland cotton seed. The partners distributed the seed free to local landowners in the Rio Grande valley. Upland cotton proved profitable, and Magoffin moved to Chihuahua to extend the business. In January 1835 President Andrew Jackson appointed Stryker United States consul for the port of Goliad (later the port of Matagorda). Stryker's influence, both positive and negative, in the Rio Grande valley continued long after his death. Although long-staple (Sea Island) cotton had formerly grown in the region, its cultivation was confined to coastal areas. A profitable cotton culture was possible only after Stryker and Magoffin introduced upland cotton and the cotton gin. The vast cotton fields in the Rio Grande valley later provided the pathway for the introduction of the boll weevil into the United States.

*Muleshoe Ranch brand registered
*
On this day in 1860, cattleman Henry Black registered the Muleshoe brand in Fannin County, though he may have used it as early as 1856. At least six other Texas ranches have registered and used a muleshoe brand in various forms (typically an inverted U shape). Black served in the Confederate Army, and returned after the Civil War to find that his home had burned and his wife had died. He remarried and began fording herds across the Red River and selling clothing made by his second wife. By 1877 their herd had outgrown their property, so the family moved to Stephens County, taking with them 1,000 cattle and 500 horses. Black purchased land and established the Muleshoe Ranch, where his descendants were still using the brand a hundred years later.

*William Stallings becomes the first county agricultural agent in Texas*

On this day in 1906, the Commercial Club of Tyler, with the cooperation of Seaman A. Knapp of the United States Department of Agriculture, appointed William Stallings agricultural agent of Smith County. He was the first county agricultural agent in Texas and the first in the nation to serve a single county. After serving Smith County for a year, during which he earned $150 a month, Stallings was appointed district agent; the district comprised Smith, Cherokee, and Angelina counties. Through his efforts the cotton and corn yields of the district increased by over 50 percent. In November 1971 the Texas Historical Commission placed a historical marker on the courthouse square in Tyler to commemorate Stallings's services.

*Texas Federation of Music Clubs organized
*
On this day in 1915, twenty-two Texas music clubs came together to form the Texas Federation of Music Clubs in Brownwood, during the annual meeting of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs. The TFMC was designed to establish a center to aid communication and cooperation for Texas musical organizations and to make music an integral part of the civic, social, educational, and religious life of Texas. Lucil Manning Lyons, president of the Fort Worth Harmony Club, became the TFMC's first president. By 1918, when the TFMC was chartered under Texas law, forty-eight clubs were enrolled. During its first thirty years the Texas Federation of Music Clubs distinguished itself with music education and appreciation campaigns and with the promotion of musical therapy and musical performance. The organization achieved particular recognition for these efforts during the Great Depression and both world wars, and in public education. Nevertheless, TFMC membership and activities diminished significantly in the post-World War II era. No records for federation activities since the 1960s have surfaced.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is actually three quotes from three different "eyewitnesses" of the death of notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin in El Paso in 1895:

"My name is Frank Patterson. I am a bar tender at present at the Acme saloon. This evening about 11 o'clock J. W. Hardin was standing with Henry Brown shaking dice and Mr. Selman walked in at the door and shot him. Mr. G. L. Shackleford was also in the saloon at the time the shooting took place. Mr. Selman said something as he came in at the door. Hardin was standing with his back to Mr. Selman. I did not see him face around before he fell or make any motion. All I saw was that Mr. Selman came in the door, said something and shot and Hardin fell. Don't think Hardin ever spoke. The first shot was in the head."

"My name is E.L. Shackeford. At the time I met Mr. Selman he was in the saloon drinking with several others ... I advised him as a friend not to get under the influence of liquor. We walked out on the sidewalk and came back into the saloon, I being some distance ahead of Selman, walking towards the back of the saloon. There I heard shots fired. I can't say who fired the shots, as I did not see it. I did not turn around but left immediately. The room was full of powder smoke, and I could nae have seen anything anyway."

"My name is Henry Brown. We were shaking dice. I heard a shot fired and Mr. Hardin fell at m feet at my left side. I heard three or four shots fired. I then left, went out the back door, and don't know what occurred afterwards. When the shot was fired, Mr. Hardin was against the bar, facing it, as near as I can say, and his back was towards the direction the shot came from. I did not see him make any effort to get his six-shooter. The last words he spoke before the first shot were. ;Four sixes to beat,' and they were addressed to me."

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## woodman6415

It amazes me that without the benefit of high speed travel how much some of these folks got around ... 


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is doozy:

After Sam Houston resigned as Tennessee's governor he returned to live with the Cherokees, with whom he had lived as a youth. In 1832, while Houston was a member of an Indian delegation to Washington, Ohio Congressman William Stanberry, on the floor of the House, said some slanderous things about him. Houston sent a note challenging Stanberry to a duel. Stanerry refused to answer but started carrying pistols when he went out.

Almost two weeks after the original insult Houston was going to his hotel one evening when he encountered Stanberry on Pennsylvania Avenue. Houston attacked Stanberry with his hickory cane. Stanberry drew one pistol, aimed, and pulled the trigger but the pistol did not fire.

Stanberry filed a complaint with the Speaker. The House voted to arrest Houston, since the offensive statement had een made in that chamber, and Congressmen were supposed to be immune for statements made there. Houston's only punisment could be reprimand and withdrawal of his privilege, as a former Congressman, of coming onto the floor of the House.

Houston appeared the next day and was given 48 hours to prepare his defense. The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is that his attorney was none other than Francis Scott Key. That's right, THE Francis Scott Key, the man who, 18 years earlier, had written the Star Spangled Banner.

The trial began on April 19. Stanberry showed the bumps on his head and Houston's cane was put into evidence. Key's defense was that the words which so inflamed Houston were not spoken in the House ---- he did not hear those ---- but those printed in the newspaper. it was a rather unsatisfactory position, since the newspaper account was a direct quote of Stansberry's speech in the House.
The trial lasted for a month and attracted a great deal of attention. President Jackson was displeased by the actions of his young friend, Houston, but said a few such chastisements would teach congressmen to maintain civil tongues.
The House found Houston guilty, but the attempt to deprive him of the privileges of the House was defeated by James K. Polk and other Jacksonians.

In the District of Columbia courts Houston was charged with the crime of assault and a fine of 500 dollars was imposed. A year later Houston was advised, "Get that remitted by the Old Chief (Andrew Jackson)." After another year Houston wrote Jackson about the fine. By virtue of his pardoning power, the President granted a remission and Houston never had to pay it.

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## Wildthings

Watched a documentary on Ronald Reagan last night on *REELZ* channel called "_Reagan from actor to president_" It was excellent and learned a few things

*Today in Texas History -- November 13th*


*Texas preacher speaks of evils of intemperance
*
On this day in 1855, preacher Mansell Matthews was invited to address the people of Rockwall, Texas, on "the evils of intemperance." Born in Kentucky in 1806, Matthews had become both a doctor and a Disciples of Christ minister by the time he moved to Texas in 1835. After settling his family and winning election as representative from Red River County to the First Texas Congress, he joined the Texas army and served as a surgeon until July 1836. He was at the battle of San Jacinto and attended the wounded Gen. Sam Houston. Matthews lived and preached in a succession of communities before his death in Wise County in 1891. The struggle against the consumption of alchoholic beverages, the subject of his talk in 1855, engaged Texans for many years, culminating in the temporarily successful Prohibition campaign of the early twentieth century.



*"Chipita" sentenced to death
*
On this day in 1863, Josefa (Chipita) Rodríguez was sentenced to death for the murder of John Savage in San Patricio de Hibernia. Rodríguez, for many years believed to be the only woman legally hanged in Texas, furnished travelers with meals and a cot on the porch of her lean-to on the Aransas River. She was accused of killing Savage while seeking to rob him of $600 in gold, but the gold was found in the river north of San Patricio, where Savage's body was discovered in a burlap bag. Nonetheless, she and Juan Silvera (who may have been her illegitimate son) were indicted on circumstantial evidence and tried before Fourteenth District Court judge Benjamin F. Neal at San Patricio. After Chipita pleaded not guilty, the jury recommended mercy, but Neal ordered her executed. At the time, Chipita was described as "very old" or "about ninety," but was probably in her sixties. At least one witness to the hanging claimed he later heard a moan from the coffin, which was placed in an unmarked grave, and her ghost is said to haunt the area, especially when a woman is sentenced to be executed. She is pictured as a specter with a noose around her neck, wailing from the riverbottoms. She has been the subject of two operas, numerous books, newspaper articles, and magazine accounts.


*First black SWC football player is born in Groesbeck
*
On this day in 1947, John Hill Westbrook, the first black student to play varsity football in the Southwest Conference, was born in Groesbeck, Texas. In 1965 he enrolled at Baylor University and tried out for the freshman football team as a running back. Despite racially motivated harsh treatment from some teammates and coaches, he earned an athletic scholarship. On September 10, 1966, in the fourth quarter of a game against Syracuse, Westbrook became the first black to play football in the Southwest Conference. He ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1978 and received 23 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. In 1983 Westbrook died in Houston at the age of 36.


*Karen Silkwood dies in mysterious crash*

On this day in 1974, union activist Karen Silkwood died in an automobile accident. Silkwood, born in Longview in 1946, was a laboratory technician at a Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation plutonium plant in Oklahoma. She joined the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and became the first female member of the union bargaining committee in Kerr-McGee history. On her first assignment to study health and safety issues at the plant, she discovered evidence of spills, leaks, and missing plutonium. As environmental concerns increased in the 1970s, Kerr-McGee faced litigation involving worker safety and environmental contamination, and Silkwood testified to charges before the Atomic Energy Commission that she had suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents. She died en route to a meeting with an AEC official and a New York _Times_ reporter. Speculations over foul play in her death were never substantiated, but an autopsy showed her body had been contaminated by plutonium, and Kerr-McGee eventually closed the plant. Her life was the subject of a motion picture, _Silkwood,_ released in 1984.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 14th*

*
Historic World War II pipelines sold (Link to more info)
*
On this day in 1947, the Big Inch and Little Big Inch, two strategic pipelines laid during World War II from East Texas to the Northeast, were sold by the U.S. government to a private company. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes realized as early as 1940 that shipment of petroleum to the Northeast by tankers would be impossible in time of war because of German submarines. In 1941, at Ickes's urging, oil industry executives began to plan the building of two pipelines. One, twenty-four inches in diameter, called the Big Inch, transported crude oil. The other, twenty inches in diameter, called the Little Big Inch, transported refined products. The Big Inch ran from Longview to Southern Illinois, thence to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Twenty-inch lines continued from there to New York City and Philadelphia. The Little Big Inch began in the refinery complex between Houston and Port Arthur and ended in Linden, New Jersey. Together the pipelines carried over 350 million barrels of crude oil and refined products to the East Coast before the war in Europe ended in August 1945.


*Cuero paper uncovers land fraud*

On this day in 1954, the Cuero _Record_ published an article by its managing editor, Roland Kenneth Towery, revealing violations of the intent and purpose of the Veterans' Land Program through fraud and bribery. Towery's story, and those which followed, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for distinguished reporting of local affairs. They also set off intensive statewide media reporting and accelerated an investigation begun in October by the office of the attorney general under John Ben Shepperd (who was a member of the Veterans' Land Board at the time of the investigation), the Texas Department of Public Safety under Homer Garrison, the state auditor's office, and the Senate General Investigating Committee. Governor Allan Shivers, as a member of the Veterans' Land Board, was also actively involved in the investigation. Once investigations were begun, numerous charges were filed against various people accused of taking part in the improper use of state monies and violating veterans' personal rights. Twenty people were indicted in nine counties, and Bascom Giles, commissioner of the General Land Office and chairman of the board of the Veterans' Land Board, became the first elected state official to enter prison for a crime committed while in office.


*Former congressman dies in Lufkin
*
On this day in 1972, former congressman Martin Dies died in Lufkin. His father, also named Martin Dies, was an outspoken nativist and opponent of woman suffrage who served in Congress from 1909 to 1919. The younger Dies, born in Colorado City in 1900, was elected to Congress in 1930 and gained fame as the first chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established in 1938 to investigate subversion. Dies ran against Lyndon B. Johnson for a Senate seat in 1941, finishing last in a four-way race. During World War II he became a leader of the anti-Roosevelt, anti-union Texas Regulars, but announced his retirement in 1944 after the Congress of Industrial Organizations launched a vast voter-registration drive and found a candidate to oppose him. In 1952 he won election to a new congressman-at-large seat, but he was not allowed to return to the HUAC, which believed that he had damaged the cause of anticommunism. He finished second to Ralph Yarborough in the 1957 special election to fill the Senate seat of Price Daniel, Sr. After declining to run for reelection to Congress in 1958, Dies continued to warn that the United States was succumbing to communism.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is fantastic:

"I have sworn to be a good Texan, and that I will not forswear. I will die for that which I firmly believe, for I know it is just and right. One life is a small price for a cause so great. As I fought, so shall I be willing to die. I will never forsake Texas and her cause. I am her son." ----- Jose Antonio Navarro, from Mexican Prison in 1841

Note: After being tried and sentenced to death, Navarro was imprisoned in Mexico. He was given the choice of freedom if he would simply renounce Texas but refused, languishing for several years in prison. Finally, with the help of sympathetic prison officials, Navarro escaped and, by 1845, was a member of the Republic of Texas Congress from Bexar County.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Battle of Palo Alto, which took place near Brownsville in May, 1846, was notable not only because it was the first battle of the U.S.-Mexican War, but for a couple of more obscure reasons. For one, it was the first time that the U.S. used mobile, lightweight artillery in battle. But another is that it brought together on the battlefield three future Presidents: U.S. Grant and Zachary Taylor on the American side and Mariano Arista ---- who was President of Mexico for two years beginning in 1851 ---- on the Mexican side. Incidentally, Arista's full name was José Mariano Martín Buenaventura Ignacio Nepomuceno García de Arista Nuez.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 15th*

*Santa Anna's policies lead to abortive invasion of Tampico
*
On this day in 1835, an armed invasion of Mexico by North Americans led by George Fisher and José Antonio Mexía unsuccessfully assaulted the Mexican garrison at Tampico. The Tampico Expedition, like the incipient Texas Revolution, was launched in response to the reactionary policies of Antonio López de Santa Anna. The expedition sailed from New Orleans on the schooner _Mary Jane_ on November 6. The _Mary Jane_ ran aground off the bar of Tampico on November 14. Mexía attacked the city on November 15 and was defeated. The rebels retreated aboard the American schooner _Halcyon_, which arrived at the mouth of the Brazos on December 3. Thirty-one prisoners were left at Tampico. All either died from wounds or were executed.

*Lorenzo de Zavala dies
*
On this day in 1836, Lorenzo de Zavala, the first vice president of the Republic of Texas, died. Zavala was born in 1788 in Mexico. His support of democratic reforms led to his imprisonment in 1814 in Veracruz, where he gained enough knowledge from reading medical textbooks to qualify him to practice medicine upon his release in 1817. He also taught himself to read English during his imprisonment. In the early 1820s he helped establish a republican government in newly independent Mexico, but due to Federalist-Centralist strife was forced into exile in 1830. Zavala returned to Mexico in 1832 and was named by President Antonio López de Santa Anna to serve as the first minister plenipotentiary of the Mexican legation in Paris. When he learned that Santa Anna had assumed dictatorial powers in 1834, Zavala denounced his former ally, resigned his post, and eventually went to Texas. Although he first advocated the cause of Mexican Federalism, he soon became an active supporter of the independence movement. Zavala's legislative, executive, ministerial, and diplomatic experience, together with his education and linguistic ability, uniquely qualified him for the role he was to play in the drafting of the constitution of the Republic of Texas. Under the Treaties of Velasco Zavala was appointed a peace commissioner to accompany Santa Anna to Mexico City, but returned to his home in poor health shortly thereafter. He resigned the vice presidency on October 17, 1836. Less than a month later, soaked and half-frozen by a northern after his rowboat overturned in Buffalo Bayou, he developed pneumonia and died.

*Woman cattle rancher born in San Antonio*

On this day in 1901, Armel Keeran, the granddaughter of Texas cattleman John N. Keeran, was born in San Antonio. As a child she developed an interest in Brahman cattle on her father's ranch, and after graduating from college she moved back to the ranch and spent her life raising Brahmans. She was widely known as a Brahman breeder and was an outspoken advocate of the hump-backed cattle. She was the first woman in the United States to raise Brahmans and the second woman to sit on a board of a major cattle association. She developed the largest herd of Brahman cattle in the United States at that time. She was married to Henry Clay Koontz II of the Koontz Ranch in 1928, but the couple divorced after eleven years of marriage. She later married Hugh Baker. She died of a stroke and complications of diabetes in 1967 in Victoria.

*"Great Captain" of the rangers retires
*
On this day in 1906, John Abijah Brooks resigned his commission as captain of the Texas Rangers. He is known in the annals of the rangers as one of the "Four Great Captains," the others being John R. Hughes, William J. McDonald, and John H. Rogers. Brooks had a lean frame, angular features, a mustache, a soft voice, and kindly yet determined manners. He joined the service as a private at the beginning of 1883 and rose through the ranks--corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant--to become captain in 1889 of Company F in the Frontier Battalion. Of the "Four Great Captains" Brooks and Rogers received the least publicity, but they were said to be "dependable, intelligent, and wise in the ways of criminals." After leaving the rangers and moving to Falfurrias, Brooks served in the House of Representatives in the Thirty-first and Thirty-second legislatures and was instrumental in establishing the new county named in his honor. He also served as county judge of Brooks County for many years. Brooks died in 1944 and was buried in Falfurrias.

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## woodman6415

Leon Russell and Willie Nelson at the 1974 Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic in College Station, Texas. Leon passed away a couple of days ago, on Nov. 13. It sure seems to me that we've seen a lot of great musicians pass away this year. RIP Leon Russell.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

José Gregorio Esparza, also known as Gregorio Esparza, was the last Texian defender to enter the Alamo during the early days of March 1836 in the Siege of the Alamo and was the only Texian to not be burned in the pyres that Santa Anna ordered be built to burn the defender's bodies after the battle. The reason that Gregorio's body was not burned alongside those of Travis, Crockett, Bowie and the others is that Gregorio's brother, Francisco Esparza, fought for the Mexican side and, after Santa Anna ordered the burning, Francisco went to him and pleaded to be allowed to give his brother Gregorio a proper Christian burial. Santa Anna granted permission and Gregorio Esparza's body was removed from the rest and buried near the San Fernando church, the only Alamo defender accorded such an honor.


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 16th*

*Republic of Texas signs its last Indian treaty
*
On this day in 1845, the Republic of Texas concluded its last Indian treaty. The agreement marked the end of the Tehuacana Creek Councils, which began in the spring of 1843, when Jesse Chisholm helped convince a number of Indian groups, including the Caddos, Tawakonis, Delawares, Lipan Apaches, and Tonkawas, to meet on Tehuacana Creek near the Torrey Brothers trading post south of present Waco. A second council met at Fort Bird on the Trinity River in the fall of 1843. These councils resulted in a peace treaty between the Republic and the Wacos, Caddos, and other smaller groups, but the absence of the Comanches caused President Sam Houston to call another council to meet at Tehuacana Creek in April 1844. The April council convened without the Comanches, but by October 9, 1844, Houston had negotiated a treaty with a part of the southern Comanches, Kichais, Wacos, Caddos, Anadarkos, Hainais, Delawares, Shawnees, Cherokees, Lipan Apaches, and Tawakonis. At the November 1845 council the Wacos, Tawakonis, Kichais, and Wichitas agreed to the treaty of October 9, 1844.


*South Texas Chamber of Commerce formed*

On this day in 1926, the South Texas Chamber of Commerce was established. Founding officers of the organization were R. W. Morrison of San Antonio, president; S. C. Tucker of Brownsville, first vice president; E. R. Fawcett of Del Rio, second vice president; Ray Leeman of San Antonio, executive vice president, and George Rehment of Alice, treasurer. The organization covered in its activities fifty-five counties in South Texas, roughly bounded by Del Rio on the west, Austin on the north, Houston on the east, and the Rio Grande on the south. Representing commercial interests in its area and performing the usual functions of chambers of commerce, the organization worked for an equitable proportion of state appropriations for state-supported educational institutions in South Texas, the modernization and completion of the state highway system in South Texas, rate adjustments and improved marketing conditions in the area, equitable fire insurance rate adjustments, and encouragement of tourist traffic into South Texas and Mexico. In 1988 the South Texas Chamber of Commerce, along with the other regional chambers of commerce, merged into the Texas Chamber of Commerce.



*Colorful lawman Jess Sweeten dies in Athens
*
On this day in 1980, Jess Sweeten, colorful county sheriff and mayor of Athens, Texas, died. He was born in Stigler, Indian Territory, in 1905. He moved to Dallas in 1926 and worked there for several years before becoming a deputy sheriff. In 1932 his election as sheriff of Henderson County made him the youngest sheriff in Texas. He served for twenty-two years. The six-foot-four, 225-pound Sweeten gained a reputation as a hard-nosed investigator and a crack shot. During his tenure he shot nine men, killing three, including Gerald Johnson, the so-called "Dallas Kid," whom Sweeten gunned down after a high-speed car chase through Athens. Sweeten conducted shooting exhibitions for schools and civic clubs throughout his career, shooting cigars and other objects held up by his one-armed assistant, Gus Sowells. On one occasion, he reportedly fired 3,700 rounds in seven hours, shooting up some 600 pounds of potatoes. He was elected mayor of Athens in 1969.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a great historical read:

"We bedded our cattle for the last time near Abilene, Kansas. The boss let myself and another boy go to the city one day. As it had been a long time since we had seen a house or a woman, they were good to look at. I wore a black plush hat which had a row of small stars around the rim, with buck-skin strings to tie and hold on my head. We went into town, tied our ponies, and the first place we visited was a saloon and dance hall. We ordered toddies like we had seen older men do, and drank them down, for we were dry, very dry, as it had been a long ways between drinks. I quit my partner, as he had a girl to talk to, so I went out and in a very short time I went into another store and saloon. I got another toddy, my hat began to stiffen up, but I pushed it up in front, moved my pistol to where it would be handy, then sat down on a box in the saloon and picked up a newspaper and thought I would read a few lines, but my two toddies were at war, so I could not very well understand what I read. 

I got up and left for more sights— you have seen them in Abilene, Dodge City and any other place those days. I walked around for perhaps an hour. The two toddies were making me feel different to what I had felt for months, and I thought it was about time for another, so I headed for a place across the street, where I could hear a fiddle. It was a saloon, gambling and dance hall. Here I saw an old long-haired fellow dealing monte. I went to the bar and called for a toddy, and as I was drinking it a girl came up and put her little hand under my chin, and looked me square in the face and said, "Oh, you pretty Texas boy, give me a drink." I asked her what she wanted and she said anything I took, so I called for two toddies. My, I was getting rich fast —a pretty girl and plenty of whiskey. My old hat was now away back on my head. 

My boss had ,given me four dollars spending money and I had my five-dollar bill, so I told the girl that she could make herself easy; that I was going to break the monte game, buy out the saloon, and keep her to run it for me when I went back to Texas for my other herd of cattle. Well, I went, to the old longhaired dealer, and as he was making a new layout I put my five on the first card (a king) and about the third pull I won. I now had ten dollars and I thought I had better go and get another toddy before I played again. As I was getting rich so fast, I put the two bills on the tray and won. Had now twenty dollars, so I moved my hat back as far as it would go and went to get a drink— another toddy, but my girl was gone. I wanted to show her that I was not joking about buying out the saloon after I broke the bank. 

After this drink things did not look so good. I went back and it seemed to me that I did not care whether I broke him or not. I soon lost all I had won and my old original five. When I quit him my hat was becoming more settled, getting down in front, and I went out, found my partner and left for camp. The next morning, in place of owning a saloon and going back to Texas after my other herds, I felt—oh! what's the use? You old fellows know how I felt."

------ J.L. McCaleb, as quoted in "The Trail Drivers of Texas," 1925

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"There is an old army story to the effect that, when General [Zachary] Taylor's little army was on the march from Corpus Christ to Matamoras, a soldier on the flak of the column came upon and fired at a Longhorn bull. The bull immediately charged, and the soldier, taking to his heels, ran headlong, scattering several regiments like chaff, finally escaping unhurt, having demoralized and put to flight an army which a few days after covered itself with glory by victoriously encountering five times its numbers of human enemies."

------ Richard Irving Dodge, "The Hunting Grounds of the Great West," 1878

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 17th*


*Ohioans come to the aid of Texas with "Twin Sisters"
*
On this day in 1835, the people of Cincinnati, Ohio, decided to aid the cause of the Texas Revolution by raising funds to procure two cannons. Since the United States was taking an official stance of neutrality toward the rebellion in Texas, the citizens of Cincinnati referred to their cannon as "hollow ware." Two guns, probably six pounders, were manufactured at the foundry of Greenwood and Webb in Cincinnati and then shipped down the Mississippi to New Orleans. The cannons arrived in Galveston at the beginning of April 1836, accompanied by the family of a Dr. Charles Rice. The guns were presented to representatives of Texas under the sponsorship of Dr. Rice's twin daughters, Elizabeth and Eleanor. Someone in the crowd made notice of the fact that there were two sets of twins in the presentation, the girls and the guns, and thus the cannons became the Twin Sisters. The guns went into action on April 20, and, under the command of George W. Hockley, supported the infantry assault the next day at the battle of San Jacinto. Along with the Gonzales "come and take it" cannon, the Twin Sisters are among the most famous weapons of the Texas Revolution.


*Texas cattlemen propose National Trail*

On this day in 1884, a cattle industry convention meeting in St. Louis passed a resolution calling upon Congress, "in the interest of cheaper food," to build and maintain a National Trail from the Red River north to the Canadian border. Pushed through by prominent Texas cattlemen, it was an attempt to thwart proposed northern quarantines against Texas cattle. Texas fever, caused by ticks indigenous to the Southwest, had inflicted heavy losses upon the northern range-cattle industry by the early 1880s, and these losses had caused northern cattlemen to lobby for quarantines against infected livestock. Since it was much less expensive for Texas cattlemen to trail their herds to northern railheads and ranges and then ship them by rail rather than ship directly from Texas, most Texans saw these proposed quarantines as a threat to their economic well-being. In the wake of the National Trail proposal, however, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Canada passed quarantine laws against Texas cattle, seriously restricting drives during the regular trailing season. Finally, on January 7, 1886, Texas congressman James Francis Miller of Gonzales introduced the National Trail proposal in the United States House of Representatives. The measure was blocked in the House committee on commerce by northern cattle interests and by Texas railroads, which presumably wanted to replace the trail with rails. The failure of the National Trail, the northern quarantines, and the western migration of farmers and barbed wire sounded the death knell of trailing.


*Tick fever helps end cattle-trailing era despite ranchers' efforts
*
On this date in 1884, a prominent group of Texas cattlemen met in St. Louis to attempt to thwart plans of northern interests to quarantine Texas cattle. Texas fever, caused by ticks indigenous to the Southwest, had inflicted heavy losses upon the northern range-cattle industry by the early 1880s, and these losses had caused northern cattlemen (roughly all those north of the thirty-second parallel) to lobby for state and territorial quarantines against infected livestock. The Texans at the St. Louis meeting sought to evade this quarantine by drafting a resolution calling for Congress to build and maintain a National Trail from Doan's Crossing on the Red River through Indian Territory, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Montana. On January 6, 1886, Texas congressman James Francis Miller introduced the National Trail proposal to the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure failed, and northern quarantines, western migration, and barbed wire fences ended cattle trailing.


*Delta Drilling Company founded
*
On this day in 1931, the Delta Drilling Company was founded in Longview by four immigrants and a native Houstonian. Fifty years later the company, headquartered in Tyler, was one of the largest land-based, private, contract drilling firms in the world. The partners borrowed $22,000 in the depth of the Great Depression to buy two junk drilling rigs and began drilling in the East Texas oilfield. In the late 1930s and thereafter Delta branched out from East Texas, with operations in the Illinois basin, the Northeast, the Rocky Mountains, Louisiana, the Southeast, West Texas, and South Texas. In 1981 the firm "went public" and began selling its stock over the counter. At its peak Delta operated fifty-nine domestic drilling rigs and six foreign onshore rigs. But an industry-wide economic slump sent Delta into a long trough. In 1989 the firm, now known as DeltaUS, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but emerged a year later under its original name. It owned thirty-five land rigs in East Texas, South Texas, the Louisiana Gulf Coast, and the Appalachian region.

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## woodman6415

As much as the great loss of a great Texan and true friend, it hurts and saddens me but I think he would want us to carry on ...

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1977 the San Antonio Light reported that people were "shocked and appalled" at the sight of topless bathers at Austin's Barton Springs swimming pool. "Matter of fact, some folks are driving 200 miles to be shocked and appalled by the sight," the newspaper reported.

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## Schroedc

woodman6415 said:


> As much as the great loss of a great Texan and true friend, it hurts and saddens me but I think he would want us to carry on ...
> 
> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> In 1977 the San Antonio Light reported that people were "shocked and appalled" at the sight of topless bathers at Austin's Barton Springs swimming pool. "Matter of fact, some folks are driving 200 miles to be shocked and appalled by the sight," the newspaper reported.



And I can see Kevin being one of those driving there

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## woodman6415

Schroedc said:


> And I can see Kevin being one of those driving there



As a matter of fact .. Kevin and I had talked about having been to hippy hollow ... if I remember he lived around there close for a while ... I know the couple of times I cruised by in a boat it was mostly .. girls that like girls and guys that like guys group there ... not that in this day and time anything wrong with that ... was just a lot of unattractive people laying around naked .. would have been a sight better if they had clothes on ...


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## Schroedc

woodman6415 said:


> As a matter of fact .. Kevin and I had talked about having been to hippy hollow ... if I remember he lived around there close for a while ... I know the couple of times I cruised by in a boat it was mostly .. girls that like girls and guys that like guys group there ... not that in this day and time anything wrong with that ... was just a lot of unattractive people laying around naked .. would have been a sight better if they had clothes on ...



It always seems that the folks that like to take their clothes off are the ones we'd rather not

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## woodman6415

The year was 1904, Teddy Roosevelt was President, Archie Hahn was the world's fastest human, Jim Jeffries was the heavyweight champion, the New York Giants under John McGraw had won the National League pennant, and down in the Texas cattle country Jack Abernathy was catching wolves bare-handed.

Which seems a rather interesting occupation and one not to be taken lightly. There had been nothing in Abernathy's background that gave a hint he would become involved in so risky a pastime. Abernathy was born in Bosque County. At nine, he was a working cowboy and by 15 he was breaking horses in the Texas Panhandle on Charles Goodnight's JA Ranch. But for those times and that country this wasn't particularly unusual. The only clue that Abernathy might be subject to aberrant whims came at 17 when he decided to be a musician.

The question that comes to mind is why he wanted to catch a wolf bare-handed or why ANYONE would want to.

Abernathy caught his first wolf without giving much thought to danger. It was a mistake, done, he said later, in a hasty moment. When he was 15 he was working as a cow-puncher for the JA ranch. Working cattle one day, two greyhounds of which he was very fond jumped a wolf. After a chase the wolf turned and bayed. By the time Abernathy rode up, one dog had been disemboweled and the other was being chewed. Abernathy had no gun and, without thinking, jumped from his horse and started for the fight. He was a young man noted for his exceptional quickness and agility, but, even so, a big wolf—and this one weighed about 125 pounds, almost as much as Abernathy—has canines an inch long and jaws that can crush bones. Abernathy later wrote that his only concern was getting the wolf off his dog, and that he expected the beast to run away.

Instead, the wolf attacked Abernathy, lunging for his throat. Instinctively he threw up a hand, thrusting it sideways into the wolf's mouth. He then grabbed the wolf with his free arm and threw it on its back, and he discovered that as long as he kept the animal's lower jaw open it could not bite him. They struggled, the animal scratching and clawing. Once, Abernathy lost his hold and had to retake it. The scramble ended in a standoff with Abernathy on top of the wolf, holding on to its jaw for dear life, and the animal sulking beneath him. Abernathy was cut and bleeding when his brother, who had missed him, rode up. Abernathy later told his son that his brother said, "Well, what have you got there, Jack?" and he said, "I've got something captured I can't get loose from." His brother wanted to shoot the wolf, but Abernathy decided that since he'd got that far he was going to take the animal back alive. He made a running hitch with cord around the wolf's jaws, jerked his hand out, and with a quick pull tied its mouth shut. Then he slung it over his saddle and took it back to camp.

They say Abernathy caught a few more wolves at this time, but it was more for the sport of the thing and it wasn't until years later that he got serious about wolves. Instead, he decided to become a musician, got married, began selling pianos and raising a family, including two sons. It's important to take note of these two sons because they figure in the story later and they were just a bit unusual, too, maybe even more so than their father.

After Abernathy quit being a musician and piano salesman he returned to cowboying and catching wolves. Only this time he discovered that he had a real knack for wolf catching and he began doing it full time, selling the animals to zoos, circuses and traveling shows for $50 each. His fame spread and Teddy Roosevelt heard about him. Teddy, of course, couldn't let something unusual and outdoorsy go uninvestigated. A month after he was sworn in for his second term as President, Roosevelt arrived in Frederick, Okla. to watch Jack Abernathy catch a live wolf. That made everyone nervous, including the governor of Texas, S.W.T. Lanham, who sent Texas Rangers to provide Roosevelt with added protection. According to newspaper accounts, Roosevelt was immediately taken with Jack Abernathy and with Abernathy's famous wolf-hunting horse, "Sam Bass." The President and Abernathy posed for pictures, the two looking bully and the Secret Service men looking apprehensive.

The first morning, Roosevelt joined the 10-mile chase over broken and rocky land. He later wrote: "...just as they crossed the creek the greyhound made a rush, pinned the wolf by the hind leg and threw it. There was a scuffle, then a yell from the greyhound as the wolf bit it. At the bite the hound let go...and at that moment Abernathy, who had ridden his horse right on them as they struggled, leaped off and sprang on top of the wolf. He held the reins of the horse with one hand and thrust the other, with a rapidity and precision even greater than the rapidity of the wolf's snap, into the wolf's mouth, jamming his hand down crosswise between the jaws, seizing the lower jaw and bending it down so the wolf could not bite him...with his knees he kept the wolf from using its forepaws to break the hold until it gave up struggling. When he thus leaped on and captured this coyote it was entirely free, the dogs having let go of it; and he was obliged to keep hold of the reins of the horse with one hand. I was not 20 yards distant at the time.... It was as remarkable a feat of the kind as I have ever seen."

Of course, they had trouble with Roosevelt because he wanted to catch a wolf, too. The Secret Service finally talked him out of that, and he turned his attention to killing rattlesnakes, one as long as five feet, with his riding quirt.

Roosevelt wasn't the only one of the party who wanted to try catching wolves. It was reported in the Daily Oklahoman that two others attempted it and had their hands badly mangled. When Roosevelt asked Abernathy about his technique, he said, "Well, Mr. President, you must remember that a wolf never misses its aim when it snaps. When I strike at a wolf with my right hand I know it's going into the wolf's mouth."

During his career Abernathy caught about a thousand wolves. He wrote: "Usually I wore a thin glove, the thinner the better. I wore this glove merely to prevent the sharp canine teeth of the wolf from splitting open the skin of my hand. In thrusting my hand into the mouth of a biting wolf, sometimes the sharp teeth would scratch the skin if I didn't have on a thin glove." In a book he wrote called Catch-'Em-Alive Jack, Abernathy talked about trying to teach others the process. "Nearly all were able to make the catch so far as letting the wolf have their hand. But when the savage animal would clamp down on the hand, the student would become frightened, fearing the hand would be ruined forever. Instead of holding fast to the lower jaw, the student would quit. Consequently the wolf would then almost ruin the hand."

One of Abernathy's sons, Temple, talks of witnessing such an instance as a small boy: "Dad was trying to teach a Mexican cowhand who was around the camp. The man got the wolf all right, but then he got scared and let go and the wolf bit him viciously. He died a few days later. Loss of blood or some such."
In his book Abernathy claimed that the only time he was badly bitten was when he was catching wolves for a Colonel Cecil A. Lyon near Sherman, Texas. He had caught several wolves successfully, but then he had a few drinks of whiskey and the next wolf bit him. He later said the whiskey had ruined his timing.
Temple says the worst bite his father got was from his very first wolf. "Dad told me he was surprised at how easy he got that wolf down and thought he had a good chance of getting out of a bad spot unharmed. So he went to jerk away, but when he did, the wolf got him by the wrist and bit him pretty bad. Dad pried open his mouth and took his hold again, but the wolf had severed the artery in the wrist, and he was losing blood pretty fast when my uncle rode up. When they got back to camp, that big vessel was sticking out about half an inch and spurting blood. Dad tried to shove it back in under the skin, but it wouldn't go. Finally, he just stretched it and cut if off with some shears they had around the wagon, tied it and stopped the bleeding."

When Roosevelt returned to Washington, he sent for Abernathy and asked him what federal office he would like to hold. Abernathy said he'd like to be the United Slates marshal for the Oklahoma Territory and Roosevelt appointed him on the spot at a salary of $5,000 a year. Later, the President wrote:

My Dear Marshal:
I guess you had better not catch live wolves as a part of a public exhibition while you are Marshal. If on a private hunt you catch them, that would be all right, but it would look too much as if you were going into show business if you took part in a public celebration.

Give my regards to all your family.
I am sure you are doing well in your position.
Sincerely, President Theodore Roosevelt."

----- From a 1976 Sports Illustrated Article about Jack Abernathy

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- November 18th*

*
Charles Morgan introduces steamship service to Texas
*
On this day in 1837, the steamship _Columbia_ arrived at New Orleans in the first recorded voyage of the Morgan Lines, the first steamship line in Texas. The _Columbia_ made its inaugural voyage to Galveston a week later. Originated by shipping and railroad magnate Charles Morgan, the Morgan Lines introduced Morgan's economic influence into the Gulf region. In 1849, rebelling against port charges at Lavaca, Morgan built Powderhorn, which grew into Indianola and was for a time a chief port of the line. In 1858 the Morgan Lines had three sailings a week from Galveston and two from New Orleans, and by 1860 the company had a monopoly on coastal shipping. During the Civil War all of the vessels of the line were commandeered, either by the United States or by the Confederate States. The Morgan Steamship Company took an active part in building railroads after the war to feed the ship lines. In the 1870s pooling agreements were worked out among Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company, the Louisiana Western Railroad Company, and the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. In the late 1870s Morgan worked with E. W. Cave to make Houston an inland port with better facilities for the line. In the late 1870s or early 1880s the Morgan Lines were sold to C. P. Huntington of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The fleet was sold to the United States Maritime Commission in 1941.


*Wharton promoted to brigadier general
*
On this day in 1862, John Austin Wharton was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the Confederate army. Wharton, born in Tennessee in 1828, was brought to Galveston as an infant and spent his early years on a Brazoria County plantation. Before the Civil War he enjoyed a successful career as a lawyer and planter and represented Brazoria County at the state Secession Convention. When the war began Wharton was elected captain of Company B, Eighth Texas Cavalry, better known as Terry's Texas Rangers. He rose to command the regiment after the deaths of Col. Benjamin F. Terry and Lt. Col. Thomas S. Lubbock. Wharton's leadership in the course of Gen. Braxton Bragg's 1862 Kentucky invasion earned him the promotion to brigadier general. His actions at the battle of Chickamauga in the fall of 1863 earned him another promotion, to the rank of major general. In 1865, while visiting Gen. John B. Magruder's headquarters in Houston, Wharton was killed by fellow officer George W. Baylor in a personal quarrel that grew out of "an unpleasant misunderstanding over military matters." Even though Wharton was found to have been unarmed, Baylor was acquitted of murder charges in 1868.

*Cavalry column launched against Panhandle Indians*

On this day in 1868, the Canadian River Expedition was launched as part of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's winter campaign against the Indians of the southern plains. Maj. Andrew Evans left Fort Bascom, New Mexico, with more than 500 officers and men. Following the left bank of the Canadian, the column encountered a blizzard two days later, but despite deep snow, sleet, and freezing temperatures the troops trudged their way over the Fort Smith-Santa Fe route across the Panhandle and established a supply depot probably in what is now Hemphill County, Texas. After more than a month of hard campaigning, Evans finally came upon a Comanche village at Soldier Spring, in what is now Greer County, Oklahoma. A sharp battle on Christmas Day drove the surprised Indians from their lodges and resulted in the destruction of vast quantities of dried buffalo meat and other provisions on which they depended for winter survival. The troops lost only one killed and two slightly wounded, while the Indians sustained twenty-five fatalities. Evans and his force returned to Fort Bascom in early February. Although lasting peace was not effected for almost another decade, the Indians of the southern plains realized that winter was no longer a safeguard against campaigns by white soldiers. Evans was brevetted colonel for his action at Soldier Spring.


*National Women's Conference begins in Houston*

On this day in 1977, the National Women's Conference began in Houston. The meeting was authorized by public law and supported with federal funds. In 1975 President Gerald Ford established a thirty-five-member National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year to make recommendations to promote equality between men and women. Conventions were held in all states and territories to elect delegates and consider recommendations. Houston was selected to host the national conference. A National Plan of Action reached at the conference was submitted to the president and the Congress in March 1978. The National Women's Conference is recognized as a major event in the women's movement in the United States.


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

If you like cookies or brownies or cake or pie or pizza, you may consider that you owe a debt of gratitude to Gus Baumgarten of Schulenburg, Texas. It was he who effected a revolutionary change in kitchens worldwide. In 1917, Baumgarten was fooling around with a thermometer in his oven and invented controlled-heat baking in the process. Herbert Hoover, who had been appointed head of the U.S. Food Administration by President Woodrow Wilson, heard of Baumgarten's experiments and wrote to him, asking if he would please instruct by mail 2,385 home economists, who would demonstrate this new baking method all over the country. The result was a thermostat on nearly every oven subsequently produced in America and, of course, the world. It's hard to imagine an oven without a thermostat these days, but prior to 1917, baking had consisted of (essentially) heating and cooling, with no direct way to evenly control the heat. So the next time you bite into an apple fritter, remember old Gus Baumgarten in Schulenburg, and thank your lucky stars for the general inventiveness of Texans.


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 19th 
*
*Mormons arrive in Texas*

On this day in 1845, the first group of Mormon settlers to come to Texas, led by Lyman Wight, arrived in Grayson County. After wintering in an abandoned fort at Preston, this group of dissident Mormons pressed on to Austin in June 1846. They remained in the capital until 1847, when they established the community of Zodiac near Fredericksburg. This hamlet, where Wight implemented an idiosyncratic form of communitarianism he called the "common stock principle," became a mecca for Mormon dissenters. After a visit by missionaries Preston Thomas and William Martindale in 1848-49, Wight was excommunicated by the Mormons in Utah for his insubordination and doctrinal irregularities. Zodiac was destroyed by a flood in 1851. After living at several other sites Wight died in 1858. Thereafter, his colony dispersed.

*Houston joins church
*
On this day in 1854, Texas hero Sam Houston joined Independence Baptist Church and was baptized in nearby Little Rocky Creek by Rufus C. Burleson. Houston joined at the urging of his wife, Margaret Moffette Lea Houston, and her mother, Nancy Moffette Lea. A deeply religious woman, Margaret Houston worked hard to restrain Houston's drinking and to lead him to a more settled and devout life. The church, located in Independence, Washington County, was organized in 1839 by Rev. Thomas Spraggins and a small group of fellow Baptists. The devout Mrs. Lea, who had moved to Independence in 1852, sold her silverware and gave the money to the church for a bell. Though the current building dates only to 1872, the pew in which Sam Houston sat has been preserved and is marked so that visitors can see it.
*


World War I Medal of Honor recipient dies*

On this day in 1979, Medal of Honor recipient Samuel M. Sampler died in Fort Myers, Florida. Sampler was born at Decatur, Texas, on January 27, 1895, the son of Francis E. and Lorenza D. Sampler. He entered military service at Altus, Oklahoma. Corporal Sampler was a member of Company H, 142d Infantry, Thirty-sixth Infantry Division, United States Army, on October 8, 1918, near St. Étienne, France. His company suffered severe losses from machine-gun fire, and its advance was stopped. Sampler detected the enemy positions on an elevation. Armed with German grenades, which he had picked up, he advanced alone until he was near the enemy nest. His third grenade killed two Germans and caused the surrender of twenty-eight more. As a result of his brave and unselfish action the company was able to advance on its objective. Sampler received the Medal of Honor from Gen. John J. Pershing on April 22, 1919. He was also awarded the French Croix de Guerre and Italian War Cross.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 22nd *


*Stephen F. Austin hires builder
*
On this day in 1821, James Beard (or Baird), one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, signed an agreement with Austin to come to Texas on the _Lively_ and to work for him until December 1822 at building cabins and a stockade and cultivating five acres of corn. Beard was a saddler from St. Louis, Missouri, who was later known as "Deaf" Beard. He joined Austin in New Orleans on June 18, 1821, and accompanied him on the _Beaver_ to Natchitoches, Louisiana, and thence to Texas. According to the terms of the agreement, Austin was to provide tools, provisions, a section of land, and a town lot. Beard served as a cook and steward aboard the _Lively_ and was left in command of the vessel while some of the passengers explored the Brazos River. On August 10, 1824, he received a sitio of land and settled on the San Bernard River in what later became Fort Bend County. The census of 1826 listed Beard as a single man aged between twenty-five and forty.


*Austin College incorporated
*
On this day in 1849, Austin College in Huntsville was incorporated. The college was established by the Brazos Presbytery of the Old School Presbyterian Church as a men's college and theological school. It was founded at Huntsville by Daniel Baker, James Weston Miller, and William Cochran Blair, who were appointed by the presbytery in June 1849 to select a college site somewhere between the Brazos and Trinity rivers. Huntsville citizens provided $10,000 and five acres of land to secure the location. Sam Houston and Anson Jones--both presidents of the Republic of Texas--were charter members of the board of trustees. The school opened in the fall of 1850 and generally prospered until the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, when it lost enrollment and suffered financially. In 1876 the Texas Synod of the Presbyterian Church, United States, decided to move the college to Sherman, where the first college building was completed and fifty-three students were enrolled in 1878. After 1930 Austin College was strengthened by its consolidation with Texas Presbyterian College at Milford and has enjoyed its most dynamic period of growth in students, endowment, and campus facilities since 1950.


*"Father of Houston Heights" dies
*
On this day in 1933, Houston real estate developer Daniel Denton Cooley died. Cooley, known as the "Father of Houston Heights," was born in Pennsylvania in 1850. In 1887 he became a director, treasurer, and general manager of the Omaha and South Texas Land Company, for which he worked until the company was dissolved in 1895. In 1891 the Omaha and South Texas Land Company's parent company purchased 1,765 acres of land west of downtown Houston. The property, twenty feet higher in elevation than the downtown area, came to be known as Houston Heights. At the time it was one of the country's largest real estate projects. Cooley's home was one of the first houses in the division. He installed the electric lights by hooking wires from the house to the electric trolley. Marmion Park, at the site of the former Cooley residence, contains a pavilion modeled after Cooley's home, which was razed in 1965.


*President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas*

On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. After breakfast in Fort Worth he flew to Dallas and, with his wife and Governor and Mrs. John Connally, began a motorcade trip in an open car toward downtown Dallas. As the car passed through Dealy Plaza several shots rang out. Both Kennedy and Connally were hit. Kennedy died at 1:00 PM in Parkland Hospital. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president of the United States at 2:38 PM.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 24th -- Happy Thanksgiving! *


*Provisional government of Texas authorizes Texas Rangers*

On this day in 1835, Texas lawmakers instituted a special force known as the Texas Rangers. Stephen F. Austin had hired ten experienced frontiersmen as "rangers" as early as 1823, but the 1835 legislation formalized the organization. The importance of the rangers has waxed and waned several times over the ensuing century and a half. They participated in many notable battles with various Indian tribes and fought ably in the Mexican War; they also were dispatched to restore order during various feuds, border disturbances, and civic upheavals. In the early twentieth century, however, numerous acts of brutality and debauchery committed by rangers, especially against Hispanics, were brought to light, in large part through the efforts of J. T. Canales, and in 1933 governor Miriam A. Ferguson fired all forty-four rangers for their partisan support of her opponent Ross Sterling. When the Texas Department of Public Safety was founded in 1935, it assumed responsibility for a greatly reduced force. In subsequent decades, however, the rangers have once again come to be recognized as the elite of Texas law enforcement. Legendary rangers are honored in the *Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco*.

If you haven't been here GO it's a great place


*"King of Ragtime" born
*
On this day in 1868, pianist and composer Scott Joplin, who later gained fame as the "King of Ragtime," was born, probably at Caves Springs, near Linden, Texas. Joplin's father, a former slave, moved the family to Texarkana by about 1875. Scott was a proficient banjo player by the age of seven and began to experiment on a piano owned by a neighbor for whom his mother worked as a domestic. At about age eleven, he began free piano lessons with the German-born Julius Weiss, who also taught him the basics of sight reading, harmony, and appreciation, particularly of opera. Around 1890 Joplin settled in St. Louis, where a type of music later known as ""ragged time," or simply "ragtime," was popular. Joplin may have witnessed the 1896 "Crash at Crush," which he later commemorated in a march entitled "Great Crush Collision." In 1899 Carl Hoffman issued Joplin's first ragtime publications, including his best-known piece, "Maple Leaf Rag." The sheet music went on to sell over one million copies. Joplin also incorporated ragtime into a number of other works, including a ballet and two operas. He settled in New York in 1911 and died there in 1917.



*Antisocialist newspaper publisher born in Ohio
*
On this day in 1878, Raymond Cyrus Hoiles was born in Alliance, Ohio. As a newspaper publisher, he developed such a keen eye for socialism that he could see it in virtually every cooperative effort. He moved to California in 1935 after purchasing the Santa Ana _Register_, which became the flagship of his newspaper chain. By fall 1951 he owned seven papers, including the Odessa _American_ and the Pampa _News_ in Texas. He bought the three leading papers in the Rio Grande valley, the Brownsville _Herald_, the McAllen _Monitor_, and the Harlingen _Valley Morning Star_. Hoiles, called by _Time_ magazine a "crabby, Bible-spouting zealot," criticized the "socialism" inherent in public schools, police departments, libraries, hospitals, churches, unions, the National Association of Manufacturers, integration, paper money, and majority rule. Democracy, he thought, was mob rule. Roy Hofheinz of Houston began a series of broadcasts against Hoiles, arguing that schools were no more socialistic than highways or the weather bureau. In February 1952 the two debated each other about whether public schools should be closed. Eventually Hoiles, who was losing many subscribers, softened a bit. When he died in 1970 his Freedom Newspaper chain was publishing twenty newspapers in seven or eight states with a combined circulation of about 500,000.

*
Boles Home opens its doors
*
On this day in 1924, Boles Orphans' Home, now called Boles Children's Home, received its first ten orphans. The institution is one of the largest children's homes supported and maintained by the Church of Christ. Supporters William Foster and Mary Barnhart Boles donated 436 acres of land near Quinlan to the Church of Christ in 1923 and requested that the church make improvements to the site at a value of at least $10,000 before January 1, 1925. Through the efforts of church officials of the Pearl and Brown Street Church of Christ in Dallas, and under the direction of A. O. Colley, the money was collected. By the year 2000 the home had assisted over 19,000 children.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 27th *


*Texas Presbytery organized at Sumner Bacon's home
*
On this day in 1837, pioneer Cumberland Presbyterian ministers Sumner Bacon, Amos Roark, and Mitchell Smith began the Texas Presbytery at Bacon's home. Bacon, born in Massachusetts in 1790, traveled as a young man to Arkansas, where he was converted at a Cumberland revival meeting and decided to become a minister. Because he lacked even a basic grasp of grammar and spelling, the Cumberland Presbytery of Arkansas asked him to spend two years improving his education before applying for a license to preach, but he went instead to Texas as a freelance itinerant evangelist in 1829. Since Catholicism was the legally required religion of the territory, Bacon did his preaching surreptitiously. In 1833, the American Bible Society commissioned Bacon as its first regular agent in Texas. In the summer of 1836 he organized the first Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Texas near San Augustine. Due to poor health, Bacon's leadership in church activities diminished after 1837, although he did serve as the first moderator of the Cumberland Synod of Texas in 1843. He died in 1844. Although Bacon was not the first Protestant to preach in Texas, evidence indicates that he was the first resident Protestant evangelist to maintain a continuous ministry in the new territory.


*Hispanic Texan earns Medal of Honor*

On this day in 1944, Macario García distinguished himself on the battlefield near Grosshau, Germany, while serving with the Fourth Infantry Division. Though wounded in the shoulder and foot, he singlehandedly assaulted two German machine-gun emplacements and destroyed them, killing six enemy soldiers and capturing four. Only then did he allow himself to be evacuated. For his heroic action he was awarded the Medal of Honor. García was a Mexican native who moved to Texas in 1923 and joined the U.S. Army in 1942. After his wartime service he returned to his home in Sugar Land. In September 1945 he was denied service in a Richmond restaurant because he was Hispanic. Outraged, he fought with the owner until police were called in. García was arrested and charged in the incident. His case immediately became a cause célèbre, symbolizing not only the plight of Hispanic soldiers who returned from the war, but the plight of Mexican Americans. Numerous groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, rallied to his aid, and he was acquitted. Garcia died in 1972.


*Economy Furniture strike begins in Austin*

On this day in 1968, Local 456 of the Upholsterers International Union called a strike against Austin's Economy Furniture Company, six months after company officials refused to recognize the 252-83 vote by the workers for union representation. At the time Economy was the largest furniture manufacturer in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Mexican Americans, almost a quarter female, comprised 90 percent of the company's 400 workers, many of whom earned only $1.75 an hour, even after more than fifteen years of service. The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Economy must negotiate with the union, but owner Milton T. Smith rejected the board's order, precipitating the strike. Smith appealed the NLRB decision to the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. In January 1971 the court ordered that the NLRB ruling be enforced; two months later, workers voted to end the strike. In June two months of collective bargaining began on a new three-and-a-half-year contract which was formally approved in September.

*
Distinguished Texas conductor dies on his birthday
*
On this day in 1976, Victor Alessandro died in San Antonio. The day was also his sixty-first birthday. The Waco native had become conductor of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra in 1951, after the death of Max Reiter in 1950. The next year he also assumed leadership of the San Antonio Symphony Society's Grand Opera Festival. Alessandro was noted for performances of Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, Brahms, and Beethoven. He introduced works by Bruckner, Mahler, and Berg to San Antonio audiences before they became fashionable elsewhere. He conducted memorable performances of _Elektra_, _Salome_, _Nabucco_, _Boris Godunov_, _Susannah_, _Die Meistersinger_, and the standard operas of Verdi and Puccini. In building the San Antonio orchestra he was an exacting, often irascible taskmaster of high musical standards. Alessandro received honorary doctorates from the Eastman School of Music and Southern Methodist University and the Alice M. Ditson Award for service to American music. Recordings of his work include Claude Debussy's _Martyrdom of St. Sebastian_, light accompaniments, Vivaldi and Rodrigo guitar concertos, and works by Richard Strauss and John Corigliano. With his health declining, Alessandro retired in 1976.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 29th *


*Spanish military tribunal convicts cartographer*

On this day in 1811, a Spanish military tribunal convicted Juan Pedro Walker on a charge of supporting Mexican independence. Walker, born in 1781 in New Orleans, was the son of an English merchant. He was the official surveyor of the Concordia district in Louisiana by 1803. In August of that year, he learned of the Louisiana Purchase and, as a lifelong subject of the Spanish crown, applied for permission to move to New Spain. Walker proceeded to Coahuila, where Governor Manuel Antonio Cordero y Bustamante recruited him for the Spanish service. In 1807 Walker served as the interpreter for Lt. Zebulon M. Pike's party during their involuntary sojourn in Chihuahua. Walker's career collapsed in 1811, however, when he was jailed on charges of supporting Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's insurrection. After his conviction Walker was stripped of military employment and condemned to perpetual exile from America, but before he could be sent to Spain Joaquín de Arredondo commissioned him to map the area that included Texas. During 1815 and 1816 Walker engaged in extensive fieldwork along the Rio Grande, as far north as San Antonio, and along the coast of Nuevo Santander. Meanwhile, officials discovered an error in Walker's case which could be redressed only by the highest authorities in Spain, where Walker was shipped early in 1817. Lacking sufficient evidence either to convict or to exonerate him, the crown ordered him to remain in Spain, but granted him a small stipend. He settled in Valladolid and died around 1828.


*Newspaper publisher authorized to outfit privateers*

On this date in 1835, Samuel Whiting, who later published a number of newspapers in Texas during the period of the republic, was granted six blank commissions or letters of marque to outfit privateers at New Orleans. Just four days previously, the General Council had passed a bill providing for the issuance of letters of marque to privateers until the first Texas Navy should become a reality. Whiting and others were taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the embryonic Republic of Texas to entrepreneurs who wanted to serve their country on the high seas by accosting Mexican vessels. Letters of marque were later issued by the Confederacy to Texans who wanted to do similar duty against Union vessels. Charles DeMontel, for instance, was officially authorized in 1863 to command the steamer _Texas_, a privately owned vessel of the Confederate States. During the early days of the republic, the Texas government even authorized an official flag for registered civil vessels and vessels sailing under letters of marque and reprisal.
*


A founder of Methodism in Texas crosses into the republic*

On this day in 1838, Jesse Hord crossed the Sabine River into Texas at Gaines Ferry. He preached his first sermon at San Augustine the next day, then worked vigorously to establish Methodism in the republic. Between December 23, 1838, and April 15, 1839, he founded the first Methodist congregations at Richmond, Matagorda, Brazoria, Bay Prairie, DeMoss, Texana, Velasco, East Columbia, and Houston. His 500-mile circuit included twenty preaching places. He continued preaching on circuits until 1848. Hord died on January 17, 1866, and was buried at Goliad.


*Eugene Routh resigns as editor of the Baptist Standard
*
On this day in 1927, Eugene Routh submitted his resignation as editor of the _Baptist Standard,_ effective in March 1928.Routh, born in Plum, Texas, in 1874, graduated from the University of Texas in 1897 and was ordained as a Baptist minister four years later. In 1907 he became editor of the _Baptist Visitor,_ published in San Antonio. When this paper was consolidated with Dallas's _Baptist Standard_ in 1912, Routh was appointed associate editor under J. B. Gambrell; he was named editor two years later. Routh's fourteen-year tenure as _Standard_ editor encompassed a period of turmoil. He supported the biblical creationist position in the nationwide controversy over the teaching of evolution in the public schools, but opposed compulsory reading of the Bible in public educational institutions. Although personally opposed to the views of sensationalist Fort Worth minister J. Frank Norris, Routh attempted to keep the _Standard_ neutral during the events that led to Norris's expulsion from the Southern Baptist Convention in the mid-1920s. Routh resigned when his temperate policy met with disapproval, though he went on to edit two other Baptist publications before retiring in 1948. He died in Dallas in 1966.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - November 30th *


*Sam Houston welcomes David Burke to Texas*

On this day in 1835, Gen. Sam Houston welcomed David N. Burke to Texas, commending "the manly and liberal feelings which have been manifested by you in the tender of your services in behalf of Texas." Burke commanded the Mobile Grays, a company of about thirty volunteers that was organized in Mobile by James Butler Bonham, Albert C. Horton, and S. P. St. John. In December, upon the army's reorganization for the Matamoros expedition of 1835-36, the group, enlarged by transfers from the New Orleans Greys, proceeded to Goliad and became part of the Second Battalion of the Provisional Regiment of Volunteers under James W. Fannin Jr. One member was killed in action on March 19. Three escaped, four were spared, and thirty were killed in the Goliad Massacre on March 27.


*Texas general dies with his men in disastrous battle
*
On this day in 1864, Confederate general Hiram B. Granbury, commander of Granbury's Texas Brigade, was killed in the battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Granbury, a native of Mississippi, moved to Texas in the 1850s. He was chief justice of McLennan County from 1856 to 1858. At the outbreak of the Civil War he recruited the Waco Guards, which became a unit in the Seventh Texas Infantry. By 1864 he had commanded in turn a regiment and a brigade. After the fall of Atlanta, Granbury led his brigade in Hood's invasion of Tennessee. He was one of at least 1,750 Confederate soldiers killed in the frontal assault at Franklin, the highest total of rebel dead for any single-day battle of the war. A Texas captain wrote of the battle, "It can't be called anything else but cold blooded murder."


*Memoirist John H. Jenkins killed in gunfight
*
On this day in 1890, soldier and memoirist John Holland Jenkins was killed in a gunfight in Bastrop in an attempt to save his son, the sheriff, from an ambush. Jenkins, born in Alabama in 1822, was a man of little education but learned to write in a vigorous and cultivated style. He and his family came to Texas in 1828 or 1829 and settled near the site of present Bastrop in 1830. In 1833 Jenkins's father was murdered and young Jenkins became the ward of Edward Burleson. At age thirteen Jenkins joined Burleson's First Regiment, Texas Volunteers, and is thought to have been the youngest Texan to serve in the San Jacinto campaign. After the Texas revolution, Jenkins joined the Texas Rangers and fought at the battle of Plum Creek. During the Civil War he served as a private in Parsons's Brigade and later served as a captain in the Frontier Battalion. In 1884, with the aid of his daughter-in-law, Jenkins completed his memoirs for the Bastrop _Advertiser._ A typescript was preserved in the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas at Austin. It was edited by his great-great grandson, John H. Jenkins III, and published in 1958 by the University of Texas Press under the title _Recollections of Early Texas._



*Time magazine celebrates ecumenical "love in Corpus Christi"*

In its issue dated on this day in 1936, _Time_ magazine featured an account of an ecumenical service held in Corpus Christi. Rabbi Sidney Wolf had joined Rev. William Caper Munds of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal, to start a joint Thanksgiving service. At the time, such ecumenical events were newsworthy. _Time_ labeled its photo of the two clergymen "Love in Corpus Christi." Wolf, musician and rabbi, had assumed the pulpit of the first Jewish congregation in Corpus Christi, Temple Beth El, in 1932. He held the post for forty years. He served in many other voluntary charitable offices and was a recognized authority on synagogue music. He helped organize the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra and in 1945 served as the first chairman of its board. He also chaired the city chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He spent countless hours giving musical performances in nursing homes. After his retirement in 1972 he taught music appreciation at Del Mar Junior College and the University of Corpus Christi. In 1940 Wolf was elected president of the Texas Kallah of Rabbis, and in 1959 he received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union. He was a member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and was presented its Brotherhood and Humanitarian Award in 1974. The mayor of Corpus Christi, Luther Jones, proclaimed November 10, 1982, "Rabbi Sidney Wolf Day." Wolf died on February 18, 1983.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 2nd *


*Lucy Pickens's face appears on Confederate $100 bills*

On this day in 1862, the Confederate government issued $100 notes bearing a portrait of the renowned Southern beauty Lucy Pickens. Lucy Holcombe was born in 1832 in Tennessee. Between 1848 and 1850 the Holcombes moved to Wyalucing plantation in Marshall, Texas. Lucy became highly acclaimed throughout the South for her "classic features, titian hair, pansy eyes, and graceful figure." In the summer of 1856 she met Francis Wilkinson Pickens, twice a widower and twenty-seven years her senior. Her acceptance of his marriage proposal, it is said, hinged on his acceptance of a diplomatic post abroad. President James Buchanan appointed him ambassador to Russia, and Pickens and Lucy were wed in 1858 at Wyalucing. Lucy was a favorite at the Russian court, but Pickens resigned his diplomatic post in the fall of 1860 in anticipation of the outbreak of the Civil War. Upon his return home he was elected governor of South Carolina. By selling the jewels that had been given her in Russia, Lucy helped outfit the Confederate Army unit that bore her name, the Lucy Holcombe Legion. Her portrait was also used on the one-dollar Confederate notes issued on June 2, 1862. She died in 1899.


*"Angel of San Antonio" weds longtime love*

On this day in 1880, Lottie Deno married Frank Thurmond in Silver City, New Mexico. Deno was born, most likely as Carlotta J. Thompkins, in Kentucky in 1844. After her father, a wealthy planter, was killed in the Civil War, her mother and sister sent Lottie to Detroit to find a husband, but Lottie, who had spent much time in casinos with her father, instead began a career as a professional gambler. She came to San Antonio in 1865 and became a house gambler at the University Club, where she became known as the "Angel of San Antonio." She also fell in love with Frank Thurmond, who went to West Texas after allegedly killing a man in an altercation during a game. Lottie soon followed him, gambling her way around West Texas before settling in Fort Griffin, where Frank was living under the alias Mike Fogerty. In Fort Griffin she began calling herself Lottie Deno. By 1877 she and Frank had moved on to New Mexico. From 1882 until Lottie's death in 1934, they lived in Deming, New Mexico, as upstanding and respected citizens. Frank became vice president of the Deming National Bank. Lottie gave up gambling and became a founding member of St. Luke's Episcopal Church of Deming. She was the prototype for Miss Kitty in the television series "Gunsmoke" and the subject of a 1959 biography by amateur historian J. Marvin Hunter.


*From Peck to Tomball to "Oil Town U.S.A."
*
On this day in 1907, citizens of Peck, located about thirty miles north of Houston, renamed their community Tomball in honor of Thomas Henry Ball, a well-known politician and prohibition advocate. Ball had been a United States congressman and strong supporter of the development of the Houston Ship Channel. The town of Tomball later rose to prominence in 1933 when drillers struck oil. The population of the new boomtown, nicknamed “Oil Town U.S.A.,” tripled as twenty-five to thirty oil and gas companies rushed in to set up camps, housing developments, and recreation facilities. In 1935 Humble Oil and Refining Company (which later became Exxon Company, U.S.A.) granted free water and natural gas to Tomball residents in exchange for drilling rights within the city limits. This arrangement gained the attention of Ripley’s _Believe It or Not,_ which heralded Tomball as the only city with free gas and water and no cemetery.


* Founder of Missionary Catechists of Divine Providence dies
*
On this day in 1975, Sister Mary Benitia, foundress of the Missionary Catechists of Divine Providence, died. Sister Benitia was born Elizabeth Vermeersch in Belgium in 1880. Her family moved to Texas while she was a child, and after the sudden deaths of her parents in 1893 she was placed in an orphanage conducted by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. In 1898 she was received into the congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence of San Antonio and took the name Mary Benitia. In 1915 she was made principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Houston. In 1930 she organized a group of young women whom she called Catechists of Divine Providence. In 1934 Bishop Christopher E. Byrne approved specific rules for the catechists. When Sister Benitia's assignment in Houston came to an end in late 1938 she was sent to San Antonio, where she continued her catechetical work. In 1946, through her efforts and those of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, the Catechists of Divine Providence received approval from the Sacred Congregation of Religious in Rome to become a branch of the Sisters of Divine Providence. Sister Benitia retired from her missionary work in 1960.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 5th 
*

*Spanish priests launch "peace offensive"
*
On this day in 1791, Fray José Francisco Garza found the Karankawa crossing to Matagorda Island, where the natives had kept horses stolen from the Spanish. Garza’s discovery marked the high point in the “peace offensive” launched by Garza and fellow Franciscan priest Manuel Julio de Silva. For decades the Spanish had attempted to missionize the Karankawas in order to subdue the hostile group and gain a foothold on the Texas Coast. Garza’s access to Matagorda Island, then known as Toboso Island, which the Indians had used as a refuge, led to renewed interest in establishing a mission in the area. His associate Silva proposed the construction of a complex for the Karankawas at the mouth of the Guadalupe River as part of an ambitious plan to convert all Indians between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande. Construction began on Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission, but ultimately the region proved to be unhealthful, and the mission site was relocated twice to settle eventually near the present town of Refugio. The Karankawas maintained their nomadic and hostile ways until American colonization and warfare rendered the tribe virtually extinct in the mid-nineteenth century.


*Texans assault Mexican garrison at Bexar
*
On this day in 1835, the Texas revolutionary army began its assault on the Mexican garrison at San Antonio de Béxar. Ben Milam and William Gordon Cooke gathered more than 300 volunteers to attack the town in two columns, while Edward Burleson and another 400 men forced Mexican general Martín Perfecto de Cos to keep his 570 men divided between the town and the Alamo. The battle ended with the surrender of the Mexican army on December 9. Texas casualties numbered 30 to 35, while Mexican losses totaled about 150; the difference reflected in part the greater accuracy of the Texans' rifles. Most of the Texas volunteers went home after the battle, which left San Antonio and all of Texas under their control.


*Philosophical Society of Texas founded in Houston*

On this day in 1837, the Philosophical Society of Texas was founded by twenty-six prominent Texans who met in the capitol of the Republic of Texas at Houston. The purpose of the organization was stated as "the collection and diffusion of correct information regarding the moral and social condition of our country; its finances, statistics and political and military history; its climate, soil and productions ... animals ... aboriginal tribes ... natural curiosities ... mines ... and the thousand other topics of interest which our new and rising republic unfolds to the philosopher, the scholar, and the man of the world." Charter member Mirabeau B. Lamar was elected the society's first president and occasional meetings were held during the annual sessions of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, but the society became inactive before 1845. In 1935 the organization was revived by a group that included George Waverly Briggs, James Quayle Dealey, Herbert P. Gambrell, Samuel Wood Geiser, Umphrey Lee, Charles Shirley Potts, and Ira Kendrick Stephens. Membership was by invitation and was limited to persons who were born within or had resided in the geographical boundaries of the Republic of Texas and who had contributed to the achievement of the original aims of the society. The Philosophical Society had its office in Dallas upon its reorganization, but by the 1990s was headquartered in Austin.


* "Dusky Deamon" Bill Pickett born in Travis County
*
On this day in 1870, black rodeo cowboy Bill Pickett was born in the Jenks-Branch community in Travis County. After observing dogs subduing huge steers by biting their upper lips, the young Pickett found he could do the same thing. In 1888 he performed at the first fair in Taylor, his family's new hometown. As the "Dusky Deamon," Pickett performed at rodeos and fairs throughout Texas and the West. Capitalizing on his fame, he contracted in 1905 to perform at the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma. By 1907 he had become a full-time employee of the ranch, where he worked as a cowboy and performed with the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. He entertained millions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, and England, and was featured in several motion pictures, the first black cowboy star. Pickett died in 1932 after being kicked in the head by a horse. His friend Will Rogers commented on his radio show: "Bill Pickett never had an enemy, even the steers wouldn't hurt old Bill." In 1972 Pickett became the first black honoree in the National Rodeo Hall of Fame. In 1994 the United States Post Office issued a stamp in his honor, though the stamp accidentally showed one of Pickett's brothers.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The first long-distance telephone lines in Texas were installed between Houston and Galveston in 1883. Can you imagine how crazy it must have seemed to Houstonians to be able to pick up a phone and talk to somebody 50 miles away? They must have been amazed. Incidentally, the first long distance direct-dialing in Texas was initiated in 1955.

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## Wildthings

Glad to see you're back @woodman6415

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one, describing the fate of a man who tried to volunteer for the Texan side in the war against Mexico back in 1836:

"While still in Natchitoches (Louisiana), I had decided to offer my services as an officer in the forthcoming war. I spoke about this to the Adjutant General of the Texas army, who happened to be there, and was informed that all of the government-appointed positions had been filled and that the officers of the volunteer companies were elected by members of those companies.

At the election of officers, the choice was not for the most worthy, but for the man who could buy the most whisky. It is no wonder, therefore, that orders were oftentimes not only ignored, but laughed at. The Captain commanded and the solder did as he pleased. I would have been glad to lead an armed group for the liberation of the land where I had sought to make my home, but under such conditions I would not and could not take up arms."

----- Friedrich W. von Wrede, a decorated Hessian officer and a veteran of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon and the French Army, passing up an opportunity to become a solder in the Texas Revolution, 1836

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 6th *

*
U.S. government okays the building of the Port Isabel lighthouse*

On this day in 1851, the contract to construct the Port Isabel lighthouse was let by the United States government. The brick lighthouse stands near State Highway 100 in southeastern Cameron County. It is fifty-seven feet high, and projects eighty-two feet above sea level. The original light was visible for fifteen miles. The tower has been used mainly for observation, first during the Cortina War, then during the Civil War and both world wars. It received a state historic marker in 1936. The site is managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. In the 1990s the tower with its mercury-vapor light was still marked on sea charts as an aid to navigation.


*San Antonio hosts two observing expeditions for transit of Venus*

On this day in 1882, two expeditions, one from the United States Naval Observatory and one from the Belgian Royal Obervatory, came to San Antonio to observe the transit of Venus. Such transits are very rare events that offer an opportunity of determining the distance of the earth from the sun by mounting expeditions to widely scattered sites over the earth, from which different tracks of the planet across the sun can be observed. On previous occasions the exact moments when the disk of Venus was just fully on the edge of the solar disk were unknown because of a distortion of the planet's image known as the "black drop effect." For the 1882 event many nations sent expeditions to a variety of sites; San Antonio was considered the best observing station in North America. The Belgian expedition produced many drawings of the black drop effect, both at San Antonio and at the companion station in Chile, but these led again to an uncertain estimate of the earth-sun distance. The American results were equally disappointing, not least because the funds allocated by Congress were cut off.


*Jefferson Davis dies*

On this day in 1889, Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, died in New Orleans. Davis, born in Kentucky in 1808 but later a senator from Mississippi, was first in Texas as an army officer during the Mexican War in 1847 with Zachary Taylor's force on the Rio Grande. In 1854, while Davis was United States secretary of war, he recommended the Texas or thirty-second-parallel route for construction of a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, and in 1856 he sent camels to Camp Verde to test the animals' suitability as military transportation. After Reconstruction a movement was launched in Dallas to purchase a homestead for Davis and invite him to move to Texas. In 1875 he was offered the presidency of the newly established Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. In declining the appointment, he wrote of his hopes of revisiting Texas, but he never did so.


*Leadbelly dies
*
On this day in 1949, blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter, popularly known as “Leadbelly,” died in New York City. Born in 1888, the son of a black sharecropper, Leadbelly grew up in Louisiana and East Texas before striking out on his own in 1901 to live the life of a musician. He eventually made his way to Dallas, where he met songster Blind Lemon Jefferson playing on the streets of Deep Ellum, the town’s notorious black district. In 1918 Leadbelly was sentenced to thirty years in the Texas penitentiary for murder, but Gov. Pat Neff pardoned him in 1925 after the blues player wrote a song in his honor. In 1930, however, Leadbelly was imprisoned again, this time in Angola, Louisiana, on an assault charge. It was here where pioneer recording archivists John Avery Lomax and his son Alan discovered the blues guitarist and recorded his songs for posterity. Leadbelly was soon released as a result of their appeals and eventually toured the country, thus bringing his work songs and spirituals to a wider audience and influencing new generations of songwriters and guitarists. In 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

According to Cabeza de Vaca, the coastal Indians in Texas lived nomadic lives that were cyclical and based on where food could be found at any given time during the year. From January to April, these natives lived almost entirely on oysters that they harvested from the Laguna Madre, the series of hypersaline bays that lie between the Texas mainland and barrier islands (like Padre Island) that line the Texas coast. After the dewberries ripened in May, they would move inland to feast on them. In summer they migrated to an area south of San Antonio to collect prickly pears. And when fall arrived they would head to what they called "the river of nuts," probably the Guadalupe River, where they ate the pecans that fell from the trees that covered the forested river bottoms. In late fall and early winter they would harvest cattails and native roots like arrowroot as well as fish from their canoes. And then back again to the oyster beds when the weather turned cold.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Comstock, Texas, was established in 1892 and at first had a railroad sidecar serving as its post office. The town was named for a Southern Pacific railroad section foreman. The trans originally crossed the nearby Pecos River through a series of underground tunnels. Then, in 1890, the Southern Pacific began construction of a high bridge across the Pecos River gorge to shorten the route by eleven miles. Touted as the "eighth wonder of the world," workers spent 87 days building the bridge, which eventually opened for traffic in 1892. A marvel of engineering, the bridge stood 321 feet high, stretched 2,180 feet long ---- the world's longest at the time ---- and cost 1.2 million dollars.To pay for costs, the railroad charged and extra fifty cents just to cross the bridge. A highway bridge spans the Pecos today. it is 273 feet above the river and doesn't cost a cent to drive across.

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## Wildthings

And there is the Railroad bridge Wendell is talking about. Picture taken of my son with the bridge in the background at our deer lease.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 7th (not only Pearl Harbor but my dad was killed in a car wreck 36 years ago at the age of 59 - miss you dad!!*


*Noah Smithwick banished from Texas as "a bad citizen"*

On this day in 1830, Noah Smithwick was banished from Texas as "a bad citizen." Smithwick, born in North Carolina in 1808, came to Texas in 1827 and eventually settled in San Felipe. When San Felipe authorities ordered a friend of his who was accused of murder chained with leg irons, Smithwick, a blacksmith by trade, provided a file and a gun so he might escape. As a result, the authorities tried Smithwick, declared him "a bad citizen," and banished him from Austin's colony and Texas, providing an escort as far as the Sabine River. Smithwick returned to Matagorda in the fall of 1835 and reached Gonzales the day after the battle of Gonzales. He served in the Texas Revolution, married, and after an unsuccessful stint as a Williamson County cattle rancher established a mill near Marble Falls. With the coming of the Civil War, the Unionist Smithwick received threats and decided to abandon Texas. He sold his property and, with a number of friends, left Burnet County for southern California in 1861. In California, Smithwick gradually lost his eyesight but dictated his memoirs to his daughter. After his death in 1899, she had the manuscript published by Karl H. P. N. Gammel as _The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days.


*West Texas Historical and Scientific Society organized*

On this day in 1925, the West Texas Historical and Scientific Society was organized at Alpine. The group received a state charter in 1926 and was governed by a seven-member board of directors. Members of the society conducted research in folklore, history, and different scientific fields and periodically published their results in the organization’s Bulletin. The first publication, Sul Ross State Teachers College Bulletin, came out in December 1926, and ten years later the society secured funding for a permanent museum (now the Museum of the Big Bend) located on the campus of Sul Ross State Teachers College at Alpine. The West Texas Historical and Scientific Society also worked in conjunction with the Peabody Museum of Harvard University and the Work Progress Administration to publish one of its bulletins in 1940.


*Texas native Doris Miller shoots back at Japanese attackers*

On this day in 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Texas native Doris Miller responded courageously to the assault. He was serving as a mess steward on the USS West Virginia. When the ship was attacked he went on deck and manned an unattended deck gun. It was Miller's first experience firing such a weapon because black sailors serving in the segregated steward's branch of the navy were not given gunnery training. Although later news stories credited Miller with downing from two to five airplanes, these accounts have never been verified and are almost certainly apocryphal. Miller himself told navy officials he thought he hit one of the planes. The navy awarded him the Navy Cross for bravery in battle. He died on November 24, 1943, when his ship, the aircraft carrier Liscome Bay, was torpedoed and sunk._
*

Dallas museum trustees issue statement in "red art" controversy
*
On this day in 1955, the board of trustees of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts issued a statement that they would "exhibit and acquire works of art only on the basis of their merit as works of art." The statement was a reaction to the so-called "red art" controversy, which reflected the city's generally conservative cultural climate. In March 1955 the Public Affairs Luncheon Club, a local women's group, charged the museum and its director, Jerry Bywaters, with exhibiting the work of artists with communist affiliations and neglecting the work of Dallas artists. The museum temporarily removed works by Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, and other ideologically suspect artists from display, but the trustees' statement and the support of the Dallas _Morning News_ helped quell the controversy. The "red art" flap also led to the founding of the short-lived Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts as a venue for contemporary art free from political pressures. The DMCA opened in 1957, though real estate costs and competition with an older, more established museum drained the museum's resources, and in 1962 the board sought a merger with the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. In April 1963 the boards of both museums voted to merge the two institutions under the name Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The name was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1984.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> And there is the Railroad bridge Wendell is talking about. Picture taken of my son with the bridge in the background at our deer lease.
> 
> View attachment 118104



Fished there many times with my neighbors... trotling ... awesome pic ...

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day was written in 1857 but has been true for eons:

"The stars, and especially the nebulae, DO seem to shine more vividly, and to give more light and the firmament appears more effulgent than in any part of the northern or southern hemisphere in which I have been."

------ Frederick Law Olmstead, "A Journey Through Texas," 1857

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## woodman6415

The very first Bevo, 1917. This was taken after some Texas A&M fans broke into Bevo's corral at 3:00 a.m. and branded him with the score of the 1915 game between Texas and Texas A&M, 13-0. He had been presented to UT as a mascot during the Thanksgiving day game between the two teams in 1916. He looks kind of sad, doesn't he? In 1920 he was barbecued for a varsity dinner.

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## woodman6415

Deep under Waxahachie, the giant tunnel that was being built for the superconducting supercollider still remains. The project was halted after funds were cut off in 1989.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
Did you know that the world's first photograph is in Texas? It's true. In 1826 or 1827, Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph in history, and that photograph is on permanent display on the UT-Austin campus on the first floor of the Harry Ransom Center. You can go and see it pretty much anytime. Here is the photograph and here is a TRULY interesting article about it, about the challenges that Mr. Niepce faced etc... it includes shots of his house, the place from which the photo was taken, and the camera with which he took it. It was an eight hour exposure, if you can believe that:

http://petapixel.com/2013/10/02/first-photo/

You can also see Gutenberg Bible when you visit. Really a fantastic place. Tell them Traces of Texas sent you and watch them say, "who?"

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## woodman6415

It is 12 degrees in Dalhart, Texas, as I type this. I'm no mathematician, but that seems kind of cold to me.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> It is 12 degrees in Dalhart, Texas, as I type this. I'm no mathematician, but that seems kind of cold to me.



 Damit, this is Texas not Minnesota! !!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 8th 


Mission church begins remarkable run*

On this day in 1755, the stone church at Mission Concepción near San Antonio was dedicated. Its forty-five-inch-thick walls, two towers, latticed windows, and choir loft, among other features, would stand the test of time through years of tumultuous change. The mission was originally founded as Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de los Hainais in 1716 in East Texas, but famine, epidemics among the Caddoans, and French incursions forced the Spanish to retreat. They reestablished the facility in 1721, but had moved it to the Colorado River by 1730. The following year missionaries finally found a more suitable location on the east bank of the San Antonio River and renamed the mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña. Mexican independence in the nineteenth century brought secularization, and the property was sold at auction. During the Texas Revolution the battle of Concepción, in which James Bowie and his men defeated Mexican forces led by Martín Perfecto do Cos, took place on the mission grounds. In 1841 the Republic of Texas gave title of the building and land to the Catholic church, though the church continued to be used as a barn by settlers and, after annexation, as a supply depot by the United States Army. The Concepción church is considered by some historians to be the oldest unrestored church in the United States. The structure is now part of San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and Mass is still celebrated each Sunday.


*Bee County comes into being*

On this day in 1857, Bee County was formed from portions of San Patricio, Goliad, Refugio, Live Oak, and Karnes counties. The first Spanish grant in the area was made to Carlos Martínez in 1789. The first permanent settlers, Jeremiah O'Tool, his sons Martin and Michael, and James O'Reilly, sailed from Ireland in 1826. Bee County, named for Barnard E. Bee Sr., was established shortly after the settlement of the Cart War, which originated ten miles east of the site of Beeville.


*Texarkana established
*
On this day in 1873, the community of Texarkana was established, and the first store in town, a combination drug and grocery store operated by George M. Clark, opened for business. The town is in two states, Texas and Arkansas, and near another, Louisiana; the name Texarkana combines the three state names. The strategic position of Texarkana is the keynote to its history and development. The Great Southwest Trail, for hundreds of years the main line of travel from Indian villages of the Mississippi River country to Indian villages of the South and West, passed by a Caddo Indian village on the future Texarkana site. When the builders of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad crossed Arkansas in the late 1850s, and by 1874 pushed their rails beyond the Red River to the border of Texas, they met at Texarkana the railhead that had been extended to the state line by the builders of the Texas and Pacific. The road from the south bank of the Red River was completed on January 15, 1874, to the state line, where the city of Texarkana had been established the previous month at the site where the two roads would join. In 2000, Texarkana was a transportation, commercial, and industrial center with a population of 61,230.

*
Southwestern colleges form athletic conference
*
On this day in 1914, the Southwest Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the future Southwest Conference, officially came into existence when the original eight member schools agreed on a constitution. The eight schools were Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State), Southwestern, and Rice, which was admitted provisionally. The new conference was the idea of L. Theo Bellmont, athletic director at Texas, who saw the need for the larger colleges of the area to organize to engage in intercollegiate athletics. Throughout its eighty-year history the Southwest Conference provided high-level competition in numerous sports for its member schools. In 1996, when the conference was broken up, the member schools were the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, Rice, SMU, and the University of Houston.
*
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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> It is 12 degrees in Dalhart, Texas, as I type this. I'm no mathematician, but that seems kind of cold to me.



That's above Amarillo so they do have some Northern blood in them!!


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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day is some good advice from an old ranch handbook:

"Someone has said that no one could look into the firmament and be an infidel. People who just go out and look up at the stars at night do not see them, they just see a few, but the cowboys see them and love them and with the old-timers they were guide and clock and almanac. Sometimes when you think things are all wrong, and that maybe you have been forgotten, get out somewhere with your cot and spend a night with the stars. After a while they will begin to come out in hundreds and thousands as though God were counting his angels, and when you fall asleep there will be quiet and rest in your heart, an no matter what the sorrow, you will be able to face it in the morning."

----- Frank Hastings, SMS Ranch Handbook, 1919

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 9th 
*

*Martín de Alarcón appointed governor of Texas
*
On this day in 1716, Martín de Alarcón was appointed Spanish governor of Texas. Alarcón, though governor for just three short years, played a pivotal role in Texas history. In the spring of 1718 he led settlers across the Rio Grande and assisted in the founding of San Antonio de Valero mission and San Antonio de Béxar presidio. The accompanying families formed the beginnings of a settlement. Thus Alarcón is credited as the founder of San Antonio, the most important town in Spanish Texas and the eye of the storm of the Texas Revolution. As part of his official duties, Alarcón also inspected the East Texas missions and was constantly vigilant against the widespread French contraband trade, advising explorer and trader Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe to leave Spanish territory. Alarcón was relieved of his gubernatorial duties in the fall of 1719.


*Juan de Ugalde is born in Spain
*
On this day in 1729, Juan de Ugalde, soldier, governor, and Indian fighter, was born in Cadiz, Spain. He joined the Spanish army in 1738. He served against the Austrians in Italy, the Moors in Africa, and the Portuguese in the Seven Years War. In 1776 he was appointed governor of San Francisco de Coahuila. He conducted several campaigns against Apache groups along the Rio Grande. In 1786 he was promoted to commander of arms of the Provincias Internas, with authority over Coahuila, Nuevo León, Nuevo Santander, and Texas. In 1790 he surprised and defeated 300 Lipan, Lipiyan, and Mescalero Apaches at Arroyo de la Solidad (the Sabinal River Canyon.) The battlefield was named Cañon de Ugalde; from it both the county and city of Uvalde take their name. Ugalde returned to Spain and died in Cadiz in 1816 at the age of eighty-seven.


*Founder of Negro National League dies*

On this day in 1930, Andrew "Rube" Foster, "father of the Negro Baseball League," died in Illinois. He was born in Calvert, Texas, in 1879. He began a barnstorming career at age seventeen pitching with the traveling Waco Yellow Jackets. By 1902 his abilities enabled him to move north, where he pitched for some of the foremost black teams of his era, including the Chicago Union Giants and the Philadelphia Giants. In 1902 he won the nickname Rube for defeating white Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Waddell in an exhibition game. In 1903 he won four games of the first Colored World Series. After an illustrious playing career Foster became a baseball manager and businessman. He helped form the Chicago American Giants, for whom he recruited fellow Texan Smokey Joe Williams, in 1911 and in February 1920 organized the Negro National League. At a time when there were few opportunities for blacks, Foster and his team held celebrity status in black America and were followed avidly through nationally circulated black newspapers.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Dr. James Long and a group of fillibusters created a fort made out of mud at what is now Port Bolivar in 1819 and stayed there 'til 1821. Long then left his wife, Jane, and entered Mexico, where he died. Jane Wilkinson Long subsequently gave birth to a child, somehow managing to avoid being killed by Indians. Because her baby was the first Anglo baby known to be born in what became Texas, she is known as "The Mother of Texas." And, of course, these days there is a free, 24 hour a day ferry that connects Port Bolivar with Galveston.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds Cabeza de Vaca describing what may have been the first surgery in Texas, which be performed sometime in the early 1530s:

"Those who there received us, after they had touched us, went running to their houses and directly returned, and did not stop running, going and coming, to bring us in this manner many things for support on the way. They fetched a man to me and stated that a long time since he had been wounded by an arrow in the right, shoulder, and that the point of the shaft was lodged above his heart, which, he said, gave him much pain, and in consequence, he was always sick. Probing the wound I felt the arrow-head, and found it had passed through the cartilage. With a knife I carried, I opened the breast to the place, and saw the point was aslant and troublesome to take out. I continued to cut, and, putting in the point of the knife, at last with great difficulty I drew the head forth. It was very large. With the bone of a deer, and by virtue of my calling, I made two stitches that threw the blood over me, and with hair from a skin I stanched the flow.

They asked me for the arrow-head after I had taken it out, which I gave, when the whole town came to look at it. They sent it into the back country that the people there might view it. In consequence of this operation they had many of their customary dances and festivities. The next day I cut the two stitches and the Indian was well. The wound I made appeared only like a seam in the palm of the hand. He said he felt no pain or sensitiveness in it whatsoever. This cure gave us control throughout the country in all that the inhabitants had power, or deemed of any value, or cherished. "

----- Cabeza de Vaca, "La Relacion," or "The Narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca," 1542

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## woodman6415

Scene from the general store in Langtry, Texas, 1939. This photo was taken by Carl Mydans and the clarity is really super. You can see so much of what is available. One sign says "Our weighing service is rendered by Toledo Scales ... No Springs, Honest Weight." There is a Liptons Tea sign, a Camel cigarette sign, Granger's pipe tobacco etc...

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## woodman6415

Laying the cornerstone of the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio, 1882. This beautiful structure still stands today and, in fact, was recently restored.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Laying the cornerstone of the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio, 1882. This beautiful structure still stands today and, in fact, was recently restored.
> View attachment 118309



It is a good looking building with an Old World appeal. Tony


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## woodman6415

I have been having a GREAT time today browsing through the amazing online collection at UT San Antonio's Special Collections. Check out this photo of the Alamo, taken at Christmastime in 1900. Is this not just awesome? You can view the rest of their collection here:

https://lib.utsa.edu/specialcollections/collections/photographs

Remember the Alamo! Always. Always

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - December 10th *


*Lamar inaugurated as president of the Texas Republic
*
On this day in 1838, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was inaugurated as the second president of the Republic of Texas. His predecessor, Sam Houston, appeared in colonial costume and powdered wig and gave a three-hour "Farewell Address." Algernon P. Thompson, Lamar's secretary, reported that the new president was indisposed and read his inaugural remarks. Lamar's inaugural speech declared the purposes of his administration to be promoting the wealth, talent, and enterprises of the country and laying the foundations of higher institutions for moral and mental culture. Though he had only mixed success as president, Lamar's support for education was one of the high points of his administration. His proposal that the Congress establish a system of education endowed by public lands resulted in the act of January 26, 1839, which set aside land for public schools and two universities. Although it was decades before the school system was established, Lamar's advocacy of the program earned for him the nickname "Father of Texas Education."


*Early female land promoter and diplomat goes down with the ship*

On this day in 1878, Jane Cazneau, author, land promoter, and perhaps the first unofficial woman diplomat for the United States, died when the steamer _Emily B. Souder_, bound from New York to Santo Domingo, sank. The adventuress, born in New York in 1807, first investigated Texas in 1832 when she sought opportunities to resettle her parents and contract to bring families to Austin’s colonies. Between 1832 and 1849 she made nine trips to Texas. Though she may have received a sizable land grant from Mexico, she ultimately lacked the financial muscle to settle immigrants inland from Matagorda. Nevertheless, she speculated in Texas land and later contributed money and arms to the Texas cause for independence. Her New York _Sun_ columns supported Texas annexation, and she wrote _Texas and Her President, With a Glance at Her Climate and Agricultural Capabilities_ in 1845. She married Texas entrepreneur William Leslie Cazneau and lived in Eagle Pass; she later recorded her experiences there in _Eagle Pass; or Life on the Border_. During the Mexican War, Cazneau played an unofficial role in _Sun_ editor Moses Yale Beech’s unsuccessful secret peace mission to Mexico City, and at that time she became the only female war correspondent and American journalist to report from behind enemy lines. She and her husband later advocated U.S. annexation of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where they had extensive land holdings.


*The New York and Texas Land Company begins operation
*
On this day in 1879, the New York and Texas Land Company, one of the largest privately financed land companies to operate in post-Civil War Texas, was formed when all of the land owned by the consolidated International-Great Northern Railroad Company was deeded to John S. Kennedy, Samuel Thorne, and William Walter Phelps, all of New York state. Total acreage owned by the company was 5.5 million acres. It extended into fifty-one counties. Under the management of T. D. Hobart an extensive development program of fencing, well drilling, windmill building, and water impoundment began on the Panhandle land. By 1900 all the Panhandle lands had been developed and sold, including 190,000 acres of the North Fork pasture, 100,000 acres of the Sam Lazarus pasture, and 88,000 acres of the Nick Eaton Range. Sometime before the company was officially dissolved in 1918, the event was celebrated with a barbecue in Austin, to which all principals and current and former employees were invited.


*Dan Blocker born
*
On this day in 1928, the future television star Dan Blocker was born in DeKalb, Texas. When he was six years old the family moved to O'Donnell, in Lynn County, where his father operated a general store. Dan attended Texas Military Institute in San Antonio and Hardin-Simmons University before entering Sul Ross State Teachers College in Alpine in 1947. After graduating with a B.A. degree in speech and drama, he refused offers of professional careers in both football and boxing. He was drafted for combat duty in Korea, where he served as an infantry sergeant. In 1952 he returned to Sul Ross, where he earned an M.A. degree, and then taught school in Sonora, Texas, and Carlsbad, New Mexico, before moving to California in 1956 to work on a Ph.D. degree at the University of California at Los Angeles. During this time he also worked as a substitute teacher and began his career as a professional actor in Los Angeles. He played the role of Hoss Cartwright for thirteen seasons, from 1959 until his death in 1972 from complications following an operation, on NBC's "Bonanza," one of the longest-running and most popular TV series in history. A monument in Blocker's memory stands in a park in downtown O'Donnell, across the street from a museum which displays memorabilia from his career.

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## Wildthings

LOL had to do a geocache search in O'Donnell to see if there was one to bring people to Dan Blocker's Memorial. Nope no geocache but there are a couple of waymarks - *DAN*


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> LOL had to do a geocache search in O'Donnell to see if there was one to bring people to Dan Blocker's Memorial. Nope no geocache but there are a couple of waymarks - *DAN*



I have driven through O'Donnell many many times ... but never stopped .. wish I had now ... driving from west Texas to Lubbock


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## Wildthings

Put it on your TODO list .. it's now on mine!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds TOT reader Ken Wernau recounting something that happened to him in 1996. You are going to want to read this:

"I grew up on Long Island, New York. and joined the Navy in 1989. In 1996, I was stationed in California, and had received orders to Sigonella, Sicily. I had a 1971 Torino Cobra that I wanted to drive to North Carolina (where my Mom was living) to put in storage while I was away. For reasons that are unknown to me, while I was growing up it was always told to me that I never wanted to stop in Texas. If you had to go through Texas, you wanted to do it in one day and don't get a place to sleep until you hit Oklahoma. Don't even stop for gas if you don't have to. Today I know that this fear of Texas was unfounded, but back then it made complete sense. 

So there I was driving across Texas on my way to NC, when wouldn't you know it, My right rear axle broke. My tire and rim, with the brake drum attached, passed me in front of my car. Well this was not good. I was in the middle of nowhere, broke down on the side of Interstate 40.

Just then some people in a truck drove out of a field and asked if I needed help. I replied that I did and they said they would get help for me. About a half hour later a flatbed showed up and the driver took my car to the nearest town; Shamrock, TX.

I was a little apprehensive, and the fact that I had a trunk full of guns made it even worse. But, I left the car with the shop owner and walked down the road to a diner to get something to eat. When I got back, he said he had found an axle in someone's backyard and was going to pull it off the car and put it on mine. With that, he sent his employee out to retrieve the axle. When he came back they installed the axle and gave me the bill, which was very reasonable, considering the effort that went into getting the part, let alone installing it. I was back on the road the same day.

Since then, I have had nothing but respect for that man. He could have charged me any amount of money he wanted, but instead he treated me with fairness. I no longer have any unreasonable fear of going to Texas. Someday I may even go back to Shamrock to see if that shop is still there and to eat at that diner."

Ken, that was awesome. I had something similar happen to me in Industry, Texas on a Sunday and was blessed by Texan kindness. Thanks for sharing!

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## woodman6415

Baseball great Rogers Hornsby with his wife, Jeannette, 1928. I LOVE the way she is dressed. Rogers was born in Winters, Texas, and raised in the Lone Star State. He is one of the greatest baseball players of all time. His career batting average of .358 is second only to Ty Cobb, at .367, in MLB history. He also won two Triple Crowns and batted .400 or more three times during his career. He is the only player to hit 40 home runs and bat .400 in the same year (1922). His batting average for the 1924 season was .424, a mark that no player has matched since. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1942. He is buried in the Hornsby Bend cemetery just outside of Austin.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The nine-banded armadillo can hold its breath for as long as six minutes. Most Texans know that, because of the weight of their armor, they can walk across the bottom of bodies of water. But did you know that they can also swim quite well? They have a trick of "swallowing air" to inflate their stomachs, giving them a temporary buoyancy for long enough to swim across narrow ditches and streams.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day comes from the San Antonio Express newspaper in 1881 and shows how far the Alamo City has come in 135 years. This is a list of all the telephone numbers in the city:

"Telephone Connections for the week ending July 23rd, 1881. Subscribers will please clip this out:

11. San Antonio Times
17. J.T. Thornton residence
18. Ed Steves, residence
25 J.H. Kampmann, residence
42. Dr. John Herff, residence
62. Dr. Amos Graves, residence
63. Dr. Jos. Jones, residence
64. H.D. Kampmann, residence
68. Maverick Real Estate
72. Waterworks combination
73. S.A. National Bank
74. Alamo Mills

------- San Antonio Express, 1881

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 11th*


*Lipan chief captured and brought to Bexar
*
On this day in 1737, Cabellos Colorados (Red Hair), a Lipan Apache chief, was captured by Spanish forces. When the Spanish founded San Antonio in 1718, the Apaches had discovered a convenient, accessible location at which to stage raids against their European enemies. Little is known about Cabellos Colorados, but he appears in Spanish records on a number of occasions as he harassed the settlements. He figured prominently in a raid on San Antonio in 1731, and in 1734 his band seized two citizens in a raid. He stole horses from San Francisco de la Espada Mission and killed Indians from the missions of San Juan Capistrano and Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña. After numerous raids in 1736 and 1737, he was captured on December 11, 1737, and imprisoned at Bexar until October 1738, when he was sent as a prisoner to Mexico City.


*Diplomat of the Republic arrives in Mexico
*
On this day in 1839, diplomatic agent James Treat arrived in Mexico City to negotiate for recognition for the Republic of Texas. As early as 1836, along with Samuel Swartwout and other New York real estate venturers, he was actively but unsuccessfully interested in the annexation of Texas. That Mexico should accept a formal peace treaty and recognize the independence of Texas was important to this group. Treat's long residence in Central America and Mexico qualified him for the diplomatic task at hand. His experience and intimate acquaintance with the public officials in Mexico convinced him that they would never propose the unpopular Texas question to their congress, or vote it through, unless they gained some private profit for doing so. Treat believed that by using his personal influence for recognition he might succeed where others had failed. Upon his arrival in Mexico City, Treat at once began the activities which led him through devious paths beset with hopes and disappointments. The negotiations dragged on for the greater part of a year, only to end in complete failure in October 1840 when Mexico rejected the Texas propositions for peace. Treat died the following month while returning to Texas.


*Black farmers form union*

On this day in 1886, a small group of black farmers formed the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union in Houston County. The National Colored Alliance appeared at about the same time, and the two organizations merged. By 1891 the Alliance claimed a membership of 1,200,000. The organization tried to help the members to become better farmers, established a weekly newspaper, the _National Alliance_, established exchanges in the ports for reduced prices, raised funds for schools, and provided help for sick and disabled members. In 1891, after a strike against white farmers failed to materialize, the Alliance declined rapidly.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"How true was the expression: 'the windmill draws our water and the cows cut our wood.' The lowly cowchips around which I had at first tip-toed and raised my skirts held a place of high esteem."

----- early settler Mary Blankenship discussing the prairie's most abundant form of heating fuel at her family's new farm near Lubbock in 1902 in her autobiography, "The West is for Us"

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 13th*

*
Spanish mapping expedition heads for Texas*

On this day in 1777, Luis Antonio Andry and a crew of thirteen sailed on the schooner _Señor de la Yedra_ from New Orleans on a mapping expedition. Andry, a French engineer in the pay of Spain, was chosen by Louisiana governor Bernardo de Gálvez to map the Gulf of Mexico coast from the Mississippi River to Matagorda Bay. Andry's survey ship reached Matagorda Bay by early March 1778, its work essentially complete. Shortly thereafter, it fell victim to the trickery of apostate Karankawas from the Texas missions. Acording to the lone survivor of the crew, the expedition sought aid from Karankawa brothers Joseph María and Mateo who, feigning friendship, claimed to be soldiers from La Bahía. After first disposing of two parties sent ashore to obtain provisions, the renegade brothers brought their companions on board the ship, seized the crew's unguarded weapons, and murdered the rest of the crew with a single exception, whom they held as a slave. After removing the guns and other useful gear from the ship, they burned the vessel and with it perhaps the most detailed Spanish map of the Texas-Louisiana coast to that time.


*Moore leads sortie of Texas Navy*

On this day in 1841, a flotilla of the Texas Navy under the command of Edwin Ward Moore left Galveston to support the province of Yucatán in its rebellion against Mexico. Texas and Yucatán had formalized an alliance in September by which the latter agreed to pay Texas $8,000 a month for the upkeep of the Texas fleet. President Lamar approved of this arrangement and ordered the fleet to leave for Yucatán. Moore sailed with the _Austin_, the _San Bernard_, and the _San Antonio_ for Sisal, Yucatán, on December 13. Sam Houston, who was inaugurated as president of the Republic of Texas on the same day, had a different approach to foreign policy and promptly ordered the fleet to return. These orders did not reach Moore until March 1842, and he returned in May to Texas. During the cruise the fleet captured the Mexican merchant vessel _Progreso_ on February 6 and the _Doric,_ the _Dolorita_ (or _Doritas_), and the _Dos Amigo_s in April.


* Award-winning Texas author commits suicide
*
On this day in 1956, author George Sessions Perry drowned himself. Perry was born in 1910 in Rockdale, Texas. Orphaned at twelve, he was reared by his maternal grandmother, an autocratic and irascible woman who was the model for a major character in his prize-winning novel, _Hold Autumn in Your Hand_, and the title figure of his later book _My Granny Van_. Rockdale and the surrounding area furnished the setting for nearly all of his fiction. During the 1930s Perry wrote six novels and more than fifty short stories about rural and small-town Texas. In 1941 he firmly established his place on the Texas literary scene with _Hold Autumn in Your Hand_, perhaps the best agrarian novel about Texas. The book won the Texas Institute of Letters award in 1941 and, in 1942, became the first Texas book to win the National Book Award. Perry became a war correspondent during World War II and volunteered to go ashore on the Sicily landings in 1943. The death and suffering he witnessed there made such a searing impression on him that he later said it "defictionized" him for life. After the war he devoted himself to nonfiction and journalism. His unpublished writings in the early 1950s reflect his deepening depression and his worry about his severe arthritis and his drinking problems. In 1956, in great pain and tortured by hallucinations, Perry walked into the river near his Guilford, Connecticut, home and disappeared; his body was found two months later.


*Texas Workers' Compensation Act passed*

On this day in 1989, the Texas legislature passed the Texas Workers' Compensation Act. The beginnings of workers' compensation in Texas extend back to 1913, when the legislature passed a law establishing the Industrial Accident Board and the Texas Employers' Insurance Association to provide for adequate compensation for injuries or death resulting from accidents on the job. A Workmen's Compensation Law, passed in 1917, further supported the compensation movement. By the 1980s many critics claimed that the compensation system was too expensive and paid too few benefits. In an effort to overhaul the system, the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Workers' Compensation Act. As a result of the new law the Industrial Accident Board was replaced by the Texas Workers' Compensation Commission. The new act increased maximum benefits from $238 to $416 a week and initiated a series of programs designed to improve the compensation system. In general, it sought to replace litigation with an administrative review process. Some practices included setting up worker health and safety programs, establishing penalties for fraudulent claims, streamlining medical costs, and establishing a research center for studying worker-related issues. As of 2003, the agency had gone through a Sunset Commision review and was due to continue through 2005.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a typical dance program of a cowboy's ball, as published by the Taylor County News on March 19, 1886:

1) Grand circle round-up march
2) Horse hunter's quadrille
3) Catch-horse waltz
4) Saddle-up lancers
5) Broncho racquet
6) Captain's quadrille
7) Circular's gallop
8) Round-up lancers
9) Cut-out schottische
10) Branding quadrille
11) Cow and calf racquet
12) Night-horse lancers
13) First guard waltz
14) Second guard quadrille
15) Third guard Newport
16) Fourth guard quardrille
17) Day herder's waltz
18) Maverick's polka
19) Bull calves' medley
20) Stampede all

If I am not mistaken, a dance card listing all of the dances would be given out to all of the dancers before the ball started and then those in attendance would try to get as many different people to dance with them, filling out the dance card with the names of those with whom they danced. Good, clean fun!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Thirty five of the most beautiful white stallions were brought into Hollywood for the role of "Silver." None would do until one was found in Texas ---- perfect for the role.

------- "The Lone Ranger of the SIlver Screen and Television," Marco DeMarco. Yup, it's true: Silver was a Texan. ;)

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## woodman6415

This is Santos Benavides and his wife. Santos led an amazing life that included, among other things, being a Confederate colonel during the American Civil War. Santos was the highest-ranking Tejano soldier in the Confederate military.

He was born in Laredo, the seat of Webb County, a descendant of Tomás Sánchez de la Barrera y Garza, the founder of Laredo. Benavides was elected Mayor of Laredo in 1856 and then became Webb County Judge in 1859. He was a Captain of the 33rd Texas Cavalry, also called Benavides' Regiment, until he was promoted to Colonel in November 1863.

On May 22, 1861, at the Battle of Carrizo (also called Battle of Zapata), Benavides engaged the local Tejano leader Juan Cortina (who had invaded Zapata County, an event usually referred as the Second Cortina War), and drove him back into Mexico. Probably Santos' greatest contribution to the Confederacy was securing passage of Confederate cotton to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, 
Mexico, in 1863. Due to the Union blockade of ports along the Gulf of Mexico, shipping cotton to Mexico was one of the few ways the Confederacy was able to earn needed cash.

On March 18, 1864, Major Alfred Holt led a force of about two hundred men of the Union First Texas Cavalry who were stationed near Brownsville, Texas under the command of Colonel Edmund J. Davis, who had earlier offered Benavides a Union Generalship. Their mission was to destroy five thousand bales of cotton stacked at the San Agustín Plaza in Laredo. Colonel Benavides commanded forty-two men and repelled three Union attacks at the Zacate Creek in what is known as the Battle of Laredo.
In May 1865, Benavides' regiment participated in the last battle of the Civil war, the Battle of Palmito Ranch

After the American Civil War ended, he resumed his merchant and ranching activities and remained active in politics. He served three terms in the Texas State Legislature from 1879 to 1885. He died in Laredo, Texas, and is buried there.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one:

"An old, old man got to remembering down in Texas the other day, and when somebody questioned a statement he made, he hauled forth from the tray of an ancient horsehair trunk yellowed letters that have the haughtiest crest of British royalty, and two very famous signatures.

When he showed them around, he not only convinced his hearers that his story was true, but he made public for the first time a tale of both homely and historic value ---- a tale that casts a very human sidelight upon the most famous of modern monarchs, Queen Victoria.

The venerable Texan's name is Shannon ----- last survivor of that famous family that, headed by Colonel Thomas Jefferson Shannon, prairie-schoonered its way into that vast and howling wilderness in the days of head-rights and buffalo. The old Colonel, a bluff, hard riding, sharp-shooting old plainsman, is remembered as the man who introduced the Red Durham strain into the cattle business of the West.

It now appears that that start ----- probably the parent herd of all the Durham cattle in America today, was a male and two females sent to Colonel Shannon by none other than Victoria, herself, and sent to him merely because he wrote her a letter saying he'd like a sample of the cattle she liked best.

He was only a plainsman living in an uncharted wilderness, but ... he sat down and wrote the Queen of England ... simply asked her to sell him some of her livestock. He told her who he was, where he lived, and what he wanted with it. The order was for a male and two females, and he generously offered to let her set any price she thought was fair.

Two months later the Queen herself wrote. It was a friendly but business-like letter. She said she'd be glad to let the colonel have the stock as he requested, and if he'd pay the freight on them from New Orleans to his North Texas home, she'd be glad to make him a present of them .... and in 1848 the bull and two cows landed from a British ship in New Orleans.

The colonel conveyed them carefully from there to North Texas. There were no railroads, but he placed them in wagons. At frequent intervals he unloaded them, fed them, and let them graze for a day or two. He at last got them home in perfect condition and they founded the herd that was the sensation of the old Southwest. 

The old colonel never forgot the graciousness of England's queen. He sent her reports from time to time as to how her transplanted stock was flourishing in the New World. He named his first daughter "Victoria" in her honor and one of his sons was christened "Albert" in honor of her consort."

------- Norfolk (Virginia) News, March 20, 1926. I have to say that I love little slices of human-interest history like this one. To think that the Queen of England would be so humored by this simple man's letter that she would actually send a bull and two cows all the way to New Orleans at her own expense is just too great.

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## woodman6415

It used to snow in Texas


A photo taken in Deer Park, Texas (where the Battle of San Jacinto was fought) after the "big snow" of 1895. Records indicate it snowed 22 inches in 4 days.

Courtesy the Deer Park Historical Committee via the Houston Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/a...photos-of-Deer-Park-7240933.php#photo-9785597

Good stuff!


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## Spinartist

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
I lived in the Dallas , Tx. area for 2 years.

Then I moved to paradise.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> It used to snow in Texas
> 
> 
> A photo taken in Deer Park, Texas (where the Battle of San Jacinto was fought) after the "big snow" of 1895. Records indicate it snowed 22 inches in 4 days.
> 
> Courtesy the Deer Park Historical Committee via the Houston Chronicle.
> 
> http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/a...photos-of-Deer-Park-7240933.php#photo-9785597
> 
> Good stuff!
> View attachment 118641


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## Tony

Spinartist said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> I lived in the Dallas , Tx. area for 2 years.
> 
> Then I moved to paradise.



Dang it, I used to like you Lee....

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

There is a bed and breakfast in Fort Davis called "The Veranda." The Veranda was originally a hotel called "The Lempert Hotel." Comanche Chief Quanah Parker stayed at the hotel in the late 1800s when he came to Fort Davis in search of peyote cactus for a peyote ritual. According to Barry Scobee, a legendary pulp-fiction writer and amateur historian who lived out in west Texas for many years (and who passed away in 1977), Quanah Parker showed up in Fort Davis in search of, as Quanah put it, “the gift-of-God cactus to lighten the Red man’s burden”. Accompanied by Chief Rising Star and several others, Chief Quanah arrived at the Lempert Hotel much to the surprise of a Miss Finck, who worked the front desk. An Indian agent who accompanied the party allayed Miss Finck's initial fears, saying Quanah and Rising Star had come in search of peyote and only wanted room and board. According to Comanche legend, peyote was only found in the vicinity of nearby Mitre peak.

So, yeah, if you go and stay at the Veranda Bed and Breakfast in Fort Davis ----- which is an exceptionally nice place, by the way ---- you can stay in the place at which Quanah Parker stayed.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day:

"In that day [1870s] there was truly a hard set congregated in Houston. It seemed to me that the sole business of most of them was drinking liquor and playing cards, varied now and then by a little recreation in the way of ''target shooting" at each other with their double barrel guns and derringers. I was walking leisurely along Main street, when I heard the reports of two or three pistols in rapid succession, and shortly afterwards I noticed a small crowd collected in front of a shanty, over the door of which was a board with the following legend inscribed on one side: ''The First Chance," and on the other*'The Last Chance," thus appropriately soliciting the custom of thirsty wayfarers, coming into or going out of town.

I stepped up to one of the crowd collected around this "juicery" and inquired if anything unusual had happened. "No," said he, "nothing more common. Bob Sprowls and Arkansaw Jake had a little misunderstanding 'bout a game of poker just now, and Jake 'upped him' with a derringer, that's all." "And where is Sprowls now?" said I. "Well, some of his friends carried him off to the drug store to see if
the doctor could do anything for him, but I reckon he can't do much for a fellow that's got a half ounce bullet through his lights."

"And where is Arkansaw Jake now?" I asked. "Have they arrested him?" "Arrested thunderation!" replied my informant, ''you must be green from the States— he's there," pointing to the door of
the juicery. "Seth Blake has taken Spowls' hand, and they are finishing the game— and by the by, my young man," he continued, "you'd better git out of the range of that door, for I heard Arkansaw Jake jess now tell Seth he was renigging, and I reckon 'twont be long afore another derringer goes off."

I got out of the range of that door promptly and returned to my hotel, satisfied that the "lions" of Houston were a unique species, and were very dangerous animals to tampe with. "

------ John C. Duval, "The Young Explorers," 1892

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## Spinartist

Tony said:


> Dang it, I used to like you Lee....




Maybe the country side outside of Dallas is close to paradise but in the city surely ain't... Just sayin'


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## Tony

Spinartist said:


> Maybe the country side outside of Dallas is close to paradise but in the city surely ain't... Just sayin'



You're right. My son lives in Denton, nice town.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a list of ferry tolls across the Nueces River in 1847:

For each and every wheel to a wagon, buggy, or carriage, 25 cents.
For each and every pair of oxen and horses, 25 cents.
For each man and horse, 25 cents.
For each man, 12 1/2 cents.
For each loose horse, 10 cents.
For each head of sheep, goats, or hogs, 3 cents.

------ Paul S. Taylor, "An American-Mexican Frontier," 1934

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from "Lonesome Dove:"

"The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.

It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning."

------- Larry McMurtry, "Lonesome Dove," 1985

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day comes from "Lonesome Dove:"
> 
> "The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.
> 
> It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.
> 
> It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning."
> 
> ------- Larry McMurtry, "Lonesome Dove," 1985



A great series of books, all of them are excellent. Tony

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## woodman6415

A house made of aircraft crates in San Antonio, 1939.

Photo by Russell Lee.

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## ripjack13

I thought things were always "bigger" in Texas?


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## Tony

ripjack13 said:


> I thought things were always "bigger" in Texas?



That's an outhouse Marc. Tony

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## woodman6415

ripjack13 said:


> I thought things were always "bigger" in Texas?



How many aircraft crates do you think were available in 1939?.... 
that's probably the dog house

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## ripjack13

Tony said:


> That's an outhouse Marc. Tony


Ah yes...a wood stove to keep them toushies warm....

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## woodman6415

ripjack13 said:


> Ah yes...a wood stove to keep them toushies warm....



Can't let the family's jewels get all froze up

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## woodman6415

This is Laura Bullion (aka "The Thorny Rose"), the only female member of Butch Cassidy's "Wild Bunch" Gang. Laura was most likely born in Knickerbocker, Texas in 1876, though there are also claims that she was born in Arkansas or Kentucky. She was probably of German and Native American heritage

In the 1890s, Laura Bullion was a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang; her cohorts were fellow outlaws, including the Sundance Kid, "Black Jack" Ketchum, and Kid Curry. For several years in the 1890s, she was romantically involved with outlaw Ben Kilpatrick ("The Tall Texan"), a bank and train robber and an acquaintance of her father, who had been an outlaw, as well. In 1901, Bullion was convicted of robbery and sentenced to five years in prison for her participation in the Great Northern train robbery. She was released in 1905 after serving three years and six months of her punishment.

Laura Bullion moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1918, posing as a war widow and using assumed names. She supported herself as a householder and seamstress, and later as a drapery maker, dressmaker and interior designer. Her fortunes declined in the late 1940s, at which time she was without an occupation. In 1961, she died of heart disease at the Shelby County Hospital in Memphis. Her final resting place is at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.

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## woodman6415

And the only way to truly enjoy the experience is to ride the hill country roads on a Harley ... can't wait for 2017 bloom ...


The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The bluebonnet is to Texas what the shamrock is to Ireland, the cherry blossom to Japan, the lily to France, the rose to England and the tulip to Holland."

------ historian Jack McGuire

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: Everybody knows that the Bluebonnet is THE Texas state flower. But did you realize that Texas actually has five state flowers? It's true, given that there are five varieties of Bluebonnets

The five state flowers of Texas are:

1) Lupinus subcarnosus, the original champion and still co-holder of the title, grows naturally in deep sandy loams from Leon County southwest to LaSalle County and down to the northern part of Hidalgo County in the Valley. It is often referred to as the sandy land bluebonnet. The plant's leaflets are blunt, sometimes notched with silky undersides. This species, which reaches peak bloom in late March, is not easy to maintain in clay soils.

2) Lupinus texensis, the favorite of tourists and artists, provides the blue spring carpet of Central Texas. It is widely known as THE Texas bluebonnet. It has pointed leaflets, the flowering stalk is tipped with white (like a bunny's tail) and hits its peak bloom in late March and early April. It is the easiest of all the species to grow.

3) Lupinus Havardii, also known as the Big Bend or Chisos Bluebonnet, is the most majestic of the Texas bluebonnet tribe with flowering SPIKES UP TO THREE FEET. It is found on the flats of the Big Bend country in early spring, usually has seven leaflets and is difficult to cultivate outside its natural habitat.

4) Lupinus concinnus is an inconspicuous little lupine, from 2 to 7 inches, with flowers which combine elements of white, rosy purple and lavender. Commonly known as the annual lupine, it is found sparingly in the Trans-Pecos region, blooming in early spring.

5)Lupinus plattensis sneaks down from the north into the Texas Panhandle's sandy dunes. It is the only perennial species in the state and grows to about two feet tall. It normally blooms in mid to late spring and is also known as the dune bluebonnet, the plains bluebonnet and the Nebraska Lupine.

Source: The Texas A&M Agricultural Extension Service

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## woodman6415

How crazy was this last blue norther? Midland ALMOST set its record high and record low in the same day!

"Grand prize for the most dramatic frontal passage goes to West Texas, where the cold air mass plowed south on Saturday in the form of a classic “blue norther” (sometimes called a Texas norther). A mesonet station about 6 miles west of Denver City, TX, reported a temperature drop of 36°F in just 10 minutes--from 21°C (70°F) to 1°C (34°F)--accompanied by winds of 40 knots (46 mph) gusting to 69 knots (79 mph).

Temperatures across Texas at 4:00 pm CST Saturday ranged from 6°F at Dumas (nearby Dalhart sank to a record-low –8°F by Sunday morning) to a record-hot 92°F at McAllen. MIDLAND SET A RECORD HIGH OF 80°F ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON BUT BY 11:59 pm CST, THE CITY'S OFFICIAL TEMPERATURE HAD PLUMMETED TO 18°F, JUST ONE DEGREE SHORT OF THE DATE'S RECORD LOW!"

For those at home, that's a 62 degree drop in temperature in about 9 hours. 

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/cold-wave-crescendos-with-a-frigid-weekend

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> And the only way to truly enjoy the experience is to ride the hill country roads on a Harley ... can't wait for 2017 bloom ...
> 
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "The bluebonnet is to Texas what the shamrock is to Ireland, the cherry blossom to Japan, the lily to France, the rose to England and the tulip to Holland."
> 
> ------ historian Jack McGuire


So True So True!!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> So True So True!!
> View attachment 118927
> 
> View attachment 118928



I have ridden by that fence many times

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## woodman6415

Ahem. Offered without comment, the Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a partial list of Kansas ladies who "greeted" Texas cowboys at the end of a trail drive:

Poker Alice

Alabama Jane

Cayuse Laura

Cowboy Anna

Poker Nell

The Crying Squaw

Snowplow Bowers

Wild Horse Kate

Madame Bulldog

Dutch Jake

Yellowstone Nell Chinook

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds Caleb Pirtle describing a man he met in the Texas Hill Country:

"He walked out of the valley, as lean as a mesquite post and just about as gnarled, his eyes harsh and stubborn like the land around him. He paused to kick at a clump of prickly pear cactus that held on selfishly to a patch of dirt that had washed down among the rocks. He looked out as the bluebonnets, the Indian Paintbrush, the clover, the purple, orange and red haze that ran up and down the gentle hillsides without going anywhere at all, the beauty amid the bristles.

In the rugged valley from whence he came, he saw the face of Texas the way the mythical Texas is supposed to be:big and empty, delicate yet defiant, tough as boot leather and just about as polished.

"This land ain't worth a plugged nickel," he explained, a definite German accent rolling off his tongue. "I've seen cows walk for ten miles just tryin' to find an acre of grass to chew on. 'Bout all you can raise on it is rocks and a little Cain now and then." He paused and sighed. "It's poor, useless, good for nothin', and too dadgummed hard to even leave a footprint. But ain't it pretty?"

And so it was. The old man grinned again, bent low into the wind, and slowly shuffled away. I looked close. There were no footprints behind him to even prove he had ever come to or from the valley that separated Kerrville from Medina."

-------- Caleb Pirtle III, "The Genuine Old-Fashioned, Down-Home, Home Grown Official Texas Cookbook," 1990

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Ahem. Offered without comment, the Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a partial list of Kansas ladies who "greeted" Texas cowboys at the end of a trail drive:
> 
> Poker Alice
> 
> Alabama Jane
> 
> Cayuse Laura
> 
> Cowboy Anna
> 
> Poker Nell
> 
> The Crying Squaw
> 
> Snowplow Bowers
> 
> Wild Horse Kate
> 
> Madame Bulldog
> 
> Dutch Jake
> 
> Yellowstone Nell Chinook



Wild Horse Kate is my favorite. Tony


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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> Wild Horse Kate is my favorite. Tony



Probably a wild ride

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## JohnF

Those wild horses can usually buck pretty good. At least for a short while....

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
The Karankawa Indians were relative latecomers to the coast of Texas. Native Americans had lived along the coast for at least 4,500 years, but the Karankawas arrived in (about) 1400 AD, less than a century before Europeans discovered the new world. Many archaeologists believe the tribe originated in the Caribbean. The language, impressive physical size, and the cultural traits (particularly the antisocial behavior) of the Karankawas are strikingly similar to those of the Carib Indians, a tribe of cannibal warriors who traveled in sturdy dugout canoes and regularly raided and conquered neighboring lands.
By the way, "Karankawa" is not the name this tribe gave itself. Like most other North American Indians, they called themselves men, people, bodies etc.... Other South Texas tribes assigned various names to these newcomers. The Lipan-Apaches knew them as "people who walk in the water," and others called them "wrestlers" or "without moccasins." But the name that stuck came from two Indian words "Karan (dog)" and "kawa (to love). Since the tribe traveled with small, barkless, foxlike dogs, it became known as the dog lovers, Karankawas. Archaeologists note that this breed of dog has been discovered in only two places in the western hemisphere: among the Karankawas and among the Armwak population of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day: 

"As a Texan and a country music fan, I didn't LEARN George Strait songs; I knew them the same way I know English. In Texas, when you get your first car at 16 or 17 years old, it comes standard with a George Strait Greatest Hits along with brakes and A/C."

------- Country Musician Jack Ingram

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 22nd*


*General Land Office established
*
On this day in 1836, the General Land Office was established by the First Congress of the Republic of Texas. John P. Borden, the first commissioner, opened the office in Houston on October 1, 1837. He was enjoined by law to "superintend, execute, and perform all acts touching or respecting the public lands of Texas." Much of the early business of the office consisted of translating and registering Spanish and Mexican land grants, and issuing headrights, military bounties, homestead preemptions, and veteran donations. Extensive land grants have been used to fund the public debt and education and to develop railroads. Texas is the only public-land state with complete control over its public lands and over the proceeds resulting from the administration and sale of lands.


*First Texas-German church services held in Houston
*
On this day in 1839, in Houston, Louis Ervendberg held the first recorded church services for Texas Germans. He had held a church post in Pomerania before immigrating to America in 1836-37, and he established congregations in southern Illinois before coming to Texas. Ervendberg was invited by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels to minister to the Adelsverein immigrants, whom he accompanied from Indianola to the site of present-day New Braunfels. His later life was marked by scandal. In the mid-1850s he began an affair with an orphan under his care, which ultimately led to divorce from his wife and to his moving to Mexico. He was reportedly shot to death by robbers in 1863, though some information places him in Paris four years later.


*Escaped POW William Dyess resumes flying and dies in plane crash*

On this day in 1943, war hero and escaped prisoner of war William Dyess resumed his flying career and was killed while attempting an emergency landing in Burbank, California. Dyess, born in Albany, Texas, in 1916, was sent to the Philippines in October 1941. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and began assaults on Bataan and Corregidor, Dyess was thrust into combat as commander of all flying squadrons on Bataan. In March 1942 he sank a Japanese ship and damaged shore installations in Subic Bay. When American forces in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese in April 1942, Dyess became a prisoner of war. He survived the horror of the Bataan Death March and imprisonment at camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan and the Davao Penal Colony. In April 1943 Dyess and several other prisoners escaped from Davao and contacted Filipino guerillas, who led them to an American submarine. After evacuation to Australia and a hero's welcome in the United States, Dyess briefed the War Department on Japanese warfare and confirmed the enemy's brutality to POWs. After staying in an army hospital in Virginia to regain his health, Dyess was promoted to lieutenant colonel and resumed flying, with fatal consequences. During his life he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion of Merit, and the Silver Star. He was posthumously awarded the Soldier's Medal. Abilene Air Force Base was renamed Dyess Air Force Base in his honor in 1956.


*National Wildflower Research Center opens on Lady Bird's birthday
*
On this day in 1982, the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin opened to the public on the seventieth birthday of former First Lady Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson, the driving force behind its establishment. She formulated the idea of a national center to study wildflowers and native plants in response to her lifelong interest in the natural world and her concern, especially during the 1960s, about the rapid disappearance of natural areas. Mrs. Johnson envisioned the center as a nationwide clearinghouse for information about wildflowers and native plants. Through research and education, the Wildflower Center strives to bring about a fuller understanding of the ecological, economic, and aesthetic benefits of native plants. Research at the center includes studies on the propagation, cultivation, management, and reestablishment of native plants and their relationships and dependence upon other species in natural systems. A primary research objective is to provide appropriate information about native, indigenous plants so that every individual can participate in the conservation and reestablishment of our native flora at all levels--from home gardens to large natural areas.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 23rd*


*Black militia company organizes in Nueces County*

On this day in 1879, the Roberts Rifles, made up entirely of African American citizens, organized in Nueces County. The company, the county's first since the Civil War, secured armaments through the adjutant general. The organizational meeting was called by Capt. George Wilson, a commissioned officer from Galveston; Evan M. Mack, a Corpus Christi brickmason, was elected the company's first captain. In 1880 the Roberts Rifles were one of nine "colored" and thirty-eight white units in the Texas militia. The company was the centerpiece of Juneteenth celebrations between 1883 and 1886. The legislature rewrote the statutes relating to military groups in 1889, however, and continuation of such companies became much more troublesome than before. In 1892, a white company in Hempstead asked to use the name Roberts Rifles, and the black company, which had been in decline, relinquished it and adopted the name Bluff City Guards.


*"Santa Claus" robs bank but muffs getaway*

On this day in 1927, the Santa Claus Bank Robbery occurred in Cisco, Texas. At noon Marshall Ratliff, Henry Helms, Robert Hill, and Louis Davis entered the First National Bank of Cisco with guns drawn. Ratliff, dressed in a borrowed Santa Claus costume, entered the bank vault. Some of the bank customers escaped and alerted the police and town citizens. Gunfire ensued when Ratliff came out of the vault with a sack containing money. Two policemen were mortally wounded, and Ratliff and Davis were also wounded, Davis severely. As their escape car was almost out of gas and one of the tires had been shot out, the robbers commandeered another car, but the driver took the keys with him. They then left the wounded Davis in the car, forgetting the moneybag. The fugitives escaped on foot, stole a series of cars, and had more gunfights over the next several days. They were finally captured in Graham, Texas. The infamous Santa Claus Bank Robbery led to the largest manhunt ever seen in the state at that time.


* Scott and White becomes nonprofit hospital foundation
*
On this day in 1949, Scott and White Memorial Hospital became a nonprofit hospital foundation. The Temple, Texas, hospital was established by Arthur Carroll Scott and Raleigh R. White in 1904. It started in a converted house and was moved shortly thereafter to a former Catholic convent, which became the nucleus of a collection of thirty-one buildings in the fifty-nine years the hospital remained at the location. The hospital was first called Temple Sanitarium, but in 1922 the name was changed to Scott and White Hospital. White died in 1917, and Scott stayed at the hospital until his death in 1940. The hospital was converted to a nonprofit hospital foundation by its charter of December 23, 1949. In December 1963 it moved to its present plant, a 354-bed hospital and clinic of 880,000 square feet. In 1993 the complex consisted of over a million square feet, including a magnetic-resonance-imaging building, dialysis center, and cancer prevention and treatment center. The hospital has pioneered group practice, with private medical specialists working as teams, for the Southwest.



*Bob Lemmons, "the most original mustanger," dies
*
On this day in 1947, Bob Lemmons, whom J. Frank Dobie called "the most original mustanger," died in Dimmit County. Lemmons (sometimes spelled Lemons) was born about 1847 and came to Texas as a slave in 1854. Lemmons's birth name is not known. After being freed, he came under the tutelage of Texas rancher Duncan Lemmons, who took the seventeen-year-old youth to work on his Eagle Pass ranch. Out of respect for his new employer and friend, Lemmons adopted the rancher's last name. When Duncan Lemmons died, Bob worked in the Carrizo Springs area and eventually purchased his own ranch there. His fame came about as a result of his mustanging methods. Said Lemmons, "I grew up with the mustangs.... I acted like I was a mustang ... made them think I was one of them." The legend of the man who lived as a mustang and gained the confidence of the wild horses spread throughout Texas, but his career as a mustanger ended when the Carrizo Springs area population began to grow and when fences sprang up on the landscape. In 1931 Dobie interviewed Lemmons for his book _The Mustangs_ (1952).

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## woodman6415

The Night Before Christmas, Texas Style:

'Twas the night before Christmas, in Texas, you know. 
Way out on the prairie, without any snow. 
Asleep in their cabin, were Buddy and Sue, 
A dreamin' of Christmas, like me and you.

Not stockings, but boots, at the foot of their bed, 
For this was Texas, what more need be said, 
When all of a sudden, from out of the still night, 
There came such a ruckus, it gave me a fright.

And I saw 'cross the prairie, like a shot from a gun, 
A loaded up buckboard, come on at a run, 
The driver was "Geein" and "Hawin", with a will, 
The horses (not reindeer) he drove with such skill.

"Come on there Buck, Poncho, & Prince, to the right, 
There'll be plenty of travelin' for you all tonight." 
The driver in Levis and a shirt that was red, 
Had a ten-gallon Stetson on top of his head.

As he stepped from the buckboard, he was really a sight, 
With his beard and mustache, so curly and white. 
As he burst in the cabin, the children awoke, 
And were so astonished, that neither one spoke.

And he filled up their boots with such presents galore, 
That neither could think of a single thing more. 
When Buddy recovered the use of his jaws, 
He asked in a whisper, "Are you really Santa Claus?"

"Am I the real Santa? Well, what do you think?" 
And he smiled as he gave a mysterious wink. 
Then he leaped in his buckboard, and called back in his drawl, 
"To all the children in Texas, Merry Christmas, Y'all!"

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of the 1887 Christmas blizzard in North Texas:

"The air was full of ice needles that drove into the exposed flesh and stuck, but did not seem to melt. The snow seemed to parallel the ground in its flight, yet the plains grass was covered by it in a few minutes and it rolled along the ground with the wind. That wind didn't turn aside ... There wasn't a hill between us and the North Pole and that wind must have come all the way ---- and gathering power at every jump."

---- J.C. Tolman, describing the 1887 Christmas blizzard in Palo Duro Canyon

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 26th


Pro-Union Tejanos lynch secessionist judge*

On this day in 1862, an armed group of 100 pro-Union Tejanos captured and hanged the wealthy rancher Isidro Vela, the chief justice of Zapata County and an outspoken supporter of the Confederacy, in the presence of his family. Vela was born in Mexico in 1798 and served as president of the secessionist meeting held in Zapata County in December 1860. He and the other landowners in the area strongly supported secession, in contrast to the mostly Hispanic local populace. Guerrilla warfare ensued, as pro-Union, anti-Anglo bands staged raids into Texas and retreated into Mexico. In April 1861 Vela had faced down a band under the leadership of Antonio Ochoa, a follower of Juan N. Cortina who threatened pro-Confederate county officials, and later that year had been forced to seek refuge with a neighbor when another such band raided his ranch. After Vela's death, Capt. Refugio Benavides caught and defeated the raiders near Camargo, Mexico. Papers seized in the battle implicated Leonard Pierce Jr., the United States consul in Matamoros, as an instigator of the raid.
*

First commercial buffalo hunt in Texas*

On this day in 1874, Joseph McComb led a party out from Fort Griffin on the first commercial buffalo hunt in Texas. The party consisted of McComb; two assistants, John Jacobs and John W. Poe; and teamsters, skinners, and an ox-drawn wagon. The season's kill brought 2,000 hides, which were marketed at Fort Griffin at $1.50 and $2.00 each. Other hunting trips headed by McComb followed in 1875, 1876, 1877, and 1878. McComb estimated that he killed no fewer than 12,000 buffalo during his five hunting seasons. The completion of the transcontinental railroad was a catalyst for the slaughter of buffalo in the 1870s and 1880s, since the railroad made possible the profitable shipment of hides from the Great Plains to eastern markets. Thousands of hunters and skinners participated in the hunts. By 1884 the great herds had been exterminated.


*Future Eagle Pass civic leader born in Hungary*

On this day in 1885, Sam Schwartz was born in Patrelin, Hungary. He came to America about 1900 and worked for his uncle at El Paso's Popular Dry Goods Company, where his customers included Pancho Villa. In 1910 he relocated to Eagle Pass and, casting his lot with the new motion-picture technology then sweeping the country, bought and renovated an old pool hall and opened the Majestic Theater. The business was a success, thanks in part to the 16,000 National Guard troops garrisoned in Eagle Pass during the Mexican Revolution. In 1915 Schwartz built the Aztec Theater, which remained in family hands until closing in 1982. Schwartz served as mayor of Eagle Pass from 1920 to 1924. He was co-founder of Maverick County Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, which he served as president from 1930 to 1967, and which irrigated tens of thousands of acres in the county; its main canal was the largest in the state. Schwartz served in many other civic roles in the community. At the time of his death in 1969, he was the oldest independent theater owner in Texas.


*Independence Heights is independent no longer*

On this day in 1929, the city of Independence Heights was formally annexed by Houston. The Wright Land Company had originally secured the land, incorporated in 1910, and developed a new community for blacks. By doing its own financing the company made it possible for people with small incomes to become homeowners. Resident contractors built most of the houses and churches. Independence Heights incorporated in 1915, with a population of 600; according to a Houston _Post_ story dated January 17, 1915, it was the first incorporated black city in Texas. In November 1928 Independence Heights residents voted to dissolve the city's incorporation because of their desire to become a part of Houston. In 1989 a Texas Historical Commission marker was placed on the grounds of Greater New Hope Missionary Baptist Church to mark the city site.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

From 1909-1912, Caddo Lake was the site of :"The Great Pearl Rush." IWhat happened was that, in the summer of 1909, oil rig cook George Murata found a pearl in a Caddo Lake mussel he was preparing for use as catfish bait. He sold the pearl for $1,500. A few days later he found another of equal value. A major pearl rush developed and fishermen and workers left their jobs to search Caddo and nearby waters for pearls. Hundreds of people, whole families included, converged on "Potter's Point." As many as 500 tents were counted at one point. This harvest continued through 1912 but ultimately ended in 1913 when a dam constructed downriver at Mooringsport caused lake levels to rise and placed mussels in waters too deep to be easily harvested (modern diving equipment was unavailable in those days). Many of the same pearl-producing mussels still live in Caddo Lake and Big Cypress Bayou, but no similar pearl rushes have occurred since. George Murata stayed on at Caddo Lake, however, running a fishing camp. He passed away in 1948.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I come from a long line of dancers. My maternal grandfather, a short, squat blacksmith named Daddy Harrell, was the king of country dancing ... Everything was music to Daddy Harrell. A mule could bray and he'd mistake it for a melody. .. When Aunt Esther sang at Mam Harrell's funeral, it was all they could do to hold Daddy Harrell down and keep him from dancing over her coffin. He cried, 'They who hear not the music think the dancers mad.' Then he sat down and let the preacher finish."

---- Bill Porterfield, "The Greatest Honky Tonks in Texas," 1983.

You know, besides being a wise observation and a bumper sticker slogan in and of itself, it's the PERFECT comeback. How many times have you been been caught doing something really stupid and, when somebody calls you out on it, you don't have a comeback? Well here is the perfect comeback right here. Example: "Traces, what in tarnation were you thinking, climbing 475 feet up that giant television broadcast antenna?" "Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad." Not that I,myself, have ever illegally climbed one of those towers, mind you. ;) But still, you can see where this response would come in handy, right?

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## woodman6415

The Not-So-Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

It was on June 26, 1832 at the Battle of Velasco that blood was first drawn during the Texas Revolution. This event marked the first incidence of Texian resistance to Mexican law. What happened is that John Austin and Henry Smith, in charge of a group of Texans who had gone to Brazoria to secure a cannon to use against Mexican forces at Anahuac engaged forces under the command of Domingo de Ugartechia, commander of the Mexican fort at nearby Velcaso, to prevent passage of the vessel carrying the cannon. About 150 Texians engaged a similar number of Mexican soldiers. Ugartechea and his soldiers were forced to surrender when their ammunition was exhausted. 10 Texans were killed and 11 wounded; five Mexican solders were killed and 16 wounded.

But, yeah, the shots that ultimately ended up in San Jacinto were fired almost four years later.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 28th*


*Oldest Jewish house of worship in Texas chartered*

On this day in 1859, Congregation Beth Israel, the oldest Jewish house of worship in Texas, was chartered as the Hebrew Congregation of the City of Houston. The congregation, which consisted of twenty-two members, many of western European origin, had been organized as an orthodox synagogue five years earlier. The institution started a religious school in 1864 and incorporated as the Hebrew Congregation Beth Israel in 1873. By 1943 it had completed the transformation from an Orthodox to an American Reform Jewish congregation. The Franklin Avenue Temple Beth Israel was completed in 1874, and funds donated in memory of Abraham M. Levy helped pay for a new temple at Austin Street and Holman Avenue in 1925. Among the congregation's chief rabbis was Hyman Judah Schachtel, who arrived in 1943. The Hebrew Congregation Beth Israel was renamed Congregation Beth Israel in 1945.


*First oil well in Ector County signals development of Odessa*

On this day in 1926, the first producing oil well in Ector County was brought in on the W. E. Connell ranch, southwest of the county seat of Odessa. Its limited production of twenty barrels a day did not bring about an immediate boom, but with the opening of Penn Field in 1929 and Cowden Field in 1930, Odessa became an established oil center and grew rapidly. In 1925, just prior to the discovery of oil, the town's population was 750; by 1929 it had risen to 5,000. As the demand for oil grew during World War II the population exceeded 10,000, and Odessa became the world's largest inland petrochemical complex. By 2000 the city's population had grown to just over 90,000

*Poet-horticulturist "Fruit Tree" Ramsey dies
*
On this day in 1932, poet-horticulturist Frank Taylor Ramsey died in Austin. Ramsey, born in Burnet County in 1861, became his father's partner in the nursery business at the age of sixteen. By horseback and buckboard he scouted all Texas for native flora and introduced many choice wildings to cultivation. In 1894 the Ramseys moved their nursery to Austin, and Ramsey took over the business after his father's death in 1895. His establishment, the Austin Nursery, was a prominent and successful business throughout the early 1900s, at one time covering 430 acres. Ramsey, nicknamed "Fruit Tree" from his initials, discovered or originated and introduced several domestic fruit varieties, including the Breck nectarine, the Leona peach, the Haupt berry, the Ramsey fig, a seedless persimmon, and the cluster apricot. He also developed several varieties of pecans, bred a Ramsey hybrid shrub, and introduced the Chinese jujube tree into the area. Ramsey contributed articles on horticulture to various magazines and also wrote his own verses in his nursery catalogs and produced a booklet of poetry titled _'Tis Sweeter Still and Other Poems._ Ramsey Park in Austin was named for him.


*Death of blues king Freddie King
*
On this day in 1976, Freddie King, celebrated African-American blues musician, died in Dallas. The Gilmer, Texas, native moved to Chicago when he was sixteen and developed his guitar style under the influence of Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, B. B. King (not a relative), and others. From 1950 to 1958 he played in neighborhood clubs and in the latter year made his professional debut. In 1963 he returned to Texas and settled in Dallas. In 1971 he recorded the first major live album ever made in Austin, at Armadillo World Headquarters, known as "the House That Freddie King Built." King opened AWH and returned periodically for fund-raisers. His recordings with Shelter Records brought him recognition throughout the state as a "top-notch Texas bluesman." Some of his classic songs were "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," "Highway," and "Woman Across the River."

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## woodman6415

La Kiva might be the best bar in Texas. You gotta love a place where the soup du jour is tequila. I'll be there for New Year's Eve and I hope to see all 592,000+ people who have liked this page out there. I'll buy a round for the page. :) 





__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155409582093084

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Farms are so big in Texas that on one of them a man starts out in the Spring and plows a straight furrow right on through until Fall and then he harvests back."

----- humorist BOYCE HOUSE

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## woodman6415

I posted this Texas Quote of the Day once before, but it keeps getting requested. This is example # 8574334 of why not to mess with Texas women:

"One winter day the White family on Bear Creek in Sabine County killed a hog, cut it up, put the meat in a wooden tub, and set in in a corner of the cabin, to be salted down and smoked on the morrow. Then the man went off with his dogs to join the neighbor on a hunt. That night while Mrs. White was chunking up the fire in the fireplace, the children covered up in bed and a quilt wrapped around herself to shut out the cold norther blowing through the chinks in the log walls, she heard a panther scream.

She knew it had smelled the fresh meat. It prowled under the puncheon floor and then leaped up on the roof, every once in a while letting out a scream. Then it went to clawing on the logs and finally got a paw through a crack near the tub of meat and took out a piece. At this, Mrs. White threw her quilt over the tub, seized an axe standing just inside the door, and waited. In a little while the panther put its paw back through the crack for another piece of meat. She had the axe raised and now she came down with it, cutting the paw clean off. That panther did not bother around the cabin any more that night."

----- J. Frank Dobie, "Tales of Old-Time Texas"

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## Tony

Finally, you have something to show your out of state relatives, who ask if why you don’t visit your distant cousin in Corpus Christi more often…”I mean, how far away is it really?” Well facts are fact, that annoying aunt may actually be closer to your cousin than you are.
Texas is 790 miles long. The red on this map represents the area that is within 790 miles of Texas. That is to say, if you are within this red zone, you are closer to somewhere in Texas than other parts of Texas are…

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## Wildthings

That's what I'm talking about!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- December 31st*


*Official Spanish census records 247 male and 167 female mulattoes
*
On this day in 1792, an official Spanish census recorded 247 male mulattoes, 167 female mulattoes, 15 male Negroes, and 19 female Negroes in a total population for Texas of 1,617 males and 1,375 females. Thus the black and mulatto population constituted 15 percent of the total population. Spanish law required free blacks to pay tribute, forbade them to carry firearms, and restricted their freedom of movement. In practice Spanish officials ignored such restrictions. After the Mexican War of Independence (1821), the Mexican government offered free blacks full rights of citizenship, but numerous free blacks fought for Texas independence--some fearing Anglo retribution if they did not serve, and others sharing Anglo beliefs about the Mexican government. However, the Congress of the Republic of Texas and, following annexation, the state legislature passed a series of increasingly repressive laws governing the lives of free blacks. The increased restrictions and the rise in white hostility resulted in a virtual halt to additional free black immigration to Texas. The United States census reported 397 free blacks in Texas in 1850 and 355 in 1860, though there may have been an equal number of free blacks not counted.


*Birder's paradise established
*
On this day in 1937, the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge was established. The refuge was sited on more than 47,000 acres on Blackjack Peninsula, located midway between Rockport and Port Lavaca on the Gulf Coast, purchased by the federal government with money raised by selling stamps of migratory birds. Later purchases increased the area of the refuge to more than 54,000 acres on the peninsula and more than 56,000 acres on Matagorda Island. Historically, Karankawa, Tonkawa, and other native groups wandered the saltwater marshes and coastal grasslands of the region. Legends abound that the pirate Jean Laffite buried treasure there. Today the most famous inhabitants of the refuge are the endangered whooping cranes, who with other migratory fowl winter at the refuge. Deer, javelina, alligators, and other animals are also inhabitants. Visitors can learn about the history and ecology of the region at the Wildlife Interpretive Center, and the refuge offers a car tour route, walking trails, a boardwalk, and tower for wildlife observation.


*Armadillo World Headquarters closes its doors for good*

On this day in 1980, Armadillo World Headquarters held a final New Year's blowout before closing its doors to await demolition. The celebrated Austin music venue was a concert hall in a converted National Guard armory in downtown Austin. It opened its doors in August 1970 and quickly became the focus for much of the city's musical life. AWH reflected the emergence nationwide of countercultural forms of music typical of its time. With a capacity of 1,500, the hall featured a varied fare of blues, rock, jazz, folk, and country music in an informal, open atmosphere. In 1980 the demands of the downtown real estate market brought an end to the Armadillo.


*Bluebonnet Bowl wilts as old year fades
*
On this day in 1987, the last Bluebonnet Bowl game was played. This annual post-season football game was initiated in Houston in 1959 by a civic group appointed by the Houston Chamber of Commerce Athletics Committee. In short order, the group secured National Collegiate Athletic Association sanction, obtained Southwest Conference approval, and arranged for the use of Rice Stadium. The first game, on December 19, 1959, matched Clemson University against Texas Christian University. In the first eight years of the Bluebonnet Bowl's existence the television contract grew from $16,000 to the 1967 contract of $180,000. Proceeds were distributed to Harris County charitable organizations. Beginning in 1968 the game was played in the Astrodome, and the event was referred to as the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl. Games were played at Rice Stadium in 1985 and 1986. Unable to continue after a drop in ticket sales and failure to attract a corporate sponsor, the Bluebonnet Bowl ceased after returning to the Astrodome for its 1987 game.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- The 1st Day of a New Year!!*


*Confederates attack Union forces in Galveston*

On this day in 1863, Confederate forces under Gen. J. B. Magruder began their assault on Union forces that had held Galveston since October. Magruder placed artillery and dismounted cavalry aboard two river steamers, the _Bayou City_ and the _Neptune_. He also gathered infantry and cavalry, supported by artillery, to cross the railroad bridge onto the island. The Confederates entered Galveston on New Year's night, January 1, 1863, and opened fire before dawn. The Union ship _Harriet Lane_ sank the _Neptune_, but the _Bayou City_'s crew seized the Federal vessel. Union commander William B. Renshaw's flagship, the _Westfield_, ran aground, and the commander died trying to blow it up rather than surrender it. The other Union ships sailed out to sea, ignoring Confederate surrender demands, while their infantry comrades in town surrendered. Magruder had retaken Galveston with a moderate loss. Although the port remained under Confederate control for the rest of the war, only a week elapsed before it was again blockaded.


*Farmer sows tent colony
*
On this day in 1906, William Carlton Farmer established the San Antonio Tent Colony, an open-air colony for the treatment of tuberculosis. Farmer, born in 1866, moved to Texas as a child. After studying medicine in Louisville, Kentucky, he worked in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Paris, Texas, and established a reputation as a tuberculosis specialist. In 1905 he moved to San Antonio, where he lived the rest of his life and continued his study of lung diseases. From 1931 to 1934 he was director of the National Tuberculosis Association. Farmer’s pioneering research included the use of X-rays to diagnose tuberculosis, and it is believed that his experimentation with them led to the development of the carcinoma which caused his death in 1944.


*Texas governor shocks nation, appoints all-woman court
*
On this day in 1925, Governor Pat M. Neff appointed an all-woman state Supreme Court, the first in Texas and probably in the nation. The case before the court involved the Woodmen of the World. All three justices belonged to this organization and were consequently disqualified. Since most of the other judges in Texas were also Woodmen, Neff decided to choose female lawyers, who were ineligible for lodge membership. The special court first met on January 8, 1925. Women did not serve on juries in the state until 1954.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- The 2nd Day of a New Year!!*


*Bonnie sculptor born*

On this day in 1890, sculptor Bonnie MacLeary was born in San Antonio. At age six the precocious child fashioned her first sculpture out of clay from the banks of the San Antonio River. After her parents divorced, she was raised by her grandparents in Austin. MacLeary studied art in New York, Paris, and Italy and determined that sculpture would be her mode of expression. In 1924 her bronze _Aspiration_, displayed at the National Academy of Design three years earlier, became the first sculpture created by a Texan to be acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite a painful divorce and the destruction of many of her works in a studio fire in the mid-1920s, MacLeary’s career continued to flourish, and her pieces, especially her statues of graceful female forms, achieved tremendous popularity not only in the art world but also as replicas in jewelry stores. The Witte Museum in San Antonio and Baylor University in Waco display examples of her work. Bonnie MacLeary died in 1971.


*Roger Miller born
*
On this day in 1936, musician Roger Miller was born in Fort Worth. He had no formal musical training and apparently never learned to read or write music. After service in the army, during which he entertained troops in a Special Services country-music band, he moved to Nashville, where he did odd jobs and played in back-up bands for such entertainers as Minnie Pearl and Ray Price. After Miller won a contract as a drummer with the Faron Young organization, other performers began singing his songs. In 1961 he first made the country top ten as a performer with "When Two Worlds Collide," co-written with Bill Anderson. He moved to Hollywood, where his singing career took off in 1964. "Chug-a-lug" and "Dang Me" were hits in both country and pop categories. The next year Miller scored a series of bestsellers: "King of the Road," "Engine, Engine No. 9," "Kansas City Star," and "One Dyin' and a-Buryin'." NBC featured Miller in his own weekly variety show, which fared well in 1966 but subsequently lost out in the ratings and was cancelled. Miller won eleven Grammy awards, both as composer and performer, in the categories of contemporary and country and western. In 1985 he received five Tony awards for his score to _Big River_, a musical based on _Huckleberry Finn_. He died in Los Angeles on October 25, 1992.


*Western crooner Tex Ritter succumbs in country-music capital*

On this date in 1974, Tex Ritter died in Nashville, Tennessee. The native of Murval, Texas, attended the University of Texas, where he was influenced by John Avery Lomax and J. Frank Dobie. Some of his greatest hits were "Rye Whiskey," "Wayward Wind," and "You Are My Sunshine." His performance of "High Noon," from the movie of the same name, won an Oscar in 1952. Ritter appeared in eighty-five movies and starred in the television series "Ranch Party" (1959-1962). In 1964 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. John Ritter, his youngest son, starred in the popular series "Three's Company."

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## woodman6415

Just got email last week stating that all season ticket holders to the San Antonio zoo could get in to the Witte Museum free ... went once last year .. but can not see it all in a day ... now I have something else to look for when I go back ... thanks 
I love all of Roger Miller songs ...one of the great oldies .. 





Wildthings said:


> *Today in Texas History -- The 2nd Day of a New Year!!*
> 
> 
> *Bonnie sculptor born*
> 
> On this day in 1890, sculptor Bonnie MacLeary was born in San Antonio. At age six the precocious child fashioned her first sculpture out of clay from the banks of the San Antonio River. After her parents divorced, she was raised by her grandparents in Austin. MacLeary studied art in New York, Paris, and Italy and determined that sculpture would be her mode of expression. In 1924 her bronze _Aspiration_, displayed at the National Academy of Design three years earlier, became the first sculpture created by a Texan to be acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite a painful divorce and the destruction of many of her works in a studio fire in the mid-1920s, MacLeary’s career continued to flourish, and her pieces, especially her statues of graceful female forms, achieved tremendous popularity not only in the art world but also as replicas in jewelry stores. The Witte Museum in San Antonio and Baylor University in Waco display examples of her work. Bonnie MacLeary died in 1971.
> 
> 
> *Roger Miller born
> *
> On this day in 1936, musician Roger Miller was born in Fort Worth. He had no formal musical training and apparently never learned to read or write music. After service in the army, during which he entertained troops in a Special Services country-music band, he moved to Nashville, where he did odd jobs and played in back-up bands for such entertainers as Minnie Pearl and Ray Price. After Miller won a contract as a drummer with the Faron Young organization, other performers began singing his songs. In 1961 he first made the country top ten as a performer with "When Two Worlds Collide," co-written with Bill Anderson. He moved to Hollywood, where his singing career took off in 1964. "Chug-a-lug" and "Dang Me" were hits in both country and pop categories. The next year Miller scored a series of bestsellers: "King of the Road," "Engine, Engine No. 9," "Kansas City Star," and "One Dyin' and a-Buryin'." NBC featured Miller in his own weekly variety show, which fared well in 1966 but subsequently lost out in the ratings and was cancelled. Miller won eleven Grammy awards, both as composer and performer, in the categories of contemporary and country and western. In 1985 he received five Tony awards for his score to _Big River_, a musical based on _Huckleberry Finn_. He died in Los Angeles on October 25, 1992.
> 
> 
> *Western crooner Tex Ritter succumbs in country-music capital*
> 
> On this date in 1974, Tex Ritter died in Nashville, Tennessee. The native of Murval, Texas, attended the University of Texas, where he was influenced by John Avery Lomax and J. Frank Dobie. Some of his greatest hits were "Rye Whiskey," "Wayward Wind," and "You Are My Sunshine." His performance of "High Noon," from the movie of the same name, won an Oscar in 1952. Ritter appeared in eighty-five movies and starred in the television series "Ranch Party" (1959-1962). In 1964 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. John Ritter, his youngest son, starred in the popular series "Three's Company."

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Just got email last week stating that all season ticket holders to the San Antonio zoo could get in to the Witte Museum free ... went once last year .. but can not see it all in a day ... now I have something else to look for when I go back ... thanks
> I love all of Roger Miller songs ...one of the great oldies ..



Also, if you are a Bank of America customer, on the first Monday of every month you get in free to a ton of museums across the country including the Witte. Tony

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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> Also, if you are a Bank of America customer, on the first Monday of every month you get in free to a ton of museums across the country including the Witte. Tony



That's cool .. but don't bank there ...


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 3rd *


*Presidio County established*

On this day in 1850, Presidio County was established from Bexar Land District with Fort Leaton as the county seat. The area around the present town of Presidio on the Rio Grande, known as La Junta de los Ríos, is believed to be the oldest continuously cultivated farmland in Texas. The first Spaniards probably reached La Junta in 1535 when Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca crossed on his trek across Texas. The entrada of Juan Domínguez de Mendoza and Father Nicolás López in 1683-84 established seven missions at seven pueblos along the river in the La Junta area. The area remained devoid of permanent settlements, however, because neither the Spanish nor, later, the Mexican government could control the Apache and Comanche Indians in the area. With the 1846 annexation of Texas, Americans recognized the economic potential of the frontier along the Rio Grande, and by 1848 Ben Leaton had established Fort Leaton on the site of an old Spanish fort. Although the 1850 United States census reported no population for Presidio County, a sufficient number lived there to establish the county. Several Americans irrigated crops and grazed herds on the Rio Grande in the 1850s and 1860s, and rancher Milton Faver became the first to move away from the safety of the river. Presidio and Marfa are the main communities in Presidio County today.


*General Kiddoo nixes Contract Law
*
On this day in 1867, Gen. Joseph P. Kiddoo declared that the Texas Contract Law was biased against freedmen and prevented its enforcement. This law was one of the notorious Black Codes, a series of measures enacted by Southern legislatures to keep blacks in an inferior social position. During Reconstruction the codes tried to uphold continued legal discrimination. Thanks in part to Kiddoo, assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, the codes generally failed to accomplish their purpose.


*Orphans get new home
*
On this day in 1874, Claude Marie Dubuis, second Catholic bishop of Texas, purchased the Green Bayou Place and additional acreage west of Galveston for St. Mary’s Orphanage. Operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, an order that Dubuis had founded in the United States, the institution, associated with St. Mary's Infirmary, soon sheltered twenty-eight orphans. The Green Bayou residence housed the boys, and a new two-story structure was soon completed for girls. The orphanage suffered through several catastrophes. Fire ravaged one of the institution’s buildings in 1875, and later that year a storm destroyed the Green Bayou house. Citizens of Galveston quickly answered the call for aid. Concerts and other benefits and a donation from St. Mary’s Infirmary helped repair and replace damaged buildings within a few years. In November 1896 St. Mary’s Orphan’s Asylum became a corporation and decided to build a new facility closer to the center of Galveston, but no action was taken before the great hurricane of 1900. At Green Bayou, all the buildings were swept away in a deluge. Of the ninety-four orphans, only three survived, and all ten nuns drowned.


*Another bad day for A. J. Dorn
*
On this day in 1884, Andrew Jackson Dorn lost his bid to become a congressional assistant doorkeeper. Dorn had served in a volunteer company in the Mexican War and afterward in the regular army. Although he claimed to have achieved the rank of colonel and to have remained in the U.S. Army until the outbreak of the Civil War, he was in fact mustered out of federal service in 1848. He did serve with the Confederate military, and after the war moved to Bonham, Texas. In 1873, he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Texas state treasurer. Dorn was elected on Richard Coke's ticket, but when he appointed his son as chief clerk of the treasury, the _Herald_ attacked him for nepotism, "one of the most odious of all political abuses." Dorn was reelected in 1876 and remained in office until 1879. In 1883, unemployed, he went to Washington, D.C., seeking Samuel Bell Maxey's aid in finding a government job. "He is the most helpless man I know," wrote Maxey of Dorn, "an honorable, good man but a fearfully and wonderfully made hanger-on for office." Dorn became one of seven applicants for one of the two assistant-doorkeeper appointments to which the Texas delegation was entitled, but when the appointments were decided by lot on January 3, 1884, he was not chosen. In 1885, the destitute Dorn, with Maxey's influence, was elected as doorkeeper of the state Senate. After his tenure as doorkeeper, Dorn remained in Austin "filling some minor positions in the state departments" until his death in 1889. He was buried in the State Cemetery.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Lajitas, Texas, which lies on the border with Mexico in the Big Bend region, is named after the flat rocks, the "lajitas," that lie beneath the shallow water at the ford that has made it a natural crossing place in the Rio Grande for centuries. War parties from both the Comanches and the Apaches frequently raided south into Mexico, fording the Rio Grande at this same spot.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"'Singin’ in the Rain' and childbirth were the two hardest things I ever had to do in my life."

---------- actress Debbie Reynolds writes in her autobiography "Debbie," 1988. Debbie was born in El Paso in 1932 and lived there until she was seven years old

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## woodman6415

Many Texans eat Black Eyed Peas on New Years for good luck. This tradition is thought to have started during the Civil War. Northern troops destroyed many southern crops but the black eyed peas were ignored as they were often used for livestock food. It is said the Southerners were grateful to have any food to survive on and since the black eyed peas kept them from starvation, they became good luck.

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## woodman6415

The bonus Texas Quote of the Day was overheard at the Starlight Theater in Terlingua on New Year's Eve:

"I have lived long enough to know that nothing has been screwed up so bad that I can't screw it up some more."

Happy New Year, y'all. It's good to be back.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 5th *


*Pioneer Texas scientist born in Germany*

On this day in 1818, scientist Ferdinand von Roemer was born in Hildesheim, Hanover. He studied law at Göttingen from 1836 to 1839 and received his Ph.D. in paleontology in Berlin in 1842. Roemer traveled to Texas in 1845. From November 1845 to May 1847 he explored from Galveston to Houston, as far west as New Braunfels and Fredericksburg and as far north as Waco, studying the fauna, flora, and geology of the country. He also wrote a detailed report of the expedition that led to the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty. His book _Texas_ (1849), published in Bonn and translated in 1935 by Oswald Mueller, describes German immigration to Texas and the physical appearance of the state. Roemer was the author of the first monograph on Texas geology, _The Cretaceous Formations of Texas and Their Organic Inclusions,_ published in Bonn in 1852. He died in Breslau in 1891, having published over 350 works.


*First telegraph company in Texas chartered*

On this day in 1854, the first telegraph company in Texas was chartered. The Texas and Red River Company opened its first office in Marshall on February 14, offering patrons connections with New Orleans via Shreveport and with Alexandria, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. Wires were strung from treetop to treetop, and in many instances telegraph operators closed the offices and rode along the lines to make repairs when the wind swaying the trees caused breaks in the wires. By 1870 there was an estimated 1,500 miles of telegraph wire in Texas. Expansion was rapid up to 1890 as the transcontinental railroads completed lines across the state. By 1943 the Western Union Telegraph Company, which had begun operating in Texas in 1866, was the only telegraph company still operating in the state. The company closed the Marshall telegraph office--the oldest in the state--in 1972.


*Cooke County hamlet springs back after Indian raid
*
On this day in 1865, about 100 Indians from Indian Territory raided a new settlement in Cooke County. They killed nine people and stole many horses. The raid is often referred to as the last Indian raid in Cooke County. Five years later, four brothers named Ross established a general store at the site. The first post office there was opened in 1872. According to local legend, the near-ubiquitous outlaw Sam Bass used the area as a rendezvous. The town of Rosston still celebrates Sam Bass Day on the third Saturday of July.

* 
Naval fleet commander relieved on eve of World War II*

On this day in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt relieved James Otto Richardson as commander of the United States naval fleet. Born in Paris, Texas, Richardson graduated fifth in his class from the United States Naval Academy and gradually rose in the ranks until promotion to the temporary rank of admiral in 1939. The following year he was made commander-in-chief of the U.S. fleet and assumed the duties of supervising the transfer of the Pacific Fleet from the mainland to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Richardson strongly opposed the transfer, believing that the fleet was not prepared for war with Japan and that personnel could best achieve a state of readiness in mainland ports. He also dismissed concerns over Japanese expansion in the Pacific, and throughout the move he urged Roosevelt and the Navy to reconsider the relocation. After relieving Richardson of command, Roosevelt offered the job to Chester W. Nimitz, who declined at that time.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the day is actually 9 Terrific Quotes by Texan Debbie Reynolds:

1. On seduction

"Women were far more seductive back then – and far less obvious than they are now. A woman should be like a treasure chest. First you should have to find it, then locate the key, and if not, have a key made to fit. It shouldn’t be easy."

The Telegraph, 2014



2. On body image

"Really thin is not attractive. I was always little but my mother was not a skinny lady. She had big boobs and a divine, voluptuous figure. I think everyone should get over the whole thin thing."

The Telegraph, 2014


3. On her daughter Carrie Fisher:

"Carrie is my child, and I love her with every ounce of strength I possess. If love alone could cure our children, they would always be well. Since I can’t, I will do whatever I can to make her life less difficult."

Debbie Reynold's memoir, Unsinkable, 2013


4. On Frank Sinatra

"He was so much fun - and a great kisser. I found that out in The Tender Trap."

Debbie Reynolds, Facebook



5. On work

"Singin’ in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things I ever had to do in my life."

Debbie Reynold's autobiography, "Debbie," 1988


6. On mornings

"I'm not a morning person. I'm barely an afternoon person.""

Debbie Reyold's memoir, Unsinkable, 2013"

7. On happily ever after:

I only had radio growing up, so I loved going to the movies. I always had a thing for a fairy-tale ending."
"
Entertainment Weekly, 2016


8. On her Life Achievement award

"Every moment adds up to a life, and that’s why I am here with you for an achievement award that they say I’ve earned. The golden era of Hollywood. Fortunately, that’s really my life. My life is golden"

".
Entertainment Weekly, 2016


9. On Las Vegas

"I like Vegas because it’s fun, free and people have a good time there." 

The Late Late Show, 2014

https://www.indy100.com/article/debbie-reynolds-quotes-carrie-fisher-7500101

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## woodman6415

Another "Only in Texas" image! Traces of Texas reader Laurie Gist shot this photo at the Sonic Drive-In in Aubrey, Texas. 

Yup.

Thank you, Laurie. Great capture!

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## woodman6415

I would loved to have witness that fist fight 

The Texas quote of the day is a series of entries in the diary of Sam Newcomb, who taught school at Fort Davis in 1865-1866:

January 1 [1865]: For the past year Indians have been troublesome, coming into the section in such large bodies that a great many families have left the frontier .... and those who remain are "forted up." There are now 125 persons in the fort and others planning to move in.

January 23: This day was made memorable by the marriage of J.H. Browning and Miss Angelina McCarty. It was a grand occasion, being attended by a number of people from the lower fort, and all the visitors coming prepared to fight Indians along the way, if necessary.

March 13: Commenced school here today for a term of 14 weeks. I have only nineteen scholars at present and most of them are rude, wild and wholly unacquainted with school discipline.

July 8: A couple of the fort's leading ladies indulged in a fist fight this morning, the result of differences among their children.

November 29: A large buffalo was driven into the fort this morning, causing a great deal of commotion and excitement. The animal was immediately attacked by 40 dogs and killed in a very few minutes.

December 5: Cold and sleeting and several herds of buffalo drifted by during the day. I have stood in the school house and watched a herd no more than 100 yards away. I ave some home-made ink, but find it difficult to get it of the proper color and consistency, but it is a case of the best you can do or do without.

December 24: The first sermon ever preached in Fort Davis was preached here today by Parson Slaughter, and it was the first sermon that many of the people ever heard.

January 29 [1866]: My school is continually getting smaller. This is the second time a couple have quit school to get married.

----- Quoted in "The Graham Leader," January 29, 1922

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is the population and rank of Texas' 10 largest towns in 1850:

1850

1. Galveston (4,177) 
2. San Antonio (3,488) 
3. Houston (2,396)
4. New Braunfels (1,723) 
5. Marshall (1,180)
6. Gonzales (1,072)
7. Victoria (802)
8. Fredericksburg (754) 
9. Austin (629) 
10. Corpus Christi (533)

It is interesting to look back and see how history treated some of them and to realize what cities are now in the top-10 (Fort Worth, Dallas, El Paso) that were not on the list then.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"In the last desperate months of his life, he would come into the restaurant at all hours of the day and take a seat, sometimes at the counter and other times in one of the back booths. He was always alone. He wore a scruffy ball cap, and behind his large, square glasses there was something odd about his eyes. They didn’t always move together. Barbara Billnitzer, one of the waitresses, would bring him a menu and ask how he was doing. “Just fine,” he’d say, and they would chat about the traffic and the weather, which was always warm in South Texas, even in January. He’d order coffee—black—and sometimes a sandwich, maybe turkey with mayo. Then he’d light up a Pall Mall and look out the window or stare off into space. Soon he was lost in thought, looking like any other 55-year-old man passing the time in a Sambo’s on Tyler Street in downtown Harlingen. He had moved there with his family five years before, in 1976. It was a perfect place for a guy who wanted to get away from it all. And he had a lot to get away from. Twenty-five years before, just about everyone in the Western world had known his face. In fact, for a period of time in the mid-fifties, he had been the most popular entertainer on the planet. He had sold tens of millions of records. He had caused riots. He had headlined shows with a young opening act named Elvis Presley and had inspired John Lennon to pick up the guitar. He had changed the world."

-------- Journalist Michael Hall describes Bill Haley (who sang "Rock Around the Clock" and other early rock and roll hits) in a fine, though sad, Texas Monthly article about the last few years of the R&R legend in South Texas. You can read the rest of the article here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/falling-comet/

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## woodman6415

Years ago me and some of my buddies crossed there a couple of time ... Mexican national had a rickety old boat ... charged 2 dollar American one way ... last couple of trips to big bend after 9/11 it was closed to any crossing .. 

The Texas Quote of the Day is an 1852 description of the Rio Grande crossing point at what is now Lajitas, Texas. The crossing at Lajitas was called "Comanche Pass" at that point in time:

"Comanche Pass, on the Rio Bravo, the most celebrated and frequently used crossing place of the Indians, was found to be just below this Bofecillos range; here broad, well-beaten trails lead to the river from both sides. A band of Indians under the well known chief Mano (hand) crossed the river at the time of our visit; they had come, by their own account, from the headwaters of Red River, and were on their way to Durango, in Mexico—no doubt on a thieving expedition."

------- Lt. William H. Emory, member of the Mexican-American Boundary Commission, 1852

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## woodman6415

This is Henry Clay Thruston, the tallest soldier to ever fight for the the Confederacy. He died in 1909 at the age of 79 on his farm near Mt. Vernon, Texas. You can read more about him here:

http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/Tallest-Rebel-Henry-Clay-Thurston.htm

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 9th*


*Anson Jones commits suicide*

On this day in 1858, Anson Jones, last president of the Republic of Texas, committed suicide at Houston. Jones, a physician born in Massachusetts in 1798, came to Texas in 1833 and served in the Texas Revolution. He was elected to the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas and also served as minister to the United States and in the Republic of Texas Senate before being elected president in 1844. In 1845 he ignored mounting pressures for annexation until he had a treaty of recognition of the republic from Mexico. After Jones presented to the people of Texas the alternative of peace and independence or annexation, the Texas Congress rejected the treaty with Mexico, approved the joint resolution of annexation, and adopted resolutions censuring Jones. In 1846, at the ceremony setting up the government of Texas as a state in the Union, Jones declared, "The Republic of Texas is no more." He hoped to be elected to the United States Senate, but Sam Houston and Thomas J. Rusk were chosen instead. Jones brooded over his neglect while he became a prosperous planter and accumulated a vast estate. After an injury that disabled his left arm in 1849, he became increasingly moody and introspective. In 1857 he believed that the legislature would send him to Washington as senator, but he received no votes.


*Texas Academy of Science organized*

On this day in 1892, fourteen scientists organized the first Texas Academy of Science at the University of Texas to investigate and report upon such scientific problems as might be submitted by the state. Edgar Everhart, a chemist, served as the first president. The group was to advance the exact and natural sciences both by research and discussion, and they established a publication, _Transactions_. By 1907 the academy had publication exchange arrangements with seventy-five institutions. Throughout the twenty years of its existence patrons George W. Brackenridge and Mrs. George B. Halsted each gave $500 to the organization. By 1911 it had 154 members. The organization became defunct after 1913, but a second Texas Academy of Science organized in 1929 with approximately 100 members, including many from the first Texas academy. The group resumed publication of _Transactions_ which was later absorbed by the new _Texas Journal of Science_, a journal still distributed to members and institutional libraries worldwide.


*Frank X. Tolbert dies
*
On this day in 1984, veteran Texas newspaperman and chili aficionado Frank X. Tolbert died of heart failure. Francis Tolbert was born in Amarillo in 1912 and attended four different Texas colleges but never received a degree. He began his career in journalism as a sportswriter for the Lubbock _Avalanche-Journal_ and later worked for papers in Wichita Falls and Amarillo before joining the staff of the Fort Worth _Star-Telegram._ He also published two novels, numerous short stories, and various nonfiction works. Tolbert began using the name Frank X. Tolbert when he enlisted in the United States Marines in 1942. He served as combat correspondent in the Pacific for the marines' official publication, _Leatherneck,_ and later as its managing editor in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of the Dallas _Morning News_ in 1946 and began publishing his "Tolbert's Texas" column. Tolbert's most popular work, _A Bowl of Red_ (1962), was devoted to chili con carne. Soon after the publication of _A Bowl of Red_ Tolbert founded the Chili Appreciation Society International, which is based in the ghost town of Terlingua, where annual chili-cooking contests are held. He officially retired from the _Morning News_ in 1977 but continued to write one column a week until his death.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because God had put me on the ground in Texas. I actually felt sorry for those poor little kids that had to be born in Oklahoma or England or some place. I knew I was living in the best place in the world. "

----- actor Tommy Lee Jones, who was born in San Saba

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The population of Thurber, Texas is roughly 50 people today, but in 1920, when bituminous coal was being mined in the area, there were 10,000 souls living there and it was the largest company town in Texas. But, beginning in 1920, the conversion of locomotives from coal to oil reduced the demand for coal, lowering prices, and the the miners and their families drifted away. Today, there are a few physical remnants of what used to be a thriving community. Thurber is in Erath County, very close to the Palo Pinto County State line. If you've ever driven I-20 from Dallas-Fort Worth to El Paso, you've driven through it.

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## woodman6415

I don't claim to be particularly favored, mind you, but I was lucky enough to be at the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon a few days ago in order to snap this photo of some canoeists getting ready to launch out into the muddy Rio Grande. I used a polarizing filter to bring in more of the sky.

The boss and I have kayaked up in this canyon ... Mexico on one side Texas on the other ... in places you can almost touch both sides at the same time ... beautiful

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## Wildthings

I tweaked it a little more

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 10th*


*Black physician and civil rights leader born in Waskom
*
On this day in 1894, Charles A. (Doc) Dudley, an African American physician, civic leader, and civil rights worker, was born in Waskom, Texas. He graduated from high school at Marshall and attended Bishop College in Dallas before entering Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. After receiving a license to practice medicine in Texas, he assumed the practice of his cousin in Victoria. Dudley supported education for black children and, working with teachers in Victoria, helped furnish equipment not provided by the school board. In January 1940 he organized a council composed of black citizens that provided improvements for the grounds of F. W. Gross High School. He led the fund raising drive that established the George Washington Carver Civic Council for the recreational and cultural development of black youth. During the struggle for voting rights, he worked closely with NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, the future United States Supreme Court associate justice. Dudley died in 1975. Dudley Elementary School in Victoria is named for him.


*Spindletop oilfield discovered*

On this day in 1901, the Spindletop oilfield was discovered on a salt dome south of Beaumont, marking the birth of the modern petroleum industry. Pattillo Higgins, the "prophet of Spindletop," and others had tried for years to find oil on Spindletop Hill, but with no success. In 1899, however, Higgins hooked up with Anthony F. Lucas. Despite negative reports from contemporary geologists, Lucas remained convinced that oil was in the salt domes of the Gulf Coast. On January 10 mud began bubbling from a well that Lucas had spudded in the previous October. The startled roughnecks fled as six tons of four-inch drilling pipe came shooting up out of the ground. After several minutes of quiet, mud, then gas, then oil spurted out. The Lucas geyser, found at a depth of 1,139 feet, blew a stream of oil over 100 feet high until it was capped nine days later. The discovery of the Spindletop oilfield had an almost incalculable effect on world and Texas history. Investors spent billions of dollars throughout the Lone Star State in search of oil and natural gas. The cheap fuel they found helped to revolutionize American transportation and industry. Many of the major oil companies were born at Spindletop or grew to major corporate size as a result of their involvement at Spindletop, including Texaco, Gulf Oil Corporation, Magnolia Petroleum Company, and Exxon Company, U.S.A.


*Texas aviation leaders die in plane crash*

On this day in 1954, two leading figures in Texas aviation, Edgar Tobin and Thomas Elmer Braniff, died in a plane crash near Shreveport, Louisiana. Tobin, a San Antonio native, became an ace after shooting down five enemy aircraft while flying with Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker's "Hat-in-the-Ring" squadron during World War I. After the war he started Tobin Aerial Surveys and entered the commercial mapping field for Humble Oil and Refining Company (now the Exxon Company, U.S.A.). During World War II he served as a special advisor to the Army Air Force, and his company mapped the entire United States for the federal government. He generously contributed to many charitable organizations in San Antonio. Braniff, a native of Kansas and co-founder with his brother Paul of Braniff Airways, pioneered airline service to Texas and the Southwest*.


Houston honors philanthropist
*
On this date in 1964, groundbreaking for the Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts took place in Houston. Construction of the building was underwritten by the Houston Endowment, a charitable foundation endowed by Jesse H. Jones and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones. With its luxurious decor and excellent acoustics, Jones Hall won the American Institute of Architects' Honor Award in 1967 and today is the home performance venue for the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the Society for the Performing Arts.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In February 1818, , Sam Houston led a delegation of Cherokees to Washington, D.C. to meet with Secretary of War John C. Calhoun and President James Monroe. While there, Sam was reprimanded by Secretary Calhoun for wearing Indian dress.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 11th*


*Texas troops captured at Arkansas Post
*
On this day in 1863, the remnants of the Fourth Brigade of Walker's Texas Division were captured intact at Arkansas Post. The division, organized in Arkansas in October 1862, was the only division in Confederate service composed throughout its existence of troops from a single state. It took its name from Maj. Gen. John George Walker, who took command from its organizer, Brig. Gen. Henry Eustace McCulloch, on January 1, 1863. During its existence it was commonly called the "Greyhound Division," or "Walker's Greyhounds," in tribute to its special capability to make long, forced marches from one threatened point to another in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Initially, the division was made up of four brigades. The Fourth Brigade, under the command of Col. James Deshler, was detached from the division shortly after its organization and sent to Arkansas Post. Deshler was captured there, then exchanged and promoted to brigadier general in July 1863. He was killed during the battle of Chickamauga later that year.


*Confederate Navy sinks U.S. ship
*
On this date in 1863, the USS _Hatteras_ was sunk by the CSS _Alabama_. The _Hatteras_, a converted merchant ship formerly named the _St. Mary_, was commissioned in October 1861 and first saw duty in the South Atlantic. After assignment to the blockading squadron in the Gulf of Mexico, she was raiding along the Confederate coast when she was sunk by Confederate captain Raphael Semmes. She lies in sixty feet of water twenty miles south of Galveston. The federal government has been able to preserve the wreck for scientific and historical research.


*Black veteran honored for war bond sales*

On this day in 1945, Hugh McElroy, decorated black veteran, was honored by Henry Morganthau Jr., United States secretary of the treasury, for participating in bond drives as a speaker and poster model. McElroy was reportedly the first African American whose picture appeared as an advertisement for United States war bonds. McElroy was born in Kentucky in 1884. In 1898 he lied about his age and enlisted in the Tenth United States Cavalry. He served in Cuba in the Spanish-American War and afterwards in the Philippine Insurrection and on the Pershing expedition into Mexico. During World War I he landed in France with the 317th Engineers. The much-decorated veteran retired in 1927 to Houston. In 1968 he and his oldest son rescued two children from a burning house near his Houston home. The Texas Senate commended the McElroys for their bravery. McElroy died in 1971.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Imagine ... men dressed in every variety of costume, except the ordinary uniform, armed with double-barreled shotguns, squirrel rifles, and Colt's six shooters, mounted on small, wiry, half-wild horses, with Spanish saddles and Mexican spurs, unshaven, unwashed, undisciplined, but brave and generous men, riding pell-mell along roads, over the prairies, and through the woods, and you will be able to form a correct conception of a squad of Texas Rangers on the march." 

---- Willis L. Lang (1830-1862), planter, Texas Ranger, and Confederate Army officer, writing in his diaries

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## woodman6415

In San Antonio back in 1939 you could buy your driver's license on the installment plan. I am pretty amazed by this.

Another great photo taken by Russell Lee.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day: 

"The roads are full of errant thieves united with the Indians, and without a small force of mounted troops to clean-up and guard them, I cannot respond to the security of travelers .... If it is possible to permit me to continue in service the 14 men and augment them with 10 more and a Sergeant, I can respond to the security of the roads." 

--- Stephen F. Austin, explaining to Mexican authorities why he needed to continue the employ of the first force of Texas Rangers, November 1823

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 14th*


*Governor urges Texans to make sacrifices
*
On this day in 1865, during the final months of the Civil War, Governor Pendleton Murrah urged Texans to put aside personal ambitions and make sacrifices in defense of their liberty. Murrah, a native of either Alabama or South Carolina, had moved to Texas in 1850. After serving in the state legislature, Murrah was elected governor of Texas in 1863. As governor, he became involved in a series of controversies over control of the state's manpower and economy with Gen. John B. Magruder, the Confederate military commander of the Texas district, and his superior, Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department. In spite of these quarrels, Murrah supported Kirby Smith in his determination to carry on the war in the face of military reversals. Even after Lee's surrender, Murrah continued to urge resistance. When it was obvious that Union forces would occupy the state, he vacated his office, leaving Lieutenant Governor Fletcher Stockdale in charge, and joined other Confederate leaders fleeing to Mexico. The long trip was too much for Murrah, who suffered from tuberculosis. He was confined to bed upon reaching Monterrey and died on August 4, 1865.


*Alianza Hispano-Americana founded
*
On this day in 1894, the Alianza Hispano-Americana was founded in Tucson, Arizona, by Carlos I. Velasco, Pedro C. Pellón, and Mariano G. Samaniego, as a fraternal benefit society. It fanned out across the rest of the Southwest over the next sixteen years, spreading to Texas by June 1906. It grew into the biggest and best known of the Mexican-American _sociedades mutualistas_ in the Southwest. AHA was set up to offer life insurance at low rates and provide social activities for Mexican Americans. Its goals were similar to those of other fraternal aid groups in the United States, which began to multiply in the late nineteenth century among European immigrants. When AHA was established, most United States citizens could not depend on government social security programs, labor unions, or commercial life insurance to provide economic assistance to a family upon the loss of the chief family provider, usually the father. Besides tendering such services, AHA, like other mutual-aid groups, also sought to preserve the culture of its constituents and taught its members democratic traditions, such as free speech, by involving them in organizational activities.Texas-based AHA lodges were established in major cities, such as San Antonio and El Paso, but there were some affiliates in such small towns as Luling and Lytton. Expansion into Texas and other Southwestern cities in the 1910s improved services to the immense Mexican immigrant population that had been driven across the border by the Mexican Revolution. After 1929 the establishment of the League of United Latin American Citizens cut Texas participation in the AHA, and the AHA faded away in the 1960s


*War effort proceeds as huge Texas base is activated
*
On this date in 1942, Camp Hood was activated. The temporary camp, named for Confederate general John Bell Hood, is now one of the largest military installations in the world. It was officially opened on September 14, 1942, and has since been continuously used for armored training. By 1950 it was made a permanent army post and renamed Fort Hood. Units from Hood have contributed significantly to all important overseas United States military actions since 1942. The installation, the largest piece of Texas owned solely by the federal government, has also been critically important economically and socially in the Killeen area.


*Former governor Alan Shivers dies*

On this day in 1985, former Texas governor Allan Shivers died suddenly of a massive heart attack. Robert Allan Shivers was born in Lufkin in 1907. His political career began at the University of Texas, where he was elected president of the Students' Association. In 1934 he became the youngest person ever elected to the state senate. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945, when he was discharged with the rank of major, having earned five battle stars and the Bronze Star. In 1946 he was elected lieutenant governor; he was reelected two years later. When Governor Beauford H. Jester died in 1949, Shivers assumed the governorship, which he held effectively for the next 7½ years. During his tenure he pushed through significant legislation as well as reforms of state government, but he was probably best known for defending state claims to the Tidelands against the Truman administration. During the last years of his governorship his popularity diminished, due in part to his opposition to _Brown v. Board of Education,_ which legally ended segregation. And even though Shivers was never implicated, his administration became tainted with corruption because of state scandals involving insurance and veterans' lands. After retiring from politics in January 1957, Shivers managed his business interests in the Rio Grande Valley and served on the boards of several banks and on the UT Board of Regents.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is actually two facts, one arcane and one not. The NOT arcane fact is that Tommy Allsup ------ best known as a guitarist for Buddy Holly and the Crickets and also as the man who lost the coin flip to Richie Valens on Feb. 2, 1959, before the plane crash that killed Holly, Valens and J.P “The Big Bopper” Richardson after a performance in Clear Lake, Iowa ------ passed away two days ago at the age of 85. Tommy lived a full life after "the day the music died," becoming a Grammy-winning musician who played with Merle Haggard, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, and many others. So that is the not-so-arcane fact. The ARCANE fact is that the biggest-single of 1969, "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, was recorded in Odessa, Texas by none other than Tommy Allsup. Tommy owned Trans Global Productions Inc., located at 5600 Dixie Blvd in Odessa, and "In the Year 2525" was recorded there. Incidentally, the strings section in that recording was done by high school band members in the Odessa High School band.

You may remember the song:






RIP Tommy Allsup!

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## ripjack13

That's a great song.....

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## Traces of Texas

Farmers at a well in Jefferson, Texas, 1939. 

Ab ... so ... lute ...ly GORGEOUS!

This photo was taken by FSA photographer Russell Lee.

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## Traces of Texas

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Our food is like mother used to cook before she took up bridge."

----- Sign in a Tyler cafe, 1930s

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 17th*


*A Connecticut Yankee in Texas*

On this date in 1821, the government of New Spain granted Moses Austin a permit to settle 300 families in Texas. This momentous agreement began the process of Anglo-American colonization in the future state. The elder Austin died, however, before he could fulfill his part of the contract, and his son Stephen F. Austin was recognized as his successor. Although Mexican independence from Spain cast temporary doubt on the future of the contract, a special decree issued in April 1823 allowed S. F. Austin to begin the colonization that led eventually to the Texas Revolution and the Republic of Texas.


*Mexican Federalists declare independence at Laredo convention
*
On this day in 1840, leaders of the Mexican Federalist party met in Laredo to declare the independence of the ill-fated Republic of the Rio Grande. Since 1835, with the ascension of Antonio López de Santa Anna to the presidency of Mexico, Federalist leaders had attempted to force a return to the Constitution of 1824. The Federalists claimed the areas of Tamaulipas and Coahuila north to the Nueces and Medina rivers, respectively, and Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, and New Mexico. Antonio Canales Rosillo, commander-in-chief of the new republic's army, took the field against Centralist general Mariano Arista at Morales, Coahuila, in March 1840 and was disastrously defeated. Canales with his few remaining troops retreated to San Antonio, while the provisional government fled to Victoria, Texas. Canales then toured Texas in an effort to raise interest and aid for the continuance of his campaign. About 140 Americans joined his army under Col. Samuel W. Jordan, who led a successful expedition to capture Ciudad Victoria before being forced to retreat to Texas in October. Canales capitulated at Camargo in November 1840. He was taken into the Centralist army as an officer, and Federalism was dead for the time being.


*First appearance of Popeye*

On this day in 1929, Popeye, the Sailor Man, renowned comic-strip character, first appeared in print. The Victoria _Advocate_ is credited as the first newspaper in the nation to run Elzie Crisler Segar's comic strip, originally called "Thimble Theatre," which starred the spinach-eating hero. Segar (1894-1938) was born in Chester, Illinois, and worked as a moving-picture machine operator, a house painter, and a photographer before his first cartoon effort was rejected by a St. Louis paper. Segar became a popular cartoonist in the 1920s. Popeye was probably inspired by Frank "Rocky" Feigle of Segar's hometown. By 1932 Popeye was the undisputed star of "Thimble Theatre," as evidenced in fan mail, toys, games, novelties, and jokes. Segar himself called the Victoria _Advocate_ Popeye's "hometown." In gratitude he contributed a special cartoon for the _Advocate_'s historic 1934 anniversary issue. Speaking to the newspaper's editor through Popeye, Segar wrote, "Please assept me hearties bes' wishes an' felitcitations on account of yer paper's 88th Anniversity....Victoria is me ol' home town on account of tha's where I got born'd at." Crystal City, Texas, also claims a special relationship to Popeye. The spinach industry credited Popeye and Segar with the 33 percent increase in spinach consumption from 1931 to 1936, and in 1937 Crystal City, the "Spinach Capital of the World," erected a statue to honor Segar and his sailor.


*Barbara Jordan dies
*
On this day in 1996, Barbara Jordan, politician and educator, died in Austin. She was born in Houston in 1936 and grew up in that city's Fourth Ward. Jordan received a law degree from Boston University in 1959 and returned to Houston in 1960. She became involved in politics by registering black voters for the 1960 presidential campaign, and twice ran unsuccessfully for the state senate in the early 1960s. In 1967 she became the first black state senator since 1883. Eschewing a confrontational approach, Jordan quickly developed a reputation as a master of detail and an effective pragmatist and gained the respect of her thirty white male colleagues. In 1973 she successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from the Eighteenth Texas District. She was the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in Congress, and, with Andrew Young, was one of the first two African Americans elected to Congress from the South in the twentieth century. She gained national prominence for her role in the 1974 Watergate hearings as a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Impressed with her eloquence and stature in the party, the Democratic party chose her to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic national convention; she was the first woman to do so. In 1979, after three terms in congress, Jordan retired from politics to accept the Lyndon Baines Johnson Public Service Professorship at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Among her many honors were induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 18th*


*Texas historian and author born in Cincinnati*

On this day in 1817, Julia Lee was born to George and Mary Lee of Cincinnati. The Lees moved to Austin in 1840. Julia married George W. Sinks, then chief clerk of the Post Office Department of the Republic of Texas. Mrs. Sinks demonstrated a notable interest in Texas history, collecting various documents and contributing historical notes and columns to newspapers in Dallas and Galveston. She was a charter member and vice president of the Texas State Historical Association upon its formation in 1897 and contributed articles to the first two volumes of the association's journals. Following her death in 1904, her collection of documents relating to Texas history was donated to the University of Texas. Today these documents form part of the Eugene C. Barker Texas collection of the Center for American History.


*Marshall University chartered
*
On this day in 1842, Marshall University was chartered with a grant of four leagues of land. The school, never a university except in name, opened that year, probably in September, with Virgil M. DuBose as its first president and Andrew Jackson Fowler as its first teacher. James M. Morphis took charge of the male department in 1849. The school was coeducational until 1850, when the female department was organized into a separate institution, Marshall Masonic Female Institute, which operated for more than fifty years. The university was absorbed by the public school system in 1910, after which the board of trustees continued to operate for a while.


*Populist farmer elected president of Texas Farmers' Alliance
*
On this day in 1887, Evan Jones, farmer and populist leader, was elected president of the Texas Farmers' Alliance. The Kentucky native was farming in Erath County, Texas, by 1876 and joined the Texas Farmers' Alliance by 1883. He was president of the Erath County Farmers' Alliance from 1884 to 1888. In 1886 he led an independent ticket to victory in the county elections. On January 18, 1887, the Texas Farmers' Alliance elected him president, and he served until the fall of 1888, when he was elected president of the rapidly expanding Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America, the product of the merger of the Agricultural Wheel and the Farmers' Alliance. In the fall of 1889 he declined to run for national president again and was reelected president of the Texas Farmers' Alliance; he served until the fall of 1891. He was again president of the Texas alliance from 1895 to 1896. Jones's advocacy of political action on the part of independent farmers and laborers made him an early leader of the more radical political wing of the Texas alliance. From 1889 to 1891, as president of the Texas alliance, he helped the radicals persuade numerous members of the alliance in Texas and the South to move toward third-party politics. He was nominated for governor in July 1888 by the Union Labor party, a precursor of the People's party, but declined because of his work as alliance president. He joined the Populist party when it was formed in Texas in 1891, and in 1892 he ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress from the Eighth Congressional District. In 1896 he ran unsuccessfully for railroad commissioner on the same ticket. He became ill during a speaking trip to East Texas and died in 1899.


*Scandal purges body politic
*
On this day in 1971, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit in federal court alleging stock fraud against a number of Texas state officials accused of making profitable, quick-turnover, bank-financed stock purchases in return for the passage of legislation desired by a financier, Houston businessman Frank W. Sharp. The political turmoil from the Sharpstown scandal resulted in a "reform" movement that eventually saw much of the legislature replaced. Reform laws passed in 1973 required state officials to disclose their sources of income, forced candidates to make public more details about their campaign finances, opened up most governmental records to citizen scrutiny, expanded the requirement for open meetings of governmental policy-making agencies, and imposed new disclosure regulations on paid lobbyists.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On May 23, 1894, outlaw Bill Dalton robbed the First National Bank in Longview, Texas. Known for riding with his brothers and infamous outlaw Bill Doolin in a group known as the "Doolin Dalton Gang," Bill had parted ways with them prior to the robbery in Longview. After riding with a few more outfits, Bill started his own Dalton Gang. After robbing the bank in Longview, the gang shot its way out of town, leaving one bandit dead. But various posses would track and kill three of the members and send the last one to life in prison. On June 8, 1894. about two weeks after the Longview robbery, a posse tracked Dalton to his home in Pooleville, Oklahoma. He leaped from a window with a pistol in his hand and charged the posse, ignoring orders to halt; the posse opened fire, killing him. His wife identified his body and had it shipped back to California ----- where he had previously been a member of the California legislature ------ for burial. He was 27 or 28 years old.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from Traces of Texas reader Nicholas Bryant Copeland, a Texan who has been living in Taiwan for nine years and who also speaks fluent Chinese:

"Today I was having a chat in Chinese with the new garbage collector in my neighborhood. Inevitably he asked which part of the States I was from, and when I told him Texas, he tilted back his head and let out a loud, full-throated "YEEE-HAAAW!" for the whole neighborhood to hear while doing a lassoing motion with his hand. Would any other state get such an enthusiastic response?"

No, Nicholas, no other state would garner such a response. . To know that your Chinese garbage collector aligns himself with the proper Texas virtues is heartwarming, indeed. Thanks so much for sharing this trace of Texas from so far away!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I believe in looseness."

----- Willie Nelson

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 19th*


*Waterloo approved as new capital of Texas*

On this day in 1839, Waterloo (soon to be renamed Austin) was approved as the new capital of the Republic of Texas. In 1836 Columbia (now West Columbia) had become the first capital of an elected government of the republic. It remained capital for three months. The city of Houston was then selected as a temporary capital until 1839. A capital-site commission selected a site near La Grange in 1838 and Congress passed a bill to build the capital there, but President Sam Houston vetoed it. Mirabeau B. Lamar, Houston's successor as president and a proponent of westward expansion, instructed the commission to inspect a site he had visited on the Colorado River. Impressed by its beauty, abundant natural resources, and central location, the commission purchased 7,735 acres comprising the hamlet of Waterloo and adjacent lands. Because the area's remoteness from population centers and its vulnerability to attacks by Mexican troops and Indians displeased many Texans, including Houston, political opposition made Austin's early years precarious ones. In 1842, during his second term as president, Houston ordered the government to return to the city of Houston, and issued an executive order making Washington-on-the-Brazos capital. The order spawned the Archive War. The Constitution of 1845 provided that Austin be capital until 1850, when a vote was required to choose the permanent capital. The city received majorities in that election and a subsequent election in 1872.


*German school chartered in Austin*

On this day in 1858, the German Free School Association of Austin became the first Austin school chartered by the Texas legislature, for the "education of the youth, the promotion of useful knowledge, and the advancement of the sciences." The school was to be "accessible to all alike without regard to religious opinions." The two-story school building was constructed in 1857 with volunteer labor on land donated by the von Rosenberg family overlooking Waller Creek. Living quarters were added in 1872 for the schoolmaster, Julius Schuetze. Classes were taught in English, probably with German as a second language. After the school closed in the 1880s, Schuetze stayed in the family quarters and eventually purchased the rest of the building. The former school building changed hands several times after Schuetze's death. In August 1991 artist Kelly H. Stevens deeded the German Free School property to the German-Texan Heritage Society, with the understanding that it would be preserved for future generations. The building is now the headquarters of the German-Texan Heritage Society and the German Free School Guild. The guild was established in 1993 as a volunteer service arm of the society to support the facility as a historic cultural center with a library, tours, beginning-German classes, and other regularly scheduled programs.


*Mosqueda robs railroad, becomes hero*

On this day in 1891 the Rio Grande Railroad was robbed of some $75,000 as well as government mail when a train was derailed by bandits. José Mosqueda, the leader of the outlaws, was identified as the culprit and pursued by Brownsville city marshall Santiago Brito, and they both became part of the folklore of the Texas Mexican community. "El Corrido de José Mosqueda" was composed in the 1890s to commemorate the event. A version of almost a half century later presents Brito as a coward fleeing from Mosqueda after a skirmish and Mosqueda as a hero.


*Huge state park opened to public
*
On this day in 1991, Big Bend Ranch State Natural Area was opened to the public. Located in southwestern Brewster County and southeastern Presidio County, the area, now known as Big Bend Ranch State Park, is the largest in the state system, comprised some 299,000 acres in 2004. At one time the Big Bend Ranch was among the ten biggest working ranches in Texas. The first known ranchers in the area were Andrés Madrid, who began running sheep north of the site of present Lajitas in the 1870s, and the Carrasco family. In 1988 the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission formally approved the purchase of the ranch by the state for $8.8 million from the Hondo Oil and Gas Company. The park offers numerous campsites and hiking, horseback riding, and biking trails, including thirty-two miles of multiuse trails that opened in 2003. The Fort Leaton State Historic Site and the park offices, located four miles east of Presidio, mark the park's western entrance; the Barton Warnock Environmental Education Center, one mile east of Lajitas, marks the eastern entrance.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 21st*


*"Know-Nothings" abandon secrecy, meet in Austin
*
On this day in 1856, the American or Know-Nothing party of Texas met for the first time in open convention in Austin. The party was the political manifestation of the xenophobic, anti-Catholic secret society known as the American Order. In the summer of 1855 Texas Know-Nothing leaders launched a plan to gain political control of the state. Lieutenant Governor David C. Dickson, who had defected from the Democratic party, headed the ticket, though he and his fellow candidates steadfastly denied that they were members of the American Order. During the spirited ensuing campaign Sam Houston issued a public letter endorsing the principles of the American Order. Though incumbent Democratic governor Elisha M. Pease defeated Dickson in the August election, the American party elected Lemuel D. Evans to Congress and about a dozen members to the state legislature. Buoyed by these limited successes, the party held a November rally in Austin at which Houston spoke, and at the January convention elected delegates to the national convention and nominated candidates for several state offices. But the national movement soon split over the issue of slavery, and by 1857 the American party had virtually disappeared in Texas.


*Mason County courthouse burns
*
On this day in 1877, the Mason County courthouse burned, destroying all early county records, including those pertaining to the Mason County War. This deadly episode began as a feud over cattle rustling but grew into a conflict between the Anglo and German elements in the community. The violence began in February 1875, when a mob took five suspected cattle thieves from jail and killed three. Shortly thereafter, another suspected rustler was killed by twelve men with blackened faces, prompting his friend Scott Cooley, a former Texas Ranger, to seek revenge. Cooley and his men, including Johnny Ringo, killed at least a dozen men, whereupon Maj. John B. Jones and twenty or thirty Texas Rangers were sent to quiet the difficulties. Jones searched for Cooley and his followers without success before discovering that some of his rangers were former comrades-in-arms of Cooley. After Jones discharged them, Cooley fled into Blanco County and died a short time later. A few people were eventually arrested, but most of the cases were dismissed. After many months of violence, a strained peace returned to Mason County in the fall of 1876, but the courthouse fire ensured that many of the details of the Mason County War would remain unknown.


*Charitable foundation begins bumpy journey
*
On this day in 1960, Sarita Kenedy East, co-heir to the 400,000-acre Kenedy Ranch, and two friends—a Trappist monk named Brother Leo and J. Peter Grace of New York—founded the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation. Mrs. East was the sole member of the foundation. In 1948 she had willed thousands of acres of land to the Oblate Fathers and to the Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi. The rest of her holdings were to be divided among relatives and ranch kin. But in 1960 she executed a new will leaving the bulk of her estate to the foundation. Then, shortly before her death, she named Brother Leo sole member of the foundation. Thus, by the time of her death in 1961, the ingredients were mixed for a chaotic, twenty-one-year legal process that brought forth more than 200 people claiming to be legitimate heirs. Ultimately, Brother Leo was cut out and the foundation began operations (1984) as the largest charitable foundation in South Texas.


*Sid Richardson Hall dedicated*

On this day in 1971, Sid Richardson Hall on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin was dedicated. The building, adjacent to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, was named for oilman and philanthropist Sid Richardson, born in Athens, Texas, in 1891. He became an independent oil producer in Fort Worth in 1919 and was well established as a millionaire by 1935. The public seldom knew of Richardson's business activities, and few knew what he looked like, for he rarely talked to reporters and did not like publicity. In 1947 he established the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, designed to aid churches, hospitals, and schools in Texas. Richardson was considered one of the wealthiest men in the nation; some estimates of his worth ranged up to $800 million, and he was often referred to as the "bachelor billionaire." He died in 1959. The building that bears his name houses the Center for American History, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:
"Around noon on January 21, 1932, a cloud ten thousand feet high from ground to top appeared just outside Amarillo. The winds had been fierce all day, clocked at sixty miles an hour when the curtain dropped over the Panhandle. The sky lost its customary white, and it turned brownish then gray as the thing lumbered around the edge of Amarillo, a city of 43,000 people. Nobody knew what to call it. It was not a rain cloud. Nor was it a cloud holding ice pellets. It was not a twister. It was thick like coarse animal hair; it was alive. People close to it described a feeling of being in a blizzard—a black blizzard, they called it—with an edge like steel wool. The weather bureau people in Amarillo were fascinated by the cloud precisely because it defied explanation. They wrote in their logs that it was "most spectacular." As sunlight came through the lighter edge of the big cloud, it appeared greenish. After hovering near Amarillo, the cloud moved north up the Texas Panhandle, toward Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas.

Bam White saw this black monstrosity approaching from the south, and he thought at first he was looking at a range of mountains on the move, nearly two miles high. But the Llano Estacado was one of the flattest places on earth, and there was no mountain of ten thousand feet, moving or stationary, anywhere on the horizon. He told his boys to run for protection and hide deep under their little house. The cloud passed over Dalhart quickly, briefly blocking the sun so that it looked like dusk outside. It dumped its load and disappeared, its departure as swift as its arrival, the sun's rays lighting the dust.

Some sandstorm, they said down at the DeSoto.

No, sir, that was no sandstorm, others said.

Did you see the color of that monster? Black as the inside of a dog.

The storm left the streets full of coal-colored dust and covered the tops of cars and the sidewalks on Denrock. The dust found the insides, too, coating the dining table and wood floor of Doc Dawson's place, and the fine furniture inside the DeSoto lobby, and the pool tables at Dinwiddie's, and the baseball stands at the edge of town. Folks had it in their hair, their eyes, down their throat. You blew your nose and there it was—black snot. You hacked up the same thing. It burned in the eyes and made people cough. It was the damnedest thing, and a mystery.

What is it? Melt White asked his daddy.

It's the earth itself, Bam said. The earth is on the move.

Why?

Look what they done to the grass, he said. Look at the land: wrong side up."

----- Timothy Egan, "The Worst Hard Time"

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 22nd*


*First steamboat reaches Houston
*
On this day in 1837, the first steamboat to ascend Buffalo Bayou above Harrisburg brought Augustus C. and John K. Allen and a number of other prominent Texans to the new capital of Houston. The _Laura_ was built in Louisville, Kentucky, for use on the Brazos by Thomas F. McKinney and Samuel M. Williams. After her arrival in Texas in June 1835 she had a notable career. In September 1835 the _Laura_ towed the armed schooner _San Felipe_ to engage and capture the Mexican cruiser _Correo,_ which had been seizing United States vessels calling at Texas ports. In April 1836 the _Laura_ took vice president Lorenzo de Zavala and secretary of the treasury Bailey Hardeman to the site of the battle of San Jacinto; they were the first officials to arrive there from Galveston Island. The vessel remained in government service through September 1836, when McKinney and Williams resumed using her to gather Brazos River cotton. In June 1840 she broke both shafts on a bar in the Brazos River and was towed into port. Her subsequent fate is unknown.


*Fifty Cent Act repealed*

On this day in 1883, the Fifty Cent Act was repealed. The act, advocated by Governor O. M. Roberts and passed in July 1879, provided for the selling of Texas land for fifty cents an acre, with one-half of the proceeds to be used to pay down the public debt and the other half to establish a permanent school fund. The act opened to settlement about fifty-two Texas counties, in which the state sold 3,201,283 acres for $1,600,641.55. The Fifty Cent Act was repealed as a public necessity due to fraudulent land speculation.


*Supreme Court legalizes abortion
*
On this day in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in _Roe v. Wade_, a Texas case. The court established a right to abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment. The issues involved in the case are still being hotly debated. The "Roe" in the case, for instance, travels the country speaking in opposition to the court's decision; while abortion-rights groups do their utmost to shield _Roe v. Wade_ from any revision.


*State supreme court rules new school funding system unconstitutional
*
On this day in 1991, in the landmark civil-rights case _Edgewood ISD v. Kirby,_ the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state's system of public school funding was unconstitutional. The case began in 1984 when the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed suit against state education commissioner William Kirby on behalf of the Edgewood Independent School District, citing discrimination against students in poor school districts. The plaintiffs contested the state's reliance on local property taxes to finance its system of public education, contending that this method was intrinsically unequal. In 1989 the Texas Supreme Court ordered the state legislature to implement a new system by the 1990-91 school year. The legislature finally reached consensus in June 1990 and approved a bill to increase state support to public schools by $528 million. The plaintiffs, however, were dissatisfied and asked for another hearing in the Travis County District Court, which agreed that the new legislation did not provide "substantially" equal access to public school funds, and instructed the legislators to come up with another system. The state appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. Following the January 22 ruling, the legislature devised a new plan that consolidated the state's 1,058 school districts into 188 county education districts to assure that public money spent per student would be equal. Exactly one year later, however, on January 22, 1992, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the new plan was illegal. In May 1993, the legislature passed a multi-option plan for reforming school finance. The Texas Supreme Court eventually ruled that the options plan was constitutional but that the legislature still needed to work on equalizing and improving school facilities throughout the state.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Four months after his record-setting trans-Atlantic solo flight, Charles Augustus Lindbergh landed in Abilene for one hour and thirty-six minutes during a nationwide publicity tour. Touching down at Kingsolving Field (now the site of Abilene Zoo) after an almost nine-hour flight from Santa Fe, "Lucky Lindy" was given a hero's welcome by thousands of West Texans. His famous Ryan Monoplane, "Spirit of St. Louis," was taxied into a fenced area and surrounded by National Guard Troops for protection. An escort plane landed later. 

Heading a parade into Abilene were seventy-one mayors and countless officials. Lindbergh was escorted by Mrs. Mildred Moody (1897-1983), wife of Governor Dan Moody and an Abilene native; Mayor Thomas Edward Hayden (1891-1949); and Chamber of Commerce president Charles William Bacon (1871-1947). The young pilot reportedly balked at a "throne" rigged for him in an open Nash automobile, and rode with Mrs. Moody through the town to Federal lawn. Lindbergh delivered a brief speech over loudspeakers, praising the ideal terrain and weather in Texas for developing civil and military aviation. He was escorted back to this plane and flew two hours and forty-two minutes to his next stop in Fort Worth.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Then there's the story of a young Texas lad in Sunday School who was asked to name the birthplace of Jesus. He guessed Gladewater, Mount Pleasant, and Bonham. When told the answer was Palestine, he said "I knew it was in East Texas somewhere."

------ "The Truth About Texas," Lewis Nordyke, 1957

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "Then there's the story of a young Texas lad in Sunday School who was asked to name the birthplace of Jesus. He guessed Gladewater, Mount Pleasant, and Bonham. When told the answer was Palestine, he said "I knew it was in East Texas somewhere."
> 
> ------ "The Truth About Texas," Lewis Nordyke, 1957



I've got a lot of kin in Palestine. If Jesus was born there all I can say is I'm sorry for him! Tony

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## Traces of Texas

It is so funny for me to post these things on my Traces of Texas Facebook page and then see them show up here.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas said:


> It is so funny for me to post these things on my Traces of Texas Facebook page and then see them show up here.



I've been a fan of your posts a long time ... and I am all Texan .... started this just to share with my friends here and it's kind of grown .. thanks for posting all this great info on Facebook ... I'll keep stealing your post and copying them here till you say stop ...

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day, part deux:

This is a KMAC clock. It is in the Nix hospital parking garage in downtown San Antonio. It was given away from 1956-58 as a radio promotion for KMAC radio, located for many years at 630 Khz on your AM dial. All of the clocks had this distinct green neon color. There are several still in service around San Antonio and they supposedly keep excellent time.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day, part deux:
> 
> This is a KMAC clock. It is in the Nix hospital parking garage in downtown San Antonio. It was given away from 1956-58 as a radio promotion for KMAC radio, located for many years at 630 Khz on your AM dial. All of the clocks had this distinct green neon color. There are several still in service around San Antonio and they supposedly keep excellent time.
> 
> View attachment 120902



I walk past the Nix every Thursday for work, I always wondered where that clock came from. Tony

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## Wildthings

Traces of Texas said:


> It is so funny for me to post these things on my Traces of Texas Facebook page and then see them show up here.


I don't do Facebook so I get to enjoy them here...so Thank You for posting them to Facebook!!

and you Wendall for posting them here @woodman6415

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 23rd
*
*Domingo Terán de los Ríos appointed first governor of Texas*

On this day in 1691, the Conde de Gálvez appointed Domingo Terán de los Ríos the first governor of the Spanish province of Coahuila and Texas. Most historians consider the appointment the beginning of Texas as a political entity. Terán's instructions, prepared by a _Junta de Hacienda_ acting under suggestions by Damián Massanet, were to establish seven missions among the Tejas Indians; to investigate rumors of foreign settlements on the coast; and to keep records of geography, natives, and products. Terán's army crossed the Rio Grande in May and explored East Texas as far as Caddo settlements on the Red River until December. By March 1692 Terán had returned to Matagorda Bay, where Juan Enríquez Barroto gave him instructions from the viceroy to explore the lower reaches of the Mississippi River. Bad weather caused Terán to abandon the project and return to Veracruz in April. Terán's mission proved to be a complete failure. He succeeded in founding no new missions, and the expedition added little new information about the region. After his return, Terán compiled a lengthy report, defending his actions and detailing the dismal situation in East Texas
*

Ill-fated Spanish mission established
*
On this day in 1762, the mission of San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz was established at El Cañón, about halfway between San Sabá and San Juan Bautista. After the destruction of Santa Cruz de San Sabá in 1758, the only Spanish settlement in the area was the military outpost of San Luis de las Amarillas. In 1760, Felipe de Rábago y Terán took over as commander there with instructions from Viceroy Marqués de Cruillas to explore lands between the San Saba River and New Mexico with the objective of establishing Spanish presence in a region that was threatened by the French. Rábago elected instead to found a settlement on the upper Nueces River at El Cañón, but the viceroy withheld financial support. Although the mission attracted 400 Indians within a week, the priests, including Diego Jiménez, soon realized that the Apaches had no real interest in conversion, but viewed the site as a haven from their enemies. In 1767, the Marqués de Rubí recommended that San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz and the nearby mission Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria del Cañón be abandoned. Jacobo de Ugarte y Loyola, governor of Coahuila, concurred, and the El Cañón missions officially closed in 1771.

*
Confederates hang former Texas senator as traitor
*
On this day in 1863, Confederate soldiers hanged Martin Hart in Fort Smith, Arkansas. This attorney from Hunt County had served in the Texas legislature, where he spoke out against secession. After secession, he resigned his government post and organized the Greenville Guards, pledging the company's services "in defense of Texas" against invasion. Under color of a Confederate commission, however, he spied against the Confederacy. In Arkansas he led a series of rear-guard actions against Confederate forces, and is alleged to have murdered at least two prominent secessionists. He was captured on January 18, 1863, by Confederate forces.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 24th*


*Reformist Freedmen's Bureau superintendent replaced
*
On this day in 1867, Joseph Barr Kiddoo was replaced as superintendent of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas. Kiddoo, born in Pennsylvania in 1840, was appointed superintendent in 1866, following distinguished military service during the Civil War. During his tenure he was sympathetic to both planters and blacks. Kiddoo imposed heavy fines on whites caught enticing freedmen away from employers with whom they were under contract, limited bureau interference in the civil courts, and instituted free education for blacks in Galveston and Houston. Under Kiddoo's program perhaps 10,000 blacks learned to read and write. Although Texas planters recognized that Kiddoo was changing the social structure of the state by his reforms, many appreciated his attempts to help planters and freedmen work together. Eventually, however, because he thought the laws reduced blacks to a condition of involuntary servitude, he suspended some sections of the state's black codes, whereupon Gen. Charles Griffin relieved Kiddoo as superintendent; the excuse was that an old wound received during the war prevented him from fulfilling his duties. Kiddoo retired from the army in 1870 and died in 1880.


*Famous former slave dies at the hands of Indians
*
On this date in 1871, Britton Johnson was killed by a band of Kiowas who attacked his wagontrain. He had become legendary in the previous decade for pursuing Indians who kidnapped his wife and children. After his adventures on the Llano Estacado, Johnson worked as a teamster hauling goods between Weatherford and Fort Griffin. The evidence of spent cartridges suggests that he defended himself fiercely before dying. He and his men were buried in a common grave beside the road.


*"Tri-Cities" finally unite as Baytown*

On this day in 1948, the former "Tri-Cities" of Baytown, Goose Creek, and Pelly united to form the city of Baytown. The area had been largely undeveloped until the opening of the Goose Creek oilfield in 1916. All three communities grew up around the oilfield, thanks in large part to the promotional efforts of Ross Sterling, president of Humble Oil and Refining Company. Sterling and his associates established a refinery near the oilfield and bought 2,200 acres there, calling their site Baytown. Construction began in the fall of 1919, though Baytown remained a collection of tents and shanties until 1923, when Humble laid out streets, provided utilities, sold lots, and even furnished financing for employees' homes. The residents of nearby Goose Creek voted to incorporate in January 1919, and the residents of neighboring Pelly, fearing that Goose Creek might absorb their town, followed suit a year later. Due to the pervasive paternalism of Humble, the community of Baytown never incorporated, and this enabled Pelly to annex the "contiguous and unincorporated" territory of Baytown in December 1945. But when Pelly and Goose Creek voted to consolidate in February 1947, the citizens selected the name Baytown for their new combined city. The voters approved a new city charter on January 24, 1948. Baytown today is a highly industrialized city of oil refineries and rubber, chemical, and carbon black plants

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Texas was a new country then .... and certainly an aggressive country. Every brush had its thron, every animal, reptile, or insect had its horn, tooth, or sting; every male human his revolver; and each was ready to use his weapon of offense on any unfortunate sojourner, on the smallest or even without the smallest provocation."

----- Richard Irving Dodge, "The Hunting Grounds of the Great West," 1877

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The worst Dust Bowl year for Texas was probably 1935. Regional dust storms lasted for a total of 908 hours that year in Amarillo. From January to March, 1935, visibility in that fine Texas city declined to zero seven times; one of these complete blackouts lasted eleven hours. In another instance a single storm raged for 3½ days.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 25th*


*Isleño leader dies*

On this day in 1779, Vicente Álvarez Travieso, leader of the _isleño_ settlers of San Antonio, died. Álvarez Travieso was born on the island of Tenerife in 1705. When Spanish royal authorities, hoping to reduce the expense of a purely military settlement, decided on a plan to transfer a number of Canary Islanders to Texas, Álvarez Travieso joined them. When they arrived at their new home, San Fernando de Béxar (now San Antonio), in 1731, the _isleños_ established the first regularly organized municipal government in Texas and elected Álvarez Travieso _alguacil mayor_ (chief constable) for life. He soon became a leading spokesman for the colonists and something of a problem for the colonial administration. When the islanders were refused permission to travel to Saltillo for medical attention, Álvarez Travieso launched a series of lawsuits on behalf of his disgruntled companions. In the 1770s the Álvarez Travieso clan became known for their vigorous pursuit of unbranded stray cattle, many of which had wandered away from neighboring mission pastures. To stop such "excesses" Governor Vicencio de Ripperdá conducted two rustling trials against the ranchers of the San Antonio River valley. Álvarez Travieso died just after these proceedings.


*First church meeting in Texas*

On this day in 1834, the first Baptist church meeting in Texas took place at Daniel Parker's home in present Anderson County. Parker, who came to Texas in 1833 to apply for a land grant, realized that a Baptist church could not be organized in Texas without breaking Mexican law. Therefore, he went back to Illinois, where he and seven others organized the Pilgrim Predestinarian Regular Baptist Church. The group then traveled by wagon train to Texas. In 1837 Pilgrim Church gave Parker and Garrison Greenwood authority to organize Primitive Baptist churches and ordain ministers and deacons. By 1841 they had established eight churches in Texas. Pilgrim Church had met in many different locations since 1834, and in 1848 the members voted to build a meetinghouse where Parker had been buried, at the present location of Pilgrim Church, 2½ miles southeast of Elkhart.


*Lone Star heraldry*

On this day in 1839, the Republic of Texas Congress adopted the Texas coat of arms -- a white star of five points on an azure ground encircled by olive and live oak branches. The national seal bore these arms encircled by the words _Republic of Texas_. In 1845 the designation was altered from _Republic_ to _State_.


*Death of "Cattle King" touches off family financial scandal*

On this day in 1919, rancher C. C. (Lum) Slaughter died, precipitating a tangled family financial scandal. Born in 1837 in Sabine County, Lum Slaughter claimed to be the first male child born of a marriage contracted under the Republic of Texas. About 1877 he established one of the largest ranches in West Texas, the Long S, on the headwaters of the Colorado River, and around 1898 he bought almost 250,000 acres in Cochran and Hockley counties and established the Lazy S Ranch. Frequently titled the "Cattle King of Texas," Slaughter became one of the country's largest individual owners of cattle and land (over a million acres and 40,000 cattle by 1906) and was for years the largest individual taxpayer in Texas. Less than a week after his death, however, his younger brother, Bill, with whom he had had a long and strained financial relationship but who managed the Long S, was accused of fraud. Bill had attempted to sell his nephew Bob Slaughter's new Western S Ranch on the Rio Grande in Hudspeth County to an "unknown company" from Mexico. Learning of the fraudulent negotiations, Bob, backed by his brothers, confronted and fired his uncle. Although he later filed a $3 million slander suit against his nephews, Bill Slaughter apparently never collected anything from it.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"They cut us up like boarding house pie. And that's real small pieces."

------ University of Texas Football Coach Darrell Royal in 1960, after the Longhorns were defeated by the Rice Owls. I love this quote because I've heard that "boarding house pie" reference used by several older folks in my life. Love those old colorful expressions!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The last surviving Confederate General, Felix Huston Robertson, was also the only Texas-born general to serve the Confederacy during the Civil War. Robertson was born in 1839 at Washington-on-the-Brazos. His father, Jerome B. Robertson, also fought in the Civil War and was for a time commander of Hood's Brigade. Felix attended Baylor University and went to West Point in 1857, but left before graduation to serve the Confederacy. He was a harsh disciplinarian whose Indian-like features gave him the nickname "Comanche Robertson."

In 1864, Robertson was assigned a field command, leading first a brigade and later a division of cavalry. On October 3, 1864, a group of guerrillas associated with Robertson's troops during the campaign slaughtered more than one hundred black Union soldiers who had been wounded in the previous day's fighting. One of his subordinate officers, Champ Ferguson, was executed by hanging after the war for his part in what the Northern press deemed the "Saltville Massacre. Noted historian William C. Davis, in his book "An Honorable Defeat. The Last Days of the Confederate Government," reports that Robertson personally "join(ed) in the act of villainy" although he escaped prosecution. Robertson was severely wounded in the elbow during the Battle of Buck Head Creek near Augusta, Georgia, in late November 1864. He lived, but never resumed field duty.

After the war, Robertson returned to Texas and settled in Waco. He studied law, passed his bar exam, and established a profitable legal practice. He and his father speculated in real estate and invested in several local railroads. After the death of his wife, Robertson remarried in 1892. He attempted to enter local politics in 1902 as he ran for mayor of Waco in the Democratic primaries. However, he was defeated by incumbent J. W. Riggins. He became the commander of the local United Confederate Veterans in 1911. In 1913, Texas Governor Oscar B. Colquitt appointed him as the Texas Representative for the Battle of Gettysburg Commission, a national group that commemorated the battle's fiftieth anniversary in July 1913. He died in Waco in 1928 and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. At the time of his death he was the last surviving Confederate general.

William C. Davis had this to say about Robertson: "Perjurer, sycophant, quite probably a murderer, Felix Robertson of Texas was almost without doubt the most reprehensible man in either army to wear the uniform of a general. Only by the narrowest of margins did he escape being tried by his own government for what later generations would call war crimes."

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- January 28th

*
*Italian hero of San Jacinto arrives in Texas*

On this day in 1836, Prospero Bernardi arrived in Texas aboard the schooner _Pennsylvania_ as a member of Capt. Amasa Turner's volunteer company, raised in New Orleans. Bernardi was born in Italy in 1794 and was a notary by trade. He enlisted in the Texas army on February 13, 1836, and distinguished himself in the battle of San Jacinto. He remained in the army until January or February 1837, when he was medically discharged from John Smith's company at Galveston because of a spinal injury sustained during combat. Bernardi received a bounty grant and a first-class headright grant for his military service, but both were assigned to other parties. Bernardi's whereabouts by 1838 were unclear. In February of that year two former fellow soldiers testified that they understood he was deceased. A bust of the Italian soldier stands in front of the Hall of State, Fair Park, Dallas, to commemorate his participation in the battle of San Jacinto.


*"Murder steer": Fine Gilliland kills Fort Davis cattleman*

On this day in 1891, Fine Gilliland shot and killed Fort Davis cattleman Henry Harrison Powe during a roundup near Leoncita Springs in Brewster County. Gilliland had been sent by the firm of Dubois and Wentworth to make sure none of the local ranchers appropriated any of the company's cattle; he became embroiled in a dispute with Powe over an unbranded brindle yearling steer found without its mother. Powe believed that the steer belonged to a cow with his HHP brand, but Gilliland disagreed and a gunfight ensued. Gilliland killed Powe and fled on horseback, but was himself killed a few days later in a shootout with two Texas Rangers. Meanwhile, the cowboys branded "MURDER" on one side of the yearling and "JAN 28 91" on the other. Legend has it that the "murder steer" still appears whenever foul play has occurred; the incident also inspired an episode of the television series _Rawhide_ and a ballad by Canadian folk singer Ian Tyson.


*First air-conditioned building west of the Mississippi?*

On this day in 1912, philanthropist Frances Lutcher dedicated the First Presbyterian Church in Orange in honor of the family of her husband, lumberman Henry J. Lutcher, whom she had married in 1858. This magnificent marble structure was reputedly the first structure west of the Mississippi River to have air conditioning. Henry J. Lutcher died in October 1912. In 1921 his widow dedicated the Frances Ann Lutcher Hospital, the first modern hospital in Orange. She died three years later.

* 
Catastrophic explosion kills Texas astronaut and her colleagues
*
On this day in 1986, the space shuttle _Challenger_ exploded shortly after takeoff. Seven American astronauts were killed, including Texas resident Judith Arlene Resnik. She was the second American woman astronaut. She had taken her first space flight in August 1984 aboard the orbiter _Discovery._

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day is a touch risque'. Here, Traces of Texas reader Johnny Hughes' reminisces about the dating scene at the Lindsey Theater in Lubbock during the 1950s. Johnny is a rather unique and legendary character, and this is how he wrote it:

TAKING DATES TO THE LINDSEY THEATER: LUBBOCK, TEXAS

by Johnny Hughes

"Fireworks always reminds me of the Lindsey Theater in Lubbock. Y'all remember the nicest moving picture show house in your town? From ninth grade all through high school, the Lindse was the social, focal point of our town. When a car load of boys hoping to get to talk to a car load of girls were making the circle: Hi D Ho, Hi D Ho Jr on College Avenue, the Village Mill, across the street, to Etter's Rebel at 34th and P, giving the Lindsay and State Theaters a drive by was in there. Etter's had car hops on roller skates.

Before you'd ask a gal for a movie date, there was the coke date. In Texas, coke is a generic term meaning cherry lime, root beer, and what folks from the lesser states call pop or soda water. A coke dated started with one of the most terrifying experiences and went on to a more terrifying experience. First, you had to ask her and risk some phony baloney excuse, "I have to wash my hair" which meant you are not cool enough for me or anyone I know. If she did say yes, you had to meet her ax murderer-looking father and remember the eye contact and firm handshake while being given a Charlie Manson eye dance. 'Ol Daddy would set a curfew with the unspoken you might be killed if you were over five minutes late.

You might go to the Hi D Ho for a coke but since the man paid for everything, ususally not a burger. Then there was the sole reason for coke dates: parking which implied necking a.k.a. smooching a.k.a. making out and for certain, attempted light petting where a mental score of first bast, second base, third base was kept but never talked about. It is a myth about all that locker room talk as boys do not wish to share their rare successes because of their far more frequent failures, We'd go parking out in the country on dirt road, on isolated spots on Texas Tech's campus, and the traditional spot, Prairie Dog Town in Mackenzie Park. It was good because there was a row of cars with teenies necking which set an 
example for your date of the reason for your presence. There was one legendary Lubbock policeman, Copper Rollins, who would come shine lights and even get out and talk to folks.

Out in the country, you might encounter sheriff's deputies hoping to see half-clothed teenie women, if that is not an oxymoron.

Movie dates were often Friday or Saturday night affairs. There were larger than life oil paintings in the lobby at the Lindsey and it was a class joint with a big balconey where dates 
could be semi-alone in the dark. Goody. Goody. We might pick our date up at 7:30 and enter the movie in the middle which didn't seem odd at all. In this Golden Age of the movies, 
movies had Intermission with an overture. I'd go to the Lindsey lobby to smoke and flirt with other girls and my date would save our seats. You'd want to be back to sing along with 
songs with the lyrics up on the screen and a bouncing ball. I date myself. Y'all are not as old as me. Our high school motto was "Rough as hell. Sweet as heaven. Senior class of '57."
There was the dilema of whether to hold hands, put your arm around her, cop a feel. Daddys didn't have much to worry over because gals had on layers of clothes and mysterious 
garments. We'd dress up some for the Lindsey, no ties, but slacks, sports coats in season. Gals would have on panties, a bra held in place by buckles, clasps, and it might be mildly 
padded. The gal had on panty hose and a garter belt, and a girtle, nearly required at Texas Tech, again held tightly by security devices. Over that, she might have fifty petty coats, a 
dress, and a sweater. There was an actual gal down in there if you were persistent.

It was cool to go to the major flicks early in their run. When Red River with John Wayne premeired around 1949, Hemphill Wells also opened and they gave away these packets of 
four chocolates and they had an escalator we would ride like a carnival ride. We'd walk downtown stopping at Sears to look at our feet in the exray machine and sit on the saddles, 
maybe buy a quarter's worth of hot peanuts.

This was at a time in the mid to late fifties when the teenies were in rebellion and called juvenile delinquents. The biggest event was the midnight movies at the Lindsey. One time a few of us worthless boys, trying to be James Dean, spent the afternoon making flour bombs, a Kleenex full of baking flour, secured by a rubber band. At midnight, we hurled these from the baloney on all the folks below. Made a big white cloud. No one snitched us off, being the rebellion and all. The next year, at midnight, my best friend and I, lit a string of firecrackers right by the screen. We lacked a coherent exit plan and were immediately seized by the Lubbock police, arrested, and walked to jail, a few blocks.

I was fourteen and this was my first arrest. Daddy came down in good humor and paid 'em something. We were put on probation and had to be lectured by this old dude, John Wilson, who majored in stern in college. Worse, we were forced to go to the Boy's Club and take part in their activities. They had a gym, a boxing ring I hated, a dangerous wood craft room with spinning saws and other minor criminals all around, a baseball field and teams you were assigned to, which I hated. I was the eternal right fielder, last guy chosen and bad at all sports even though I tried them all: football, baseball, basketball, track, boxing, and golf. I was good at poker, a blessing since they play with real money and you do not bump into big guys or get slugged. The swimming was way more than weird. We were required to swim naked. The official reason was that the loose threads from bathing suits would clog the drain.
I miss the Lindsey. I miss downtown Lubbock. Remember it?"

----- Johnny Hughes

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## woodman6415

TONY LAMA, SR. (1887-1974) STARTED HIS BOOT COMPANY IN EL PASO, TEXAS 105 YEARS AGO

*Reposted by popular demand.

Tony Lama was born to Italian immigrants in the year 1887. Orphaned at age eleven, his uncle apprenticed him to a cobbler in Syracuse, New York. As an apprentice, young Tony learned to be a cobbler and learned the properties of the different skins and leathers. He joined the United States Army and in 1910 was stationed with the Cavalry at Fort Bliss, Texas. Naturally he was assigned to duty as a cobbler and started hand-crafting boots for the soldiers. His expertise as a custom boot maker spread quickly among the cowboys and ranchers of the Southwest. Once he completed his tour of duty with the Calvary, he settled in the border town of El Paso, Texas.

Tony Lama started his company in 1912 as a small boot repair shop on East Overland Street. He continued to do business with the soldiers at Fort Bliss. That first year, with the help of one assistant, he repaired boots for the soldiers and hand crafted twenty pairs of hand-made boots. About this time, the Army started to phase out the Cavalry and Tony Lama concentrated on the western boots for his customers. Cowboys and ranchers would come to Tony Lama’s shop with hides, requesting custom made boots. He would hand craft custom-made western boots for his customers with unmatched style and comfort.

In 1917 he married Ester Hernandez and they had six children. The children became active workers in his company. He taught his children the boot-making skills which had made his boots famous across the Southwest.

By 1933 his factory was producing forty pairs of boots a day. During World War II the company had a difficult time due to scarcity of leather but as soon as the war ended the business boomed. In 1946 Tony Lama turned his business into a corporation. In fact, in 1948 he made of pair of custom-made boots for the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman.

Business continued to boom during the 1950s as the company became an innovator in styles and technology. They made boots that were extremely stylish for both cowboys and the general public. Some of the characteristics were low heels and vibrant colors and designs. At this time the company employed 780 employees and produced 3,100 pairs of boots a day.

Tony Lama died in 1974. The legacy created by the cobbler from Fort Bliss lives on in legendary boots made with unmatched craftsmanship and innovative technology. Today the company is owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

Source: http://www.bootoutfitters.com/history_of_tony_lama.html

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## woodman6415

GENERAL JOHN J. PERSHING LEADING THE U.S. ARMY ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE INTO MEXICO IN PURSUIT OF PANCHO VILLA, 1916 OR 1917

Courtesy of the El Paso Museum of History.

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## woodman6415

Today is Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1827 - The Fredonian rebels fled when Mexican troops approached. The Declaration of Independence of the republic of Fredonia was signed at Nacogdoches on December 21, 1826. (Fredonian Rebellion) 

1859 - William Menger opened the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, next to the Alamo. Theodore Roosevelt later recruited his Rough Riders from the hotel in 1898. 

1961 - In Houston, TX, voters approved financing for a domed stadium (The Astrodome). 

1986 - In Houston, U.S. President Ronald Reagan spoke at a memorial service honoring the astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Many of the Texas country blues musicians toiled in obscurity, only to be discovered late in their lives. Mance Lipscomb is probably the best example of these artists. He was born in 1894 in the Navasota River bottoms and spent his life as a sharecropper. An intuitive and cunning guitarist who originally learned fiddle from his father, Lipscomb entertained at parties and barn dances. Though he made trips to Dallas to pick cotton during the harvest, and would anonymously watch Blind Lemon Jefferson play, he never made the trek to any of the urban blues centers with the idea of performing himself.

Lipscomb "turned pro" when he sas sixty-five ... In 1950, Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Rocords, an archival label in San Francisco, was led by Houston disc jockey Mack McCormick to Navasota, where Lipscomb could generally be found playing on his porch.

A guitarist whose staggering technique underscored a lifetime spent writing and cataloging a spectacular range of material (from country blues to ballads to jazz and folk) by all accounts Lipscomb was a devout, friendly, gentle man, and it must have been astonishing to him when the records he recorded for Arhoolie brought him a bit of fame.

He criscrossed the United States, appearing before adoring fans and bedazzled musicians at various clubs and folk festivals, but he found a spiritual home in Austin. For almost ten years, Lipscomb was a kind godfather to a city-wide family of players, preaching his gospel of Texas music in "churches" like the Armadillo World Headquarters and the Vulcan Gas Company. He passed away in 1976, but scores of modern guitarists ----- from Jimmie Vaughan to Ian Moore ----- are quick to point to Lipscomb as a genuine Texas musical force. Arhoolies "Texas Sharecropper and Songster" and "You Got to Reap What You Sow" are recommended."

----- Rick Koster, "Texas Music," 1998

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
The "big tree" Live Oak at Goose Island State Park is estimated to be more than 1100 years old. Some recent estimates believe that it is closer to 2000 years of age. It is estimated to have survived 40-50 major hurricanes and is one of the largest Live Oaks in the world. The tree was believed to be the largest Live Oak in Texas until 2003, when a larger one was found in Brazoria county. Its trunk is more than 35 feet in circumference. Although it is a massive tree, it stands "only" 44 feet tall, which means that many live oaks are taller than it is. The reason it is so short, relatively speaking, is because of the near constant wind off the gulf. Here's a photo of the tree:

https://tracesoftexas.smugmug.com/Images-of-Texas/Recently-Added-Photos/i-WmPQTdJ

Good stuff!

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## Wildthings

Here's a more recent picture taken by yours truly 3 weeks ago. Maybe not a nice of picture though

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 1st*


*Ground broken for new Capitol*

On this date in 1882, building commissioners Nimrod Norton and Joseph Lee turned the first shovelful of dirt for the present Texas Capitol. Construction was financed by the sale of three million acres of public land in the Panhandle, under the auspices of the XIT Ranch. The main building material is red granite from Marble Mountain, west of Austin. The Renaissance Revival structure, for which the Capitol in Washington was the model, was dedicated in 1888. The total cost was $3.75 million. The cost of restoration in the 1990s was $200 million.


*United States and Mexico sign Rio Grande Rectification Treaty
*
On this day in 1933, the United States and Mexico signed the Rio Grande Rectification Treaty, which called for construction of a 590-foot-wide floodway and 66-foot-wide normal flow channel along a stretch of the river from Cordova Island to below Fort Quitman. The agreement became necessary after the 1916 completion of Elephant Butte Dam near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Assuring water for irrigation, Elephant Butte also kept the stream from flooding and cleaning its own channel. The bed filled with silt, and uncontrolled wanderings not only wasted water but destroyed crops and shifted the international boundary. When little water flowed through the river the channel still marked the border, but that line became more and more difficult to find. The agreement made the international boundary the middle of the deepest channel of the Rio Grande within the rectified channel. The project was completed in 1938 at a cost of $5 million, 88 percent of which the United States paid. The International Boundary Commission, later renamed the International Boundary and Water Commission, was given responsibility for its construction and maintenance.


*Composer of state song dies*

On this day in 1971, William John Marsh, the composer of "Texas, Our Texas," died in Fort Worth. Marsh, an Englishman, moved to Texas in 1904 and became a United States citizen in 1917. He taught composition, theory, and organ at Texas Christian University and published more than 100 pieces. His projects included anthems, pageants, masses, and reportedly the first opera, _The Flower Fair at Peking_ (1931), to be composed and produced in Texas. He was also chairman of the Composer's Guild of the Texas Federation of Music Clubs. But his greatest claim to fame was the song “Texas, Our Texas.” He composed the music in 1924 to lyrics that he cowrote with Gladys Yoakum Wright. Their entry won a statewide contest and was officially adopted as the state song in 1929. John Philip Sousa extolled the piece as the finest state song he had ever heard.

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## Tony

That's an incredible tree, but I hate working with that crap!!!!

Is Goose Island by you Barry?

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> That's an incredible tree, but I hate working with that crap!!!!
> 
> Is Goose Island by you Barry?


No Goose Island is not by me. It's just north of Rockport, TX where I went duck hunting recently

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## woodman6415

Today is Thursday, February 2, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1802 - Blas María Herrera was born in San Antonio. He was known as the "Paul Revere" of the Texas Revolution. He warned Texian forces of the advance of Santa Anna’s troops. 

1848 - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the War with Mexico and specifying the location of the international boundary. The treaty turned over portions of land to the U.S., including Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The U.S. gave Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed responsibility of all claims against Mexico by American citizens. Texas had already entered the U.S. on December 29, 1845. 

1856 - The Texas legislature granted Dallas a town charter. 

1949 - Golfer Ben Hogan was seriously injured in an auto accident in Van Horn, TX. 

2015 - RadioShack was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange due to its average market capitalization remaining below $50 million longer than 30 consecutive days. 

Texas Quote

Texas is neither southern nor western. Texas is Texas.
- Senator William Blakley

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The city of Garland was originally called "Duck Creek." The first Duck Creek school was built in 1858, and three stores and two grist mills were in operation in the 1870s. Duck Creek was granted a post office in 1878. In 1886 the Katy railroad built through the area from Greenville to Dallas. and a short time later the Santa Fe railroad crossed the Katy from the south, going from Dallas to Greenville. Both railroads missed the village of Duck Creek, however, so various citizens laid out two new towns. The one near the Santa Fe depot was named "Embree" in honor of the Postmaster, K.H. Embree, and the one near the Katy depot assumed the proud name of "Duck Creek." The hamlets refused to join hands, but in 1887 a fire wiped out most of the original Duck Creek, at which time New Duck Creek claimed the post office. The village of Embree contested it. The matter was put to rest in 1888 when newly-elected Congressman Jo Abbott got the post office department to relocate the post office halfway between New Duck Creek and Embree, naming it "Garland" in honor of President Grover Cleveland's attorney General, A.H. Garland, who had earlier been a Confederate congressman from Tennessee.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 2nd*


*María Coronel becomes "the Woman in Blue"
*
On this day in 1620, María Coronel took religious vows in a Franciscan order of nuns who wore an outer cloak of coarse blue cloth over the traditional brown habit. As a nun, now known as María de Jesús de Agreda, she had numerous mystic experiences (more than 500) in which she thought she visited a distant, unknown land. Franciscan authorities determined that the land was eastern New Mexico and far western Texas. Sister María supposedly contacted several Indian cultures, including the Jumanos, and told the natives to seek instruction from the Spanish. Shortly thereafter, some fifty Jumano Indians appeared at the Franciscan convent of old Isleta, south of present Albuquerque, in July 1629 and said that they had been sent to find religious teachers. They already demonstrated rudimentary knowledge of Christianity, and when asked who had instructed them replied, "the Woman in Blue." A subsequent expedition to the Jumanos, led by Fray Juan de Salas, encountered a large band of Indians in Southwest Texas. The Indians claimed that they had been advised by the Woman in Blue of approaching Christian missionaries. Subsequently, some 2,000 natives presented themselves for baptism and further religious instruction. Two years later, Fray Alonso de Benavides traveled to Spain, where he interviewed María de Jesús at Agreda. Sister María told of her bilocations and acknowledged that she was indeed the Lady in Blue. After she died in 1665, her story was published in Spain. Although she said her last visitation to the New World was in 1631, the legend of her appearances was current until the 1690s. In the 1840s a mysterious woman in blue reportedly traveled the Sabine River valley aiding malaria victims, and her apparition was reported as recently as World War II.


*Ursuline Academy founded in Dallas*

On this date in 1874, the Ursuline Sisters started their academy in Dallas. The Ursulines, founded in Italy in 1535, came to Quebec in 1639, New Orleans in 1727, Galveston in 1847, and San Antonio in 1851. Their academies welcome girls of all denominations without regard for race, color, or national or ethnic origin. The original school in Dallas, in a four-room building on Bryan Street, opened with seven students. The academy, now located in Preston Hollow, is the oldest continuously operated Catholic school in Dallas.


*Cotton comes to the Rio Grande valley
*
On this day in 1830, business partners John Stryker and James Wiley Magoffin arrived at Matamoros in the sloop _Washington_. They made port carrying a newly designed cotton gin and several hundred bags of upland cotton seed and set out distributing free seed to landowners in the Rio Grande Valley. Magoffin eventually moved to Chihuahua, but Stryker purchased property along the Rio Grande. Stryker, an agriculturalist, was appointed consul for the port of Goliad (later the port of Matagorda) by President Andrew Jackson in 1835. He bought a league of land in Victoria, where he was living at the time of his death in 1844. His efforts in cotton seed distribution and the introduction of the cotton gin enabled the profitable cotton culture of the Rio Grande Valley. Years later those same cotton fields provided the pathway for the dreaded boll weevil’s entry into the United States.

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## barry richardson

Here ya go Wendell, yall will want to include this as an historical Texas milestone... 

http://heatst.com/culture-wars/texa...-elected-official-to-come-out-as-transgender/


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## woodman6415

barry richardson said:


> Here ya go Wendell, yall will want to include this as an historical Texas milestone...
> 
> http://heatst.com/culture-wars/texa...-elected-official-to-come-out-as-transgender/



Can use any bathroom in Target stores ... and join the Boy Scouts now

Reactions: Agree 1


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## woodman6415

I really like the chickens gone dry and cows quit laying part 


The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Pampa was a Texas oil boom town and wilder than a woodchuck. It traveled fast and traveled light. Oil boom towns come that way and they go that way. Houses aren't built to last very long, because the big majority of the working folks will walk into town, work like a horse for a while, put the oil wells in, drill the holes down fifteen thousand feet, bring in the black gushers, case off the hot flow, cap the high pressure, put valves on them, get the oil to flowing steady and easy into the rich people's tanks, and then the field, a big thick forest of drilling rigs, just sets there pumping oil all over the world to run limousines, factories, war machines, and fast trains. There's not much work left to do in the oil fields once the 
boys have developed it by hard work and hot sweat, and so they move along down the road, as broke, as down and out, as tough, as hard hitting, as hard working, as the day they come to town.

The town was mainly a scattering of little old shacks. They was built to last a few months; built out of old rotten boards, flattened oil barrels, buckets, sheet iron, crates of all kinds, and gunny sacks. Some were lucky enough to have a floor, Others just the dusty old dirt. The rent was high on these shacks. A common price was five dollars a week for a three roomer. That meant one room cut three ways. Women folks worked hard trying to make their little shacks look like something, but with the dry weather, hot sun, high wind, and the dust piling in, they could clean and wipe and mop and scrub their shanty twenty-four hours a day and never get caught up. Their floors always was warped and crooked. The old 
linoleum rugs had raised six families and put eighteen kids through school. The walls were made out thin boards, one inch thick and covered over with whatever the women could nail on them: old blue wallpaper, wrapping paper from the boxcars along the tracks, once in a while a layer of beaver board painted with whitewash, or some haywire color ranging from deep-sea blue through all of the midnight blues to a blazing red that would drive a Jersey bull crazy. Each family usually nailed together some sort of a chair or bench out of junk materials and left it in the house when they moved away, so that after an even thirty-five cents worth of hand-made wash benches, or an old chair, or table had been left behind, 
the landlord hired a sign painter to write the word "Furnished" on the "For Rent" sign.

Lots of folks in the oil fields come in from the country. They heard about the high wages and the great number of jobs. The old farm has dried up and blowed away. The chickens are gone dry and the cows have quit laying. The wind has got high and the sky is black with dust. Blow flies are taking the place over, licking off the milk pails, falling into the cream, getting hung up in the molasses. Besides that, they ain't no more work to do on the farm; can't buy no seed for planting, nor feed for the horses and cows.

Hell, I can work. I like to work. Born working. Raised working. Married working. What kind of work do they want done in this oil boom town? If work is what they want done, plowing or digging or carrying something, I can do that. If they want a cellar dug or some dirt moved, I can do that. If they want some rock hauled and some cement shoveled, I can do that. If they want some boards sawed and some nails drove, hell's bells, I can do that. If they want a tank truck drove, I can do that, too, or if they want some steel towers bolted up, give me a day's practice, and I can do that. I could get pretty good at it. And I wouldn't quit. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to.

Hell with this whole dam layout! I'm a-gonna git up an' hump up, an' walk off of this cussed dam place! Farm, toodle-do. Here I come, oil town! Hundred mile down that big wide road."

----- Woody Guthrie describes Pampa, Texas in "Bound for Glory," 1943

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Can use any bathroom in Target stores ... and join the Boy Scouts now



And probably kick a dozen Yankees asses.

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## woodman6415

Also first State with the balls to do this: 
Gov. Abbott Cuts Off Grants to Travis County Over 'Sanctuary City' Policy

http://www.tinyurl.com/z49ysp2

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## woodman6415

Sam Houston's 1839 Republic of Texas passport. It reads:

Department of State
Republic of Texas

( Late President
Whereas General Sam Houston ( a citizen of
the Republic of Texas, has represented and made known
to this Department, his intention to travel in the
United States of American; also in Her Britannic
Majesty's possessions in North America; also in
the Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland in
Europe; and also in the Kingdom of France
in Europe,

These are therefore to request all persons whom it
may concern in either of the Countries aforesaid, or in
any other Country in Amity with the Republic of
Texas, to permit the said General Sam Houston,
the Bearer hereof, freely and safely to pass through
all or any of said countries (he deporting himself
peaceably and according to the laws thereof and in case
of need to give him all lawful aid, protection & support
A[nd] he the said General Sam Houston is hereby
[per]mitted to travel beyond the limits of the Republic of
[Texas] aforesaid for such time as is authorised by the laws
of said Republic unless sooner duty recalled by proclamation
or otherwise.

The said Gen'l Sam Houston is forty five years of age Six feet two inches high hair light, complexion fair forehead high, Eyes blue, nose acqueline, mouth full & chin dimpled and the Signature as follows

Given under my hand and Seal of Office at the City of Houston this
day of February A.D. One thousand Eight hundred and thirty nine and of the Independence of the Republic of Texas the Third.

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## ripjack13

Tony said:


> And probably kick a dozen Yankees asses.



I doubt that....maybe some Cali snowflakes....


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## woodman6415

ripjack13 said:


> I doubt that....maybe some Cali snowflakes....



But they don't fight .. to busy spreading love and tolerance...

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## ripjack13



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## Tony

ripjack13 said:


> I doubt that....maybe some Cali snowflakes....



Gay, Straight, Trans, whatever. I'll still bet on a Texas over a dozen Yankees every time.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

How explosive was the growth of agriculture in Texas after the Civil War? From 1870-1890, the number of farms in Texas grew from 61,125 to 228,126. During the same time period, cotton production went from 350,628 bales produced to 1,471,242 bales produced and the value of farms, tools and livestock rose from $80,777,550 to $552,127,104. "Farmers are pouring into Western Texas so fast," claimed a New Orleans newspaper in 1886, "that ranchmen have just enough time to move their cattle out and prevent their tails being chopped off by the advancing hoe.:.."

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 3rd*

*
Republic authorizes mercantile firm to issue money
*
On this day in 1841, the Republic of Texas Congress authorized the firm of McKinney, Williams and Company to issue notes for circulation as money, using for security mortgages on real estate, slaves, and a sawmill. This desperate measure reflected the history of money in the republic, where the various issues of currency--including "exchequer bills," "interest notes," and "red backs"--all were textbook examples of "fiat money," or paper money not redeemable in specie. The republic issued a total of $4,095,990 in paper money. Until the approach of annexation, government-issued currency was typified by Sam Houston's promissory notes of 1837, called "Star Money" because they were decorated with a star. Houston printed this money "to avoid the absolute dissolution of the Government." Measured against United States dollars, red backs (issued by the Lamar administration in 1839) started with a value of 37½ cents and fell to two cents before expiring completely. Other currencies underwent a similar, if less dire, inflation, and citizens--especially government employees, who were paid in these currencies--suffered accordingly. Rich in natural resources, poor in manufactured goods, and chronically depleted of silver and gold (which had to be paid for imports), the Republic of Texas sorely needed the economic blessings that came with annexation to the United States.


*Coastal brewery serves up a cold one*

On this day in 1896, the Galveston Brewing Company began operations. St. Louis brewers Adolphus Busch and William J. Lemp were major stockholders. By this time Texas boasted more than fifty years of brewing history that began with small home operations and gradually expanded to commercial breweries, many centered on sizable German populations. The impressive Galveston complex included a large ice plant, cold-storage rooms, several water wells, railroad tracks, and a brewery that produced up to 75,000 barrels of beer annually. The facility survived the Galveston hurricane of 1900 with minor damage. Brewed brands High Grade and Seawall Bond were popular beers. During Prohibition, the company produced Galvo, a “nonintoxicating cereal beverage.” Though Galveston Brewing Company was one of the few regional breweries to survive Prohibition, small regional brewers declined in Texas as more national chains moved into the state.


*Teenage idol Buddy Holly dies in plane crash
*
On this day in 1959, Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly, died in a plane crash near Mason City, Iowa. After a show on the night of February 2 in Clear Lake, Holly, fellow Texan J. P. Richardson (the "Big Bopper"), and Richie Valens took off in a chartered plane for Fargo, North Dakota. The aircraft went down shortly after take-off, and all aboard were killed. The innovative Holly and his group, the Crickets, had achieved a high level of fame that persists more than forty years later. In Lubbock, Holly's hometown, a large statue of the musician stands near the Lubbock Memorial Center.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 4th*


*La Bahía becomes Goliad*

On this day in 1829, the Mexican government issued a decree officially changing the name La Bahía to Villa de Goliad. The term _La Bahía_ (“the bay”) historically referred to several entities, including La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (present Matagorda and Lavaca bays) and Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission and its accompanying presidio. Coahuila and Texas state legislator Rafael Antonio Manchola proposed the change, arguing that the name of the settlement around the presidio was meaningless because neither the mission nor presidio were located on “the bay.” His suggestion of “Goliad” was actually an anagram for the name of Father Hidalgo, the priest who led the fight for Mexican independence. For a time during the 1830s settlers called the town both La Bahía and Goliad. The community played a key role in the Texas Revolution and became the site of the signing of the first declaration of independence for Texas.


*Republic of Texas authorizes ill-fated Peters colony
*
On this day in 1841, the Republic of Texas passed a law authorizing the president to enter into an empresario contract with William S. Peters of Pennsylvania and his associates. The contract required Peters to bring 200 colonists to North Texas every three years. The colony was headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and its bumpy history contrasts sharply with that of such earlier colonies as the Austin colony partly because the successful earlier empresarios lived in their colonies and managed them personally. After the initial authorizing law, the Peters colony entered four contracts with the republic. Each was an effort to correct some defect in the previous one, or to relax the demands of the government on colony officials, who failed to bring in the requisite colonists. Peters and his investors soon gave up, and in 1844 the Texas Emigration and Land Company was founded to take over the colony. The company continued the earlier management's precedents for rapacious demands on the colonists and inept management. The installation in 1845 of the officious Henry O. Hedgcoxe as the company's agent in residence inflamed the colonists and precipitated the Hedgcoxe War, in which the agent was driven from the colony. A settlement was eventually reached, and the deadline for colonists to file their claims was extended to May 7, 1853. But it took nearly ten legislative enactments over nearly twenty years to bring final settlement of the land titles. The colony that helped settle North Texas brought little if any profit to the investors and much disgruntlement to the settlers.


*Hero from Rio Grande valley dies in Vietnam
*
On this day in 1968, Marine sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez died near Thua Thein, Vietnam, after action that earned him the Medal of Honor. On January 31 the native of Edinburg was commanding a platoon in a truck convoy formed to relieve pressure on the beleaguered city of Hue. After being wounded, he moved through a fire-swept area and rescued a wounded comrade. On February 3 he was again wounded, but refused medical treatment. The next day, as the enemy inflicted heavy casualties on his company, Gonzalez knocked out a rocket position and suppressed much enemy fire before falling. The missile destroyer USS _Alfredo Gonzalez_, named for him, is the first United States military ship named for a Hispanic.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1914:

1) One Texan in 75 owned a car

2) Texas had 225 buildings taller than five stories or taller

3) For every person who left Texas for another state, eight were moving in.

4) There were 182 ice factories in Texas

5) The Texas cotton crop was calculated to produce enough clothing shirts, pants, dresses and socks to clothe 300 million people.

6) Dallas was the world's largest producer of saddles

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is an outstanding piece of writing:

"I meant to tell you about a house ... The walls still stand, and part of a rotting roof, from which protrudes part of a rusty stovepipe. Even if I offered explicit directions, many of you would not find it. You have to go west from Fort Worth about 225 miles, through Weatherford, Mineral Wells, Breckenridge, Albany, Stanford, Aspermont, Swenson, to Jayton. By now, you'd be into territory from which it costs about fourteen dollars to send a letter to the world, but you'd still not be there yet. Jayton, with a population of about 750, is the last big city before you get there. You drive four or five miles out into what people in the area call the Cotton Breaks for seven or eight miles, and after a while you'd come to the little community known as Golden Pond. It's not close to anything. Nobody ever goes there. It's no longer recognized as a community. The only inhabitants are ghosts, and the southwest wind keens and moans through rotting planks of an occasional ruined shack.

No far from Golden Pond ... is the house I mentioned. It is a little house made of native stone. It measures about ten feet by twelve feet, and there is a small wooden lean-to on the back. You can see through the walls.

My aunt lived in that house with a family during the school year of 1933-34 ... It was her first teaching job, and she made 12 dollars a month, with room and board thrown in. 

She was far miles from home. There were no telephones in Golden Pond, and she had no transportation save what her feet offered. She was among strangers in a barren, twisty land. That area, the Cotton Breaks, is broken, eroded country; dry creeks, ravines, gullies, and canyons break the terrain for thirty miles and maybe more. Even in 1933 it was nearly forgotten country.

There were no telephones, no electricity, no running water, no way to wash except in a pan or round metal washtub. And the wind whistled and moaned through the rocks.

If you stand on the little rise between ravines where the rock house is, if you stand there even in bright daylight, in every direction you look the distance is blue and far and melancholy. It is the lonesomest country I know. If you stand there at night, imagine what the dark is like when you're far from home and there's only one dingy. smoky kerosene lamp which, for the sake of economy, you can't burn for long.

Imagine lying in a narrow bed with the wind coming in between the rocks and across you. How could you possibly imagine a bright future?"

----- James W. Corder, "Lost in West Texas," 1988

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Two San Saba county cowboys, Harkey and Barbee, who had known one another and worked together for years, shot one another to death after Barbee suddenly bawled out a song that started "Dickie dinktum Dick," and Harkey remarked that it was a foolish song."

------ Leroy Yarborough, "Canyon of the Eagles," 1989. I should note that this shoot-out occurred on January 1, 1880, at the Cottonwood Mott line camp in Motley county. Both men were line riders, Jim Barbee for the Jingle Bob Cattle Company and Jim Harkey for J. M. Hall's Spur Cattle Company. The two men apparently disagreed over the singing of "Yankee Doodle." Taking offense at Harkey's version, Barbee drew his gun and mortally wounded him; Harkey drew his gun and killed Barbee. Two freighters from San Saba witnessed the shooting, notified authorities, and helped bury the two side by side in a grave only eighteen inches deep and dug with an ax. Yes folks, it's this kind of "need to know" information that you can only find here on Traces of Texas! ;)

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Ernest Tubb was born on a cotton farm near Crisp (now a ghost town), Texas. His father was a sharecropper, so Tubb spent his youth working on farms throughout the state. Bur Ernest had dreams and, inspired by Jimmie Rodgers, spent his spare time learning to sing, yodel, and play the guitar. At age 19, he took a job as a singer on San Antonio radio station KONO-AM. The pay was low so that Ernest also dug ditches for the Works Progress Administration and then clerked at a drug store. In 1939 he moved to San Angelo, Texas and was hired to do a 15-minute afternoon live show on radio station KGKL-AM. He drove a beer delivery truck in order to support himself during this time, and during World War II he wrote and recorded a song titled "Beautiful San Angelo."

In 1936, Tubb contacted Jimmie Rodgers’s widow (Rodgers died in 1933) to ask for an autographed photo. A friendship developed and she was instrumental in getting Tubb a recording contract with RCA. His first two records were unsuccessful. A tonsillectomy in 1939 affected his singing style so he turned to songwriting. In 1940 he switched to Decca records to try singing again and it was his sixth Decca release with the single "Walking the Floor Over You" that brought Tubb to stardom. He joined the Grand Ol' Opry in 1943 and with his band, the Troubadours, stayed for more than 40 years.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 6th

*
*Frenchman, considered a troublemaker by the Spanish, dies in prison*

On this day in 1756, Joseph Blancpain, a French trader whose activities in Texas heightened bad feeling between France and Spain in the middle of the eighteenth century, died in prison in Mexico City. Blancpain had been arrested in 1754 by Spanish army lieutenant Marcos Ruiz for unauthorized trading with Indians, to whom he was evidently furnishing firearms. The Spanish authorities believed him to be an agent for the French government. As a result of Blancpain's activities the king of Spain ordered that any Frenchman found in Spanish territory would be imprisoned.
*
*
*Virginia Point enlivened by railroad bridge to Galveston Island*

On this day in 1860, the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad completed its bridge from Virginia Point to Galveston Island. Virginia Point, on the mainland west of Galveston, was an outlying part of Stephen F. Austin's Coast Colony. The bridge brought growth, as it facilitated traffic between Galveston and Houston. Previously, merchandise had to be unloaded at the point from trains, carried by the steam ferryboat _Texas_ across to Galveston, unloaded onto drays, and unloaded again on the wharves. With the new 10,000-foot bridge in service, trains came through Virginia Point daily. The causeway survived the ravages of the Civil War, only to be destroyed by a hurricane in 1867. While repairs were being made, ferry boats again carried the freight. In 1875 the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway constructed a second wooden bridge. Other railroad interests brought a third railroad bridge from North Galveston to Virginia Point in 1892, and Galveston County built a steel wagon bridge in 1893. But the Galveston hurricane of 1900 swept away the bridges and most of Virginia Point. A reinforced-concrete causeway completed in 1911 carried the Galveston-Houston Electric Railway, five steam railroads, and the county highway. Virginia Point remained a train stop and fishing resort until another hurricane wiped out the town in 1915. In 1936 the electric railway abandoned its tracks as automobile traffic took over. The University of Texas operated a shell and topsoil company in Virginia Point until the 1950s. Texas City annexed the point in 1952, but never included it in its seawall system. Increased shipping in the Intracoastal Canal and bay has eroded portions of the old townsite, which is now reached only at low tide by a shell road under the old causeway


*First Czech newspaper in Texas
*
On this day in 1879, the first issue of the _Texan_, the first Czech newspaper in Texas, appeared. Though the periodical, published by E. J. Glueckman, lasted little more than a decade, it reflected the rich influence of the Czech culture in Texas and was just the first of many publications to come. Czech immigrants came to Texas in the early 1850s and were inspired by the glowing descriptions of countryman Josef Arnošt Bergmann. This pioneer, known as the “father” of Czech immigration to Texas, wrote of the freedom and fertile land available in the Lone Star State. Austin, Fayette, Lavaca, and Washington counties in Central Texas saw the growth of Czech settlements. The immigrants brought with them their family-oriented farming way of life and many religious and social societies. They also added to the fabric of the state’s ethnic culture with a wealth of folk stories, music, dance, and food. Immigration to Texas reached its zenith in the years before World War I, when foreign-born Czechs numbered over 15,000 in the state. By the end of the twentieth century, more than thirty Czech newspapers and periodicals had been published, and a number of societies and festivals honored the Czech heritage in Texas.


I find that quite interesting about Virginia Point and will have to check the area out next time I'm down that way!!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas fact of the Day:

In 1894, the population of Waco was about 17,000 people. There were 68 churches in the city at that time, more than half of them Baptist.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

During the blizzard of 1899, the temperature tumbled to 10 degrees below zero in Waco and people ice-skated on the Brazos River.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Giddings, 
Lee County, Texas
May 18, 1877

M. Mast Esq., 
Nacogdoches, Texas

Dear Sir,

Your esteemed favor of April 24th was received. Allow me to thank you for your interest in the arrest of criminals. [Bill] Longley is today the worst man in Texas ---- he hs committed many murders in this vicinity ---- he has even murdered a woman. He is about six feet high; weighs 150 .lbs; tolerably spare built; black hair, eyes, and whiskers; slightly stopped in the shoulders. I have been told by those who know him that he can be recognized in a crowd of 100 men by the keenness and blackness of his eyes... You will have to take advantage of him.... he will fight and is a good shot.

Very respectfully yours,

W.A. Knox"

----- letter from W.A. Knox, sheriff of Lee County, to a man named M. Mast in Nacogdoches, Texas. Mast had written to Knox with an offer to help arrest Bill Longley.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 8th*


*Last Franciscan in early Texas relinquishes missions*

On this day in 1830, José Antonio Díaz de León, the last Franciscan missionary in prerepublic Texas, reluctantly complied with the Mexican state government decree that missions be secularized--that is, turned over to diocesan authorities. Díaz de León had been appointed ad interim president of all the Texas missions in 1820, three years before the Mexican government ordered their final secularization. Díaz de León declined to comply without instructions from his superiors in Zacatecas, the first in a series of delays that lasted seven years. Díaz de León surrendered the San Antonio missions to the Diocese of Monterrey in 1824. In 1826 he was officially named president of the Texas missions. But Anglo settlers wanted the mission properties, and in 1829 the town of Goliad (formerly La Bahía) obtained a new decree to enforce secularization. Díaz de León continued to resist, but on February 8, 1830, he finally surrendered the last remaining missions. The mission lands, as he had expected, were soon made available to colonists. The bishop of Monterrey assigned him a parish post in Nacogdoches. Díaz de León was murdered on November 4, 1834. He was the thirty-first, and last, Zacatecan missionary to die in Texas. In 1926 the German author Robert Streit published a historical novel about Díaz de León; the work remains untranslated.


*Violence presages end of notorious red-light district
*
On this day in 1887, "Longhair Jim" Courtright, former town marshall of Fort Worth, was killed in a gunfight with Luke Short. This was one of the most famous gunfights in western history--and, contrary to the movie legends, one of the few face-to-face shootouts. The duel was the first of two events that drew increased hostile attention to the hive of brothels and bars known as Hell's Half Acre. The second was the discovery of a murdered prostitute named Sally, two weeks later. Before these violent occurrences, even legitimate businesses had resisted reform of the Acre because of the money it brought in. But the deaths of Courtright and Sally brought renewed and ultimately successful cleanup efforts.


*Brewster County exposes "dummy town"
*
On this day in 1910, a Brewster County grand jury exposed the Progress City swindle. The grand jury, led by well-known cattleman and Sul Ross State University founder Joseph D. Jackson, reported on the Progress City Town Site Company. This bogus organization sold town lots for Progress City, an “imaginary town” situated in the Santiago Mountains about forty miles southeast of Alpine. Unsuspecting buyers across Texas had already purchased more than 1,000 lots for $1.50 each without realizing that the site was along a remote and rugged trail only accessible by horseback. The Progress City Town Site Company consisted of John L. Mauk and Lee R. Davis of Waco, who had gained title to the land from William Poole. The grand jury admitted that prosecution was probably pointless, but did accomplish its goal of exposing the caper while making clear the innocence of the people of Brewster

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## woodman6415

On this day 181 years ago, Davy Crockett arrived in San Antonio 27 days before the fall of the Alamo.

STORY: http://on.kens5.com/2k3uCPd

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Corny dogs were first introduced to the Texas State Fair in 1942 by Neil and Carl Fletcher. The brothers had been vaudeville performers before they perfected their recipe. They cost 15 cents in 1942. When I was there in 2015 they were five dollars each ---- and still worth every penny!

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## woodman6415

Today is Friday, February 10, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1852 - The Texas Legislature confirmed the work of the Bourland Commission that had investigated land grants in South Texas. 

1923 - Lubbock's Texas Technological College was founded when Governor Pat M. Neff signed Senate Bill 103 to establish a college in West Texas. 

Texas Quote

"No important incident took place until 4:30 p.m. At this fatal moment, the bugler on our right signaled the advance of the enemy upon that wing." - Mexican Colonel Pedro Delgado, April 21, 1836 about the Battle of San Jacinto

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

According to the US Patent Office, the beverage known as Dr Pepper, which was born in Waco, was sold for the very first time on 12th January 1885. It is the oldest major soft-drink brand in the United States.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 10th*


*French castaway reaches Natchitoches*

On this day in 1721, the castaway François Simars de Bellisle reached the French post at Natchitoches after a year and a half of wandering across Texas. Bellisle was an officer on the _Maréchal d'Estrée,_ which ran aground near Galveston Bay in the autumn of 1719. He and four other men were put ashore to ascertain their position and seek help, but were left behind when the ship floated free and sailed away. That winter the Frenchmen were unable to kill enough game to sustain themselves. One by one, Bellisle's companions died of starvation or exposure. When he at last encountered a band of Atakapa Indians on an island in the bay, they stripped him of his clothing, robbed him of his possessions, and made him a slave. But they fed him, and he remained with them throughout the summer of 1720, traversing "the most beautiful country in the world." When a group of Bidai Indians came to the Atakapa camp, Bellisle managed to write a letter and give it to the visitors with instructions to deliver it to "the first white man" they saw. The letter, passed from tribe to tribe, at last reached Louis Juchereau de Saint-Denis at Fort Saint-Jean-Baptiste (Natchitoches). Saint-Denis sent the Hasinais to rescue the French castaway. Bellisle returned to the Texas coast with Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe in the summer of 1721 and served as an interpreter among the natives, "who were quite surprised at seeing their slave again." Bellisle remained in the Louisiana colony until 1762 and died in Paris the following year.


*Legislature confirms South Texas land grants
*
On this day in 1852, the Texas legislature confirmed the work of the Bourland Commission, a group of three officials appointed to investigate land claims after the Mexican War. The war's outcome had brought into question the validity of numerous Spanish and Mexican land grants north of the Rio Grande. Against a complex backdrop that included agitation for making trans-Nueces Texas a separate country, Governor Peter Bell recommended that the legislature appoint a commission to investigate claims. The commission began its business in Laredo in mid-1850 and in February 1852 confirmed 234 grants in five South Texas counties to the original Spanish and Mexican grantees.


*"Madam Candelaria" dies at age 113
*
On this day in 1899, Andrea Castañón Villanueva (Madam Candelaria), who claimed to be a survivor of the battle of the Alamo, died at age 113 in San Antonio. She said she had been born in Laredo in 1785, though other sources say she was born at Presidio del Río Grande. She came to San Antonio when she was about twenty-five and married Candelario Villanueva, who she said was her second husband; thereafter she became known as Madam or Señora Candelaria. She was the mother of four children and raised twenty-two orphans. She nursed the sick and aided the poor. She claimed to have been in the Alamo during the 1836 battle and to have nursed the ailing Jim Bowie. Since evidence of survivors is sparse, her claims may never be confirmed, but in 1891 the Texas legislature granted her a pension of twelve dollars a month for being an Alamo survivor and for her work with smallpox victims in San Antonio. Madam Candelaria is buried in San Fernando Cemetery.

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## Clay3063

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day is an outstanding piece of writing:
> 
> "I meant to tell you about a house ... The walls still stand, and part of a rotting roof, from which protrudes part of a rusty stovepipe. Even if I offered explicit directions, many of you would not find it. You have to go west from Fort Worth about 225 miles, through Weatherford, Mineral Wells, Breckenridge, Albany, Stanford, Aspermont, Swenson, to Jayton. By now, you'd be into territory from which it costs about fourteen dollars to send a letter to the world, but you'd still not be there yet. Jayton, with a population of about 750, is the last big city before you get there. You drive four or five miles out into what people in the area call the Cotton Breaks for seven or eight miles, and after a while you'd come to the little community known as Golden Pond. It's not close to anything. Nobody ever goes there. It's no longer recognized as a community. The only inhabitants are ghosts, and the southwest wind keens and moans through rotting planks of an occasional ruined shack.
> 
> No far from Golden Pond ... is the house I mentioned. It is a little house made of native stone. It measures about ten feet by twelve feet, and there is a small wooden lean-to on the back. You can see through the walls.
> 
> My aunt lived in that house with a family during the school year of 1933-34 ... It was her first teaching job, and she made 12 dollars a month, with room and board thrown in.
> 
> She was far miles from home. There were no telephones in Golden Pond, and she had no transportation save what her feet offered. She was among strangers in a barren, twisty land. That area, the Cotton Breaks, is broken, eroded country; dry creeks, ravines, gullies, and canyons break the terrain for thirty miles and maybe more. Even in 1933 it was nearly forgotten country.
> 
> There were no telephones, no electricity, no running water, no way to wash except in a pan or round metal washtub. And the wind whistled and moaned through the rocks.
> 
> If you stand on the little rise between ravines where the rock house is, if you stand there even in bright daylight, in every direction you look the distance is blue and far and melancholy. It is the lonesomest country I know. If you stand there at night, imagine what the dark is like when you're far from home and there's only one dingy. smoky kerosene lamp which, for the sake of economy, you can't burn for long.
> 
> Imagine lying in a narrow bed with the wind coming in between the rocks and across you. How could you possibly imagine a bright future?"
> 
> ----- James W. Corder, "Lost in West Texas," 1988



I've heard of this place, Golden Pond. I've heard of this house, though I've never been there. It is part of the legend and lore of Texas I've heard about all my life. We lived in Spur, TX, just a few miles north of Jayton. I am familiar with the area and the "cotton breaks". It is indeed a different kind of country. Most cannot handle the solitude if affords as it is always present, regardless of the weather or time of day. That whole country, from just south of Childress down to Matador, Dickens, Spur, Jayton, all just off the caprock, is hostile to everyone and everything that does not want to be there. It is lonesome country. Yet, for those who see beyond the needs of others, it is a beautiful country. A place where one can find themselves and the reason for their existence if they are inclined to look. Yes I lived there. Yes I love it there. But then again, I love it here as well. Though oft times when I feel the need to escape, my mind drifts back to those ravines and dry gullies. The parched arid red dirt outlined with the whitish alkaline of gypsum rock and brackish backwaters hidden from the sun by the outcropping various hills and steep cliffs of the caprock. It truly is a different place.


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## Tony

Clay3063 said:


> I've heard of this place, Golden Pond. I've heard of this house, though I've never been there. It is part of the legend and lore of Texas I've heard about all my life. We lived in Spur, TX, just a few miles north of Jayton. I am familiar with the area and the "cotton breaks". It is indeed a different kind of country. Most cannot handle the solitude if affords as it is always present, regardless of the weather or time of day. That whole country, from just south of Childress down to Matador, Dickens, Spur, Jayton, all just off the caprock, is hostile to everyone and everything that does not want to be there. It is lonesome country. Yet, for those who see beyond the needs of others, it is a beautiful country. A place where one can find themselves and the reason for their existence if they are inclined to look. Yes I lived there. Yes I love it there. But then again, I love it here as well. Though oft times when I feel the need to escape, my mind drifts back to those ravines and dry gullies. The parched arid red dirt outlined with the whitish alkaline of gypsum rock and brackish backwaters hidden from the sun by the outcropping various hills and steep cliffs of the caprock. It truly is a different place.



Clay, you truly have a way of painting a picture with words, that's a beautiful piece of writing. Tony

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## Clay3063

Tony said:


> Clay, you truly have a way of painting a picture with words, that's a beautiful piece of writing. Tony


Thanks Tony. I was feeling a little melancholy this morning after reading this piece about West Texas.

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## Tony

Clay3063 said:


> Thanks Tony. I was feeling a little melancholy this morning after reading this piece about West Texas.



Texas has that effect on people. Foreigners don't understand. Tony

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## woodman6415

Some Texas boys :

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## Tony

I saw them at a show in LA Grange 2 years ago, they still got it! Tony

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## woodman6415

Geronimo's prison transfer to San Antonio. This stop was on the Nueces River west of that fair city on Sept 10 1886. Geronimo is in the first row, third from the right. They were moved to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The Army held them there for about six weeks before Geronimo was sent to Fort Pickens, in Pensacola, Florida, and his family was sent to Fort Marion. They were reunited in May 1887, when they were transferred to Mount Vernon Barracks near Mobile, Alabama for seven years. In 1894, they were moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In his old age, Geronimo became a celebrity. He appeared at fairs, including the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where he rode a ferris wheel and sold souvenirs and photographs of himself. He rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade in 1905 and passed away at Fort Sill at the age of 79 in 1909

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 11th

*
*Texas marines mutiny in old New Orleans*

On this date in 1842, the first and only mutiny in the Texas Navy began. The schooner _San Antonio_ was anchored in the Mississippi River at New Orleans. Although the high- ranking officers were ashore, the sailors and marines were confined aboard because of fear of desertion. But they evidently got drunk on smuggled liquor and, under marine sergeant Seymour Oswalt, began a mutiny in which Lt. Charles Fuller was killed. Eventually, Commodore Edwin Moore brought some of the mutineers to trial. Three were sentenced to flogging, and four were hanged from the yardarm of the _Austin_ on April 6, 1843. Oswalt himself escaped from jail in New Orleans and was never brought to justice.
*

First railroad in Texas chartered*

On this day in 1850, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway was chartered, marking the beginning of the railroad age in Texas. The BBB&C was the first railroad to begin operating in the state, the first component of the present Southern Pacific to open for service, and the second railroad west of the Mississippi River. Gen. Sidney Sherman was a member of the group that received the charter. Construction began from Buffalo Bayou to Harrisburg in 1851; the first locomotive, which was named for Sherman, arrived in 1852; and the first twenty miles of track, from Harrisburg to Stafford's Point, opened in 1853. Although Harrisburg did not develop into the major city on Buffalo Bayou as a result of the construction of the BBB&C, the railroad otherwise fulfilled the expectations of its early backers. The first railroad in Texas, now a part of Southern Pacific's transcontinental Sunset Route between New Orleans and Los Angeles, handles heavy freight traffic as well as Amtrak's Sunset Limited west of Houston.

* 
Legislature passes bill to pay for governor's "chicken salad and punch"*

On this day in 1915, the state legislature passed an appropriations bill to pay for expenses incurred by former governor Oscar Branch Colquitt for "chicken salad and punch," among other items, during his term in office. An ensuing legal battle, known as the "Chicken Salad Case," lasted until June 1916, when Justice William Seat Fly ruled that the legislature could appropriate for fuel, water, lights, and ice necessary for the Governor's Mansion, but not for groceries and other personal needs of the governor. Colquitt's successor as governor, Jim Ferguson, had continued to purchase groceries with state money under this appropriation. Ferguson testified under oath that he would repay the state if the Supreme Court decided against him, but failed to do so. In September 1917 the High Court of Impeachment held that Ferguson was guilty of a misapplication of public funds. The Court of Impeachment, by a vote of twenty-five to three, removed Ferguson from office and made him ineligible to hold any office of honor, trust, or profit under the state of Texas. Ferguson continued to exert considerable political influence, however, through the political career of his wife, Miriam (Ma) Ferguson.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is actually a series of articles and headlines taken from the Lone Star Locals newspaper in El Paso back in 1885. Some of these are just great:

"Mr. Tuttle, a brick mason, fell from the scaffold on which he was working on the new courthouse Monday. He was slightly injured. Mr John Marening was also injured on the same day but standing on the ground. He was shot."

"Clean up the city. If you don’t the undertakers may have their hands full this summer."

"A bold robbery was committed last night on the main street of the city. The shoe store of Mr. Erdman was broken into through a back door and seventeen pairs of his finest shoes stolen . . . Mr. Erdman can ill afford this loss, and it is hoped that some clue may be found to the thieves, and the goods recovered."

"Two guards will now watch the interests of the United States at the bridge, both day and night."

"The Rio Grande is still rising. Mexicans are profitably engaged in catching drift wood in the river. When they see a log floating down they swim out and tow it ashore."

"In a few more years El Paso will be noted for the lovely shade trees, beautiful flowers and grassy carpets surrounding the homes of our thrifty people. We can safely say that no new town in any country can make a better showing than El Paso in regard to home decoration. Our people believe that “there’s no place like home.” and they back their belief with deeds, not words."

"El Paso grocery merchants show their enterprise by importing all the early fruits and vegetables as fast as they ripen in California. Fresh strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, pie-plant and currants are among the delicacies already introduced."

"A runaway team spun an empty wagon along West Overland street at a livery rate yesterday morning. The Mexican driver, who tried to stop the team when it started, was thrown down and injured somewhat by the wagon running over him."

"The crossing near the jail is still in a bad fix. Some dark night soon a valuable horse of still more valuable citizen may get his neck broken thereabouts. We have given timely warning"

"Mr. Gay E. Porter, the Big Mogul of THE LONE STAR, is absent from the city, and if there’s anything you don’t like in this issue, just please be kind enough to wait till he comes back, to settle the matter. His “sub” is really too busy to act as fighting editor and “hold down” the rest of the concern too."

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 12th*


*Sixty-one die as steamboat burns
*
On this day in 1869, sixty-one men, women, and children died when the sidewheel steamboat _Mittie Stephens_ caught fire on Caddo Lake during a run from New Orleans to Jefferson, Texas. The boat had been plying the New Orleans-Red River route since 1866. At that time Jefferson was the head of navigation via Caddo Lake due to the great log raft that obstructed traffic on the Red River. The _Mittie Stephens_ had left New Orleans on February 5 with 107 passengers and crew and a cargo that included 274 bales of hay. On the night of the twelfth, a breeze blew a spark to the hay from the torch baskets that lighted the bows of the boat, and the resulting fire could not be contained. The boat headed for the shore, 300 yards away, but grounded in three feet of water near Swanson's Landing. The pilot and the engineer kept the wheels running in an attempt to force the boat to shore; the action of the wheels pulled the people struggling in the water into them and killed most of them. The _Mittie Stephens_ burned to the water line, and parts of the wreck could be seen above the water until the early twentieth century. Jefferson remained the principal riverport of Texas until the logjam was removed in 1874.


*Inventor of the electric typewriter born*

On this day in 1888, James Field Smathers was born near Valley Spring, Texas. In 1908 he became a typist, accountant, and credit manager for a firm in Kansas City, Missouri. He soon realized the need for some means to increase the speed and decrease the fatigue of typing, and the use of electric power seemed to him the obvious solution. By 1912 he had completed a working model and applied for a patent, which was issued the next year. In 1914 he built an electric typewriter that performed perfectly. In 1923 the Northeast Electric Company of Rochester, New York, entered into a royalty contract with Smathers for the production of electric typewriters. However, private industrial acceptance of the electric typewriter did not come until 1930, when a subsidiary of Northeast Electric put the Electromatic model on the market. This company was purchased by the International Business Machines Corporation in 1933, a step which marked the beginning of the IBM Office Products Division. In 1938 Smathers joined the Rochester staff of IBM as a consultant and worked in development engineering at Poughkeepsie until his retirement in 1953. He died in 1967. Smathers was one of a number of Texas inventors, such as Gail Borden Jr., John Wesley Carhart, Carl Crane, Bette Graham, Ole Ringness, Ned Barnes, and Robert Munger, whose ideas spread far beyond the borders of the state.


* Arctic cold stiffens Tulia
*
On this day in 1899, Tulia, Texas, reported the coldest temperature ever recorded in the state--minus 23 degrees Fahrenheit. This was part of the "Big Freeze," an infamous norther that killed 40,000 cattle across the state overnight. This temperature was matched in Seminole in 1933. The highest temperature recorded for Texas was 120.

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## woodman6415

Today is Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1854 - The Texas and Red River Company opened its first telegraph office in Marshall. The company was the first to be chartered in Texas (on January 5). 

1882 - The southwest Texas town of Valentine was founded and named when a crew constructing the Southern Pacific Railroad reached the site. 

Texas Quote

"No important incident took place until 4:30 p.m. At this fatal moment, the bugler on our right signaled the advance of the enemy upon that wing." - Mexican Colonel Pedro Delgado, April 21, 1836 about the Battle of San Jacinto

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 14th*


*Spanish nobleman calls for settlement of Texas
*
On this day in 1729, the Marqués de Aguayo proposed to the king of Spain that 400 families be transported from the Canary Islands, Galicia, or Havana to populate the province of Texas. Eventually some fifteen families from the Canary Islands came to Texas.The first of the Canary Islanders arrived at Presidio San Antonio de Béxar on March 9, 1731. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. Several of the old families of San Antonio trace their descent from the Canary Island colonists.


*Railroad crew founds Valentine, Texas*

On this day in 1882, the town of Valentine, Texas, was founded and named when a Southern Pacific Railroad crew building east from El Paso reached the site. Valentine, in Jeff Davis County, is thirty-six miles west of Fort Davis. The trains started running in 1883, and Valentine got a post office in 1886. The town became a shipping point for local cattle ranchers, and by 1914 it had an estimated population of 500, five cattle breeders, a news company, a real estate office, a grocery store, a restaurant, and the Valentine Business Club. By the late 1990s, however, the estimated population had dropped to 267.


*Philanthropists wed on Valentine's Day
*
On this day in 1904, Walter William Fondren married Ella Florence Cochrum at Corsicana, Texas. Walter Fondren came to Texas as a sixteen-year-old orphan. He entered the oil business as a roughneck in the Corsicana oilfields, and went on to become one of the most successful oilmen in the state and the major stockholder of Humble Oil Company. As a teenager, Ella Fondren worked in her family's boardinghouse in Corsicana, where she met her future husband, then working as a driller. Ella aided him throughout his career, beginning shortly after their marriage, when she settled the family in Houston and purchased stock in the firm that became Texaco, Incorporated, an investment that was eventually worth millions. The couple were known for their philanthropic efforts. The Fondrens established the Fondren Lectures in Religious Thought at Southern Methodist University, and donated nearly half a million dollars to SMU to build the Fondren Library. After Walter's death in 1939, Ella carried on their philanthropic interests, establishing the Fondren Library at Rice University and administering the Fondren Foundation. Ella died in 1982, shortly before her 102nd birthday.


*Awesome dude proposes to get hitched*

On this day in 1984, Barry J Buras (Me (Wildthings)) proposed marriage to Pamela F. Gigout(my wife) at Mont Belvieu, Texas. 33 years later they have 3 children (by previous marriages) and 5 grandchildren.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> *Today in Texas History -- February 14th*
> 
> 
> *Spanish nobleman calls for settlement of Texas
> *
> On this day in 1729, the Marqués de Aguayo proposed to the king of Spain that 400 families be transported from the Canary Islands, Galicia, or Havana to populate the province of Texas. Eventually some fifteen families from the Canary Islands came to Texas.The first of the Canary Islanders arrived at Presidio San Antonio de Béxar on March 9, 1731. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. Several of the old families of San Antonio trace their descent from the Canary Island colonists.
> 
> 
> *Railroad crew founds Valentine, Texas*
> 
> On this day in 1882, the town of Valentine, Texas, was founded and named when a Southern Pacific Railroad crew building east from El Paso reached the site. Valentine, in Jeff Davis County, is thirty-six miles west of Fort Davis. The trains started running in 1883, and Valentine got a post office in 1886. The town became a shipping point for local cattle ranchers, and by 1914 it had an estimated population of 500, five cattle breeders, a news company, a real estate office, a grocery store, a restaurant, and the Valentine Business Club. By the late 1990s, however, the estimated population had dropped to 267.
> 
> 
> *Philanthropists wed on Valentine's Day
> *
> On this day in 1904, Walter William Fondren married Ella Florence Cochrum at Corsicana, Texas. Walter Fondren came to Texas as a sixteen-year-old orphan. He entered the oil business as a roughneck in the Corsicana oilfields, and went on to become one of the most successful oilmen in the state and the major stockholder of Humble Oil Company. As a teenager, Ella Fondren worked in her family's boardinghouse in Corsicana, where she met her future husband, then working as a driller. Ella aided him throughout his career, beginning shortly after their marriage, when she settled the family in Houston and purchased stock in the firm that became Texaco, Incorporated, an investment that was eventually worth millions. The couple were known for their philanthropic efforts. The Fondrens established the Fondren Lectures in Religious Thought at Southern Methodist University, and donated nearly half a million dollars to SMU to build the Fondren Library. After Walter's death in 1939, Ella carried on their philanthropic interests, establishing the Fondren Library at Rice University and administering the Fondren Foundation. Ella died in 1982, shortly before her 102nd birthday.
> 
> 
> *Awesome dude proposes to get hitched*
> 
> On this day in 1984, Barry J Buras (Me (Wildthings)) proposed marriage to Pamela F. Gigout(my wife) at Mont Belvieu, Texas. 33 years later they have 3 children (by previous marriages) and 5 grandchildren.



Happy Anniversary !!!


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> *Today in Texas History -- February 14th*
> 
> 
> *Spanish nobleman calls for settlement of Texas
> *
> On this day in 1729, the Marqués de Aguayo proposed to the king of Spain that 400 families be transported from the Canary Islands, Galicia, or Havana to populate the province of Texas. Eventually some fifteen families from the Canary Islands came to Texas.The first of the Canary Islanders arrived at Presidio San Antonio de Béxar on March 9, 1731. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. Several of the old families of San Antonio trace their descent from the Canary Island colonists.
> 
> 
> *Railroad crew founds Valentine, Texas*
> 
> On this day in 1882, the town of Valentine, Texas, was founded and named when a Southern Pacific Railroad crew building east from El Paso reached the site. Valentine, in Jeff Davis County, is thirty-six miles west of Fort Davis. The trains started running in 1883, and Valentine got a post office in 1886. The town became a shipping point for local cattle ranchers, and by 1914 it had an estimated population of 500, five cattle breeders, a news company, a real estate office, a grocery store, a restaurant, and the Valentine Business Club. By the late 1990s, however, the estimated population had dropped to 267.
> 
> 
> *Philanthropists wed on Valentine's Day
> *
> On this day in 1904, Walter William Fondren married Ella Florence Cochrum at Corsicana, Texas. Walter Fondren came to Texas as a sixteen-year-old orphan. He entered the oil business as a roughneck in the Corsicana oilfields, and went on to become one of the most successful oilmen in the state and the major stockholder of Humble Oil Company. As a teenager, Ella Fondren worked in her family's boardinghouse in Corsicana, where she met her future husband, then working as a driller. Ella aided him throughout his career, beginning shortly after their marriage, when she settled the family in Houston and purchased stock in the firm that became Texaco, Incorporated, an investment that was eventually worth millions. The couple were known for their philanthropic efforts. The Fondrens established the Fondren Lectures in Religious Thought at Southern Methodist University, and donated nearly half a million dollars to SMU to build the Fondren Library. After Walter's death in 1939, Ella carried on their philanthropic interests, establishing the Fondren Library at Rice University and administering the Fondren Foundation. Ella died in 1982, shortly before her 102nd birthday.
> 
> 
> *Awesome dude proposes to get hitched*
> 
> On this day in 1984, Barry J Buras (Me (Wildthings)) proposed marriage to Pamela F. Gigout(my wife) at Mont Belvieu, Texas. 33 years later they have 3 children (by previous marriages) and 5 grandchildren.



You mean to tell me that in 33 years that poor woman hasn't wized up to her mistake??????


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> You mean to tell me that in 33 years that poor woman hasn't wized up to her mistake??????



Not one bit!!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"On last Thursday afternoon, a terrible gale of cold wind swooped down upon this devoted section while in its shirt-sleeves, that cleared the thoroughfares in a few brief and hurried good-bye moments, killed business dead, stopped all out-door work, sent men tumbling into their overcoats, and in a few hours froze all creation stiff and hard.

The gale blew great guns all of Thursday night, and on Friday morning the thermometer actually went down to 1 degree above the point of zero!

The Colorado was frozen entirely over at Bluffton, Marble Falls, and other crossing where the water was comparatively shallow and still. The ice ranged from half to over an inch in thickness, which is unprecedented. At Marble Falls, it took over two hours to cut a passage for the ferry boat on Friday. The Llano river was also a mass of ice in places. Mr. J.J. Smith saw a horse pass over it at Llano town. Hamilton Creek was frozen all over as far as the eye could see with thickness of two and three inches reported and the boys had a lively time sliding."

------ Burnet Bulletin, January 1866

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day is a quickly improvised 1838 Republic of Texas marriage license and is both hilarious and fantastic:

"Republic of Texas

To all who shall see this present, greetings. Whereas I, Clerk of this County, having this morning unthoughtedly tied my office key as a clapper in my cow's bell; and whereas the said cow has gone astray to parts unknown, bearing with her the said key; and therefore the said key is "non inventus est" ---- that is, it can't he had; And whereas one Abner Barnes has made application to me for marriage license, and the said Abner persists that he cannot wait until the cow comes back with the key, but is compelled by the violence of his feelings and the arrangements already made to get married: Therefore these presents are to command any person legally authorized to celebrate the rites of matrimony to join the said Abner Barnes to Rebecca Downs; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient authority.

Given under my hand and private seal, on the doorstep of my office ---- the seal being locked up, and my cow having gone away with the key, this fourth day of October, A.D. 1838. Henry Osborne, Clerk" ----- a quickly improvised Republic of Texas marriage license, 1838

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 16th*


*Lone survivor of Bonilla expedition found*

On this day in 1599, Jusepe Guitiérrez, the lone survivor of the Bonilla expedition, was found by Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate. Francisco Leyva de Bonilla, a Portuguese captain in the service of Spain, was dispatched in 1594 by Governor Diego de Velasco of Nueva Vizcaya to pursue beyond the frontiers of that state a rebellious band of Indians that had committed acts of theft. Once across the border, Bonilla and his party determined to explore New Mexico and the plains beyond and to search for the fabled treasure of Quivira. They spent about a year at the upper Rio Grande pueblos, making Bove (San Ildefonso) their principal headquarters. They then explored into Arkansas and Nebraska. According to the statement of Gutiérrez, a Mexican Indian who was with the party, Bonilla was stabbed to death after a quarrel with his lieutenant, Antonio Gutiérrez de Humaña, who then assumed command. Sometime after the murder, Jusepe and five other Indians deserted the party and retraced their steps toward New Mexico. On the way, four were lost and a fifth was killed. Jusepe was taken captive by Apache and Vaquero Indians and kept for a year. At the end of that period, he made his way to Cicuyé and in 1599 was found at Picuris by Oñate, who secured his services as a guide and interpreter. When Oñate arrived at Quivira in the summer of 1601, he learned that hostile Indians had attacked and wiped out Humaña and nearly all his followers on their return journey, by setting fire to the grass at a place on the High Plains subsequently called La Matanza.


*First archbishop of San Antonio consecrated
*
On this day in 1927, Arthur Jerome Drossaerts was consecrated as the first archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio in San Fernando de Béxar Cathedral. Drossaerts was born in Breda, Holland, in 1862. He was ordained in 1889 and travelled to Louisiana the same year. He subsequently served as pastor at New Orleans, Broussard, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 1918, Drossaerts was consecrated bishop of San Antonio. As bishop, Drossaerts built more than sixty churches and fifty schools, the most significant of which was St. John's Seminary. When the Diocese of San Antonio was made an archdiocese, Drossaerts became its first archbishop. He continued to build churches and schools and fill speaking engagements. He kept the old Spanish missions alive and went without salary in order to assist poor parishes with expenses. During his tenure as archbishop, he dedicated about 134 churches and religious buildings. In 1934, Pope Pius XI honored Drossaerts for his aid to those fleeing from religious persecution in Mexico. For his charitable works he was named assistant at the pontifical throne and papal count. Drossaerts died in 1940.


*Longoria given hero's burial
*
On this day in 1949, the body of Private Felix Longoria of Three Rivers, Texas, was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Longoria had died in the Philippines near the end of World War II. When his recovered remains were sent to Three Rivers for burial, the funeral director refused the use of his chapel for a "Mexican." After action by the American G.I. Forum and Lyndon Johnson, Longoria was buried in Arlington. The affair provided a model case in the Mexican-American struggle for civil rights.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 17th*


*Hydraulic dredge Comstock catches fire
*
On this day in 1913, the _Comstock_ caught fire off the mouth of the Brazos River. The hydraulic hopper dredge _General C. B. Comstock_ was built for the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1895 and named for Cyrus B. Comstock, a prominent nineteenth-century corps of engineers officer. The _Comstock_ was ordered for service in Galveston and designed for southern climates, with a metal-sheathed wooden hull and an airy, well-ventilated superstructure. The vessel traveled to Galveston on her own keel in the summer of 1895 and spent most of her career there. The dredge was a very efficient machine that moved material at a cost of approximately 7.4 cents a cubic yard. She could move four or five full loads in a ten-hour day; the hoppers could be discharged in 7½ minutes. After being driven ashore by the Galveston hurricane of 1900, she could not be freed until a channel fifty feet wide and eight feet deep was dug to release her. After 1910 she was lent to the Wilmington Corps District and sent to work first at Aransas Pass and afterward at Freeport. On February 17, 1913, she caught fire and burned to the water line. The crew was quickly rescued by fishermen from Quintana and the life-saving crew from Surfside, but the _Comstock_ was a total loss. The wreck was relocated during jetty construction in June 1987 and investigated and identified in 1988. The artifacts are in a collection at Corpus Christi Museum.


*LULAC founded*

On this day in 1929, the League of United Latin American Citizens, originally called the United Latin American Citizens, was founded at Salón Obreros y Obreras in Corpus Christi, Texas. LULAC is the oldest and largest continually active Latino political association in the United States and was the first nationwide Mexican-American civil-rights organization. It grew out of the rising Texas-Mexican middle class and resistance to racial discrimination. The strength of the organization has historically been in Texas. Over the years LULAC has been a multi-issue organization. It was organized in response to political disfranchisement, racial segregation, and racial discrimination. It responded to bossism, the lack of political representation, the lack of a sizable independent Mexican-American vote, jury exclusion of Mexican-Americans, and white primaries. It also dealt with the segregation of public schools, housing, and public accommodations. The organization has attempted to solve the problems of poverty among Mexican Americans and has sought to build a substantial Mexican-American middle class.


*Art museum chartered at crossroads city
*
On this day in 1930, the El Paso Museum of Art was chartered under its original name, El Paso International Museum. Since 1959 the museum has been operated under the authority of the city of El Paso, along with a history museum and a wilderness park. The art museum features the Kress collection of Italian Renaissance and Spanish Baroque works, a collection of Pre-Columbian and Mexican art, and a "Sensorium" for blind patrons.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

Havin' fun while freedom fightin' must be one of those lunatic Texas traits we get from the water ---- which is known to have lithium in it ----- because it goes all the way back to Sam Houston, who was surely the most lovable, the most human, and the funniest of all the great men this country has ever produced."

----- Molly Ivins, journalist, humorist, and essayist

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Face of the Day:

At 35,587 feet — more than 6 1/2 miles of meticulously stacked granite — the Galveston jetties are listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest jetties on the planet. At their bases they’re roughly seven times wider than at their peaks, peaks, a ratio that’s typical of most jetty systems.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"It is only right that the five points of the Lone Star have been said to represent the characteristics of a good Texan: fortitude, loyalty, righteousness, prudence, and chicken fried steak."

------ me, Traces of Texas, at my local watering hole

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## Clay3063

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "It is only right that the five points of the Lone Star have been said to represent the characteristics of a good Texan: fortitude, loyalty, righteousness, prudence, and chicken fried steak."
> 
> ------ me, Traces of Texas, at my local watering hole



Amen.

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## woodman6415

New bucket list addition 

When you get right down to it, World War II was won on the backs of the B-24 bombers built in Fort Worth at the Consolidated Aircraft Company's massive facility. There is only one fully restored B-24J Liberator flying and it is this one, built in Fort Worth in August, 1944. Here's a short video about this amazing plane:

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> New bucket list addition


WOW! That would be the 5 gallon bucket!!!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> WOW! That would be the 5 gallon bucket!!!



Coming to San Antonio in March ...
The boss had given the ok ...
I'm beyond trilled...


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## woodman6415

In a state filled with tall tales and folks who are known for OCCASIONALLY stretching the truth, you'd think it would be hard to find the biggest liar. Not true. I met a man on the Horace Caldwell pier in Port Aransas a few weeks ago who told me he once met an honest fisherman. If that's not the biggest lie in Texas, I don't know what is! ;)

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## woodman6415

The Not So Arcane Fact of the Day:

Remember that the first election for President of the Republic of Texas was held on Sept. 5, 1836 --- about 4 1/2 months after the Battle of San Jacinto. The three candidates were Stephen F. Austin, Henry Smith, and Sam Houston. Prior to Houston's entrance into the race, Stephen F. Austin considered himself to be the front-runner in the election to become the first president of Texas. His opponent in the race was Henry Smith, who had been governor of the Provisional Government and a delegate to the convention that declared the independence of the Republic of Texas. But many had doubts as to Austin's qualifications, and his connections to land speculator Samuel May Williams had soiled his public reputation. Eleven days before the election, Houston declared his candidacy, sinking Austin's hopes of winning the presidency. Houston won the election with 77% of the vote (4,374 votes). Smith got 13% (743 votes) and Austin 10% (587 votes). Houston was inaugurated on October 22, 1836. Mirabeau B. Lamar was elected vice-president.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

It was 47 years ago, on February 10, 1970 when ZZ Top first took the stage as a band at the Knights of Columbus hall in Beaumont, Texas. This was several years before the band started growing its signature facial hair. According to the official ZZ Top website, Dusty Hill didn't even own a bass at the time they played this gig in Beaumont....

“I had to borrow a bass for that gig. I didn’t actually own one. It was the Knights of Columbus hall and though I didn’t meet any knights or royalty, there were a lot of cool people who came out to hear us play,” ----- Dusty Hill

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## woodman6415

Today is Thursday, February 23, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1836 - In San Antonio, TX, the siege of the Alamo began. 

1848 - The Texas legislature formally created Gillespie County out of Bexar and Travis counties. 

1861 - Voters ratified an ordinance that would withdraw Texas from the Union. The ordinance had been approved by the Secession Convention on February 1. The secession became official on March 2. Texas was the 7th state to leave the Union. 

1911 - Quanah Parker, the last fighting chief of the Comanche in Texas, died from an undiagnosed illness in Oklahoma. 

1999 - White supremacist John William King was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering James Byrd Jr. Byrd was dragged behind a truck for two miles on a country road in Texas. 

Texas Quote

There’s a vastness here and I believe that the people who are born here breathe that vastness into their soul. They dream big dreams and think big thoughts, because there is nothing to hem them in.
- Conrad Hilton

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## woodman6415

The arcane Texas Fact of the Day: On June 3, 1955, thirteen-year-old Lubbock native Mac Davis witnessed Elvis shake the showroom of a local Pontiac dealership. It changed Davis' life and he knew afterward that he wanted to be a singer. The cool thing is that Presley later recorded seven of Mac Davis’s compositions, including the 1969 Top 10 hits “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy.”

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> 1836 - In San Antonio, TX, the siege of the Alamo began.




I'll start my series, *"Siege of the Alamo"*, here tomorrow. That's my plan anyway since I'll be out of town and limited access

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History -- February 23rd


*Legislature establishes Gillespie County
*
On this day in 1848, the Texas legislature formally marked off Gillespie County from Bexar and Travis counties. The first known residents of Gillespie County, in west central Texas, were the Tonkawa Indians. By the nineteenth century, Comanches and Kiowas had also moved into the area. The future county was first settled by Europeans in 1846, when John O. Meusebach led a group of 120 Germans sponsored by the Adelsverein to the site of Fredericksburg, which became one in a series of German communities between the Texas coast and the Fisher-Miller Land Grant. Fredericksburg and the surrounding rural areas grew quickly, and in December 1847, 150 settlers petitioned the legislature to establish a new county, which they suggested be named either Pierdenales or Germania. Instead, the legislature named it after Capt. Robert A. Gillespie, a hero of the recent Mexican War, and made Fredericksburg the county seat. Gillespie County originally included areas that today are parts of Blanco, Burnet, Llano, and Mason counties. The people of Gillespie County have always been proud of their German heritage and pioneer history. In 1896 Robert G. Penniger wrote a book in German marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Fredericksburg and, with it, Gillespie County. The people of Gillespie County marked this occasion with a gala celebration at which the fifty-five surviving original settlers were honored.


*Secession referendum passes by landslide
*
On this day in 1861, the people of Texas went to the polls to vote on a referendum to secede from the Union. The vote was 46,153 for secession and 14,747 against. Of the 122 counties casting votes, only eighteen cast majorities against secession. Only eleven others cast as much as 40 percent against. The referendum was held pursuant to a decision in favor of secession in the state Secession Convention.


*Marines raise flag on Iwo Jima*

On this day in 1945, Cpl. Harlon Block of Weslaco appeared in one of the most indelible images to come out of World War II. For three days the men of Company E, Second Battalion, Twenty-eighth Marines, had fought their way to the top of Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot-high extinct volcano at the southern end of the island of Iwo Jima. They first raised a small flag to signal their victory to their fellows below, and a larger flag later. In Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's picture of the six men raising this second flag, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the twenty-year-old Block was the stooping figure guiding the base of the flagpole into the volcanic ash. He never saw the famous picture, however, as he was killed in action on March 1 as his unit advanced in the direction of Mishi Ridge. Block was buried in the Fifth Marine Division cemetery at the foot of Mount Suribachi, though his body was taken home to Weslaco in 1949.

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> I'll start my series, *"Siege of the Alamo"*, here tomorrow. That's my plan anyway since I'll be out of town and limited access



Just drove past the Alamo. I'm trying to envision what it was like all those years ago. For me, there is always a heaviness in the air around it, as if all those lost souls are still hanging around. It weighs on me every time. Tony

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one:

"The rivers, especially the Colorado, Brazos, Guadalupe, and Nueces, were only crossable at a few fords when in full flow, and sometimes not even then, making ferries vital, for bridges as yet could span only the minor tributaries. The communities that appeared by 1800 grew up beside the rivers: San Antonio de Bexar, capital of the early province under Spain, and known colloquially both as San Antonio and simply as Bexar, sat on the upper reaches of the San Antonio River, one hundred and forty miles from the coast. Downstream, just fifty miles from the Gulf, the river passed La Bahia, which men would later rename Goliad. Gonzales grew up seventy miles due east of Bexar, and fifty miles north of Gonzales sat Mina on the edge of the Hill Country. The major future settlement would land between the Lavaca and the Trinity, but as of 1800 that stretch of territory sat virtually uninhabited except by a few tribes of Koshatta, Karankawa, and other native peoples. Above the Trinity almost no settlement appeared except at Nacocdoches some fifty miles from the Sabine. Meanwhile, all of that vast empire north and west of the settle area was the home ground of the feared Comanche.

Primal forces of earth itself created this Texas, ripped it apart in the separation of the continent, then drove it back together in a geological metaphor for the human history to come. Indeed, even as the first European men ventured north of the Nueces to find that rich land of gentle breezes and tall waving grass, the strains in the earth's crust continued their epochal battle to shape the land. But then came men with their own ideas about shaping a world above all that terrestrial turmoil, men with younger traditions than those of tectonic stresses, but just as deeply ingrained in them as were the shifting of the plates beneath their feet. They, too, carried in their blood a compulsion for change, for destruction, revolution, and rebuilding, only theirs was not the patience of the eons. The primal forces that drove them wanted metamorphosis within the scale of a lifetime rather than over uncounted millennia. They came because the earth itself made this Texas a lure. They stayed because of what they saw they might do with it. And inevitably, they warred among themselves in the conflict of their dreams.

Chance and geography placed Texas at one of history's crossroads. At the dawn of a new century in a New World, that intersection was about to become very busy indeed."

----- William C. Davis, "Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic"

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## Wildthings

WOW

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## woodman6415

William B. Travis wrote from the Alamo that he'd never surrender or retreat on this day in 1836.

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## woodman6415

Today is Friday, February 24, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1885 - Admiral Chester Nimitz was born in Fredericksburg, TX. He was a leader for the Allied forces in the Pacific during World War II. 

2015 - A Texas jury found Eddie Ray Routh guilty in the 2013 shooting deaths of former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. 

Texas Quote

All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.
- Sam Houston

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas history -- February 24th*

One thing I love is history and especially Texas History -- 180 years ago today this was request was made

_*Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World-

Fellow Citizens & compatriots-

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna - I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man - The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken - I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls - I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch - The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country - Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis.

Lt. Col.comdt.

P. S. The Lord is on our side - When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn - We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.*_
________________

Also worth reading. From Travis at the Alamo -- Travis' Report

God Bless the defenders of the Alamo!

and God Bless Texas!!

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> and God Bless Texas!!




C'money brother, remember where you live. That's simply not big enough


*GOD BLESS TEXAS!!!!!*

**

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## woodman6415

God Bless The Great State Of Texas ...

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Cheetos were invented in 1948 by the same man who created Fritos, Charles Elmer Doolin. It was Doolin who first cooked early test batches in the Frito Company's Dallas, Texas-based research and development kitchen. The new snacks were marketed by the H.L. Lay company, and in 1961 the two companies merged to become Frito-Lay. The snack, which is extruded corn coated with artificially-colored cheddar cheese, is sold in many countries around the world and dominates its market space like few other brands. But, yeah, both Fritos and Cheetos were created in Texas by the same man. Nice little piece of trivia, eh?

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas. 

----- Willie Nelson

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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - DAY 3: February 25, 1836*

A two-hour engagement occurs when Santa Anna’s troops attempt to occupy jacales (picket and thatch huts) located near the southwest corner of the compound. Members of the garrison venture out and burn the jacales this night. Santa Anna’s soldiers construct artillery batteries south of the Alamo. James W. Fannin leaves Goliad with a relief column bound for the Alamo.

*The Defenders*

*Texas drew men from all walks of life. While many planned to make their living by farming, others come to Texas to provide the services that the growing colonies needed. Doctors, lawyers, merchants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and businessmen flocked to Texas. It was men like these who found themselves part of the Alamo’s garrison.

This list contains names of men who are known to have died in defense of the Alamo. For more information about an individual Alamo defender, please click the defender's name. Sort information in this page by clicking the column titles.

Name Age Rank From
?, John Unknown A Black Freedman Unknown
Abamillo, Juan Unknown Garrison Member Texas
Allen, James L. 21 Garrison Member Kentucky
Andross, Miles DeForest 27 Garrison Member Vermont
Autry, Micajah 43 Garrison Member North Carolina
Badillo, Juan Antonio Unknown Garrison Member Texas
Bailey, Peter James 24 Garrison Member Kentucky
Baker, Isaac G. 32 Garrison Member Arkansas
Baker, William Unknown Garrison Member Missouri
Ballentine, John J. Unknown Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Ballentine, Richard W 22 Garrison Member Scotland
Baugh, John J. 33 Captain Virginia
Bayliss, Joseph 28 Garrison Member Tennessee
Blair, John 33 Garrison Member Tennessee
Blair, Samuel 29 Captain Tennessee
Blazeby, William 41 Captain England
Bonham, James 29 Second Lieutenant South Carolina
Bourne, Daniel 26 Garrison Member England
Bowie, James 40 Colonel Kentucky
Bowman, Jesse 51 Garrison Member Tennessee
Brown, George 35 Garrison Member England
Brown, James Murry 36 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Brown, Robert 18 Garrison Member Unknown
Buchanan, James 23 Garrison Member Unknown
Burns, Samuel E. 26 Garrison Member Ireland
Butler, George D. 23 Garrison Member Missouri
Cain, John 34 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Campbell, Robert 26 Lieutenant Tennessee
Carey, William R. 30 Captain Virginia
Clark, Charles Henry Unknown Garrison Member Missouri
Clark, M. B. Unknown Garrison Member Mississippi
Cloud, Daniel William 22 Garrison Member Kentucky
Cochran, Robert E. 26 Garrison Member New Hampshire
Cottle, George Washington 25 Garrison Member Tennessee
Courtman, Henry 28 Garrison Member Germany
Crawford, Lemuel 22 Garrison Member South Carolina
Crockett, David (Davy) 50 Colonel Tennessee
Crossman, Robert 26 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Cummings, David P. 27 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Cunningham, Robert W. 32 Private New York
Darst, Jacob C. 43 Garrison Member Kentucky
Davis, John 25 Garrison Member Kentucky
Day, Freeman 30 Garrison Member Unknown
Day, Jerry C. 18 Garrison Member Missouri
Daymon, Squire 28 Garrison Member Tennessee
Dearduff, William Unknown Garrison Member Tennessee
Dennison, Stephen 24 Garrison Member England or Ireland
Despallier, Charles 24 Garrison Member Louisiana
Dewall, Lewis 24 Garrison Member New York
Dickinson, Almaron 36 Captain Pennsylvania
Dillard, John Henry 31 Garrison Member Tennessee
Dimpkins, James R. Unknown Sergeant England
Duvalt, Andrew 32 Garrison Member Ireland
Espalier, Carlos 17 Garrison Member Texas
Esparza, Gregorio 34 Garrison Member Texas
Evans, Robert 36 Garrison Member Ireland
Evans, Samuel B. 24 Garrison Member New York
Ewing, James L. 24 Garrison Member Tennessee
Fauntleroy, William H. 22 Garrison Member Kentucky
Fishbaugh, William Unknown Garrison Member Unknown
Flanders, John 36 Garrison Member Massachusetts
Floyd, Dolphin Ward 32 Garrison Member North Carolina
Forsyth, John Hubbard 38 Captain New York
Fuentes, Antonio 23 Garrison Member Texas
Fuqua, Galba 16 Garrison Member Alabama
Garnett, William 24 Garrison Member Virginia
Garrand, James W. 23 Garrison Member Louisiana
Garrett, James Girard 30 Garrison Member Tennessee
Garvin, John E. 27 Garrison Member Unknown
Gaston, John E. 17 Garrison Member Kentucky
George, James 34 Garrison Member Unknown
Goodrich, John C. 27 Garrison Member Virginia
Grimes, Albert Calvin 19 Orderly Sergeant Georgia
Guerrero, José María Unknown Garrison Member Texas
Gwynne, James C. 32 Garrison Member England
Hannum, James 21 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Harris, John 23 Garrison Member Kentucky
Harrison, Andrew Jackson 27 Garrison Member Tennessee
Harrison, William B. 25 Commanding Officer Ohio
Haskell, Charles M. 23 Garrison Member Tennessee
Hawkins, Joseph M. 37 Garrison Member Ireland
Hays, John M. 22 Garrison Member Tennessee
Herndon, Patrick Henry 32 Garrison Member Virginia
Hersee, William Daniel 31 Sergeant England
Holland, Tapley 26 Garrison Member Ohio
Holloway, Samuel 28 Garrison Member Philadelphia
Howell, William D. 39 Garrison Member Massachusetts
Jackson, Thomas Unknown Garrison Member Ireland
Jackson, William Daniel 29 Lieutenant Ireland
Jameson, Green B. 27 Lieutenant Kentucky or Tennessee
Jennings, Gordon C. 56 Corporal Connecticut
Jiménez, Damacio Unknown Garrison Member Unknown
Johnson, Lewis 23 Private Virginia
Johnson, William Unknown Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Jones, John 26 Lieutenant New York
Kellogg, John Benjamin 19 Lieutenant Kentucky
Kenny, James 22 Garrison Member Virginia
Kent, Andrew Unknown Garrison Member Kentucky
Kerr, Joseph 22 Garrison Member Louisiana
Kimbell, George C. 33 Lieutenant Pennsylvania
King, William Philip 16 Garrison Member Mississippi
Lewis, William Irvine 30 Garrison Member Virginia
Lightfoot, William John 31 Third Corporal Kentucky
Lindley, Jonathan 22 Garrison Member Illinois
Linn, William Unknown Garrison Member Massachusetts
Losoya, José Toribio 27 Private Texas
Main, George Washington 29 Second Lieutenant Virginia
Malone, William T. 18/ Garrison Member Virginia or Alabama
Marshall, William 28 Garrison Member Tennessee
Martin, Albert 28 Garrison Member Rhode Island
McCafferty, Edward Unknown Lieutenant Unknown
McCoy, Jesse 32 Garrison Member Tennessee
McDowell, William 42 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
McGee, James Unknown Garrison Member Ireland
McGregor, John Unknown Second Sergeant Scotland
McKinney, Robert 27 Garrison Member Tennessee
Melton, Eliel 38 Lieutenant Georgia
Miller, Thomas Redd 31 Garrison Member Virginia
Mills, William 20 Garrison Member Tennessee
Millsaps, Isaac 41 Private Tennessee
Mitchasson, Edward F. 30 Private Virginia
Mitchell, Edwin T. 30 Private Unknown
Mitchell, Napoleon B. 32 Private Tennessee
Moore, Robert B. 30 Garrison Member Virginia
Moore, Willis A. 28 Garrison Member North Carolina
Musselman, Robert 31 Sergeant Ohio
Nava, Andrés 26 Sergeant Texas
Neggan, George 28 Garrison Member South Carolina
Nelson, Andrew M. 27 Garrison Member Tennessee
Nelson, Edward 20 Garrison Member South Carolina
Nelson, George 31 Garrison Member South Carolina
Northcross, James 32 Garrison Member Virginia
Nowlan, James 27 Garrison Member England or Ireland
Pagan, George 26 Garrison Member Unknown
Parker, Christopher Adams 22 Garrison Member Unknown
Parks, William 31 Garrison Member North Carolina
Perry, Richardson 19 Garrison Member Texas or Mississippi
Pollard, Amos 32 Garrison Member Massachusetts
Reynolds, John Purdy 29 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Roberts, Thomas H. Unknown Garrison Member Unknown
Robertson, James Waters 24 Garrison Member Tennessee
Robinson, Isaac 28 Fourth Sergeant Scotland
Rose, James M. 31 Garrison Member Ohio
Rusk, Jackson J. Unknown Garrison Member Ireland
Rutherford, Joseph 38 Garrison Member Kentucky
Ryan, Isaac 31 Garrison Member Louisiana
Scurlock, Mial 26 Garrison Member North Carolina
Sewell, Marcus L. 31 Garrison Member England
Shied, Manson 25 Garrison Member Georgia
Simmons, Cleveland Kinloch 20 Lieutenant South Carolina
Smith, Andrew H. 21 Garrison Member Tennessee
Smith, Charles S. 30 Garrison Member Maryland
Smith, Joshua G. 28 Sergeant North Carolina
Smith, William H. 25 Garrison Member Unknown
Starr, Richard 25 Garrison Member England
Stewart, James E. 28 Garrison Member England
Stockton, Richard Lucius 19 Garrison Member New Jersey
Summerlin, A. Spain 19 Garrison Member Tennessee
Summers, William E. 24 Garrison Member Tennessee
Sutherland, William DePriest 17 Garrison Member Unknown
Taylor, Edward 24 Garrison Member Tennessee
Taylor, George 20 Garrison Member Tennessee
Taylor, James 22 Garrison Member Tennessee
Taylor, William 37 Garrison Member Tennessee
Thomas, B. Archer M. 18 Garrison Member Kentucky
Thomas, Henry 25 Garrison Member Germany
Thompson, Jesse G. 38 Garrison Member Arkansas
Thomson, John W. 29 Garrison Member Virginia
Thurston, John M. 23 Second Lieutenant Pennsylvania
Trammel, Burke 26 Garrison Member Ireland
Travis, William Barret 26 Lieutenant Colonel South Carolina
Tumlinson, George W. 22 Garrison Member Missouri
Tylee, James 41 Garrison Member New York
Walker, Asa 23 Garrison Member Tennessee
Walker, Jacob 36 Garrison Member Tennessee
Ward, William B. Unknown Sergeant Ireland
Warnell, Henry 24 Garrison Member Unknown
Washington, Joseph G. 28 Garrison Member Kentucky
Waters, Thomas 24 Garrison Member England
Wells, William 47 Garrison Member Georgia
White, Isaac Unknown Sergeant Alabama or Kentucky
White, Robert 30 Captain Unknown
Williamson, Hiram James 26 Sergeant-Major Pennsylvania
Wills, William Unknown Garrison Member Unknown
Wilson, David L. 29 Garrison Member Scotland
Wilson, John 32 Garrison Member Pennsylvania
Wolf, Anthony 54 Garrison Member Spain
Wright, Claiborne 26 Garrison Member North Carolina
Zanco, Charles 28 Garrison Member Unknown*

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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - DAY 4: February 26, 1836*

A “norther” or cold front blows in, dropping the temperature and bringing rain. Fannin, returns to Goliad after learning that column of Mexican troops under Col. José Urrea is advancing northward from Matamoros.

*To Major-General Sam Houston
February 25, 1836

HEADQUARTERS, FORT OF THE ALAMO: Sir; On the 23rd of Feb., the enemy in large force entered the city of Bexar, which could not be prevented, as I had not sufficient force to occupy both positions. Col. Bartes, the Adjutant-Major of the President-General Santa Anna, demanded a surrender at discretion, calling us foreign rebels. I answered them with a cannon shot, upon which the enemy commenced a bombardment with a five inch howitzer, which together with a heavy cannonade, has been kept up incessantly ever since. I instantly sent express to Col. Fannin, at Goliad, and to the people of Gonzales and San Felipe. Today at 10 o'clock a.m. some two or three hundred Mexicans crossed the river below and came up under cover of the houses until they arrived within virtual point blank shot, when we opened a heavy discharge of grape and canister on them, together with a well directed fire from small arms which forced them to halt and take shelter in the houses about 90 or 100 yards from our batteries. The action continued to rage about two hours, when the enemy retreated in confusion, dragging many of their dead and wounded.

During the action, the enemy kept up a constant bombardment and discharge of balls, grape, and canister. We know from actual observation that many of the enemy were wounded -- while we, on our part, have not lost a man. Two or three of our men have been slightly scratched by pieces of rock, but have not been disabled. I take great pleasure in stating that both officers and men conducted themselves with firmness and bravery. Lieutenant Simmons of cavalry acting as infantry, and Captains Carey, Dickinson and Blair of the artillery, rendered essential service, and Charles Despallier and Robert Brown gallantly sallied out and set fire to houses which afforded the enemy shelter, in the face of enemy fire. Indeed, the whole of the men who were brought into action conducted themselves with such heroism that it would be injustice to discriminate. The Hon. David Crockett was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty. Our numbers are few and the enemy still continues to approximate his works to ours. I have every reason to apprehend an attack from his whole force very soon; but I shall hold out to the last extremity, hoping to secure reinforcements in a day or two. Do hasten on aid to me as rapidly as possible, as from the superior number of the enemy, it will be impossible for us to keep them out much longer. If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope prosperity and our country will do our memory justice. Give me help, oh my country! Victory or Death!

W. Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Com*

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## woodman6415

Today is Monday, February 27, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1850 - Carlos Esparza and various followers attempted to seperate from Texas and establish the Territory of the Rio Grande. The plan was dropped soon after. 

1917 - John Connally was born on a farm near Floresville, TX. He was the 38th Governor of the State of Texas. He was wounded in the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. 

1948 - Fort Worth Army Airfield was renamed Carswell Air Force Base in honor of Horace S. Carswell, Jr. Carswell had been awarded a Medal of Honor in 1946. 

1970 - Elvis Presley began three days of performances at the Astrodome in Houston, TX. More than 200,000 people saw the shows. 

Texas Quote

Texas is a blend of valor and swagger.
- Carl Sandburg

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Early Texas trail drivers, while herding the giant herds of Texas cattle over the historic trails of Texas, were sometimes treated during storms to a bizarre phenomena in which eerie luminous flashes of yellow-green tongues lightning-like fire arced from the horns of one steer to that of one nearby. Often this early day "laser show" continued until the entire herd was bathed in an incandescent glow. This phenomena, although a mystery to those old cowboys, is today most often associated with ships, masts and aircraft and is known as "St. Elmo's Fire."

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Today is Monday, February 27, 2017
> 
> Today in
> Texas History
> 
> 1970 - Elvis Presley began three days of performances at the Astrodome in Houston, TX. More than 200,000 people saw the shows.



I was one of them!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas history -- February 27th*


*South Texas separatists proclaim Territory of the Rio Grande
*
On this day in 1850, Carlos Esparza, a supporter of the Mexican folk hero Juan N. Cortina, and various followers attempted to establish a territorial government and separate themselves from the rest of Texas. The Territory of the Rio Grande was intended to protect the interests of Hispanics, but the proposal became politically complicated and was dropped. Esparza, born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in 1828, was to all appearances an ordinary rancher, possessing neither Cortina's striking appearance nor leadership qualities. The eccentric, sharp-tongued Esparza remained Cortina's man in the shadows, however. During the Civil War, he managed to aid Union and Confederate forces against each other while promoting the Cortinista cause. In 1873 Esparza was appointed special deputy inspector of hides and animals in Cameron County. Texas Ranger Leander H. McNelly was probably referring to Esparza when in 1876 he described the Cortinistas' "organization ... called the 'rural police.' The chief man is owner of a ranch, or the superintendent... He is a civil officer... He sends an alarm to one ranch, and it is sent from ranch to ranch in every direction." After Cortina was arrested in 1875, Esparza retreated to his ranch and became a recluse to avoid criminal charges for his controversial political activities. He died in 1885.


*Gillespie County matriarch dies
*
On this day in 1907, Justina Luckenbach died, four years to the day before the death of her husband Jacob. Both Luckenbachs were born in Germany and came to Texas in late 1845. In January 1846 they were among the first settlers in Fredericksburg. Jacob Luckenbach was allocated a town lot in the new village and a ten-acre lot southwest of town, where he built the family's first home. The Luckenbach family became American citizens in 1852 and shortly thereafter sold both Fredericksburg properties and moved twelve miles southeast. When she was appointed postmistress at the site, Sophie Engel named the post office Luckenbach in honor of her fiancé, Jacob and Justina's son Albert. Jacob and Justina Luckenbach raised three boys and nine girls in all. In 1883 they sold their property in Luckenbach and retired in Boerne, to be near six of their children who lived there. The population of Luckenbach peaked at 492 in 1904, but declined dramatically in the following decades. John Russell (Hondo) Crouch, from nearby Comfort, bought the "town" in 1971. Styling himself the "mayor" and "Clown Prince of Luckenbach," Crouch declared Luckenbach "a free state...of mind." Popularized in regional culture as the place where "Everybody is Somebody," Luckenbach achieved mythic proportions in 1977, the year after Crouch's death, when the Waylon Jennings song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)" became a national favorite.


*Future governor born on farm*

On this day in 1917, future governor John B. Connally, Jr., was born on a farm near Floresville. Although he was associated with Lyndon Johnson, Connally switched to the Republican party in the middle of his political career. The most famous, and the gravest, moment in his public life came when he was wounded in the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963.

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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - DAY 5: February 27, 1836
*
Work continues on the batteries and entrenchments ringing the Alamo. Santa Anna sends foraging parties to nearby ranches to look for supplies.

Food is getting scarce for Santa Anna's troops

* A portion of a letter written by Daniel Cloud:
Ever since Texas has unfurled the banner of Freedom and commenced a warfare for Liberty or Death, our hearts have been enlisted in her behalf. The progress of her cause has increased the ardor of our feelings, until we have resolved to embark in the vessel which contains the flag of Liberty and sink or swim in its defence. Our Brethren of Texas were invited by the Mexican Government while republican in its form to come and settle, they did so, they have endured all the privations and sufferings incident to the settlement of a frontier country and have surrounded themselves with all the comforts and conveniences of live. Now the Mexicans with unblushing effrontery call on them to submit to a Monarchical, tyrannical, Central despotism, at the bare mention of which every true hearted son of Kentucky feels an instinctive horror followed by a firm and steady glow of virtuous indignation. The cause of Philanthropy, of humanity, of Liberty and human happiness throughout the world call loudly on every man who can, to aid Texas. If you ask me how I reconcile the duties of a soldier with those of a Christian I refer you to the memorable conversation between General Marion and DeKalb on this point, and the sentiments of the latter I have adopted as my own. If we succeed, the country is ours, it is immense in extent and fertile in its soil and will amply reward all our toils. If we fail, death in the cause of liberty and humanity is not cause for shuddering. Our rifles are by our sides and choice guns they are; we know what awaits us and are prepared to meet it.*

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## woodman6415

Today is Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1845 - The United States Congress passed a bill that authorized the U.S. to annex the Republic of Texas. On March 1, U.S. President John Tyler signed the bill. 

1948 - In San Angelo, twenty-three women met to found the Girls Rodeo Association. The school later became known as the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association. 

1993 - U.S. Federal agents raided the compound of an armed religious cult in Waco, TX. The ATF had planned to arrest the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, on federal firearms charges. Four agents and six Davidians were killed and a 51-day standoff followed. 

Texas Quote

All my ex's live in Texas
And Texas is the place I'd dearly love to be
But all my ex's live in Texas
Therefore I reside in Tennessee
- George Strait

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas history -- February 28th*


*Anson Mills names El Paso
*
On this day in 1859, Anson Mills submitted a street map of a settlement at the far western tip of Texas called variously Ponce's Rancho, Franklin, and Smithsville. He called the little community El Paso, and the name stuck. The city's downtown is still practically as he platted it. Mills was born in Indiana in 1834. After flunking out of West Point, he rode the Butterfield Overland Mail stage to El Paso in 1858. He was appointed district surveyor and surveyed forts Quitman, Davis, Stockton, and Bliss. He also built the Overland Building, for three decades the city's largest structure, and the Mills Building, which remains a major El Paso landmark. Mills is best remembered, however, as the boundary commissioner who refused to accept the 1911 arbitration agreement that gave the disputed Chamizal tract to Mexico. He died in 1924.


*Cowgirls get organized
*
On this day in 1948, the Girls Rodeo Association, forerunner of the Women's Professional Rodeo Association, was formed in San Angelo. The event followed the historic "all-girl" rodeo produced the previous fall in Amarillo. The founders, who met to organize and established goals, determined to raise the standards of cowgirl contests and to protect cowgirls from unfair practices. The WPRA is the oldest organization of women athletes in America.


*Dr Pepper goes private*

On this day in 1984, shareholders in the Dr Pepper Company accepted a buyout offer from a New York investment-banking firm, and Texas's preeminent soft-drink company went private. Dr Pepper originated in Waco in 1885. Wade B. Morrison, owner of Morrison's Old Corner Drug, employed a pharmacist named Charles Courtice Alderton, who often served soft drinks to customers. Alderton enjoyed experimenting with various combinations of fruit extracts and sweeteners. One combination proved enormously popular, and Morrison named it after Dr. Charles T. Pepper, a physician and pharmacist for whom he had worked in Virginia. In 1898 the Southwestern Soda Fountain Company of Dallas purchased the rights to produce and sell Dr Pepper, and four years later changed its name to the Dr Pepper Company. The Dr Pepper Company was officially incorporated in 1923. By the early 1980s changes in the soft-drink business led to decreasing profits, and the company began looking for a buyer. After the buyout, Dr Pepper sold a majority of its fixed assets and within a year had reestablished itself as the third most popular soft drink in the U.S. In 1986 Dr Pepper merged with the Seven-Up Company and soon thereafter moved its manufacturing operations to St. Louis, although the company's corporate headquarters remained in Dallas.

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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - DAY 6: February 28, 1836
*
Cannons bombarding
*
The Alamo endures prolonged cannonade from Santa Anna’s artillery batteries. 

As history records, nearly all of the Texans under arms inside the Alamo were killed in the March 6, 1836 attack. However, nearly twenty women and children, who had suffered and survived the bombardment and siege leading to the final assault, were spared and allowed to return to their homes. The best-known Alamo survivor, Susanna Dickinson, was sent to Gonzales by Santa Anna with a warning to the Texans that the same fate awaited them if they continued their revolt.

Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson (1814 – 1883)*
Married to Alamo defender Almaron Dickinson, Susanna is perhaps the best-known Alamo survivor. Only 22 yo at the time of the battle, Susanna moved into the Alamo mission when her husband was assigned there as captain in charge of artillery. Their daughter, Angelina Dickinson – later known as the “Babe of the Alamo” was less than two years old when the Alamo fell. Legend maintains that Travis placed his personal “cat’s-eye” ring on a string around the girl’s neck before the final battle. That ring is on display at the Alamo.

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## woodman6415

Where I'm from you either love them or hate them ... I grew up hating them .... in my youth not good for anything .. not even shade ... chop them down to ground and the next year two sprout up .... but as I got older and a little wiser I learned that not many woods cook BBQ as good as Mesquite .. when I started turning I found out how much I loved the finished look .. 


The Texas Quote of the Day:

The Brasada of south Texas covers over twenty million acres. These mesquite thickets and cactus patches created an environment found nowhere else in the United States. "Thickets are so dense in Maverick and Wells counties that even the rattlesnakes have to back out," and "Boys, that's some thick brush!" men have said about every county in south Texas. It seems true of all of them.

The Mesquite is a small tree in height. Seldom does it grow over 30 feet tall. Originally named "Misuitl" by the Aztecs, its name has been anglicized. It is now "Mesquite." It seems this tree has been here always. It was here before Kawas, the Eagle God, brought the Apaches, Kiowas and Lipans to the Southwest. Maybe the Mesquites were the first trees in northern Mexico and Texas. Quien Sabe? Some things are shrouded in the mists of antiquity ---- you do not question legends, you just believe them.

The Mesquite is a product of its environment. Its roots go deep into the earth to find water. Its bark is thick and rough. The pale green leaves are small to conserve moisture and prevent its loss from evaporation. The blossoms are small and yellow. The seeds grow in pods resembling domesticated green beans. When green, the beans are sweet, almost like cane. The beans dry on the tree and fall off in the autumn. They are relished by deer, javelinas, rodents, cows, horses and humans.

The native Americans taught the Spaniards about making flour from the beans. The native Indians made tortillas from Mesquite bean flour. The Spaniards soon learned to mix the native corn meal with the Mesquite bean flour to make a form of hot cake. When you cover these hot cakes with honey made from Mesquite blossoms or jelly made from Mesquite beans, you have a delicious dish. Of course, if you stuff your fat sides with meals of Mesquite bean hot cakes, Mesquite jelly, or honey, fried carna seca (dried beef) from a fear-year-old steer, and black coffee, the inevitable will happen: "You will get as fat as a town dog."

----- William B. Miller III, from "Mesquite" the Tree that Created Legends," published in "The Catch-Pen," oral essays collected by Len Ainsworth and Kenneth W. Davis, 1991

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Where I'm from you either love them or hate them ... I grew up hating them .... in my youth not good for anything .. not even shade ... chop them down to ground and the next year two sprout up .... but as I got older and a little wiser I learned that not many woods cook BBQ as good as Mesquite .. when I started turning I found out how much I loved the finished look ..
> 
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> The Brasada of south Texas covers over twenty million acres. These mesquite thickets and cactus patches created an environment found nowhere else in the United States. "Thickets are so dense in Maverick and Wells counties that even the rattlesnakes have to back out," and "Boys, that's some thick brush!" men have said about every county in south Texas. It seems true of all of them.
> 
> The Mesquite is a small tree in height. Seldom does it grow over 30 feet tall. Originally named "Misuitl" by the Aztecs, its name has been anglicized. It is now "Mesquite." It seems this tree has been here always. It was here before Kawas, the Eagle God, brought the Apaches, Kiowas and Lipans to the Southwest. Maybe the Mesquites were the first trees in northern Mexico and Texas. Quien Sabe? Some things are shrouded in the mists of antiquity ---- you do not question legends, you just believe them.
> 
> The Mesquite is a product of its environment. Its roots go deep into the earth to find water. Its bark is thick and rough. The pale green leaves are small to conserve moisture and prevent its loss from evaporation. The blossoms are small and yellow. The seeds grow in pods resembling domesticated green beans. When green, the beans are sweet, almost like cane. The beans dry on the tree and fall off in the autumn. They are relished by deer, javelinas, rodents, cows, horses and humans.
> 
> The native Americans taught the Spaniards about making flour from the beans. The native Indians made tortillas from Mesquite bean flour. The Spaniards soon learned to mix the native corn meal with the Mesquite bean flour to make a form of hot cake. When you cover these hot cakes with honey made from Mesquite blossoms or jelly made from Mesquite beans, you have a delicious dish. Of course, if you stuff your fat sides with meals of Mesquite bean hot cakes, Mesquite jelly, or honey, fried carna seca (dried beef) from a fear-year-old steer, and black coffee, the inevitable will happen: "You will get as fat as a town dog."
> 
> ----- William B. Miller III, from "Mesquite" the Tree that Created Legends," published in "The Catch-Pen," oral essays collected by Len Ainsworth and Kenneth W. Davis, 1991



I agree, when you grow up around them it only takes a couple thorns in your feet to dislike them. Now, it's my favorite wood to work. Tony

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

1836 was a leap year, so the 7th day of the Alamo siege actually fell on Feb. 29th.

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## Wildthings

Yep so we gonna get a twofer today

*The Alamo - Day 7 - February 29, 1836*

Santa Anna sends troops toward Goliad to intercept Texian reinforcements reportedly being brought by Fannin. Mexican troops are also positioned east of the Alamo, completing the encirclement of the besieged garrison. Evidence indicates an informal truce completed today may allow some civilians inside the Alamo to leave.

*Juana Navarro Alsbury (1812–1888).
The daughter of José Ángel Navarro (the son of the Navarro patriarch) and Concepción Cervantes, she and her sister, Gertudis, were raised in the Veramendi home after their mother’s death. She was the niece of José Francisco Ruiz and cousin of Ursula Veramendi. She married colonist Dr. Horace Alexander Alsbury. Juana entered the Alamo in the company of her young son by a previous marriage (Alejo Pérez), her sister Gertrudis, and James Bowie. She and her son are listed as Alamo survivors.

The Alamo - Day 8 -- March 1, 1836
*
A second cold front arrives. A relief column from Gonzales arrives, responding to Travis’ pleas for help. The Gonzales Ranging Company safely enters the compound, increasing the garrison’s strength by at least thirty-two. Finding no sign of Fannin’s reinforcements, the detachment sent by Santa Anna returns.


*Gertrudis Navarro (1816-1895).
The sister of Juana Narvarro Alsbury, Gertudis entered the Alamo at the same time as Juana and James Bowie. She is listed as an Alamo survivor.

Enrique Esparza (1828 – 1917)
The eight-year-old son of Alamo defender Gregorio Esparza, Enrique was one of the youngest eyewitnesses to the battle who later recorded his memories of the fateful day. His oft-quoted testimony was given to a San Antonio paper in 1907.*

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History -- March 1st


*Texas loses stagecoach mail and passenger service*

On this day in 1861, the 2 1/2-year history of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas came to an end. The Butterfield line began operations on September 15, 1858. It carried passengers and mail between St. Louis, Memphis, and San Francisco, a distance of 2,795 miles. A government contract called for the company to carry letter mail twice weekly in both directions in four-horse coaches, or spring wagons suitable for carrying passengers. Each trip was to be completed in twenty-five days. The postage rate was ten cents per half ounce. Passenger fare was $200 each way. Stage service in Texas was terminated in March 1861, when an agreement was made to modify the contract and move the route northward out of the state.


*First president of Rice Institute retires
*
On this day in 1946, Edgar Odell Lovett retired as president of Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston. Rice Institute was chartered in 1891 by William Marsh Rice with a $200,000 note payable upon his death. The original charter very generally prescribed an institution "dedicated to the advancement of literature, science, and art." The board of trustees in Houston determined that it would be a university and in 1907 appointed Lovett, a mathematician and astronomer at Princeton University, as president. The institute's opening in 1912 was marked by an elaborate international convocation of scholars. From the beginning Lovett intended Rice to be a university "of the highest grade." Under his direction Rice Institute first developed major strength in the sciences and engineering, though distinguished instruction was offered from the beginning in the humanities and architecture. The curriculum broadened and the faculty increased greatly in size under the administration of Lovett's successor, physicist William V. Houston, and the school's name was changed to Rice University in 1960. After his retirement Lovett continued his association with the university as president emeritus, director, and consultant.


*Nature Conservancy buys Enchanted Rock
*
On this day in 1978, the Nature Conservancy, a private concern based in Arlington, Virginia, bought Enchanted Rock for $1.3 million and agreed to act as interim owner until the state could take over, thus guaranteeing that the area would not be opened to private development. Enchanted Rock, a spectacular granite dome near the Gillespie-Llano county line in southern Llano County, rises to 1,825 feet above mean sea level and is the second largest such mountain in the United States. Its name derives from Spanish and Anglo-Texas interpretations of Indian legends and related folklore, which attribute magical properties to the ancient landmark. The first owners of this land were Anavato and María Martínez, to whom a headright certificate was issued in 1838. Over the ensuing 140 years the property changed hands numerous times; eventually Llano rancher Charles H. Moss and his wife Ruth acquired full title to the property but decided to sell it in 1978. Moss first offered it to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; the Nature Conservancy stepped in when the agency could not pay his price and deeded the land to the state six days later. Following eighteen months of renovations, the site reopened as Enchanted Rock State Park in March 1984. Today the 1,643-acre Enchanted Rock State Natural Area is a favorite destination of hikers, campers, rock-climbers, hang-gliders, and other outdoor enthusiasts from around the state.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Today in Texas History -- March 1st
> 
> 
> *Texas loses stagecoach mail and passenger service*
> 
> On this day in 1861, the 2 1/2-year history of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas came to an end. The Butterfield line began operations on September 15, 1858. It carried passengers and mail between St. Louis, Memphis, and San Francisco, a distance of 2,795 miles. A government contract called for the company to carry letter mail twice weekly in both directions in four-horse coaches, or spring wagons suitable for carrying passengers. Each trip was to be completed in twenty-five days. The postage rate was ten cents per half ounce. Passenger fare was $200 each way. Stage service in Texas was terminated in March 1861, when an agreement was made to modify the contract and move the route northward out of the state.
> 
> 
> *First president of Rice Institute retires
> *
> On this day in 1946, Edgar Odell Lovett retired as president of Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston. Rice Institute was chartered in 1891 by William Marsh Rice with a $200,000 note payable upon his death. The original charter very generally prescribed an institution "dedicated to the advancement of literature, science, and art." The board of trustees in Houston determined that it would be a university and in 1907 appointed Lovett, a mathematician and astronomer at Princeton University, as president. The institute's opening in 1912 was marked by an elaborate international convocation of scholars. From the beginning Lovett intended Rice to be a university "of the highest grade." Under his direction Rice Institute first developed major strength in the sciences and engineering, though distinguished instruction was offered from the beginning in the humanities and architecture. The curriculum broadened and the faculty increased greatly in size under the administration of Lovett's successor, physicist William V. Houston, and the school's name was changed to Rice University in 1960. After his retirement Lovett continued his association with the university as president emeritus, director, and consultant.
> 
> 
> *Nature Conservancy buys Enchanted Rock
> *
> On this day in 1978, the Nature Conservancy, a private concern based in Arlington, Virginia, bought Enchanted Rock for $1.3 million and agreed to act as interim owner until the state could take over, thus guaranteeing that the area would not be opened to private development. Enchanted Rock, a spectacular granite dome near the Gillespie-Llano county line in southern Llano County, rises to 1,825 feet above mean sea level and is the second largest such mountain in the United States. Its name derives from Spanish and Anglo-Texas interpretations of Indian legends and related folklore, which attribute magical properties to the ancient landmark. The first owners of this land were Anavato and María Martínez, to whom a headright certificate was issued in 1838. Over the ensuing 140 years the property changed hands numerous times; eventually Llano rancher Charles H. Moss and his wife Ruth acquired full title to the property but decided to sell it in 1978. Moss first offered it to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; the Nature Conservancy stepped in when the agency could not pay his price and deeded the land to the state six days later. Following eighteen months of renovations, the site reopened as Enchanted Rock State Park in March 1984. Today the 1,643-acre Enchanted Rock State Natural Area is a favorite destination of hikers, campers, rock-climbers, hang-gliders, and other outdoor enthusiasts from around the state.



Enchanted Rock is a climb from hell .. but the view from the top is truly amazing ...

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## woodman6415

I sure hope y'all like the Texas quote of the day on account of it took me awhile to type it out, It's worth reading, but a little gruesom:

"Uncle Worthy was past eighty in 1905, but he was still a "fiddlin fool" and when he received compliments on his rendition of "Over the Waves," which was the hit tune of that decade, he acknowledged the compliments with a gleam in his eye and gave most of the credit to his violin, which he held up for inspection. He said he had had it for "nigh onto fifty years." As he turned the instrument for all to see, there came a faint thump, thump, as if a small piece of leather or a little chip was loose inside ..."

"Got something in it you can't get out?" asked one of the young fellows.

"Nope. Got something in it I don't want out," came laconically from Uncle Worthy. "I'll tell you how it all come about....

"I was company cook in G Company when we was sent from San Antonio to help the Rangers run those damn Indians out of the Big Bend and the Devil's River country. We spent fourteen months on duty amongst that many million prickly pear and enough Indians to keep the Cap'n and the boys busy. But fixin' three meals wasn't enough to occupy my time, so I rode a pack mule over to a settlement, and bought, from a down-and-out sheep herder, this ole fiddle, wihich was shiny bright then, havin' just been brought up from Indianola the year before. "

"Long toward night of about the last day we spent in that thorn-incubatin' region, I was roastin' some venison and musin over the reasons the good Lord must 'a had for inventin' Injuns when, all of a sudden, somethin' zipped over my head and I felt a stingin' feelin' along the right side of my face ... I reached up and felt a round hole in my right ear, which ain't a been none too good since. In less than another minute I heard a shot and the Cap'n came ridin' down the side of the arroyo with his Springfield a-smokin'."

"One shot got the old chief," snapped the Cap'n. "He's lyin' where he fell. Don't touch him ..."

"Next mornin' we pulled out for San Antone and the trail led right by the body of that old Indian chief. The Cap'n permitted us to stop and look at the old cuss's carcass. I reached down and made like I was straightenin' his head out, which had sort of got crooked as he fell ... But what I really done was to let my desires get the most of my soldier trainin' and cause me to whack off that old gent's right ear, which I deemed rightly due me in place of mine, which he injured for what I knew to be the rest of my days. When I collected the compensation for my ruined ear, I had no place to hide it, so I just slipped it into my fiddle."

The thump, thump of Uncle Worthy's bit of retribution could be heard again as the fiddle, with a swinging flourish, was adjusted under the shaggy chin, and he settled back in his chair with an air of perfect harmony with the situation.

----- Virginia Madson, "The Big Bend Country," 1955

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> I sure hope y'all like the Texas quote of the day on account of it took me awhile to type it out, It's worth reading, but a little gruesom:
> 
> "Uncle Worthy was past eighty in 1905, but he was still a "fiddlin fool" and when he received compliments on his rendition of "Over the Waves," which was the hit tune of that decade, he acknowledged the compliments with a gleam in his eye and gave most of the credit to his violin, which he held up for inspection. He said he had had it for "nigh onto fifty years." As he turned the instrument for all to see, there came a faint thump, thump, as if a small piece of leather or a little chip was loose inside ..."
> 
> "Got something in it you can't get out?" asked one of the young fellows.
> 
> "Nope. Got something in it I don't want out," came laconically from Uncle Worthy. "I'll tell you how it all come about....
> 
> "I was company cook in G Company when we was sent from San Antonio to help the Rangers run those damn Indians out of the Big Bend and the Devil's River country. We spent fourteen months on duty amongst that many million prickly pear and enough Indians to keep the Cap'n and the boys busy. But fixin' three meals wasn't enough to occupy my time, so I rode a pack mule over to a settlement, and bought, from a down-and-out sheep herder, this ole fiddle, wihich was shiny bright then, havin' just been brought up from Indianola the year before. "
> 
> "Long toward night of about the last day we spent in that thorn-incubatin' region, I was roastin' some venison and musin over the reasons the good Lord must 'a had for inventin' Injuns when, all of a sudden, somethin' zipped over my head and I felt a stingin' feelin' along the right side of my face ... I reached up and felt a round hole in my right ear, which ain't a been none too good since. In less than another minute I heard a shot and the Cap'n came ridin' down the side of the arroyo with his Springfield a-smokin'."
> 
> "One shot got the old chief," snapped the Cap'n. "He's lyin' where he fell. Don't touch him ..."
> 
> "Next mornin' we pulled out for San Antone and the trail led right by the body of that old Indian chief. The Cap'n permitted us to stop and look at the old cuss's carcass. I reached down and made like I was straightenin' his head out, which had sort of got crooked as he fell ... But what I really done was to let my desires get the most of my soldier trainin' and cause me to whack off that old gent's right ear, which I deemed rightly due me in place of mine, which he injured for what I knew to be the rest of my days. When I collected the compensation for my ruined ear, I had no place to hide it, so I just slipped it into my fiddle."
> 
> The thump, thump of Uncle Worthy's bit of retribution could be heard again as the fiddle, with a swinging flourish, was adjusted under the shaggy chin, and he settled back in his chair with an air of perfect harmony with the situation.
> 
> ----- Virginia Madson, "The Big Bend Country," 1955



An eye for an eye, ear for a ear......


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## woodman6415

Today is Thursday, March 2, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1836 - The Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico was adopted at Washington-on-the-Brazos. An ad interim government was also formed. 

1861 - Texas' secession from the Union became official. The Secession Convention approved the ordinance on February 1 and the action was ratified by voters on February 23. 

1867 - The United States Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act. The act divided the South into five military districts. Texas was in the Fifth Military District. 

1910 - In San Antonio, at Fort Sam Houson, Lt. Benjamin D. Foulois made the first military air flight in a Wright brothers plane. The flight was seven-and-a-half minutes long and marked the beginning of the U.S. Air Force. 

1949 - The B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II landed in Fort Worth, TX. The American plane had completed the first non-stop around-the-world flight.

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## woodman6415

God bless the great State of Texas



On this day in 1836, Texans fed up with a government that "ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people,” signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Today, we proudly celebrate Texas Independence Day!

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## Tony




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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - Day 9 - March 2, 1836*

The siege continues. Unbeknownst to defenders of the Alamo, the provisional Texas government at Washington-on-the-Brazos declares independence from Mexico. (see above post)

Travis receives a report that there is corn at the Seguin ranch. He sends a detachment headed by Lt. Menchaca to retrieve it.

Mexican forces discover a hidden road within pistol shot of the Alamo and post the Jimenez battalion there to cover it.


*David (Davy) Crockett
Age: 50
Rank: Colonel
Birthplace: Tennessee
In early February Crockett arrived at San Antonio de Béxar; Antonio López de Santa Anna arrived on February 20. Susanna Dickinson, wife of Almaron Dickinson, an officer at the Alamo, said Crockett died on the outside, one of the earliest to fall. Joe, Travis's slave and the only male Texan to survive the battle, reported seeing Crockett lying dead with slain Mexicans around him and stated that only one man, named Warner, surrendered to the Mexicans (Warner was taken to Santa Anna and promptly shot). When Peña's eyewitness account was placed together with other corroborating documents, Crockett's central part in the defense became clear. Travis had previously written that during the first bombardment Crockett was everywhere in the Alamo "animating the men to do their duty." Other reports told of the deadly fire of his rifle that killed five Mexican gunners in succession, as they each attempted to fire a cannon bearing on the fort, and that he may have just missed Santa Anna, who thought himself out of range of all the defenders' rifles. David Crockett proved a formidable hero in his own right and succeeded Daniel Boone as the rough-hewn representative of frontier independence and virtue. In this regard, the motto he adopted and made famous epitomized his spirit: "Be always sure you're right-then go a-head!"*

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 2nd*


*Texas declares independence from Mexico*

On this day in 1836, Texas became a republic. On March 1 delegates from the seventeen Mexican municipalities of Texas and the settlement of Pecan Point met at Washington-on-the-Brazos to consider independence from Mexico. George C. Childress presented a resolution calling for independence, and the chairman of the convention appointed Childress to head a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence. In the early morning hours of March 2, the convention voted unanimously to accept the resolution. After fifty-eight members signed the document, Texas became the Republic of Texas. The change remained to be demonstrated to Mexico.


*Fifth Military district created by the First Reconstruction Act
*
On this day in 1867, the United States Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, thereby dividing the defeated South into five military districts, of which Louisiana and Texas, under Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan at New Orleans, constituted the Fifth Military District. Under the leadership of Sheridan, Charles Griffin, Winfield Scott Hancock, Joseph Mower, Joseph Reynolds, and Edward Canby, the military district presided over Congressional Reconstruction in Texas. The constant turnover in commanders and the relatively small number of troops in the state made the army more annoying than effective. Military officials intervened intermittently in political matters by controlling voter registration and by removing office holders who impeded Reconstruction efforts. With the notable exception of Hancock, most commanders favored the Republican party. In April 1870 Texas was readmitted to the Union and the Fifth Military District ceased to exist.


*Semicentennial of Texas Independence celebrated
*
On this day in 1886, the Semicentennial of Texas Independence celebrations began. Scattered meetings included orations at Brenham, a ball in Fort Worth, and a small gathering of Galveston County veterans. The major events occurred on April 21--San Jacinto Day--in most Texas towns. Parades, picnics, and speeches were typical. Waco and Belton used the occasion to break ground for new college buildings. Militia drills and athletic contests were frequent attractions. The Texas Veterans Association met in Dallas for the most important single celebration of the semicentennial. More than 200 old soldiers received an elaborate welcome, which added musical presentations to the other forms of entertainment. Semicentennial speakers drew several comparisons between the Texas Revolution and the American Revolution, such as the relation of both to the growth of liberty and stable government. Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, and others were compared to the Founding Fathers. The emphasis remained, however, on honoring the living veterans.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 3rd*


*U.S. appoints its first diplomat to the Republic of Texas
*
On this day in 1837, President Andrew Jackson appointed Alcée Louis La Branche to be the first diplomat from the United States to the Republic of Texas. As United States chargé d'affaires, La Branche negotiated the settlement of the cases concerning the brigs _Pocket_ and _Durango_ and a temporary commerce agreement. He aggressively defended the United States claim to disputed territory in Red River County. On April 25, 1838, the two countries signed the Convention of Limits, which recognized Texas claims to the contested county and the Sabine River as the eastern boundary of Texas. However, tension continued between the Republic of Texas and the United States regarding Indian depredations along the northern border. La Branche protested Texas army crossings of the border in pursuit of Indians. He believed that the majority of Indian attacks were caused by Texans' trespassing and surveying Indian lands. La Branche's reports on real or rumored Mexican attacks expressed optimism about the Texans' ability to retain their independence. On April 2, 1840, La Branche resigned his post to attend to personal affairs. His clear, calm reports enabled his government to be sensitive to the Texas position on various issues.


*Prominent black political leader dies*

On this day in 1898, Norris Wright Cuney, politician, died in San Antonio. Born to a white planter father, Philip Minor Cuney, and a slave mother, Adeline Stuart, in 1846 near Hempstead, Texas, Cuney was educated in Pennsylvania. After the Civil War Cuney studied law and was appointed president of the Galveston Union League in 1871. In 1873 he was appointed secretary of the Republican State Executive Committee. Over the next twenty-odd years he held a number of important positions in the Republican Party. In 1886 he became Texas national committeeman of the Republican party, the most important political position given to a southern black man in the nineteenth century. One historian of the Republican party in Texas characterizes the period between 1884 and 1896 as the "Cuney Era." Among his achievements was the organization of the Screwmen's Benevolent Association and he was a supporter of the black state college at Prairie View (now Prairie View A&M University). Maud Cuney-Hare, the noted musicologist, was his daughter.


*Texas Regiment formed for duty in the Philippines
*
On this day in 1899, a congressional act authorized the formation of the Thirty-Third Infantry Regiment, better known as the "Texas Regiment," one of the most famous American combat units of the Philippine Insurrection. The regiment was raised specifically for duty in the Philippines, and served there from October 27, 1899, until March 2, 1901. The regiment was organized at Fort Sam Houston. A third of the company officers as well as a third of the enlisted men were from Texas. The Thirty-third distinguished itself in the battles at Magnataram, Tirad Pass, Vigan, and Taguidin Pass. After the insurrection, some of the men chose to remain in the Philippines to serve with the Philippine Constabulary. The rest were mustered out of U.S. service in San Francisco on April 17, 1901.

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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - Day 10 - March 3, 1836
*
Travis receives a letter from his friend Major Robert M. “Three-Legged Willy” Williamson carried in by James B. Bonham that details efforts to send aid to the Alamo. In the letter, Williamson asks Travis to hold out a little longer until help arrives. Santa Anna receives 1,100 reinforcements. Travis sends out his last known appeals for assistance, stating, “I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and may my bones reproach my country for her neglect.”

James Butler Bonham arrives with news of reinforcements. He reports that sixty men from Gonzales are due and that an additional 600 would soon be en route.

The Texians fire several shots into the city in celebration.

Santa Anna receives word of Mexican General Urrea's victory at San Patricio. In celebration, the Mexians ring church bells and there is revelry in the camp.

The lead elements of General Gaona's Brigade arrive. These are reinforcements needed for a successful assault.

*James Bonham
Age: 29
Rank: Second Lieutenant
Birthplace: South Carolina
Bonham reached Texas in November 1835 and quickly involved himself in political and military affairs. On December 1, 1835, he wrote to Sam Houston from San Felipe volunteering his services for Texas and declining all pay, lands, or rations in return. On December 20, 1835, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Texas cavalry, but apparently was not assigned to any specific unit. He had time to set up a law practice in Brazoria and was advertising the fact in the Telegraph and Texas Register by January 2, 1836.

Bonham and Houston quickly developed a mutual admiration. On January 11, 1836, Houston recommended to James W. Robinson that Bonham be promoted to major, for "His influence in the army is great–more so than some who `would be generals'." Bonham probably traveled to San Antonio de Béxar and the Alamo with James Bowie and arrived on January 19, 1836. On January 26 he was appointed one of a committee of seven to draft a preamble and resolutions on behalf of the garrison in support of Governor Henry Smith. 

He was sent by Travis to obtain aid for the garrison at Bexar on or about February 16, 1836. He returned to the Alamo on March 3, bearing through the Mexican lines a letter from Robert M. Williamson assuring Travis that help was on its way and urging him to hold out. Bonham died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. He is believed to have died manning one of the cannons in the interior of the Alamo chapel.*

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## Wildthings

*Shall we set the mood for the coming days!





*


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## Wildthings

Little did they know that the end is drawing near...I'm sure the majority really understood their fate

*The Alamo - Day 11 - March 4, 1836*

Santa Anna ordered his artillery batteries moved closer to the Alamo. The prolonged artillery attack continues.

Santa Anna gathers his officers for a council of war.

It is decided that when the final assault takes place, that they will take no prisoners. The time for the assault will be determined tomorrow.

Having been consolidated into two batteries, the Mexican artillery, is brought to within 200 yards of the compound.

More Texian reinforcements arrive in the late hours.

*To the President of the Convention
March 3, 1836

COMMANDANCY OF THE ALAMO, BEJAR: In the present confusion of the political authorities of the country, and in the absence of the commander-in-chief, I beg leave to communicate to you the situation of this garrison. You have doubtless already seen my official report of the action of the 25th ult. made on that day to General Sam Houston, together with the various communications heretofore sent by express. I shall, therefore, confine myself to what has transpired since that date.

From the 25th to the present date, the enemy have kept up a bombardment from two howitzers (one a five and a half inch, and the other an eight inch) and a heavy cannonade from two long nine-pounders, mounted on a battery on the opposite side of the river, at a distance of four hundred yards from our walls. During this period the enemy has been busily employed in encircling us with entrenchments on all sides, at the following distance, to wit -- in Bexar, four hundred yards west; in Lavilleta, three hundred yards south; at the powder-house, one thousand yards east by south; on the ditch, eight hundred yards north. Notwithstanding all this, a company of thirty-two men from Gonzales, made their way into us on the morning of the 1st inst, at three o'clock, and Col. J.B. Bonham (a courier from Gonzales) got in this morning at eleven o'clock without molestation. I have so fortified this place, that the walls are generally proof against cannon-balls; and I shall continue to entrench on the inside, and strengthen the walls by throwing up dirt. At least two hundred shells have fallen inside our works without having injured a single man; indeed, we have been so fortunate as not to lose a man from any cause, and we have killed many of the enemy. The spirits of my men are still high, although they have had much to depress them. We have contended for ten days against an enemy whose numbers are variously estimated at from fifteen hundred to six thousand, with Gen. Ramirez Sesma and Col. Bartres, the aid-de-camp of Santa Anna, at their head. A report was circulated that Santa Anna himself was with the enemy, but I think it was false. A reinforcement of one thousand men is now entering Bexar from the west, and I think it more than probable that Santa Anna is now in town, from the rejoicing we hear. Col. Fannin is said to be on the march to this place with reinforcements; but I fear it is not true, as I have repeatedly sent to him for aid without receiving any. Col. Bonham, my special messenger, arrived at Labahia fourteen days ago, with a request for aid; and on the arrival of the enemy in Bexar ten days ago, I sent an express to Col. F. which arrived at Goliad on the next day, urging him to send us reinforcements -- none have arrived. I look to the colonies alone for aid; unless it arrives soon, I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms. I will, however, do the best I can under the circumstances, and I feel confident that the determined valour and desperate courage, heretofore evinced by my men, will not fail them in the last struggle, and although they may be sacrifieced to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse for him than a defeat. I hope your honorable body will hasten on reinforcements, ammunition, and provisions to our aid, as soon as possible. We have provisions for twenty days for the men we have; our supply of ammunition is limited. At least five hundred pounds of cannon powder, and two hundred rounds of six, nine, twelve, and eighteen pound balls -- ten kegs of rifle powder, and a supply of lead, should be sent to this place without delay, under a sufficient guard.

If these things are promptly sent, and large reinforcements are hastened to this frontier, this neighborhood will be the great and decisive battle ground. The power of Santa Anna is to be met here or in the colonies; we had better meet them here, than to suffer a war of desolation to rage our settlements. A blood-red banner waves from the church of Bexar, and in the camp above us, in token that the war is one of vengeance against rebels; they have declared us as such, and demanded that we should surrender at discretion or this garrison should be put to the sword. Their threats have had no influence on me or my men, but to make all fight with desperation, and that high-souled courage which characterizes the patriot, who is willing to die in defense of his country's liberty and his own honour.

The citizens of this municipality are all our enemies except those who have joined us heretofore; we have but three Mexicans now in the fort; those who have not joined us in this extremity, should be declared public enemies, and their property should aid in paying the expenses of the war.

The bearer of this will give you your honorable body, a statement more in detail, should he escape through the enemy's lines. God and Texas! --
Victory or Death!!

P.S. The enemy's troops are still arriving, and the reinforcements will probably amount to two or three thousand. *

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The last man to be killed by "Wild Bill" Hickock, Phillip Houston Coe, is buried in the Prairie Lea cemetery in Brenham, Texas. Phillip "Phil” Coe was a soldier, a gambler, a businessman, and called the famous Ben Thompson, gunman and gambler, one of his best friends.

Born Phillip Houston Coe in July, 1839 in Gonzales, Texas, to Elizabeth Parker Coe and Phillip Houston Coe, Phil would grow up to be called one of the greatest gunfighters of Texas.

In September, 1861 he joined the Confederate forces in Houston, Texas to fight in the Civil War and was quickly made a 3rd Lieutenant. However, just a few months later, in December, he was mustered out due to illness.

In March, 1862, he re-joined the Confederate forces, enlisting in the 36th Texas Cavalry, fighting for over a year, when he left the force in April, 1863.

After the war over, it is thought that he served with Ben Thompson under Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. It was under famous gunfighter and gambler, Ben Thompson, that Coe would hone his shooting and gambling skills.

By late 1869 he was in Brenham, where his sister, Delilah, and her family lived. There, he met and gambled with such notorious individuals as James Madison Brown, John Wesley Hardin, and William P. Longley. Next he went to Salina, Kansas in 1870, but by May, 1871 he had moved on to the wild Kansas cowtown of Abilene. Also there were Ben Thompson and Bill Hickok, who was serving as city marshal.

Coe and Thompson soon went into a partnership operating the Bull’s Head Saloon, one of the wildest places in the already wild cowtown. This, of course, created dissension between Thompson and Coe with City Marshal, Bill Hickok. Though there were a number of disagreements, tension rose again when Thompson and Coe hanged an oversize painting of a Texas Longhorn, complete in its "full masculinity” at the Bull’s Head Saloon. Most Abilene townspeople were offended by the sign and demanded the animal’s anatomy be altered. As a result, Hickok stood by with a shotgun as the necessary deletions were made to the painting. The tension was, no doubt, so thick it could be cut with a knife, and the alteration was made without serious incident. 

Though Coe and Hickok continued to have a number of disagreements, and it was well known the two disliked each other, Thompson and Hickok never had problems with each other, seemingly having a mutual respect for each other’s reputations.

Later, Thompson left town and Coe sold his interest in the saloon, although he remained on as a gambler.

When Hickok and Coe began to court the same woman, rumors started to circulate that each planned to kill the other.

At one point, Coe and Hickok passed words during a disagreement, during which Coe bragged of his expertise in shooting, with Coe reportedly stating he could "kill a crow on the wing", to which Hickok replied: "Did the crow have a pistol? Was he shooting back? I will be."

Eventually, the tension between the Phil Coe and Wild Bill Hickok would culminate in the ultimate gunfight. On the night of October 5, 1871, the trouble came to a head.

It was the end of the cattle season and Coe, along with a number of Texas cowboys were celebrating by drinking and carousing in Abilene's numerous saloons. As the cowboys neared the Alamo Saloon a vicious dog tried to bite Coe, and the gunman took a shot at him. Though he missed the dog, Hickok appeared just minutes later to investigate the gunfire.

The marshal demanded that Coe surrender his firearms, as an ordinance prohibited carrying them in the city. But instead of giving over his weapons Coe sent a bullet Hickok's way, to which the marshal returned fire, shooting Coe twice in the stomach. At about the same time, Hickok heard footsteps coming up behind him and turning swiftly; he fired again and killed Deputy Mike Williams, who had been coming to his aid. Williams' death haunted Hickock for the rest of his life. 

Coe lingered in agony for days and finally died on October 9th. His body was transported back to Brenham and buried in Prairie Lea Cemetery.

In the meantime, Hickok drove the rest of the cowboys out of town. But the city of Abilene had had enough. Before long, the city fathers told the Texans there could be no more cattle drives through their town and dismissed Hickok as city marshal.

Though some thought that Ben Thompson would retaliate against Hickok for the shooting, he did not, and by some estimations seemed to believe the shooting was justified

Coe's body was returned to Brenham, where he was buried.

Source: "Legends of America."

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## Wildthings

Even though it's a 181 years later my heart saddens knowing what tomorrow will bring -- God Bless Texas and its Heroes!


* The Alamo - Day 12 -- March 5, 1836
*
Santa Anna announces to his officers that he plans to attack the Alamo in the morning and orders them to prepare their troops for assault.

Santa Anna issues orders for the assault to begin utilizing four assault columns and one reserve column.

Santa Anna calls for reconnaissance to determine Mexican attack positions and approaches.

A messenger arrives at the compound with the grim news that reinforcements aren't coming.

Travis gathers his men and informs them of their options. Although evidence is lacking, tradition holds that Travis gathered his command together one final time to offer them the chance to leave. According to one account, Travis draws a line in the sand and asks the garrison to make a decision to stay or leave. Only one man, Moses Rose, chooses to leave.

At midnight the Mexicans begin moving into attack position.


*To Jesse Grimes
March 3, 1836

Do me the favor to send the enclosed to its proper destination instantly. I am still here, in fine spirits and well to do, with 145 men. I have held this place for ten days against a force variously estimated from 1,500 to 6,000, and shall continue to hold it till I get relief from my country or I will perish in its defense. We have had a shower of bombs and cannon balls continually falling among us the whole time, yet none of us has fallen. We have been miraculously preserved. You have no doubt seen my official report of the action of the 24th ult. in which we repulsed the enemy with considerable loss; on the night of the 25th they made another attempt to charge us in the rear of the fort, but we received them gallantly by a discharge of grape shot and musquertry, and they took to their scrapers immediately. They are now encamped in entrenchments on all sides of us.

All our couriers have gotten out without being caught and a company of 32 men from Gonzales got in two nights ago, and Colonel Bonham got in today by coming between the powder house and the enemy's upper encampment....Let the convention go on and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand, and the world will understand, what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms, and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day, and to drive away the monster who is fighting us under a blood-red flag, threatening to murder all prisoners and make Texas a waste desert. I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms, yet I am ready to do it, and if my countrymen do not rally to my relief, I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and my bones shall reproach my country for her neglect. With 500 men more, I will drive Sesma beyond the Rio Grande, and I will visit vengeance on the enemy fighting against us. Let the government declare them public enemies, otherwise she is acting a suicidal part. I shall treat them as such, unless I have superior orders to the contrary.

My respects to all friends, confusion to all enemies. God Bless you.

W. Barret Travis*

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: Most every time you see a film or read about the Battle of San Jacinto, Sam Houston is shown riding a white stallion. It is believed that the origin of this may be Marquis James' influential, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Sam Houston, "The Raven." But it is a myth. Sam Houston rode a gray horse at San Jacinto. We know because we have the testimony of several eyewitnesses, including that of William Zuber who, at the age of 15, was a soldier in Sam Houston's army and traveled with Houston and the Texian army across Texas. Houston had purchased the horse form a man named Isom Parmer. William Zuber wrote:

"Before leaving home for Washington he [Isom Parmer] had purchased a very large, fine-looking horse, for which he paid four hundred Mexican silver dollars, and rode him to Washington. Later, I often saw that horse. He was a large, handsome animal, but I think not very nimble. General Houston having been re-elected commander-in-chief of the army, left Washington for Gonzales on the 6th of March, but he was sorrily mounted and wanted a better horse, and proposed to purchase Isom Parmer's fine gray, offering to pay to him the price that he had paid for the horse--four hundred Mexican silver dollars. Parmer prided very much in that horse and wished to keep him, to accommodate General Houston though, he accepted the offer, and his memory of this favor to Houston was always a pleasure to him. This was the horse that was killed under General Houston in the battle of San Jacinto." 

So the next time you are watching one of those History channel TV shows and they show the white stallion, just say "uh-huh" to yourself, smug in the knowledge that you know the truth! ;)

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 5th*


*Mexican Army captures San Antonio; Republic of Texas totters*

On this day in 1842, Mexican general Ráfael Vásquez, with 700 soldiers, occupied San Antonio. Unable to raise an army in time to resist this invasion, the Texans surrendered and evacuated the town without a fight. Vásquez raised the Mexican flag over the town, and declared Mexican laws in effect. On March 9 the Mexican army abandoned San Antonio and began to withdraw to Mexico. The incident was part of a series of raids and counter-raids in 1842 as Mexico sought to recover Texas and the Texans fought to maintain their independence.


*Richard Henry Boyd born into slavery
*
On this day in 1843, Richard Henry Boyd began his remarkable life. He was born in Mississippi and named Dick Gray, a slave of B. A. Gray, and was later taken to his owner’s new plantation near Brenham, Texas. Boyd accompanied Gray and his three sons as a servant in the Confederate army. After Gray and his two older sons died in battle near Chattanooga, Boyd carried the youngest son, who was badly wounded, back to the Texas plantation. Boyd took charge of the plantation and managed cotton production and sales until emancipation. He then worked as a cowboy and in 1867 changed his name from Gray to Richard Henry Boyd. Self-taught, he enrolled in Bishop College at Marshall and was later ordained a Baptist minister. He organized six churches into the first black Baptist association in Texas in 1870 and went on to represent the group at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Boyd rose to prominence in Texas as a religious leader, established more churches, and published literature for black Baptist Sunday schools. In the mid-1890s he moved to Nashville, where his accomplishments included organizing a bank, a publishing company, and a doll company. He also wrote or edited fourteen books.


*Hill Country natural history authority dies in England
*
On this day in 1929, Howard George Lacey, rancher and naturalist, died in Bournemouth, England. He was born in Wareham, Dorset, England, on April 15, 1856, to aristocratic parents who sent him to private European schools; he earned a B.A. degree from Caius College, Cambridge. He immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-six and settled in Kerr County, Texas. In 1882 he purchased land on Turtle Creek, seven miles southwest of Kerrville, where he ranched for almost forty years. He gained wide recognition as a breeder of Angora goats, but his greatest fame came from his interest in natural sciences. His studies, observations, and collections of Hill Country flora and fauna ensured his reputation as an authority on the natural history of the region. Lacey published little, but he corresponded with natural scientists in Europe and throughout the United States and frequently entertained internationally known naturalists and scientists at his ranch. In addition, he worked in close contact with the Smithsonian Institution, the British Museum of Natural History, the Audubon Society of America, the American Ornithological Union, and the National Geographic Society. In recognition of Lacey's contributions to the field of zoology, three small mammals were named for him. In 1919, in ill health, Lacey sold his ranch and returned to England. His collection of specimens was donated to the Witte Museum in San Antonio.

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## woodman6415

God bless the Great State of Texas

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## Wildthings

*The Alamo - Day 13 -- * *March 6, 1836*


The Mexican columns formed up in their positions at midnight and lay on the ground surrounding the Alamo. At 5 AM Santa Anna rode to the north emplacement and ordered bugler Jose Maria Gonzales to bugle 'Attention' and then 'Charge'. He then began to play the _Deguello_. 

The Texans were jarred awake by the sound of the Mexican charge and the men scrambled to their positions on the walls. Each man had several preloaded muskets in place. The Texan artillery started firing grapeshot which took a heavy toll on the advancing Mexicans. Witnesses in the city reported that the inside of the fort was fully illuminated from the constant firing. 

The main force of the attack was focused on the north wall. They took heavy casualties and were beginning to stall when Santa Anna ordered more men into the attack. The Texan artillery also forced the Mexicans to the east and west of the fort to shift to the north. 

Travis and his slave Joe were defending the north wall. Travis discharged his shotgun and then took a Mexican bullet to the forehead. He fell to the base of the wall and landed dead against the earthworks as the Mexicans overwhelmed the north wall. 

The men inside the fort turned to face the Mexicans coming inside. Mass chaos ensued and there was firing in all directions. Almaron Dickinson ran into the church and told his wife Susana that all was lost. He gave her a kiss and rejoined the fight. 

A group of Texans attempted to escape on foot to the east on the Gonzales road. They were run down and killed by Mexican lancers. The east, west and south walls were also overran. The Mexicans entering the south wall would have found Jim Bowie in a room near death from his fever. David Crockett and his men from Tennessee were forced to abandon their position on the south wall and head to the church for cover. With most of the defenders in the open dead, the fighting shifted to bloody to room to room combat as the Mexicans went about finishing off the few remaining defenders. 

The Mexicans turned the captured Texan 18 pounder toward the church, the last holdout for the defenders, and blasted a sand bag barricade at the door. Almaron Dickinson fired his cannon from the back of the church at the Mexicans coming inside but he had no time to reload before being overtaken. Irishman Robert Evans made for the powder magazine with a torch to keep the Mexicans from taking the gunpowder but was cut down before he could make it. 

It was over. Santa Anna came down from the north fortification and walked into the Alamo observing the pools of blood and mutilated bodies. A small group of captured Texans were brought into the courtyard. Santa Anna was enraged that his orders for no quarter were not followed and ordered the men to set upon them with swords. There were some accounts that David Crockett was one of these men, however there is no conclusive evidence of this. The Mexicans set about looting the bodies while Santa Anna had Joe, Travis's captured slave, identify the bodies of the Alamo leaders. 

By 8 AM Santa Anna was giving a report to be sent back to Mexico City. The bodies of the Texan defenders were ordered to be stacked and burned and the bodies of the Mexican dead were buried. The exact numbers are not known but it is thought that 257 Texans were killed. They took with them 300-1000 Mexican soldiers.

Several of the Mexican officers noted that another such victory would be their ruin. 

Sam Houston left Washington-on-the-Brazos for Gonzales to take charge of the 400 men now gathered there to go to the aid of the Alamo. He arrived there on March 11. Later that day news of the fall of the Alamo arrived. Thus began the Runaway Scrape that would end on April 21 at San Jacinto amid cries to "*Remember the Alamo*!" "*Remember Goliad!"*

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## Wildthings

Here's another take of it I have been watching on another forum

Sunday March 6, 1836

At Midnight on March 5, 1836, Santa Anna's troops began moving into position for their planned attack of the Alamo compound. For several hours, the soldiers lay on the ground in complete darkness. About 5:30 A.M., they received the order to begin the assault.

The massed troops moved quietly, encountering the Texian sentinels first. They killed them as they slept.

No longer able to contain the nervous energy gripping them, cries of "Viva la Republica" and "Viva Santa Anna" broke the stillness.

The Mexican soldiers' shouts spoiled the moment of surprise. Colonel Travis, the Mexicans are coming!

Inside the compound, Adjutant John Baugh had just begun his morning rounds when he heard the cries. He hurriedly ran to the quarters of Colonel William Barret Travis. He awakened him with: "Colonel Travis, the Mexicans are coming!" Travis and his slave Joe quickly scrambled from their cots. The two men grabbed their weapons and headed for the north wall battery. Travis yelled "Come on boys, the Mexicans are on us and we'll give them Hell! "Unable to see the advancing troops for the darkness, the Texian gunners blindly opened fire; they had packed their cannon with jagged pieces of scrap metal, shot, and chain. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated the landscape and it was with horror that the Texians understood their predicament. The enemy had nearly reached the walls of the compound.

The Mexican soldiers had immediate and terrible losses. That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. Colonel José Enrique de la Peña would later write "...a single cannon volley did away with half the company of Chasseurs from Toluca." The screams and moans of the dying and wounded only heightened the fear and chaos of those first few moments of the assault.

Travis hastily climbed to the top of the north wall battery and readied himself to fire; discharging both barrels of his shotgun into the massed troops below. As he turned to reload, a single lead ball struck him in the forehead sending him rolling down the ramp where he came to rest in a sitting position. Travis was dead. Joe saw his master go down and so retreated to one of the rooms along the west wall to hide.

There was no safe position on the walls of the compound. Each time the Texian riflemen fired at the troops below, they exposed themselves to deadly Mexican fire. On the south end of the compound, Colonel Juan Morales and about 100 riflemen attacked what they perceived was the weak palisade area. They met heavy fire from Crockett's riflemen and a single cannon. Morales's men quickly moved toward the southwest corner and the comparative safety of cover behind an old stone building and the burned ruins of scattered jacales.

On the north wall, exploding Texian canister shredded but did not halt the advance of Mexican soldiers. Cos's and Duque's companies, now greatly reduced in number, found themselves at the base of the north wall. Romero's men joined them after his column had wheeled to the right to avoid deadly grapeshot from the guns of the Alamo church.

General Castrillón took command from the wounded Colonel Duque and began the difficult task of getting his men over the wall. As the Mexican army reached the walls, their advance halted. Santa Anna saw this lag and so committed his reserve of 400 men to the assault bringing the total force to around 1400 men.

Amid the Texian cannon fire tearing through their ranks, General Cos's troops performed a right oblique to begin an assault on the west wall. The Mexicans used axes and crowbars to break through the barricaded windows and openings. They climbed through the gun ports and over the wall to enter the compound.

That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. General Amador and his men entered the compound by climbing up the rough-faced repairs made on the north wall by the Texians. They successfully breached the wall and in a flood of fury, the Mexican army poured through.

The Texians turned their cannon northward to check this new onslaught. With cannon fire shifted, Colonel Morales recognized a momentary advantage. His men stormed the walls and took the southwest corner, the 18-pounder, and the main gate. The Mexican army was now able to enter from almost every direction.

In one room near the main gate, the Mexican soldiers found Colonel James Bowie. Bowie was critically ill and confined to bed when the fighting began. The soldiers showed little mercy as they silenced him with their bayonets.

The Texians continued to pour gunfire into the advancing Mexican soldiers devastating their ranks. Still they came.

When they saw the enemy rush into the compound from all sides, the Texians fell back to their defenses in the Long Barracks. Crockett's men in the palisade area retreated into the church.

The rooms of the north barrack and the Long Barracks had been prepared well in advance in the event the Mexicans gained entry. The Texians made the rooms formidable by trenching and barricading them with raw cowhides filled with earth. For a short time, the Texians held their ground.

The Mexicans turned the abandoned Texian cannon on the barricaded rooms. With cannon blast followed by a musket volley, the Mexican soldiers stormed the rooms to finish the defenders inside the barrack.

Mexican soldiers rushed the darkened rooms. With sword, bayonet, knife, and fist the adversaries clashed. In the darkened rooms of the north barrack, it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Mexicans systematically took room after room; finally, the only resistance came from within the church itself.

Once more, the Mexicans employed the Texians' cannon to blast apart the defenses of the entrance. Bonham, Dickinson and Esparza died by their cannon at the rear of the church. An act of war became a slaughter. It was over in minutes.

According to one of Santa Anna's officers, the Mexican army overwhelmed and captured a small group of defenders. According to this officer, Crockett was among them. The prisoners were brought before Santa Anna where General Castrillón asked for mercy on their behalf. Santa Anna instead answered with a "gesture of indignation" and ordered their execution. Nearby officers who had not taken part in the assault fell upon the helpless men with their swords. One Mexican officer noted in his journal that: "Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers."

Santa Anna ordered Alcalde Francisco Ruiz to gather firewood from the surrounding countryside and in alternating layers of wood and bodies the dead were stacked.

At 5:00 O'clock in the evening the pyres were lit. In this final act, Santa Anna's "small affair" ended.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 6th*


*Alamo falls to Mexican army*

On this day in 1836, the fortified compound of San Antonio de Valero Mission, under siege for thirteen days by the Mexican army under General Antonio Lòpez de Santa Anna, was subjected to an early morning assault. After a fierce battle, lasting for perhaps some 90 minutes, the defenses of the Alamo were overrun and all the defenders were killed. The chapel fell last. The slogan "Remember the Alamo!" subsequently became a rallying cry for the Texas Revolution, and the Alamo became a shrine to fallen Texas heroes.


*Medal of Honor recipient's plane shot down
*
On this day in 1944, John Cary Morgan's plane was shot down over Berlin. He spent the remaining fourteen months of World War II as a German prisoner. The Texas native, born in Vernon in 1914, received his pilot's license at age twenty. In July 1943, Second Lieutenant Morgan was stationed in England and was flying as a copilot on a B-17 bomber when his aircraft was attacked by a large force of enemy fighters. The pilot received a severe head wound that left him crazed, and fell over the controls with the wheel in his arms. Morgan took the controls on his side and, despite the frantic struggles of the pilot, brought the aircraft under control and back into the formation. Because the interphone had been destroyed it was impossible to call for assistance. The waist and tail gunners were unconscious because of damage to the oxygen system in the rear compartment. Hearing no fire from their guns, Morgan concluded that they had bailed out. He faced the prospect of flying the plane to the target and back to England unassisted. For two hours he flew in formation, with one hand holding off the pilot and the other on the controls, until the navigator entered the pilot's compartment and relieved the situation. Morgan's heroic performance resulted in the successful completion of a vital bombing mission and the safe return of the aircraft and crew. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for "gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty." He continued to fly missions until he was shot down in 1944. His story was fictionalized in the novel _Twelve O'Clock High!_ by Sy Bartlett (1948).


*A jolly good barbecue
*
On this day in 1954, the Anglo-Texan Society in London held its first official affair—a barbecue. Fifteen hundred guests enjoyed the celebration and feasted on 2,800 pounds of beef generously donated by the Houston Fat Stock Show. Author Graham Greene founded the group in London in late 1953 and welcomed persons with “definite connections with both Texas and Great Britain.” The society promoted friendly relations between Texans and Britons during a time when Great Britain had increased ties with the Lone Star State and its oil. Architect O’Neil Ford was an enthusiastic participant. The organization enjoyed its heyday under the leadership of Sir Alfred Bossom, a member of Parliament. The society met four times a year for merry Mexican food luncheons and dynamic speakers. By the mid-1960s the fun-loving glory days of the Anglo-Texan Society were over. The group disbanded in 1979.


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Here's another take of it I have been watching on another forum
> 
> Sunday March 6, 1836
> 
> At Midnight on March 5, 1836, Santa Anna's troops began moving into position for their planned attack of the Alamo compound. For several hours, the soldiers lay on the ground in complete darkness. About 5:30 A.M., they received the order to begin the assault.
> 
> The massed troops moved quietly, encountering the Texian sentinels first. They killed them as they slept.
> 
> No longer able to contain the nervous energy gripping them, cries of "Viva la Republica" and "Viva Santa Anna" broke the stillness.
> 
> The Mexican soldiers' shouts spoiled the moment of surprise. Colonel Travis, the Mexicans are coming!
> 
> Inside the compound, Adjutant John Baugh had just begun his morning rounds when he heard the cries. He hurriedly ran to the quarters of Colonel William Barret Travis. He awakened him with: "Colonel Travis, the Mexicans are coming!" Travis and his slave Joe quickly scrambled from their cots. The two men grabbed their weapons and headed for the north wall battery. Travis yelled "Come on boys, the Mexicans are on us and we'll give them Hell! "Unable to see the advancing troops for the darkness, the Texian gunners blindly opened fire; they had packed their cannon with jagged pieces of scrap metal, shot, and chain. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated the landscape and it was with horror that the Texians understood their predicament. The enemy had nearly reached the walls of the compound.
> 
> The Mexican soldiers had immediate and terrible losses. That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. Colonel José Enrique de la Peña would later write "...a single cannon volley did away with half the company of Chasseurs from Toluca." The screams and moans of the dying and wounded only heightened the fear and chaos of those first few moments of the assault.
> 
> Travis hastily climbed to the top of the north wall battery and readied himself to fire; discharging both barrels of his shotgun into the massed troops below. As he turned to reload, a single lead ball struck him in the forehead sending him rolling down the ramp where he came to rest in a sitting position. Travis was dead. Joe saw his master go down and so retreated to one of the rooms along the west wall to hide.
> 
> There was no safe position on the walls of the compound. Each time the Texian riflemen fired at the troops below, they exposed themselves to deadly Mexican fire. On the south end of the compound, Colonel Juan Morales and about 100 riflemen attacked what they perceived was the weak palisade area. They met heavy fire from Crockett's riflemen and a single cannon. Morales's men quickly moved toward the southwest corner and the comparative safety of cover behind an old stone building and the burned ruins of scattered jacales.
> 
> On the north wall, exploding Texian canister shredded but did not halt the advance of Mexican soldiers. Cos's and Duque's companies, now greatly reduced in number, found themselves at the base of the north wall. Romero's men joined them after his column had wheeled to the right to avoid deadly grapeshot from the guns of the Alamo church.
> 
> General Castrillón took command from the wounded Colonel Duque and began the difficult task of getting his men over the wall. As the Mexican army reached the walls, their advance halted. Santa Anna saw this lag and so committed his reserve of 400 men to the assault bringing the total force to around 1400 men.
> 
> Amid the Texian cannon fire tearing through their ranks, General Cos's troops performed a right oblique to begin an assault on the west wall. The Mexicans used axes and crowbars to break through the barricaded windows and openings. They climbed through the gun ports and over the wall to enter the compound.
> 
> That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. General Amador and his men entered the compound by climbing up the rough-faced repairs made on the north wall by the Texians. They successfully breached the wall and in a flood of fury, the Mexican army poured through.
> 
> The Texians turned their cannon northward to check this new onslaught. With cannon fire shifted, Colonel Morales recognized a momentary advantage. His men stormed the walls and took the southwest corner, the 18-pounder, and the main gate. The Mexican army was now able to enter from almost every direction.
> 
> In one room near the main gate, the Mexican soldiers found Colonel James Bowie. Bowie was critically ill and confined to bed when the fighting began. The soldiers showed little mercy as they silenced him with their bayonets.
> 
> The Texians continued to pour gunfire into the advancing Mexican soldiers devastating their ranks. Still they came.
> 
> When they saw the enemy rush into the compound from all sides, the Texians fell back to their defenses in the Long Barracks. Crockett's men in the palisade area retreated into the church.
> 
> The rooms of the north barrack and the Long Barracks had been prepared well in advance in the event the Mexicans gained entry. The Texians made the rooms formidable by trenching and barricading them with raw cowhides filled with earth. For a short time, the Texians held their ground.
> 
> The Mexicans turned the abandoned Texian cannon on the barricaded rooms. With cannon blast followed by a musket volley, the Mexican soldiers stormed the rooms to finish the defenders inside the barrack.
> 
> Mexican soldiers rushed the darkened rooms. With sword, bayonet, knife, and fist the adversaries clashed. In the darkened rooms of the north barrack, it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Mexicans systematically took room after room; finally, the only resistance came from within the church itself.
> 
> Once more, the Mexicans employed the Texians' cannon to blast apart the defenses of the entrance. Bonham, Dickinson and Esparza died by their cannon at the rear of the church. An act of war became a slaughter. It was over in minutes.
> 
> According to one of Santa Anna's officers, the Mexican army overwhelmed and captured a small group of defenders. According to this officer, Crockett was among them. The prisoners were brought before Santa Anna where General Castrillón asked for mercy on their behalf. Santa Anna instead answered with a "gesture of indignation" and ordered their execution. Nearby officers who had not taken part in the assault fell upon the helpless men with their swords. One Mexican officer noted in his journal that: "Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers."
> 
> Santa Anna ordered Alcalde Francisco Ruiz to gather firewood from the surrounding countryside and in alternating layers of wood and bodies the dead were stacked.
> 
> At 5:00 O'clock in the evening the pyres were lit. In this final act, Santa Anna's "small affair" ended.



It's with a heavy heart I go through my work day today. These men had a ton of guts and didn't deserve to be slaughtered like rabid dogs at the end. Tony

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 7th*


*Bluebonnet proclaimed state flower
*
On this day in 1901, the Texas legislature proclaimed the bluebonnet the state flower. In the 1930s the state began a highway-beautification program that included scattering bluebonnet seed beside roadways, thus extending the flower's range. The flower-called in some Indian lore a gift from the Great Spirit-is the subject of countless photographs and paintings. It usually blooms in March and April.
*

Earthquake!
*
On this day in 1923, an earthquake struck El Paso and resulted in the only death associated with a Texas quake when an adobe house collapsed on a man in neighboring Cuidad Juárez. Even though earthquakes are not common in the Lone Star State, more than 100 recorded tremors have occurred since 1847. Most have been of low magnitude and caused either by relief of tectonic stress along fault lines or by well injections connected with oil and gas field operations. Many of the quakes have hit West Texas and the Panhandle. One such occurrence in 1929 destroyed the hotel at Lobo in Culberson County, but the largest earthquake to shake Texas hit Valentine in Jeff Davis County in 1931 and measured roughly 6.0 on the Richter Scale. Other notable historic quakes shook Seguin (1847), Creedmore (1902), Hempstead (1910), and Mexia-Wortham (1932). In 1995 an earthquake measuring 5.7, the second largest in Texas history, rocked Alpine.


*Globe of the Great Southwest groundbreaking*

On this day in 1958, groundbreaking ceremonies on the campus of Odessa College were held for the Globe of the Great Southwest. This theater is a permanent replica of the original Globe Theater built in 1598 on the Thames River in London, England, for William Shakespeare's acting company. The idea of the reconstruction of a Shakespearean theater in Odessa originated in 1948 in Marjorie Morris's senior English class at Odessa High School. Building the replica was adopted as a project of the Odessa High School Shakespeare Club; donations were solicited, and a local architect, J. Ellsworth Powell, drew the blueprints without remuneration and pledged supervision of the construction. Morris began to teach at Odessa College in 1951. That year the Odessa College regents donated land on the campus on which to build the theater, a nonprofit organization was chartered, and fund-raising began. The Globe was constructed as money could be raised, largely through Morris's personal efforts. The main structure was completed in 1961. The octagonal theater seats 410. Because of its shape and building materials, primarily wood and plaster, it has excellent acoustics. Adjacent to the theater is a replica of Shakespeare's wife's home, which houses a Shakespearean library, archives, a small performance area, and a meeting place.

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## woodman6415

Today is Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1798 - Mathew Caldwell was born in Kentucky. He settled in Dewitt County, Texas, in 1831. He later became known as "Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution" because he rode from Gonzales to Bastrop to call men to arms before the battle of Gonzales in October 1835. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. 

1836 - In Goliad, James W. Fannin raised a flag with the words "Liberty or Death". 

2010 - Forbes Magazine published an article describing Texas as the "poster child for economic recovery" from the nationwide recession. 

2014 - The Dallas Stars retired Mike Modano's #9. 

Texas Quote

Don't mess with Texas.
- Texas Department of Transportation

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 8th*


*Birthday of the "Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution"*

On this day in 1798, Mathew Caldwell was born in Kentucky. He settled in Dewitt County, Texas, in 1831. Caldwell earned the name "Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution" because he rode from Gonzales to Bastrop to call men to arms before the battle of Gonzales in October 1835. He was also called "Old Paint" because his whiskers were dappled. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Caldwell commanded a company in the defense of Goliad. He was captured during the Santa Fe expedition and imprisoned in Mexico. He died at his home in Gonzales in 1842 and is buried there. Caldwell County was named in his honor.


*Creuzbaur's brave plans for Sea King
*
On this day in 1862, the battle of the Civil War ironclads _Merrimack_ and _Monitor_ near Chesapeake Bay sounded the death knell for a Texas gunboat before it ever got out of the planning stages. Texas mapmaker Robert Creuzbaur had proposed an innovative design for an iron-plated gunboat called _Sea King_ in November 1861. With a hot-air engine that powered propellers at the stern, this wood and iron vessel, Creuzbaur estimated, could reach a speed of 18 mph. Topside armaments would provide ample defense, but the ship’s most unique weapon was a gun beneath the waterline. This “submarine cannon” would surely blast through the Union fleet’s vulnerable wooden hulls. Fifty years before its time, the inventive cartographer envisioned a version of the modern torpedo tube. Governor Francis R. Lubbock appointed a scientific committee, and soon Texas legislators, excited about the great military potential of _Sea King_, appropriated $500 for Creuzbaur to present his plan to the Confederate War Department. But when the ironclads later engaged in their historic showdown all realistic chances for experimentation on a project like _Sea King_ were lost.


*Black traildriver born into slavery
*
On this day in 1850, George Glenn, black traildriver, was born into slavery, probably in Colorado County, Texas. He was raised on the ranch of Robert B. Johnson of Columbus and trained in ranching skills and as a trail cook. After the Civil War and emancipation, Glenn evidently continued at the Johnson ranch as a cowhand. In the spring of 1870 he accompanied Johnson on a cattle drive to Abilene, Kansas. At the Red River, when a fresh group of cowhands displaced the original ones, Johnson and Glenn continued with the new group to Abilene, where they sold the herd. Johnson fell ill and died at age thirty-six in Abilene in July 1870. Glenn had his employer embalmed and buried in a metal casket in the area. The following September he decided to bring Johnson's body back to Texas for burial and had the casket disinterred and placed in a wagon. Reportedly, Glenn traveled alone with Johnson's body for forty-two days across three states, arriving in Columbus in November 1871. He did not continue as a cowhand but maintained a lifelong friendship with his former employer's nephew, Texas Ranger and cattleman John Edwards Folts. Glenn died in 1931; his death certificate lists his occupation as "laborer." He was honored as one of the handful of black members of the Old Trail Drivers Association at the 1924 and 1926 annual meetings.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1837, Mirabeau B. Lamar traveled from Houston to a remote trading post named "Waterloo" to go on a buffalo hunt. Waterloo was located where Shoal Creek meets the Colorado River in what is now downtown Austin. They arrived one afternoon, woke up the next morning, looked out their windows, and saw the prairie covered in buffalo. Lamar shot and killed one of the biggest bull buffaloes that any of them had ever seen at what is now the corner of Congress avenue and 7th street. As you can see, things look a little different now:

http://goo.gl/maps/FphfV

Lamar was a lyrical and poetic soul. He climbed to the top of the hill where the state capitol building currently is and, enraptured and inspired by the water flowing so swiftly and purely in the creeks and the hunting and the physical beauty and a fleeting vision of Farrah Fawcett standing at that very spot 130 years in the future [note: that part about Farrah is not true, or at least not documented], declared that this is the spot where Texas' capital should be. And that's how the whole crazy thing got started.

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## Tony

The Texas quote of the day comes from General Philip Sheridan. Sheridan is most famous for having said, in a moment of tired frustration back in 1866, "If I owned Texas and all Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell." Well, for today's Texas quote, Sheridan explains how that quote came about:

"Speaking so kindly of Texas ---- and I speak from my heart ----- probably I ought to explain a remark I once made about the Lone Star state. I had just returned to San Antonio from Chihuahua on some Mexican business when I received an order to proceed at once to New Orleans.

I hired relays and coaches so that I had only to hitch on the wagon and go speedily to gt the boat from Galveston. I rode night and day. It was in August and, need I say, a tad warm. I arrived here covered with dust, my eyes and ears and throat filled with it. I went to a little hotel in that condition and had just gone up to the register when one of these newspaper men rushed up to me and said, "General, how do you like Texas?"

I was mad and I said, 'If I owned Texas and all Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.' Needless to say, that did not represent my true opinion of this magnificent state."

----- General Philip Sheridan, March 24, 1880, during a speech in Galveston at the Tremont Hotel. Now you know the rest of the story and I feel a little bit like Paul Harvey.

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## woodman6415

Today is Friday, March 10, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1836 - Sam Houston abandoned Gonzales and retreated eastward to avoid the advancing Mexican army. The exodus of settlers in the area was called the Runaway Scrape. 

1890 - The John Sealy Training School for Nurses opened with eighteen students in Galveston's two-month-old John Sealy Hospital. It was the first formal nursing school in Texas, 

1891 - The city of Lubbock was elected as the county seat of Lubbock County. 

1898 - A group of business men in Eagle Lake chartered the Cane Belt Railroad. The railroad was needed to transport crops to market. 

1922 - The Sealy and Smith Foundation for the John Sealy Hospital was chartered under the laws of Texas as a charitable corporation. The corporation was formed by Galveston entrepreneur John Hutchings Sealy and his sister, Jennie Sealy Smith. 

Texas Quote

I’d rather be a fencepost in Texas, than the king of Tennessee.
- Chris Wall, Singer-Songwriter-Austin

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 10th*


*Explorer promises each Texan a silver mine
*
On this day in 1756, Bernardo de Miranda y Flores, lieutenant governor of Texas, returned to San Antonio after his expedition to Los Almagres Mine in present-day Llano County. He announced the discovery of “a tremendous stratum of ore,” and he proclaimed the promise of “a mine to each of the inhabitants of the province of Texas.” Even though the samples he collected were too small for accurate analysis, his bold guarantee sparked dreams of a rich silver mine for decades. Diego Ortiz Parrilla, presidio captain at San Sabá, soon obtained more samples in an attempt to convince authorities that he should move his garrison to Los Almagres Mine. Those plans died with the destruction of the Apache mission in 1758, but in the confusion, later prospectors erroneously deemed the mine to be near the San Saba River. By the 1830s Stephen F. Austin depicted the legendary “lost” silver mine on maps, and James Bowie was among the fortune hunters who tried to find the mother lode. Finally in the early 1900s, after examining Miranda’s journal, historian Herbert E. Bolton found the site near Honey Creek in Llano County. Even though geologists classified the mine as unproductive, romantic tales of Hill Country riches continued to abound.


*First nursing school in Texas opens*

On this day in 1890, the John Sealy Training School for Nurses, the first formal nursing school in Texas, opened with eighteen students in Galveston's two-month-old John Sealy Hospital. The school was established by a group of philanthropic ladies of that city as an educational entity independent of the hospital. In 1896, however, the school was subsumed by the University of Texas Medical Branch. Training schools subsequently opened in hospitals throughout the state. In the majority of hospitals the actual education students received was secondary to their service in the wards caring for patients. This pattern of training nurses predominated until well into the 1960s. By 1991 UTMB had conferred more than 4,000 nursing diplomas or degrees.


*New foundation formed for support of John Sealy Hospital
*
On this day in 1922, the Sealy and Smith Foundation for the John Sealy Hospital was chartered under the laws of Texas as a charitable corporation by Galveston entrepreneur John Hutchings Sealy and his sister, Jennie Sealy Smith. As indicated by its charter, the foundation was established for the purpose of "construction, remodeling, enlarging, equipping, and furnishing of the John Sealy Hospital" and other buildings, "and endowment thereof" to provide medical care for the people of Galveston. Since its establishment the foundation has committed more than $313 million to hospital-related facilities and operations of the hospital at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

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## woodman6415



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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 12th*


*Falvel given command of Flash*

On this day in 1836, Luke A. Falvel was commissioned captain of the _Flash_. On the same day, the crew was sworn in. The vessel was a privateer fitted out for service in the Texas Revolution. Privateers, private ships carrying letters of marque from the Republic of Texas, were used to supplement the small Texas Navy. The _Flash_ was ordered to proceed to the Brazos River to pick up victims of the Runaway Scrape, take them to Morgan's Point, and defend that place in case of a Mexican attack. The ship sailed on several more missions before it ran aground and was lost in May 1837.


*Galveston longshoremen strike
*
On this day in 1920, approximately 1,600 dockworkers in Galveston went on strike as part of a nationwide walkout. The ensuing battle between organized labor and open-shop factions stretched on for months. The Mallory and Morgan steamship lines used scab workers to combat the strikers, who were members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). The company employed white scabs to replace black ILA locals and black scabs to replace white ILA workers to inflame racial tensions. In an effort to prevent violence, Governor William P. Hobby deployed a detachment of Texas Rangers, and the Mallory company, fearful of conflict, suspended its Galveston operations. In June the governor declared martial law and dispatched 1,000 national guard troops. Eventually negotiations between the city of Galveston and the state government led to the withdrawal of the national guard, and Galveston ILA locals finally resumed work between December 1920 and July 1921, but with a smaller pay increase than they had sought. Ultimately, the dispute was a factor that helped foster antilabor attitudes among business and political entities in the state.


*Rejected portrait of LBJ draws record crowd to Snyder museum
*
On this day in 1967, a record number of visitors went to the Diamond M Museum in Snyder, Texas, to see Peter Hurd's official portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson, which Johnson had rejected and declared "the ugliest thing I ever saw." Hurd, a native of New Mexico born in 1904, studied under N. C. Wyeth in the 1920s and first came to national attention in the 1930s. Many of his paintings and murals are in Texas; perhaps the most notable mural is in the Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock. The Johnson portrait episode inspired the punning comment that "artists should be seen around the White House--but not Hurd." The Diamond M Museum put the portrait on display just before it was moved to the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., where it hangs today. The Diamond M Museum closed in 1992, and its collection was given to the Museum of Texas Tech University.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 13th*


*Fort Inge established on Texas frontier
*
On this day in 1849, frontier artist and military officer Capt. Seth Eastman and his companies established Camp Leona on the Leona River in southern Uvalde County. The outpost, which was soon renamed Fort Inge, was part of a federal line of forts in Texas. Army troops and Texas militia used the camp as a base while they provided protection for settlements and escorted supply trains and mail carriers. For most of its history Fort Inge operated as a one-company, fifty-man post. Notable officers through the years included captains John G. Walker and Edmund Kirby Smith, as well as William A. A. (Bigfoot) Wallace and his Texas Rangers. The presence of Fort Inge brought a greater sense of security to the Hill Country frontier, and by the late 1850s farmers had established the nearby community of Uvalde. Fort Inge was closed for federal service in 1869. Today Fort Inge County Park includes the site of the old outpost.


*Future Texas publisher born in Tennessee*

On this day in 1857, Jefferson McLemore was born in Tennessee. He moved to Texas in 1878 and worked as a cowboy, printer, and newspaper reporter. He published a newspaper in Kyle in the 1880s, and from 1892 to 1896 was a member of the Texas House of Representatives. He published the _Texas Monthly Review and State Topics_ and _Indianola and Other Poems_. McLemore represented Texas as a delegate at large in the Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth U.S. congresses. He died in Laredo on March 4, 1929.


*Evangelist breaks with Southern Baptist Convention
*
On this day in 1956, evangelist and humanitarian Lester Roloff broke with the Southern Baptist Convention by delivering a sermon at Baylor University against denominationalism. Roloff, a Texas native, determined to preach at age eighteen. To pay for his room and board at Baylor University, he took his Jersey cow, Marie, with him and sold milk. After pastoring several different churches, he accepted the pastorate of Park Avenue (later Second) Baptist Church in Corpus Christi in the mid-1940s, which was henceforth his home base. There he organized the Baptist Ministerial Alliance, of which he was first president, and in 1944 launched his "Family Altar" radio program. Almost from the time he began preaching, Roloff was in demand as a revival speaker, and in 1951 he resigned his pastorate and became a full-time evangelist. Whether from the pulpit or over the airwaves, Roloff preached a scripturally based, no-nonsense Gospel message that reflected his conservative background and fundamentalist approach. His tenacious refusal to compromise his personal convictions resulted in a gradual break with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptist Convention, finalized by his 1956 sermon. Under his leadership his ministry founded a number of humanitarian programs. Controversial to the end, Roloff engaged in a series of court battles with the Texas Department of Human Services in the 1970s over the licensing of his youth-rescue projects. He died in 1982.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 14th*


*Wildcatter born in Lithuania
*
On this day in 1874, Haymon Krupp, merchant and oil wildcatter, was born in Kozno, Lithuania. In 1890 he immigrated to El Paso, Texas, where he worked in a dry-goods store and soon opened his own men's clothing store. In 1910 he established a large dry-goods house that became widely known throughout the Southwest. He pioneered what is now El Paso's outdoor clothing industry with one of the first clothing factories in the Southwest. He became renowned for giving thousands of dollars' worth of coal to the poor in El Paso and West Texas. In the 1920s he donated funds to build B'nai Zion Temple in El Paso. Krupp entered the oil business when he joined Frank Pickrell, also of El Paso, to buy a lease option to drill for oil on University of Texas lands in the Permian Basin. In 1919 Krupp and Pickrell organized the Texon Oil and Land Company, with Krupp as president and Pickrell as vice president. They capitalized Texon by purchasing three producing wells in Burkburnett and selling 685 certificates of interest in New York. On May 28, 1923, their first well, the Santa Rita No. 1, came in on their leased university-owned lands in West Texas. Krupp died on February 21, 1949.


*Group forms organization to honor trusty steeds
*
On this day in 1940, livestock leaders met in Fort Worth to form the American Quarter Horse Association. Among those in attendance were rancher and quarter horse breeder Anne Burnett Hall and King Ranch president Robert J. Kleberg. The series of meetings led to a charter, by-laws, and election of officers of an organization to “collect, record and preserve the pedigrees of Quarter Horses in America….” The origin of the American quarter horse dates to colonial times when the speedy horses earned fame for their performance in quarter-mile races—hence the name. The quarter horse in Texas is forever linked with the history of the open range and the cowboy. After the Civil War cattlemen needed swift yet sturdy mounts to drive longhorns to northern railheads in Kansas and elsewhere. Quarter horses were mated with mustang mares to produce a strong, speedy equine with great endurance. No formal registry of the animals existed until the American Quarter Horse Association undertook its publication. Soon after the formation of the group, the King Ranch-bred Wimpy, grand champion stallion at the 1941 Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth, earned the designation of P-1 in the AQHA Stud Book.


*Ruby found guilty*

On this day in 1964, Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby was convicted of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. On November 24, 1963, Ruby, then proprietor of the Carousel Club, had shot and killed Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in the basement of the Dallas City Jail, during Oswald's transfer to the county jail. Millions of witnesses watched on national television. Although he was defended by Melvin Belli on the grounds that "psychomotor epilepsy" caused him to black out consciously while functioning physically, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice. His conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and Ruby was awaiting a retrial when he died in prison in 1967. Ruby denied involvement in any conspiracy, and maintained to the end that he shot Oswald on impulse from grief and outrage.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"In 1883, Alpine [Texas] was composed of seven lumber shacks, one general store, and two saloons and dance halls combined. The 
saloons and dance halls did a thriving business, as this was an 
important cattle shipping point. This was during the time 
when every man was a law unto himself, and carried his code 
with him. Gambling was open, and on hot summer days the 
tables and the "layout" were placed on the front verandas of 
the saloons. Sunday afternoons were the most popular after- 
noons of the week at the saloons and dance halls. 

The old cemetery at the point of Twin Mountains was first 
broken for the body of Mike Dersey, who was killed one sum- 
mer's day while 'in a poker game. His slayer was arrested, but 
later escaped from the old "Bat Cave" at Fort Davis. 

Alpine was in its "wild and woolly" state during this time, 
and excursions from the East always stopped long enough to 
give the passengers a chance to view the sights. Most of the 
passengers were persons who never had been west of New 
York, and often their credulity and inquisitiveness was taxed 
to the breaking point. A story is told that on one occasion 
just before the train departed, one of the passengers, wearing 
slippers, a smoking jacket, and a monocle, appeared on the rear 
platform of the last Pullman. One of the cowboys, seeing him, 
quickly dropped his rope over him, and drew him off the plat- 
form, whereupon all of his cowboy companions rushed up 
shouting, "I saw him first!" "What is it?" "If you can name 
it, you can have it," "It is mine, I roped it first," and other 
similar statements that were hurled at the head of the scared 
and helpless prisoner. The westerners, in all good humor 
among themselves, then began to quarrel over the ownership of 
the passenger, and guns were brought into play to settle the 
argument. 

The train had gone some distance by this time, but the 
conductor was implored by the other passengers to back up and 
recover the man. When it did, there was one frightened tourist 
who scrambled on board, vowing never to return to the Big 
Bend. "

------ Carlyle Graham Raht, "Romance of the Davis Mountains and Big Bend, 1919

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Although Jackie Gleason and Gypsy Rose Lee were world famous celebrities entertaining State Fair of Texas patrons in 1946, the longest lines by far were for those waiting to see Elsie the Borden cow in her first State Fair of Texas appearance.

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## woodman6415

Just down the road 

Only in Bandera: Shiner Bock, cowboys, and nude dancin'.... I took this photo just a few days ago at the 11th Street Cowboy Bar. I saw these two gentlemen sitting under that sign and KNEW I had to take this photo. I love that little town!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 15th*


*Mexican army captures Texas Masonic soldier
*
On this day in 1836, Texas Revolutionary soldier Lewis T. Ayers was captured by the Mexican forces of Gen. José de Urrea. Ayers was involved in the series of skirmishes between March 12 and March 15 that came to be known as the battle of Refugio. He was serving with Captain Amon King in an action against the Mexican rear guard when he was captured. Ayers was one of thirty-three prisoners subsequently led out to be shot, but was saved by the intervention of one of Urrea's subordinates, Col. J. J. Holzinger, who halted the execution so that German prisoners might be reprieved. Though he was not a German, Ayers was spared, and afterward set free, reportedly because he gave a Masonic sign that was recognized by the Mexican general.


*Sensational court-martial convenes for Alamo hero's son
*
On this day in 1856, the court-martial of Capt. Charles Edward Travis, one of the most sensational courtroom dramas in history, convened at Fort Mason. Charles, son of beloved Alamo hero William Barret Travis, was born in Alabama in 1829 and reared by his mother and stepfather in New Orleans after his father’s death. He moved to Brenham in 1848 and became an attorney and Texas legislator. Travis received a commission as captain in the Second United States Cavalry in 1855. At Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, a fellow officer charged Travis with slander, and he was also charged with cheating at cards and unauthorized absence from camp during a subsequent journey to Texas. Col. Albert Sidney Johnston relieved him of command and confined him to quarters. At the court-martial at Fort Mason, Travis conducted much of his own defense and pleaded not guilty to “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” Col. Johnston himself and other officers testified against Travis, and Johnston’s wife Eliza commented in her diary that Travis was “a mean fellow.” He was pronounced guilty and dismissed from service. After attempts to exonerate himself he died of consumption in 1860.


*Big band leader born*

On this day in 1916, Harry James, jazz trumpet player and big-band leader, was born in Albany, Georgia. Though thought by many to be a native Texan, he did not arrive in Texas until the 1930s, when he and his parents moved to Beaumont. There he played trumpet and led a band. In 1936 James joined Benny Goodman's orchestra. He made a name for himself with fiery trumpet solos and an appearance in the band's 1938 movie, _Hollywood Hotel_. After he started the Harry James Band in 1940, his hit song "You Made Me Love You" (1941) sold over a million copies. A true virtuoso, Harry, along with his band, developed the boogie-woogie style for big-band swing. His romantic ballads were the key to his success and shot him to fame as a big-band leader. Still an active musician in the 1970s, he was quoted then as saying, "I don't look at people as changing, being old or being young. I just look down from the stand to see if people are having fun." Harry James died in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1983.

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## woodman6415



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## Wildthings

*Battle of Refugio March 12 - 15th, 1836*

A little more on the Battle at Refugio

The battle was fought from March 12–15,1836, near Refugio, Texas. Mexican General José Urrea and 1,500 Centralista soldiers fought against Amon B. King and his 28 American volunteers and Lieutenant Colonel William Ward and his approximately 120 Americans. The battle, a part of the Goliad Campaign of the Texas Revolution, resulted in a Mexican victory and splintered Texan resistance

Fannin dispatched William Ward, commanding a group from Peyton S. Wyatt and the Georgia Battalion to assist King. Ward made his stand at the Mission Nuestra Senora del Refugio and a furious battle ensued. Although successful in breaking up the siege on the 13th, the arrival of Ward at Refugio led to a conflict over command between the two officers. This dispute caused the insurgents to break into several smaller detachments. King left and ventured to attack a nearby ranch, believed to be occupied by Centralistas, killing 8.[11]

As more of Urrea's troops arrived, the fighting with Ward's men continued. The groups held their own on the 14th, repelling four assaults, killing 80 – 100 Mexican troops and wounding 50. The Texians suffered light losses, (about 15), but were now short on ammunition and supplies. King returned from his raid in the evening but could not get to the mission for safety. They had to fight from a tree-line across from it, near the Mission River, where they also inflicted heavy losses upon the Mexican army. Ward sent courier James Humphries to Fannin for orders. Edward Perry returned word from Fannin to fall back to Victoria, where Texian forces were to later regroup.

At night, the groups attempted the escape. The wounded and a few others would remain behind. Their flight seemed successful at first, but there were overwhelming numbers of Mexican troops in wait. Each group was subsequently defeated and its survivors captured by Urrea's troops. After battling for twelve hours and inflicting heavy casualties on their enemies, the last group of fleeing Texians only suffered one killed and four wounded. King and thirty-two men surrendered on the 15th because their remaining powder had become unusable after crossing the river. They were returned as prisoners of war to the Refugio Mission. On March 16, fifteen men were executed; King and the remnants of his company, and several of Ward's men. Juan José Holzinger, a German-Mexican officer, saw fit to save Lewis T. Ayers, Francis Dieterich, Benjamin Odlum and eight men from local families. The remaining fifteen men were spared to serve the Mexican army as artisans (blacksmiths, wheelwrights, mechanics).[17]

Ward and the bulk of his men escaped toward Copano, then turned at Melon Creek and headed for Victoria, where he thought Fannin should be, hearing the gunfire on the Coleto Creek as they moved on. At Victoria, they found no time for rest; it was overrun with Urrea's troops. The group was forced to scatter after a short skirmish with Urrea's cavalry. Staying off the main roads, they moved toward Lavaca Bay, with ten of them eventually escaping. The remainder were captured on March 22 by Urrea, two miles from Dimmit's Landing. Informed of Fannin's surrender, Ward's group was marched back to Victoria, where Holzinger again saved twenty-six men, by conscripting them as laborers for Urrea. Urrea had left Colonel Telesforo Alavez, in charge of Victoria. Señora Francita Alavez intervened with her husband as well, to make sure the captive laborers' lives would be saved. The remainder were sent to Goliad by March 25.[18]

Fannin learned of Ward and King's fate on the 17th and had finally left for Victoria on the 19th, which proved to be too late, as the right wing of the Mexican Army was now in place to capture Fort Defiance. Fannin and his command would never make it to Victoria

Just south of Town, in the middle median, on Hwy 77 is a huge Old Oak Tree with a Tx Historical Marker depicting the spot where General Urrea camped under the canopy of the oak.

Urrea Oaks

Also at the Catholic Church "Our Lady of Refuge" previously known as "_Mission Nuestra Senora del Refugio_" as mentioned above is an old Anaqua tree that dates back before the revolution

Mission Anaqua

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is actually a newspaper account of the hanging of notorious outlaw Bill Longley in Giddings on October 11, 1878. 

"BILL LONGLEY HANGED

The End of the Most Atrocious Criminal in the Country - Expiaring on the Gallows One of Over a Score of Murders - A Career Happily Unparalleled in American Records of Crime. Galveston, Texas, Oct. 11 - A special to the News from Giddings, says Wm. P. Longley, generally known as Bill Longley, was hanged there to-day in presence of a vast crowd, for the murder of Wilson Anderson, in March, 1875. Longley made a speech from the gallows asking forgiveness of those whom he had injured, and warning his hearers to forgo revenge, as it was that passion which brought him to the scaffold.

At 2:37 o'clock the drop fell; the culprit moved a couple of times, and his arms and legs worked spasmodically for a few seconds. In eleven and a half minutes life was pronounced extinct.

Longley had certainly killed eight men, six whites and two negroes, besides shooting several others who survived; but it is confidently believed that at least 30 men died by his hand.

A New York Sun correspondent says; William P. Longley was the first murderer judicially hanged in Texas for two years. Longley was undoubtedly the king of desperadoes, though he lately protested to the writer that he was innocent of some of the murders attributed to him. He was never able to recall them at all. Longley was one of the handsomest men I ever met. He was a little over 27 years of age, tall and graceful, with a mild, blue eye, ruddy complexion, Roman nose, a dark mustache and goatee, and a set of teeth like pearls. While talking he occasionally rubbed them with a faded silk handkerchief, and his voice was low and gentle as a woman's. He wore the Texan sombrero, the band of which is made in imitation of the coiled rattlesnake, and with his coat buttoned around his shapely waist, his hat tipped a little to one side of his well shaped head, he was the model of the roving desperado of Texas.

Longley began his extraordinary career at the age of 15, when he and a companion amused themselves by mounting on horseback and firing at every negro whom they encountered. Those were stormy times even for Texas, when it was emerging from the civil war, and civil law was virtually dead in the greater portion of the State. The immunity which Longley enjoyed emboldened him to more daring crime until, before reaching his majority, he was one of the most dreaded men north of the Rio Grande. While yet quite young he started through the Indian Nation with a companion, but was attacked by outlaws, his partner was killed, and himself put to flight. When his horse gave out he shot an Indian and took his from him. This he repeated several times, until the Creeks and Choctaws gathered and pursued him. Longley's horse was killed, himself wounded, and he took to the bush. Here he was found by a squaw, who brought him food and helped conceal him until the hue and cry was over, when he got away.

Longley subsequently joined a party which started for the Black Hills, but were turned back by the Government troops, and he enlisted in the service. He made an arrangement with the quartermaster to swindle the Government, but the two attempted to cheat each other, quarreled, and Longley shot the quartermaster dead, and then took to the mountains. He was followed, captured, and sentenced to a long confinement in prison, but escaped, as he declared, through bribing the guard.

While trampling through the woods in Arkansas one day he stopped at a cabin, where he was welcomed by its only occupant, a powerful-limbed, heavily bearded man. While the two were in conversation the cabin was surrounded by a vigilance committee, that had come for the express purpose of lynching the host, who was a noted horse thief named West. Finding a handsome and graceful guest, they concluded he belonged to the gang. Longley protested an appealed to the horse-thief, who grimly shook his head. As there was no help for himself, he thought his visitor might as well bear him company in the road to the sudden gallows.
Both men were carried out and hanged to the limb of a tree, and then the seven vigilantes galloped away. A brother of West was hiding in the woods, watching the proceedings. As the horsemen disappeared, he ran up and cut down the horse-thief. He was already dead, but when Longley was lowered, he was found to be alive. The knot of the rope had caught in his ear, and in the course of an hour he was as well as over.

Longley straightway devoted himself to "getting even" with the vigilance committee. He caught and hanged the man who put the rope around his neck, and claimed to have shot all the others, though it is scarcely credible that such was the case.

Some of Longley's murders were particularly atrocious. He deliberately killed the Rev. Mr. Ray, of Arkansas because that gentleman attempted to persuade a young girl not to marry the desperado. One night a soldier expressed an unfavorable opinion of Texans, and Longley sent a bullet through his brain. His last crime, so far as known, was that of walking into a field where a man was plowing, and firing one barrel of his gun at him. The poor fellow fell badly wounded, and asked Longley why he had shot him. "For fun," was the answer, as the young scoundrel emptied the other barrel in to his victim's body, instantly killing him. It should be stated that Longley suspected this person of being concerned in the slaying of a distant relative of his.

Finally this desperado seemed to weary of his massacres, and went into Nacogdoches County, where he engaged himself to a farmer. He wrought quietly for several months, and formed a strong friendship for a young man in the neighborhood, to whom, finally, under a solemn pledge of secrecy, he gave his correct name. His confidant communicated with the authorities, who, knowing the desperate character of their man, succeeded in surrounding him while he was unarmed and working in a field. His trial and conviction followed, and, after several appeals, he suffered yesterday the penalty of his numerous crimes."

----- Decatur Daily Review, Decatur, Illinois, Thursday, October 24, 1878:

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## woodman6415

This is the Robert Bruno Steel House in in the Ransom Canyon neighborhood of Lubbock, Texas. Mr. Bruno worked for more than 30 years to build one of America’s most unusual houses, but died before he could complete it.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> This is the Robert Bruno Steel House in in the Ransom Canyon neighborhood of Lubbock, Texas. Mr. Bruno worked for more than 30 years to build one of America’s most unusual houses, but died before he could complete it.
> View attachment 124390



@Bean_counter


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## Bean_counter

Yup I lived in Ransom when we moved back to Lubbock. Tony I have a great story about this place

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## woodman6415

Today is Thursday, March 16, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1758 - The Santa Cruz de San Sabá mission was destroyed by 2,000 Comanches and their allies. Eight residents were killed and the mission buildings were burned. 

1836 - The Republic of Texas approved a constitution. 

1861 - Sam Houston resigned as governor in protest against secession. 

1894 - John Wesley Hardin was pardoned and admitted to the bar. Hardin had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of Charles Webb. 

1909 - Lubbock, TX, was incorporated as a city.

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## woodman6415

Shout it from the rooftops!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 16th*


*Indians attack San Sabá mission*

On this day in 1758, some 2,000 Comanches and allied North Texas Indians descended on Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, on the San Saba River near the present site of Menard. The mission had been established the previous year to Christianize the eastern Apaches. The attackers killed two priests, Fray Alonso Giraldo de Terreros and Fray José de Santiesteban Aberín, and six others, then looted and set fire to the log stockade. In late summer 1759 Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla, commander of the nearby Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas, undertook a military campaign to punish the _Norteños_ but suffered an ignominious defeat near the site of present-day Spanish Fort. With French firearms and Spanish horses, the northern tribes now constituted a stronger force than the Spaniards themselves could muster. The attack on the mission marked the beginning of warfare in Texas between the Comanches and the European invaders and signaled retreat for the Spanish frontier. In 1762, Mexican mining magnate Pedro Romero de Terreros, who had financed the ill-fated mission with the stipulation that his cousin Alonso de Terreros be placed in charge, commissioned a huge painting to honor the memory of his martyred cousin. _The Destruction of Mission San Sabá in the Province of Texas and the Martyrdom of the Fathers Alonso Giraldo de Terreros, Joseph Santiesteban_ now hangs in the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia in Mexico City.


*Despite ranchhands' desperate rides, Panhandle cattleman dies of smallpox
*
On this day in 1883, pioneer Panhandle rancher Joe Morgan died of smallpox despite the heroic efforts of two of his cowboys. Little is known of Morgan's life before he arrived in Texas in 1877. He located his spread in Lipscomb County on a Canadian River tributary. Morgan was a charter member of the Panhandle Stock Association, organized in 1880, and served on the Wheeler County grand jury in 1882. By the summer of that year he was reported to have significantly increased his rangeland. Because of his triangle brand, his ranch became known locally as the Triangle. In March 1883 he and his two small sons came down with smallpox. Edward H. Brainard, who had been working at the Triangle for two months, rode thirty-five miles to Mobeetie for a doctor while another ranchhand, Frank Biggers, rode 150 miles to Fort Dodge, Kansas, trying to find a doctor there in time to save his employer's life. Though both doctors came, it was too late to save Joe Morgan. Brainard and another cowboy, John Dilly, drove Mrs. Morgan and the two boys to Fort Dodge with the doctor in hopes of saving them there. Six-month-old Johnny recovered, but his three-year-old brother died. Mrs. Morgan eventually sold the ranch to Henry W. Cresswell.


*Script writer and future Texan born in Chicago
*
On this day in 1939, Carol O'Brien Sobieski, television and film writer, was born in Chicago, Illinois. When she was five the family moved to the Frying Pan Ranch in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo. In 1964 she was hired as a scriptwriter for the television series "Mr. Novak." She also wrote scripts for "The Mod Squad" and "Peyton Place." Her writing credits for television movies included _The Neon Ceiling_, _Sunshine_,_Sunshine Christmas_, _Amelia Earhart_, and _Harry Truman: Plain Speaking_. In the 1980s Sobieski became known for her film screenplays, which included _Annie_, _Winter People_, _Honeysuckle Rose_ and _Fried Green Tomatoes_.

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## Wildthings

*Yesterday in Texas History -- March 17th*


*Convention of 1836 breaks up in a hurry*

On this day in 1836, the Convention of 1836 adjourned in haste as the Mexican army approached Washington-on-the-Brazos. The convention, which met on March 1, drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, organized the ad interim government, and named Sam Houston commander-in-chief of the republic's military forces before the delegates evacuated Washington-on-the-Brazos. Their hurried departure was part of the so-called Runaway Scrape, in which Texans fled the advancing troops of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Richmond was evacuated about April 1, and Houston's subsequent retreat toward the Sabine left all of the settlements between the Colorado and the Brazos unprotected. The settlers in that area at once began making their way toward Louisiana or Galveston Island. The section of East Texas around Nacogdoches and San Augustine was abandoned a little prior to April 13. The flight was marked by lack of preparation and by panic caused by fear both of the Mexican Army and of the Indians. The flight continued until news came of the victory in the battle of San Jacinto.


*First law school in Texas established
*
On this day in 1855, the first law school in Texas was established at Austin College. Austin College, an independent liberal arts college, was incorporated at Huntsville in 1849. Five years later James Addison Baker, attorney and founder of the firm now known as Baker Botts, was appointed to a committee of three to consider adding a law school to the college, of which he was also a trustee. Previously, all legal training in Texas had taken place by apprenticeship. The innovation was discontinued at Austin College after four students had completed the one-year course, and in 1876 the Texas Synod of the Presbyterian Church, United States, decided to move the college to Sherman.


*World-famous animal trapper born in Texas
*
On this day in 1884, Frank "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Buck, hunter, author, and film maker, was born in Gainesville, Texas. He traveled over the world trapping and transporting exotic animals to zoos and circuses. He wrote at least seven books and produced several motion pictures about animals and his adventures. Buck died in Houston on March 25, 1950.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 18th*


*Groce's plantation becomes temporary capital of Texas
*
On this day in 1836, the new government of Texas began a three-day stay at Groce's Retreat, Jared E. Groce's plantation home, in what is now southwestern Grimes County. President David G. Burnet and his cabinet sought sanctuary there as they retreated from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Harrisburg. Groce's house was used as the capital of the Republic of Texas until March 21.


*Nearly three hundred die in New London school explosion*

On this day in 1937, a massive explosion caused the steel-framed school building in New London, in Rusk County, to collapse, killing a reported 298 people. It was the worst school disaster in United States history. Of the 500 students in the building, only about 130 escaped serious injury. The explosion, which was heard four miles away, occurred when a manual-arts teacher turned on a sanding machine and inadvertently ignited a mixture of gas and air. Three days after the explosion, inquiries were held to determine the cause of the disaster. Investigators learned that in January 1937, to save gas expenses of $300 a month, the school board and superintendent had authorized plumbers to tap a residue gas line of H. L. Hunt's Parade Gasoline Company. Apparently gas had escaped from a faulty connection and accumulated beneath the building. No school officials were found liable. More than seventy lawsuits were filed for damages, but district judge Robert T. Brown dismissed the few cases that came to trial for lack of evidence. The thirty surviving seniors at New London finished their year in temporary buildings while a new school was built on nearly the same site.


*Galveston Methodists split along racial lines
*
On this day in 1848, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, purchased a piece of property at 2015 Broadway in Galveston. Soon a church and parsonage were erected and "given to the Slaves as the Negro Methodist Episcopal Church South." Increasing tensions between North and South, exacerbated by the moral debate over slavery, fueled the white congregation's decision to separate its black and white members. After the Civil War the church was reorganized as a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In recognition of the service of Rev. Houston Reedy, who became the pastor in 1870, the congregation renamed the church Reedy Chapel. Also in 1870, the Reedy Chapel AME Church was involved in a lawsuit when the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, took possession of the chapel. Unable to worship at Reedy Chapel, the congregation rented an old soap factory for fifteen dollars a month. After a four-year battle the courts ruled in favor of the AME Church, and Reedy Chapel was restored to them. In 1885 the structure was destroyed by fire. The replacement church still stood in 2004.

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## Wildthings

*Texas Revolution - Battle of Coleto - (Day 1) March 19, 1836
*
Colonel James Fannin was the commander of the Texan troops at Fort Defiance in late 1835 and early 1836. During the siege of the Alamo in February 1836 he attempted a march of 100 miles to relieve the Texan forces at the Alamo but due to poor preparation for the journey and word that general Urrea's Mexican forces were approaching Goliad, he turned back. After the Alamo fell to Santa Anna's forces the Texians received orders from General Sam Houston to fall back to Victoria. Fannin therefore abandoned the fort but proceeded without adequate supplies and without haste on his retreat.

By 09:00 on March 19 they began their retreat from Goliad, during a period of heavy fog. The Texan force included the San Antonio Greys, the Red Rovers, the Mustangs commanded by Burr H. Duval, a militia from Refugio commanded by Hugh McDonald Frazer, Texan regular soldiers commanded by Ira Westover, and the Mobile Greys. Nine heavy artillery pieces with different calibers were ordered by Fannin to be taken by the Texans, along with 1000 muskets, but he neglected to ensure that a good amount of food and water was transported. Carts loaded with heavy equipment were being pulled by hungry and tired oxen. Urrea did not realize the Texians had left until 11:00. The two hour lead was removed, when a Texan cart crossing the San Antonio River broke, a cannon had to be brought out of the river, and Fannin ordered that the oxen be allowed to graze for a period of time after the Texans had proceeded about a mile past Manahuilla Creek, resulting in the retreat being stopped. John Shackelford, Burr H. Duval, and Ira Westover opposed Fannin's decision to allow the oxen to graze, arguing that they should continue their retreat until they reached the protection of the Coleto Creek timber. Shackelford would state that Fannin argued that the Mexican army against them was poor, and that Urrea would not follow them.

In an effort to catch Fannin's troops Urrea left his artillery, and some of his men, in Goliad. He began his pursuit with, according to Mexican sources, 80 cavalrymen and 360 infantrymen. Mexican mounted scouts determined the location of the Texans, and reported the size of the force, which Urrea concluded was smaller than he originally thought. As a result, he ordered 100 of his soldiers to go back to Goliad to help secure Presidio La Bahía. He also ordered the artillery he left in Goliad to be brought to him, and that the artillery would be escorted by some of the soldiers he was sending back. Meanwhile, Albert C. Horton's 30 cavalrymen were serving as advance guards, and were positioned to cover all sides of the Texan force. The rear guard was not alert, and did not detect the Mexican cavalry that was approaching the Texians. Shortly after they resumed their march another Texan cart broke down, and its cargo had to be transferred to another one, delaying the retreat again. Shortly after, Fannin had sent Horton to scout the Coleto Creek timber that was in sight, then the Mexican cavalry overtook Fannin's Texians. As the Texans tried to get to high ground 400 to 500 yards away from the position they were in when the cavalry overtook them, the ammunition cart broke.

The Texan soldiers formed a square against the Mexicans. The high grass of the prairie meant the Texan view of the Mexicans was impaired. The Texians had little water. Each Texian soldier received three to four muskets. The square was three ranks deep. The front line contained the San Antonio Greys and Red Rovers, whilst Duval's Mustangs and Frazer's Refugio militia formed part of the rear line. The left flank was covered by Westover's regulars, whilst the right was protected by the Mobile Greys. In the corners of the square, the artillery had been positioned. Fannin stood in the rear of the right flank. In addition, a number of sharpshooters were deployed around Abel Morgan's hospital wagon, which could no longer be moved after the ox that was moving it was killed by Mexican fire.

The Mexican soldiers then attacked the square. The left of the Texian square was confronted by the rifle companies under Morales, and the right was assaulted by the grenadiers and part of the San Luis Battalion. The Mexican formations involved in this attack on the right of the square was under the personal supervision of Urrea. The Jiménez Battalion under Col. Mariano Salas fought the front, and Col. Gabriel Núñez's cavalry was ordered against the rear of the square. By sunset, when Urrea ordered the Mexicans to cease any more major attacks against the square due to a lack of Mexican ammunition, the majority of the action of 19 March was over. The Mexicans had assaulted the square three times. Making effective use of their bayonets, multiple muskets, and nine cannons, the Texians had prevented the Mexicans each time from breaking the square. Urrea said that he was impressed with the fact that the Texians had managed to maintain the square against the three charges, and he was also impressed with the Texian weapon fire. Dr. Joseph H. Barnard, a Texian, recorded that by sunset seven Texians had been killed. He also recorded that sixty Texians, including Fannin, had been wounded. Forty of the sixty had been wounded several times.

After sunset, Urrea ordered Mexican sharpshooters to be positioned in the tall grass around the square, and that they fire at the Texians. Before Texian sharpshooters were able to remove the threat posed by the Mexican sharpshooters, by firing at the flash caused by the Mexican guns, the Mexican sharpshooters were able to inflict more Texian casualties. As a result of all the fighting that occurred on 19 March, the Texians had suffered at least ten dead and sixty wounded, whilst the Mexicans suffered an unspecified high amount of casualties. The fighting of 19 March had not demoralised the Texian soldiers. They were encouraged by the thought that Horton would succeed in getting Texian reinforcements from Guadalupe Victoria to Fannin. However, Horton had not been able to break through the Mexican defences. During the day's fighting the Texian soldiers that were retreating to Guadalupe Victoria after the earlier battle of Refugio were close enough to Fannin to hear gunfire. However, they were exhausted and hungry, and did not move to the square. Urrea stationed three detachments of Mexican troops around the square, to prevent the Texians in the square from escaping, and during the night Mexican false bugle calls were sounded to keep the Texians alert.

The Texians' lack of water, and the inability to light fires in the square, meant the wounded Texians could not be treated. The pain being experienced by the wounded resulted in the general decrease in morale amongst the Texian soldiers during the night. The poor weather during the night further lessened the morale of the soldiers. The lack of water also meant that the artillery could not be used effectively the next day, because water was needed to cool and clean the cannons. The fighting of 19 March had also left many Texian artillerists casualties, and ammunition for the cannons was low. All these factors contributed to the conclusion by Fannin and other officers during the night that they could not sustain another day of fighting. An idea for the Texians to escape to a more defendable position under cover of darkness, before Urrea received reinforcements, was rejected because it was decided that those who were too injured to escape, which included friends and relatives of unwounded Texians, should not be left behind. It was therefore decided that the Texians should attempt to make another stand from their current position the next day. As a result, during the night, the Texians dug trenches and erected barricades of carts and dead animals. Urrea, meanwhile, had been reinforced with munitions, fresh troops, and two or three artillery pieces from Goliad. He positioned the Mexican artillery on the slopes overlooking the Texian square.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Col. John Watkin and his wagon train were caught in a driving rain between Laredo and Uvalde. Camping out, the Colonel found that a roll of bills in his pocket was wet and placed them before the campfire to dry. While the party was eating supper, a jenny [female mule] on which they carried their packs very innocently protruded her tongue and took in her throat $785 of Uncle Sam's currency. The Colonel, by mere chance, happened to look that way just as the mule was swallowing his valuable rations, ran to her, put his hand down her throat, seized the greenbacks, and brought them forth intact."

---- the Uvalde Hesperian Newspaper, March 14, 1885

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Academy Award winning films "There Will be Blood" and "No Time for Old Men" were both filmed in Marfa, Texas, at the same time. Members of the film crews crossed paths at least once, when "Blood's" director Paul Thomas Anderson and his crew were testing the pyrotechnic system used in the film's famous oil derrick scene. The test resulted in a smoke billow so enormous that it affected a shot that the Coen brothers, the directors of 'No Time," were putting together nearby, forcing them to suspend shooting for the day.

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## woodman6415

SHARP DRESSED TEXAS MAN 

Robert Hall was a lover AND a fighter.

As one of Ben McCulloch's Rangers, he fought Indians (and helped lay out the town of Seguin.)

Next he fought annexation, famously saying, "I voted first, last, and always for the Lone Star." But when his countrymen made the decision to join the union, he fought for the US in the Mexican War.

A decade and a half later he fought against secession. Again, his countrymen decided contrary to his wishes. He spent the next three years fighting for the Confederacy.

One thing nobody could deny: Robert Hall was loyal to Texas.

He was also loyal to Polly, daughter of Colonel John King, a Gonzales County pioneer.

Problem was, another fella wanted Polly for himself and was spreading rumors that Robert had a wife back in Tennessee. 

Old Colonel King was not about to give his daughter's hand to such a rogue.

Robert decided to be patient and win over the Colonel by being brave, upright and honorable in his behavior. 

One day, after pursuing and defeating a band of Indians that had killed a local woman and her child, Colonel King took him aside.

I'll let Robert take up the story:

"After it was all over, Col. King called me to him and simply said: "A brave man never lies. Tell me the truth. Have you got a family back in the States?"

I replied: "Colonel, I was never married in my life, nor did I ever love another girl but your daughter. If you will give her to me I will do everything in my power to make her a good husband."

"Give me your hand, my brave boy," he said. "I believe you will do it."

I was the happiest man in the world. We were married on the 20th of June, 1837. We lived together forty-five years, and thirteen children were born to us. We were always happy together and never happy out of each other's sight.

In our old age we did more courting than we did under the swinging moss on the old plantation when we were young, and Polly's voice was full of sweeter notes than the mocking birds in the trees."

In 1881 Robert lost his Polly.

To deal with his grief, he began attending more veterans' reunions and other gala events. He had been active the Texas Veterans Association since the 1870s. 

He had even made himself a special "Frontiersman's suit" to wear at these events.

And what a suit it was!

It was made of buckskin, trimmed with black velvet and decorated with floral bead work, fringe and herringbone embroidery.

The jacket was appliqued with cowhide, jaguar, rabbit and other skins, cut into various animal and geometric shapes. The back panel was a woolly sheepskin, partially dyed red. The hem was weighted with 150 carved dew claws from whitetail deer.

At six foot four and thus bedecked, Robert Hall was a sight to behold!

That hunting horn you see in the picture has a tale of its own. The story goes that Jean Lafitte had taken it off the body of a dead pirate and presented it to Jane Long when she was under his "protection" after Dr. Long had been captured. 

Mrs. Long later gave it to Sam Houston, who presented it to Robert Hall for his bravery in fighting the Comanches.

It was his prized possession. He once said, "If I were out of bread it would take a million to buy that horn."

Hall died in 1899 at the age of 84.

His suit was displayed at the Centennial in 1936, where is was worn for a photo op by Cary Grant.

The suit and horn, along with Robert Hall's canteen, were sold by a Cincinnati auction house in 2010.

The hammer price was $35,250.00.

*****
If you enjoyed this you should subscribe to TEXAS READER, our FREE Texas history newsletter.

Click the link to subscribe. It's Free:

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 19th*


*Spanish priest and chronicler of Texas enters Franciscan* order

On this day in 1697, future Texas chronicler Isidro Félix de Espinosa was professed as a novice at the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, a Franciscan missionary institution in Mexico. He probably arrived in Texas in 1703. Espinosa's missionary activities in Texas included his participation in several expeditions. Dubbed the "Julius Caesar of the Faith in New Spain" because he worked by day and wrote all night, Espinosa left behind several works on early Texas, including a biography of his friend Antonio Margil de Jesús. Espinosa's Crónica de los colegios de propaganda fide de la Nueva España has been called the "most important contemporary account of the Franciscans in Texas."

*
Cherokee leader arrives in Mexico City seeking tribal land grant
*
On this day in 1826, Cherokee leader John Dunn Hunter arrived in Mexico City to renew negotiations with the Mexican government for land for a Cherokee settlement in Texas. Hunter was promised land to be granted to individual Indian settlers but was unsuccessful in getting a tribal grant with the right of self-government. He returned to East Texas and, with Cherokee diplomatic chief Richard Fields, began negotiations with Martin Parmer and his associates for the so-called Fredonian Republic, which would have divided Texas between the Indians and the Anglo-Americans. The Mexican government moved quickly to quash the uprising, however, and the Cherokee council refused to take part in the Fredonian Rebellion. Hunter, an American born about 1796, claimed to have been captured by the Cherokees as a child. Although he lived with the Indians until about 1816, he received a fairly good education and traveled considerably through the United States and England. While in England Hunter wrote an account which was published in London in 1824 under the title of _Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of North America._ Dr. Hunter, as he was often called, returned to the Cherokees at one of their East Texas villages in 1825. After the Cherokee council repudiated their agreement with Parmer and his allies, Hunter and Fields were tried by the council and executed in 1827.

*
Council House Fight irreparably damages Comanche-white relations
*
On this day in 1840, Republic of Texas soldiers killed some thirty Penateka Comanche leaders and warriors and five women and children in the Council House Fight in San Antonio. The Comanches had come to San Antonio seeking to make peace. Texas officials had demanded that the Comanches return all captives, but the Penatekas brought only a few prisoners, including the severely abused Matilda Lockhart. After a dispute about the other captives, Texas soldiers entered the Council House, where the peace talks were being held, and informed the assembled chiefs that they were to be held as hostages until the remaining captives were released. The Comanche chiefs attempted to escape and called to their fellow tribesmen outside the house for help. In the ensuing melee, the soldiers killed most of the Comanches who remained in the Council House courtyard. Six whites were killed and twenty wounded as well. Texas authorities freed a single Comanche woman with orders to secure the release of the remaining white captives in exchange for twenty-seven Comanches captured in the fight. The Penateka leaders refused to respond to Texas demands, and most of the Texans' captives escaped. The Council House Fight outraged Comanche sensibilities, for they considered ambassadors immune from acts of war. Led by Buffalo Hump, the Penatekas retaliated by raiding deep into Texas. Comanche hatred of Texans deepened and contributed much to the violence of the frontier.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Stan Roberts kindly sent in this dynamite photo of the San Jacinto monument as shot from a drone. The monument is 567.31 feet tall, monument and was constructed between 1936 and 1939. Dedicated on April 21, 1939, it is the world's tallest masonry column. By comparison, the Washington Monument is 554.612 feet (169.046 m) tall,

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## Wildthings

That is an awesome photo!! Been in that star many a time. Well actually right below the star

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The star atop the San Jacinto Monument weighs 220 tons.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 20th*


*Aguayo expedition enters Texas
*
On this day in 1721, an expedition under the Marqués de Aguayo crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. José de Azlor y Virto de Vera, Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo, was governor of Coahuila and Texas when the viceroy of New Spain accepted his offer to reestablish Spanish control of East Texas in the wake of the French invasion of 1719. Aguayo organized a force of some 500 men, which he called the Battalion of San Miguel de Aragón, with Juan Rodríguez as guide. Aguayo reached San Antonio on April 4 before proceeding to East Texas. A detachment under Domingo Ramón occupied La Bahía del Espíritu Santo on the same day. The Indians east of the Trinity welcomed the Spanish, as did the French commander Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who agreed to withdraw to Natchitoches. Leaving 219 of his men at various presidios in Texas, Aguayo returned to Coahuila, where the force was disbanded on May 31, 1722. The expedition resulted in the increase in the number of missions in Texas from two to ten, the increase in the number of presidios from one to four, and the establishment of so definite a Spanish claim to Texas that it was never again disputed by France or by the French in Louisiana.


*Scholar Harriet Smither dies*

On this day in 1955, Harriet Wingfield Smither died. She had been the archivist of the Texas State Library for twenty-eight years. Her scholarly editions included the _Papers of Mirabeau Lamar_, the _Journals of the Fourth Congress_, the _Journals of the Sixth Congress_, and the _Diary of Adolphus Sterne_. She retired in 1953 and was recognized by a resolution by the Texas State Library and the Texas Historical Commission.


*Legendary Texas yodeler silenced
*
On this day in 1987, legendary Austin country singer and tavern owner Kenneth Threadgill died of a pulmonary embolism. Threadgill was born in Peniel, Texas, in 1909, the son of a minister. As a youngster, Threadgill was working at Beaumont's Tivoli Theater when Jimmie Rodgers performed. Backstage, Rodgers heard Threadgill imitating his yodeling and was impressed. Threadgill incorporated yodeling into his country singing act later in his life to make a unique style that fans loved. In 1933 Threadgill moved to Austin and began working at an old service station. He soon bought the establishment and renamed it Threadgill's Tavern, which still sold gas and food but operated with the first beer license in Austin after the repeal of Prohibition. After closing temporarily during World War II, Threadgill's reopened and became known for its Wednesday night hootenannies, at which university students and local residents congregated for beer, country music, yodeling, and the "Alabama Jubilee," the song that would usually get Kenneth to dance his patented shuffle. Bill Neely and Janis Joplin were among the many performers who found Threadgill's a congenial spot to launch or further musical careers. Threadgill gained some measure of national celebrity himself when he acted and sang in the Willie Nelson movie _Honeysuckle Rose_ (1980). He sold the tavern in the early eighties, but Threadgill's Restaurant remains an Austin institution.

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## Wildthings

*Texas Revolution - Battle of Coleto (Day 2) March 20, 1836
*
At 06:15 on March 20, the Mexicans were grouped for battle. After one or two rounds were fired by Mexican artillery Fannin and his officers re-iterated their conclusion that the Texians could not take another day's fighting, and decided to seek honorable terms for surrender. They drafted terms of surrender, which included statements that the Texian wounded would be treated, that they would be gain all the protection expected as prisoners of war, and that they would be paroled to the United States of America. However, Santa Anna had stated earlier that any Texian can only be allowed to surrender unconditionally. As a result, Urrea could not guarantee that all the terms would be followed by Santa Anna. He stated that he would talk to Santa Anna on behalf of the terms of surrender presented by the Texians. The document of surrender was signed by Benjamin C. Wallace, Joseph M. Chadwick, and Fannin. As a result of the signing, the battle of Coleto ended.

Those Texans that could walk were sent to Goliad, under Mexican escort. It would take until about March 23 until those Texans that could not walk were transported to Goliad. During that time, Mexican physicians were told that wounded Mexicans were a priority to treat, as opposed to the wounded Texans. Fannin arrived in Goliad on March 22. Urrea, meanwhile, had moved onto Guadalupe Victoria, from where he wrote to Santa Anna a letter recommending that the Texan prisoners should be treated with clemency.

The Battle of Coleto was significant because it showed that Texan troops involved in the battle, despite being relatively untrained, were able to stand up to the Mexican troops against them and obey their commanders. The battle was primarily lost because Fannin did not act decisively enough to ensure success and he underestimated the quality of the Mexican force against him. It also illustrated that Fannin was reluctant to co-ordinate his actions with other Texan forces, a trait that was common amongst many Texian commanders.

An obelisk commemorating the war at Fannin Battleground State Historic Site

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 21st*


*Famed mustanger and filibuster killed*

On this day in 1801, Philip Nolan, mustanger and filibuster, died at the hands of Spanish troops. It was not his first visit to Texas to acquire horses. He was also known to be carrying on illegal trade with the Indians. He left Natchez at the head of a body of well-armed men in October 1800 and made his way to the area north of Nacogdoches. He then proceeded to a now-unknown Central Texas site, where he erected a small fortification, including some corrals, and began capturing mustangs. He was killed at his fort on March 21, 1801, by troops from Nacogdoches sent out to intercept him. His men, captured and tried, spent years in prison for their part in Nolan's final expedition, the precise nature of which has not been satisfactorily explained.


*Preservationist and former Indian captive Rebecca Fisher dies
*
On this day in 1926, Rebecca Fisher died in Austin. She was born Rebecca Gilleland in Philadelphia in 1831. Her family came to Texas around 1837 and settled in Refugio County. In 1840 Comanches attacked their home, killing Rebecca's parents and taking Rebecca and her brother. The children were rescued by Albert Sidney Johnston and a detachment of Texas soldiers. Rebecca married Orceneth Fisher, a Methodist minister, in 1848. In 1855 the Fishers left Texas for the Pacific coast. They returned to Texas about 1871 and eventually established a home in Austin, where Fisher died in 1880. Mrs. Fisher was a charter member and state president of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. She also aided Clara Driscoll in saving the Alamo from destruction, and for several years she gave the opening prayer when the Texas legislature convened. She was the only woman elected to the Texas Veterans Association and was its last surviving member.


*First woman elected to state legislature dies
*
On this day in 1966, Edith Wilmans, who in 1922 became the first woman elected to the Texas legislature, died in Dallas. Wilmans, born in Louisiana in 1882, moved to Dallas at an early age. She helped organize the Dallas Equal Suffrage Association and was president of the Democratic Women's Association of Texas. To learn more about the legal problems involved in improving the status of women and children, she studied law and in 1918 was admitted to the bar. She served only one term in the legislature, and in 1924 and 1926 she ran unsuccessfully for governor. In 1925 Governor Pat M. Neff appointed her to the All-Woman Supreme Court, but she was disqualified from serving because she lacked by a few months the required seven years' experience in the practice of law. She ran for the legislature again in 1935 but was defeated. She also ran for congress in 1948 and again in a 1951 special election but lost both races.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Thousands of the German POWs who were interred at Camp Hearne in Hearne, Texas during World War II were members of the elite and infamous Nazi fighting force known as the Afrika Korp and served under the very able Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, aka "The Desert Fox."

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day: 

"Credit for the ultimate design of the chuck wagon belongs to cattle baron Charles Goodnight, who in 1866 rebuilt for his trail a surplus Army wagon, picked primarily for its extra-durable iron axles. To the basic wagon bed, where bulk goods such as foodstuffs and bedrolls were to be stored, Goodnight added the already customary trail-drive appendages. But the innovation that made the Goodnight wagon unique at the time, and a useful prototype for all self-respecting wagons that followed, was the design and installation of a chuck box. Perched at the rear of the wagon, facing aft, it had a hinged lid that let down on a swinging leg to form a worktable."

----- William H. Forbis, "The Cowboys," TIme-Life Books

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 22nd*



*Texas Navy schooner seizes mercantile brig; friction with U.S. ensues
*
On this day in 1836, the sixty-ton armed schooner _Liberty,_ commanded by William S. Brown, seized the brig _Durango_ in Matagorda Bay. The _Durango_ was owned by a New Orleans mercantile house with a longstanding interest in the Texas trade, which makes it unlikely that she was carrying war contraband designed to assist the Mexican army. A more likely explanation for the seizure is that the fledgling Texas Navy simply needed the vessel and her supplies; the _Liberty_ had been the first ship purchased by the republic, only two months before. The _Durango_ incident added to an already hostile attitude within the United States about attacks by both Mexico and Texas on United States vessels, which eventually led to the arrest of the crew of the _Invincible_ after this vessel captured the United States merchant vessel _Pocket._ The _Durango_ incident was closed officially in 1838, when Texas and the United States entered into a convention of indemnity. The total settlement, which also made provisions for the _Pocket_ claims, was for $11,750 plus accrued interest.


*First black state convention meets in Austin*

On this day in 1866, the Texas State Central Committee of Colored Men met in Austin. It was the first of at least ten such conventions held in Texas from Reconstruction through the 1890s to express the concerns of African Americans in an era before the existence of groups that focused upon the economic, political, and civil rights of minorities. Often these state meetings sent delegates to national conventions seeking the same goals. The Texas State Central Committee of Colored Men, with the Baptist minister Jacob Fontaine presiding, opposed a request by Episcopal bishop Alexander Gregg for funds which presumably would have benefited former slaves. The committee members did not trust Gregg, himself a former slaveholder and ardent supporter of secession, and expressed their preference for the work of the Freedmen's Bureau.


*March on Washington falters in desert
*
On this day in 1894, a contingent of "Coxey's Army" arrived in El Paso. In the wake of the 1893 panic Jacob Sechler Coxey of Massillon, Ohio, a businessman and reformer, led an army of jobless men to Washington to induce Congress to provide assistance. A group from Los Angeles arrived in El Paso on the evening of March 22, and, after marching on the city hall, were given food and allowed to camp for the night. Hoping for transportation from the railroad, they camped alongside the tracks for two days. They boarded a Southern Pacific train that uncoupled their car 70 miles east of El Paso, leaving them stranded in a barren region without food or water. After an order from Governor James S. Hogg, and negotiations with the railroads and the citizens of El Paso, the "army" was finally transported to Washington, arriving weeks after Coxey had been arrested.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"If we had arrested all the naked and drunk people I saw, we'd have filled our jail and yours and all of the jails from here to Dallas.. 

---- a Williamson County deputy sheriff talking to a reporter from the Austin American Statesman after Willie's 1975 4th of July picnic, held in Williamson County, Texas.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 23rd*


*Fort Worth Stockyards incorporated*

On this day in 1893, the Fort Worth Stock Yards were officially incorporated. The Fort Worth livestock market became the largest in Texas and the Southwest, the biggest market south of Kansas City, and consistently ranked between third and fourth among the nation's large terminal livestock markets for five decades, from about 1905 to the mid-1950s. When the Texas and Pacific Railway arrived in Fort Worth in 1876 promoters built pens to hold cattle, but business leaders were already dreaming of packing plants and stockyards to make their community a permanent focus of the cattle industry. By 1886 four stockyards had been built near the railroads. Boston capitalist Greenleif W. Simpson, with a half dozen Boston and Chicago associates, incorporated the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company and purchased the Union Stock Yards and the Fort Worth Packing Company in 1893. In 1896 the company began a fat-stock show that has survived to the present as one of the largest livestock shows in the nation, the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show. An agreement with Armour and Swift brought in two of the nation's largest meatpackers, who constructed modern plants adjacent to the stockyards. By 1936 Texas had become the largest-producing state for both cattle and sheep, with Fort Worth as the industry's hub. The stockyards began to decline in the 1950s as the industry became more decentralized, and today the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District is primarily a tourist attraction.


*Texas conductor leads farewell concert in Antwerp
*
On this day in 1927, Frank Van der Stucken, composer and conductor, gave his farewell symphonic concert in the hall of the Royal Society of Zoology in Antwerp. The child of Belgian immigrants to Castro's Colony, he was born in Fredericksburg, Texas, in 1858. His family returned to Antwerp in 1866. By age sixteen he had completed two major original works. After a visit to Wagner's Bayreuth Festival in 1876, Van der Stucken settled in Leipzig, Germany, for two years of study with Carl Reinecke, Victor Langer, and Edvard Grieg. Grieg was the first of a number of important composers to befriend the young composer and conductor; among the others were Franz Liszt, Giuseppe Verdi, Emmanuel Chabrier, and Jules Massenet. Van der Stucken returned to America in 1884, where he became director of the New York Arion Society, a male chorus. He also worked with other German male choruses in the Sängerbund movement. In April 1885 in New York City he conducted the first concert in this country devoted exclusively to works by American composers, and in 1889 he conducted the first European concert with an entirely American program at the World Exposition in Paris. In 1895 Van der Stucken moved to Cincinnati to become the first conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1907. From 1907 until his death in 1929, Van der Stucken lived in Germany and worked throughout Europe, where he was in great demand as a conductor of festivals.


*Higher education develops in Beaumont
*
On this day in 1923, Lamar University originated as South Park Junior College when the South Park Independent School District in Beaumont instructed superintendent L. R. Pietzch to develop plans for "a Junior college of the first class." SPJC opened on September 17, 1923, with an enrollment of 125 students and a faculty of fourteen. Classes were held on the third floor of the new South Park High School. In 1923 the name of the institution was changed to Lamar College, in honor of Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas. The college was later renamed Lamar State College of Technology and, in 1971, Lamar University.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

There is a legend that a man named John Singer buried a treasure of 80,000 dollars plus an emerald necklace on Padre Island back in 1861 before taking his family away from their ranch at the onset of the Civil War. Singer buried the treasure near a gale-blown tree. When the family returned after the Civil War, the tree was gone, all other markers were gone, and the treasure was lost beneath the dunes.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one. It comes from an 1839 French account of Texas:

"Texas is on the whole a flat country. More prairie lands than wooded areas are to be found there. The prairies are magnificent, the most delightful sight an eye can hope to behold. For nine months of the year Texas is a green carpet deorated with wild flowers. It is a garden, where the hand of man has hothing to do but gather. Nature alone is sufficient to reproduce the treasures of this vast, fertile park in which every adornment and every fruit of the earth grow without cultivation. The Amerians call Texas their Italy, their Andalusia. This praise is no exaggeratation....

The products of Texas will, as time goes on, become infinitely more varied. The fertility of the soil, which in all of North America, is unequaled except in the states of Indiana and Illinois; the mildness of the climate, Texas' heat being tempered by a steady cool breeze: these factors make it suitable for all times of agriculture, whether colonial or European. Even the grape, I am told, has been quite successfully cultivated. At present, the major crops of Texas are confined to cereals, sugar, tobacco, and cotton. The latter product furnishes the chief revenue of this budding economy. No sooner had Texian cotton made its apperance in foreign markets that its quality was recognized and acclaimed without contradiction. This cotton is of a golden-yellow hue and is unequaled y other varieties, both in strength and in length. It is always quoted at a higher price than its rivals."

------ From an article in "Journal des Debuts," by Theodore Frederic Gaillardet, October 26, 1839

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 24th*

*
Mexican law invites Anglo colonists*

On this day in 1825, the Mexican legislature, meeting in Saltillo, passed the State Colonization Law of March 24, 1825. The legislation was designed to bring about the peopling of Coahuila and Texas. It encouraged farming, ranching, and commerce. For a nominal fee, the law granted settlers as much as a square league (4,428.4 acres) of pastureland and a _labor_ (177.1 acres) of farmland. Immigrants were temporarily free of every kind of tax. Newcomers had to take an oath promising to abide by the federal and state constitutions, to worship according to the Christian (i.e., Catholic) religion, and to display sound moral principles and good conduct. After accepting these terms and settling in Texas, immigrants earned the standing of naturalized Mexicans. Empresarios Stephen F. Austin and Green DeWitt, among others, started their colonies under this law.


*Fort Worth jeweler weds poet
*
On this day in 1912, Sam Kruger, Jewish immigrant and founder of Kruger Jewelry Company, married poet Fania Feldman in Fort Worth. Sam Kruger was born in the Ukraine in 1882. He and his brother Julius immigrated to New York in 1904, then around 1907 moved to Texas. Sam brought his other relatives from the Ukraine to New York and Fort Worth, where he trained them in the jewelry business. His nephews, Morris and William Zale, joined the family business and in 1912 moved to Wichita Falls and opened the Kruger Jewelry Company. In 1926, Kruger helped Morris Zale open what became the first Zale Jewelry Store, and eventually the Zale Jewelry Corporation. The daughter of a rabbi, Fania Feldman was born in 1893 in Sevastopol and became a partisan in the political underground during the 1905 Russian revolution. The family emigrated to the United States three years later. While her husband's business prospered, Fania Kruger blossomed as a poet and social activist. Her experiences in Russia inspired her poetry and were the basis for a lifelong commitment to human rights. She published three collections of poetry, _Cossack Laughter_ (1938), _The Tenth Jew_ (1949), and _Selected Poems_ (1973). She became known internationally and corresponded with a variety of writers and editors in literary circles. She knew Langston Hughes well enough to trade poems with him and to send him her homemade strudel from time to time.


*Baylor honors president emeritus*

On this day in 1963, Baylor University honored W. R. (Billy) White with the position of president emeritus. White was born on a farm in Henderson County, Texas, in 1892. White was licensed to preach by the Saline Baptist Association at fourteen and was ordained just before his eighteenth birthday. He attended preparatory school at Rusk Academy before enrolling at Baylor University in the fall of 1913. Illness, however, forced White to leave Baylor, and he earned his B.A. from Howard Payne in 1917. In 1919 White enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned a Th.M. in 1922 and a Th.D. in 1924. After holding a number of pastoral, denominational, and educational positions, including three years as president of Hardin-Simmons University, White was elected president of Baylor University in 1948, a position he held until 1961, when he became chancellor of the university. He oversaw the postwar growth at Baylor, both physical and in student enrollment. White died in 1977.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"An old Texan veteran called in to see us yesterday here in Austin and he stated positively that he had not captured Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. As he is the first old Texan we have ever met who did not capture Santa Anna, there is something very strange about it. We are afraid that he is an awful liar, but perhaps he was only drunk. We do not wish to do him injustice."

------ Edwin Sweet, "Texas Siftings," 1881

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

The Chisholm Trail is named for Jesse Chisholm. Jesse (circa 1805 - March 4, 1868) was a mixed blood Cherokee fur trader. It was Jesse who originally scouted and developed what became the Chisholm Trail in order to supply his various trading posts among the Plains Indians in what is now western Oklahoma. Although Jesse died before the heyday of the Texas-to-Kansas cattle drives, he was nevertheless a participant in several important events in Texas and Oklahoma history.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Among the very early cowmen, the long hair was quite prevalent. This was not worn in a spirit of Wild West showmanship, as really happened in many cases later on after Buffalo Bill, Ned Buntline, and the lurid dime novels created a Wild West type for eastern consumption. In the ante-bellum days the trend in masculine coiffure was for long hair. I do not mean that in all cases it had to drape over the shoulders, but it was for long locks. That was the natural trend in all branches of society, and so it was but natural that on the frontier where a man might go for months and months without even an approach to a barber shop, longhairs were not an uncommon note. Moustaches were the vogue, and the smooth face was the exception; and that generally due to extreme youth or the inability to raise one. And let me state right here that there were some wonderful handlebars to be found in those days. Goatees were also quite popular and, as a rule, cowboys looked older than they do today."

----- Jo Mora, "Trail Dust and Saddle Leather," 1946

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## woodman6415

The Battleship Texas lent gunfire support and anti-aircraft fire to support the landings for the Battle of Okinawa of World War II on this day in 1945.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Nobody left his home cold or hungry."

----- Inscription on the gravestone of Jesse Chisholm, the man for whom the Chisholm Trail was named, It's about as fine a sentiment as a man could have on his marker, I think.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Battleship Texas lent gunfire support and anti-aircraft fire to support the landings for the Battle of Okinawa of World War II on this day in 1945.


Now that is pretty cool!


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## Wildthings

My keyboard petered out on me and I was having cold sweats and chills until my wife got me another one today....SO let's go back to yesterday but in 1843

*Yesterday in Texas History -- March 25th*


*Texas force decimated after black bean lottery*

On this day in 1843, seventeen Texans were executed at Salado, Tamaulipas, Mexico. As the members of the defeated Mier expedition were being marched from Mier to Mexico City, they attempted a mass escape on February 11. Some 176 were recaptured, and Mexican dictator Santa Anna ordered that one in ten of the prisoners be shot. The victims were chosen by a lottery in which each man drew a bean from an earthen jar containing 176 beans, seventeen of which were black. This event has come to be known as the Black Bean Episode. The bodies were returned to Texas and are buried on Monument Hill at La Grange, Fayette County

Never been to Monument Hill until a search for geocache took me there couple years ago. Interesting place and I've driven right by it thousands of times. Here's the link to the geocache

*TxGCC MHKB* which was located right here *MAP*

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## Wildthings

Well look what showed up on my info!! The Big Boat!

*Today in Texas History -- March 26th*


*Battleship Texas continues outstanding service*

On this day in 1945, the battleship _Texas_ supported the landings for the battle of Okinawa, the final great amphibious assault of World War II. The keel of the _Texas_, the second battleship to bear this name, was laid at Newport News, Virginia, on April 17, 1911. After serving in the Atlantic Fleet in the First World War, she supported the World War II landings in North Africa, Omaha Beach, southern France, and Iwo Jima. After more than thirty-four years of naval service she was retired and given to the state of Texas to be used as a memorial. She is permanently moored at the San Jacinto Monument off the Houston Ship Channel.


*Mexican raiders attack Nuecestown
*
On this day in 1875, a party of Mexican raiders attacked Nuecestown. The raid can best be explained as part of a cycle of violence among Mexican citizens, Hispanic Texans, and Anglo Texans. By 1875 raids and murder were common on the part of both ethnic groups. In late March a number of men left Mexico in small groups and met about twenty miles from where the raid began. The Mexican raiders concentrated their efforts on Nuecestown and the surrounding area, but also hit other areas between Nuecestown and the Rio Grande.The raiders attacked homes, ranches, and stores, stealing horses and valuables, taking hostages, and killing several men. They attacked Thomas Noakes's store at Nuecestown on March 26 and Roma, in Starr County, on April 2. Soon thereafter the band crossed back into Mexico. Anglo residents of South Texas retaliated with a vengeance. Bands of volunteers organized "minute companies" and proceeded to hunt down Mexican outlaws, peaceful rancheros, and merchants; the avengers looted property and burned homes. Violence along the border would continue for years to come.


*Veterans found G.I. Forum
*
On this day in 1948, 700 Mexican-American veterans, led by Hector P. Garcia, met in Corpus Christi and organized the American G.I. Forum, a civil-rights organization devoted to securing equal rights for Hispanic Americans. The first issue the forum dealt with was the failure of the Veterans Administration to deliver benefits earned through the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights. After securing those benefits, the forum addressed other veterans' concerns, such as hospital care and Mexican-American representation on draft boards. In 1949 the group's involvement in the Felix Longoria Affair established the forum as an effective civil-rights advocate for Hispanics and expanded the scope and nature of its activities. The forum worked with the League of United Latin American Citizens on educational reform and voting rights issues. In 1958 the forum became a national organization, and its members led Mexican Americans into national politics. The American G.I. Forum continued its work through the 1970s with such efforts as the first application of the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to de facto Mexican-American school segregation in Corpus Christi.

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## Wildthings

Back to the problems of the revolution in 1836

*Goliad - the Massacre (Prelude)
*
After the battle of Coleto those Texans that could walk were sent to Goliad, under Mexican escort. It would take until about March 23 until those Texans that could not walk were transported to Goliad. During that time, Mexican physicians were told that wounded Mexicans were a priority to treat, as opposed to the wounded Texans. Fannin arrived in Goliad on March 22. General Urrea, meanwhile, had moved onto Guadalupe Victoria, from where he wrote to Santa Anna a letter recommending that the Texan prisoners should be treated with clemency.
On March 23, Santa Anna replied to Urrea's letter regarding Fannin and the other captured Texans. In this communication, he directly ordered Urrea to execute the prisoners which he dubbed "perfidious foreigners." This order was repeated in a letter on March 24. Concerned about Urrea's willingness to comply, Santa Anna also dispatched a note to Colonel José Nicolás de la Portilla, commanding at Goliad, ordering him to shoot the prisoners. Received on March 26, it was followed two hours later by a conflicting letter from Urrea telling him to "treat the prisoners with consideration" and to use them to rebuild the town. Though a noble gesture by Urrea, the general was aware that Portilla lacked sufficient men to guard the Texans during such an endeavor. Weighing both orders during the night, Portilla concluded that he was required to act on Santa Anna's directive.

Tomorrow we will see the rest of the story......

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## woodman6415

Today we remember the heroic Texians whose lives were taken at the Goliad Massacre and celebrate the independence they fought for.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

Famed Texas rancher Charles Goodnight was born on March 5, 1836. I wouldn't mention it except that was one day before the Alamo fell. Of course, Goodnight was born 970 or so miles north of the Alamo, in southwestern Illinois. But I have always thought it rather coincidental that this man who grew up to be a giant of Texas history was born one day before such an auspicious day in Texas history.

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## woodman6415

My home town ... lived there for 58 years ... had not changed one bit 


The Texas Quote of the Day:

"San Angela [now San Angelo] is a resort for desperate characters and is mainly made up of gambling and drinking saloons and other disreputable places."

----- Colonel Robert Grierson describes the tiny village of San Angela (now San Angelo), Texas as he found it back in 1877

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History - The Revolutions continues --

*Goliad - the Massacre March 27, 1836
*
Santa Anna sent a direct order to the "Officer Commanding the Post of Goliad" to execute the prisoners in his hands. This order was received on March 26 by Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla, whom Urrea had left at Goliad. Two hours later Portilla received another order, this one from Urrea, "to treat the prisoners with consideration, and especially their leader, Fannin," and to employ them in rebuilding the town. But when he wrote this seemingly humane order, Urrea well knew that Portilla would not be able to comply with it, for on March 25, after receiving Santa Anna's letter, Urrea had ordered reinforcements that would have resulted in too large a diminution of the garrison for the prisoners to be employed on public works.
Portilla suffered an unquiet night weighing these conflicting orders, but he concluded that he was bound to obey Santa Anna's order and directed that the prisoners be shot at dawn. At sunrise on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, the unwounded Texans were formed into three groups under heavy guard commanded by Capt. Pedro Balderas, Capt. Antonio Ramírez, and first adjutant Agustín Alcérrica (a colonel in the Tres Villas Battalion in April 1836). 
The largest group, including what remained of Ward's Georgia Battalion and Capt. Burr H. Duval's company, was marched toward the upper ford of the San Antonio River on the Bexar road. The San Antonio Greys, Mobile Greys, qqv and others were marched along the Victoria road in the direction of the lower ford. Capt. John Shackelfordqv's Red Rovers and Ira J. Westover's regulars were marched southwestwardly along the San Patricio road. The guard, which was to serve also as a firing squad, included the battalions of Tres Villas and Yucatán, dismounted cavalry, and pickets from the Cuautla, Tampico, and Durango regiments.
The prisoners held little suspicion of their fate, for they had been told a variety of stories-they were to gather wood, drive cattle, be marched to Matamoros, or proceed to the port of Copano for passage to New Orleans. Only the day before, Fannin himself, with his adjutant general, Joseph M. Chadwick, had returned from Copano, where, accompanied by Holsinger and other Mexican officers, they had tried to charter the vessel on which William P. Miller's Nashville Battalion had arrived earlier (these men had been captured and imprisoned at Goliad, also). Although this was really an attempt by Urrea to commandeer the ship, the vessel had already departed. Still, Fannin became cheerful and reported to his men that the Mexicans were making arrangements for their departure. The troops sang "Home Sweet Home" on the night of March 26.
At selected spots on each of the three roads, from half to three-fourths of a mile from the presidio, the three groups were halted. The guard on the right of the column of prisoners then countermarched and formed with the guard on the left. At a prearranged moment, or upon a given signal, the guards fired upon the prisoners at a range too close to miss. Nearly all were killed at the first fire. Those not killed were pursued and slaughtered by gunfire, bayonet, or lance. Fannin and some forty (Peña estimated eighty or ninety) wounded Texans unable to march were put to death within the presidio under the direction of Capt. Carolino Huerta of the Tres Villas battalion.
From two groups shot on the river roads, those not instantly killed fled to the woods along the stream, and twenty-four managed to escape. The third group, on the San Patricio road, was farther from cover; only four men from it are known to have escaped. A man-by-man study of Fannin's command indicates that 342 were executed at Goliad on March 27. Only twenty-eight escaped the firing squads, and twenty more were spared as physicians, orderlies, interpreters, or mechanics largely because of the entreaties of Francita Alvarez, a "high bred beauty" whom the Texans called the "Angel of Goliad", and the brave and kindly intervention of Col. Francisco Garay. Many of those who eventually escaped were first recaptured and later managed a second escape. Two physicians, Joseph H. Barnard and John Shackelford, were taken to San Antonio to treat Mexican wounded from the battle of the Alamo; they later escaped.
After the executions the bodies were burned, the remains left exposed to weather, vultures and coyotes, until June 3, 1836, when Gen. Thomas J. Rusk gathered the remains and buried them with military honors.

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## Wildthings

The Runaway Scrape is full blown right now. Texians fleeing in advance of Santa Anna's armies. While we wait for what happens next here is some more reading on the Goliad Massacre

*Daylight March 27th 1836

Escape of the Four **Alabama Red Rovers* <--- click

*Dillard Cooper's Remembrances of the Fannin Massacre. *_From Rangers and Pioneers of Texas by A.J. Sowell 1884 as reprinted from the American Sketch Book 1881. According to James T. DeShields in Tall Men With Long Rifles, Cooper died in extreme poverty in the 1890's in Llano, TX stating "during his later years the pitiful pension of $150.00 a year, provided by the great and opulent state of Texas, barely sufficed to buy food and medicines for the aged hero and his faithful wife. Napoleon was not far wrong when he said 'Republics are ungrateful.'"
*......several....cried out for mercy. I remember one, a young man, who had been noted for his piety, but who had afterwards become somewhat demoralized by bad company, falling on his knees, crying aloud to God for mercy, and forgiveness. Others, attempted to plead with their inhuman captors, but their pleadings were in vain.....On my right hand, stood Wilson Simpson, and on my left, Robert Fenner....while some of them were rending the air with their cries of agonized despair, Fenner called out to them, saying: "Don't take on so, boys; if we have to die, let's die like brave men.....At that moment, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the flash of a musket.....*_


On the morning of the 27th of March, 1836, about daylight, we were awakened by the guards, and marched out in front of the fort, where we were counted and divided into three different detachments; we had been given to understand that we were to be marched to Copano, and from there shipped to New Orleans. The impression, however, had in some way been circulated among us, that we were to be sent out that morning to hunt cattle; though I thought at the time that it could not be so, as it was but a poor way, to hunt cattle on foot.







Our detachment was marched out in double file, each prisoner being guarded by two soldiers, until within about half a mile southwest of the fort, we arrived at a brush fence, built by the Mexicans. We were then placed in single file, and were half way between the guard and the fence, eight feet each way. We were then halted, when the commanding officer came up to the head of the line, and asked if there were any of us who understood Spanish. By this time, there began to dawn upon the minds of us, the truth, that we were to be butchered, and that, I suppose, was the reason that none answered. He then ordered us to turn our backs to the guards. When the order was given not one moved, and then the officer, stepping up to the man at, the head of the column, took him by the shoulders and turned him around.

By this time, despair had seized upon our poor boys, and several of them cried out for mercy. I remember one, a young man, who had been noted for his piety, but who had afterwards become somewhat demoralized by bad company, falling on his knees, crying aloud to God for mercy, and forgiveness. Others, attempted to plead with their inhuman captors, but their pleadings were in vain, for on their faces no gleam of piety was seen for the defenseless men who stood before them. On my right hand, stood Wilson Simpson, and on my left, Robert Fenner. In the midst of the panic of terror which seized our men, and while some of them were rending the air with their cries of agonized despair, Fenner called out to them, saying: "Don't take on so, boys; if we have to die, let's die like brave men."

At that moment, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the flash of a musket; I instantly threw myself forward on the ground, resting on my hands. Robert Fenner must have been instantly killed, for he fell with such force upon me as almost to throw me over as I attempted to rise, which detained me a few moments in my flight, so that Simpson, my companion on the right, got the start of me.

per Kenbo's whining below:




As we ran towards an opening in the brush fence, which was almost in front of us, Simpson got through first, and I was immediately after him. I wore, at that time, a small, round cloak, which was fastened with a clasp at the throat. As I ran through the opening, an officer charged upon me, and ran his sword through my cloak, which would have held me, but I caught the clasp with both hands, and tore it apart, and the cloak fell from me. There was an open prairie, about two miles wide, through which I would have to run before I could reach the nearest timber, which was a little southwest of the place from where we started.

I gained on my pursuers, but saw, between me and the timber, three others, who were after Simpson. As I neared the timber, I commenced walking, in order to recover my strength, before I came near them. When he first started, we were all near together, but as Simpson took a direct course across the prairie, I, in order to avoid his pursuers, took a circuitous course. There were two points of timber projecting into the prairie, one of which was nearer to me than the other. I was making for the furthest point, but as Simpson entered the timber, his pursuers halted, and then ran across and cut me off, I then started for the point into which Simpson had entered, but they turned and cut me oft from that. I then stopped running and commenced walking slowly between them and the other point. They, no doubt, thinking I was about to surrender myself, stopped, and I continued to walk within about sixty yards of them, when I suddenly wheeled and ran into the point for which I had first started. They did not attempt to follow me, but just as I was about to enter the timber, they fired, the bullets whistling over my head caused me to draw my head down as I ran.

As soon as I entered the timber, I saw Simpson waiting and beckoning to me. I went towards him, and we ran together for about two miles, when we reached the river. We then stopped and consulted as to the best way of concealing ourselves. I proposed climbing a tree, but he objected, saying that should the Mexicans discover us, we would have no way of making our escape. Before we arrived at any conclusion, we heard some one coming, which frightened us so, that I jumped into the river, while Simpson ran a short distance up it, but seeing me, he also jumped in. The noise proceeded from the bank immediately above the spot where Simpson was, and I could see the place very plainly, and soon discovered that two of our companions had made their escape to this place. They were Zachariah Brooks, and Isaac Hamilton. In the fleshy part of both Hamilton's thighs were wounds, one made by a gun-shot and another by a bayonet.

We all swam the river, and traveling up it a short distance, arrived at a bluff bank, near which was a thick screen of bushes, where we concealed ourselves. The place was about five miles above the fort. We did not dare proceed further that day, as the Mexicans were still searching for us, and Hamilton's wounds had become so painful as to prevent his walking, which obliged us to carry him. We remained there until about 10 o'clock that night, when we started forth, Simpson and myself carrying Hamilton, Brooks, though severely wounded, was yet able to travel. We had to proceed very cautiously and rather slowly.

Fort La Bahia being southeast of us, and the point we were making for, was about where Goliad now stands. We proceeded, in a circuitous route in a northeasterly direction. We approached within a short distance of the fort, and could not at first account for the numerous fires we saw blazing. We were not long in doubt, for the sickening smell that was borne towards us by the south wind, informed us too well that they were burning the bodies of our companions. And, here, I will state what Mrs. Cash, who was kept a prisoner, stated afterwards; that some of our men were thrown into the flames and burned alive. We passed the fort safely, and reached a spring, where we rested from our journey and from whence we proceeded on our travels.

But the night was foggy, and becoming bewildered, it was not long before we found ourselves at the spring from which we started. We again started out, and again found ourselves at the same place; but we had too much at stake to sink into despondency. So once more took our wounded companion, thinking we could not miss the right direction this time; but, at last when day began to break, to our great consternation, we found we had been traveling around the same spot, and were for the third time back at the identical spring from which we had at first set forth. It was now impossible to proceed further that day, as we dared not travel during the day, knowing we should be discovered by the Mexicans. We therefore concealed ourselves by the side of a slight elevation, amidst a thick undergrowth of bushes.

By this time, we began to grow very hungry, and I remembered an elm bush that grew at the entrance of the timber where we were concealed, which formed an excellent commissary for us, and from the branches of which we partook, until nearly every limb was entirely stripped. About 9 o'clock that morning, we heard the heavy tramp of the Mexican army on the march; and they not long after that passed within a stone's throw of our place of concealment. It seems indeed, that we were guided by an over-ruling providence in not being able to proceed further that night, for as we were not expecting the Mexican army so soon, we would probably have been overtaken and discovered by them, perhaps in some prairie, where we could not have escaped.

We remained in our hiding place the rest of the day, and resumed our journey after dark, still carrying our wounded companion. Whenever the enemy passed us, we had to conceal ourselves; and we laid several days in ponds of mud and water, with nothing but our heads exposed to view. When in the vicinity of Lavaca, we again got ahead of the Mexicans; and, after traveling all night, we discovered, very early in the morning of the ninth day, a house within a few hundred yards of the river. We approached it, and found the inhabitants had fled. When we entered the house, we discovered a quantity of corn, some chickens, and a good many eggs lying about in different places. Our stomachs were weak and revolted at the idea of eating them raw, so we looked about for some means of striking a fire, first searching for a rock, but failing to find one, we took an old chisel and ground it on a grindstone for about two hours, but could never succeed in getting the sparks to catch. We then concluded to return and try the eggs raw.

We had taken one, and Simpson was putting on his shoes, which he had taken off to rest his feet, which were raw and bleeding, and had just got one on when he remarked: "Boys, we would be in a tight place if the Mexicans were to come upon us now." So saying, he walked to the window, when to his horror, there was the whole Mexican army not more than a mile and a half off, and fifteen or twenty horsemen coming at full speed within a hundred yards of us. We took up our wounded man and ran to the timber, which was not far off, Simpson leaving his shoe behind him. We got into the timber and concealed ourselves between the logs of two trees, the tops of which having fallen together, and being very thickly covered with leaves and moss, formed an almost impenetrable screen above and around us. We had scarcely hidden ourselves from view, when the Mexicans came swarming around us, shouting and hallooing through the woods, but did not find us. We heard them from time to time, all throughout the day and next night. The next morning, just before day, the noise of the Mexicans ceased, and we concluded they had left. Simpson then asked me to go with him to get his shoe, as it would be difficult for him to travel without it, and I consented to do so. We went out to the edge of the timber and stopped some time to take observations before proceeding further. Seeing nothing of the Mexicans, we proceeded to the house, found the shoe, and possessing ourselves of a couple of ears of corn, and a bottle of water, we returned to our companions. We had no doubt that the Mexicans had gone, so we sat down and drank the water and ate an ear of corn, when Brooks asked Simpson to go with him to the house, saying he would get a chicken, and we could eat it raw. They started, and had hardly got to the edge of the timber when I heard the sound of horses’ feet, and directly afterwards the Mexicans were to be seen in every direction. I was sure they had captured Simpson and Brooks. Soon I heard something in the brush near us, but did not know whether it was the boys or Mexicans, but it turned out to be the boys, who crept undercover, and, in a few minutes, four Mexicans came riding by, passing within a few feet of where we were lying, with our faces to the ground.

After going into the woods a short distance they turned and passed out again, but it was not long after when six of them came riding quite close, three on each side of us, and leaning down and peering into our hiding place. It seemed to me they could have heard us, for my own heart seemed to raise me almost from the ground by its throbbings. I felt more frightened than I ever had been before; for at the time of the massacre, everything had come on me so suddenly that my nerves had no time to become unstrung as they now were. The Mexicans passed and repassed us, through the day, so we dared not move from our hiding place. A guard was placed around us the following night, the main body having, no doubt, gone on, and left a detachment to search for us. I think they must have had some idea of our being some of Fannin's men, or they would scarcely have gone to that trouble. About 10 o'clock that night we held a consultation, and I told my companions it would not do to remain there any longer, as the Mexicans were aware of our place of concealment, and would surely discover us the next day. We all decided then to leave, and they requested me to lead the way out. I told them we would have to crawl through the timber and a short piece of prairie, until we crossed the road near which the Mexicans were posted; that they must be careful to remove every leaf and stick in the path, and to hold their feet up, only crawling on their hands and knees, as the least noise would betray us to the enemy.

I was somewhat acquainted with the locality; for we were now not far from Texana, and I had some times hunted along these woods. Thus I led the way. Hamilton's wounds were so painful that we could move only slowly, and we must have been two hours crawling about 200 yards. When we at length passed the timber and reached the road, I stopped to make a careful survey of the situation. I could see the Mexicans placed along the road, about a hundred yards on each side of us. The moon was shining, but had sunk towards the west, which threw the shadow of a point of timber across the road, and concealed us from view. It would have been hard to discover us from the color of our clothes, as the earthy element with which they were mixed had entirely hidden the original fabric. We continued to crawl, until we reached a sufficient distance not to be discovered, when we rose up and walked. Although Hamilton had, with a great deal of pain, managed to crawl, yet it was impossible for him to walk, and his wounds had by this time become so much irritated and inflamed that he could scarcely bear to be carried. We traveled that night only a short distance, and hid ourselves in a thicket near a pond of water. Brooks had been trying to persuade me to leave Hamilton; but, although our progress was impeded by having to carry him, I could not entertain the idea for a moment. I indignantly refused, but still he would seize every opportunity to urge it upon me. He said it would be impossible for us to escape, burdened as we were with Hamilton. I could only acknowledge the truth of this, for it was a desperate case with us. The foe was around us in every direction. Brooks, finding that I was not to be persuaded, then attempted to influence Simpson.

On the tenth day out, they took the bottle and went to the pond nearby, for water. As they were returning, (I suppose Brooks did not know he was so near the place they left us), both Hamilton and myself heard Brooks urging Simpson to leave him. He told him if we remained with Hamilton, we would certainly lose our lives; but there was some slight chance of escaping, if we left him, and that Hamilton's wounds had become so much worse that he was bound to die, unless he could have rest; and, as we were doing him no good, and ourselves a great deal of injury by carrying him, it was, our duty to leave him. Now Brooks had never carried him a step; Simpson and myself having done that; yet Brooks was the first who had ever proposed leaving him; and, although there was a great deal of truth in what he was saying, yet I felt quite angry with him, as I heard him trying to persuade Simpson. Hamilton did not say a word to them when they came in, but sat with his face buried in his hands a long time.

At length, he looked up, and said: "Boys, Brooks has told you the truth; I cannot travel any further, and if you stay with me, all will be killed. Go and leave me, boys; if I have rest I may recover, and if I ever should get off safe, you shall hear from me again." He spoke so reasonably, and we were so thoroughly convinced of the truth of what he said, after a brief consultation, we decided to depart without him. Hamilton had known Brooks in Alabama; he called him to him, and gave him a gold watch and $40 in gold, telling him to give it to his mother. We then bade Hamilton farewell, all of us shedding tears as we parted, but when we turned to go, my resolution failed me, and I could not find it in my heart to leave him. I said: "Boys, don't let us leave him." But Simpson and Brooks said that we could do neither him nor ourselves any good by remaining, and that they were determined to go. I told them I would remain with him, and do the best I could for him. So they started off without me; but Hamilton insisted so much that I should leave him, that I again bade him farewell, and followed and soon overtook the others. The reason that we started off in the day, was that it was raining quite hard, and we thought there would not be much danger in traveling, but we had not gone more than half way through the next prairie. when the weather cleared up, and we saw the whole Mexican army encamped at Texana, about two miles off; but they did not discover us, and we succeeded in reaching the timber on the Navidad. In the evening we walked out to a slight eminence which overlooked the prairie, to reconnoiter. While gazing across the prairie, we could see three men on horseback, but so indistinct were they that we could not at first tell whether they were Americans or Mexicans. As they approached, we hid in the undergrowth; and as they passed, we saw that they were Mexican couriers returning to the command.

At eight we again started forth, and coming out on the prairie, we discovered a road, which we concluded had been made by the refugees in their retreat from the enemy. During all this time we had nothing to eat but leaves and herbs, and the two ears of corn that we got at the house on Lavaca river. On the twelfth day, we reached the Colorado, at Mercer's crossing. As we were very tired, we sat down on the bank to rest a little, before attempting to swim over. While sitting there, a dog on the opposite side of the river began to bark. When we heard that well-known sound, our very souls thrilled with joy, and that was the first time since the awful day of the massacre that a smile had ever illuminated our faces. We looked at each other, and then burst into a great big laugh. We were all good swimmers, but I some times took the cramp while swimming, so we concluded to cross on a log. We procured a dead mulberry pole, and hanging on to it, one at each end, and one in the middle, we crossed over to the land of freedom, and a land where we found plenty to eat. After recruiting a little, we procured horses, with the intention of joining Houston's army; but before we reached there, San Jacinto had been fought and won.

It was more than a year before I ever heard anything of Hamilton. He remained in the same place where we left him nine days, sometimes lying in the pond of water, which assuaged the pain of his wounds. At the end of that time he was so much improved that he essayed to walk to Texana, and succeeded in doing so. He said the best eating he ever had in his life, was when he first entered Texana, and ate the meat from the rawhides the Mexicans had left. The next morning he took a skiff, and made his way down to Dimmitt's landing. He had scarcely reached there when he was taken prisoner by a Mexican soldier. Not long after, other soldiers came in, and tying Hamilton on a mule, started for camp. He suffered so much from his wounds that he fainted several times, on the way. Whenever this occurred, they would untie him, lay him on the ground, and throw water into his face until he revived, when they would again mount him on the mule and proceed on their way. Hamilton remained in their hands for some time and gradually grew well of his wounds. There was a Mexican who waited on him, who seemed much attached to him, and Hamilton was led to place much confidence in him. One morning, this Mexican told him that if he wanted to live another day, he must make his escape that night, as he had learned that he and two other prisoners were to be shot before morning. Hamilton then arranged a plan for the escape of himself and two of his companions, which was a success, after many trials and tribulations.

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## Wildthings

Here's another account of the Goliad Massacre (from Legacy of Texas)

The Goliad Massacre, the tragic termination of the Goliad Campaign of 1836, is of all the episodes of the Texas Revolution the most infamous. Though not as salient as the battle of the Alamo, the massacre immeasurably garnered support for the cause against Mexico both within Texas and in the United States, thus contributing greatly to the Texan victory at the battle of San Jacinto and sustaining the independence of the Republic of Texas. The execution of James W. Fannin, Jr.'s command in the Goliad Massacre was not without precedent, however, and Mexican president and General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who ultimately ordered the executions, was operating within Mexican law.

Santa Anna's main army took no prisoners; execution of the murderous decree of December 30, 1835, fell to Gen. José de Urrea, commander of Santa Anna's right wing. The first prisoners taken by Urrea were the survivors of Francis W. Johnson's party, captured at and near San Patricio on February 27, 1836. When the Mexican general reported to Santa Anna that he was holding the San Patricio prisoners, Santa Anna ordered Urrea to comply with the decree of December 30. Urrea complied to the extent of issuing an order to shoot his prisoners, along with those captured in the battle of Agua Dulce Creek, but he had no stomach for such cold-blooded killing. When Father Thomas J. Malloy, priest of the Irish colonists, protested the execution, Urrea remitted the prisoners to Matamoros, asking Santa Anna's pardon for having done so and washing his hands of their fate.

Santa Anna replied to Urrea's clemency letter on March 23 by ordering immediate execution of these "perfidious foreigners" and repeated the order in a letter the next day. Meantime, on March 23, evidently doubting Urrea's willingness to serve as executioner, Santa Anna sent a direct order to the "Officer Commanding the Post of Goliad" to execute the prisoners in his hands. This order was received on March 26 by Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla, whom Urrea had left at Goliad. Two hours later Portilla received another order, this one from Urrea, "to treat the prisoners with consideration, and especially their leader, Fannin," and to employ them in rebuilding the town. But when he wrote this seemingly humane order, Urrea well knew that Portilla would not be able to comply with it, for on March 25, after receiving Santa Anna's letter, Urrea had ordered reinforcements that would have resulted in too large a diminution of the garrison for the prisoners to be employed on public works.

At sunrise on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, the unwounded Texans were formed into three groups under heavy guard commanded by Capt. Pedro Balderas, Capt. Antonio Ramírez, and first adjutant Agustín Alcérrica. The largest group, including what remained of Ward's Georgia Battalion and Capt. Burr H. Duval's company, was marched toward the upper ford of the San Antonio River on the Bexar road. The San Antonio Grays, Mobile Grays,and others were marched along the Victoria road in the direction of the lower ford. Capt. John Shackelford's Red Rovers and Ira J. Westover's regulars were marched south westwardly along the San Patricio road. The guard, which was to serve also as a firing squad, included the battalions of Tres Villas and Yucatán, dismounted cavalry, and pickets from the Cuautla, Tampico, and Durango regiments.

The prisoners held little suspicion of their fate, for they had been told a variety of stories-they were to gather wood, drive cattle, be marched to Matamoros, or proceed to the port of Copano for passage to New Orleans. Only the day before, Fannin himself, with his adjutant general, Joseph M. Chadwick, had returned from Copano, where, accompanied by Holsinger and other Mexican officers, they had tried to charter the vessel on which William P. Miller's Nashville Battalion had arrived earlier (these men had been captured and imprisoned at Goliad, also). Although this was really an attempt by Urrea to commandeer the ship, the vessel had already departed. Still, Fannin became cheerful and reported to his men that the Mexicans were making arrangements for their departure. The troops sang "Home Sweet Home" on the night of March 26.

After the executions the bodies were burned, the remains left exposed to weather, vultures, and coyotes, until June 3, 1836, when Gen. Thomas J. Rusk, who had established his headquarters at Victoria after San Jacinto and was passing through Goliad in pursuit of Gen. Vicente Filisola's retreating army, gathered the remains and buried them with military honors. Some of the survivors attended the ceremony. The impact of the Goliad Massacre was crucial. Until this episode, Santa Anna's reputation had been that of a cunning and crafty man, rather than a cruel one. When the Goliad prisoners were taken, Sam Houston led a small army of volunteers who were retreating in the face of Santa Anna. The Texas cause was dependent on the material aid and sympathy of the United States. Had Fannin's and Miller's men been dumped on the wharves at New Orleans penniless, homesick, humiliated, and distressed, and each with his separate tale of Texas mismanagement and incompetence, Texas prestige in the United States would most likely have fallen, along with sources of help. But Portilla's volleys at Goliad, together with the fall of the Alamo, branded both Santa Anna and the Mexican people with a reputation for cruelty and aroused the fury of the people of Texas, the United States, and even Great Britain and France, thus considerably promoting the success of the Texas Revolution

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## woodman6415

Down close to Del Rio ... been a couple of times ... pretty neat place 


Dean Martin and Raquel Welch on the set of Bandolero!, which was filmed at the Alamo Village in Brackettville back in 1968. The movie also starred Jimmy Stewart and George Kennedy. It's a pretty good flick, actually, and you can catch it from time to time on various TV channels. Worth viewing, no doubt.

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## Wildthings

I was at the gate back in December but it's closed to the public now!! LOL a spitting image of the guy in the above photo!!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I was at the gate back in December but it's closed to the public now!! LOL a spitting image of the guy in the above photo!!
> 
> View attachment 125315


That's sad if it's closed permanently... probably 18 years since I was there


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## woodman6415

In September, 1936, the North Concho River flooded in San Angelo. Nobody died, but damage was extensive.

Courtesy the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum: http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/upload/images/stories/1936_San_Angelo_flood.jpg

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> That's sad if it's closed permanently... probably 18 years since I was there



It's been probably 15 years for me. Been meaning to get back there for awhile. Hope it's not permanent. Tony


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## Wildthings

I'm pretty sure it's permanent. Remember reading that somewhere


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## Wildthings

Ah it was on the geocache page for a geocache located at the entrance



> *Geocache Description:*
> _Small camo hanging container. _
> 
> _This is where the movie Alamo with John Wayne was filmed. The owner, Happy Shahan, then used the movie set as a tourist attraction for many years as well as hosting many movies. Sadly, when Mrs. Shahan passed away a couple of years ago, the kids didn't want to keep the place open. Many fond memories of coming here as a child and seeing the shoot-outs._
> [unquote]


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## Kenbo

Wildthings said:


> per Kenbo's whining below:



I do like pictures.

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## Wildthings

Kenbo said:


> I do like pictures.


LOL we established that on the last go around!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 28th*


*Texas Confederates whipped in New Mexico
*
On this day in 1862, Union and Confederate troops fought the key battle of the Civil War in the Far West at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico. When the Texans of Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley's Army of New Mexico were defeated by Union forces, Confederate ambitions in the West were checked. In June 1987 a mass grave containing more than thirty bodies, casualties of the battle of Glorieta, was discovered. Only three bodies were identified, among them that of Ebenezer Hanna, the youngest fatality of the battle. All the bodies were reburied in Santa Fe National Cemetery in 1993. Hanna's journal is now in the Texas State Library.

*Confederate guerilla leader arrested by own side*

On this day in 1864, Civil War guerrilla leader William Quantrill was arrested by Confederate forces in Bonham, Texas. The Ohio native, wanted for murder in Utah by 1860, collected a group of renegades in the Kansas-Missouri area at the beginning of the Civil War. He fought with Confederate forces at the battle of Wilson's Creek in August 1861 but soon thereafter began irregular independent operations. Quantrill and his band attacked Union camps, patrols, and settlements. While Union authorities declared him an outlaw, Quantrill eventually held the rank of colonel in the Confederate forces. After his infamous sack of Lawrence, Kansas, and the massacre of Union prisoners at Baxter Springs, Quantrill and his men fled to Texas in October of 1863. There he quarreled with his associate, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and his band preyed on the citizens of Fannin and Grayson counties. Acts of violence proliferated so much that regular Confederate forces had to be assigned to protect residents from the activities of the irregular Confederate forces, and Gen. Henry McCulloch determined to rid North Texas of Quantrill's influence. On March 28, 1864, when Quantrill appeared at Bonham as requested, McCulloch had him arrested on the charge of ordering the murder of a Confederate major. Quantrill escaped that day and returned to his camp near Sherman, pursued by more than 300 state and Confederate troops. He and his men crossed the Red River into Indian Territory. Except for a brief return in May, Quantrill's activities in Texas were at an end. Quantrill was killed by Union forces at the very end of the war.


*Commander of "Kirby Smith's Confederacy" dies
*
On this day in 1893, Edmund Kirby Smith, former commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy, died in Sewanee, Tennessee. The Florida native attended West Point, served in the Mexican War, and was an officer in the Second United States Cavalry on the frontier. He entered the Confederate service in 1861 and rose to the rank of lieutenant general in October 1862, when he was given command of the Trans-Mississippi Department, including Texas. His competent administration of the department, sometimes called "Kirby Smith's Confederacy," and successful defense of the region against Union general Nathaniel P. Banks's Red River campaign in 1864 were marred by his inability to cooperate amicably with his principal field commander, Gen. Richard Taylor. In February 1864 Smith was promoted to the rank of full general, and during this time he presided over the Marshall Conferences. Kirby Smith was almost the last Confederate general in the field, but in a hopelessly isolated situation he finally surrendered to Gen. Edward R. S. Canby in June 1865.

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## Wildthings

While we are waiting on the next chapter in our story of Texas Independence here is an article written by _Dr. Stephen L. Hardin, _a professor of History at Victoria College. It's a long read but very interesting to us Texians. I've stood in that building in _Washington-on-the-Brazos_ and imagine that day so long ago.....

*March 2, 1836: *
*The Myth and Meaning of Texas Independence
By Dr. Stephen L. Hardin
Professor of History
The Victoria College
Victoria, Texas*

March 2, 1836 dawned, frigid and gray; cutting winds blew through glassless windows. Texians – as they styled themselves – huddled close, pulled blankets tight, and gave birth to a dream. At the Town of Washington, fifty-nine representatives voted into existence a sovereign nation: the Republic of Texas. Tennessean George C. Childress had drafted the independence document. In word and spirit it borrowed heavily from Thomas Jefferson” original 1776 declaration. No matter. Anglo-Celtic Texians proudly embraced the values and traditions of their founding fathers. “The same blood that animated the hearts of our ancestors in ’76 still flows in our veins,” one frontier preacher affirmed. Still, not all the delegates were of that blood. Four Mexican residents signed the declaration on behalf of their Tejano constituents. By their presence and with their signatures, they demonstrated that they too shared Jefferson’s values – and his vision of liberty. Thus began a decade of independence singular in the annals of American history.

The ramshackle surroundings seemed neither appropriate, nor especially auspicious. The Convention met in an unfinished building lacking glass in the windows or even doors. In lieu of glass, delegates tacked rags tight across the windows. They could have saved themselves the trouble. On March 1, as the members gathered in the Town of Washington, a blue norther swept in. By the morning of the second, the thermometer had plummeted to a brisk thirty-three degrees as gusts whistled through fluttering window cloth.

If the Washington “Convention Center” proved bleak, so too did the rest of the rustic frontier settlement. It did not make a favorable impression upon Virginia native Colonel William Fairfax Gray. He may have tasted sour grapes, for he had earlier applied for the job of convention secretary. Although he did not receive the post, he nevertheless maintained a record of the proceedings in his diary. In numerous instances, Gray’s account is more complete than the official minutes. Still, he found the Town of Washington a “disgusting place.” Cold, uncomfortable, and unappreciated, Gray described Washington in wholly uncharitable terms:

_It is laid out in the woods, about a dozen wretched cabins or shanties constitute the city; not one decent house in it, and only one well-defined street, which consists of an opening cut out of the woods. The stumps still standing. A rare place to hold a national convention in. They will have to leave it promptly to avoid starvation._

Even here in Texas most folks still remain unclear about the meaning of that cold March day in 1836. Myth and misunderstanding also obscure the event. Many believe, for example, that the delegates signed the Texas Declaration on March 2. Not true. The delegates read and approved the document on that day, but remember that they did not have a photocopier at their disposal. Clerks worked through the night. Perforce, the five hand-written copies were not ready for signatures until the following day. Nor did all sign even then. Seven delegates had not yet arrived on March 3. As they dragged in, the latecomers added their names for a total of fifty-nine signatories. Nowadays Texans remember the small hamlet where the delegates gathered as Washington-on-the-Brazos. Nobody called it that in 1836. Texians back then simply called it the “Town of Washington.” Not until later would ‘Washington-on-the-Brazos” come into common usage.

Whether one observes March 2 or March 3, one constant remains; the delegates could not have picked a worse time to declare independence. To many contemporary observers, such confidence appeared reckless. As delegates brazenly declared Texas independent, the artillery of Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna hammered the walls of the Alamo. Just four days later his troops would assault the crumbling fort and wipe out every rebel defender. At the same time, General José Urrea’s division swept northward through the coastal prairies. He would subsequently capture the entire rebel command of Colonel James W. Fannin, Jr. following the Battle of Coleto on March 19. Acting upon Santa Anna’s orders, Mexican troops executed Fannin and the majority of his Goliad garrison, some 342 men. The twin defeats at San Antonio and Goliad generated panic among Texian settlers who fled toward the Louisiana border. The “Runaway Scrape” they called it. To declare independence amid all this chaos seemed more than unduly hopeful. Indeed, to most it resembled a fool’s errand.

On April 21, General Sam Houston’s vengeful army swept the Mexican camp at San Jacinto and the skeptics recanted. On that momentous afternoon, enraged Texians slaughtered 650 Mexican soldados and took another 700 prisoner. Most important, the following day Texians captured President-General Santa Anna. At San Jacinto Texians won a great victory, but only with the capture of the Mexican dictator did the battle become decisive?

Sandwiched between the defeat at the Alamo and the victory at San Jacinto, it is not all that startling that the importance of March 2 gets lost in the glare of those two shining episodes. The date is not a state holiday; public schools do not let out; newscasters rarely recall the event.

Even in 1836, Texians did not consider the approval of Childress’s declaration a momentous occasion. Nearly all the representatives had arrived in Washington knowing that independence was a forgone conclusion. Gray captured the lackadaisical nature of the proceedings in his diary, but was so underwhelmed that he could not manage to spell Childress’s name correctly. The important news of the day, at least as far as Gray was concerned, was the break in the weather: “The morning clear and cold, but the cold somewhat moderated.” Only then, did he mention – in an offhand manner – that the Convention had approved the declaration of independence:

_The Convention met pursuant to adjournment. Mr. Childers [sic], from the committee, reported a Declaration of Independence, which he read in this place. It was received by the house, committed to a committee of the whole, reported without amendment, and unanimously adopted, in less than one hour from its first and only reading. It underwent on discipline, and no attempt was made to amend it. The only speech made upon it was a somewhat declamatory address in committee to the whole by General Houston._

And it was done. At the end of the day, the delegates merely rubber-stamped a question that they had already decided.

So apathetic were the delegates concerning the document–or, perhaps, so chaotic were conditions–that all five of the original hand-written copies went missing. In 1896 an original copy turned up in the files of the U.S. State Department. It appears that Texas agent William H. Wharton deposited his copy there in 1836. As Commissioner of the Texas Republic, he had traveled to Washington, D. C. to inquire about admitting Texas into the Union. If annexation proved impossible, he then was to push for the recognition of Texas as an independent nation. He must have submitted one of the original copies to support the claim that Texas was, in fact, an independent nation and not merely a breakaway province within the Mexican Republic. State Department officials returned the precious document to Texas. Today this it resides deep inside a vault at the State Library in Austin. A reproduction of this copy is on permanent display at the state capitol. The archivists, having lost it for so long, are not willing to take chances with the only surviving original.

So here we are near the end of the twentieth century. What do the events of 163 years ago have to do with us? What does it all mean? Of late the delegates have not fared too well at the pens of activist historians. They see Texas independence as the action of ungrateful snits that willfully ignored Mexican generosity. Typical of this new breed is Colorado writer Jeff Long. In his book Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo, he sides with the Mexicans.

_It was grotesque that a host of squatters, land speculators, and short-term colonists should expect the Mexican government to grant them government conducted in the English language. Mexico had not forced the Anglo-Americans to come to Texas. Mexico had certainly not promised those who did come “that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.” To the contrary, those settlers in Texas who were legitimate had pledged themselves to a set of regulations extended by a whole new authority.”_

Like many of his ilk, Long has a reductionist understanding of Texas history. To be sure Mexicans were astoundingly generous to norteamericano colonists. A head of a household normally received a league and a labor. That amounted to a whopping 4,605 acres. Additionally, immigrants could also expect a tax rebate until they got on their feet in their adopted homeland. Americans who had been ruined in the Panic of 1819 flocked to Mexican Texas by the thousands. And they were grateful to Mexico for the chance–and a place–to make a fresh start. To most American immigrants, it seemed as if Mexico offered more opportunity than the “land of opportunity” itself. Still – and this is the part Mr. Long conveniently remembers to forget – most Texians immigrated under the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Under that covenant Mexican citizens enjoyed a republican form of government and most of the power of government resided at the state and local levels. Indeed, the Mexican federalists were great admirers of the United States Constitution of 1787 and employed it as a model for their 1824 charter. When Santa Anna revoked the Constitution of 1824 and declared himself dictator in 1835, all bets were off. American Mexicans considered themselves bound to the old constitution and were not about to sit still and be quiet while a military dictator appropriated the reins of government. They were not, however, alone it that. Many Federalistias –Mexicans loyal to the Constitution of 1824 – also took up arms to resist Santa Anna’s centralist regime.

So the revolt that began near Gonzales in October 2, 1835, was a civil war – not a bid for complete separation from Mexico. Both Anglo-Celtic Texians and the native Tejanos fought for self-government within the federalist system created by the Constitution of 1824. The war was not, as some have insisted, a “culture conflict.” Indeed, many Texas Mexicans joined with norteamericano neighbors to resist the centralistas.

Having said that, why did Texians overwhelmingly support complete separation from Mexico only five months later? Is Long correct? Was the Texas Revolution merely a shameless land grab? Once again, the answer is more involved than some allow themselves to believe. Texians were disappointed when Federalists from the interior did not rush to Texas to take up the struggle. Texian leaders had tried to squash any mention of independence, fearing that such remarks might alienate Mexican federalists. By February 1836, however, a majority of Texians had concluded that they could expect no help from that quarter. Why had the federalists south of the Rio Grande been so unwilling to support the Texian federalists? The short answer is that they simply did not trust the Anglo-Americans.

Mexican federalists had plenty of reasons to mistrust their northern neighbors. They recalled the two decades from 1800 to 1820 as the era of the filibusters. Throughout that period, American soldiers of fortune such as Philip Nolan, Augustus Magee, and James Long (apparently no relation to the Colorado revisionist) had attempted to wrest Texas away from Spain. Mexicans declared their independence from Spain in 1821, but many still remembered the filibusters and mistrusted Americans. Mexican Secretary of State Lucas Alamán expressed such concern succinctly. “Where others send invading armies,” he groused, “[the Americans] send their colonists.” He understood that American newspapermen wrote incendiary articles calling for the occupation of Texas. He knew that in 1829 President Andrew Jackson had dispatched the brutish Anthony Butler to Mexico with an offer to buy Texas. He was also aware that Americans almost constantly spoke of the “reannexation of Texas,” a crack-brained belief that Texas should have been a part of the Louisiana Purchase owing to the short lived La Salle colony of 1685. Little wonder then that Mexican federalist viewed the colossus to the north and its wayfaring citizens as a threat to Mexican nationhood.

Texas leaders came to understand that alone they could not win the war. If Mexican federalists would not lend a hand, they must enlist assistance from the United States. War is the most expensive of all human endeavors. While Texians claimed thousands of acres of disposable land, they were cash poor. To win this war they first had to fight it. But that required troops, weapons, and provender and all those items cost money – lots of it! They were not so naïve as to believe that President Jackson would risk an international incident by openly supporting the Texas rebels against Mexico. They did, however, hope to enlist the support of individual Americans who believed in their cause. The ad interim government dispatched Stephen F. Austin–the most famous Texian–as an agent to the United States. Once back in the “old states” the empresario appealed to citizens to provide volunteers, funds, and supplies for Texas. He and other Texas agents visited American banks to secure loans for the Texas war effort.

That is where they consistently encountered problems. Banks in the north would not even consider supporting with their money a cause that might ultimately bring another slave state into the union. Southern bankers, while more sympathetic, would not lend their money so long as the war remained a domestic Mexican squabble. They let Austin and the other agents know, however, that they might be interested if – and only if, Texians declared their complete separation from Mexico.

Why this southern support for Texas independence? Southerners anticipated that an independent Texas would remain independent for, say, three or four months, before entering the union as a slave state. In 1836 the United States had an equal number of free and slave states. Since both free and slave states voted as a block, it created a legislative gridlock with neither side being able to gain advantage. Southerners believed that adding Texas to the list of slave states would tilt the congressional balance of power in their favor.

Austin may have been lukewarm concerning slavery, but he was a firebrand in the cause of Texas. In a rambling letter dated January 7, 1836, he neatly summed up the situation.

_I go for Independence for I have no doubt we shall get aid, as much as we need and perhaps more – and what is of equal importance – the information from Mexico up to late in December says that the Federal party has united with Santa Anna against us, owing to what has already been said and done in Texas in favor of Independence so that our present position under the constitution of 1824, does us no good with the Federalists, and is doing us harm in this country, by keeping away the kind of men we most need[.] [W]ere I in the convention[,] I would urge an immediate declaration of Independence – unless there be some news from the [Mexican] interior that changed the face of things – and even then, it would require very strong reasons to prevent me from the course I now recommend._

When Stephen Fuller Austin spoke, Texians listened. By March 2, nearly all of them believed that their best hopes for the future rested on complete separation from Mexico.

How did Tejanos regard the independence announcement? The fighting had severely tested the loyalty of Texas-born Mexicans, most of whom resisted the inexorable movement toward independence. While many were willing to fight, even die, for the Constitution of 1824, they were understandably hesitant to support an open break with their mother country. The politically astute among them realized that in an independent Texas they would be woefully outnumbered by norteamericanos and thus relegated to minority status in a land dominated by foreigners who possessed little knowledge of or appreciation for their distinctive culture.

The war cast Tejanos into a whirlpool of changing politics and shifting loyalties. Wealthy landowners like José Antonio Navarro, Erasmo Seguín, and Plácido Benavides had been early proponents of American emigration. They were willing to abet slavery to promote the cotton trade and economic growth for the province. Having placed their economic and political bets on their new allies, when open revolt erupted federalist Tejanos could only try to play out their hand.

Independence forced Tejanos to make hard choices. Some like Navarro and the Seguíns opted to support the new republic. But others like Benevides, the alcalde of Victoria, could not force their principles to bend that far. Benevides was a Mexican first, a federalist second. He had seen much hard fighting at the siege and storming of Béxar in 1835, but when he heard of the March 2 declaration he went to Goliad commander James W. Fannin and informed him he was leaving the army. He could not abide centralist despotism, but neither could he be a party to striping Mexico of Tejas. He believed his only honorable option was to return to his ranch and sit out the war as a non-combatant. Fannin understood his plight and sent him home with his blessing. Still other Tejanos, like Carlos de la Garza, Juan Moya, and Agustín Moya, resented the influx of foreign settlers, view opposition as disloyalty to their motherland, and flocked to the centralist banner. These were not men who wet their fingers to test the prevailing winds; they did not plot their course according to the latest public opinion poll. They were deeply rooted in principle and tradition. Each of these Texas Mexicans followed his heart and while the path did not always lead to victory, it never led to dishonor.

That was then; this is now. Why should modern Texans observe the events of 163 years ago? Why should they stop for a moment every March 2 to reflect on the meaning of Texas Independence Day?

The first reason is historical – this day marks the creation of the Republic of Texas. For almost a decade Texas existed as a sovereign nation. It exchanged foreign ministers with other countries; it had a national army and navy (though neither was especially effective); it maintained a national currency (though, to be sure, the money was never worth much). When Texas joined the Union in 1845, it did so as a nation and thus demanded rights not accorded to mere territories. By order of Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress, Texas retained possession of its public lands. So large was the landmass of Texas, the same resolution allowed Texas to divide into as many as five states. In 1850 Texans did, in fact, sell a portion part their western holdings to pay off the debt incurred during the Republic period. Since then, however, they have been reluctant to part with even so much as an inch of their sacred soil – the resolution notwithstanding. Texas nationalism has proved stronger that political expediency.

The second reason is psychological, perhaps even spiritual. The Republic of Texas was an ephemeral empire. Like the spring bluebonnets, it bloomed, blossomed, and blanched with the sands of time. But also like the state flower, its scent lingers in the hearts and imaginations of every Texan. A moment ago I referred to Texas nationalism. Many outside the state would, no doubt, find that remarkably pretentious, but those who live here understand the truth of it. Texas existed as a nation for ten years; Texans got used to the idea; and nationalism is a difficult habit to break. The novelist John Steinbeck perhaps said it best:

*Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.*

March 2 is a day to celebrate Texas distinctiveness. Now I’m not saying that Texans are better that other folks, but I am saying that we’re different. And if a people consider themselves different, they are. March 2 should be to Texans what St. Patrick’s Day is to the Irish. But what if you are a Tejano. Should you want to celebrate the day that Texas separated itself from Mexico? You bet! Even as early as 1835 Tejanos were distinctive from other Mexicans. The ranching culture that developed in Texas produced its own clothing, its own music, its own customs, and its own food. Gringos call it “Mexican food,” but all one has to do to put the lie to that assertion is to eat the food in the interior – or try to. It is rather bland and not nearly as good as the Tejano food (we might as well call it what it really is) right here at home. We sometimes call it Tex-Mex, but in truth, it’s all Tex and precious little Mex. It is found nowhere else on earth. How many things might we say that of? Tejano music is not Mexican; it is not American. It is Texan and is found nowhere else on earth. Tejanos also speak a variety of Spanish called Tex-Mex. But try using it in Mexico City or worse yet, in Seville. Again, it is a unique language and is found nowhere else on earth. Truth is if you’re a Texan – be you brown, black, white, yellow, or red – you don’t rightly belong anywhere else. Steinbeck nailed that too. “A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner,” he observed. That applies to Tejanos as much as, probably more than, other Texans. After all, whose family has lived here the longest?

Even today it is common to hear natives claim to be “Texans first, Americans second.” It is impossible to believe that they would feel that way had the Texas Republic never existed. There in Washington on that cold, windy day in March of 1836, delegates, both Anglo and Tejano, shouted to the world that they were different. Not Mexican were they, not American, but something else. They were, they insisted, TEXIANS. They gave birth not only to a dream, but also to a mystique. Not all Texians wanted to join the Union in 1845. Early settler, ranger, and Indian fighter, Robert Hall spoke for many of the old breed. “I was opposed to annexation,” he groused, “and voted first, last, and all time for the Lone Star.” The degree of Texas nationalism may be a matter of debate, but it is perhaps significant, that even when they joined the Union, the old Texians could not bear to part with their cherished flag. And even today, the banner of nation continues to swell over the Lone Star State

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

Charles Doolin is often credited with inventing the Frito in San Antonio back in 1932. In fact, the truth is more complicated. According to the 2011 book "Fritos Pie, Stories, Recipes and More" by Kaleta Doolin, Charles’s daughter, Charles actually bought the recipe and a small corn chip company in San Antonio from a Mexican man named Gustavo Olguin who was trying to raise money to return home. Like so many great Texas things, the humble Frito was created "when the Tex met the Mex," to quote that man in the movie "Bernie."

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"San Antonio is prosperity just on the edge of a lonesome, untilled belt of land 150 miles wide, like Mardi Gras on the edge of Lent."

------ Poet Sidney Lanier, 1870

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 29th*


*Rebels defeat Spanish royalists*

On this day in 1813, the battle of Rosillo was fought on a prairie near the confluence of Rosillo and Salado creeks, nine miles southeast of San Antonio. The engagement was between the Republican Army of the North led by José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and Samuel Kemper and a Spanish royalist force under Texas governor Manuel María de Salcedo and Nuevo León governor Simón de Herrera. The republican army, variously estimated at 600 to 900 men, was advancing along the road from La Bahía to San Antonio when it was confronted by a royalist force variously reported to be 950 to 1,500 men. The ensuing battle was bloody and brief, lasting no more than an hour but resulting in the complete rout of the royalists and the capture of most of their arms and ammunition, six cannons, and 1,500 horses and mules. Royalist losses were heavy, estimated to be 100 to 330 men, while the republicans lost only six men. The battle of Rosillo resulted in the capture of San Antonio and the establishment of a first "republic of Texas," but the rebellion was eventually crushed at the battle of Medina in August 1813.



*Ann Raguet marries Robert Irion instead of Sam Houston
*
On this day in 1840, Anna W. Raguet, who was courted by Sam Houston, married Robert A. Irion instead. The eldest child of Texas pioneer Henry Raguet, Anna was born in Pennsylvania in 1819 and lived in Cincinnati until she was brought to Nacogdoches by her father in the spring of 1833. There she became acquainted with Sam Houston. He evidently contemplated marrying her, for in 1833 he engaged the services of Jonas Harrison to secure a divorce for him from his first wife, Eliza Allen. As divorces were not granted under Mexican law, nothing came of the application, but Houston's courtship continued. Soon after he became president of the Republic of Texas he issued a proclamation giving his authority to Judge Shelby Corzine to try his application for divorce in the district court of San Augustine County, although Congress was supposed to have exclusive jurisdiction of such matters. Houston's attorney, W. G. Anderson, used the same petition that had been drawn up by Jonas Harrison. The divorce was granted on April 8, 1837, but did not satisfy the scruples of Anna Raguet, who apparently abandoned any plans she might have had for marrying Houston. Robert Irion, secretary of state under Houston, bore many messages between Anna and the president. When Irion learned of the final rift between the two, he persuaded her to marry him. The date of their marriage differs in printed sources, one saying March 29, another March 30, and a third April 9. The couple had five children.


*East Texas lake completed
*
On this day in 1965 the deliberate impoundment of water began at Sam Rayburn Reservoir. The reservoir is dammed eighty miles north of Beaumont, is fed by the Angelina River, and covers part of Jasper, Angelina, Sabine, Nacogdoches, and San Augustine counties. Construction began on September 7, 1956. The reservoir's name was changed from McGee Bend to Sam Rayburn, in honor of the congressional leader, in 1963. The dam serves two hydroelectric plants. The lake has a drainage area of 3,449 square miles. It is a favorite resort destination for East Texans.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 30th*


*Secessionist paper founded in Marshall*

On this day in 1849, the Marshall _Texas Republican_ was established by Trenton A. and Frank J. Patillo. The paper is most closely identified with Robert W. Loughery, who became associate editor in July and editor in November, and two years later bought the paper outright. Under his fiery leadership, the _Republican_ became one of the state's most articulate voices for secession, and his editorials were reprinted around the state. Loughery's support played an important role in the election of his fellow townsmen James Pinckney Henderson and Louis T. Wigfall to the United States Senate, and the _Republican_ was among the staunchest supporters of the Confederacy during the war years. Once the war ended, however, Loughery vigorously advocated conciliation and compliance with the requirements of surrender, though he changed his stance after the imposition of congressional Reconstruction. His last great journalistic fight involved the Stockade Case at Jefferson, in which a number of citizens were held without formal charge and finally tried by a military tribunal. Loughery's complaints about the military's refusal to turn the case over to civilian courts or to release the prisoners on bail came to the attention of President Andrew Johnson, who asked for an explanation from Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, commander of the troops in Texas. After the _Republican_ ceased publication in 1872, Loughery went on to help found several other Texas newspapers. He died in 1894.


*Congressional Reconstruction ends as Texas readmitted to Union
*
On this day in 1870, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the act that ended Congressional Reconstruction and readmitted Texas to the Union. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Texas had been in turmoil, first under Presidential Reconstruction and then, beginning in 1867 with the passage of the First Reconstruction Act, under Congressional Reconstruction. The latter required that Texas have a constitutional convention, with delegates elected by all male citizens over the age of twenty-one, regardless of race, color, or "previous condition of servitude." The convention was to write a new state constitution that would provide for universal adult male suffrage. When the constitution had been written and the state had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Congress would consider the case for readmission to the Union. The convention met at Austin in June 1868 and did not adjourn until February 1869. The constitution it produced differed significantly from previous constitutions by authorizing a more centralized and bureaucratized system of government, with greater power in the hands of the governor. In February 1870 the Twelfth Legislature assembled at Austin to adopt the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments and select United States senators in preparation for readmission to the Union. They quickly approved the amendments and selected Morgan C. Hamilton for a six-year term and James W. Flanagan for a four-year term. This completed the requirements set by Congress for readmission


*German author of Wild West fiction dies
*
On this day in 1912, Karl May died in Radebeul, Germany. May's fictional character Old Shatterhand spread Christianity and justice across a romanticized American West while fighting "unscrupulous white men and renegade Indians." The novelist's huge following included such disparate readers as Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Hermann Hesse, and Adolf Hitler. Over sixty million copies of May's works, in thirty languages, helped form the image of Texas and the Wild West in many European minds.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 31st*


*Texas Mormon leader dies leading followers north
*
On this day in 1858, pioneer Mormon leader Lyman Wight, determined to lead his people back to the North following a premonition of the coming Civil War, died near San Antonio. Wight, born in Connecticut in 1796, was living in Ohio in 1826 when he converted to Mormonism. In 1838, Wight and Joseph Smith were among fifty Mormon leaders tried in Missouri for treason and other crimes against the state. After Smith's death in 1844, Brigham Young was selected as head of the Mormon church and resolved to lead his people to Utah, but Wight refused to accept Young's authority. He claimed that Smith had told him to found a Mormon colony in Texas. With some 200 followers, Wight moved to Texas in 1845, and received John O. Meusebach's permission to found a colony near Fredericksburg in 1847. The community of Zodiac (later renamed Rocky Hill) quickly became a central element in the Gillespie County economy. The Mormons built the first sawmill in the county and soon became the principal suppliers of seeds, lumber, and flour to the Germans of Fredericksburg. In 1848 Young sent two messengers to Texas to convince Wight to come to Utah, but Wight, nicknamed "the Wild Ram of the Mountains" by his fellow Mormons for his stubborn independence, refused. He was disfellowshiped by the Mormon church in 1849. In 1851, following a flood that destroyed their mills, the Mormons left Gillespie County and eventually settled in Bandera County.


*Cowpunchers' planned strike starts slow, then flops*

On this day in 1883, many Texas cowboys went on strike against their bosses, absentee ranchers. The cowboys' grievances, however, were against developments that proved permanent. As closed-range ranching wiped out the previous open-range industry, some of the cowboys' traditional perks were denied them. No longer could they brand mavericks, keep small herds of their own, or receive part of their pay in calves. The strike mustered some 300 cowboys at its peak strength, but after 2 1/2 months the work stoppage was so weakened that the May roundup occurred without incident. The last press mention of the strike was in the Dodge City Times for May 10, 1883.


*Newsweek chronicles decline of Texas steel town
*
On this day in 1986, _Newsweek_ magazine published an article detailing the economic problems in Lone Star, Texas, in southern Morris County. The site was probably settled around the time of the Civil War, but a community did not develop until the 1930s, when Dallas-based Lone Star Steel established a steel mill in the area. During World War II the plant expanded to cover 600 acres and employed as many as 6,000 workers. Many of the workers settled in the area, and by the mid-1950s Lone Star was an incorporated city with a reported population of 1,131. The town continued to prosper in the 1970s, and in 1980 it had a population of 2,006 and eighty-six businesses. In 1981, thanks in part to the steel industry, Morris County ranked twenty-ninth among the state's 254 counties in per capita income--the highest among the sixteen counties in the northeastern corner of the state. During the 1980s, however, the steel plant began having economic difficulties, mainly because of the slump in the oil industry and competition from foreign steel suppliers. In 1986 company officials laid off 2,000 of their 3,800 employees. Subsequently the town declined, and by 1990 its population had fallen to 1,615. In that year Lone Star Steel filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and was subsequently reorganized. In 2000 the town's population was 1,631

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 1st * -- it may be April Fool's Day to you but to me it's my retirement anniversary Yeah 2 years


*Mexican revolutionary captures San Antonio
*
On this day in 1813, Spanish governor Manuel María de Salcedo surrendered the city of San Antonio to forces under José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara, commander-in-chief of the filibustering Gutiérrez-Magee expedition. Gutiérrez intended to set up a republican government in Texas and use Texas as a base for operations designed to liberate Mexico from Spanish rule. The scheme ended in August with the defeat of Gutiérrez's successor as head of the provisional government, José Álvarez de Toledo, but the indefatigable Gutiérrez went on to become involved with such filibusters and revolutionaries as Louis Michel Aury, Francisco Xavier Mina, and James Long, among others


*William Brann, publisher of Iconoclast, is killed in Waco
*
On this day in 1898, controversial journalist William Cowper Brann was fatally shot in the back by Tom E. Davis on a Waco street. Brann managed to pull his own gun and kill Davis. Earlier in the decade Brann's newspaper, the _Iconoclast_, had launched a series of vitriolic attacks, especially on Baptists, Episcopalians, blacks, women, and anything British. He also went after nearby Baylor University, which he called "that great storm-center of misinformation." Brann was subsequently kidnapped on one occasion and beaten on another, and his supporters had a deadly gunfight with Baylor partisans. Davis, who killed Brann, was an irate supporter of Baylor.


*State population surges as minority percentages grow*

The U.S. Census Bureau showed the population of the state of Texas at 20,851,820 as of April 1, 2000. This figure represents an increase of 22.8 percent, or almost four million, since the 1990 census, and means that Texas has passed New York as the second most populous state in the nation (behind California). The population of Texas grew much faster than that of the nation as a whole, which increased 13.1 percent between 1990 and 2000 to a total of 281,421,906. During those ten years, the number of Hispanics in Texas grew from 4,339,905 (25.5 percent of the state's population) to 6,669,666 (32.0 percent). The number of Texans defining themselves as wholly or partly black or African American grew from 2,021,632 (11.9 percent) to 2,493,057 (12.0 percent). The number of Texans of American Indian descent increased from 65,877 (0.4 percent) to 118,362 (0.6 percent). Females represented a slightly lower percentage of the state's population in 2000 (10,498,910, or 50.4 percent) than in 1990 (8,620,547, or 50.9 percent).

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 3rd*

@scrimman Just wondering if you will be massacred again this year?

*Legendary Texan born in Virginia*

On this day in 1817, Bigfoot Wallace was born in Lexington, Virginia. He arrived in Texas shortly after the Texas Revolution, fought Gen. Adrián Woll's invading Mexican army near San Antonio in 1842, and then volunteered for the Somervell and Mier expeditions. Some of his most graphic memories were of his experiences in Perote Prison. As soon as he was released, he joined the Texas Rangers under Jack Hays and fought with the rangers in the Mexican War. In the 1850s Captain Wallace commanded a ranger company of his own, fighting border bandits as well as Indians. He spent his later years in Frio County, near a hamlet named Bigfoot. There he was known as a mellow and convivial soul who liked to sit in a roomy rawhide-bottomed chair in the shade of his shanty and recount over the stories of his career.


*Historian and TSHA director born in Panola County
*
On this day in 1888, historian and author Walter Prescott Webb was born on a farm in Panola County, Texas. His father was a schoolteacher and part-time farmer. The Webb family had moved from Mississippi to Rusk County, Texas, then to Panola and westward past the 100th meridian. The arid West Texas environment profoundly influenced the young Webb, as reflected in his later writing about the Great Plains. During his tenure as director of the Texas State Historical Association (1939-46), he expanded the _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, founded the Junior Historians of Texas, and launched a project to compile an encyclopedia of Texas, published in 1952 as the original _Handbook of Texas_. He was also a charter member and fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters and a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. Webb died in an automobile accident in 1963; the Walter Prescott Webb Historical Society was later founded and named in his honor.


*U.S. Supreme Court dooms white primary
*
On this day in 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in _Smith v. Allwright_ ruled the so-called "white primary" unconstitutional. The case originated in 1940, when Houston dentist Lonnie E. Smith attempted to vote in the Democratic primary in his Harris County precinct. As an African American, he was denied a ballot under the white primary rules of the time. Smith, with the assistance of attorneys supplied by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (including the future United States Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall), filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in 1942. Smith petitioned for redress for the denial of his rights under the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Seventeenth amendments by the precinct election judge, S. E. Allwright. Following an unfavorable ruling in the district court, Smith's attorneys lodged appeals that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. That court reversed the prior decisions against Smith by a margin of eight to one. The _Smith_ decision did not end all attempts to limit black political participation but did virtually end the white primary in Texas. The number of African Americans registered to vote in Texas increased from 30,000 in 1940 to 100,000 in 1947

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 4th*


*Spanish explorer names the Nueces*

On this day in 1689, Spanish explorer and governor Alonso De León, marching from Coahuila in response to news of a French settlement in Texas, crossed a river in what is now Dimmit or Zavala County which he named Río de las Nueces ("River of Nuts") for the pecan trees growing along its banks. The Nueces River, although not explored in its entirety until the eighteenth century, was the first Texas river to be given a prominent place on European maps. It is identifiable as the Río Escondido ("Hidden River"), which first appeared on a 1527 map attributed to Diogo Ribeiro, signifying the obscure location of the river mouth behind its barrier island. It was to this river that René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle--confused by the period's inadequate maps--sailed in 1685, believing that it was the Mississippi. De León discovered the remains of La Salle's Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek eighteen days after crossing the Nueces.


*Sarah Ann Horn and other settlers captured by Indians
*
On this day in 1836, Sarah Ann Horn was captured by Comanche Indians near the Nueces River. Her family was traveling from the failed Dolores settlement, in Beales's Rio Grande colony, hoping to reach the port of Matamoros. The Comanches killed several men, including John Horn, Sarah's husband. After capture, Sarah was separated from her children. In 1837 American traders ransomed her at a trading rendezvous in New Mexico. She moved in 1838 to Missouri, where writer E. House recorded her account of her captivity, published the following year as _A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Horn, and Her Two Children_. Sarah Horn died in 1839 from injuries sustained during her captivity.


*Houston surgeon implants first artificial heart
*
On this day in 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first complete artificial heart in a human being. The device, developed at Cooley's Cullen Cardiovascular Laboratories in Houston, kept the patient, Haskell Karp, alive for sixty-four hours, until a suitable heart donor was found. Karp died thirty-two hours after receiving a new human heart, from pneumonia and renal failure, but his experience proved the viability of the artificial heart as a temporary measure. That first artificial heart is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Two Houston surgeons, Cooley and Michael E. DeBakey, pioneered heart transplant techniques. The development of the artificial heart dates to the early 1960s, when Domingo Liotta began research at DeBakey's Baylor laboratories in Houston. DeBakey and his team performed the first successful coronary artery bypass graft procedure in November 1964. Cooley and his associates at St. Luke's Hospital in Houston performed the first heart transplant in the U.S. in May 1968. In August of that year DeBakey and his team performed the first simultaneous multi-organ transplant. Despite such advances, cardiac transplantation initially had limited therapeutic success. DeBakey and Cooley reported that sixty of the first 100 heart transplant recipients died by the eighth day following surgery. Today, heart transplantation is no longer considered an experimental procedure; approximately 2,200 heart transplants were performed in 2000.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 6th*


*Mexican immigration law offends Anglo-Texans
*
On this day in 1830, the Mexican government passed a law that helped foment the Texas Revolution. The law is said to be analogous to the Stamp Act, which encouraged the American Revolution. Among its provisions, it forbade the further introduction of slaves into Mexico, and apparently was intended to suspend existing empresario contracts. Article 11, the most inflammatory part, was intended to prohibit or limit immigration from the United States. Texas colonists were greatly disturbed by news of the law. Although Stephen F. Austin secured exemption from the operation of the law for his contract and for that of Green DeWitt, the measure shook his belief in the good will of the Mexican government. Enforcement of the law resulted directly in the Anahuac Disturbances of 1832 and indirectly in the battle of Velasco, the conventions of 1832 and 1833, and the accumulation of grievances that helped lead to the revolution


*Fine arts association, Ney Museum founded
*
On this day in 1911, various friends of the late sculptor Elisabet Ney met in her Austin studio to found the Texas Fine Arts Association and the Elisabet Ney Museum. Ney, born in Westphalia in 1833, came to Texas in 1872 and was one of the first professional sculptors in the state. She built her studio, which she named Formosa, in 1892, and died in 1907. Among the friends who gathered four years later to honor her memory were Bride Neill Taylor, Julia Pease, Emma Cherry, and Emma Kyle Burleson. They designated the museum as the annual meeting place for the association and the gallery for its exhibitions; it thus functioned as one of the earliest centers for artistic development in Texas. In 1941 the city of Austin assumed ownership of the museum and in subsequent years has operated it as a component of the parks and recreation department.


*Fair for this half of the world opens in San Antonio*

On this day in 1968, HemisFair, the first officially designated international exposition in the southwestern United States, opened in San Antonio. It celebrated the cultural heritage shared by San Antonio and the nations of Latin America. It ran from April to October and attracted 6.3 million visitors. More than thirty nations participated with pavilions or exhibits. It also changed the face of the city. The outstanding structures at the fair that remained after the event included the Institute of Texan Cultures, the Convention Center and Arena, and the 622-foot Tower of the Americas.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When I'm dead 25 years, people are going to begin to recognize me."

----- famed ragtime composer Scott Joplin, who proved to be absolutely right in his prediction. Joplin was born near Linden, Texas, back in 1868 and died in New York City in 1917. He is probably most famous for "The Entertainer," but the "Maple Leaf Rag" and a few others belong in that group, too.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 8th*


*General Taylor foils Union campaign in Louisiana
*
On this day in 1864, Confederate forces under Richard Taylor defeated a much larger Union force at the battle of Mansfield, Louisiana. Union general Nathaniel Banks had gathered an army of some 17,000 Federal troops to advance up the Red River to Alexandria and Shreveport, hoping to cut off the flow of supplies from Texas and to capture large quantities of cotton. General Taylor, commanding a Confederate force of Texas and Louisiana units, attacked the long, 12,000-man Union column three miles south of Mansfield with an army of 8,800 men. Taylor's force killed or wounded 700 Union soldiers, captured 1,500, and took 20 Union cannons and 200 wagons. About 1,000 Confederates were killed or wounded. It was one of the most humiliating Union defeats of the war. The following day Taylor's army was repulsed when it attacked the Union army at Pleasant Hill. Nevertheless, stung by his defeat on the 8th and convinced that Taylor's army was much larger than it was, Banks gave the order to retire on the night of April 9.


*Call issued for statewide woman suffrage convention
*
On this day in 1893, ten Texas women, mostly members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, issued a call for a statewide woman suffrage convention. The Texas Equal Rights Association, the first such statewide organization, was chartered at the ensuing three-day convention in Dallas. Internal dissension plagued the TERA, which had been organized as a branch of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and it ceased to operate by 1896. In 1903 Annette Finnigan helped organize a successor organization, the Texas Equal Suffrage Association, which helped lead the long and ultimately successful fight for woman suffrage. Texas women were finally granted the right to vote in primary elections in 1918, and in June 1919 Texas became the ninth state (and the first in the south) to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended full suffrage to women


*Lady Bird dedicates Padre Island National Seashore*

On this day in 1968, a crowd of nearly 10,000 watched as Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, dedicated Padre Island National Seashore. It is the longest seashore in the national park system and encompasses a portion of the largest barrier beach in the United States. The history of the park was long and contentious. Efforts to establish a state park on Padre Island began in 1936, but proved unsuccessful due to a struggle between public and private interests over ownership of the land. In 1958 Texas senator Ralph Yarborough introduced a bill to establish a national park on the island, and the proposal was finally signed into law in 1962. The dedication of the park followed five years of condemnation proceedings. Today the park is a popular tourist destination, with attractions including a wide, sandy beach for swimming and fishing; a plethora of shore birds and migratory waterfowl; and a variety of legends involving pirates and hidden treasure.

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas - 1836

Don't forget back in the Texas Revolution the Runaway Scrape is in full accord - Texians fleeing from the advancement of General Santa Anna's army

_The Runaway Scrape is the period in early 1836 generally beginning with the Siege and Fall of the Alamo and ending with the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21. It was a period of terror and panic among the settlements of Texas, as Santa Anna and the Mexican armies swept eastward from San Antonio, virtually unopposed. _

_During the runaway, the colonists gathered a few personal possessions, abandoned their homes, and headed eastward under most difficult conditions. Rain and cold weather during the period slowed the settler's eastward progress along the muddy roads and trails. There was widespread hunger and sickness, and many died. News of Santa Anna's atrocities (some true, but some distorted by rumor) added to the frenzy._

More about this in a few day!!

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## Wildthings

*YESTERDAY in Texas History -- April 9th -- *Boy I missed some good stuff


*Grocery chain founder born in Tennessee
*
On this day in 1895, Howard Edward Butt was born in Memphis, Tennessee. While he was a child, his family moved to Kerrville, Texas, because of his father's tuberculosis. His mother, Florence Butt, opened a small grocery store there in 1905; Howard became manager of the store at the age of sixteen, and was the valedictorian of his class at Tivy High School in 1914. After serving in the navy during World War I, Butt returned to Kerrville and in 1921 made the then-daring decision to operate on a cash-and-carry basis, rather than the customary charge and deliver. After several failed attempts to expand, he opened a successful store in Del Rio in 1926 and bought three more stores in the Rio Grande valley in 1928. He opened stores in Corpus Christi in 1931, Austin in 1938, and San Antonio in 1942. In 1946 he changed his company's name to H-E-B. At the time of his death, in 1991, there were more than 170 H-E-B supermarkets, and by the end of the twentieth century H-E-B was the largest privately owned grocery chain in the nation


*Mexico detains American sailors
*
On this day in 1913, federal forces in Mexico temporarily detained a group of American sailors in Tampico. Tensions were high in the port city because it had been under attack by rebels seeking to overthrow the government of Victoriano Huerta, and because U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had refused to recognize Huerta as the legitimate leader of Mexico. The commander of the American naval forces at Tampico demanded a formal apology from the government, which Huerta refused to issue. When the U.S. invaded Veracruz on April 21, rebel leader Venustiano Carranza accused Huerta of having provoked the invasion and the rebels stepped up their campaign against the government. The embattled Huerta resigned in July 1914, though he continued to entertain hopes of a comeback. In June 1915 he and Pascual Orozco Jr. were arrested in New Mexico and charged with conspiring to violate U.S. neutrality laws. Huerta died in El Paso in January 1916 of cirrhosis of the liver. Mexican and Tejano resentment of _yanqui_ high-handedness continued, and doubtless contributed to support of the Plan of San Diego and the raids carried out on U.S. soil by Luis De la Rosa and Francisco (Pancho) Villa. Those living on both sides of the Rio Grande continued to feel the effects of the Mexican Revolution until 1920.


*Astros meet Yankees to inaugurate domed stadium *-- I was at that opening week in '65 and they opened the '17 at home with a4-3 record YaY!

On this day in 1965, the Houston Astros played the New York Yankees in exhibition baseball in the Astrodome, the first event in the new domed stadium. The Astrodome, the first fully air-conditioned, enclosed, multipurpose sports stadium in the world, was first approved by voters in 1958. Roy M. Hofheinz had led in developing it. Over the years it was the home stadium of the Houston Astros and the Houston Oilers, among other teams. It also hosted such varied entertainments as bullfighting, rodeos, and, in 1992, the Republican National Convention. After the Oilers moved to Tennessee to become the Titans and the Astros moved to a new stadium, the Astrodome continued in use as part of an entertainment complex, the Astrodome Convention Center.

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## Wildthings

and back to the present uhhh you know what I mean!

*Today in Texas History -- April 10th*


*Rubí report recommends reorganization
*
On this day in 1768, the Marqués de Rubí filed an official report in Mexico City on Spain's frontier presidios. He had just traveled some 7,600 miles, from the Gulf of California to Louisiana, on a 23-month inspection tour. His report recommended that Spain reorganize its frontier defenses in a cordon of fifteen presidios more or less along the current U.S.-Mexico border. The report also recommended that Spain maintain only San Antonio and Santa Fe to the north of this line; abandon East Texas completely; and undertake a war of extermination against the Lipan Apaches. More than four years passed before a royal proclamation, the New Regulations for Presidios, incorporated many of Rubí's recommendations. Under the New Regulations, Spain abandoned all missions and presidios in Texas except those at La Bahía and San Antonio, designated the latter city the new capital of Texas, removed all settlers and soldiers from East Texas, and implemented a new policy intended to establish good relations with the enemies of the Apaches.


*Pioneer Mexican Presbyterian ordained minister*

On this day in 1887, José Marí Botello was ordained a minister by the Presbytery of Tamaulipas. Botello was born in Tamaulipas between 1840 and 1850 and lived in Matamoros. He converted from Catholicism to Presbyterianism and served as an elder in the Matamoros Presbyterian congregation. In 1883 the Presbytery of Western Texas licensed him "to preach the gospel to his people," and he was instrumental in the establishment of the Mexican Presbyterian Church of San Marcos, the first Mexican-American church in Texas to be affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Botello reportedly died in Mexico at the age of ninety-seven.

*
Job Corps Center dedicated at former Air Force base
*
On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson dedicated the Gary Job Corps Training Center. Following the passage of the Federal Economic Opportunity Act on August 20, 1964, the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity began awarding contracts to establish centers for vocational training. On December 16, 1964, the Texas Educational Foundation, a private, nonprofit, Texas corporation, was awarded a contract to establish the Gary Center near San Marcos at the former site of Gary Air Force Base. Between 1965 and 1967 it became the largest such training center in the nation, having approximately 3,000 trainees in 1967. It continues to offer vocational training to young people, who receive sufficient technical knowledge and supervised practice to enable them to get paying jobs when they finish. The Gary Job Corps Center is one of more than a hundred such centers in the country.

*Related Articles*
JOB CORPS
GARY AIR FORCE BASE
JOHNSON, LYNDON BAINES

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 11th*


*Keelboat reaches "raft on the Colorado"*

On this day in 1838, the keelboat _David Crockett_, reportedly the first large craft to navigate the Colorado River, arrived at the head of "the raft on the Colorado." Early in the nineteenth century, the river's slow current caused a logjam, or "raft," which by the late 1830s blocked the river ten miles above its mouth at Matagorda. The _Crockett_, which had averaged more than sixty miles a day, stopped at the head of the raft, where its cargo of cotton was unloaded and carried by wagon to Matagorda. Removal of the log jam in the 1920s caused the development of an enormous delta that reached across Matagorda Bay to the Matagorda Peninsula. In 1936 engineers dug a channel through the delta, but Matagorda gradually became landlocked.


*Majestic Theatre opens in Dallas
*
On this day in 1921, the Majestic Theatre opened on Elm Street in downtown Dallas. The five-story structure, designed by Chicago architect John Eberson in the Renaissance Revival style, was the flagship of Karl Hoblitzelle's Interstate Amusement Company chain of vaudeville houses. Among the stars who appeared there were Mae West, Jack Benny, Harry Houdini, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway. Fort Worth resident Ginger Rogers began her career at the Majestic, and Vin Lindhe was a member of a girls' trio that played there in 1927. The Hoblitzelle Foundation gave the theater to the city of Dallas in 1976. A year later it became the first Dallas building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Various local theatrical and musical groups have subsequently called the Majestic home.


*Leading Texas woman made first secretary of HEW
*
On this day in 1953, President Eisenhower appointed Oveta Culp Hobby the first secretary of the new Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Killeen native had married former governor William P. Hobby in 1931. During her subsequent extraordinary career she took an active part in the family's communications empire, became an important figure in the Democratic party, headed the League of Women Voters, and organized the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II. In her thirty-one months as secretary of HEW, the agency greatly expanded the nation's hospital system, improved the administration of food and drug laws, increased grants for mental health, set up a nurse-training program, enlarged the rehabilitation program, and designed an insurance program to protect Americans against the rising cost of illness. When Mrs. Hobby left office in July 1955, Eisenhower told her, "None of us will forget your wise counsel, your calm confidence in the face of every kind of difficulty, your concern for people everywhere, the warm heart you brought to your job as well as your talents."

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 12th*


*Compromise leads to oldest land grant in Texas
*
On this day in 1758, Luís Antonio Menchaca and Andrés Hernández resolved a title dispute involving Menchaca's San Francisco ranch. Their compromise resulted in the oldest recorded private land grant in Texas. The grant, recorded in the General Land Office, consisted of a total of fifteen leagues and seven _labores_ in present-day Karnes and Wilson counties, of which eleven leagues and two _labores_ went to Menchaca and four leagues and five _labores_ to Hernández. More is known of Menchaca's life than of Hernández's. Menchaca was born in 1713, the son of a career soldier, and died in 1793. He was a captain in the Spanish military and also served as _justicia mayor_ of the villa of San Fernando. The census of 1779 showed him to be the richest man in the province of Texas. The dates of Hernández's birth and death are unknown, but he was for many years a soldier at San Antonio de Béxar Presidio. At the time of the grant, he made sworn statements to the effect that he had been living on the site for more than five years by virtue of a grant of four sitios and eight _caballerías_ of land which had been made to his deceased father more than twenty-two years previously. It is possible that this was the site of the first ranch in Texas. Hernández's ranch headquarters was in the same locale as Fuerte de Santa Cruz del Cíbolo.


*Mexican forces under Santa Anna capture key Brazos crossing*

On this day in 1836, Mexican forces under General Santa Anna captured Thompson's Ferry, on the Brazos River between San Felipe and Fort Bend. As Sam Houston's army retreated eastward, a rear-guard under Moseley Baker at San Felipe and Wyly Martin at Fort Bend sought to prevent the Mexicans from crossing the Brazos. At Thompson's Ferry on April 12, Mexican colonel Juan N. Almonte hailed the ferryman, who was on the east bank. Probably thinking that Almonte was a countryman who had been left behind during the retreat, the ferryman poled the ferry across to the west bank. Santa Anna and his staff, who had been hiding in nearby bushes, sprang out and captured the ferry. By this means the Mexican Centralists accomplished a bloodless crossing of the Brazos, which they completed by April 14. The Texan forces at Fort Bend and San Felipe were forced to abandon their defenses and join the rest of Houston's army in retreat. The Texans did not turn on their pursuers until April 21, when they destroyed Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto.


*First county in Panhandle organized
*
On this day in 1879, Wheeler County became the first organized county in the Texas Panhandle. The Kiowas and Comanches, who displaced the earlier Apache peoples around 1700, dominated the area until the mid-1870s. By that time buffalo hunters had already established a settlement, called Hidetown or Sweetwater, in the area. The U.S. Army established Fort Elliott near Hidetown in 1875, and the first post office in the Panhandle opened there in 1878. The legislature established Wheeler County, named for Royal T. Wheeler, in 1876. Three years later, the residents of the area petitioned for county organization, which became official on April 12. The small camp of Sweetwater became the first county seat; it was renamed Mobeetie in 1880.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas Revolution -- 1836*


April 12th, 1836 the Runaway Scrape is in full accord - Texians fleeing from the advancement of General Santa Anna's army marching eastward from San Antonio, left all their belonging behind and in some cases set their homes on fire to keep the Mexicans from getting any valuables. Santa Anna arrived at the Brazos river and needed a way to cross...


* April 12th, 1836 -- Mexican forces under Santa An**na capture key Brazos crossing*

On this day in 1836, Mexican forces under General Santa Anna captured Thompson's Ferry, on the Brazos River between San Felipe and Fort Bend. As Sam Houston's army retreated eastward, a rear-guard under Moseley Baker at San Felipe and Wyly Martin at Fort Bend sought to prevent the Mexicans from crossing the Brazos. On April 9, 1836, Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, not wishing to be delayed by Baker's men at San Felipe, led a column downriver toward Thompson's Ferry. The Mexicans arrived at the crossing on the morning of April 12 and spied a black ferryman on the east bank of the Brazos.

Mexican colonel Juan N. Almonte, who spoke good English, hailed the ferryman, who was on the east bank. Probably thinking that Almonte was a countryman who had been left behind during the retreat, the ferryman poled the ferry across to the west bank. Santa Anna and his staff, who had been hiding in nearby bushes, sprang out and captured the ferry. By this means the Mexican Centralists accomplished a bloodless crossing of the Brazos. Twelve miles downriver, Martin and the Texans guarding the Fort Bend crossing learned that the Mexicans had crossed in force at Thompson's Ferry; outflanked and outnumbered, they had no choice but to abandon Fort Bend and join the rest of Houston's army in retreat. Baker, also outflanked, was now obliged to end his dogged defense of the San Felipe crossing and join the rest of the Texans in their retreat. José Enrique de la Peña reported that after the battle of San Jacinto, 1,500 Mexican troops and four cannons were stationed at or near Thompson's Ferry under the command of Gen. Vicente Filisola. Peña asserted that if Filisola had force-marched his troops from Thompson's Ferry to San Jacinto, a mere two day's march, he might have undone the effects of the Texan victory.

and for @Kenbo

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 13th*


*Expedition reaches future site of San Antonio*

On this day in 1709, an expedition led by Franciscan fathers Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares and Isidro Félix de Espinosa reached the site of what is now the city of San Antonio and named the nearby springs San Pedro Springs. Olivares and Espinosa, escorted by Capt. Pedro de Aguirre and fourteen soldiers, had set out from San Juan Bautista on April 5, hoping to befriend the Tejas Indians on what is now the Colorado River. The expedition reached the Colorado on May 19, but discovered that the home of the Tejas was still three days' journey away. Because Aguirre's orders did not authorize them to proceed farther, and because they learned that the Tejas were not well disposed toward the Spanish, the expedition then returned to the Rio Grande.

*
Millionaire Robert Mills, erstwhile "duke of Brazoria," dies
*
On this day in 1888, Robert Mills, early Texas merchant and the largest slaveholder in antebellum Texas, died at Galveston. In Brazoria, the Kentucky native began engaging in the Mexican trade in 1830. Bars of Mexican silver were stacked like cordwood in the Mills brothers' counting room, and Mills became known as the "duke of Brazoria." In 1839 he built the first cotton compress in Texas. He became a shipping magnate in the 1850s. By 1860 the Mills brothers cultivated approximately 3,300 acres on their four Brazoria County plantations. Mills was reputed to have been worth between $3 and $5 million before the Civil War. He freed about 800 slaves in 1865. His firm lost heavily when customers were unable to pay their debts, and suffered additional postwar losses when the cotton market collapsed. He declared bankruptcy in 1873 and was dependent on relatives in his final years.

*
First Knights of Columbus council in Texas established in El Paso
*
On this day in 1902, the first council of the Knights of Columbus in Texas was founded in El Paso. The Order of the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal and service organization of Catholic men, was founded in Connecticut in 1882. By 2002, the Texas State Council comprised 643 local councils. In the early 1920s the Texas State Council of the Knights of Columbus formed a historical commission to oversee the publication of a history of Catholicism in Texas from its beginnings under the Spanish flag. Documents collected for that purpose grew into the Catholic Archives of Texas at Austin. This and other collections were used for the writing of _Our Catholic Heritage in Texas_, by Carlos E. Castañeda

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 16th*


*Power wedding: wealthy Mexican widow and Anglo rancher marry
*
On this day in 1852, the wealthy twenty-six-year-old Mexican widow Petra Vela de Vidal married Anglo rancher Mifflin Kenedy in Brownsville. Though Kenedy was raised a Quaker, he accepted his wife's Catholicism, and she became one of the few upper-class women of Mexican origin in nineteenth-century Texas. In 1850 Mifflin Kenedy had formed an immensely profitable steamboat company in partnership with Richard King, and the two gradually began buying up vast amounts of ranching land. In 1869 the Kenedy family moved from Brownsville to the Laureles Ranch in Nueces County. As did most women in nineteenth-century Texas, Petra dedicated much of her life to childbearing, childrearing, and the domestic support of the family and the ranch. In 1882 Kenedy sold the ranch to the Texas Land and Cattle Company, apparently when Petra became an invalid for reasons doctors could not understand, and they moved to Corpus Christi. In Corpus Christi Petra Kenedy helped the church and the poor. A devout Catholic, she donated three bells for the tower and other gifts for the new Catholic church. She also made generous donations to St. Mary's Church in Brownsville. Petra died at Corpus Christi on March 16, 1885, and was buried at Brownsville
Tejana superstar born in Lake Jackson


*Catastrophic explosion kills hundreds in Texas City
*
On this day in 1947, the ship SS _Grandcamp_ exploded at the docks in Texas City. The French-owned vessel, carrying ammonium nitrate produced during wartime for explosives and later recycled as fertilizer, caught fire early in the morning. While attempts were being made to extinguish the fire, the ship exploded. The entire dock area was destroyed, along with the nearby Monsanto Chemical Company, other smaller companies, grain warehouses, and numerous oil and chemical storage tanks. The concussion of the explosion, felt as far away as Port Arthur, damaged or destroyed at least 1,000 residences and buildings. The ship SS _High Flyer_, in dock for repairs and also carrying ammonium nitrate, was ignited by the first explosion; it was towed 100 feet from the docks before it exploded the next day. The ship's anchor monument records 576 persons known dead, only 398 of whom were identified. Probably the exact number of people killed will never be known.


*Tejana superstar born in Lake Jackson*

On this day in 1971, Tejana superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez was born in Lake Jackson. She won the first of eight Tejano Music Awards as female entertainer of the year in 1987. Her 1992 album _Entre a Mi Mundo_ made her the first Tejana to sell more than 300,000 albums, and her bilingual 1995 album _Dreaming of You_ hit number one on the national _Billboard_ Top 100 the week it was released. On March 31 of that year in Corpus Christi, Selena was fatally shot by the founder of her first fan club. More than 30,000 people viewed her casket at the Bayfront Plaza Convention Center in Corpus Christi. A biographical film of her life was released in 1997.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 17th*


*Historic academy building dedicated in New Braunfels
*
On this day in 1856, a stone building was dedicated at the newly established New Braunfels Academy. A twenty-year charter granted in 1858 provided that the school be governed by a board of six trustees, the mayor of New Braunfels, and the Comal county judge. The academy was supported by a city tax and tuition. New Braunfels is said to be the first city in Texas in which the citizens voted unanimously for a school tax. In 1876 the school received support from the Peabody Fund. When the charter was about to expire in 1878, a legislative act to renew it was vetoed by Governor O. M. Roberts, who thought the act establishing the academy was not in harmony with Texas constitution. The original long, one-story building of New Braunfels Academy was razed in 1913 to be replaced by a two-story school building on the same location, at East Mill and Academy streets.


*Legislature approves appropriation for Agricultural and Mechanical College*

On this day in 1871, the state legislature approved a bill providing for the organization of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Texas A&M University) and appropriating $75,000 for the construction of academic buildings and suitable accommodations. A committee selected a site near Bryan, now known as College Station, following the donation of 2,416 acres by local citizens. The college, the oldest public institution of higher education in the state, opened in October 1876 with 106 students and a faculty of six under President Thomas S. Gathright. By the year 2000, the College Station campus was the fifth-largest university in the nation, with more than 44,000 students, and the Texas A&M University System included nine schools across the state.


*Orphanage for black children founded in Gilmer
*
On this day in 1900, African-American Baptist minister W. L. Dickson founded the Dickson Colored Orphanage in Gilmer. Black and white Baptists contributed to its development, as did local Baptist churches and Gilmer businesses; Robert C. Buckner, a prominent Dallas Baptist minister, served as chairman of the orphanage's board of trustees. The Dickson Colored Orphanage was the only such institution for black children in Texas from 1900 to 1929. The state took over the home in the latter year and operated it as the State Colored Orphans' Home until 1943, when the resident orphans were moved to the Texas Blind, Deaf, and Orphan School in Austin

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## Wildthings

*Today in the Texas Revolution -- 1836*

A couple excerpts from Alexander Horton's daily journal

*Headquarters, Camp at the head of a little bayou, April 17, 1836*

Dear Fellow Texians,

We continued to march along the muddy road to Harrisburg, resting for the night at the head of a little bayou about six miles from Harrisburg. The days are now rather hot and quite uncomfortable with all of the water around. We are close to a forced march, as we believe that we are on an intercept course with the enemy.

As of this writing I have no confirmation of a report given by a civilian that Santa Anna himself has taken a small force and has rushed to Harrisburg to catch the new Texian government. The government had moved there from Washington, but had then departed for Galveston by way of Morgan’s point before Santa Anna‘s arrival. In an effort to catch the government, the Mexican army then proceeded to New Washington on Col. Morgan‘s point on Galveston Bay. The main body of the Mexican army is still on the Brazos at Thompson’s ferry. This is perhaps the opportunity we have been looking for, to confront the enemy while vulnerable with a decisive battle. The spirit of the men has risen to a higher pitch than I have witnessed on this whole campaign.

Respectfully yours, Alexander Horton, aide-de-camp


*Headquarters, Camp opposite Harrisburg, April 18, 1836*

Dear Fellow Texians,

We arrived opposite Harrisburg about noon and witnessed the smoking ruins of the city. The army established camp down river about 800 yards. Deaf Smith with Henry Karnes crossed over the river, called Buffalo bayou, and set out to spy on the enemy. They returned jubilantly with captured couriers and a report confirming the location of Santa Anna at New Washington. This is less than a day’s march from this spot. With only 500 men, Santa Anna is in a most vulnerable position. General Houston, with the council of Secretary War Rusk, is busy at work on a plan of action.

Although General Houston and Secretary Rusk put out a General Appeal to the people of Texas to rally to the cause, it is too late to wait for additional supplies and volunteers. Victory goes to the swift. The camp has been put on alert that we cross the Buffalo tomorrow and will march to our destiny.

The army has moved quickly to this point and many men are sick and infirm. Without proper transport, the crossing of the bayou will be difficult. The army can not be burdened with supply wagons during this final assault, but must arrange to carry the cannons across. A rear guard camp will be established with sufficient effective men to protect the infirm and baggage. Those men selected to move forward were instructed to travel light and prepare rations to carry. The night was passed in anticipation.

Respectfully yours, Alexander Horton, aide-de-camp

_________________________________________________________________________________________


April 18th, 1836 -- Texian forces under General Houston arrive in the Harrisburgh area where Mexican forces already have arrived three days earlier.

Harrisburgh - *Harrisburg* is a community that is now (originally documented as Harrisburgh then shortened to Harrisburg in 1892) located within the city of Houston, Texas

The community is located east of Downtown Houston, south of the Brays Bayou and Buffalo Bayou junction, and west of Brady's Island. It was founded before 1825 on the eastern stretches of the Buffalo Bayou in present-day Harris County, Texas, on land belonging to John Richardson Harris. In 1926, Harrisburg was annexed into the city of Houston. The original name of Harris County was Harrisburg (Harrisburgh) County until it was shortened after the demise of the City of Harrisburg

_On April 16, 1836 during the Texas Revolution, almost all of Harrisburgh was burned by the forces of General Antonio López de Santa Anna._

*I feel a fight brewing!.......*

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## Eric Rorabaugh

Looking through and saw woodman6415's post. Saw a name that I recognized, Stephen F. Austin. I live in Wythe County, VA and have a small area called Austinville. At our boat ramp (which I patrol ALL the time due to being a Game Warden), there is a memorial about him. The area is named after him. I'll try to get a picture and post it later.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 19th*


*White Horse surrenders*

On this day in 1875, Kiowa chief White Horse (Tsen-tainte) and a group of followers surrendered at Fort Sill, Indian Territory. White Horse had gained considerable notoriety during the early 1870s for his raids on Texas settlements, and was considered the "most dangerous man" among the Kiowas. He participated in the Warren wagon train raid in May 1871 and in the second battle of Adobe Walls in June 1874. He was also present in September 1874 at the battle of Palo Duro Canyon, which apparently convinced him that further resistance was futile. White Horse was among those singled out by Kicking Bird for incarceration at St. Augustine, Florida. He died of a stomach ailment in 1892 and was buried on the reservation near Fort Sill.


*Texas Industrial Congress founded
*
On this day in 1910, the Texas Industrial Congress was organized at San Antonio. This nonpolitical, nonpartisan, and nonsectional organization sought the development of Texas resources in agriculture, commerce, and industry. With the slogan "Equal Rights to All; Special Privileges to None," it proposed to work for legislation to develop Texas resources, to correct misimpressions about the state, and to encourage homeseekers and investors to move here. Annual conventions were proposed to discuss state welfare and outline action. As a result of the 1915 depression that followed the outbreak of World War I, the Industrial Congress sponsored a "Buy It Made in Texas" movement, which combated unemployment and encouraged manufacture. By 1917 this movement resulted in legislation allowing corporations to make contributions to commercial organizations. The influence of the Industrial Congress dwindled with the development of regional chambers of commerce.


*West Texas Historical Association organized in Abilene
*
On this day in 1924, the West Texas Historical Association was organized at the Taylor County Courthouse in Abilene. The organization was the brainchild of Royston Campbell Crane Sr., the son of former Baylor University president William Carey Crane. Crane and six Abilene residents, including R. N. Richardson, Laura J. D. Scarborough, and William C. Holden, signed the call for the organizational meeting. In 1925 the association, headquartered at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, began publication of its annual _Year Books,_ which have included scholarly articles, memoirs, documents, book reviews, and other miscellaneous pieces. The association has grown from twenty-four members in 1924 to several hundred.

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## Wildthings

*Today in the Texas Revolution -- 1836*

Today's excerpt from Alexander Horton's daily journal


*Headquarters, Camp south of Buffalo bayou, April 19, 1836*

Dear Fellow Texians,

This morning the army began crossing Buffalo bayou about a half mile below the remaining rear guard camp. An old ferryboat was repaired using the flooring from a nearby cabin that was owned by Isaac Batterson. It’s main use was to transport the cannons across, weapons and ammunition, and what men that did not swim or ride their horses across. The landing on the opposite shore was a few paces below the mouth of Sims’ bayou. The crossing took the greater part of the daylight and the army was on the move by dusk. Near the bridge over Vince’s bayou Santa Anna had camped a few days earlier and his extinct campfires were in evidence. The march continued along the very wet, muddy plain, following the tracks of the enemy, for another couple of miles. The army was allowed to rest at a small ravine in the open prairie. While it was not a camp in the conventional sense of the word, some of the men took the opportunity to set fires and cook what game and cattle could be conveniently had nearby. Others cleaned their weapons while I composed this report. Few slept.

Ahead of us is the despotic serpent of Mexico. Behind us is the balance of his merciless army. There is no turning back from this course of action. Blood will flow. Our just cause, and a passion for vengeance, will give us the strength to strike this blow for freedom. All will be gained, or lost, soon.

Respectfully your, Alexander Horton, aide-de-camp


*Little did he realize!!*

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"To the students of the agricultural and mechanical college today the President said: 'After looking at you the thought that comes to my mind is that they raise good men in Texas as well as a good many other things.'"

------ United States President William Howard Taft praises Texas A&M students during impromptu remarks while visiting the Texas State Fair in Dallas back in 1910

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## woodman6415

Who knew ? Learn something new everyday..

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The so called "Cart War" erupted in 1857 and had national and international repercussions. The underlying causes of the event, historians believe, were ethnic and racial hostilities of Texans toward Mexican Texans, exacerbated by the ethnocentrism of the Know-Nothing party and the white anger over Mexican sympathy with black slaves. By the mid-1850s, Mexicans and Tejanos had built a successful business of hauling food and merchandise from the port of Indianola to San Antonio and other towns in the interior of Texas. Using oxcarts, Mexicans moved freight more rapidly and cheaply than their Anglo competitors. Some Anglos retaliated by destroying the Mexicans' oxcarts, stealing their freight, and reportedly killing and wounding a number of Mexican carters. An attack on Mexican carters occurred in 1855 near Seguin, but sustained violence did not begin until July 1857. Local authorities made no serious effort to apprehend the criminals, and violence increased so much that some feared that a "campaign of death" against Mexicans was under way.

Public opinion in some counties between San Antonio and the coast ran heavily against the carters, who were regarded as an "intolerable nuisance." Some newspapers, however, spoke out against the violence. The Austin Southern Intelligencer and the San Antonio Herald expressed concern that the "war" would raise prices. The Intelligencer also worried that if attacks on a "weak race" were permitted, the next victims would be the German Texans, and that finally "a war between the poor and the rich" might occur. Some humanitarians also expressed concern for the Mexicans, notwithstanding "the fact of their being low in the scale of intelligence," as the Nueces Valley Weekly of Corpus Christi stated.

News of the violence in Texas soon reached the Mexican minister in Washington, Manuel Robles y Pezuela, who on October 14 protested the affair to Secretary of State Lewis Cass. Cass urged Texas governor Elisha M. Pease to end the hostilities. In a message to the state legislature of November 30, 1857, Pease declared: "It is now very evident that there is no security for the lives of citizens of Mexican origin engaged in the business of transportation, along the road from San Antonio to the Gulf." Pease asked for a special appropriation for the militia, and the legislators approved the expenditure with little opposition. Though some citizens of Karnes County, who wanted the "peon Mexican teamsters" out of business, were angry at the arrival of armed escorts for Tejano carters, the "war" subsided in December of 1857.

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, David J. Weber, "Cart War,"

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 20th*

*
German nobles unite for Texas colonization
*
On this day in 1842, the Adelsverein (the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas) was provisionally organized by twenty-one German noblemen at Biebrich on the Rhine, near Mainz. The society was formed to establish a new Germany on Texas soil by means of an organized mass emigration. In May 1842 the association sent two of its members, counts Joseph of Boos-Waldeck and Victor August of Leiningen, to Texas to purchase land. In January 1843 Boos-Waldeck bought a square league (4,428 acres) in what is now Fayette County, near Industry, as the base for future colonization. The first immigrants disembarked in Texas in December 1844, near Carlshafen (later Indianola). The society brought more than 7,000 Germans to Texas. It also established Texas as a major goal of subsequent emigration from Germany.


*Texas baritone makes professional debut in New York*

On this day in 1924, Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe made his professional singing debut at Aeolian Hall in New York City. The African-American baritone was born in Waco in 1897. He attended Central Texas Academy in Waco and Bishop College in Marshall. His best-known achievement was his portrayal of Joe in Florenz Ziegfeld's 1927 production of Jerome Kern's _Showboat._ His interpretation of "Ol' Man River" made the song an American classic. A highlight of his career was his performance in the title role for the European premiere, in Amsterdam, of Louis Gruenberg's opera _The Emperor Jones_ (1934). Bledsoe also wrote an opera, _Bondage_ (1939), based on _Uncle Tom's Cabin._ He died in 1943, in Hollywood, of a cerebral hemorrhage.
*

Last Confederate general dies
*
On this day in 1928, Felix Huston Robertson died in Waco. Robertson, the only Texas-born general officer to serve the Confederacy, was born in 1839 at Washington-on-the-Brazos. His father, Jerome Bonaparte Robertson, also fought in the Civil War, and was for a time commander of Hood's Texas Brigade. Felix Robertson was appointed brigadier general in 1864. He was a harsh disciplinarian whose savage punishments and Indian-like features earned him the sobriquet "Comanche Robertson." The most controversial incident of his military tenure occurred in Saltville, Virginia. There, on October 3, 1864, troops under Robertson's command killed well over 100 wounded, mostly black survivors of a Union attack. Though Robertson was never charged with any crime, one of his subordinate officers was hanged for murder. After the war Robertson returned to Texas, where he became an enthusiastic member of the United Confederate Veterans and served as the commander of the Texas Division in 1911. At the time of his death he was the last surviving general of the Confederacy

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## Wildthings

*Today in the Texas Revolution -- 1836*


*On this day April 20th, in 1836 things are coming to a head pretty fast -- here are some of the highlights for today
*

Texan and Mexican patrols clash at New Washington (now known as Morgan’s Point which is the home of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” Emily West (Morgan))
Houston moves his army to Buffalo Bayou
J.C. Neill is wounded and replaced by G.W. Hockley who was later the Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas

On April 20, Neill commanded the Twin Sisters (two matched six-pounders brass cannons which were a gift from the people of Cincinnati, Ohio) during the Battle of San Jacinto. During this fight, his artillery corps repulsed an enemy probe of the woods in which the main Texian Army was concealed. Neill was seriously wounded when a fragment of Mexican grapeshot caught him in the hip.
A cavalry attack led by Sidney Sherman engages the Mexican army
At dawn on April 20 the Texans resumed their trek down the bayou and at Lynch's Ferry captured a boat laden with supplies for Santa Anna. They then drew back about a mile on the Harrisburg road and encamped in a skirt of timber protected by a rising ground. That afternoon Sidney Sherman with a small detachment of cavalry engaged the enemy infantry, almost bringing on a general action. In the clash Olwyns J. Trask was mortally wounded, one other Texan was wounded, and several horses were killed. Mirabeau B. Lamar, a private, so distinguished himself that on the next day he was placed in command of the cavalry.


Colonel Sherman later was a member of the House of Representatives from Harris County. The I-610 East Loop Bridge over the Houston Ship Channel is named for him. He is buried in Galveston’s Lake View Cemetery

Santa Anna made camp under the high ground overlooking a marsh about three-fourths of a mile from the Texas camp and threw up breastworks of trunks, baggage, packsaddles, and other equipment. Both sides prepared for the conflict.
and for @Kenbo


 

"The Twin Sisters"
________________________________________________________________________________________

Today's excerpt from Alexander Horton's daily journal


*Headquarters, Camp at San Jacinto, April 20, 1836*

Dear Fellow Texians,

Scarcely were the fires set last night when the call to march was received. We marched into the rising sun and reached Lynch’s ferry to learn that the enemy had not crossed. We withdrew to a high wooded ridge about a half-mile back and set up camp. Our scouts encountered a contingency of lancers and banished them in gallant style. It was learned that Generalissimo Santa Anna has put New Washington to the torch and is headed in our direction.

Contact has been made with the villainous enemy that struck down our brothers at the Alamo and at Goliad. The main body of our army was concealed in the timber along Buffalo bayou so as to deny Santa Anna the knowledge of our true strength. Col. James Neill commanded our two cannons and from a forward position exchanged fire with the lone Mexican cannon of superior caliber. Col. Neill was wounded and the Mexican piece was damaged and one of her artillerymen wounded. Col. Sherman advanced with the cavalry in an attempt to capture the disabled Mexican cannon, but was driven back by Mexican Dragoons. Private Mirabeau Lamar made a valiant defense, which spared the life of our beloved Secretary of War, Thomas Rusk. General Houston honored Lamar by elevating him to commander of the cavalry. Since both Houston and Santa Anna declined to present their full armies to the engagement, the skirmish ended and the Mexican army withdrew to establish its camp.

The demand for vengeance and the small victorious moments today has elevated the spirits of the men. It will be hard to keep them calm tonight as surely a decisive battle will be waged tomorrow.

Respectfully your, Alexander Horton, aide-de-camp

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## woodman6415

I love today's Texas Quote of the Day as it shows the spirit and "can do" mentality that Texans are famous for. Yesterday I posted a photo of Kansas City Royals shortstop Freddie Patek sitting alone in the dugout after hitting into a double play that ended the 1977 American League Championship series. If you will recall, Freddie hails from Sequin, Texas. Anyway, Freddie was the shortest player of his era at 5'5" tall. When asked how it felt to be the shortest Major League baseball player, Freddie responded "I'd rather be the shortest player in the major leagues than the the tallest player in the minor leagues."

Sums it up perfectly, I think.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
Texas President Mirabeau Lamar’s private papers include the assertion that, at the Battle of San Jacinto, Sam Houston was shot in the leg by a member of Captain William S. Fisher’s company in order to prevent Houston from stopping the battle. Few historians give this rumor much credit, but the most famous painting of the wounded Houston after the battle ------ William Henry Huddle’s 1890 canvas “The Surrender of Santa Anna”—shows the general lying on a blanket with a bandaged right leg. Since Houston was riding across the battlefield from left side to right, the painting suggests that he took a bullet on the side of his body that would have been facing his own troops.

In reality, letters written by Houston himself and his own son more accurately report that he was shot in the left ankle—which would have been facing the Mexican camp as he rode across the battlefield at San Jacinto. But such was the acrimony/jealousy between Lamar and Houston that Lamar did, indeed, make that claim.

Here's the painting in question, by the way. It hangs in the capitol building in Austin.

http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/uplo...of Santa Anna/the-surrender-of-santa-anna.jpg

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## woodman6415

April 21, 1836. 181 years ago today. 

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> April 21, 1836. 181 years ago today.
> 
> Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!



YESSIR!!

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 21st *-- also my oldest granddaughter's 19th birthday
*

Texas forces win at San Jacinto*

On this day in 1836, Texas forces won the battle of San Jacinto, the concluding military event of the Texas Revolution. Facing General Santa Anna's Mexican army of some 1,200 men encamped in what is now southeastern Harris County, General Sam Houston disposed his forces in battle order about 3:30 p.m., during siesta time. The Texans' movements were screened by trees and the rising ground, and evidently Santa Anna had no lookouts posted. The Texan line sprang forward on the run with the cries "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Goliad!" The battle lasted but eighteen minutes. According to Houston's official report, the casualties were 630 Mexicans killed and 730 taken prisoner. Against this, only nine of the 910 Texans were killed or mortally wounded and thirty were wounded less seriously.


*Legendary lawman joins the Texas Rangers
*
On this day in 1906, Frank Hamer enlisted in the Texas Rangers. Hamer, born in Fairview in 1884, was recommended for a position with the Rangers after capturing a horse thief while working as a cowboy in 1905. In 1908 he resigned from the force to become marshal of Navasota and then a special officer in Harris County. He rejoined the Rangers in 1915 and patrolled the South Texas border from the Big Bend to Brownsville. He was criticized for his use of force, and legislator José T. Canales accused Hamer of threatening him in 1918. In 1934 Hamer became a special investigator for the Texas prison system and was assigned to track down outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. After a three-month search, he and his men shot and killed them near Gibsland, Louisiana. Congress awarded Hamer a special citation for stopping the pair. Hamer retired in 1949 and lived in Austin until his death in 1955.


*First internees arrive at Kenedy Alien Detention Camp
*
On this day in 1942, the first group of internees--456 Germans, 156 Japanese, and 14 Italians--arrived at the Kenedy Alien Detention Camp on the outskirts of Kenedy, Texas. The United States Border Patrol had entered into an agreement to lease a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The lease was made for the purpose of establishing an internment camp for aliens from the United States and Latin America who were considered dangerous to the public safety. At the outset of World War II, when conditions were bleak for the Allies, the U.S. undertook to protect its national interests by entering into agreement with Latin-American countries to arrest and intern all resident aliens or citizens of German, Japanese, or Italian descent who could possibly aid the Axis war effort. From the time the Kenedy Camp received its first internees until it was converted into a prisoner of war camp on October 1, 1944, more than 3,500 aliens passed through its gates.

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## Wildthings

*Today in the Texas Revolution -- 1836*


On this day April 21st in 1836

The Battle of San Jacinto was the concluding military event of the Texas Revolution. On March 13, 1836, the revolutionary army at Gonzales began to retreat eastward. It crossed the Colorado River on March 17 and camped near present Columbus on March 20, recruiting and reinforcements having increased its size to 1,200 men. Sam Houston's scouts reported Mexican troops west of the Colorado to number 1,325. On March 25 the Texans learned of James W. Fannin's defeat at Goliad, and many of the men left the army to join their families on the Runaway Scrape. Sam Houston led his troops to San Felipe de Austin by March 28 and by March 30 to the Jared E. Groce plantation on the Brazos River, where they camped and drilled for a fortnight. Ad interim President David G. Burnet ordered Houston to stop his retreat; Secretary of War Thomas J. Rusk urged him to take a more decisive course. Antonio López de Santa Anna decided to take possession of the Texas coast and seaports.

With that object in view he crossed the Brazos River at present Richmond on April 11 and on April 15, with some 700 men, arrived at Harrisburg. He burned Harrisburg and started in pursuit of the Texas government at New Washington or Morgan's Point, where he arrived on April 19 to find that the government had fled to Galveston. The Mexican general then set out for Anahuac by way of Lynchburg. Meanwhile, the Texans, on April 11, received the Twin Sisters and with the cannon as extra fortification crossed the Brazos River on the Yellow Stone and on April 16 reached Spring Creek in present Harris County. On April 17, to the gratification of his men, Houston took the road to Harrisburg instead of the road to Louisiana and on April 18 reached White Oak Bayou at a site within the present city limits of Houston. There he learned that Santa Anna had gone down the west side of the bayou and the San Jacinto River, crossing by a bridge over Vince's Bayou. The Mexicans would have to cross the same bridge to return.

Viewing this strategic situation on the morning of April 19, Houston told his troops that it looked as if they would soon get action and admonished them to remember the massacres at San Antonio and at Goliad. On the evening of April 19 his forces crossed Buffalo Bayou to the west side 2½ miles below Harrisburg. Some 248 men, mostly sick and ineffective, were left with the baggage at the camp opposite Harrisburg. The march was continued until midnight. At dawn on April 20 the Texans resumed their trek down the bayou and at Lynch's Ferry captured a boat laden with supplies for Santa Anna. They then drew back about a mile on the Harrisburg road and encamped in a skirt of timber protected by a rising ground. That afternoon Sidney Sherman with a small detachment of cavalry engaged the enemy infantry, almost bringing on a general action. In the clash Olwyns J. Trask was mortally wounded, one other Texan was wounded, and several horses were killed. Mirabeau B. Lamar, a private, so distinguished himself that on the next day he was placed in command of the cavalry.

Santa Anna made camp under the high ground overlooking a marsh about three-fourths of a mile from the Texas camp and threw up breastworks of trunks, baggage, packsaddles, and other equipment. Both sides prepared for the conflict. On Thursday morning, April 21, the Texans were eager to attack. About nine o'clock they learned that Martín Perfecto de Cos had crossed Vince's bridge with about 540 troops and had swelled the enemy forces to about 1,200. Houston ordered Erastus (Deaf) Smith to destroy the bridge and prevent further enemy reinforcements. The move would prevent the retreat of either the Texans or the Mexicans towards Harrisburg.

Shortly before noon, Houston held a council of war with Edward Burleson, Sidney Sherman, Henry W. Millard, Alexander Somervell, Joseph L. Bennett, and Lysander Wells. Two of the officers suggested attacking the enemy in his position; the others favored waiting Santa Anna's attack. Houston withheld his own views at the council but later, after having formed his plan of battle had it approved by Rusk. Houston disposed his forces in battle order about 3:30 in the afternoon while all was quiet on the Mexican side during the afternoon siesta. The Texans' movements were screened by trees and the rising ground, and evidently Santa Anna had no lookouts posted. The battle line was formed with Edward Burleson's regiment in the center, Sherman's on the left wing, the artillery under George W. Hockley on Burleson's right, the infantry under Henry Millard on the right of the artillery, and the cavalry under Lamar on the extreme right. The Twin Sisters were wheeled into position, and the whole line, led by Sherman's men, sprang forward on the run with the cry, "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember Goliad!" The battle lasted but eighteen minutes. According to Houston's official report, the casualties were 650 Mexicans killed and 730 taken prisoner. Against this, only nine of the 910 Texans were killed or mortally wounded and thirty were wounded less seriously. Houston's ankle was shattered by a musket ball

The Texans captured a large supply of muskets, pistols, sabers, mules, horses, provisions, clothing, tents, and $12,000 in silver. Santa Anna disappeared during the battle and search parties were sent out on the morning of the 22nd. The party consisted of James A. Sylvester, Washington H. Secrest, Sion R. Bostick, and a Mr. Cole discovered Santa Anna hiding in the grass. He was dirty and wet and was dressed as a common soldier. The search party did not recognize him until he was addressed as "el presidente" by other Mexican prisoners.

He was brought before Houston, who had been shot in the ankle and badly wounded. Texian soldiers gathered around, calling for the Mexican general's immediate execution. Bargaining for his life, Santa Anna suggested that he order the remaining Mexican troops to stay away. In a letter to Filisola, who was now the senior Mexican official in Texas, Santa Anna wrote that "yesterday evening [we] had an unfortunate encounter" and ordered his troops to retreat to Béxar and await further instructions.

Urrea urged Filisola to continue the campaign. He was confident that he could successfully challenge the Texian troops. According to Hardin, "Santa Anna had presented Mexico with one military disaster; Filisola did not wish to risk another." Spring rains ruined the ammunition and rendered the roads almost impassable, with troops sinking to their knees in mud. Mexican troops were soon out of food, and began to fall ill from dysentery and other diseases. Their supply lines had completely broken down, leaving no hope of further reinforcements. Filisola later wrote that "Had the enemy met us under these cruel circumstances, on the only road that was left, no alternative remained but to die or surrender at discretion".

For several weeks after San Jacinto, Santa Anna continued to negotiate with Houston, Rusk, and then Burnet. Santa Anna suggested two treaties, a public version of promises made between the two countries, and a private version that included Santa Anna's personal agreements. The Treaties of Velasco required that all Mexican troops withdraw south of the Rio Grande and that all private property be respected and restored. Prisoners-of-war would be released unharmed, and Santa Anna would be given passage to Veracruz immediately. He secretly promised to persuade the Mexican Congress to acknowledge the Republic of Texas and to recognize the Rio Grande as the border between the two countries.

When Urrea began marching south in mid-May, many families from San Patricio who had supported the Mexican army went with him. When Texian troops arrived in early June, they found only 20 families remaining. The area around San Patricio and Refugio suffered a "noticeable depopulation" in the Republic of Texas years. Although the treaty had specified that Urrea and Filisola would return any slaves their armies had sheltered, Urrea refused to comply. Many former slaves followed the army to Mexico, where they could be free. By late May the Mexican troops had crossed the Nueces. Filisola fully expected that the defeat was temporary and that a second campaign would be launched to retake Texas.


*Sion Record Bostick’s personal account of Santa Anna’s capture*

Captain Moseley Baker told me on the morning of the 22nd to scout around on the prairie and see if I could find any escaping Mexicans. I went and fell in with two other scouts, one of whom was named Joel Robinson, and the other Henry Sylvester. We had horses that we had captured from the Mexicans. When we were about eight miles from the battle field, about one o'clock, we saw the head and shoulders of a man above the tall sedge grass, walking through the prairie. As soon as we saw him we started towards him in a gallop. When he discovered us, he squatted in the grass; but we soon came to the place. As we rode up we aimed at him and told him to surrender. He held up his hands and spoke in Spanish, but I could not understand him. He was dressed a common soldier with dingy looking white uniform. Under the uniform he had on a fine shirt. As we went back to camp the prisoner rode behind Robinson awhile and then rode behind Sylvester. I was the youngest and smallest of the party, and I would not agree to let him ride behind me. I wanted to shoot him. We did not know who he was. He was tolerably dark skinned, weighed about one hundred and forty-five pounds, and wore side whiskers. When we got to camp, the Mexican soldiers, then prisoners, saluted him and said 'el presidente.' We knew then that we had made a big haul. All three of us who had captured him were angry at ourselves for not killing him out on the prairie to be consumed by the wolves and buzzards. We took him to General Houston, who was wounded and lying under a big oak tree.


*".........waving his hat and shouting "San Jacinto! San Jacinto! The Mexicans are whipped and Santa Anna a prisoner." The scene that followed beggars description. People embraced, laughed and wept and prayed, all in one breath. As the moon rose over the vast flower-decked prairie, the soft southern wind carried peace to tired hearts and grateful slumber. As battles go, San Jacinto was but a skirmish; but with what mighty consequences! The lives and the liberty of a few hundred pioneers at stake and an empire won! Look to it, you Texans of today, with happy homes, mid fields of smiling plenty, that the blood of the Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto sealed forever . Texas, one and indivisible!--Ms. Kate Scurry Terrell describing the scene among refugee families on the Sabine River.*


*And for @Kenbo*


































On a side note: I grew up about 10 miles from the battleground sight and my best friend's mother would take him and me to San Jacinto and drop us off. We were probably 12 years old - don't see that happening nowadays! We explored all the area and one time found some bones that we turned over to the officials. We reenacted that fight many a times!
GOD BLESS TEXAS! REMEMBER THE ALAMO! REMEMBER GOLIAD!

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## woodman6415

Being as today is the 181st anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, it's time for the annual retelling of my favorite story from those times back in 1836. I especially love a story that has a lesson and this one has a good one, one that I learned a long time ago. Namely, "don't mess with Texas women!"

The story comes from the narrative of Robert Hancock Hunter. Hunter fought in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 alongside Sam Houston and all of the rest of the Texians. The following event took place on April 16th, 1836, five days before the battle.

It seems that Houston's army had borrowed a team of oxen from Mrs. Pamela Mann. The oxen were needed to move Houston's artillery. In order to get them from her, Houston had promised her that he was moving his army towards Nacogdoches, where her oxen would be safe.

The army came to a fork in the road. North lead to Nacogdoches, and safety, south lead to Harrisburg ... and a fight. Houston said "to the right (Harrisburg), boys."

This did not please Mrs. Mann. I will now let Hunter's narrative take over, in his own singular spelling and grammar:

"She rode up [to] the general & said, general you tole me a dam lie, you said [you] was going on the Nacogdoches road. Sir, I want my oxen."

"Well, Mrs. Mann [General Houston replied], we cant spare them. We cant git our cannon a long without them."

"I dont care a dam for your cannon [Mrs. Mann responded], I want my oxen."

With that, she whipped out her Bowie knife, cut the oxen from their traces, and lead them away.

The rugged frontiersmen watched this performance in stunned awe.

"No body said a word," Hunter went on. "She jumpt on her horse with whip in hand and away she went in a lope with her oxen."

Conrad Rohrer, the army's wagon master, protested to Houston that he could not move the artillery without the oxen and said he was going after Mrs. Mann to retrieve them. Houston advised him not to do it, saying that this particular Texian woman would not let them go without a fight. "Dam her fighting" Rohrer answered and away he went.

Rohrer sheepishly returned to camp a few hours later, his shirt in tatters. "Where are the oxen?" the men asked. "She would not let me have them," Rohrer meekly replied.

"What happened to your shirt?" they asked.

"She needed it for baby rags."

Gentlemen, let this be a lesson for all of you. Having read this story, don't come crying to me if you ever find yourself in the wrong end of such a situation!

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## woodman6415

Mirabeau B. Lamar was one of the heroes of San Jacinto. During a skirmish the day before the battle, Lamar courageously rescued two surrounded Texans, an act that drew a salute of respect from the Mexican lines. One of those rescued was Thomas Jefferson Rusk, later appointed as Texas Secretary of War. Lamar was promoted that night from private to Colonel and given command of the cavalry during the battle the following day.

Houston noted in his battle report: "Our cavalry, sixty-one in number, commanded by Mirabeau B. Lamar, (whose gallant and daring conduct on the previous day, had attracted the admiration of his comrades and called him to that station,) placed on our right, completed our line..." Lamar was subsequently appointed as the Secretary of War in the interim Texian government. In 1845, he was elected as vice-president of the Republic of Texas under Houston. He was the individual most responsible for the creation of public education in Texas but his life and career are not without controversy, particularly his advocacy of violent tactics against Native Americans. . 

On April 10, eleven days before the Battle of San Jacinto, Lamar wrote his brother back in the states and said, ”Dear Brother, I leave this in the morning for the army; a dreadful Battle is to be fought in three or four days on the Brazos, decisive of the fate of Texas; I shall of course have to be in it.”

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## woodman6415

Ed Burleson, another hero of the Battle of San Jacinto. He was a soldier, general, and statesman in the Republic of Texas and later the U.S. state of Texas. He is the namesake for Burleson county and Burleson, Texas. As far as I can tell this is the only photograph of him.

Known as the "Old Indian Fighter", Burleson was a veteran of the War of 1812 and had served in the Missouri and Texas militias. In October 1835 he was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the Texas army and served under Stephen F. Austin in the opening stages of the Texas Revolution. During the Siege of Béxar, Burleson served as the second-in-command to Gen. Austin, and in November, 1835 he was elected Major General of Texas Volunteers and took command of the Volunteer army besieging San Antonio de Béxar and received the surrender of Mexican general Martín Perfecto de Cos. In March, he was appointed a Colonel of Texas Regulars and led the First Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Runaway Scrape and at the Battle of San Jacinto. He continued to serve in the army after the war and was eventually promoted Brigadier General of Texas Regulars.

Subsequently, Burleson --- though he despised Sam Houston ----- served as vice president of the Republic of Texas during Houston's second term, from 1841 to 1844. He was a Presidential candidate in the Texas Presidential Election of 1844 but was defeated by Anson Jones. Burleson also took up arms in the Mexican-American War after Texas was annexed by the United States in 1846.

After Burleson passed away in 1851, he was buried on land that later became the Texas State Cemetery.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

A little more than 76 years ago, on April 3, 1941, Jeff Hamilton passed away in Belton at the age of 100. He had been a former slave of Sam Houston. Hamilton, son of Abner Hamilton, was born a slave on the Singleton Gibson plantation in Kentucky on April 16, 1840. The Gibsons moved to Fort Bend County, Texas, in 1843. There Mr. Gibson was killed, and his widow married a man named James McKell, a heavy drinker and gambler, known to mistreat slaves. Sometime after the marriage McKell settled in Trinity County. Hamilton was taken from his mother in October 1853 to sell at auction in Huntsville so McKell could pay a whiskey bill. Senator Sam Houston was in town that day, noticed the crying child, and purchased him.

Houston took Hamilton to his home, where he was a playmate of the Houston children, a personal bodyguard and valet of Sam Houston, and had a close relationship with the family. Hamilton was a driver for Houston during his two campaigns for governor. He learned not only reading, writing, and arithmetic but also had lessons on religion and responsibility with the Houston family. When Houston was elected governor of Texas in 1859, he appointed Hamilton as his office boy. Hamilton met many important historical figures during this period in his life and attended many important events. He was with Houston when the governor refused to take the oath to join the Confederacy. 

When Houston freed his slaves in October 1862, Hamilton remained with the family. He was Houston's personal body servant and was with him at the time of his death. Afterward, Hamilton moved with the Houston family to Independence, Texas, and remained with them until Mrs. Houston died. In Independence Hamilton helped the Houstons and worked as a janitor at Baylor College from 1889 to 1903. When the female college (now Mary Hardin-Baylor University) moved to Belton, Hamilton moved there too.

Throughout his life Hamilton remained an honorary member of the Houston family and attended all their reunions and special family events. He located his mother following the Civil War. She recognized him by a burn scar on his left leg. She also showed him an old Bible her mistress in Kentucky had given her; from annotations in it he learned his date of birth and father's name. 

Hamilton married Sarah Maxey, and they had eleven children. During his later life he was honored throughout the United States for his association with leading historical figures of his lifetime. He spoke at many historical events, especially during the Texas Centennial, and was widely interviewed about his life as a slave and his life with the Houston family. Hamilton revered the Houston family until his death, on April 3, 1941, in Belton. He was buried in the East Belton Cemetery. Two Texas historical markers honor him, one at his gravesite and one on the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor campus in Belton.

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, Jean C. Davis, "Hamilton, Jeff"

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 25th*


*U.S. recognizes Republic of Texas claims to disputed territory
*
On this day in 1838, the United States and the Republic of Texas signed the Convention of Limits, which recognized Texas claims to disputed territory in Red River County (the present Bowie, Red River, Franklin, Titus, Morris, and Cass counties). The agreement also set the west bank of the Sabine River as the eastern boundary of Texas. However, tension continued between the two countries regarding Indian depredations along the republic's northern border. U.S. chargé d'affaires Alcée La Branche protested Texas army crossings of the border in pursuit of Indians. In the twentieth century the exact location of the Texas-Louisiana border became the subject of a dispute between the two states.


*One-time port of Saluria was prominent in the Civil War*

On this day in 1861, 500 Federal troops stranded at the port of Saluria in Calhoun County were forced to surrender to Confederate colonel Earl Van Dorn. Saluria, at the eastern end of Matagorda Island, was founded in the 1840s and was a thriving port and ranching center in the 1850s. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Federal troops flocked to the coast, hoping to find transport to the North. Van Dorn intercepted 500 of them at Saluria. After being paroled, they were allowed to sail for New York. During the federal blockade of 1862, when invasion seemed imminent, Saluria inhabitants fled to the mainland. Confederate troops stationed at nearby Fort Esperanza later burned the town, dismantled the lighthouse, and drove most of the cattle off the island. Confederate artillerymen defended the fort until November 29, 1863, when they retreated to the mainland. In June 1864 Federal troops left Fort Esperanza. Afterward, citizens began moving back to the island. What finally destroyed Saluria was hurricanes, in 1875 and 1886. By 1904 a rural school with one teacher and seven students was the only vestige of the community. The more famous nearby port of Indianola was similarly destroyed.


*Black Seminole scouts rescue commander from Comanches
*
On this day in 1875, three Black Seminole scouts earned the Medal of Honor for gallantry in action. Pompey Factor, Isaac Payne, and John Ward, along with their commander, Lt. John Lapham Bullis of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry, were pursuing a band of twenty-five or thirty Comanche Indians near Langtry. The scouts dismounted, crept up on the Indians, and opened fire. They killed three and wounded another before withdrawing to their horses because they were in danger of being surrounded. Bullis was unable to mount because his horse had broken away. The three scouts turned back into the face of hostile Indian fire, mounted Bullis behind them, and alternately carried him to safety

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 26th*


*War Department orders surveys for Indian reservations
*
On this day in 1854, the U.S. War Department ordered Randolph B. Marcy, in conjunction with Indian agent Robert S. Neighbors, to locate and survey land for Indian reservations in unsettled territory, preferably on timbered land of good soil adjacent to navigable water. The sites selected after consultation with the various Indian groups concerned were four leagues of land on the Brazos River below Fort Belknap for the use of the Caddos, Wacos, and other Indians, and another tract of the same size forty miles away on the Clear Fork of the Brazos for the use of the Comanches. A third tract of four leagues adjoined the one on the Brazos and was intended for the use of the Indians living west of the Pecos River, chiefly the Mescalero and Lipan Apaches. These western Indians, however, failed to come in to the reservation, and this tract was added to the Brazos agency, making that reservation total eight leagues. Both reservations reverted to the state when the Indians were removed to the Indian Territory in 1859.


*First letter from "Pidge" appears in Austin paper
*
On this day in 1874, the first of a series of twenty-three letters and poems signed "Pidge" was published in an Austin newspaper. They were actually the work of Thomas C. Robinson, and appeared in the Austin _Statesman_ and _State Gazette_. Robinson, born in 1847, had come to Austin in 1874 after feuding with a neighbor in his native Virginia. After enlisting in the Texas Rangers, he served under Leander H. McNelly during the Sutton-Taylor feud and battled Juan N. Cortina's raiders. Pidge's literary efforts describe Austin in the 1870s and provide a rare illustration of ranger service written from the field. They reveal literary knowledge, intelligence, and wit. Robinson returned to Virginia on leave to settle a feud with his former neighbor. In the resulting gunfight he was mortally wounded and died on April 4, 1876, just four days after the last Pidge letter was published in Austin.


*Texan earns Medal of Honor for heroism*

On this day in 1968, PFC Milton Lee earned the Medal of Honor for heroism in action in Vietnam. After attending Harlandale High School in San Antonio, Lee enlisted in the army. He arrived in Vietnam in January 1968. On April 26 of that year, near Phu Bai, South Vietnam, he was serving as radio and telephone operator when his platoon came under intense fire. Lee rendered lifesaving first aid while under heavy enemy fire. During a subsequent assault on the enemy position he saw four enemy soldiers, armed with automatic weapons and a rocket launcher, lying in wait for the platoon. He passed his radio to another soldier, charged through heavy fire, overran the enemy position, and killed all the occupants. He continued his assault on a second enemy position. Though mortally wounded, he delivered accurate covering fire until the platoon destroyed the enemy position. Only then did he die of his wounds. The Medal of Honor was presented to his grandmother and guardian, Mrs. Frank B. Campion, by President Richard M. Nixon at the White House on April 7, 1970.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"How many men in the hurry, scurry, and irresponsible management in the field were taken out, maimed, mashed, struck dead, will never be known. To get the oil out of the earth and get it converted to money was the sole thought of acreage owners; and those engaged in other forms of business were moved by like motives. They halted at no obstacles. Employers paid good wages for that they had done, and slam, bang, clang, they wanted to have results. Hence firemen with eyes so badly gassed they could hardly see the steam gauges worked around boilers; hence well crews worked with old rattletrap outfits that were liable any minute to fly to pieces and knock them to kingdom come; hence men worked in the top of derricks, hanging on with one hand, straining with the other to the limit of the muscles to adjust something that had gone wrong. After forty years of sobering absence, it still seems to me that there was more high-pressure work going on in Sour Lake than in any other place I have ever seen."

----- Charles Jeffries recalls life and death in the Sour Lake oilfields in 1903, as reported in "Documents of Texas History," by Ernest Wallace, David M. Vigness, and George B. Ward

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 27th*

* 
Rolling Stone rolls no more
*
On this day in 1895, the final issue of the weekly newspaper _Rolling Stone_ was published in Austin. The _Rolling Stone_ was the first publication of William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, who purchased the press of William Cowper Brann's _Iconoclast_. The first issue of the _Rolling Stone_ appeared on April 28, 1894. In the paper, Porter lampooned local politicians, social customs, business practices, the performing arts, and other local and state targets. Some of his own short stories were first published in the _Rolling Stone_. He may have kept the paper alive with money embezzled from the First National Bank, where he worked as a teller. After being accused of the crime, he resigned and, without an income, was unable to continue publishing.


*Disastrous tornado presages community's demise
*
On this day in 1907, a tornado hit Hemming, Texas, killing seven people and wiping out all but one of the town's buildings. Hemming, in southern Cooke County, was established in 1889 and named for the donor of its school land. A store and cotton gin were built there in 1894, and that year a post office opened in the store. At its height just after 1900, Hemming had two general stores, a school, a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, three churches, and a population of 125. The town served as the region's cotton-processing center. During the peak years of the cotton boom after 1900 the Hemming cotton gin handled 1,000 to 1,500 bales annually. But the 1907 tornado devastated the community. Though several of its buildings were rebuilt, by the early 1920s Hemming was in decline. By the late 1980s the town was no longer shown on county highway maps.
*

Texas history library opens in Austin*

On this day in 1950, the Barker Texas History Center opened on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. The Barker Center, today known as the Eugene C. Barker Texas History Collection, was named for UT history professor Eugene C. Barker. It originally occupied the Old Library Building (now called Battle Hall), which was designed by Cass Gilbert and built in 1910. In 1971 the center moved to Sid Richardson Hall, located on the eastern edge of the campus adjacent to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. In 1991 the Barker Center became a division of the university's newly organized Center for American History (Now the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History). Until 1994 the Center for American History remained a unit of the UT Austin General Libraries; in August 1994 it became an independent operating unit. The Barker Collection houses more than 130,000 books and periodicals; some 3,500 individual collections of personal papers and official records; an extensive newspaper collection; approximately 750,000 photographs; 30,000 recordings; and more than 30,000 printed and manuscript maps.

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## woodman6415

And on a far greater note : the Texas legislature voted at 3am this very morning to ban sanctuary cites in Texas ... this forces law enforcement to enforce all the laws ... great job to Govener Abbot and the rest of the lawmakers ... let's keep Texas Great

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## woodman6415

Zip lines are not a new thing at all. This circa 1910 photo was taken at what is now Deep Eddy Pool in Austin but which at that time was "Deep Eddy Bathing Beach." Deep Eddy began as a natural swimming hole in the Colorado River (seen here) and was expanded into a man-made swimming pool in 1915 by A.J. Eilers, Sr.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day concerns Houston's infamous "goo goo eyes ordinance" of 1905:

"That hereafter any male person in the City of Houston who shall stare at, or make what is commonly called 'goo-goo eyes' at, or in any other manner look at or make remarks to or concerning, or cough or whistle at, or do any other act to attract the attention of any woman or female person upon or traveling along any of the sidewalks, streets, or public ways in the City of Houston, with the intent or in a manner calculated to annoy, or to attempt to flirt with any such woman or female person, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor..."

A violation would bring a fine of not more than $100. What cost $100 in 1905 would cost $2164 in 2006.

The 'goo-goo eyes' law was on the books up through the 1950s.

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## ripjack13

Maybe that's why Kevin added the "eye candy" icon..

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## Tony

Dam good thing I didn't live there. No way I'd ever keep any money.....

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

“But that’s the thing about East Texas. Red dirt never quite washes out, and pine pollen is tenacious as original sin. You can leave East Texas, for Houston, for the Metroplex, for the Commonwealth, for New York, or Bonn or Tokyo or Kowloon; but you can never quite leave it behind.”

― Markham Shaw Pyle, historian, critic ---- and East Texan

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- May 2nd*


*Henry Robert, engineer and parliamentarian, born in South Carolina
*
On this day in 1837, Henry Martyn Robert was born in Robertville, South Carolina. As an engineer, he was involved in most of the major river and harbor improvement and fortification projects undertaken by the U.S. government in the later nineteenth century. After the Galveston hurricane of 1900 he served as consulting chairman of the board of engineers to design means of protection against future tidal waves. The result was a seawall that successfully saved the city of Galveston in two subsequent hurricanes, in 1909 and 1915. Robert also became this country's leading parliamentarian. _Robert's Rules of Order_, first published in February 1876, remains in print in 2001 as an authoritative reference work on parliamentary procedure.


*Governor Coke appoints commander of Frontier Battalion
*
On this day in 1874, Governor Richard Coke appointed John B. Jones to command the newly raised Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers. Jones, a veteran of the Civil War, was well suited to execute the governor's mandate to put an end to Indian raids on the frontier and to enforce the laws of Texas in the interior. The new battalion was successful in suppressing Indian incursions against white settlements. Jones reported to Gen. William Steele that during the first six months of the battalion's service more than forty Indian raiding parties had been reported on the frontier, of which the rangers engaged fourteen. During the second six months Jones's men had only four Indian fights, and after May 1875 only six raids and one small battle were reported. During this period Jones reported an estimated thirty-seven Indians killed; the battalion lost two killed and six wounded. In the seven years of its service under his command the battalion was also responsible for the quelling of considerable civil unrest as well as the return of much stolen property recovered from the Indians.


*Boerne Village Band honored by German president*

On this day in 1992, Richard von Weizsaeker, the president of Germany who was in Houston on a state visit, commended the German musical tradition exemplified by the Boerne Village Band. German immigrants to Texas had a profound influence on the development of music in the state. Acclaimed as "the Oldest Continuously Organized German Band in the World outside Germany Itself," the Boerne Village Band was organized in 1860 by Karl Dienger to complement the Boerne Gesang Verein (singing club). The band practiced in barns during the difficult Civil War period. After the war it continued to practice and play at various events in and around Boerne. During World War I and World War II the band was less active but remained organized, and it has flourished since 1945. Dr. Kenneth Herbst became director of the band in 1972 and attended the luncheon at which the German leader made his remarks. For the band's 130th anniversary in 1990, Peter Fihn, a noted German composer, dedicated and presented his march, "Grüsse an Texas" ("Greetings to Texas"), to the band. In the 1990s the band continued to perform regularly at the Texas Folklife Festival, the New Braunfels Wurstfest, the Kendall County Fair, the Boerne Berges Fest, Boerne Abendkonzerte (summer evening concerts), and many other events.

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## woodman6415

This is famed bronc buster Samuel T. "Booger Red" Previtt. Samuel was born near Georgetown in Williamson County in 1864. He broke more than 40,000 horses over the course of his life and offered 100 dollars to anybody who had a horse that he could not ride. He never paid. Not once. The story of how he got the nickname "Booger Red" and how it didn't stop him from inventing the modern rodeo can be read here. Prepare to be amazed! 

http://www.ppie100.org/boogerred/

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- May 5th*


*Victory over French marks origin of Cinco de Mayo celebration*

On this day in 1862, Mexican general and Texas native Ignacio Zaragoza defeated French expeditionary forces at Puebla, Mexico. This event is celebrated annually as El Cinco de Mayo. Once widely observed throughout Mexico, today it is an official public holiday only in the Mexican state of Puebla, where it is known as El Día de la Batalla de Puebla, or Battle of Puebla Day. However, Cinco de Mayo remains popular in the United States as a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage.


*UT observatory dedicated in Davis Mountains
*
On this day in 1939, the telescope of the University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory was dedicated. The observatory, located on Mount Locke near Fort Davis, owes its foundation to the unexpected legacy of William Johnson McDonald, bachelor banker of Paris, Texas, who died in 1926 and left the university $850,000 for the establishment of an astronomical observatory. The university, having no astronomy faculty, signed a thirty-year collaborative agreement with the University of Chicago in 1932, whereby Texas financed the telescope and Chicago provided the astronomers. World War II severely restricted astronomical research in many parts of the world, but McDonald gained the services of several refugee European astronomers. At the end of the war McDonald astronomers received many awards from American and European astronomical societies. Construction of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope on Mount Fowlkes, adjacent to Mount Locke, began in 1994, and it became operational in 1999

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Prepare to be amazed!
> http://www.ppie100.org/boogerred/




That's a great read (long). I've never heard of him til this. Thanks

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> That's a great read (long). I've never heard of him til this. Thanks


I had never heard of him ... and looks like he lived in my home town ..


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## Tony

Finally had time to sit and read that, that is a tale for the ages! Tony

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is an 1883 description of the Texas Ranger:

"It may be said of the old-time ranger that he was not so hand- 
some as he might be, but was as courageous as a Numidian lion, 
and tougher than a Mexican burro. His language, perhaps, 
could not pass in the London drawing room, but he could suc- 
cessfully ride a bronco and kill a Mexican horse thief at five 
hundred yards. His manners may not have been exactly Ches- 
terfieldian, but this deficiency was more than offset by the 
aestheticism displayed when he scalped an Indian. He probably 
was not acquainted with the tariff question, but he could follow 
a blind trail at a gallop and never miss the way. It is possible 
that he could never tell the difference between the hypothesis of 
atomic evolution and a lunar eclipse ; but he knew a "rustler" 
by sight, and could name half the fugitives in Texas. 

But underneath his rough exterior the ranger possessed a 
heart as simple and guileless as a little child's, and a sympathy 
that was instantly touched by human misery or woe. Perhaps 
he did not respect the Sabbath with the same zeal as by some of 
the better citizens, as he cleaned his gun, washed his shirts, and 
repaired his saddle on that day. But he would share his only 
dollar with a man in want, and throw his last biscuit to a hungry 
dog. His salary was meagre and he did not profess to love his 
country as dearly as a candidate for the Legislature, but he 
would tackle a bunch of rustlers, nevertheless, single-handed. 
As a rule, he never saw the inside of a college, but all the same 
he was the advance courier of civilization, and was instrumental 
in making life and property safe in Texas."

----- Alexander Sweet, "Texas Siftings," 1883

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

100 years ago this month, Texas A&M canceled its graduation ceremony because the entire 1917 class went to serve in WW I.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> 100 years ago this month, Texas A&M canceled its graduation ceremony because the entire 1917 class went to serve in WW I.



WOW

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> WOW


At the same time the students at Berkeley were rioting about not getting their way ....

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- May 10th*


*Two Texas women's organizations founded in Dallas
*
On this day in 1893, a group of writers attending the Texas Press Association meeting in Dallas formed the Texas Woman's Press Association, which later became Texas Press Women. The group was led by Aurelia H. Mohl of Houston. Its purpose was to encourage Texas woman writers and illustrators through organized activities and communication with similar groups. Thirty-eight women, representing eighteen Texas towns, became charter members. Membership was originally restricted to whites. At the time, there were few other statewide women's groups in Texas. The Texas Equal Rights Association, the first statewide female suffrage organization, was founded on the same day and in the same hotel, the Windsor. The TERA was committed to securing voting and political rights for women on the same terms as men, including the right to hold political office and serve on juries.


*Woman mayor celebrated in national magazine*

In its issue for this day in 1937, _Life_ magazine wrote up Mary Lucy Kyle Hartson as the only woman mayor in Texas. The 72-year-old great-grandmother was elected mayor of Kyle by a write-in vote that year. From 1937 until 1941 and from 1944 until 1946 she held office. Along with the "all-woman" city council elected in 1944, she made "Ripley's Believe It or Not." During Mrs. Hartson's mayoralty, the town built a municipal water system, installed street lights, updated the fire department, and kept the city clean. Of her administration she said, "We balanced the budget, and cleaned up the town. Then when everything was under control, I retired."
*

Dallas designates Federal Reserve Bank a historic landmark
*
On this day in 1979, the city of Dallas declared the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas a historic landmark. Among the civic leaders who helped secure a Federal Reserve branch for Dallas in 1914 were G. B. Dealey, Walter F. McCaleb, Nathan Adams, and Hatton W. Sumners. The Dallas Fed, designed by the Chicago firm of Graham, Anderson, Probost, and White in the Neoclassical style of the Beaux Arts School, opened in 1921. It serves the Eleventh Federal Reserve District, which covers approximately 350,000 square miles and includes Texas, northern Louisiana, and southern New Mexico. Like the other reserve banks, the Dallas Fed is primarily a "banker's bank." It serves as a bank for financial institutions in basically the same way commercial banks and thrift institutions serve the public. Financial institutions send their excess currency and coin to the Fed, where the money is verified, sorted, and stored until it is needed to fill new orders.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds Caleb Pirtle describing a man he met in the Texas Hill Country:

"He walked out of the valley, as lean as a mesquite post and just about as gnarled, his eyes harsh and stubborn like the land around him. He paused to kick at a clump of prickly pear cactus that held on selfishly to a patch of dirt that had washed down among the rocks. He looked out as the bluebonnets, the Indian Paintbrush, the clover, the purple, orange and red haze that ran up and down the gentle hillsides without going anywhere at all, the beauty amid the bristles.

In the rugged valley from whence he came, he saw the face of Texas the way the mythical Texas is supposed to be:big and empty, delicate yet defiant, tough as boot leather and just about as polished.

"This land ain't worth a plugged nickel," he explained, a definite German accent rolling off his tongue. "I've seen cows walk for ten miles just tryin' to find an acre of grass to chew on. 'Bout all you can raise on it is rocks and a little Cain now and then." He paused and sighed. "It's poor, useless, good for nothin', and too dadgummed hard to even leave a footprint. But ain't it pretty?"

And so it was. The old man grinned again, bent low into the wind, and slowly shuffled away. I looked close. There were no footprints behind him to even prove he had ever come to or from the valley that separated Kerrville from Medina."

-------- Caleb Pirtle III, "The Genuine Old-Fashioned, Down-Home, Home Grown Official Texas Cookbook," 1990

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## Eric Rorabaugh

Said I would get and post these...just got down there and remembered to take them today.

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## Tony

That is awesome, thanks for posting this Eric! Tony


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## Eric Rorabaugh

I never really read it until today. I always thought he moved here, not the other way around. Pretty neat to know!

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## woodman6415

On May 25, 1843, Sam Houston, Jr. was the first of eight children born to General Sam Houston and Margaret Lea. Sickly when he was born at Washington-on-the Brazos, Texas, he improved so that his father described him as, “a hearty brat, robust and hearty as a Brookshire pig." After attending preparatory school at Baylor University, he enrolled at the Bastrop Military Academy.. Sam Jr. inherited his mother’s artistic ability and was frequently drawing and sketching.

Although his father opposed secession, Sam Houston Jr., enlisted as a private in The Bayland Guards, Company C, of the 2nd Texas Infantry, commanded by his father’s friend Ashbel Smith. Before they left Texas his father visited the unit to deliver a bible from his mother to Sam Jr. inscribed, “Sam Houston, Jr., from his Mother, March 6, 1862.”

The regiment was still dressed in blue uniforms when they reached Corinth to join Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston’s army, but on the eve of battle, mlthey received new uniforms of undyed white Jean Cloth. Some of the men said they were going to battle in their funeral shrouds. The 2nd Texas would join Gen. John K. Jackson’s Brigade and would see heavy action on the Confederate right all day. On falling back with the regiment to rest for the night, Private Houston discovered that the new bible he had been carrying had been hit by a musket ball which had stopped at the 70th Psalm and possibly saved him from a fatal wound. 

In the fighting on April 7, Houston was not so lucky and was hit by a ball in the right groin and left for dead on the field. A Union surgeon who examined the wound, assumed the femoral artery was hit and left him to die. A chaplain, who had known his father in the Senate, located the bible and found the note from Private Houston’s mother. He called the surgeon back who on closer examination determined that the artery was not severed. The surgeon continued treating Houston who eventually recovered and was sent to the Confederate Prisoner of War Camp Douglas, near Chicago.

Private Houston’s comrades reported him as left dead on the battlefield and for a while his family was unsure of his fate. Eventually he was exchanged and returned to Texas where he became a Lieutenant in a Texas Artillery Battery. He passed away at the age of 51 in Independence, Texas and is buried there close to his mother.

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## woodman6415

Camp Verde is about 20 miles from my house ... sets about halfway between Bandera and Kerrville..
Has a large general store full of nick knacks and souvenirs.. and has a great restaurant... good food and reasonable price... 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The last wild camel in Texas was spotted near Douglas, Texas in 1941. Douglas no longer exists, but at that time it was a town about 13 miles east of Tyler. The camel was presumably a descendant of one of the stranger ideas in American history, the U.S. Camel Corps that was established in 1856 at Camp Verde, Texas. After the Civil War, most of the camels were sold (some to Ringling Brothers’ circus) and others escaped into the wild. Somehow they managed to procreate in Texas for roughly 75 years.

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## Tony



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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> View attachment 127808


Amen

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is my annual retelling of the story of me and Paul and the pig.

Growing up in Texas is different from growing up in other states. For one thing, your stories tend to revolve around old train bridges, prickly pear cacti, beer that reaches thermonuclear meltdown temperatures and explodes in the trunk of your car, and pigs.

This is a story about me and Paul and a pig named Wilbur.

About 10 years ago my friend Paul, who is the caretaker of a 600 acre ranch in Manchaca, Texas a few miles south of Austin, called me up a few days before New Years Eve and said, "hey, on New Year's Eve we're going to roast a pig here on the ranch. Do you want to come?" Well, you don't have to ask me twice to come to a pig roast so naturally I said yes. Paul said he was going to roast the pig "vaquero style," over hot coals in a pit that he had dug in the earth. I don't know if that truly is "vaquero style" or not but I'm not one to get into a semantics argument when roast pig is in the offing.

A couple of days before the roast Paul called me up and said "hey, I'm going to go and get the pig. Do you want to help me?" I said "sure," so Paul attached a horse trailer to his pickup truck, drove into Austin from his ranch near Manchaca, picked me up, and we headed north to a farm out near Taylor, a small town a few miles northeast of Austin.

We got to the farm and met the seller of the pig and it turned out it was a 16-year old blonde-headed girl named Jessica. She had ribbons in her hair and was very nice in the way that Texas farm girls always are. The pig, a 220 .lb Duroc, had been her FFA/Ag project, and she had named it "Wilbur," just like in "Charlotte's Web." Jessica had grown pretty attached to Wilbur and I thought he was a fine-looking pig ---- a deep, almost mahogany red ----- but apparently Willbur hadn't shown real well in the County Jr. Fair and Livestock show, so it was time for him to go so she could get another one and try again the next year. Jessica knew why we wanted Wilbur and there was an emotional scene as we loaded him into the trailer and she was trying to be strong but there were tears in her eyes as we drove away. I, myself, was a little choked up, too.

We left Taylor, drove to I-35, and headed south down the interstate through downtown Austin toward Manchaca. We took the Manchaca exit, and turned right onto an FM road. Paul said that he needed gas so we stopped at a convenience store. Paul got out and to pump the gas. All of the sudden he said, "Oh, crap. The pig is gone!" I said, "what?" Paul replied "I kid you not! THE PIG IS NOT IN THE TRAILER! REPEAT! THE PIG IS NOT IN THE %*$&$#&# TRAILER!"

I was inclined to think that he was pulling my leg but there was something in the tone of his voice in that second "THE PIG IS NOT IN THE %*$&$#&# TRAILER!" that was somehow convincing. I got out, looked in the trailer, and sure enough, our 300 .lb pig was gone!

I kept closing my eyes, rubbing them, then re-opening them, as if somehow this missing 350 .lb Duroc would magically reappear in this little horse trailer, but to no avail: that trailer was empty and it was staying empty!

I have to interrupt for a moment to describe the trailer. It was a trailer that was designed for a single horse, the horse facing forward, of course. At the back there were two doors with iron bars that ran vertically from the top of the trailer to the bottom. These doors had a big window cut into them, I guess so if it's a little larger horse then his rump can extend out through that window.

My first thought was that somehow we "lost" the pig before we ever left Jessica's, that we hadn't closed the doors properly etc... but the doors were closed and secured and, besides, I helped put that pig in the trailer and KNEW that there was a pig in it when we left Jessica's house.

Paul and I started groping toward the only possible explanation: the pig had somehow managed to either jump or crawl through the hole in the bars at the back of the trailer. "Maybe the pig jumped, sensing his imminent demise," Paul said. Really, that's how he talks. Immediately, visions of a 400 .lb Duroc pig running wild on I-35 with tires screeching and 18-wheelers swerving and cars crashing filled my head.

We stood there for about two minutes, not knowing what we should do. If we retraced our route, we might come across either the pig or the pig's carcass on I-35, surrounded by crashed vehicles and injured people. Of course we would have to claim it and we thought for a moment that we should just go on home and hide. Finally Paul said, "Maybe Wilbur jumped when we exited I-35, got onto the access road, and slowed to make that right turn at that stop sign a few miles back." So we agreed to just drive back to I-35 to see if we could find Wilbur. If he wasn't somewhere on the way, Paul said, then "It's in God's hands."

We drove slowly back to the highway but did not see our pig. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach as I began imagining the carnage that a frightened 425 .lb Duroc could cause on a major interstate highway. But right there where the FM road and the I-35 access road meet there was a pickup truck pulled over in the grass. The driver motioned for us to roll down our window.

"Did y'all lose a pig?" he asked, in the thickest Texas drawl I think I've ever heard. We didn’t see any visible damage to his truck but maybe it was on the side away from us, where we couldn’t see.

Finally Paul said, in a halting voice, “Well, I think we might have." As if we would have had some doubt about whether or not we had lost a pig. Mind you, one of the things you learn early here in Texas is if your pig is lost. It is an “either/or” proposition, kind of like being pregnant. You have either lost your pig or you have not.

Before we could say anything else, the man said "I've got him tied up to my back bumper."

Sure enough, we walked around to the back of his truck and there was Wilbur, roped and tied up. And I remember thinking that only in Texas does a random passerby have a rope with him and also have the technical proficiency with the rope to lasso a frightened pig. What I mean is that I grew up in a rural area of Texas and was a member of FFA and on a very good dairy cattle judging team and even with that background I don't believe I could lasso a pig, no sir.

We couldn't believe our luck.

Paul was pretty upset with the pig and didn't want to take any chances so he took a large rubber mallet from his toolbox and brained Wilbur between the eyes, dropping him. Unfortunately, in his haste, Paul hadn't pondered all the repercussions of having a lifeless 475 lb. Duroc pig on the side of the road, like a sack of flour. It took quite an effort to get the pig into the trailer but finally we managed. We wanted to give the man some money as a reward for arresting our fugitive pig but of course, him being a Texan and all, he would not take it.

We got Wilbur back to Paul's place. Paul already had a pit prepared with hot coals. I won't go into the rest of the details, but suffice to say that we had a magnificent feast a couple of days later. Vaquero style.

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## Tony

A lot of truth here.....

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## ripjack13

ok...what is this "Big Red" soda? does it taste like big red gum? dr pepper? ???


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## Tony

ripjack13 said:


> ok...what is this "Big Red" soda? does it taste like big red gum? dr pepper? ???



It doesn't taste like Dr. Pepper at all, more like the gum. Very sweet, my old boss called liquid bubble gum. Tony

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## ripjack13

like the old bazooka gum?


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## Tony

Kinda like that, ya. It's good, but not for all the time. When I was a kid it was the only soda I drank, but very rarely now. Of course, I drink soda rarely now though. Come on down, I'll buy you a cold one! Tony

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day:

"I feel like a new man, and I guess I am one."

---- Former governor Sul Ross, five minutes before he passed away, dead of a biscuit accidentally made from flour mixed with arsenic. What happened was this: when (former) Governor Ross died unexpectedly in 1898, bewildered doctors said he died of pneumonia, which was a "catchall" term they used for a whole slew of things they didn't understand. But 30 years later, the facts finally came to light when a nephew stepped forward with the truth: one of four flour barrels taken on a hunting trip had been sprinkled with a lethal substance in order to eliminate a rat colony. A tragic mistake was made the next morning, when the toxic flour was accidentally used in the preparation of a batch of breakfast biscuits.

Sul Ross took sick immediately after eating a bad biscuit. He lingered for three days in a coma, came out of it briefly to utter his last words, then died five minutes later. Now you know the rest of the story ----- and I feel like Paul Harvey

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## ripjack13

Good day....


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"A man can make his living to his liking and be more independent than the Autocrat of Russia or the Emperor of Austria. I would not exchange my 15 acre lot, with the house on it, and the garden around it, near the city of Houston for all the thrones and hereditary dominions of both those noted persons." 

----- Lewis A. Levy urges fellow Jews to emigrate from Europe to Texas in the "New York Asmonean," 1850. Sounds like a man who knew a good thing when he found it!

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## woodman6415

Ride bike there last of April ...had a cold water .. hamburger and listened to a great husband wife duo sing some songs .. try to go at least once every year ... 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Luckenbach, Texas, was founded in 1849 at the site of a former Comanche trading post and named after its first postmaster, Albert Luckenbach. I was out there a few weeks and I thought how surprised Albert would have been were you to tell him that, 137 years later his name ---- HIS name, not some other Luckenbach's name ----- would become world famous, sung on the lips of millions of people. I saw a country-western band in Wuerzburg, Germany in 1991 and the band played that song and the entire crowd sang the chorus in English, even those who spoke no English otherwise. Yup. Old Albert Luckenbach. A simple German immigrant who is the namesake of a world-famous Texas "town." Life is funny that way and I guess. sometimes, death is, too.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Ride bike there last of April ...had a cold water .. hamburger and listened to a great husband wife duo sing some songs .. try to go at least once every year ...
> 
> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Luckenbach, Texas, was founded in 1849 at the site of a former Comanche trading post and named after its first postmaster, Albert Luckenbach. I was out there a few weeks and I thought how surprised Albert would have been were you to tell him that, 137 years later his name ---- HIS name, not some other Luckenbach's name ----- would become world famous, sung on the lips of millions of people. I saw a country-western band in Wuerzburg, Germany in 1991 and the band played that song and the entire crowd sang the chorus in English, even those who spoke no English otherwise. Yup. Old Albert Luckenbach. A simple German immigrant who is the namesake of a world-famous Texas "town." Life is funny that way and I guess. sometimes, death is, too.



I've drunk many a cold beer and heard a lot of great bands there. Beautiful place. Tony


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## Wildthings

Yes at least once a year!




And also to Alamo Springs Café for a burger that'll kill you!!


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## Tony

I've been wanting to go there, looks awesome!


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## Wildthings

This Week in Texas History - May 1836

*Treaties of Velasco* 

Two treaties were signed by ad interim president David G. Burnet and Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna at Velasco on May 14, 1836, after defeat of the Mexican forces at the battle of San Jacinto. The public treaty was to be published immediately, and the secret agreement was to be carried into execution when the public treaty had been fulfilled. The public treaty, with ten articles, provided that hostilities would cease, that Santa Anna would not again take up arms against Texas, that the Mexican forces would withdraw beyond the Rio Grande, that restoration would be made of property confiscated by Mexicans, that prisoners would be exchanged on an equal basis, that Santa Anna would be sent to Mexico as soon as possible, and that the Texas army would not approach closer than five leagues to the retreating Mexicans.

In the secret agreement, in six articles, the Texas government promised the immediate liberation of Santa Anna on condition that he use his influence to secure from Mexico acknowledgment of Texas independence; Santa Anna promised not to take up arms against Texas, to give orders for withdrawal from Texas of Mexican troops, to have the Mexican cabinet receive a Texas mission favorably, and to work for a treaty of commerce and limits specifying that the Texas boundary not lie south of the Rio Grande. Gen. Vicente Filisola, in pursuance of the public treaty, began withdrawing the Mexican troops on May 26; the Texas army, however, refused to let Santa Anna be sent to Mexico and prevented the Texas government's carrying out the secret treaty. On May 20 the government in Mexico City declared void all of Santa Anna's acts done as a captive. With the treaties violated by both governments and not legally recognized by either, Texas independence was not recognized by Mexico and her boundary not determined until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"My rattlesnake, my only pet, is dead. He grew sick and would not eat his frogs and died."

----- Lieutenant Col. Robert E. Lee (yes, THAT Robert E. Lee), writing in a letter home to his wife, Mary, in Virginia from Camp Cooper, Texas. Camp Cooper was on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River seven miles north of the site of present Fort Griffin State Historic Site in south central Throckmorton County.

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## woodman6415

Three of y'all have now sent me something regarding this little trace of Texas in the past month, and previously I had never heard of it. Did you know that, in Canada, what we call "cattle guards" they call "Texas Gates?" I did not. Traces of Texas reader Debra Whitney sent in this nifty photo of just such a crossing. I like the selective color, which really highlights the "Texas Gate" sign. Here is a little more about this: http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/texas_gate.html

Thank you, Debra. I love arcane facts like this!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds early pioneer Noah Smithwick recounting an encounter with a skunk in the dark woods of east Texas back in the early 1830s. I just LOVE the way this is written!

"As I lay there day after day, burning with fever, tormented with gnats and mosquitoes, and loathing the coarse and unpalatable food which was all those good Samaritans had to offer, I would have given the whole territory of Texas had it been mine, to feel myself once more at home in a comfortable bed, with mother's loving face beside me. So thoroughly homesick was I that I was determined to resume my journey as soon as I got able, even if I had to walk. I thought if I could only get down to the mouth of the Brazos, where vessels came in, I could get back to New Orleans, where I had friends who would help me home. As soon as I felt able to undertake the jaunt I thanked my kind entertainers — I had nothing else to give — and started out to walk by easy stages. I skirted the river timber for several miles till I struck a trail leading through the bottom to Fort Bend (Richmond), where White & Knight had a trading post and ferry. My weakness prevented me from making good time and night overtook me while I was still some miles short of my destination. It was not an enviable situation. Weak, unarmed, not even a pocket knife — I had parted with everything except the clothes I had on — alone in a dense forest inhabited by Mexican lions, panthers, leopards and numerous smaller members of the feline race, all more or less inimical to man.

There was no moon, and the tall timber made a darkness so intense that I had to feel rather than see my way along the narrow trail. I confess I felt rather uncomfortable, and every time a twig snapped I looked and listened for some nocturnal beast of prey. Now and then there was a rustle of leaves as some small animal scurried away in the darkness. With every sense alert and strained, I at length descried a moving object in the trail a short distance ahead of me. Concentrating all my powers of vision upon it, I made out that it was traveling leisurely in the same direction as myself, apparently unconscious of my presence. I walked on, unintentionally gaining on it, when, to my horror, it suddenly stopped and seemed to swell to double its former size.

I could see that it was mottled light and dark, and at once jumped to the conclusion that it was a leopard. Knowing that it was a characteristic of all the cat family to turn their hair the wrong way when displeased, I felt my hair raise, for I thought he was about to spring upon me. Presently he started on and, it being out of the question to turn back, and not caring to remain in the woods, I had no alternative but to follow. Not daring to lose sight of him, lest he lie in wait for me, I kept along at a respectful distance behind. His pace was exasperatingly slow, and again and again when I got a little too near to suit him he stopped, and every time he seemed to take on greater dimensions. This process of doubling had by this time brought him up to the size of an ordinary dog, and feeling that it would be extremely hazardous to permit any further increase in his proportions, I desperately resolved to bring matters to a crisis. I stooped, still keeping my eye on the enemy, and felt around for a good sized club. Trying it on the ground to test its soundness, I took it in my left hand and felt for another, resolved to make the best fight possible.

Thus armed, I started on. Again the animal halted and I felt that the time for decisive action had arrived. I raised my chunk and with a strength born of desperation, hurled it at him and grabbed the missile from my left hand to be ready in case he should resent my familiarity. But there was no need. My shot struck him square and landed him some distance ahead, and then well, then he didn't look any bigger than a polecat. With the release from excitement came the reaction; my overtaxed strength gave way and I wouldn't swear that I didn't cry. Anyway, I had to sit down and rest before I could proceed.
Waiting till the smoke or rather scent of battle cleared a little, I went on and soon saw the welcome gleam of light that betokened a human habitation, and never was the sight more welcome. Hungry and worn out, I reached the cabin, where Captain White received me and ministered to my needs. In return I recounted my adventure, the denouement of which elicited roars of laughter, in which I could then afford to join.

The next morning I crossed the river and went my way. Before I was out of the timber I met a panther face to face. We both stopped, one as much surprised as the other. I yelled at him, but he didn't budge. I suppose he wanted to see what manner of beast or bird I was, probably never having seen a white man before. He made no hostile demonstration, so I yelled again, when, apparently satisfied with his observations, he turned and went his way. He was a big fellow, but he didn't look half so formidable as the polecat. I have faced death many times since, when bullets and arrows flew thick around me, but I never afterwards felt the sickening horror that seized me every time that wretched little skunk stopped and threw up his brush."

------ Noah Smithwick, "The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days," 1900


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## Mike Hill

Tony said:


> I've drunk many a cold beer and heard a lot of great bands there. Beautiful place. Tony


Did any of you see Waylon, Willie, and the boys?

And don't forget Gruene! or St Hedwigs - better dancing - well at least 40 years ago back when I used to kick up my heels. At Gruene, could look up and see the moon through the roof or rather what was supposed to be a roof. Entered the Lukenbach chili contest years and years ago. Was a place a few miles out of College Station/Bryan called Riverview that was our Thursday night go-to for 2-stepp'n, cotton-eye-joeing, and purdy girls. Their band's next to last song (the one right after "last call for ....." was always Lukenbach. Their vocalist did a great job with it.

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## woodman6415

Mike Hill said:


> Did any of you see Waylon, Willie, and the boys?
> 
> And don't forget Gruene! or St Hedwigs - better dancing - well at least 40 years ago. At Gruene, could look up and see the moon through the roof.


Been to all of them ... last time I saw Mighty Merle in concert was Gruene Hall ... was a great show ... here in Bandera it's the 11st cowboy bar ... biggest little bar in Texas ... this weekend has about 20 artists playing because of Rodeo ... one of my favorites... Moe Bandy .. but will miss him .., going to grandsons graduation ...


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## Mike Hill

woodman6415 said:


> Been to all of them ... last time I saw Mighty Merle in concert was Gruene Hall ... was a great show ... here in Bandera it's the 11st cowboy bar ... biggest little bar in Texas ... this weekend has about 20 artists playing because of Rodeo ... one of my favorites... Moe Bandy .. but will miss him .., going to grandsons graduation ...


Moe Bandy - man that goes a way back - saw him in concert a couple of times at A&M and when he used to play some of the honky tonks around San Antone. I believe his band was Moe and the Mavericks or something like that. Saw he and his brother in rodeoes a couple of times. Also saw Merle in concert on campus. That was a hard ticket to get! Had to bribe an upperclassman. Olivia Newton John wasn't much easier to get - twice - she looked at me the entire concert and was singing to me. She didn't get enough of me so she came back the next year and did the same thing! I know she was - and don't nobody ruin my dream!

Know Bandera well. My grandmothers family helped found it and still some sizable family ranches (20,000 acres) down 173 toward Hondo. One cousin had what had to be a mile of land along the Medina up 16 north of Bandera - it was a private campgrounds on the river, with some bunkhouses up above the flood plain. Shrunk the cahunas many a time in the Medina. Also almost got washed away in the flash flood of '74. We were camping on the river and luckily I woke up in time to see the river starting to come up over the riverbank. We got out quick, but still got a few inches of water in the car - the water was rising that fast. Found part of the camper a couple of miles downriver 20' up in a tree. Was camping on the river when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Our cousin brought a TV with some kinda of amped up antennae and we all watched the walk. Pretty cool.

Don't remember 11th street. Used to be a place on Main near the water tower I think, we'd go into occassionally. Great Uncle was president of the Bank for a while. Great Grandma lived in a little house on Hackberry, and Great Great Grandma lived in a house on Oak - I believed. And there was a feed store or hardware store we'd go into. Dude Ranch Capital of the World! Gateway to the West!

Danged, I'm going to be in Seguin next weekend for Nephew's high school graduation - all this is making me want to take a side trip to Bandera! Not sure if my daughter has been in Bandera. Might have to take a side trip out of the airport to show her some of the ole stomping grounds.

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## woodman6415

Mike Hill said:


> Moe Bandy - man that goes a way back - saw him in concert a couple of times at A&M and when he used to play some of the honky tonks around San Antone. I believe his band was Moe and the Mavericks or something like that. Saw he and his brother in rodeoes a couple of times. Also saw Merle in concert on campus. That was a hard ticket to get! Had to bribe an upperclassman. Olivia Newton John wasn't much easier to get - twice - she looked at me the entire concert and was singing to me. She didn't get enough of me so she came back the next year and did the same thing! I know she was - and don't nobody ruin my dream!
> 
> Know Bandera well. My grandmothers family helped found it and still some sizable family ranches (20,000 acres) down 173 toward Hondo. One cousin had what had to be a mile of land along the Medina up 16 north of Bandera - it was a private campgrounds on the river, with some bunkhouses up above the flood plain. Shrunk the cahunas many a time in the Medina. Also almost got washed away in the flash flood of '74. We were camping on the river and luckily I woke up in time to see the river starting to come up over the riverbank. We got out quick, but still got a few inches of water in the car - the water was rising that fast. Found part of the camper a couple of miles downriver 20' up in a tree. Was camping on the river when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Our cousin brought a TV with some kinda of amped up antennae and we all watched the walk. Pretty cool.
> 
> Don't remember 11th street. Used to be a place on Main near the water tower I think, we'd go into occassionally. Great Uncle was president of the Bank for a while. Great Grandma lived in a little house on Hackberry, and Great Great Grandma lived in a house on Oak - I believed. And there was a feed store or hardware store we'd go into. Dude Ranch Capital of the World! Gateway to the West!
> 
> Danged, I'm going to be in Seguin next weekend for Nephew's high school graduation - all this is making me want to take a side trip to Bandera! Not sure if my daughter has been in Bandera. Might have to take a side trip out of the airport to show her some of the ole stomping grounds.



Some of us have tickets to see Gary P Nunn at Mi Casa Tamales .. June 3rd in Boerne ... I live in Pipe Creek .. on hwy 16 ... 1/2 way between Bandera and Boerne ... It's what I like about Texas time .... we go see him every chance we can ...


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Some of us have tickets to see Gary P Nunn at Mi Casa Tamales .. June 3rd in Boerne ... I live in Pipe Creek .. on hwy 16 ... 1/2 way between Bandera and Boerne ... It's what I like about Texas time .... we go see him every chance we can ...



One of those people with a ticket is me! @Mike Hill, I spent plenty of time at Lubianski's in St. Hedwig growing up, great place! Gruene, Floores, all my stompin grounds for the last 30 years or so. Damn, I'm getting to be like the !

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## Lazyman

My dad played accordion, guitar and sang in a dance band in the late 40's and early 50's that played dance halls all over Gillespie county, including Lukenbach . I always told my friends that he played Luckenbach before Luckenbach was cool. Another little know fact is that Albert Luckenbach later moved a few miles down the road to another small community that was also named (Albert) after him.

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## Wildthings

Lazyman said:


> My dad played accordion, guitar and sang in a dance band in the late 40's and early 50's that played dance halls all over Gillespie county, including Lukenbach . I always told my friends that he played Luckenbach before Luckenbach was cool. Another little know fact is that Albert Luckenbach later moved a few miles down the road to another small community that was also named (Albert) after him.


Now that's pretty cool. I've been to Albert but didn't know that tidbit

The Martinsburg post office operated from 1877 to 1886.[3] In 1892, Martinsburg got a new post office and a new name, after Albert Luckenbach sold his store in Luckenbach, and arrived to register a new post office in town, under the name Albert.[3]

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## woodman6415

One thing I love about Texans is our ability to laugh at ourselves. Which is what I did when I saw the Texas Quote of the Day: "If God had intended Texans to ski, he'd have made manure white."

------ seen on a bumper sticker in Floresville May 27, 2017

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## Mike Hill

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto! How did I get here!

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## woodman6415

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 128750 View attachment 128749 We're not in Kansas anymore Toto! How did I get here!


Looks like you come to visit .. live 2 miles from that corner in Pipe Creek ...


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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 128750 View attachment 128749 We're not in Kansas anymore Toto! How did I get here!



Mike, if you get a chance go see Wendell, he's got a nice shop! Tony


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## Mike Hill

Texas Truth

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- June 6th*


*Texas rancher and trail driver born in Mississippi
*
On this day in 1836, Robert Kelsey Wylie was born in Tishomingo County, Mississippi. After moving to Anderson County, Texas, with his parents around 1850, he worked building brick chimneys, labor for which he accepted cattle as payment. With his brothers he started a ranch in Erath County and, in 1862, helped formed Picketville, at the site of the future Ballinger, in Runnels County. He ranched in Coleman County during the Civil War. In 1865 he began driving cattle to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, a business he continued for ten years. He established cattle ranches near Ballinger and at Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. He also started a sheep ranch near Van Horn. At various times he supplied cattle to John S. Chisum and to the foundation herd of the Matador Ranch. He retired to Mineral Wells by 1905 and died on July 11, 1910, after falling off the back of a Pullman car near Trinidad, Colorado.


*Texas Centennial Exposition opens*

On this day in 1936, the Central Centennial Exposition, part of the Texas Centennial celebration marking 100 years of Texas independence, opened in Dallas's Fair Park. Construction on the exposition began in October 1935 with George L. Dahl as the architect. The official $25 million central exposition occupied fifty buildings and was the first world's fair held in the Southwest. The "Cavalcade of Texas," a historical pageant depicting four centuries of Texas history, became one of the exposition's most popular attractions. The Hall of Negro Life marked an exposition milestone, the first recognition of black culture at a world's fair. The competing unofficial Fort Worth Frontier Centennial Exposition opened on July 18. The Fort Worth exposition closed on November 14, the Dallas exposition on November 29. Although attendance at both fairs (Dallas, 6,345,385; Fort Worth, 986,128) fell far short of expectations, civic leaders felt the publicity they brought to both the area and the state was well worth the cost. The Dallas exposition reopened in June 1937 as the Greater Texas and Pan American Exposition and closed in October. Many of the exposition buildings, including the Hall of State, are still standing and were renovated along with Fair Park in the 1980s.


*Rudder's Rangers fight with distinction on Normandy beaches
*
On this day in 1944, D-day, James Earl Rudder commanded the Second Ranger Battalion as it achieved one of the great feats of arms of the Normandy invasion. Rudder, a native of Eden, Texas, had served in the army in the 1930s and was recalled to duty during World War II. He became commander and trainer of the elite Second Ranger Battalion in 1943. On D-day Rudder's Rangers stormed the beach at Pointe du Hoc and, under constant enemy fire, scaled 100-foot cliffs to reach and destroy German gun batteries. The battalion suffered higher than 50 percent casualties, and Rudder himself was wounded twice. In spite of this, he and his men helped establish a beachhead for the Allied forces. In later life Rudder became president of Texas A&M. In 1967 he received the Distinguished Service Medal from President Lyndon Johnson.


*Actor Guinn Williams Jr. dies
*
On this day in 1962, Guinn Williams Jr., who enjoyed a lengthy career as a character actor, died in Van Nuys, California. Williams, who was named for his congressman father, was born in 1899 in Decatur, Texas. In 1919 he went to Hollywood, where his good looks and horsemanship resulted in a contract with the Goldwyn studio. Williams became a successful character actor in a series of westerns during the 1920s, performing with such silent screen stars as Tom Mix and Will Rogers. It was Rogers who dubbed the Texan "Big Boy," a nickname that stayed with him throughout his life. Rogers and Williams became close friends, in part because of their love of horses. Throughout the 1920s Williams was a featured performer in the Will Rogers rodeo shows that toured the country. Unlike many of his silent-movie colleagues, Williams easily made the transition to the "talkies" in the 1930s. Although he continued to be cast in westerns, he also had supporting roles in comedies such as _Bachelor Father_ (1931) and dramas such as _The Glass Key_ (1935), _A Star Is Born_ (1937), and _Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo_ (1943). His last two films were the John Wayne vehicles _The Alamo_ (1960) and _The Comancheros_ (1962). Throughout his career Williams's trademark was the puzzled squint of the slow-witted cowhand who attempts to understand an involved situation or the amiable tough guy who is too kind-hearted to be mean.

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## woodman6415

San Angelo my home town ... Fort Concho is definitely worth a visit 


This is 96 year old former Buffalo Soldier Elijah Cox playing his guitar at home in San Angelo in 1938. Elijah lead a remarkable life. His parents, Jim and Kizzie Cox, escaped slavery with their children through the woods about twenty miles below Memphis, Tennessee. They crossed over to Quebec, Canada, and later went to the free state of Michigan, where Elijah was born in 1842.
Elijah's military service began as the personal servant to Captain George Madison of the 6th Illinois Cavalry during the Civil War. The 6th Illinois Cavalry was attached to the command of future Fort Concho (Texas) commander Benjamin Grierson. After the war, he returned to Michigan and became an apprentice carpenter and later a sailor.

Disliking these professions, Elijah decided to rejoin the military. On July 1, 1870 he enlisted into the regular army and was placed in Company B, 25th Infantry which was later assigned to the Texas frontier. Cox spent almost a year in the army and was wounded during an engagement with a group of Apache Indians between Fort Davis and Fort Quitman. Cox never officially served at Fort Concho but made Saint Angela (San Angelo) his home after he was honorably discharged due to injury on June 30, 1871 at Fort Bliss. He was given permission to accompany a military funeral escort that traveled from Fort Bliss to San Antonio in 1871. Although he planned to continue traveling to his mother’s home in Michigan, when the escort reached the area of Saint Angela and Fort Concho, he decided to stay, working in the region as a cook, carpenter, buffalo hunter, musician, entertainer, and bartender. Elijah was a great musician and was said to be an exceptional fiddler. He and his son, Ben, played for all of the dances at the fort. Elijah passed away on January 25th, 1941, about six months shy of his 99th birthday.

I'm posting not only a photo of Elijah but also photos of his tombstone, which lists his date of birth and death correctly but, inexplicably, miscalculated the length of his life. The tombstone photos come from Find A Grave.Com

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the day is a description of Houston in 1848:

“Houston is a wretched little town composed of about twenty shops, and a hundred huts, dispersed here and there, among trunks of felled trees. It is infested with Methodists and ants.”

------ Emmanuel-Henri-Dieudonné Domenech, a French Catholic missionary who visited Houston in 1848

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## Mike Hill

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the day is a description of Houston in 1848:
> 
> “Houston is a wretched little town composed of about twenty shops, and a hundred huts, dispersed here and there, among trunks of felled trees. It is infested with Methodists and ants.”
> 
> ------ Emmanuel-Henri-Dieudonné Domenech, a French Catholic missionary who visited Houston in 1848


 
Even though I take a little umbrage with the Methodist dish, it doesn't seem Houston has changed much in 169 years.  Hope my cousins aren't reading this!

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## woodman6415

Mike Hill said:


> Even though I take a little umbrage with the Methodist dish, it doesn't seem Houston has changed much in 169 years.  Hope my cousins aren't reading this!


Agree

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> Even though I take a little umbrage with the Methodist dish, it doesn't seem Houston has changed much in 169 years.  Hope my cousins aren't reading this!



That's exactly what I thought! My wife is from that area, she gets mad because I call Houston the Armpit of Texas. Tony


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## Wildthings

Hey!!


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Hey!!



Sorry brother, you're one of the bright spots there. You and the Handsome One. Tony

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## Wildthings

Actually I don't live in Houston and don't care for it! And yes ANTS and MOSQUITOS!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- June 10th*

*
Moses Austin dies
*
On this day in 1821, Moses Austin died in Missouri. Austin, born in Connecticut in 1761, was the first man to receive permission to bring Anglo-American colonists into Spanish Texas. In 1798, while consolidating his position as a pioneer in the American lead industry, he established the first Anglo-American settlement west of and back from the Mississippi River, at modern Potosi, Missouri. When the Bank of St. Louis, which he had helped found, failed in 1819, Austin found himself in financial difficulties and developed a plan for settling American colonists in Spanish Texas. He traveled to San Antonio in 1820 seeking permission for his plan. Spurned by Governor Antonio María Martínez, he chanced to meet an old acquaintance, the Baron de Bastrop, who returned with him to the governor's office and convinced Martínez to endorse the plan and forward it to higher authorities. On the trip out of Texas, Austin contracted pneumonia. Shortly after he reached home, he learned that permission for the colony had been granted, but he lived barely two months more. It was his deathbed request that his son, Stephen F. Austin, take over the colonization scheme.


*First armed clash between Anglo Texans and Mexican troops
*
On this day in 1832, a rebel force attacked Anahuac in the first armed clash between Anglo-Texans and Mexican troops. In 1830, Manuel de Mier y Terán ordered John Davis Bradburn to locate a site for a fort, military town, and customhouse, to be named Anahuac. Bradburn encountered hostility from his fellow Anglo-Americans when he tried to carry out his orders, which included inspecting land titles, issuing licenses to Anglo lawyers, and enforcing Mexican customs laws. The attack was a response to Bradburn's arrest of William B. Travis and other insurgent leaders. Bradburn agreed to exchange Travis and the other Anglos for nineteen cavalrymen held by the insurgents. The cavalrymen were released, but when Bradburn discovered that a number of rebels had remained in town overnight, he refused to free his prisoners and began firing on the town. The insurgents withdrew to Turtle Bayou, where they drew up a series of resolutions explaining their action. Bradburn appealed for help from other military commanders in Texas. Col. José de las Piedras marched from Nacogdoches, but met with Anglo insurgents near Liberty and agreed to remove Bradburn from command and free Travis and the others.


*Lone Star Boys' State founded*

On this day in 1940, some 108 boys participated in the first annual Lone Star Boys' State program. The program, sponsored by the American Legion, provides teenage boys with training in functional aspects of citizenship and teaches constructive attitudes toward the American form of government. Nationally the program was begun in the 1930s to counter Fascist-inspired Young Pioneer Freedom camps. Participants are grouped into mock cities, form a mock state government, and elect state officers. The program is held each summer, usually in June, at the University of Texas at Austin. Two boys are chosen to attend Boys' Nation in Washington, D.C., each July. Bluebonnet Girls' State is a similar program for girls.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day concerns the XIT ranch and the history of Longhorn cattle:

"The XIT brand was conceived of by an an old Texas trail driver named Ab Blocker, who placed it upon the first cow. She was not an animal of high pedigree, but a Longhorn from South Texas. Her color, gauntness, and perversity were historic. Nearly two centuries before, with the initial Spanish expedition into the province for the purpose of founding a settlement in 1690, there came a similar Mexican cow. She walked steaming from the waters of the Rio Grande, cropped the first grass on the northern shore, switched her tail at a persistent fly, and felt at home. Long of horn and leg, variegated in color, and belligerent of disposition, she was prophetic of the millions and millions of others to fatten upon the grasses of the border state.

As she pushed north and east with the expedition of Governor Alonzo de Leon and Father Massanet, the tallow thickened over her ribs, a little bit, and she became smooth and glossy. She sprang of hardy and wily stock. As she fled to the nearest pool or mud hole to escape the attentions of the heel fly, as she fought off the wolves by night and outran the thieving Indians by day, she built up a spirit of independence and of resourcefulness that made her a companion of the wilderness and a fighter of the frontier.

By the time the East Texas missions were abandoned, in 1693, the Longhorn had broken the ties that bound her to her native range, and when the soldiers and missionaries returned home to Mexico, she stayed in Texas. The Mexican cows matched with the wilderness, met claw and fang with horn and cow-sense, and when the Spaniards came again, twenty-three years later, Longhorn cattle grazed the East Texas grasslands. Since that first memorable day Texas has never been without cattle. For more than two centuries livestock has formed one of its chief sources of wealth. Wherever "Texas" is heard, steers are thought of, and the head of the Longhorn is as emblematic of Texas as is the lone star. Texas and Longhorns are almost synonymous."

---- J. Evetts Haley, "The XIT Ranch of Texas," 1936

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 9th*

*Spaniards found East Texas mission*

On this day in 1716, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Nacogdoches Mission was founded by the Domingo Ramón expedition in a village of the Nacogdoches Indians. Father Antonio Margil de Jesús was in charge of the mission, which was abandoned temporarily in 1719 and became the first Zacatecan mission to be restored by the Marqués de Aguayo in 1721. Although the Nacogdoches mission was generally unsuccessful in its goal of converting the local Indians, it provided an important presence to offset French influence. It was permanently abandoned in 1773. In 1779 the deserted buildings formed the nucleus for the settlement of Nacogdoches.


*Lamar expresses good will to Chief Colita*

On this day in 1839, Mirabeau B. Lamar, president of the Republic of Texas, wrote to Colita, chief of the Coushatta Indians, expressing regret that conflicts had occurred between the Indians and white settlers. The event is notable because it marked a sharp divergence from Lamar's general Indian policy. Unlike Sam Houston, whose administration had attempted to conciliate the Indians--especially Houston's "own" tribe, the Cherokees--Lamar thought that the Indians should be either exterminated or driven from Texas. This animus helped to bring about several of the most serious clashes between Indians and whites in early Texas. Lamar's proffer of friendship toward the Alabamas and Coushattas was therefore a striking exception to his usual policy. Perhaps he was remembering how these East Texas Indians had helped the white settlers to escape from the Mexican army in the Runaway Scrape (1836). In any case, Lamar offered land to the Alabamas and Coushattas and appointed Joseph Lindley as a mediator between the Indians and the settlers. The gesture turned out to be futile, however, for when the Indians saw their land being marked off, they assumed it was for white settlers and abandoned the area; whereupon white settlers took the land.


*Groundbreaking ceremony for veterans center
*
On this day in 1948, ground was broken for the Bonham Veterans Administration Hospital. The facility was planned to provide general medical and surgical treatment and nursing-home care for veterans. Sam Rayburn, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, served as principal orator at the event. The hospital, directed by D. L. Bell until 1955, admitted its first patient and was formally dedicated in November 1951. John Connally, then secretary of the navy, spoke in 1961 at the hospital's tenth anniversary. In 1973, the hospital was renamed Sam Rayburn Memorial Veterans Center. In 2002 the center had a capacity of 370 beds. Its 400 employees provided general medicinal and psychiatric care to veterans in an area covering four counties in northeastern Texas and two counties in southeastern Oklahoma. It provides long-term rehabilitative services and extended care in facilities that include a 136-bed nursing-home unit and a 224-bed residential unit.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"You can make a lot of money in this game [golf]. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work."

----- golfer Lee Trevino, who was born and raised in Dallas, won 29 PGA Tour events (including six major championships) over the course of his career, and is regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time .

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## Mike Hill

Tony said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "You can make a lot of money in this game [golf]. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work."
> 
> ----- golfer Lee Trevino, who was born and raised in Dallas, won 29 PGA Tour events (including six major championships) over the course of his career, and is regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time .


OOhhh, OOhh. I saw him once. And I don't even like golf. As a wee little tad, we lived not far from the where the Texas PGA was played San Antonio - Pecan Valley Golf Course . A couple of friends of mine got on our bikes (this was in the day of spyder bikes and banana seats) and rode over. It was a minor adventure - having to bike a few trails, jump a creek, and a couple of crevasses, stomp a couple of rattlesnakes, wrestle with some prickly pear, hack a mesquite and the like. We knew of a drainage ditch that you could sneak under the fence. Trevino, was the only one we saw that we recognized. Well I didn't, one of my friends did.

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> OOhhh, OOhh. I saw him once. And I don't even like golf. As a wee little tad, we lived not far from the where the Texas PGA was played San Antonio - Pecan Valley Golf Course . A couple of friends of mine got on our bikes (this was in the day of spyder bikes and banana seats) and rode over. It was a minor adventure - having to bike a few trails, jump a creek, and a couple of crevasses, stomp a couple of rattlesnakes, wrestle with some prickly pear, hack a mesquite and the like. We knew of a drainage ditch that you could sneak under the fence. Trevino, was the only one we saw that we recognized. Well I didn't, one of my friends did.



We used to sneak in there too growing up. Wall along the creek picking up crawfish and generally being hooligans. Tony

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 13th*


*Mexican folk hero shoots Brownsville marshal
*
On this day in 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina shot Brownsville city marshal Robert Shears, who had brutally arrested a former employee of Cortina's, and set off what became known as the first Cortina War. Cortina, born in Tamaulipas in 1824, moved with his wealthy family to the Brownsville area while he was still a child. There he came to hate a clique of judges and Brownsville attorneys whom he accused of expropriating land from Mexican Texans unfamiliar with the American judicial system. He became a hero to many, though he was indicted at least twice by a Cameron County grand jury for stealing cattle. Several months after shooting Shears, Cortina rode back into Brownsville at the head of forty to eighty men and seized control of the town. John Salmon (Rip) Ford and Robert E. Lee were among the military leaders who became involved in the subsequent conflict. Finally, in December 1859, Cortina retreated into Mexico. After Texas seceded from the Union, he reappeared on the border and started the second Cortina War. In May 1861 he invaded Zapata County, but was defeated by Santos Benavides and again retreated into Mexico. In 1871 the Texas legislature denied a petition seeking Cortina's pardon because of his service to the Union during the Civil War, and stockmen in the Nueces Strip accused him of heading a large ring of cattle rustlers. Subsequent American diplomatic pressure led to Cortina's 1875 arrest and removal to Mexico City. He died in 1894.


*Texas government offers huge prize for eradicating long-nosed cotton pest
*
On this day in 1903, a proclamation was made from the steps of the Texas Capitol offering a $50,000 prize for the discovery of a way to rid Texas of the boll weevil. This small snout beetle had been ravaging cotton crops in Mexico for at least two millenia. Its introduction into Texas seems to have been first announced by Charles W. DeRyee of Corpus Christi in a letter dated October 3, 1894. It had reached all of East Texas by 1903 and by the 1920s had spread north and west to the High Plains. The insect continued to spread through Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Calcium Arsenate was found to be reasonably effective against it, and during the 1920s fluorides were introduced. Since the weevil does not survive well on the high plains of Texas, this region proved to be more favorable to future cotton production. The 1903 prize was never awarded to anyone.


*Crusading "padrecito" dies*

On this day in 1956, crusading San Antonio priest Carmelo Antonio Tranchese, known as "El Padrecito," died of a heart attack. Tranchese was born in Italy in 1880, entered the Jesuit order in 1896, and came to the United States in 1911. He became pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on the West Side of San Antonio, which was home for the majority of the city's 82,000 Mexican Americans, in 1932. Most worked as unskilled laborers for area companies, particularly the local pecan-shelling industry. Working conditions and wages were poor, and the living environment consisted of dilapidated housing and disease-infested neighborhoods. Tranchese immediately championed programs that brought improvements. He supported local strikes and was particularly active in soliciting provisions and establishing breadlines for pecan workers who struck in 1935 and 1938. Tranchese's most noted accomplishment, however, was his role in bringing a federal housing project, the Alazan-Apache Courts, to San Antonio.

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## woodman6415

Long read .... a true Texas icon 

The Texas Quote of the Day is one of the best things I've read in a long time and that's why I've taken the time to transcribe it. A little backstory before the quote: Longtime readers of this page know that, in the space of a few days in late 1959 or early 1960, Willie Nelson wrote 5-6 classic songs: "Funny How Time Slips Away," "Nightlife," "Crazy," "Turn Out the Lights (The Party's Over)," "Mr. Record Man," and "I Gotta Get Drunk (and I sure do dread it)." I have always been fascinated by creativity and its sources and in the Texas Quote of the Day Willie talks about these songs, how they came to him, and the places that creativity comes from. As we pick up the story, it's 1959 and Willie has just moved his small family to Pasadena, Texas, searching for his big break in Houston. Willie alternates between the narrative of his life and the lyrics of these songs and there is no easy way to show this on Facebook (no way to italicize etc...), so I have offset the song lyrics inside quotation marks. This is Willie picking up he story:

I found a little apartment for us in Pasadena, one of those lonely-looking industrial suburbs in the shadow of the ship channel, lined with factories sewing out petrochemical toxins into the stale night air.

From there I went out on my own, going from club to club, wandering up and down the Gulf Freeway, looking for a break. But nothing broke. Nothing was happening. Drinking gave me little consolation. A little consolation was better than none at all.

By then I had already accumulated a large inventory of songs written in the margins of my days and the loneliness of my nights. But in Houston those nights got lonelier. With a wife and three kids at home, I needed money --- and I needed it now. Yet this locale not yielding immediate results. I was still up against some slow-moving sh*t. It was during these long dark nights of the soul ---- driving here, driving there, stopping everywhere and anywhere a wandering minstrel might find work ---- that I reached down even deeper and found solace in words and melodies that expressed the anguish gnawing at my insides.

When songs fall from the sky ---- even the polluted midnight sky of Houston ----- all I can do is catch them before they land. They are mysterious gifts. I know they are born out of experience and genuine grief. I know they are born of uncertainty and fear. I implicitly trust their sentiments. I trust their sincerity. The deepest songs expose vulnerability. They strip me bare and leave me amazed.

Where the hell did they come from?
Did I really write these songs, or am I just a channel chosen by the Holy Spirit to express these feelings?

I really don't know. I don't remember creating the words. The words just came. I can't remember creating the melodies. The melodies were already there. The songs arrived prepackaged. There was a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In my head, I heard a groove that would drive the rhythm. In my head, I heard the accompanying instruments.

Without trying, I heard everything.

And I heard myself ruminating about the nightlife.

"It ain't no good life, but it's my life. I see it as just another scene in this 'ol world of broken dreams. Oh the nightlife, it ain't no good life, but, Lord, it's my life.

Listen to the blues that they're playing. And listen to what the blues are saying. They're saying that nightlife ain't no good life, but it's my life."

While I made those endless loops around the Houston highways, that song grew out of the soil of my soul. It happened because I was living it.

A few more hours or a few days later ---- I can't remember which ---- here comes more thoughts and feelings.

I imagined a man, someone like me, who runs into an old girlfriend.

"Well, hello there. My, it's been a long, long time. How you doing? Me? Well, I guess I'm doing fine. Been so long now, but it seems that it was only yesterday. Gee, ain't it funny, how time slips away?'

The words of the song seep out of the darkness. They fall from my imagination like tears from my eyes.

"How's your new love? Hope he's doin' fine. Heard you told him you'd love him till the end of time. That's the same thing you told me, seems like just the other day. Ain't it funny, baby, how time slips away?"

Or another night ---- or the same night ---- I imagine that the rest of the world is asleep. The rest of the world is comprised of normal people with normal jobs. This gal works as a secretary. This guy is an accountant. They go about their nine-to-five lives. They earn their money, they buy their groceries, they raise their children.

They're not crazy.

But what about me?

Why am I crazy?

"Crazy, for feeling so lonely, crazy, for feeling so blue."

Why am I imagining a man like me facing the loss of his deepest love?

"I know you'd love me as long as you wanted, then someday leave me for somebody new.

Worry. Why do I let myself worry, wondering what in the world did I do?"

I can't get this man off my mind. His blues are my blues. He's crazy, and so am I.

"Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you. Crazy for crying, crazy for trying, I'm crazy for loving you."

Is it crazy to think that this song, fallen from the sky, has a haunted beauty that could last forever?

Or is that just my ego speaking?

I hum the melody again. I see how each note is perfectly married to a lyric. Is that marriage of my making? It feels like it is. It feels like it isn't. Putting it together was too easy. I can hardly take credit. Yet who else is around? Nobody but me, driving along the highways of Houston, songs filling up all the space in my head, songs crowding my heart.

A song that says, "Mr. Record Man, I'm looking for a song I heard today. There was someone blue singing 'bout someone who went away. Just like me his heart was yearning for a love that used to be. It's a lonely song about a lonely man like me."

Am I inventing this character or am I merely writing about myself? How is it possible to step outside myself while, at the same time, delving deeper?

"I was driving down the highway with the radio turned on ---- and a man that I heard singing sounded so blue and all alone."

Who is doing the singing? Who is doing the listening?

"As I listened to this lonely song, I wonder, could it be ---- could there be another lonely man like me?"

And how could this man lose his loneliness? What's a lonely man to do?

"Well I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it 'cause I know just what I'm gonna do. I'll spend my money calling everybody honey and wind up singing the blues."

And I do just that. I live the life I'm singing about in my song.

"I gotta get drunk, I can't stay sober. There's a lot of good people in town that'd like to see me holler, see me spend my dollar, and I wouldn't think of letting them down."

I know I'm running into a dead end. Know I'm acting the fool, but that don't stop me. 

"There's a lot of doctors tell me that I'd better start slowing down. But there's more old drunks than there are old doctors. So I guess we'd better have another round."

"Spend my whole paycheck on some old wreck and, brother, I can name you a few. Well I gotta get drunk and I sure do dread 'cause I know just what I'm gonna do."

After the drinking is over, I realize what has to happen next. I realize the next song is one that says, "Turn out the lights, the party's over. They say that 'All good things must end.' Let's call it a night, the party's over, and tomorrow starts the same thing."

"But the party has hardly been fun. Look at me. I'm almost crying. That don't keep her love from dying. Misery .... 'cause for me the party's over."

----- Willie Nelson, "It's a Long Story: My Life."

It's a marvelous book. As I read Willie's words and contemplate his life and put them into the context of what the readers of this page respond to when I post, it's clear to me that what strikes responsive notes within the public are the universal things. Pretty much all of us can relate to a song like "Crazy" because we've all been there at one point or another. All of us have been in love with somebody who either didn't love us back or with somebody with whom love was impossible for some other reason. Heck, there's a whole genre of music ---- the blues ----- that has sprung up from this feeling. You lay there in bed at 2:00 a.m., anguished because this other person doesn't love you or can't love you, knowing full well that your whole life would be perfect if you could just make them see how great things would be if they would just relent. Which brings me to another Willie quote. It was Willie who said ---- in one of the most stinging, perspicacious quotes of all time, that "99 percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice, and that's what makes the jukebox play." 

Wow. Preach on, Willie.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 14th*


*New law authorizes sale of state land to finance education
*
On this day in 1879, the state of Texas authorized selling state land for fifty cents an acre. Half the proceeds were to go for reduction of the public debt and half to pay into the Permanent School Fund, established in 1876. The state sold 3,201,283 for $1,600,641.55 in fifty-two West Texas counties. On January 22, 1883, the Fifty Cent Act was repealed as a public necessity resulting from fraudulent speculation in the land.


*SA&AP Railway enters receivership
*
On this day in 1890, the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway went into receivership, with Benjamin F. Yoakum as one of the two receivers. The SA&AP was chartered in 1884 to connect San Antonio with Aransas Bay, a distance of 135 miles. Uriah Lott was the principal promoter of the line, and Mifflin Kenedy was contractor for virtually all of the mileage built before 1900. The SA&AP, which eventually built hundreds of miles of track in South and Central Texas, was a competitor in many areas with various Southern Pacific lines and was acquired by the SP in 1892. The Railroad Commission brought suit in 1903 because the SP's ownership violated the law which prohibited common ownership of parallel and competing lines. As a result of the suit the SP sold its stock in the company, but was required to continue to guarantee the bonds of the SA&AP. In 1934 the remaining 819 miles of SA&AP track was merged into the Texas and New Orleans Railroad Company.


*Hughes ends record-setting round-the-world flight in New York*

On this day in 1938, Howard Hughes and a four-man crew landed their specially equipped Lockheed 14 in New York City, having circled the globe in three days, nineteen hours, and seventeen minutes. Along the way, they cut in half Charles Lindbergh's record for crossing the Atlantic. Hughes, born in Houston in 1905, inherited a fortune when he was orphaned at the age of eighteen. He moved to Hollywood in the 1920s to produce, and then direct, movies such as _Hell's Angels_ (1930) and _Scarface_ (1932). An aviation enthusiast since boyhood, he formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in the 1930s as a division of Hughes Tool Company and set two speed records as a pilot. In the 1940s, he landed several contracts to produce military aircraft, but with mixed results, as in the case of the famous HK-1 flying boat (the "Spruce Goose"). He remained active in the film and aeronautics industries in the 1950s and 1960s, but by 1970 he had become increasingly reclusive and conducted most of his business through memos. He died in 1976 on a plane from Acapulco, Mexico to Houston.

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## woodman6415

Still is ... not one of my favorites... 
daughter getting married there Aug 5 .. I dread the trip ... it smells like crap .... some say it smells like money ... they work in the oil patch ... 


The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Odessa was the hardscrabble, hard-drinking, honky-tonk underbelly of West Texas. And it was wet, which was what people said about a place in Texas where you could buy a drink and bend the edges on that emptiness."

----- Bill Minutaglio, journalist and author, contrasting life in 1950s Odessa with that of Midland at that same point in time

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 16th *(crazy Sooners from the other side of the Red)


*Texans rout Cherokees in battle of the Neches*

On this day in 1839, some 500 Texas troops under Kelsey H. Douglass routed 700 to 800 Cherokees led by Chief Bowl (also known as Duwali, Bowles, or the Bowl) in what is now Henderson County. The two-day battle of the Neches was the principal engagement of the Cherokee War; it resulted in the expulsion of the hostile Indians from East Texas and virtually ended Indian troubles in the settled portion of the state. More than 100 Indians, including Duwali, were killed, and the remaining Cherokees were driven across the Red River into Indian Territory. Among the prominent Texans who participated in the battle were Thomas J. Rusk, Edward Burleson, David G. Burnet, Albert Sidney Johnston, and John H. Reagan. The Cherokee War was the culmination of years of friction between Cherokee, Kickapoo, and Shawnee Indians and white settlers in Northeast Texas.


*Officer begins adobe experiment at Fort Concho
*
On this day in 1870, army officer John Porter Hatch began an experiment to manufacture and use adobe bricks as inexpensive construction material at Fort Concho. Hatch, born in New York in 1822, fought in the Mexican War and in the Civil War. As a major with the Fourth United States Cavalry, he ordered the commander of Fort Chadbourne, Capt. George C. Huntt, to move his unit to the site of Fort Concho in 1867. The adobe experiment was judged a failure after Hatch and twenty enlisted men had produced only 10,000 usable bricks by September 2, 1870, but it did earn Hatch the nickname "Dobe," which he bore until his death in 1901.


*Texas, Oklahoma battle over bridge across the Red River
*
On this day in 1931, Texas and Oklahoma locked horns over a newly completed free bridge, built jointly by the two states, across the Red River between Denison, Texas, and Durant, Oklahoma. A firm operating a nearby toll bridge had obtained an injunction preventing the Texas Highway Commission from opening the new bridge because the commission had failed to fulfill its contractual obligation to buy the toll bridge. Texas Governor Ross S. Sterling ordered barricades erected across the Texas approaches to the new bridge. On July 16, however, Oklahoma Governor William (Alfalfa Bill) Murray opened the bridge by executive order. The following days brought a bewildering array of moves and countermoves involving the Texas Rangers, Oklahoma guardsmen, and Murray's declaration of martial law on both sides of the river and personal appearance in the "war zone" armed with an antique revolver. Finally, on August 6, 1931, the Texas injunction was permanently dissolved, the Oklahoma guardsmen were withdrawn to enforce martial law in the Oklahoma oilfields, and the bridge controversy was laid to rest. The bridge was dynamited in 1995 to make room for a new one.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Texas uses 1.6 million gallons of white and yellow paint each year to paint stripes along its highways.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 17th *


*Disgruntled colonists meet to discuss government abuses
*
On this day in 1835, at the Lavaca-Navidad Meeting, an assembly of Jackson Municipality colonists gathered to discuss the growing list of grievances against the Mexican government of Antonio López de Santa Anna. The group met at William Millican's gin house, located on the Job Williams league some four miles northeast of Edna in Jackson County. The resolutions discussed, written, and ratified at the meeting in many ways anticipated the Texas Declaration of Independence, issued the following March. In 1936 the state of Texas erected a marker on the site of Millican's gin.


*Galveston physicians found medical society
*
On this day in 1865, Greenville S. Dowell, a Virginia native born in 1822, and a group of local physicians formed the Galveston Medical Society. A few months later, in November, the trustees of Soule University organized Galveston Medical College, the first medical school in Texas, and Dowell was appointed professor of anatomy; he later served as professor of surgery and as dean of the college. The same year Dowell began making plans to publish the first medical periodical in Texas, the _Galveston Medical Journal,_ which began publication in January 1866. When Soule University closed Galveston Medical College in 1873, Dowell and J. M. Callaway founded Texas Medical College and Hospital, where Dowell continued to teach surgery until his death in 1881.


*Alamo savior dies*

On this day in 1945, Clara Driscoll died in Corpus Christi. She was born in 1881 in St. Mary's, Texas. After almost a decade of study and travel abroad, she returned to Texas at the age of eighteen. From 1903 to 1905 she worked with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas to acquire and preserve the Alamo by personally paying most of the purchase price. In 1906 she married Hal Sevier in New York City; in 1914 they moved to Austin, where he founded the Austin _American_ and she directed construction of Laguna Gloria, a fine Italianate mansion located on the Colorado River. When the marriage was dissolved in 1937, Clara legally resumed her maiden name. During the next decade much of her time, energy, and money were devoted to historic preservation and civic betterment. In 1943 she presented Laguna Gloria to the Texas Fine Arts Association to be used as a museum.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I've been cut in half once and blowed up a time or two, but nothing permanent."

----- Red Adair, legendary oil well firefighter and Texan. Amazingly, after engaging in a lot of dangerous activities over the course of his life, Red died peacefully at the ripe old age of 89.

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## Mike Hill

Wildthings said:


> ...... preserve the Alamo by personally paying most of the purchase price. ....


Now this one is near and dear to my heart - having 2 ancestor who died at the Alamo and another who was the Texas Commander in Chief - Sam Houston (unfortunately he was a Democrat). I stopped when I read this - How do you go about buying an Alamo. From whom and for how much?

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## Mike Hill

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "I've been cut in half once and blowed up a time or two, but nothing permanent."
> 
> ----- Red Adair, legendary oil well firefighter and Texan. Amazingly, after engaging in a lot of dangerous activities over the course of his life, Red died peacefully at the ripe old age of 89.


I thought John Wayne said this!

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## Wildthings

Mike Hill said:


> I thought John Wayne said this!


Well he did! Kinda!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 18th* 


*War Department mobilizes "T-Patchers"
*
On this day in 1917, the United States War Department issued orders mobilizing the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division (known as the "Texas Division" or the "T-Patchers") at Camp Bowie in Tarrant County. The division, initially composed mostly of Texas National Guard troops, fought in World War I and again in World War II. During the latter conflict, one unit of the division, which became known as the "lost battalion," was captured at the fall of Java. The men of the battalion spent the war in Japanese prison camps, and many died building the Burma Railroad. When the War Department made national guard units available to the governors of the states in 1946, the Thirty-sixth Division was reactivated. The Thirty-sixth was called to active duty during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but was eliminated by January 1968. In 1946 veterans of the unit founded the Thirty-sixth Division Association.

*
Texas soldier fights heroically in France*

On this day in 1918, Daniel R. Edwards of Mooresville, Texas, accomplished feats of valor near Soissons, France, that earned him the Medal of Honor. He was a member of Company C, Third Machine Gun Battalion, First Division. After undergoing treatment for battle wounds and suffering from a shattered arm, he crawled alone into an enemy trench, where he killed four and took four prisoners. While he was returning to his own lines with his prisoners, his leg was shattered by an enemy shell. His bravery and gallant acts greatly inspired his comrades. Edwards died on October 21, 1967, at Little Rock, Arkansas.


*State, city, and school reach settlement over Spanish archives
*
On this day in 1972, the state of Texas, the city of Laredo, and St. Mary's University agreed on a tentative settlement that gave the state title and ownership of the Spanish Archives of Laredo but allowed the university to retain possession of the collection. The Laredo Archives, as they were commonly known, cover a period from 1749 to 1872 and consist of 3,452 handwritten official documents totaling 13,343 pages. For many years the collection was stored in the basement of the old county courthouse in Laredo. The archives were neglected and began to deteriorate from exposure to fire, flooding, and dampness. In 1934 an order was given to destroy the papers, but Sebron S. Wilcox rescued the archives and began restoring them. After Wilcox died in 1959, his family donated the archives to St. Mary's University in San Antonio, but later demanded that the university compensate them for the archives. In 1971 the state obtained a temporary restraining order to prohibit either the Wilcox family or St. Mary's University from selling or otherwise disposing of the collection. At the same time the state also petitioned for custody of the archives on the grounds that as the successor to the Mexican government the state of Texas had a legal right to all official papers held by the Spanish and Mexican governments of Laredo. In 1979, a court ruling held that St. Mary's had lawfully acquired the Laredo Archives and further decreed that all parties must abide by the terms of the 1972 settlement.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

C.W. Post first came to Texas in 1895 and lived in Fort Worth. Post suffered from stomach and nervous disorders. In an attempt to get relief he subsequently moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he entered the Battle Creek Sanitarium. His interest in health caused him to develop a cereal drink he called "Postum." He also developed Post Toasties and Post Bran. But Texas was apparently still on his heart because he moved back in 1906. He was a millionaire and he purchased a quarter-million acre ranch in Garza and Lynn Counties on the Texas high plains. And at the center of this ranch Post founded a town which he called "Post City." Somewhere along the way the "city" was lost and the town is now just Post, Texas, the county seat of Garza county. Post divided the ranch in 160-acre fenced tracts of land with houses on them. Over a 12 year period, Post colonized more than 1,200 families in the area. Post's health failed again in 1914 and on May 9 of that year he committed suicide at another house that he owned in Santa Barbara, California.

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## woodman6415

The not-so-arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

As the saying goes, Sam McCulloch, Jr., wasn't born in Texas, but he got here as fast as he could. With his three sisters and white father, Sam Jr. settled on land along the Lavaca River in present-day Jackson County in 1835, just before the start of the Texas Revolution. Five months into his life as a free black man in Mexican Texas, Sam Jr. joined the Matagorda Volunteer Company and headed out for Goliad. On October 9, the company stormed the Mexican officers' quarters and Sam Jr. was slammed by a musket ball that permanently crippled his right shoulder. He was the only Texan wounded in the battle. That injury earned Sam McCulloch, Jr., a place in history as the first casualty of the Texas Revolution.

His place in history may have been clear, but his status as a free African American disabled war veteran made him a complex issue for the Texas government. Since Sam Jr. arrived in Texas months before it became an independent republic in 1835, he was considered a free Mexican citizen and therefore entitled to land. As of 1837, as an honored and disabled military veteran of the Republic of Texas, he was entitled to land, regardless of his race. However, as a free person of color in the Republic of Texas in 1840, Sam Jr. had until January of 1842 to leave the state, petition Congress for an exemption, or be sold into slavery.

This excerpt from McCulloch's June 1837 petition to the Texas Congress demonstrates his rock-and-a-hard place situation:

"Sam McCulloch unhappily finds that the Laws of the Country for the Independence of which he has fought and bled…he is deprived of the privileges of citizenship by reason of an unfortunate admixture of African blood…nor can he, without the beneficent action of Congress, receive the lands to which he was entitled under the Mexican government. Your petitioner [Samuel McCulloch] further asks…that he and his children be allowed to enjoy the privileges of citizenship in this Republic."

Two years later, on December 15, 1840, the leaders of Texas signed an exemption to An Act Concerning Free Persons of Color and allowed Sam Jr. and his family to remain in the Republic. 

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas…That Samuel McCulloch, jr., and his three sisters…Jane, Harriet and Mahaly, and their descendants, better known as the free children of Samuel McCulloch, senr., now in the Republic of Texas… be…exempted from all provisions of "an act concerning free persons of color," approved [February 5th, 1840].

Section 2. Be it further enacted, that the [previously mentioned] free persons…are permitted and allowed to continue their residence within the bounds of the Republic of Texas.

(signed) David S. Kaufman, Speaker of the House; Anson Jones, Senate President Pro Tem; David G. Burnet, Acting President.

All of this comes courtesy the fabulous Bullock Texas State History Museum. If you haven't visited the museum, you MUST do so the next time you are in Austin. It is SO good. Please visit their wonderful Facebook page, here.

https://www.facebook.com/BullockMuseum/

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from Willie Nelson and is a good one. This is Willie talking:

"While Waylon was recording, I went back on the road. In 1966, producer Crash Stewart and I put together a Texas tour that included Hank Cochran, Johnny Bush, and my own band. By then Paul English had moved to my farm and become my permanent drummer ----- wild, street smart Paul who always had my back and got me out of more scrapes than I can recall.

Crash wanted to add a new artist to the bill: Charley Pride.

"He's not only a good country singer," said Crash. "He's a novelty."

"Why's that," I asked. 

"He's black."

That worried me only because the tour was going into deep South Texas and roughneck Louisiana. I envisioned riots.

"Before you decide," said Crash, "listen to his single."

I listened and liked it. It was a song called "The Snakes Crawl at Night." Charley had a singing style all his own.

"Book him," I told Crash. "Paul and I will deal with the consequences."

Charley turned out to be a great guy ---- smart, congenial, and humble. Some country fans were taken aback when they saw a black man singing in my show, but the moment he opened his mouth they shut theirs. They heard that Charley could sing.

Then came the night I was off work and went to hear Johnny Bush at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas. That big barn of a nightclub was owned by Dewey Groom, who had a strict segregation policy when it came to artists and their audiences. To use Dewey's unfortunate expression, he'd call Tuesday night "n**ger night." That meant B.B. King or Bobby Blue Bland or Jimmy Reed was headlining and the crowd would be all black. Country music nights, like the one with Johnny Bush, were all white.

This particular night I got silly drunk and decided to take the stage. My buddy Johnny didn't mind.

"What are you gonna sing for us, Willie?" asked Johnny.

"I'm not going to sing a lick," I said, "but I am gonna ask a friend of mine to come up here and entertain you."

I had Paul go get Charley, who was waiting outside, and bring him to the stage.

I could hear all sorts of groans and moans and nasty catcalls. The loudest protest came from Dewey himself.

But I just held up my hand and said, "Wait 'till you hear him." And then, surprising even myself, I kissed Charley Pride full on his mouth.

Then silence.

Then Charley breaking into his beautiful "The Snakes Crawl at Night."

Then rapt listening.

And, when he was through, thunderous applause.

"You see," I said to Dewey. "God didn't strike no one dead. The world is still turning. Along with everybody else, you just fell in love with Charley Pride."

Dewey was a good sport. He came back to the motel with all of us, where we had an all night jam session. Everyone got plastered. When morning came, I looked over and saw that Dewey and Charley had both passed out on the same bed. Due to my own inebriation, I lacked the presence of mind to snap a photo. But I did manage a smile and offered up a prayer. I thanked the Lord for strange bedfellows."

------ Willie Nelson, "It's a Long Story: My Life." I can't recommend the book enough for fans of Willie, Texas, country music, or fun.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- July 24th* 


*Confederacy grows as Baylor defeats Federal troops in Arizona Territory and declares himself governor*

On this day in 1861, Lt. Col. John Robert Baylor led 300 men of the Confederate Second Texas Mounted Rifles in an assault on Union forces under Maj. Isaac Lynde at Fort Fillmore, Arizona. Baylor was under orders to occupy a chain of forts protecting the overland route between Fort Clark and Fort Bliss. He entered the nearby town of Mesilla that night. The next morning Lynde ordered an artillery attack on Mesilla, but after three of his men were killed and six wounded, he withdrew. Learning that Baylor had requested artillery from Ft Bliss, Lynde abandoned the fort the night of July 26. The next day, Baylor gave chase. The Confederates rode into Lynde’s camp in the early afternoon, and Lynde surrendered his force of 492 men. Baylor proclaimed Arizona Territory, C.S.A., and named himself governor. He remained there until the spring of 1862. The victory at Mesilla was one of the Civil War’s early and surprising Confederate successes.


*Town of Kyle established
*
On this day in 1880, the town of Kyle was established when David E. Moore and Fergus Kyle (for whom the town was named) deeded 200 acres for a townsite to the International-Great Northern Railroad. Kyle is on Interstate Highway 35 eight miles north of San Marcos and twenty miles south of Austin in northeastern Hays County. The new town drew residents and businesses from Mountain City, three miles west, and Blanco, some forty miles west. Tom Martin operated the first business in Kyle. The community's population exceeded 500 by 1882 but later declined. Kyle was incorporated in 1928 as a general-law city with a mayor and five council members. In 1937 Mary Kyle Hartson, a seventy-two-year-old great-grandmother and the daughter of Fergus Kyle, was elected mayor by a write-in vote; her victory attracted national attention, including a feature story in _Life_ magazine which proclaimed her the only woman mayor in Texas. In the early 1940s Kyle was noted as the only Texas town with an all-woman government. In the year 2000 Kyle contained some 200 businesses and 5,314 inhabitants.


*World War I camp construction begins
*
On this day in 1917, construction of Camp Logan near Houston began. After the United States entered World War I, the War Department took advantage of Houston’s climate and ship channel to order the building of the camp. The Third Battalion of the black Twenty-fourth United States Infantry arrived in late July to guard the site. Tensions between local authorities and black soldiers, however, escalated during the following weeks and erupted on August 23 as the Houston Riot of 1917, resulting in the declaration of martial law. By 1918 the camp served as a hospital for wounded men. William C. Hogg acquired the site after the war, and eventually 1,000 acres became Houston’s largest recreational area, Memorial Park.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- August 7th*

*Alexander Cockrell buys Dallas townsite*

On this day in 1852, Alexander Cockrell paid $7,000 for the portion of the John Neely Bryan homestead that included the Dallas townsite and the Trinity River ferry concession. Bryan, a Tennessee native born in 1810, had settled at a natural ford on the east bank of the Trinity in 1841. In 1844 he persuaded J. P. Dumas to survey and plat the site of Dallas; he was also instrumental in the organizing of Dallas County in 1846 and in the choosing of Dallas as its county seat in August 1850. Cockrell, born in Kentucky in 1820, first came to Texas in 1845 and later established a claim on 640 acres in the Peters colony, about ten miles west of Dallas. He and his wife moved to Dallas in 1853 and began operating a brick business, one of several Cockrell enterprises that established the main lines of trade and development in Dallas. Cockrell replaced the toll ferry with the first bridge across the Trinity River; to protect the toll bridge, Cockrell acquired hundreds of acres of land on the river. In 1858, Cockrell was killed in a gunfight with a city marshall. Bryan died in the State Lunatic Asylum in 1877.


*Peripatetic pioneer elected first Bosque County judge
*
On this day in 1854, Lowry Scrutchfield was elected the first Bosque County judge. Scrutchfield was born in Nacogdoches in 1824. Some ten years later his widowed mother moved her family to Nashville-on-the-Brazos in Milam County, where they lived in the home of her oldest son, John C. Pool. Here Scrutchfield spent his late childhood and met Maj. George B. Erath, from whom he learned Indian scouting and surveying. He accompanied Erath in 1845 to the South Bosque valley, where he met the Neil McLennan family and moved into their home. Scrutchfield assisted Erath in laying out the townsite of Waco village. In 1851 Scrutchfield married Nancy Proffitt, and the couple moved to Bosque Territory, settling on the east side of the Bosque River several miles north of the site of present Valley Mills. One of the first original settlers in Bosque Territory, Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield emerged as the leader of the small group of pioneers who explored, settled, and organized Bosque County. He served as county judge until 1858. During the almost fifty years that he lived in Bosque County, Scrutchfield played a leading role in its political affairs. He died in 1900.


*Dallas strikers attract spectators and international attention*

On this day in 1935, striking garment workers entered the Morten-Davis and Lorch Manufacturing companies in Dallas and stripped the clothing from ten female employees. Not only did the action attract hundreds of spectators, but accounts of the strikers' actions appeared in newspapers in Italy, Australia, and New York. In 1934 the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union began to organize in Dallas with the workers' support because of low wages in comparison with other parts of the country. The strike began in early February 1934 when Dallas dress manufacturers began dismissing workers suspected of union activity. Workers walked out of fifteen Dallas factories. Pickets clashed with police attempting to keep strikebreakers from entering factories. At least eighty-six women were arrested. Although the "strike stripping" led local pastors to call for an arbitrated settlement, Dallas employers would not negotiate. The strike ended in November 1935 when the dressmakers voted to end their walkout. Despite the dressmakers' initial defeat, the ILGWU maintained its two Dallas locals. By 1936 five local dress plants operated as union shops.


*Mickey Leland dies in plane crash
*
On this day in 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland's plane crashed in Ethiopia. Leland, a Lubbock native, had worked in Houston as a pharmacist. He pressured Houston officials to set up community clinics and became an active member of the black Community Action team. In 1972 he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. In 1979 he took the congressional seat vacated by Barbara Jordan. He served for more than ten years in the United States Congress, where he chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and served as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. In 1984 he helped establish the Select Committee on Hunger. A trip to the Sudan in the spring of 1989 marked the beginning of tenacious efforts aimed at aiding Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia. On his sixth trip to Africa his plane crashed on the way to the Fugnido refugee camp. Terminal D at Houston Intercontinental Airport was named in Leland's honor.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The drum is rattling; this is the signal for the calling of the roll. Most of the volunteers are gathered around the fire, roasting meat on the spit. Soon a few soldiers, half-dressed, stand in before their sergeant who, list in hand, awaits the arrival of the others. The men are without their firearms; several old in hand a domestic looking wooden spit, hung with a piece of meat, in the other the famous Bowie knife. Quite a few volunteers have failed to take their place in the line, as the position of their meat over the fire or the state it has reached in its cooking forbids even a temporary absence."

----- Prussian immigrarnt Hermah Ehrenberg of the New Orleans Grays ----- a band of volunteers ----- describes the informal camp discipline during the siege of Bexar (now San Antonio) in 1835. Ehrenberg was one of the few Texians to escape the slaughter at Goliad a few months later

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- August 15th*


*Philip Sublett nominates Sam Houston for president of the Republic of Texas*

On this day in 1836, Philip Sublett nominated Sam Houston for president of the Republic of Texas. Sublett, a Kentucky native, had participated in the battle of Nacogdoches in 1832 and was a delegate to the conventions of 1832 and 1833. In 1835 he was elected chairman of the San Augustine Committee of Safety and Correspondence. On October 6 he submitted a resolution appointing Houston commander-in-chief of the forces of San Augustine and Nacogdoches until the Consultation should meet. Sublett was commissioned lieutenant colonel in October and in December 1835 was present at the siege of Bexar. He returned to his farm east of San Augustine after the battle of Concepción. Sam Houston resided in Sublett's home while recuperating from wounds received at San Jacinto. Sublett died in San Augustine on February 25, 1850.


*First Feast of the Assumption celebrated in Praha
*
On this day in 1855, the first Feast of the Assumption celebration was held in the small Czech community that was renamed Praha three years later. Praha, in southern Fayette County, was originally known as Mulberry and Hottentot. During the mid-1850s a Bohemian immigrant named Mathias Novak came to the region. Other Bohemian immigrants followed, and in 1858 the Bohemian settlers changed the town's name to Praha in honor of Prague, the capital of their homeland. In 1865 Joseph Bithowski, a Bernardine father, built a small frame church in the town. An annual celebration of the Feast of the Assumption on August 15 attracts more than 5,000 visitors, many of them Czechoslovakian. Mass is celebrated in the historic church, with its extraordinary interior painted by Godfrey Flury, Czech food is served, and Texas Czech bands play throughout the evening.

*
Future superior of Refugio Sisters of Mercy takes religious vows
*
On this day in 1872, Mary Ann Lucas took her final vows as a member of the Sisters of Mercy, under the name Sister Mary dePazzi. She had been born in Ireland in 1853, and had followed her sister Margaret, whose religious name was Sister Mary Camillus, to New Orleans in 1870. The two sisters were leaders in the historic task of forming schools in the state of Texas; like many other nuns, they responded to a broad and urgent invitation to serve both the Catholic Church and the citizens of the frontier state. Bishop Anthony Pellicer invited the Mercy sisters to Indianola, where the group joined Mother Camillus in 1875. While Camillus was in New York seeking other volunteers, the Indianola hurricane of 1875 devastated the community. Mother Mary dePazzi went to Refugio, while her sister returned to San Patricio. Afterward, the two groups expanded separately. After years of devoted service, in a conflict with the local clergy Mary dePazzi sought a decision from a higher church authority. This move led to such acrimony that she withdrew from her religious profession for nine years. She was subsequently accepted into the Mercy community in Baltimore, where she died in 1907.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day is a great one. Here Noah Smithwick, who was there, describes what the first Texas army looked like in 1835:

"Words are inadequate to convey an impression of the appearance of the first Texas army as it formed in marching order. Nothing short of ocular demonstration could do it justice. It certainly bore little resemblance to the army of my childhood dreams. Buckskin breeches were the nearest approach to uniform, and there was wide diversity even there, some being new and soft and yellow, while others, from long familiarity with rain and grease and dirt, had become hard and black and shiny. 

Some, from having passed through the process of wetting and drying on the wearer while he sat on the ground or a chunk before the camp fire, with his knees elevated at an angle of eighty-five degrees, had assumed an advanced position at the knee, followed by a corresponding shortening of the lower front length, exposing shins as guiltless of socks as a - Kansas Senator's.

Boots being an unknown quantity; some wore shoes and some moccasins. Here a broad-brimmed sombrero overshadowed the military cap at its side; there a tall "beegum" rode familiarly beside a coonskin cap, with the tail hanging down behind, as all well regulated tails should do. Here a big American horse loomed up above the pliable Spanish pony ranged beside him; there a half-broken mustang pranced beside a sober, methodical mule. Here a bulky roll of bed quilts jostled a pair of "store" blankets; there the shaggy brown buffalo robe contrasted with a gaily checkered counterpane on which the manufacturer had lavished all the skill of dye and weave known to the art - mayhap it was part of the dowry a wife brought her husband on her wedding day, and surely the day-dreams she wove into its ample folds held in them no shadow of a presentiment that it might be his winding sheet. 

In lieu of a canteen, each man carried a Spanish gourd, a curious specimen of the gourd family, having two round bowls, each holding near a quart, connected by a short neck, apparently designed for adjusting a strap about. A fantastic military array to a casual observer, but the one great purpose animating every heart clothed us in a uniform more perfect in our eyes than was ever donned by regulars on dress parade. 

So, with the Old Cannon flag flying at the head, and the "artillery" flying at the heels of two yokes of long-horned Texas steers occupying the post of honor in the center, we filed out of Gonzales and took up the line of march for San Antonio."

----- Noah Smithwick,, "The Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days," 1900

You can read the entire book here:

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm

It is one of the most important books in Texas history and comes highly recommended.


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## Tony

One of the best books and movies!! Tony

The Texas quote of the day brings some good advice from one of the great philosophers:

"Lorie darlin', life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it's likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself."

------ Augustus McCrae, "Lonesome Dove," 1989


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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- September 11th *(and you thought I was gonna mention the twin towers)


*Irredentist forces from Mexico try to take back Texas
*
On this day in 1842, Mexican general Adrián Woll, with a force of about 1,200 men, captured the city of San Antonio. Woll's expedition was part of the continued skirmishing that went on between the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War. Woll's army was repulsed by Texan troops in the battle of Salado Creek on September 18, evacuated San Antonio two days later, and returned to Coahuila. The Mexican government hailed Woll's Texas campaign as a success, promoted him to major general, and awarded him its Cross of Honor. Texans responded to the attack by launching the Somervell and Mier expeditions.


*Fort Sam Houston officially named*

On this day in 1890, the United States War Department designated "the military post at San Antonio" as Fort Sam Houston in honor of Gen. Sam Houston. Originally established in 1845, the "Post of San Antonio" started land acquisition and construction in the 1870s, becoming the second largest in the United States Army by 1891. Fort Sam Houston has played a prominent role in the annals of military history. The First United States Volunteer Cavalry, better known as Teddy Roosevelt's "Rough Riders," mobilized in San Antonio and received their equipment from Fort Sam Houston's depot. In 1910 the army's only airplane came to Fort Sam Houston, and its flight there marked the birth of military aviation. Fort Sam Houston was even involved in the filming of several motion pictures, including _Wings _(1927). The post played a critical role in training and deployment throughout World War I and World War II, and Fort Sam Houston alumni make up an impressive roster of top commanders, including Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger and Brig. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.


*Spanish-language dramatic company attracts large audiences
*
On this day in 1891, the Solsona Dramatic Company, a family-operated, Spanish-language, professional dramatic company was reportedly attracting large audiences in San Diego, Texas. After arriving from Laredo at the end of the previous month, the Compañía Dramática Solsona had first attracted small audiences, but its popularity quickly grew. By March 1892 the company had apparently moved to San Antonio and performed each Sunday on a regular basis at the Teatro Salón San Fernando, which operated loosely under the auspices of San Fernando Cathedral. The bill included a full-length drama of a moralistic, instructional nature with religious overtones, followed by a _juguete cómico_, a short comic play with songs. Compañía Solsona greatly helped to establish the theater as an important gathering place for the Mexican-American community in San Antonio.


*Ottine Swamp designated state park
*
On this day in 1933, the State Parks Board acquired 198 acres of the Ottine Swamp in Gonzales County and designated it Palmetto State Park. The land was deeded to the state by the city of Gonzales, the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, and several private owners. In 1934 the Civilian Conservation Corps built several structures of native stone at the site, including a dining hall which the National Park Service later designated as one of the outstanding park buildings in the country. The Ottine Swamp, named for early settlers Adolf and Christine Otto, results partly from overflow from the San Marcos River and partly from a group of small sulfur springs. Before the 1950s the area had numerous warm springs, mud boils, and peat deposits, but drilling for oil and water has lowered the water table, and many of the unique hydraulic features have dried up. Scottish botanist Thomas Drummond discovered a native phlox in the area which is now cultivated around the world.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

Col. David Crockett arrived, with twelve others, direct from Tennessee. Crockett was immediately offered a command by Col. Travis, and called upon by the crowd for a speech. The former honor he would not accept; but mounted a goods-box on the civil plaza, amid prolonged cheers of the people. The applause, however, was followed by profound silence, when the full-toned voice of the distinguished speaker rose gradually above the audience and fell smooth and lively upon the ears of all; its content was familiar to many who had heard it in days past, while the hearts of all beat a lively response to the patriotic sentiments which fell from his lips. Frequent applause greeted him, as he related in his own peculiar style, some of those jolly anecdotes with which he often regaled his friends, and which he only could tell with appropriate grace. 

He alluded frequently to his past career, and during the course of his remarks stated that, not long since, he had been a candidate for Congress in his native district, and that during the canvass he told his constituents that 'if they did not elect him, they might all go to hell and he would go to Texas.'

After which he concluded his substance, as follows;

'And fellow citizens I am among you. I have come to your country, though I hope not with any selfish motive whatever. I have come to aid you all that I can in your noble cause. I shall identify myself with your interests, and all the honor that I desire is that of defending as a high private, in common with my fellow citizens, the liberties of our common country.'

----- Dr John Sutherland, an eyewitness to this event, per John S. Ford in "Origins and Fall of the Alamo," 1895

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- September 13th*


*Robert Neighbors assassinated at Fort Belknap
*
On this day in 1859, Robert Simpson Neighbors, Indian agent, was shot and killed by Edward Cornett at Fort Belknap. Neighbors was first appointed as an Indian agent in 1845. As agent for the Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas, he instituted the field system of Indian control. That is, instead of remaining at the agency headquarters and waiting for the Indians to pay him a visit, as was the common practice, Neighbors dealt with them directly in their home territory. Later, when he was overseeing Comanches, he continued this practice, with the result that he spent much time far beyond the frontier and exercised greater influence over the Indians in Texas than any other white man of his generation. In 1853 he was made supervising agent for the Texas Indians. As a member of the Fourth Texas Legislature he opened the way for Indian reservations. After receiving numerous death threats because of his attempts to protect Texas Indians, he was finally assassinated in 1859.


*Mexican-American civil-rights conference meets in Laredo*

On this day in 1911, the Congreso Mexicanista, the first statewide Mexican-American civil-rights conference, began meeting in Laredo. The Idar family, who owned and published _La Crónica_, organized the meeting. The Idars invited the Orden Caballeros de Honor, members of lodges and _sociedades mutualistas_, all Mexican consuls in the state, Texas-Mexican journalists, and women from the region. Meeting through September 22, the _congreso_ established the Gran Liga Mexicanista de Beneficencia y Protección (Great Mexican League for Benefit and Protection) and the Liga Femenil Mexicanista to promote cultural and moral values among Texas Mexicans, provide protection from abuse by public authorities, and combat segregation of Texas Mexican students. Nicasio Idar was chosen the leader of the Gran Liga, and Jovita Idar, his daughter, was elected president of the Liga Femenil.


*Hospital destroyed in hurricane
*
On this day in 1919, the Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi was demolished by a hurricane in which a nun, two patients, and two employees were killed. Spohn Hospital (originally Spohn Sanitarium), the first hospital in Corpus Christi, is a Catholic institution founded in 1905 by Arthur Edward Spohn. When Spohn moved to Corpus Christi in 1895 and noted the lack of medical facilities, he embarked upon a campaign to raise funds for a hospital. Through the efforts of Alice King Kleberg $6,000 was collected from the residents of Corpus Christi for the project. Her husband, Robert J. Kleberg, prepared a drawing of the proposed sanitarium around 1903. The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, agreed to staff the new facility. After the 1919 hurricane the hospital was temporarily located in a private home. Henrietta C. King gave the land for the new hospital and it was back in operation by 1923.Through the succeeding years, the hospital continued to expand. In 2003, the CHRISTUS Spohn Health System consisted of six hospitals--three in Corpus Christi and one each in Alice, Beeville, and Kingsville--and thirteen clinics.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- September 16th*


*Diez y Seis de Septiembre*

On this day in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's _grito de Dolores_ ("cry of Dolores") at the village of Dolores, near Guanajuato, called for the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. On September 16, 1825, the Republic of Mexico officially declared September 16 its national Independence Day. In Texas, Diez y Seis de Septiembre has been celebrated in San Antonio for more than 167 years and in Goliad for 160 years. Along with Cinco de Mayo, the holiday is one of the Fiestas Patrias celebrated by Mexican Americans throughout the Southwest.


*Mexico releases remaining Texas captives from Perote Prison
*
On this day in 1844, Mexican officials released 105 Texans from Perote Prison. The freed men were the last of the captives taken in the Dawson Massacre, the Mier expedition, and the Texan Santa Fe expedition--all episodes in the ongoing strife between the Republic of Texas and a Mexican government that did not acknowledge the legitimacy of that republic. Perote Prison was the jail chosen for Texan survivors of the republic's battles with Mexico. The stronghold, in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz, was originally a moated castle built to hold treasure bound for Spain and to protect a trade route. It was constructed in the 1770s. The Texans who were held there had surrendered as prisoners of war, but were held simply as prisoners. Nevertheless, they were evidently humanely treated. The Mexican government released the last of them partly as a result of continued pressure from the United States and British governments


*Independent Democrats oppose KKK
*
On this day in 1922, a mass meeting of "Independent Democrats" in Dallas selected Houston lawyer George Peddy to run for the United States senate. The splinter group reflected opposition to the remarkable resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. After the nomination of KKK candidate Earle Bradford Mayfield for senator in the 1922 Democratic primary and after the state Democratic convention in San Antonio, where it appeared to many that the Ku Klux Klan had gained control of the party, anti-Klan Democrats sought out Peddy to oppose Mayfield. Peddy had campaigned for James E. Ferguson as the anti-Klan candidate in the primaries. Mayfield and regular Democratic forces succeeded in keeping Peddy's name off the ballot; however, the Independent Democrats failed to have Mayfield removed from the ballot on the grounds that his endorsement by and presumed membership in the KKK disqualified him as a Democrat and precluded his honoring the senatorial oath. Republican endorsement of Peddy also failed to win him a place on the ballot. Depending entirely on write-in votes, Peddy ran a surprisingly strong race, polling one-third (130,744 to 264,260) of the vote. Peddy challenged Mayfield's election, and the subsequent Senate investigation delayed Mayfield's seating until December 1923.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Texas has never lost but one war, the Civil War. And the way it happened was that a Texan, who was delirious from fever and was color blind besides, wandered into the Union lines, thought he was among his comrades and turned around and charged, single-handed, on the Confederates, wreaking such destruction that General Lee had to surrender."

---- Boyce House, "Texas Laughs," 1951

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## woodman6415

Today is Monday, September 18, 2017

Today in
Texas History

1865 - John B. Stetson designed the first real cowboy hat. The Texas Rangers wore it for its versatility and durability. 

1933 - At Monument Hill, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas dedicated a new vault. 

1929 - Julius Myers died in San Antonio, TX. He is considered the last town crier in America. 

1944 - At Best, Holland, Lt. Robert G. Cole was killed by a sniper during "Operation Market Garden." He was rewarded a Medal of Honor for his heroic actions the previous day. 

1944 - In the Palau Islands, Charles Howard Roan jumped on a grenade to save his comrades. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Purple Heart, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal. A Texas historical marker was placed on his family plot in the cemetery in Claude, TX. 

1962 - The American League held a meeting in New York to explore the possibilities of major league baseball team in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Although the idea was deemed worthy, league owners rejected Kansas City A's owner Charley Finley's attempt to move his team to the metroplex. 

Texas Quote

In the covered wagon days, if a baby was born in Texarkana while the family was crossing into the Lone Star State, by the time they reached El Paso, the baby would be in the third grade.
- Wallace O. Chariton

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is the text of a newspaper article from Canyon, Texas on January, 31, 1891 and it sure is interestin':

"Some fool started the report that a gang of Indians numbering about five hundred stampeded from the nation and struck Saulsbery [Salisbury] "all spradled out" and painted the town crimson by killing twenty odd persons and burning the town on last Thursday night. When the report first reached Canyon the people here gave it little credit, but as all kinds of blood-curdling reports kept coming in our people commenced to take things a little more serious, and when the stage driver arrived here Saturday at 10 a.m. he told the thing more scary than ever and said that reports reached Amarillo just before he left that the state rangers were fighting the Indians and that two or three of the rangers had been killed. He further said the redskins were making for the Tule and would very likely cross the canyons at this place. The story was then believed by all of our citizens and they began to make ready to fight Indians.

Runners were sent out in all portions of the county and by three o'clock in the afternoon the town was alive with armed men - the women and children being placed in the courthouse as a place of safety. Heavy lumber was secured and a breastworks made on all sides and the men walked around town waiting for "the little thing to take place." In the meanwhile Sheriff Wise and Jas. Patton were dispatched to Amarillo to find out anything they could in regard to the way the Indians were moving. They returned home about sundown and reported the whole thing a farce and not a word of truth in the report. Our citizens then stacked arms and once more breathed easy. Quite a number of men here took their wives and children to Amarillo. Everyone was badly scared and there is no use denying the fact. It is a strange thing how such reports can get out and carried so far without any foundation whatever."

------ John Edgell, Canyon City Echo, January 31, 1891

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## woodman6415

In the best song ever written about Texas, Gary P. Nunn sings the following lines:

You ask me what I like about Texas
It's the big timber round Nacogdoches
It's driving El Camino Real into San Antone
It's the Riverwalk and Mi Tierra
Jammin' out with Bongo Joe
It's stories of the Menger Hotel and the Alamo!

This is "Bongo" Joe Coleman, a famous street performer in San Antonio, shown in 1975. Here's what the Handbook of Texas History has to say about him:

COLEMAN, GEORGE [BONGO JOE] (1923–1999). Street performer, percussionist, and singer George Coleman, known as Bongo Joe, was born in Haines City, Florida, on November 28, 1923. Coleman's father died before he was born and his mother died when he was seven. After he graduated from high school he moved to Detroit to live with his older sister. There he was exposed to the local jazz scene and began his interest in musical performance with the piano. He played with many local musicians, and even with Sammy Davis Jr.

He moved to Houston by his late twenties and started his career as a percussionist with a local band. Rather than appearing onstage with a full drumset, which he did not own, he fabricated a makeshift kit out of empty fifty-five-gallon oil drums. This led to a unique percussive sound that he developed over the course of his career through specialized drumming techniques, tuning, and hand-made instruments. He also augmented his sound with his humorous and insightful lyrics.

Coleman started performing more on streets than on stages, hauling his oil drums around the cities of Texas, mounting them with a pick-up microphone and playing through a small amplifier. For fifteen years or so, he played at popular Houston-area tourist spots such as Seawall Boulevard in Galveston, and later moved to more prominent tourist attractions such as HemisFair '68 in San Antonio. He traveled through Mexico playing for tips, but settled in San Antonio. As he continued to travel the state of Texas and its immediate environs, taking his oil drums with him and playing on streetcorners, he acquired the affectionate nickname "Bongo Joe."

Bongo Joe was invited to participate in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival nine times. There he played piano once with Dizzy Gillespie. In 1976 he played on a ten-city tour as part of Gerald Ford's presidential campaign. In 1991 he appeared on three television programs called "Almost Live from the Liberty Bar" that aired on the San Antonio PBS affiliate KLRN. His performances stopped in the early 1990s, when he was diagnosed with diabetes and kidney disease. He died in San Antonio on December 19, 1999.

Bongo Joe has been alternately viewed as inspired and as a novelty act. Whichever way he is interpreted, he was certainly a cult classic. He was recorded in San Antonio by Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records in 1968. These recordings led to an LP that, in combination with a few later sessions, turned into a CD re-release by Arhoolie entitled George Coleman--Bongo Joe. One selection from these original recordings, "Innocent Little Doggie ," was an underground classic on independent radio in Texas as well as in England. Associates of Coleman knew him to be an extremely talented musician who performed on the streets by choice, often turning down opportunities to play more respectable, and more lucrative, engagements in order to play for the general public.

This photo courtesy the Portal to Texas History. These folks are just about the most awesome people in Texas, which pretty much makes them the most awesome people in the world.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> In the best song ever written about Texas, Gary P. Nunn sings the following lines:
> 
> You ask me what I like about Texas
> It's the big timber round Nacogdoches
> It's driving El Camino Real into San Antone
> It's the Riverwalk and Mi Tierra
> Jammin' out with Bongo Joe
> It's stories of the Menger Hotel and the Alamo!
> 
> This is "Bongo" Joe Coleman, a famous street performer in San Antonio, shown in 1975. Here's what the Handbook of Texas History has to say about him:
> 
> COLEMAN, GEORGE [BONGO JOE] (1923–1999). Street performer, percussionist, and singer George Coleman, known as Bongo Joe, was born in Haines City, Florida, on November 28, 1923. Coleman's father died before he was born and his mother died when he was seven. After he graduated from high school he moved to Detroit to live with his older sister. There he was exposed to the local jazz scene and began his interest in musical performance with the piano. He played with many local musicians, and even with Sammy Davis Jr.
> 
> He moved to Houston by his late twenties and started his career as a percussionist with a local band. Rather than appearing onstage with a full drumset, which he did not own, he fabricated a makeshift kit out of empty fifty-five-gallon oil drums. This led to a unique percussive sound that he developed over the course of his career through specialized drumming techniques, tuning, and hand-made instruments. He also augmented his sound with his humorous and insightful lyrics.
> 
> Coleman started performing more on streets than on stages, hauling his oil drums around the cities of Texas, mounting them with a pick-up microphone and playing through a small amplifier. For fifteen years or so, he played at popular Houston-area tourist spots such as Seawall Boulevard in Galveston, and later moved to more prominent tourist attractions such as HemisFair '68 in San Antonio. He traveled through Mexico playing for tips, but settled in San Antonio. As he continued to travel the state of Texas and its immediate environs, taking his oil drums with him and playing on streetcorners, he acquired the affectionate nickname "Bongo Joe."
> 
> Bongo Joe was invited to participate in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival nine times. There he played piano once with Dizzy Gillespie. In 1976 he played on a ten-city tour as part of Gerald Ford's presidential campaign. In 1991 he appeared on three television programs called "Almost Live from the Liberty Bar" that aired on the San Antonio PBS affiliate KLRN. His performances stopped in the early 1990s, when he was diagnosed with diabetes and kidney disease. He died in San Antonio on December 19, 1999.
> 
> Bongo Joe has been alternately viewed as inspired and as a novelty act. Whichever way he is interpreted, he was certainly a cult classic. He was recorded in San Antonio by Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records in 1968. These recordings led to an LP that, in combination with a few later sessions, turned into a CD re-release by Arhoolie entitled George Coleman--Bongo Joe. One selection from these original recordings, "Innocent Little Doggie ," was an underground classic on independent radio in Texas as well as in England. Associates of Coleman knew him to be an extremely talented musician who performed on the streets by choice, often turning down opportunities to play more respectable, and more lucrative, engagements in order to play for the general public.
> 
> This photo courtesy the Portal to Texas History. These folks are just about the most awesome people in Texas, which pretty much makes them the most awesome people in the world.
> View attachment 134440



The first time Nikki and I met was at a wedding of mutual friends. We were both in the wedding party with different escorts. The reception was downtown on the riverwalk, and after the wedding a group of 8 of us went partying on the river. Nikki and I danced to Bongo Joe. 1988, seems like forever ago..... Tony


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> The first time Nikki and I met was at a wedding of mutual friends. We were both in the wedding party with different escorts. The reception was downtown on the riverwalk, and after the wedding a group of 8 of us went partying on the river. Nikki and I danced to *Bingo Joe*. 1988, seems like forever ago..... Tony



Not Bingo! Bongo!! Jeeeesssshh

Reactions: Like 1


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Not Bingo! Bongo!! Jeeeesssshh



Ducking autocorrect!

Reactions: Funny 2


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days nobody could stand him."

----- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22," 1961


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days nobody could stand him."
> 
> ----- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22," 1961


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## woodman6415

Canción en Agave Azul

I dance to Texas
with enormous belly,
suck torrents of Shiner Bock,
lick the lips of agave plants,
drink fresh aromas from morning skies,
bear witness to blushing sunsets
between beautiful yucca screams,
devouring the landscape like a fever-starved star,
my laughter and sorrow piercing haunted memories,
following familiar evenings and flickering sun
like her windswept miles, eternal.

Sanderson, Texas, 2013
Traces of Texas

Reactions: Great Post 2


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Women did not serve on juries in Texas until 1954.


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## woodman6415

Y'all aren't going to believe the Texas Quote of the Day, which comes from a newspaper back in 1889. I transcribed this for this page and beg forgiveness if I have made a mistake. 

"Some twenty months ago a woman living on the banks of the Brazos River missed her 3 months old baby from the pallet where she had left it lying during an absence of a few minutes. Search was made for the infant, but no trace of it could be discovered and the whole affair was wrapped in mystery until a few days ago.

A party of gentlemen riding through a somewhat unfrequented portion of the thick woods that border the river ... were startled by seeing a strange object run across the road. Thinking at first sight that it was a wild animal, several of the party were about to fire on it, when the one who had been nearest to it called to them not to shoot but to run it down instead.

This was done with difficulty, for the underbrush was thick, but at last the creature was overtaken in a dense copse. It was half running, half leaping, first on all fours and then nearly upright.

The gentlemen dismounted and attempted to lay hands on it, but chattering frightfully and savagely biting and scratching, it broke away from them. They could see it had a human face, though the brown body was covered with long, tangled hair, and the nails on the feet and hands so long as to be claws. It ran with incredible swiftness, getting over fallen trees and dense masses of creepers at a rate that obliged its pursuers to exert themselves to the utmost to keep it in view. It finally ran into an immense oak tree that lay uprooted on the ground, and the hollow trunk of which formed a yawning cavern. By dint of poking in the tree with sticks, the party succeeded in driving out an old wolf which immediately ran away. It was not pursued, as it was not the object sought. This, too, was finally dislodged and lassoed with a lariat made of hides. It bit and scratched so fiercely that it was thought advisable not to approach it, and it was half dragged, half led home with the lariat about its neck howling and yelping like a wolf.

The fact of the woman's child having disappeared was well know to all, and it was decided that this must be the child.

The wolf had evidently stolen it, and for some reason adopted it as its own. The mother declared this conjecture was correct, claiming that her child had had a malformation of one ear, which peculiarity was found in the monster.

It is kept tied up in her cabin, suffering no one to lay hands upon it, and is fed on raw meat, as it refuses to touch any other food. The woman has hopes that she may yet reawaken the human in it, but in the meantime she is reaping a fortune from the crowds who come daily from all parts of the county to inspect the strange creature."

----- The Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, 1889; the "strange creature" finally died in captivity

Reactions: Like 1


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Y'all aren't going to believe the Texas Quote of the Day, which comes from a newspaper back in 1889. I transcribed this for this page and beg forgiveness if I have made a mistake.
> 
> "Some twenty months ago a woman living on the banks of the Brazos River missed her 3 months old baby from the pallet where she had left it lying during an absence of a few minutes. Search was made for the infant, but no trace of it could be discovered and the whole affair was wrapped in mystery until a few days ago.
> 
> A party of gentlemen riding through a somewhat unfrequented portion of the thick woods that border the river ... were startled by seeing a strange object run across the road. Thinking at first sight that it was a wild animal, several of the party were about to fire on it, when the one who had been nearest to it called to them not to shoot but to run it down instead.
> 
> This was done with difficulty, for the underbrush was thick, but at last the creature was overtaken in a dense copse. It was half running, half leaping, first on all fours and then nearly upright.
> 
> The gentlemen dismounted and attempted to lay hands on it, but chattering frightfully and savagely biting and scratching, it broke away from them. They could see it had a human face, though the brown body was covered with long, tangled hair, and the nails on the feet and hands so long as to be claws. It ran with incredible swiftness, getting over fallen trees and dense masses of creepers at a rate that obliged its pursuers to exert themselves to the utmost to keep it in view. It finally ran into an immense oak tree that lay uprooted on the ground, and the hollow trunk of which formed a yawning cavern. By dint of poking in the tree with sticks, the party succeeded in driving out an old wolf which immediately ran away. It was not pursued, as it was not the object sought. This, too, was finally dislodged and lassoed with a lariat made of hides. It bit and scratched so fiercely that it was thought advisable not to approach it, and it was half dragged, half led home with the lariat about its neck howling and yelping like a wolf.
> 
> The fact of the woman's child having disappeared was well know to all, and it was decided that this must be the child.
> 
> The wolf had evidently stolen it, and for some reason adopted it as its own. The mother declared this conjecture was correct, claiming that her child had had a malformation of one ear, which peculiarity was found in the monster.
> 
> It is kept tied up in her cabin, suffering no one to lay hands upon it, and is fed on raw meat, as it refuses to touch any other food. The woman has hopes that she may yet reawaken the human in it, but in the meantime she is reaping a fortune from the crowds who come daily from all parts of the county to inspect the strange creature."
> 
> ----- The Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, 1889; the "strange creature" finally died in captivity



I don't know about this one...... Tony


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## ripjack13

Wow....you texans sure know how to tell some good stories.....

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 2


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## woodman6415

ripjack13 said:


> Wow....you texans sure know how to tell some good stories.....


And we've got a bunch of them

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## woodman6415

In 1977 the San Antonio Light reported that people were "shocked and appalled" at the sight of topless bathers at Austin's Barton Springs swimming pool. "Matter of fact, some folks are driving 200 miles to be shocked and appalled by the sight," the newspaper reported.

Just so everyone knows .. I only drive 145 miles


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> In 1977 the San Antonio Light reported that people were "shocked and appalled" at the sight of topless bathers at Austin's Barton Springs swimming pool. "Matter of fact, some folks are driving 200 miles to be shocked and appalled by the sight," the newspaper reported.
> 
> Just so everyone knows .. I only drive 145 miles



A great place back in the day! Tony


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> A great place back in the day! Tony



When they went topless?

Reactions: Agree 2


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Rancher Lee Bivins was born in Farmington, Texas ---- on Farm Road 1417 ten miles south of Sherman in south central Grayson County ----- in 1862. By the time he was 20 years old he had amassed a large herd of cattle and owned two general stores in Sherman. In 1890 he moved his family to his first ranch, the Mulberry Pasture, a few miles south of Claude, Texas. By the 1920s he was said to be the largest individual cattle owner in the world. He owned or leased more than one million acres of land and it was said that he once rode his horse 90 miles ----- from Dalhart to Amarillo ----- without leaving his property. He passed away in 1929 and is buried in the Llano Cemetery in Amarillo.

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## woodman6415

Or woodworking 

The Texas Quote of the Day was uttered by an elderly man to his daughter at the Half-Price Books store on South Lamar in Austin: "Look at all these self-help books. They must be for people who haven't discovered fishing."

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## woodman6415

Everyone from where I'm from knows you don't plant the garden till the mesquites start showing leaves . 


The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The mesquite loves life and will grow almost anywhere. In fact, most West Texans think it prefers the dry red clay or the worst soil God had to offer. It has about its annual bloom a mysterious sense of danger in springing forth prematurely and it is traditional in West Texas that spring isn't safely abroad in the land until the mesquite acknowledges it. The late Frank Grimes, editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, made an annual affair of running his poem warning those who would disregard this prophet:

'We see signs or returning spring ---
The redbird's back and the grackles sing,
The ground's plowed up and the creeks run clean,
The onions sprout and the rosebud's near;
And yet they's a point worth thinkin' about ----
We note that the old mesquites ain't out!'

---- A.C. Greene, 1969, "A Personal Country"

Reactions: Agree 1


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

“Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”

------ author Larry McMurtry

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On June 12, 1691, Domingo Terán de los Ríos, the first Spanish governor of Texas, camped on the banks of a stream in South Texas. He recorded in his diary: "We camped on the banks of a stream adorned with a great stand of trees. I named it San Antonio de Padua because we reached it on his day." Thus was born the city of San Antonio. 'Course, nobody lived there for awhile. The christening came 27 years later when, on May 1, 1718, Governor Martín de Alarcón formally founded the adobe mission called San Antonio de Valero.

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## woodman6415



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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 135273



It is a great thing!!!

It must suck to be @Don Ratcliff and wake up a billion miles from here!


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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 135273



AND without a hurricane!! Poor Don!

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Don Ratcliff

I would feel like I am missing out but you guys already exported chicken fried steak to the rest of the world sooo...

@Tony You should really see what is outside of Texas, there's lots of cool stuff beyond the boarders. I know this is what stops you from exploring so let me help with your fear; the airport is not like the fair. They dont have a stick that says "you must be this tall to ride this plane" so unlike the disappointment and humiliation you experiance at every fair and theme park, you can board a plane being the travel sized person you are...

It's a big interesting world out there, don't have the regret of not seeing more of it. Especially when you have friends to visit there.


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## woodman6415

Don Ratcliff said:


> I would feel like I am missing out but you guys already exported chicken fried steak to the rest of the world sooo...
> 
> @Tony You should really see what is outside of Texas, there's lots of cool stuff beyond the boarders. I know this is what stops you from exploring so let me help with your fear; the airport is not like the fair. They dont have a stick that says "you must be this tall to ride this plane" so unlike the disappointment and humiliation you experiance at every fair and theme park, you can board a plane being the travel sized person you are...
> 
> It's a big interesting world out there, don't have the regret of not seeing more of it. Especially when you have friends to visit there.


Wait a minute @Tony has friends ?

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## Don Ratcliff

woodman6415 said:


> Wait a minute @Tony has friends ?


Said the fellow texan...

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Tony

Don Ratcliff said:


> I would feel like I am missing out but you guys already exported chicken fried steak to the rest of the world sooo...
> 
> @Tony You should really see what is outside of Texas, there's lots of cool stuff beyond the boarders. I know this is what stops you from exploring so let me help with your fear; the airport is not like the fair. They dont have a stick that says "you must be this tall to ride this plane" so unlike the disappointment and humiliation you experiance at every fair and theme park, you can board a plane being the travel sized person you are...
> 
> It's a big interesting world out there, don't have the regret of not seeing more of it. Especially when you have friends to visit there.



In all seriousness Don that is a big deal for me. I'm almost 50 now and haven't seen much of the world at all. I keep thinking I need to get out and see some of it before I get too dam old to do it. I might just surprise you and show up down there sometime soon!

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## Don Ratcliff

Tony said:


> In all seriousness Don that is a big deal for me. I'm almost 50 now and haven't seen much of the world at all. I keep thinking I need to get out and see some of it before I get too dam old to do it. I might just surprise you and show up down there sometime soon!


We are buying a new loveseat right now so you will have a place to stretch out when you get here

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## Don Ratcliff

And no more emails from this thread.


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## Tony

@Don Ratcliff 

Now????


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## Don Ratcliff

Tony said:


> @Don Ratcliff
> 
> Now????


Just alerts now. Sorry...


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## Wildthings

OMG Barney is trying to sell his Toilet Seat Museum.. @Tony can you take over this for him since it's right down the road from you. You've been there to see it right? I have - twice. He's a pretty cool personality to talk to. God Bless Him!!

Barney Toilet Seat Museum

Geocache you can find my log on 07/07/2010

Reactions: Sincere 1


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## Tony

Barry, I am ashamed to say I've never been there, didn't know it existed. It's only a hop skip and jump from house too!


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## woodman6415

On this day in 1835, Texians fought in the Battle of Goliad--the second battle in the Texas Revolution.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because God had put me on the ground in Texas. I actually felt sorry for those poor little kids that had to be born in Oklahoma or England, or some place. I knew I was living in the best place in the world."

----- Actor Tommy Lee Jones, who was born and raised in San Saba and then, later, Dallas

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because God had put me on the ground in Texas. I actually felt sorry for those poor little kids that had to be born in Oklahoma or England, or some place. I knew I was living in the best place in the world."
> 
> ----- Actor Tommy Lee Jones, who was born and raised in San Saba and then, later, Dallas



Now he lives here. Nice guy.


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day regards how Amarillo was founded, as told to me by my friend Thomas, who hails from that city:

“Way back when, a wagon train was crossing the Texas Panhandle when they decided to stop for the night. They were about 10 miles north of Palo Duro Canyon. They circled the wagons to protect against Indian attack, then gathered up a bunch of buffalo chips to cook dinner. The wind was blowing hard. After a hearty meal, they turned in. The last thing the wagon master said before going to sleep was "Until this dang wind stops blowing, we'll stay right here." 

And that is how Amarillo was founded. ;)

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved wining seven Tour de France races while on drugs. When I was on drugs, I couldn't even find my bike."

----- Willie Nelson

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## Mike1950

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GScid=7691&GRid=6626578
A cool one I read today. I liked the pulling back on steering wheel and yelling whoa part.

Reactions: Like 2 | Great Post 1


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## Tony

Mike1950 said:


> https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GScid=7691&GRid=6626578
> A cool one I read today. I liked the pulling back on steering wheel and yelling whoa part.



I love the dog on the tombstone! Tony

Reactions: Agree 3


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

"Lopes and smokes" was an early means of estimating distance. The phrase comes from the fact that most travel was done by horseback, and usual gait was a lope. Cowboys rolled their own cigarettes, which was a tricky maneuver that required the rider to stop the horse and "fix the makings." So a trip might be four smokes distant. In this century, in West Texas, driving their pickups, cowboys often measured their distance by beers. "Valentine's 'bout three beers due west, and one beer left, outta Marfa." Or something like that.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day shows that things have always been a bit wild here in Texas:

"Whether traveling or at home, we had no peace. Not even the church was free of their antics. In many instances it might have been just horseplay, but it had serious effects on the victims. These cowboys entered the church during the services with their hats on and smoking cigarettes. They would come around the altar during the Mass and curiously examine the contents of the chalice. One of them wanted to ride into the church on horseback and see how many targets he could shoot on the walls. On the road they would shoot at the Polander's feet, in many instances wounding him. A woman, caught alone on the road, was found with a knife-stab in her back. These and many other calamities we endured. As a protection against such and against the snakes that crawled everywhere, I provided myself with a revolver. With a rosary in my pocket and the revolver hanging in a scabbard on my saddle, I went along that everyone who did not believe the word of God would believe the word of my revolver......"

-------- Father Adolf Bakanowski, the spiritual head of the Polish colony of Panna Maria, Texas, on relations with neighboring ranch hands, 1866

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## woodman6415

Texas wisdom:

1.Never slap a man who's chewin' tobacco.

2.Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back in. 

3.If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.

4.If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

5.Never kick a cow chip on a hot day. 

6.There's two theories to arguin' with a woman. Neither one works. 

7.If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.

8.Don't squat with your spurs on. 

9.It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep 

10.Always drink upstream from the herd. 

11.Never miss a good chance to shut up. 

12.There are 3 kinds of people: The ones that learn by reading, the few who learn by observation, and the rest of them who have to touch the fire to see for themselves if it's really hot.

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## woodman6415

Very interesting read 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The first part of the performance went fairly well, but in the middle of the show the audience suddenly got up en masse and disappeared through the front exit. Investigations disclosed that the customers had gone outside to view a runaway mule.

My father and his brothers, though accustomed to insults, were enraged by this one. When the customers filed back into the theater, 30 minutes later, the Marx brothers were no longer interested in giving a good performance. All they wanted to do was get even with the audience, and the only way they knew how was to burlesque the kind of singing they had been doing so seriously.

This quickly evolved into a roughhouse commedy bit, with the Marxes, led by my father, flinging insults about Texas and its inhabitants to the audience as rapidly as they could think of them. 

My father is not very clear about the exact phraseology of some of these insults, but he does recall calling the Texans in the audience "damned Yankees" and throwing in couple of lines that went something like this:

"Nacogdoches
Is full of roaches."

And:

"The Jackass
Is the finest
flower of 
Tex-ass"

They were not looking for laughs; they fully expected to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. But instead the audience loved their clowning and greeted their insults and most tired jokes with uproarious laughter."

----- The metamorphosis of an unknown wandering vaudeville troupe called "The Four Nightingales" into the immortal Marx brothers, which was triggered by a rude Nacogdoches crowd in 1920, as told by Groucho's son Arthur in "My Life with Groucho Marx," 1954. That's right, folks: the Marx Brothers became "THE Marx Brothers" accidentally, and in Texas.

Reactions: Funny 1 | Informative 1


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On the courthouse square in Goliad, Texas, one will find this tree, known as the "The Hanging Tree." During the 1800s, It was here that justice was handed out very quickly ("Texas Style") in the form of hanging, often within an hour of the verdict of the court. It was also the scene of hangings during the 1857 "Cart War." Some background:

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 officially ended Texas' war with Mexico; however, isolated outbreaks of bitter resentment between Mexicans and Texans continued for years.

One notable example of this animosity erupted into open strife in the vicinity of Goliad in 1857. Texan teamsters, who had been hauling freight from the port at Indianola to San Antonio and other interior towns, became increasingly bitter toward competing Mexican cartmen. The latter charged much lower rates and were driving the Texans out of business.

The Texans began attacking the Mexican cartmen as they passed through Golaid with their loaded wagons. In a short series of attacks, about 75 Mexicans were murdered, their carts destroyed, and their freight stolen. Authorities at Goliad remained indifferent to the criminal acts. Mexican cartmen began using a new route, one which by-passed Goliad twelve to fifteen miles to the east. Deprived of their easy source of revenue and noting the apathy of local citizens, the “cart-cutters” began robbing them.

The entire disgraceful situation had been brought to the attention of the Legislature. But it was an outraged local citizenry and “Judge Lynch” that ended the careers of the “cart-cutters.” Those guilty of crimes were speedily brought to trial.

This giant live oak was the site of the court sessions. Its huge horizontal limbs served as a ready-made gallows for the swift conduct of capital sentences passed by those early courts. A number of the cart-cutting outlaws alternately cursed and prayed as they left this world at the end of the hangman's knotted rope.

And now, today, 160 years later, you can still go and eat your lunch under the branches of this magnificent tree, which remains a silent witness to a lot of bloodshed.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> On the courthouse square in Goliad, Texas, one will find this tree, known as the "The Hanging Tree." During the 1800s, It was here that justice was handed out very quickly ("Texas Style") in the form of hanging, often within an hour of the verdict of the court. It was also the scene of hangings during the 1857 "Cart War." Some background:
> 
> The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 officially ended Texas' war with Mexico; however, isolated outbreaks of bitter resentment between Mexicans and Texans continued for years.
> 
> One notable example of this animosity erupted into open strife in the vicinity of Goliad in 1857. Texan teamsters, who had been hauling freight from the port at Indianola to San Antonio and other interior towns, became increasingly bitter toward competing Mexican cartmen. The latter charged much lower rates and were driving the Texans out of business.
> 
> The Texans began attacking the Mexican cartmen as they passed through Golaid with their loaded wagons. In a short series of attacks, about 75 Mexicans were murdered, their carts destroyed, and their freight stolen. Authorities at Goliad remained indifferent to the criminal acts. Mexican cartmen began using a new route, one which by-passed Goliad twelve to fifteen miles to the east. Deprived of their easy source of revenue and noting the apathy of local citizens, the “cart-cutters” began robbing them.
> 
> The entire disgraceful situation had been brought to the attention of the Legislature. But it was an outraged local citizenry and “Judge Lynch” that ended the careers of the “cart-cutters.” Those guilty of crimes were speedily brought to trial.
> 
> This giant live oak was the site of the court sessions. Its huge horizontal limbs served as a ready-made gallows for the swift conduct of capital sentences passed by those early courts. A number of the cart-cutting outlaws alternately cursed and prayed as they left this world at the end of the hangman's knotted rope.
> 
> And now, today, 160 years later, you can still go and eat your lunch under the branches of this magnificent tree, which remains a silent witness to a lot of bloodshed.
> 
> View attachment 136194



It is a site to behold, a magnificent tree! Tony


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## Wildthings

Been there Done that - great tree!!


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## woodman6415

On this day in 1835, Texians fought in the Battle of Concepción in present-day San Antonio.

Reactions: Like 2


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

On March 27, 1984, the temperature in Brownsville, Texas, was 106 degrees while, simultaneously, Dalhart, Texas reported snow and 26 degrees.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Tony

I'll take Brownsville, thank you!


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## Wildthings

I'll go with halfway in between the two!


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"He runs faster than small-town gossip."

----- Legendary Texas Longhorn football coach Darrell K. Royal describing one of his players

Reactions: Funny 1


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## SubVet10

THE ASTROS ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!! 
Literally through hell and high water. 3rd Coast Strong

Reactions: Like 2


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Texans have moved across the map of history with a kind of innocence and wonder that there are other people in the world who might see life through different lenses. In another way, they are like a friendly, undisciplined Dalmatian that, as it smothers you with affection and interest, cannot understand why you do not think it is the greatest dog in the world. In a world that often shows signs of weariness, I personally sometimes wish that Texas would grow up ---- but only a little bit. I also think the world would be better off were more Texans loose on the planet."

----- Joe B. Frantz, historian at the University of Texas, writing in "The Republic of Texas," 1968

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

Not mine .. but riding motorcycle to Big Bend next week ... 

It is a long trek to reach the cliffs of this remote location in Big Bend, but last Saturday after a 4.5 hour journey involving a long drive over a terrible 4WD road and an uphill slog only marked by cairns to the edge of the rocks, the abyss of Mariscal Canyon and the meandering Rio Grande appeared in the distance. We enjoyed this view for a few hours - until after sunset - before making the hike back in the dark and eventually back to our sleeping bags. This is one of my most memorable evenings in my photography career. Simply amazing. I hope my imagery does it justice as I attempt to share with you that wonder that I felt on the canyon rim. This panorama is three wide angle images stitched together - taken with the 11-24L lens.
While facebook destroys the resolution of this image, it can be printed at least 10 feet with and stay very sharp. I wish you could see the detail in this panorama up close!
Have a good week, Texas!
~ Rob 
www.ImagesfromTexas.com
www.facebook.com/ImagesfromTexas

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day is actually my top-10 Willie Nelson quotes:

My Top-10 Favorite Willie Quotes:

14) "I take it not only a day at a time, but a moment at a time, and keep it at that pace. If you can be happy right now, then you'll always be happy, because it's always right now."

13) “I've been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.”

12) "If a song was ever good, it's always good."

11) "My doctor tells me I should start slowing down, but there are more old drunks than there are old doctors so let's all have another round."

10) "I believe in looseness."

9) "Three chords and one truth --- that's what a country song is."

8) "I'm from Texas, and one of the reasons I like Texas is because there's no one in control."

7) "As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn't in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.”

6) “All I do is play music and golf -- which one do you want me to give up?” ---- Willie's response when asked why he doesn't retire

5) "We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us understand that we are the ones who cause it."

4) "Par is whatever I say it is. I've got one hole that's a par 23 and yesterday I damn near birdied the sucker.” ---- Willie talking about the benefits of owning his own golf course

3) "You know why divorces are so expensive? They're worth it."

2) “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

1) “Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice, and that's what makes the jukebox play.

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## woodman6415

It is Veteran's Day. Perhaps the most famous of all Texas veterans is this man, Audie Murphy. On March 5, 1945, 1st Lieutenant Audie Murphy was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star from Major General John "Iron Mike" O'Daniel on March 5, 1945 in Nancy, France. Audie was a Texan, having been born the son of sharecroppers in Hunt County. If you are unfamiliar with what Audie to earn his medals, this is from his Wikipedia entry:

"Murphy received the Distinguished Service Cross for action taken on 15 August 1944, during the first wave of the Allied invasion of southern France. After landing on Yellow Beach near Ramatuelle, Murphy's platoon was attacked by German soldiers while making their way through a vineyard. He retrieved a machine gun that had been detached from the squad and returned fire at the German soldiers, killing two and wounding one. Two Germans exited a house about 100 yards (91 m) away and appeared to surrender; when Murphy's best friend responded, they shot and killed him. Murphy advanced alone on the house under direct fire. He killed six, wounded two and took eleven prisoner.

Murphy was with the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment during the 27–28 August offensive at Montélimar that secured the area from the Germans. Along with the other soldiers who took part in the action, he received the Presidential Unit Citation.

Murphy's first Purple Heart was for a heel wound received in a mortar shell blast on 15 September 1944 in northeastern France. His first Silver Star came after he killed four and wounded three at a German machine gun position on 2 October at L'Omet quarry in the Cleurie river valley. Three days later, Murphy crawled alone towards the Germans at L'Omet, carrying an SCR-536 radio and directing his men for an hour while the Germans fired directly at him. When his men finally took the hill, 15 Germans had been killed and 35 wounded. Murphy's actions earned him a Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster for his Silver Star. He was awarded a battlefield commission to second lieutenant on 14 October, which elevated him to platoon leader. While en route to Brouvelieures on 26 October, the 3rd Platoon of Company B was attacked by a German sniper group. Murphy captured two before being shot in the hip by a sniper; he returned fire and shot the sniper between the eyes. At the 3rd General Hospital at Aix-en-Provence, the removal of gangrene from the wound caused partial loss of his hip muscle and kept him out of combat until January. Murphy received his first Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster for his Purple Heart for this injury.

The Colmar Pocket, 850 square miles (2,200 km2) in the Vosges Mountains, had been held by German troops since November 1944. On 14 January 1945, Murphy rejoined his platoon, which had been moved to the Colmar area in December. He moved with the 3rd Division on 24 January to the town of Holtzwihr, where they faced a strong German counterattack. He was wounded in both legs, for which he received a second Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster for his Purple Heart. As the company awaited reinforcements on 26 January, he was made commander of Company B.

The Germans scored a direct hit on an M10 tank destroyer, setting it alight, forcing the crew to abandon it. Murphy ordered his men to retreat to positions in the woods, remaining alone at his post, shooting his M1 carbine and directing artillery fire via his field telephone while the Germans aimed fire directly at his position. Murphy mounted the abandoned, burning tank destroyer and began firing its .50 caliber machine gun at the advancing Germans, killing a squad crawling through a ditch towards him. For an hour, Murphy stood on the tank destroyer returning German fire from foot soldiers and advancing tanks, killing or wounding 50 Germans. He sustained a leg wound during his stand, and stopped only after he ran out of ammunition. Murphy rejoined his men, disregarding his own wound, and led them back to repel the Germans. He insisted on remaining with his men while his wounds were treated. For his actions that day, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. The 3rd Infantry Division was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its actions at the Colmar Pocket, giving Murphy a Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster for the emblem.

On 16 February, Murphy was promoted to first lieutenant and was awarded the Legion of Merit for his service from 22 January 1944 to 18 February 1945. He was moved from the front lines to Regimental Headquarters and made a liaison officer."

Audie was 5'5" tall and one of his fellow soldiers said "he couldn't have weighed more than 130 .lbs soaking wet, but he was larger than life." I agree.

Audie Murphy died in a plane crash in 1971. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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## woodman6415

It took me awhile to transcribe the Texas Quote of the Day, so I hope y'all enjoy it. Written by one of the greatest Texans of all time, Hallie Stillwell:

"I was born in 1897, and until 1918, when I married and come to the Stillwell Ranch in the Big Bend country, I had never heard of chili. It was a dish never served by my own family. You can imagine the shock I had when my husband Roy served me a bowl. It was so hot with pepper that I couldn't eat it. Out on the ranch in those early years we did not have many spices. Later, though, I learned to make my own favorite chili, using venison, tomatoes, Gebhart's chili powder, water, salt and pepper. Chili was just one of the many things I encountered as a bride on the Stillwell Ranch. 

When I had that first shocking taste from a "bowl of red" in 1918, I never dreamed that chili would bring me so many wonderful friends and bring so many visitors to my corner of the Southwest. For sixteen years I was justice of the peace in Alpine, Texas, and Frank X. Tolbert, a newspaper columnist in Dallas, would call me at my office to verify any rumor that he had heard from the Big Bend country. Tolbert and I became friends via these telephone reports. 

When Frank X. Tolbert's book "A Bowl of Red" was published in 1966, it ignited a great chili war. H. Allen Smith, a New York critic, announced that Tolbert's recipe for chili produced a bowl of "slop." Smith, in a "Holiday Magazine" article modestly titled "Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do," presenting his own recipe. Proper chili, he wrote, must have tomato paste and green peppers.

Smith challenged Tolbert to a cook-off in Terlingua, in the great Big Bend country of southwest Texas. Terlingua, he claimed, was the chili capital of the world. Tolbert, whose talents were more literary than culinary, asked Wick Fowler, chief cook of the Chili Appreciation Society (International) of Dallas, to take the challenge. I was asked to be a judge at the confrontation, along with Floyd Schneider, vice-president of a San Antonio Brewery. We were blindfolded to sample the chili. My vote was cast; it went to Smith's chili. Schneider cast his vote for Fowler's chili. Dave Witt, the mayor of Telingua, was the final judge, so he had to break the tie. He sampled one pot and choked. He tried some of the concoction from the other pot and spit it out. "My taste buds are paralyzed," he gasped. He declared the contest a tie and scheduled another confrontation for the next year.

The cook-offs are still taking place each year on the first weekend in November. People come by the thousands, from far and near, to Terlingua for the annual chili cookoff. There are many cooks in the contest and many entertainers present, and most of the spectators are there to have a good time. Frank Tolbert's daughter Kathleen Tolbert Ryan and son Fran Tolbert, Jr. are very active in the association, and I look forward to their visit every year. I hope to attend many more cook-offs in Terlingua. I have made many friends. I cherish each and every one of them, especially, H. Allen Smith, Wick Fowler, and of course Frank Tolbert. He shared with me his knowledge and skills in newspaper reporting and writing, something I've been dabbling in since 1930. Years have passed and days have gone by, but my admiration and love for Frank Tolbert has never diminished. He is the shining star in my memory, and I am blessed that I could call him my friend."

----- Hallie Stillwell's forward to Frank X. Tolbert's book "A Bowl of Red." Hallie wrote this in 1993 from Alpine, Texas

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## woodman6415

Riding bike there today .. 

The Texas Quote of the Day is a great description of Big Bend:

"In a lifetime spent in traveling, here I came upon the greatest wonder. The mantle of God touches you; it is what Beethoven reached for in music; it is panorama without beginning or end. No fire can burn so bright, no projection can duplicate the colors that dance over the desert or the bare rock formations that form the backdrop. No words can tell you, and no painter can hold it. It is only to be visited and looked at with awe, it will make you breathe deeply whenever you think of it, for you have inhaled eternity."

----- Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the "Madeline" series of children's books, Caldecott Award winner and artist, writing in Life Magazine in 1958

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## woodman6415

For your scientific notes, here is a list of just some of the celebrities who did military training at San Antonio's Lackland Air Force Base, which is now called "Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland."

1) Willie Nelson
2) Johnny Cash
3) Marvin Gaye
4) George Carlin
5) John Hillerman (from "Magnum PI")
6) Morgan Freeman
7) Sinbad
8) Paul Rodriguez
9) Chuck Norris
10) John Williams (composer of the Star Wars theme etc..)
11) Boxcar Willie
12) George Steinbrenner
13) Sam Kendricks (Olympic pole vaulter)

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In historic times, Texas has been home to six species of wildcats: Jaguar, Margay, Jaguarundi, Ocelot, Mountain Lion, Bobcat. The Jaguar and Margay are gone from Texas. There are thought to be less than 50 Jaguarundis, between 80-120 ocelots, perhaps 250 mountain lions, and over 100,000 bobcats in the Lone Star state.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"There are only two kinds of music -- the Blues, and Zippity-Do-Dah."

----- the immortal Townes van Zandt

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I find that the longer I stay in Texas, the luckier I get."

----- Traces of Texas reader Andrew Eliott Mcburney

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"If ever a man seemed destined to lead a rebel army, it was Sam Houston. A man of intrigue and daring, Houston was intemperate, grave, and deeply committed to democratic visions of his own design. He mixed statesmanship with theatrics, and when sweet reason didn't work, he used bullying force. As governor of Tennessee, Houston had been the focus of a marvelous scandal when his bride of a few months suddenly ran home to her parents. Houston offered no public explanation, and threatened to kill any man indelicate enough to stain his wife's honor with speculation. He resigned his office in disgrace, and for years lived among the Cherokees, who knew him as "Big Drunk." Like many other outcasts of his generation, Houston ended up in Texas. he was exactly the sort of man to rally an army of rowdies and misfits."

----- Gary Cartwright, "Galveston: A History of the Island"

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is fantastic:

"Newt Keen has a gap-toothed grin. That is where the bullet went.

Minutes before he was shot, a man had sapped him. Newt Keen was bending over his bathtub adjusting the water when the sap hit him. It staggered him. For a moment, the bathroom light grew a halo as big as a skillet. Newt Keen stumbled. He turned. The man, obviously a Yankee, sapped him again.

Newt Keen turned some more. The Yankee stood in the bathroom doorway. He looked like he topped 190 pounds. Newt Keen weighs 170 carrying his saddle. The Yankee stood 6-foot-2. Newt Keen might nudge six feet in his boots. The Yankee's hands hung to his knees. He wore a gray ski mask. "Woolly booger!" Newt Keen thought. "I'm going to make a run for it and go by him." But the Yankee grabbed him. They tangled. They wrestled out of the bathroom, around a corner and into a bedroom. Newt Keen tore off the ski mask. The Yankee pulled a pistol. He shot Newt Keen squarely in the mouth.

The bullet knocked out two of Newt Keen's front teeth on top and three on the bottom. Fragments of lead sprayed into his gums. Some lodged under his lips. Others flew down his throat. One slammed straight back into his neck. Newt Keen toppled. He sat down hard on a clothes hamper. He struggled to his feet, spitting blood. He pulled a pistol of his own out of a hip pocket. Newt Keen heard the Yankee clatter down the back stairs and out into the dark. He shot at the sound. He missed. The Yankee ran headlong into the clothesline and ripped one post out of the ground. He untangled himself and ran on.

There was silence.

"Dadgum," Newt Keen muttered. "He shot me."

He bled, and he hurt. He walked to a neighbor's. The neighbor called the sheriff. Newt Keen bummed a cigarette.

The sheriff drove him to a hospital, 32 miles away. There seemed to be so many pieces of bullet that a doctor said it must have been a .38-caliber--maybe even a .45. The doctor removed as many of the fragments as he could. But it seemed wiser to leave the one at the back of Newt Keen's neck. It was too close to his spine to risk surgery. He carries it still. He also carries one in his trachea. It is tucked up next to his larynx. Other fragments have worked their way out. Every now and then, one eases up through his gums. It is usually flat, sharp, shiny and paper-thin. When that happens, he pours himself a little drink of vodka--just one, but a pretty good-sized little drink--and he asks someone to get some tweezers or a couple of toothpicks and to please pull it out. "When you get it good and taut," he says, through the gap-toothed grin, "don't fiddle around. Jerk quick, y'know."

Newt Keen was in his 60s when all this happened. Now he is 73. He is white-haired, weather-beaten, jug-eared and rail-skinny. His belt buckle rides a little low, under the early shadow of a paunch. "When I first come here, the sun wasn't no bigger than an orange," he says, trying to swallow a chuckle. He dips some snuff--Copenhagen, his brand for 55 years. "Wasn't no moon a-tall." He spits. "Windmills was only this big." He holds one hand knee-high. With that, he cannot help himself: He laughs. He leans against an aging, stainless-steel beer cooler and props a scuffed boot against the edge of the counter in this, the single eatery in Mentone, Tex., the only town between here and nightfall. "Be right with ya, pardner!" Both boots back on the floor, he shuffles out to the kitchen to hustle a hamburger. He sold this cafe a while back to a daughter, Ann, and her husband. But he still cooks. And he cowboys. He works cattle off and on for a friend. Newt Keen likes to laugh and say, "Yeah, boy!" It has four syllables. But he is not a man to trifle with. He is rarely fooled. He knows in his bones that the man who shot him was not from these parts. He could tell by the way he acted. "Had to be a damn Yankee," he says. And when that particular Yankee was running pell-mell out through Newt Keen's back yard, it is significant that he was fleeing empty-handed--and that Newt Keen still had every nickel in his pocket of the $900 he had brought home from the cafe that night.

Newt Keen is tough, but not like some hothead. He is a stronger kind of tough, like good leather. So is most everyone around here. This is West Texas. Not much comes easily here--not even a drink of water. But its people are courageous and stubborn. In this winter of shrinking expectations, at a time when more than an occasional American wonders about the country's inner strength, this is a place to notice. The people are straightforward, independent, blessed with cussedness and the capacity to laugh, even at themselves. They are Plains people: resourceful, durable, bravely persevering. They have, in a word, grit."

----- Richard E. Meyer, "West of Pecos : There Ain't Many Folks in Loving County, but Durned Near Everyone's a Character: One Bulldozed His Pool, Some Drive 50 Miles for a Cup of Coffee and the Sheriff Was Named Punk," Los Angeles Times, January 31, 1993. You can read the rest of the article, which is wonderful, here:

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-31/magazine/tm-848_1_yankee

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

It took a Texan to introduce the tradition of eating black-eyed peas to the rest of America.

http://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/bud-kennedy/article192309964.html

I'll be eating mine today, need all the luck I can get for a better year! Tony


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## Mike Hill

I ate mine yesterday.


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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> I ate mine yesterday.



I had a big ole bowl as well! Tony


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> I had a big ole bowl as well! Tony


Me too along with some cabbage and cornbread!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

According to the US Patent Office, the beverage known as Dr Pepper, which was born in Waco, was sold for the very first time on 12th January 1885, making it the oldest major soft-drink brand in the United States.

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## Mike Hill

At 10, 2, & 4 - I'm a Pepper too!

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## Tony

@Wildthings, this one is for you Barry! Tony 

56 years ago today, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Houston Astrdome was held. The men have pistols in their hands because the baseball team that the dome was going to host was called the Colt 45s.

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## Mike Hill

And Houston should have kept Bud Adams.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> @Wildthings, this one is for you Barry! Tony
> 
> 56 years ago today, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Houston Astrdome was held. The men have pistols in their hands because the baseball team that the dome was going to host was called the Colt 45s.
> 
> View attachment 139316



and little did I know, at the young age of 7, that I would be spending many many days and evenings in that structure!!



Mike Hill said:


> And Houston should have kept Bud Adams.



and the Oilers

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The miracle of Texas lies in the fact that it is the work of a handful of men. In not a single fight during the entire period from 1800-1845 did they muster as many as one thousand fighting men. Overwhelming odds never discouraged them and defeat but spurred them to ultimate victory."

----- historian Jack C. Butterfield

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"You never know when you're going to be surrounded by Redskins."

----- Tom Landry, Dallas Cowboys football coach, American Express commercial, 1986

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## woodman6415

Many Texans do not realize that the greatest polo player of all time, Cecil Smith ---- shown second from left, in the white hat ---- was a Texan.. That's right, Cecil --- who was born on the Moss Ranch near Llano in 1904 ---- dominated the rarefied world typically ruled by English noblemen and Arab oil sheiks. When he died in 1999, the New York Times published the following fascinating obituary:

Cecil Smith, Considered the Best Polo Player Ever, Dies at 94

Published: February 14, 1999

In the 1930's, when polo was a sport of the rich, a Texan named Cecil Smith began a career that made him the greatest player in the history of a game more than 2,000 years old. On Jan. 21, the one-time polo-pony wrangler died in Boerne, Tex., where he had lived more than 30-years. He would have been 95 years old today.

He started playing polo in 1924. By 1930, he was a spare member on the United States international team. Then, starting in 1938, he began a string of 26 years, 25 consecutively (1938-62), in which he was a 10-goal player, the sport's highest ranking and one achieved by only 20 American-born players.

He more or less retired from polo in 1967. Despite warnings from his doctor, he continued to ride and train polo ponies at his 100-acre ranch in Boerne (pronounced Bernie). After hip-replacement surgery, he kept riding because he considered it psychological if not physical therapy. He played his last polo game at 83 and last rode at 92.

In 1985, he told Polo magazine:

''I can't ride very much any more, but I do ride a couple of hours every morning. I haven't been able to ride much since my hip operation several years ago. I think I would still be playing polo if I hadn't had that. If I ever got where I couldn't ride, I don't think I'd live very long.''

He was born poor on Valentine's Day, 1904, on the Moss Ranch near Llano, Tex., and learned to ride by age 3. As a youth, he won roping prizes in rodeos and seemed destined for the $1-a-day life of a cowpuncher.

But at 20, he went to work for George Miller, a horse trader from Austin who also trained polo ponies (they are really horses, not ponies). Smith made a mallet from an old broom handle and started practicing polo by hitting rocks and tin cans. As Miller once observed, ''It was like learning to play baseball in a railroad switchyard.''

Miller and Smith would train up to 100 horses a year for four months each, then ship them to California. Smith started playing a polo there with such celebrities as Will Rogers, Darryl Zanuck, Walt Disney and Reginald Denny. Horses that didn't sell in California were sent to Long Island.

Tommy Wayman, a 10-goal player in the 1980's, said the polo-pony business could be lucrative.

''In those days,'' he said, ''you could get $165 from the Government for a cavalry horse, which wasn't bad, but you could get $300 for a polo pony. So those cowboys would get an old mallet and they'd go out to the ranches, where they knew they could find horses that were broke to the saddle. ... Then they'd swing the mallet on them for a little bit, and the next day they'd be able to sell them as polo ponies. ... The Government would buy a lot of them, but private players would buy them, too.''

Polo ponies were especially needed because of the game's intense pace. It is played with four players to a team on a grass field 300 yards long and 160 yards wide. A game lasts six chukkers, or perids, of seven and a half minutes each, and each player needs a new horse every chukker.

Smith and Hubert Windshield (Rube) Williams were two of the many cowboys who started selling polo ponies and then took up the sport. Will Rogers, the humorist and a high-ranked polo player, told Easteners what expert horsemen those cowboys were. Rogers was there as the cowboys led a West team to victory over the supposedly invincible East in 1933 in Lake Forest, Ill.

In the third and deciding game, Smith scored six goals as the West won, 12-6. Tommy Hitchcock of the East, polo's most renowned player, was held scoreless. Smith later said, ''I never enjoyed a series any more than I did that one.''

Rogers enjoyed it, too. In his newspaper column, he wrote:

''Well, the hillbillies beat the dudes and took the polo championship of the world right out of the drawing room and into the bunkhouse. And she won't go East in years. ... Poor old society. They got nothing exclusive left. The movie folks outmarried and outdivorced 'em, the common folks too their cocktails, 'near' society look to bridge. Now polo has gone to the buckwheat belt.''

In 1938, Smith led a United States team that toured England and won five titles, including the King's Coronationa Cup. He often competed at the Meadow Brook Club in Westbury, N.Y., in major tournaments that attracted up to 30,000 spectators, many arriving on Long Island Rail Road special trains from Manhattan. Over the years, his teams won the United States Open seven times, the Pacific Coast Open seven times and the Monty Waterbury Cup four times.

At 5 feet 11 inches and 195 pounds, Smith seemed to play effortlessly. As H.I. Brock wrote in 1934 in The New York Times Magazine, ''There is certainly no flavor of Wild West rashness.''

Smith's era marked the American zenith of polo, a game invested by Asiatic nomads and brought to the United States in 1872 by Englishmen riding American horses. Mostly because of the high cost of horses - $12,000 to $40,000 for the best - only 3,000 players are registered with the United States Polo Association. The sport is popular in Argentina and England and has received wide attention because of such celebrity players as the Duke of Edinburgh and his son Prince Charles.

In 1966, Smith and his wife moved from San Antonio to Boerne. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, the former Mary Miller of Wading River, N.Y.; two sons who became ranked polo players, Charles of Fort Worth, Tex., and Sidney of Boerne; two grandchildren and a sister, Macy Janner of Llano, Tex.

When the Polo Hall of Fame opened in 1990, six players were elected on the first ballot - Smith, Hitchcock, Harry Payne Whitney, Devereux Milburn, Bob Skene and Stewart Iglehart. Smith's citation read in part:

''Cecil Smith was endowed with unquestionable talents both as a horseman and polo player. With determination and fortitude, he developed his abilities to perfection. Over the years, he played on more fields with more players than perhaps anyone else in polo. He has always been and still is the inspirational leader of the game.''

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day describes the impact of yellow fever on society in Texas back in 1878. When you think about "the good old days," you might also want to consider this:

"When a suspected [infected] person is found on the train going to Galveston, he is summarily seized at the muzzle of a six-shooter and tumbled off the train on the open prairie. If he is sick there is no shelter, no hospital, no bed, no preparation for medical treatment, no anything to keep him from dying like a dog. If he is well, there is no house, no food, no place where the necessities of life are to be had, and if he approaches a human residence he is driven off by an excited and fear stricken people armed with shot guns. Every house has its separate quarantine, any hamlet or village takes the responsibility of turning back trains, stopping the mails and disorganizing the commerce of an entire state. Human pity is extinguished, human mercy abolished, and insane panic armed with a shot gun rules supreme."

----- the Houston Daily Telegram in an article regarding the effects of yellow fever on Texas, 1878

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Although Richard Francis Lubbock was governor (and later state treasurer) of Texas, the city of Lubbock, founded in 1876, was actually named for his brother, Thomas S. Lubbock. Thomas was a Texas Ranger and later an officer in the Confederate Army. He died of typhoid fever at 45 years of age in Bowling Green, Kentucky on January 9th, 1862 and is buried in Houston's Glenwood Cemetery. Sources say that ---- for some reason ------ a small dust storm hovers mysteriously over his grave. ;)

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## John Brock

Is a "True Texas Fact" first cousin to a "Sea Story"?


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## woodman6415

John Brock said:


> Is a "True Texas Fact" first cousin to a "Sea Story"?


Could be ... I have no idea what a "Sea Story" is ...

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## John Brock

I expect there are a few Coasties and Squids in here that can explain Sea Stories to you...

Lots of them start like this:
"There I wuz, settin' inna bar, mindin' my own damned business..."


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## woodman6415

John Brock said:


> I expect there are a few Coasties and Squids in here that can explain Sea Stories to you...
> 
> Lots of them start like this:
> "There I wuz, settin' inna bar, mindin' my own damned business..."


That might be so but these are true Texas facts not made up stories... those start out with hold my beer and watch this

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## John Brock

You imply that Sea Stories are made up...

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## woodman6415

John Brock said:


> You imply that Sea Stories are made up...


No you implied sea stories are made up...

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## John Brock

I don't believe I did. <grin>

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Even before Texas was annexed into the United States, its size drew opposition. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, for example, proposed that Texas be reduced in size so that its area would not be larger than that of the largest state in the union, which at that time was Missouri. Congressman Jeff Hale of New Hampshire proposed dividing Texas in two, drawing a line from the northwest corner of the Panhandle down to the southeast coast. Under his proposal, West Texas would be a free state and East Texas a slave state. Even some Texans favored dividing the state up: Isaac Van Zandt, the Republic of Texas minister in Washington during the time of annexation, favored division into several states, later making it part of his platform when he ran for governor. He ended up dying before the election could be held. 

I don't know about y'all, but I'm glad Texas retained its original size and shape. We're wild and unwieldy, that's for sure, but the distinctive outline of the state is known around the world: buddy of mine started drawing the outline of the state in the dirt when he was in Afghanistan and before he was two-thirds of the way through the 10 year-old kids around him started shouting "Texas! Texas!"

Plus, if you think the rivalry between Dallas and Houston is bad now, can you imagine if they were in two separate states? :)

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Even before Texas was annexed into the United States, its size drew opposition. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, for example, proposed that Texas be reduced in size so that its area would not be larger than that of the largest state in the union, which at that time was Missouri. Congressman Jeff Hale of New Hampshire proposed dividing Texas in two, drawing a line from the northwest corner of the Panhandle down to the southeast coast. Under his proposal, West Texas would be a free state and East Texas a slave state. Even some Texans favored dividing the state up: Isaac Van Zandt, the Republic of Texas minister in Washington during the time of annexation, favored division into several states, later making it part of his platform when he ran for governor. He ended up dying before the election could be held.
> 
> I don't know about y'all, but I'm glad Texas retained its original size and shape. We're wild and unwieldy, that's for sure, but the distinctive outline of the state is known around the world: buddy of mine started drawing the outline of the state in the dirt when he was in Afghanistan and before he was two-thirds of the way through the 10 year-old kids around him started shouting "Texas! Texas!"
> 
> Plus, if you think the rivalry between Dallas and Houston is bad now, can you imagine if they were in two separate states? :)



An incredible post! Heck, even the Stoopid Islander knows the shape of Texas!!!!


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## ripjack13

Tony said:


> An incredible post! Heck, even the Stoopid Islander knows the shape of Texas!!!!



https://m.sporcle.com/games/pbrown/state_outlines

Ok...go...

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## John Brock

A few years ago, I swung through central California and New Mexico to pick up a couple good friends to ride out to Daytona Bike Week in Florida. This was March, and temperatures in Texas were hovering near the freezing mark. Even that cold, riding past the stock yards in west Texas was "memorable". Yes, it really smells so bad you can taste it.

Since then, when eating Texas shaped waffles, I will not eat the west Texas tip.

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## Tony

John Brock said:


> A few years ago, I swung through central California and New Mexico to pick up a couple good friends to ride out to Daytona Bike Week in Florida. This was March, and temperatures in Texas were hovering near the freezing mark. Even that cold, riding past the stock yards in west Texas was "memorable". Yes, it really smells so bad you can taste it.
> 
> Since then, when eating Texas shaped waffles, I will not eat the west Texas tip.



It smells like money.


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## ripjack13

Tony said:


> It smells like money.



Depends on where you keep your money....

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## woodman6415

Standing six feet tall before the age of 10 — and growing to over seven feet tall by the age of 13 — El Paso's Jack Earle weighed four pounds at birth and was small until he reached the age of seven, when he began growing like a weed. There are conflicting reports as to his true height, but numbers range from 7’7” to 8’6”. The most commonly accepted height is 7 feet 7 1/2 inches tall. 

Earle had been a Hollywood actor (he appeared in films like Hansel and Gretel and Jack and the Beanstalk) before a fall from scaffolding led to major injuries and temporary blindness, causing his retirement from the movie industry. Soon after his accident, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ freak show came through El Paso with Jim Tarver as their current traveling giant.

Earle was considerably taller than Tarver, and Ringling Bros., seeing an opportunity, offered Earle a one-year contract with the circus. Earle had said he never wanted to be in a freak show, but he needed to make a living, so he signed the contract. He would spend the next 14 years on the road with the sideshow.

The gentle giant began his Ringling Bros. career alongside 2’2” tall Major Mite (Clarence Chesterfield Howerton). During Earle’s time in the circus, the slight of height were always his closest friends. On his first day, Earle was put at ease when circus midget Harry Doll explained that there were more “freaks” in the audience than there were on the sideshow platform.

After retiring, Earle — who suffered from acromegalic gigantism — went on to become a traveling salesman for the Roma Wine Company. In addition, Jack was a talented artist and worked in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and poetry. He was published in a book entitled The Long Shadows, and on November 4, 1950, the Saturday Evening Post ran an article titled Life of Giant Jack Earle.

He died of kidney failure in 1952 at the age of 46.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day was written by early Texas pioneer Noah Smithwick:

"Children forgot, many of them had never known, what wheaten bread was like. Old Martin Varner used to tell a good story of his little son's first experience with a biscuit. The old man had managed to get together money or pelts enough to buy a barrel of flour. Mrs. Varner made a batch of biscuits, which, considering the resources of the country, were doubtless heavy as lead and hard as wood. When they were done Mrs. Varner set them on the table. The boy looked at them curiously, helped himself to one and made for the door with it. In a few minutes he came back for another. Doubting the child's ability to eat it so quickly, the old man followed him to see what disposition he made of the second. The ingenious youngster had conceived a novel and not altogether illogical idea of their utility. He had punched holes through the center, inserted an axle and triumphantly displayed a miniature Mexican cart. And I assure you, from my recollection of those pioneer biscuits, they were capable of sustaining a pretty heavy load."

----- Noah Smithwick, "Evolution of a State: Recollections of Old Texas," 1900

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Texas used to be home to several subspecies of gray wolf. The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) was once found in the western portion of the state. Canis lupus monstrabilis, the Texas gray wolf, occurred in central and south Texas, while the "buffalo" wolf, Canis lupus nubilis, followed the bison herds across the Staked Plains. A separate species, the red wolf (Canis rufus), once ranged throughout much of eastern and into central Texas. The buffalo wolf was extinct by 1926, the Texas gray wolf by 1942. (Wolf taxonomy was revised several years ago to reclassify twelve of the original subspecies occurring in the western United States and central Canada as C.l. nubilis; therefore, nubilis is not extinct according to that revision.) The last two wild Mexican wolves in Texas were killed in 1970, and by the late 1980s the Mexican wolf -- currently the most endangered of all the wolf subspecies -- was believed to be extinct in the wild.

Like most Native Americans, the Tonkawas of central Texas admired and coexisted with the wolf. They believed that a terrible fate would befall anyone who killed a wolf, because it was the wolf who had brought man into the world. In the 1850s, Colonel Randolph B. Marcy visited Texas to make surveys for Indian reservations, and reported on a Tonkawa ritual called the Wolf Dance. Fifty warriors dressed in wolf skins entered a large "dance lodge" on all fours, perfectly imitating the behavior of wolves. They sniffed the earth and at length began to dig, exhuming another warrior who had been previously buried below the surface, and who played the role of the first man on earth. The warrior, acting out his part, protested being brought from the spirit world where his every need had been attended to. A council of older wolves discussed what was to be done with him and decided that he should remain on earth and become a hunter.

Source: Jason Manning, "The Wolf in Texas"

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On August 16, 1870, Maj. Zenas R. Bliss enlisted a special detachment of thirteen Black Seminole scouts from a group of approximately 100 who had recently arrived at Fort Duncan, Texas, from three main camps in northern Mexico. These people represented part of the mixed-blood Seminole and black population that had migrated to northeastern Mexico during 1849 and 1850 to escape American slave hunters. They proved to be outstanding trackers.

Between 1875 and 1881 the scouts spent much of their time on the trail of Indian raiding parties who were loose in the countryside of West Texas. On April 25, 1875, scouts under the comman of Lt. John Lapham Bullis were hot on the heels of Comanche Indians who crossed the Pecos River. After a fight of about 45 minutes and in danger of being overrun, the scouts mounted their horses to escape. But Bullis' horse had run away, leaving him without a mount. 

The Comanches fired a steady stream of bullets at the scouts. One bullet cut the carbine strap of Sgt. John Ward, but he turned back into harm's way, slung Bullis onto his horse, and rode away. As they were off another bullet slammed into the stock of Bullis' rifle. Ward and troopers Isaac Payne and Pompey Factor successively carried Bullis to safety. All three men ended up bing awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions that day and all three are buried in the Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery, located on FM 3348, about three miles south of Brackettville, Texas.

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## woodman6415

Due to the approaching winter storm Texas will be closed tomorrow. That is all.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The harder we tried, the behinder we got."

----- legendary football coach Bum Phillips describes a loss

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## woodman6415

It was 47 years ago today, on January 16, 1971, that ZZ Top's first album was released. It was recorded in Tyler, Texas, and called, appropriately enough, "ZZ Top's First Album." You can listen to the whole thing here:

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## ripjack13

I love zz top!!!

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## woodman6415

ripjack13 said:


> I love zz top!!!


One of the biggest baddest motorcycle rallies is held in Austin ... draws anywhere from 250000 to 300000 bikers every year .. ZZ Top is the headliner this year .. the boss has already given me the ok to buy tickets ... I have never seen them live .. can't wait

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## Tony

ripjack13 said:


> I love zz top!!!



I saw them live for the first time 3 years ago in La Grange, was a heck of a show!!!Tony


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## Wildthings

I saw them before they were ZZ Top, playing in a Pizza joint downtown Houston. Then a couple times since. Ran into Dusty Hill on a fishing pier in San Leon in the early 2000's. I was speechless

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## woodman6415

Bonus Texas Quote of the Day:

"They say that Virginia is the mother of Texas. We never knew who the father was, but we kinda suspected Tennessee."

----- Tex Ritter, country music and movie star

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On June 8, 1832, Bastrop, Texas was platted along conventional Mexican lines, with a square in the center and blocks set aside for public buildings. The town was named Bastrop, but two years later the Coahuila y Tejas legislature renamed it "Mina" in honor of Francisco Javier Mina, a Mexican martyr and hero. After Texas succeeded in winning its independence from Mexico, the town was incorporated under the laws of Texas on December 18, 1837, and the name changed back to Bastrop.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The first American to walk in space was Ed White, a Texan who was born in San Antonio in 1930. That was on June 3, 1965. Sadly, White died (along with astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger B. Chaffee) during prelaunch testing for the first manned Apollo mission at Cape Canaveral on January 27, 1967.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my vision."

----- Sam Houston

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I will wear myself out by inches rather than submit to Santa Anna's arbitrary rule." 

----- Stephen F. Austin, October, 1835. Austin had just been elected General by the men who comprised the Texas army.

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## woodman6415

Bumper sticker seen in the Hill Country .... "Bandera, Texas: a drinking town with a cowboy problem."

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1876, there was a "grasshopper storm" so fierce that it stopped the trains running between Dallas and Fort Worth.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"For eastern Texas: Rain Saturday, with high northerly winds. Sunday rain, followed by clearing."

----- The U.S. Weather Bureau forecast that appeared in the Galveston News on Saturday morning, September 8, 1900. This was, of course, the day the hurricane struck, resulting in the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

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## woodman6415

The Somewhat Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The events of the Texas War for independence from Mexio are well known. What is less well known is that these events were actually the SECOND attempt by Anglos in Texas to secede from Mexico. The Fredonian Rebellion (December 21, 1826 – January 23, 1827) was the first attempt by Anglo settlers in Texas to secede. The settlers, led by Empresario Haden Edwards, declared independence from Mexican Texas and created the Republic of Fredonia near Nacogdoches. The short-lived republic encompassed the land the Mexican government had granted to Edwards in 1825 and included areas that had been previously settled. Edwards's actions soon alienated these established residents, and the increasing hostilities between them and settlers recruited by Edwards led Victor Blanco of the Mexican government to revoke Edwards's contract.

In late December 1826, a group of Edwards's supporters took control of the region by arresting and removing from office several municipality officials affiliated with the established residents. Supporters declared their independence from Mexico. Although the nearby Cherokee tribe initially signed a treaty to support the new republic because a prior agreement with the Mexican government negotiated by Chief Richard Fields was ignored, overtures from Mexican authorities and respected Empresario Stephen F. Austin convinced tribal leaders to repudiate the rebellion. On January 31, 1827, a force of over 100 Mexican soldiers and 250 militiamen from Austin's colony marched into Nacogdoches to restore order. Haden Edwards and his brother Benjamin fled to the United States. Chief Richard Fields was killed by his own tribe. A local merchant was arrested and sentenced to death, but later paroled.

The rebellion led Mexican President Guadalupe Victoria to increase the military presence in the area. As a result, several hostile tribes in the area halted their raids on settlements and agreed to a peace treaty. The Comanche abided by this treaty for many years. Fearing that through the rebellion the United States hoped to gain control of Texas, the Mexican government severely curtailed immigration to the region from the US. This new immigration law was bitterly opposed by colonists and caused increasing dissatisfaction with Mexican rule. Some historians consider the Fredonian Rebellion to be the beginning of the Texas Revolution. In the words of one historian, the rebellion was "premature, but it sparked the powder for later success.

As an aside, I have always loved the name/word "Fredonia." It's just a great-sounding word. Like maybe if I ever get another dog I'm naming him/her "Fredonia" or something.

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## woodman6415

The Not-So-Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

It was 182 years ago today, on Feb. 8, 1836, that David Crockett, accompanied by five other men, rode into the Alamo ----- and immortality. Dr. Richard Bruce Winders, Alamo Director of History and Curation, has written a fine article about Crockett, here:

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I think we are in a hell of a fix. Let's go over to the saloon and get a drink then mount our horses, go fight like the devil, and get out of it."

------ Secretary of War T.J. Rusk, Washington-on-the-Brazos, 1836

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## Tony

I read about this in Tom Landry's autobiography, it's a great story! Tony 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1960, when the NFL awarded a franchise to Dallas that became known as the Dallas Cowboys, the formation of an NFL team in Texas was met with strong opposition by Washington Redskins owner George Marshall. Marshall's position came about because, despite being located in the nation's capital, the Redskins had a monopoly as the only NFL team to represent the American South for several decades. But Marshall's opposition to the new team came as no surprise to Clint Murchison Jr. and Bedford Wynne, the owners of the proposed expansion team so, to ensure the birth of Cowboys, the two men bought the rights to the Redskins fight song, "Hail to the Redskins," and threatened to refuse to allow Washington to play the song at games. Marshall needed the song because it had become a staple for his "professional football team of Dixie," so he changed his mind and the city of Dallas was granted an NFL franchise on January 28, 1960. This early confrontation between the two franchises helped to trigger what would become one of the more heated National Football League rivalries, which continues to this day.

That's what I call Texas ingenuity, y'all. :)

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1867, yellow fever swept through Texas. The disease immobilized Galveston, then the largest city in the state. The epidemic infected three quarters of Galveston's population and killed nearly 2,000 people there. Bankers hesitated to lend money, as any borrower could be dead before the first payment.

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## JR Parks

@woodman6415 Wendell,
My dad went to SFA for a while and was dirt poor. He had talked lot about Fredonia State Bank to us kids and always wanted to have $$'s there. When he died my mom found a checking account at FSB that had over $80k that she knew nothing about. He had written only two check over the years-totaling $5.75. Wanting to make up for those poor school days. So like you Fredonia has a special place in my list of words. Jim

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## woodman6415

Lived in Comfort for almost a year until we found this house ..
I passed this several times and had no idea what it was ... interesting read 


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

If you go to Comfort, Texas, take the Main Highway 27, and head south of town for about 1.5 miles, you may spot this odd structure. It is the Hygieostatic Bat Roost and it was erected in 1918 on property owned by former San Antonio Mayor Pro Tem Albert Steves, who had commissioned San Antonio health officer Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell to design it. The shingled pyramid-shaped raised tower stands 30 feet high. One dormer serves as an entrance for the bats, while the other dormers are ornamental. The lower portion of the tower allows access for humans. The concrete base of the tower is raised 7 feet (2.1 m) off the ground, facilitating wagons being driven beneath to collect the guano.

Campbell had been researching a method of controlling the spread of mosquito-carried malaria, by encouraging the insect's natural enemy, the bat. Although mosquitoes have other natural enemies, many of them are active only during the daytime hours, while bats fly in search of food during the night when mosquitoes are most active. Campbell patented his bat roost design and erected several of them in the San Antonio area beginning in 1907. When the bat roost was built on his Kendall County property, Steves coined the name Hygieostatic Bat Roost based on the Greek words hygiea (health) and stasis (standing). The descendants of Albert Steves still own the property where the tower is located. It was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1981. In 1983, the roost was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Hygieostatic Bat Roost resulted in a Nobel Prize nomination for its designer, Dr. Campbell. You can read more about this here. It's a fascinating story, actually: http://www.batcon.org/resources/media-education/bats-magazine/bat_article/386

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## Rich P.

Interesting facts about Bats. 
Is it true that Texas is also infamous for bringing us Barney and Vanilla Ice?


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## Tony

Barney yes.


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## Tony

Emotional support peacocks, emotional support cats
Emotional support this, emotional support thats

I'm confused by this stuff. All Texans need is an emotional support burrito.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 141805



This is really cool. Found this crazy thing while geocaching a few years back and this post made me spend half the morning trying to find my pictures of it with no luck. There's also a cemetery right next to it with one grave in it


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## Rich P.

Seriously, so in the picture of the big bat house, what is the tree to the left that has some kind of big melon growing in the upper part?


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## Wildthings

I think there is a peach orchard in front of it


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## JR Parks

It looks like bald cypress leaves and fruit - not that big - I think the camera angle makes them appear larger.


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## woodman6415

JR Parks said:


> It looks like bald cypress leaves and fruit - not that big - I think the camera angle makes them appear larger.


Looks like what we always called a crabapple


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## JR Parks

http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/Display_Onetree.aspx?tid=50 Crabapple

Bald cypress

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## woodman6415

I remember they make a hugh mess ... if one was on my property I'd get rid of it ..


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## Rich P.

Thanks guys, I must say I am a little disappointed that it is a simple crabapple tree. I thought for a minute that Texas had some kind of hybrid tree that grew something big, I guess it is not true that everything is bigger in Texas.


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## woodman6415

Rich P. said:


> Thanks guys, I must say I am a little disappointed that it is a simple crabapple tree. I thought for a minute that Texas had some kind of hybrid tree that grew something big, I guess it is not true that everything is bigger in Texas.


Grapefruit trees in South Texas ... the Rio Red grapefruit is shipped all over the world and is known for its sweetness ...

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## woodman6415

So there I was at Arkey Blues Silver Dollar in Bandera, Texas, when a couple of drunk Irish tourists stumbled down the stairs and into the bar. They were playing pool when one of them suddenly yelled out, "I hear you Texans are hard drinkers! I'll give 200 American dollars to anybody who can line up 12 Shiner Bocks and drink them one after another!"

The room got quiet and nobody took up the Irishman's offer. One cowboy even got up and left. Twenty minutes later the same cowboy who left showed back up and tapped the Irishman on the shoulder. "Is your bet still good?" asked the cowboy?

The Irishman said the bet was still good and asked the bartender to line up 12 bottles of Shiner Bock. Immediately the cowboy tore into all 12 of them, chugging them one after another. The other folks in the bar cheered as the Irishman sat in stunned silence.

Finally the Irishman gave the cowboy the 200 bucks and said, "If ya don't mind me askin', where did you go for that 20 minutes you were gone?"

The cowboy replied, "Oh...I walked over to the 11th Street Cowboy Bar to see if I could do it first".

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> So there I was at Arkey Blues Silver Dollar in Bandera, Texas, when a couple of drunk Irish tourists stumbled down the stairs and into the bar. They were playing pool when one of them suddenly yelled out, "I hear you Texans are hard drinkers! I'll give 200 American dollars to anybody who can line up 12 Shiner Bocks and drink them one after another!"
> 
> The room got quiet and nobody took up the Irishman's offer. One cowboy even got up and left. Twenty minutes later the same cowboy who left showed back up and tapped the Irishman on the shoulder. "Is your bet still good?" asked the cowboy?
> 
> The Irishman said the bet was still good and asked the bartender to line up 12 bottles of Shiner Bock. Immediately the cowboy tore into all 12 of them, chugging them one after another. The other folks in the bar cheered as the Irishman sat in stunned silence.
> 
> Finally the Irishman gave the cowboy the 200 bucks and said, "If ya don't mind me askin', where did you go for that 20 minutes you were gone?"
> 
> The cowboy replied, "Oh...I walked over to the 11th Street Cowboy Bar to see if I could do it first".



Been in both places, fine drinking establishments! Tony


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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> Been in both places, fine drinking establishments! Tony


Was in the 11 street couple weeks ago for benifit .... last time at Arkeys way to much smoke for me

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## Tony

Yes, our chili is that good, and no, it does NOT have beans in it! Tony 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Jesse James once refused to rob a bank in Mckinney, Texas, because that town had a chili parlor that Jesse liked, and he knew that he would not be able to return to eat there if he robbed the local bank.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I never go looking for a sucker. I go looking for a champion and make a sucker out of him."

----- Famed poker player Thomas Austin Preston, Jr., netter known as "Amarillo Slim." He was born in Amarillo in 1928 and passed away in 2012

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## woodman6415

Puerta de la Bandera (Bandera Pass)

Just 47 miles northwest of San Antonio lies the self-proclaimed “Cowboy Capital of the World,” Bandera, Texas. Settled by Roman Catholic immigrants from Poland, many of the 1200 Texans that call it home are descended from them. However, as fantastic as Bandera is, this story is not about it.

If you travel up Highway 173 from Bandera about ten miles, you will come to a V cut in the limestone mountains. The route you travel on is one that has been traveled for thousands of years by Texas travelers from early prehistoric times to today. Archeologists have discovered campgrounds south of the pass dating back 3,000 years. Of course, the modern two-lane paved highway wasn’t there then, just a trail that led through the mountains.

Over time history has made that trek stopping to put its fingerprint on Texas and the people living in it for over 120 generations. In 1772, a Spanish force attacked a band of Apaches in the pass who had been using it as a staging ground for raids against the Spanish missions of San Antonio. After three days of fighting the Spanish under the command of a General Ciro or possibly Manuel Bandera were victorious and peace with the marauding Apaches was achieved for a brief period. The site was marked with a flag, and the Spanish word for a flag is “bandera.” It was either the flag or the general for whom the Pass and the town were named. Another version has the two sides suffering equally devasting losses, and a peace treaty was struck. The Spanish would not venture north into Apache territory, and the Apache would not raid south into Spanish lands. Supposedly a red flag was placed on a peak beside the Pass to remind each other of their agreement.

In 1779, Captain José de Urrutia led yet another successful campaign against the Apache. Captain Urrutia was made “captain general” of all the nations hostile to the Apache and his knowledge of the Apache was unsurpassed. Following an increase in hostilities by the Apache in San Antonio de Bexar and the surrounding missions, Urrutia led a successful campaign against them culminating in a battle again at Bandera Pass.

As the Comanche pushed the Apache westward into New Mexico Territory and south into Mexico, they began to use this route between Kerrville and Bandera that became known as the “Comanche Trace.”

By 1815 the maps began showing it as “Puerta de la Bandera” which translates to the door of Bandera or Bandera Pass.

In the “Great Raid of 1840” Comanche leader “Buffalo Hump” and 400 warriors wage a path of destruction from the plains of west Texas to Victoria and Linnville on the Texas coast. General Sam Houston appointed Captain John Coffee Hayes to form a special unit of Texas Rangers to end any more such raids through Texas. Equipped with the Patterson Colt 5-shot revolvers instead of single shot guns, fifty Texas Rangers met and faced an overwhelming number of Comanche at Bandera Pass. History records some dispute as to the exact location, but the fight never-the-less did take place. Captain Jack Hayes is recorded as having said, “we can whip them. No doubt about that,” despite the overwhelming odds. One of the Comanche warriors later reported: “they had a shot for every finger on the hand.” A difference that not only won the battle for the Rangers but forever changed the odds against the Comanche in their dominance in Texas. 

In August or 1856 a herd of 40 camels journeyed through this Pass on their way to Camp Verde as part of the brief but illustrious United States Cavalry Camel Corps
During the Civil War first the Union and then the Confederate troops stood guard at the Pass to keep contraband and livestock rustling in check. Later local minutemen and vigilantes stood their turn at policing the 
Pass.

Following the War Between the States, this route took on yet another significance and became the start of the Great Western Trail, also known as the Dodge City Trail and the Fort Griffin Trail in 1874. Following the defeat of the Comanche in the Red River War, the Great Western as it was known, became the principal route for Texas cattle driven to northern markets. By 1879, it replaced the previous Chisholm Trail for that purpose.

So as you drive through that small V-shaped pass through the mountains just ten miles beyond Bandera, take note and tip your hat to all those who have passed that way before you...their numbers have been plentiful.

WHADDA YA KNOW ABOUT TEXAS?

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

If you go to Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood, California, you'll find the grave markers of many famous people: Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, James Coburn, Mel Torme, Don Knotts, Natalie Wood, Peggy Lee etc... What you will NOT find is the marker for (Texan) Roy Orbison. Even though he is buried there, his grave is unmarked. Incidentally, Roy's wife, Barbara, died exactly 23 years to the day after Roy did: he passed away on Dec. 6, 1988 and she on Dec. 6, 2011. It's hard to believe that it's been nearly 30 years since Roy moved on, but it's true.


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## woodman6415

On this day in 1836, Willam B. Travis sent this letter from the besieged Alamo. He lost the battle and his life. But he set the course for the gritty history of a state that insists on never giving up. Victory or Death. Long Live Texas.

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## woodman6415

Almost 101 years ago, on April 2, 1917, Ophelia “Birdie” Crosby Harwood of Marble Falls became the first woman to be elected mayor in Texas — before women even had the right to vote.

In a March 1917 article in the Marble Falls Messenger, Opehlia ----- who was also a noted horsewoman ----- stated her reasons for running for mayor: “A woman's first duty is to her home and children. When she has raised them up … no good woman is out of place doing those things which are so vital to her children and her home.”

She especially wanted a clean town. With uncanny foresight in speaking of Marble Falls’ future, she said, “We have everything about us to make (our town) one of the beauty spots of our state. Our citizens are the best. Let's welcome the stranger within our gates, but first, let us get our house in order.”

And so it was that Ophelia "Birdie" Crosby Harwood was elected mayor of Marble Falls by an electorate comprised entirely of men.

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## woodman6415

Just up the road from my place 


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Helotes, Texas, derives its name from the Spanish terms elotes and olotes, which means "corn on the cob." The area has been called "Helotes" since the early 1700s, when it was mentioned in a Spanish report to the governor of the region, describing the area where Apaches scalped a Spaniard who had been looking for stray horses. How the name was derived is unknown; however, it is believed that Lipans had cultivated corn along the creek for centuries before frequent raids of Comanche Indians made such agricultural activities impossible.

Helotes, which is located approximately twenty miles northwest of downtown San Antonio on State Highway 16 in northwestern Bexar County, was settled in the 1850s by immigrants who were for the most part from Germany and Mexico. The pioneer whose land encompassed what is now known as Old Town Helotes was Scottish immigrant and surgeon Dr. George F. Marnoch, who purchased the property in 1858 and built a two-and-a-half-story limestone house in 1859; the house was awarded a Texas Historic Landmark designation in 2010. His eldest son, Gabriel Wilson Marnoch, was a well-known naturalist who discovered two reptilian and two amphibian species in the Helotes hills.

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## Wildthings

Marnoch's Limestone house

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Dalhart, Texas, is closer to five other state capitals than it is to its own state capital of Austin.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When first called to a patient, the charge for one visit shall be five dollars. After nine o'clock, P.M., the charges for professional visits shall be doubled in all cases. For visits out of the limits of the city, an extra charge of one dollar a mile during the day, and two dollars a mile at night.

------ Medical and Surgical Society of Houston, 1841


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

Florence Butt grossed 50 dollars and 60 cents in the first month of operations at her little grocery store in Kerrville, Texas, back in 1905. 113 years that little grocery store has grown into HEB, with annual sales of 25 billion dollars. I wonder what Florence would say if she were to walk through the aisles of my local HEB superstore. She'd probably tell somebody to get a broom and clean something up. :)

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## Wildthings

We have a new HEB coming to our little community of Mont Belvieu. Barbers Hill is growing like a weed so I guess it's not "Little" anymore. Spring of 2018!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> We have a new HEB coming to our little community of Mont Belvieu. Barbers Hill is growing like a weed so I guess it's not "Little" anymore. Spring of 2018!


According to folks in Kerrville the larger store there is in the original site ... we shop the one in Boerne mostly ... but on occasion go to Helotes ... that's the biggest grocery store I've ever had the pleasure of shopping in ... isles so wide you could drives cars down them ... I think if I counted right there is 32 checkout lanes .. all are open during peak times .. hardly any wait ... and now they offer curb side pick up .. I haven't used it yet .. but think I will soon

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Hill Decker Co. received an elegant new funeral car, which is a credit to any town. Everything is of deep black, even to the carvings. While it is the handsomest carriage in town, no one has yet expressed a desire for a ride."

----- The Dalhart Texan newspaper, 1905

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> According to folks in Kerrville the larger store there is in the original site ... we shop the one in Boerne mostly ... but on occasion go to Helotes ... that's the biggest grocery store I've ever had the pleasure of shopping in ... isles so wide you could drives cars down them ... I think if I counted right there is 32 checkout lanes .. all are open during peak times .. hardly any wait ... and now they offer curb side pick up .. I haven't used it yet .. but think I will soon


I've been to the one in Boerne on a Friday heading to a deer hunting trip. It was crazy the amount of folks in there


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the day:

“If any member is too drunk to rise from his seat to speak, the chair shall appoint a committee of three to hold him up; but provided the member shall be dead drunk, and unable to speak, the chair shall appoint an additional committee of two to speak for him; provided however that if the member is unable to be held up by tables, chairs etc… and in that case, one of the members shall gesticulate for him.”

------- Rules of Order for the incoming Texas Congress, which had a reputation of having some members who liked to have a drink, as proposed by the Austin Daily Bulletin in 1841

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"You’ve got to smell it and get your fingers burned and shed a few tears over it and live your life over it and everything else to get it right. That’s the way I look at it."

------ C.B. Stubblefield ("Stubb"), famed Texas barbeque master and music lover/promoter on barbeque and life.

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## Wildthings

March 6th, 1836!! REMEMBER THE ALAMO!!


The Texas founders were not a powdered wig crowd. They were men with the bark on, their passions and foibles unhidden (except maybe to themselves.) In other words, they were real people, just like you and me. 

Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night, "Some men are born great, some men achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

*Our fifty-nine signers of* the Texas Declaration of Independence can be divided into those same categories, but you would find a disproportionate number tallied in the third column. 

Most of them had left the settled country to start new lives here in the land of second chances. 


Here they are...

*Maybe you're descended from one:*







Jesse B. Badgett --- George Washington Barnett --- Thomas Barnett --- Stephen W. Blount --- John W. Bower --- Asa Brigham

Andrew Briscoe --- John Wheeler Bunton --- John S. D. Byrom --- Mathew Caldwell --- Samuel P. Carson --- George C. Childress 

William Clark, Jr. --- Robert M. Coleman --- James Collinsworth --- Edward Conrad --- William Carroll Crawford --- Richard Ellis 

Stephen H. Everett --- John Fisher --- Samuel Rhoads Fisher --- James Gaines --- Thomas J. Gazley --- Benjamin Briggs Goodrich

Jesse Grimes --- Robert Hamilton --- Bailey Hardeman --- Augustine B. Hardin --- Sam Houston --- William D. Lacy

Albert Hamilton Latimer --- Edwin O. Legrand --- Samuel A. Maverick Collin McKinney --- Michel B. Menard --- William Menefee

John W. Moore --- William Mottley --- José Antonio Navarro --- Martin Parmer --- Sydney O. Pennington --- Robert Potter

James Power --- John S. Roberts --- Sterling C. Robertson --- José Francisco Ruiz --- Thomas Jefferson Rusk

William. B. Scates --- Erastus 'Deaf' Smith --- George W. Smyth --- Elijah Stapp --- Charles B. Stewart --- James G. Swisher --- Charles S. Taylor

David Thomas --- John Turner --- Edwin Waller --- Claiborne West --- James B. Woods --- Lorenzo de Zavala

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## woodman6415

The Alamo fell on this day 182 years ago in the battle for Texas’ independence.

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## woodman6415

Today is, of course, the 182nd anniversary of the fall of the Alamo. The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of David Crockett at the Alamo, as seen by Captain Rafael Soldana of the Tampico Battalion:

"A tall man, with flowing hair, was seen firing from the same place on the parapet during the entire siege. He wore a buckskin suit and a cap all of a pattern entirely different from those worn by his comrades. This man would kneel or lie down behind the low parapet, rest his long gun and fire, and we all learned to keep a good distance when he was seen to make ready to shoot. He rarely missed his mark, and when he fired he almost always rose to his feet and calmly reloaded his gun, seemingly indifferent to the shots fired at him by our men. He had a strong, resonant voice and often railed at us, but as we did not understand English, we could not comprehend the import of the words, other than that they were defiant. This man I later learned was known as "Kwockey."

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## Wildthings

*March 6th -- On this day in Texas history

March 6th, 1836 -- Alamo falls to Mexican army
*
On this day in 1836, the fortified compound of San Antonio de Valero Mission, under siege for thirteen days by the Mexican army under General Antonio Lòpez de Santa Anna, was subjected to an early morning assault. After a fierce battle, lasting for perhaps some 90 minutes, the defenses of the Alamo were overrun and all the defenders were killed. The chapel fell last. The slogan "Remember the Alamo!" subsequently became a rallying cry for the Texas Revolution, and the Alamo became a shrine to fallen Texas heroes.


* March 6th, 1944 -- Medal of Honor recipient's plane shot down*

On this day in 1944, John Cary Morgan's plane was shot down over Berlin. He spent the remaining fourteen months of World War II as a German prisoner. The Texas native, born in Vernon in 1914, received his pilot's license at age twenty. In July 1943, Second Lieutenant Morgan was stationed in England and was flying as a copilot on a B-17 bomber when his aircraft was attacked by a large force of enemy fighters. The pilot received a severe head wound that left him crazed, and fell over the controls with the wheel in his arms. Morgan took the controls on his side and, despite the frantic struggles of the pilot, brought the aircraft under control and back into the formation. Because the interphone had been destroyed it was impossible to call for assistance. The waist and tail gunners were unconscious because of damage to the oxygen system in the rear compartment. Hearing no fire from their guns, Morgan concluded that they had bailed out. He faced the prospect of flying the plane to the target and back to England unassisted. For two hours he flew in formation, with one hand holding off the pilot and the other on the controls, until the navigator entered the pilot's compartment and relieved the situation. Morgan's heroic performance resulted in the successful completion of a vital bombing mission and the safe return of the aircraft and crew. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for "gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty." He continued to fly missions until he was shot down in 1944. His story was fictionalized in the novel _Twelve O'Clock High!_ by Sy Bartlett (1948).

*
March 6th, 1954 -- A jolly good barbecue*

On this day in 1954, the Anglo-Texan Society in London held its first official affair—a barbecue. Fifteen hundred guests enjoyed the celebration and feasted on 2,800 pounds of beef generously donated by the Houston Fat Stock Show. Author Graham Greene founded the group in London in late 1953 and welcomed persons with “definite connections with both Texas and Great Britain.” The society promoted friendly relations between Texans and Britons during a time when Great Britain had increased ties with the Lone Star State and its oil. Architect O’Neil Ford was an enthusiastic participant. The organization enjoyed its heyday under the leadership of Sir Alfred Bossom, a member of Parliament. The society met four times a year for merry Mexican food luncheons and dynamic speakers. By the mid-1960s the fun-loving glory days of the Anglo-Texan Society were over. The group disbanded in 1979.

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## Tony

Bonus Texas Quote of the Day:

"The salvation of Texas depends in great measure on keeping Bexar out of the hands of the enemy. It serves as the frontier picquet guard, and if it were in the possession of Santa Anna, there is no stronghold from which to repel him in his march toward the Sabine..... Colonel Neill and myself have come to the solemn resolution that we will rather die in these ditches than give it up to the enemy."

----- Jim Bowie in a letter written from the Alamo to Gov. Smith, Feb. 2, 1836

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## Wildthings

And they did!!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Texas is home to 248,800 farms and ranches totaling 130.2 million acres.

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## woodman6415

Judge Roy Bean on a horse outside his famous saloon in Langtry, Texas. I am not sure exactly what the white object suspended underneath the word "Justice" is, but it appears to be a two-headed something or other. A fantastic historical capture, no doubt.

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## Tony

The Texas quote of the day:

"We drew a great many recruits from Texas; and from nowhere did we get a higher average, for many of them had served in that famous body of frontier fighters, the Texas Rangers. They were splendid shots, horsemen, and trailers. They were accustomed to living in the open, to enduring great fatigue and hardship without complaint, and to encountering all kinds of danger."

---- Teddy Roosevelt talking about the Texas portion of the Rough Riders who served with him in the Spanish-American war, 1898


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## woodman6415

The clearest photo of Judge Roy Bean that I have seen. This was taken in Llano, Texas, in (roughly) 1890. When he was a younger man, Bean lived with his brother, Joshua Bean, in San Diego, California. Considered handsome Roy Bean competed for the attentions of various local women. A Scotsman named Collins challenged Roy to a pistol-shooting match on horseback. Bean was left to choose the targets and decided that they would shoot at each other. The duel was fought on February 24, 1852 and ended with Collins receiving a wound to his right arm. Both men were arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder. In the two months that he was in jail Bean received many gifts of flowers, food, wine and cigars from women in San Diego. Hidden in the final gifts he received while incarcerated were knives that were encased in tamales. Bean used the knives to dig through the cell wall and he escaped on April 17, 1852. He then fled to San Gabriel, California where he became a bartender in his brother's "Headquarters Saloon". 

After Joshua was murdered in November 1852, Bean inherited the Headquarters. In 1854 Roy courted a young woman who was subsequently kidnapped and forced to marry a Mexican officer. Bean challenged the groom to a duel and killed him. Six of the dead man's friends put Bean on a horse and tied a noose around his neck leaving him to hang when the horse moved. When he was hung the rope stretched and Bean was able to stay alive. The bride, who had been hiding behind a tree, cut the rope, freeing him and saving his life. This experience left Bean with a permanent rope burn and a stiff neck for the rest of his life.

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## woodman6415

The Not-So-Arcane Texas Facts of the Day:

Many Texans are familiar with Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" group of Texas settlers, the first group of 300 families to be brought in by Stephen after he took the role of "empressario" upon the death of his father, Moses Austin, in 1821. The Old 300 are accorded a status in Texas history akin to that of Mayflower ancestors in New England. A few other facts about the Old 300: 

1) Many assume that the Old 300 were the first Anglo settlers in Texas, but they were not. There were already some Anglos living in Nacogdoches and San Augustine and along the Red River in northeastern Texas.

2) Austin was originally given permission to settle the Old 300 in 1821 and quickly began bringing colonists to Mexican Texas. Those 300 families were mostly in place by August, 1824, though a few titles were not issued until as late as 1828.

3) The choice grants of the first settlers were the rich river bottom lands of the Brazos, Colorado, and St. Bernard Rivers.

4) Early grants extended as far up the Brazos as present-day Brazos County in the area near Bryan, Texas. They were most heavily concentrated around Austin's colonial headquarters in San Felipe, Texas. No limits were designated for the original colony, meaning that everything between the Gulf of Mexico and the old San Antonio road and between the Lavaca and the San Jacinto rivers was up for grabs within the grant.

5) Families were given no less than one "labor" (about 177 acres) or one "sitio" (about 4,428 acres) depending on whether they were farmers or livestock raisers. 

6) Unmarried men could join together in partnerships of 2-4 to constitute "families."

7) Some men (James Rabb, John P. Coles, James Cummins etc..) got larger tracts for erecting grist mills.

8) The wealthiest of the Old 300 was Jared E. Groce, who received 10 sitios on account of the large amount of property (mostly slaves) he brought with him. Most of the first families who came in 1821 and 1822 received extra lands. 

9) There were no limits placed on the amount of land either Stephen F. Austin or the Mexican land commissioner could claim.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"A man who doesn't admire a good steer, a good horse, and a good woman ... well, there is something wrong with that man's head."

----- W.T. Waggoner, famed Texas oilman and rancher

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## woodman6415

It is a long climb to top .. but the views are worth it ... 


The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Enchanted Rock State Natural Area lies 18 miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas. Humans have camped in the area around Enchanted Rock for at least 12,000 years. More than 400 archaeological sites have been found in the park. All of them are protected and 120 of them have been designated State Archeological Landmarks. One enduring sign humanity's prehistoric presence remains: Prehistoric people ground or pounded their food on granite rocks throughout the park. They left depressions in the granite, called bedrock mortars. If you know what you're looking for, you can see them in the park today. It's a powerful and humbling experience to look at one and realize that maybe 1500 years ago somebody else was looking at the same tableau.

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## Wildthings

*On this day -- in Texas History

Aguayo expedition enters Texas
*
On this day in 1721, an expedition under the Marqués de Aguayo crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. José de Azlor y Virto de Vera, Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo, was governor of Coahuila and Texas when the viceroy of New Spain accepted his offer to reestablish Spanish control of East Texas in the wake of the French invasion of 1719. Aguayo organized a force of some 500 men, which he called the Battalion of San Miguel de Aragón, with Juan Rodríguez as guide. Aguayo reached San Antonio on April 4 before proceeding to East Texas. A detachment under Domingo Ramón occupied La Bahía del Espíritu Santo on the same day. The Indians east of the Trinity welcomed the Spanish, as did the French commander Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who agreed to withdraw to Natchitoches. Leaving 219 of his men at various presidios in Texas, Aguayo returned to Coahuila, where the force was disbanded on May 31, 1722. The expedition resulted in the increase in the number of missions in Texas from two to ten, the increase in the number of presidios from one to four, and the establishment of so definite a Spanish claim to Texas that it was never again disputed by France or by the French in Louisiana

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## woodman6415

Could you just imagine the outcry if this was done today ?


The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Robert 'Bob' Goss and M.T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas were sent to Kilgore during the oil boom to 'restore order and preserve the peace.' Both were Texas Rangers ... Goss arrived in Kilgore, February 28, 1931, after being released from a hospital where he had spent 20 days recovering from a bullet wound. Gonzaullas preceded him by a few weeks.

Law enforcement officers, overwhelmed by the great mass of people and the necessity to protect them from harm, many times resorted to the swift justice of a lead slug to curb lawlessness of a violent nature. As one of the old-timers put it, 'there were too many of them, and too much was going on. We simply didn't have time to arrest, jail and appear in court against everything thug who came along. We stopped crime by stopping them ..... a dead hi-jacker don't ever hi-jack again! The word gets around and soon the new ones steer clear of the town, too ---- it's just that simple.'

Within a short time after the boom started, the county jail was chock full of prisoners, and some method of holding additional prisoners was of utmost importance. The rangers neatly solved this by putting into operation one of the strangest jails ever known ---- 'The Trotline.' It was first situated at the corner of Main and Commerce Streets and consisted of a log-chain strung in a rough square around the trunks of trees. At intervals along this chain smaller chains were fastened with a 'cold-shut [snapping lock].' The prisoners were secured to the other end, which was secured around their necks and fastened with a padlock. Care was taken to fasten the lock tightly against the back of the neck so the prisoner could not pick the lock. This "trotline' was later moved to an abandoned church, where it remained until the building was sold to a man who converted it into a dance hall."

------- Al Eason, "Boom Town: Kilgore, Texas," 1960

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Could you just imagine the outcry if this was done today ?
> 
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "Robert 'Bob' Goss and M.T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas were sent to Kilgore during the oil boom to 'restore order and preserve the peace.' Both were Texas Rangers ... Goss arrived in Kilgore, February 28, 1931, after being released from a hospital where he had spent 20 days recovering from a bullet wound. Gonzaullas preceded him by a few weeks.
> 
> Law enforcement officers, overwhelmed by the great mass of people and the necessity to protect them from harm, many times resorted to the swift justice of a lead slug to curb lawlessness of a violent nature. As one of the old-timers put it, 'there were too many of them, and too much was going on. We simply didn't have time to arrest, jail and appear in court against everything thug who came along. We stopped crime by stopping them ..... a dead hi-jacker don't ever hi-jack again! The word gets around and soon the new ones steer clear of the town, too ---- it's just that simple.'
> 
> Within a short time after the boom started, the county jail was chock full of prisoners, and some method of holding additional prisoners was of utmost importance. The rangers neatly solved this by putting into operation one of the strangest jails ever known ---- 'The Trotline.' It was first situated at the corner of Main and Commerce Streets and consisted of a log-chain strung in a rough square around the trunks of trees. At intervals along this chain smaller chains were fastened with a 'cold-shut [snapping lock].' The prisoners were secured to the other end, which was secured around their necks and fastened with a padlock. Care was taken to fasten the lock tightly against the back of the neck so the prisoner could not pick the lock. This "trotline' was later moved to an abandoned church, where it remained until the building was sold to a man who converted it into a dance hall."
> 
> ------- Al Eason, "Boom Town: Kilgore, Texas," 1960



A trotline, that's awesome!

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## woodman6415

Traces Of Texas 
Earlier today I posted about Enchanted Rock. It's a giant granite batholith that lies about 18 miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas, and is composed of some of the oldest exposed rock in the world, estimated to be one billion years old. One of the things that frustrates me is that it's hard to show how big it is in a photograph, hard to understand the scale. Fortunately the two men shown here on top of the rock appeared at just the right time to make a kind of visual demonstration. I took this photo back in June, 2010.

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## Wildthings

You have to stand at the base of it to really comprehend it!!

and to listen to it cool off after sunset!!

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## JR Parks

woodman6415 said:


> It is a long climb to top .. but the views are worth it ...
> 
> 
> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Enchanted Rock State Natural Area lies 18 miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas. Humans have camped in the area around Enchanted Rock for at least 12,000 years. More than 400 archaeological sites have been found in the park. All of them are protected and 120 of them have been designated State Archeological Landmarks. One enduring sign humanity's prehistoric presence remains: Prehistoric people ground or pounded their food on granite rocks throughout the park. They left depressions in the granite, called bedrock mortars. If you know what you're looking for, you can see them in the park today. It's a powerful and humbling experience to look at one and realize that maybe 1500 years ago somebody else was looking at the same tableau.



Climbed to the top with all 5 grandkids last year ages 2-6 yr olds and 3 - 3yr olds all kicked butt and are ready to go again and again. A mystical place for sure

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

To this day, El Paso has a law that requires churches, hotels, stores, markets, banks, and railroad depots to provide spittoons.

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## woodman6415

JR Parks said:


> Climbed to the top with all 5 grandkids last year ages 2-6 yr olds and 3 - 3yr olds all kicked butt and are ready to go again and again. A mystical place for sure


We have climbed it several times over the years ... once many years ago we hiked the trail around the bottom... don't remember the length of Trail but it took a about 4 hot miserable hours .. never hiked that one again ..

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## woodman6415

Rumor: the crack in the floor of the rotunda in the state capitol was caused by someone falling. 

Truth: A painter named Ed Wheeler DID fall 160 feet to his death while painting the rotunda in 1922. However, the terrazo floor was installed during the Texas Centennial celebration in 1936. Thus, it isn't possible that the crack was caused by Mr. Wheeler's fall. 

The crack is due to natural settling.

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## Wildthings

Maybe he cracked the floor when he fell and they terrazzo'd over it and the crack is starting to show through Eh??

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Facts of the Day: 

Most everybody knows that the mockingbird is the state bird and the pecan is the state tree, but how many of you knew that sideoats grama is the state grass, petrified palmwood is the state stone, square dance is the state dance (shouldn't this be the two-step?), jalapenos are the state pepper, the Texas Longhorn is the official state large mammal, the nine-banded armadillo is the official state small mammal, and boasting is the official state pastime? Okay, so I made that last one up. But the rest are true!

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## woodman6415

About 25 miles from my hometown 
I don't like rattle bugs 

Between Miles and Mereta Tx. Coworkers cleaned out a barn. Over 60 snakes in 2 days. About 2 week ago.

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## woodman6415

Today marks the 175th anniversary of one of the most notorious incidents in Texas history, The Black Bean Episode. The Black Bean Episode was an aftermath of the Mier Expedition and resulted from an attempted escape of the captured Texans as they were being marched from Mier to Mexico City. After an escape at Salado, Tamaulipas, on February 11, 1843, some 176 of the men were recaptured within about a week. A decree that all who participated in the break were to be executed was modified to an order to kill every tenth man. Col. Domingo Huerta was to be in charge of the decimation. 

The victims were chosen by lottery, each man drawing a bean from an earthen jar containing 176 beans, seventeen black beans being the tokens signifying death. Commissioned officers were ordered to draw first; then the enlisted men were called as their names appeared on the muster rolls. William A. A. (Bigfoot) Wallace, standing close to the scene of the drawing, decided that the black beans were the larger and fingered the tokens successfully to draw a white bean. Observers of the drawing later described the dignity, the firmness, the light temper, and general courage of the men who drew the beans of death. Some left messages for their families with their companions; a few had time to write letters home. 

The doomed men were unshackled from their companions, placed in a separate courtyard, and shot at dusk on March 25, 1843. The seventeen victims of the lottery were James Decatur Cocke, William Mosby Eastland, Patrick Mahan, James M. Ogden, James N. Torrey, Martin Carroll Wing,qqv John L. Cash, Robert Holmes Dunham, Edward E. Este, Robert Harris, Thomas L. Jones, Christopher Roberts, William N. Rowan, James L. Shepherd, J. N. M. Thompson, James Turnbull, and Henry Walling. Shepherd survived the firing squad by pretending to be dead. The guards left him for dead in the courtyard, and he escaped in the night but was recaptured and shot.

In 1848 the bodies were returned from Mexico to be buried at Monument Hill near La Grange in Fayette County. Today the Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Site raised a flag in memory of the 17 men who are buried there.





__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2009711979058984

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> About 25 miles from my hometown
> I don't like rattle bugs
> 
> Between Miles and Mereta Tx. Coworkers cleaned out a barn. Over 60 snakes in 2 days. About 2 week ago.
> View attachment 144356



They are tasty though!


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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> They are tasty though!


I've tried them at rattle snake round up in Sweetwater ... do not taste like chicken ... and I hate the texture .. just say no to cooked rattle bugs

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> I've tried them at rattle snake round up in Sweetwater ... do not taste like chicken ... and I hate the texture .. just say no to cooked rattle bugs



You're right, it doesn't taste like chicken. I like it, don't like yardbird.


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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> About 25 miles from my hometown
> I don't like rattle bugs
> 
> Between Miles and Mereta Tx. Coworkers cleaned out a barn. Over 60 snakes in 2 days. About 2 week ago.
> View attachment 144356


Sure wish I had about a dozen or so of those!!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Sure wish I had about a dozen or so of those!!


If I had some and some lunatic would catch and box them up .. I'd send them to you ... have only found one here .. he didn't make it ...


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## Wildthings

I don't care if they are alive or not. All those in the pictures would be perfect

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I don't care if they are alive or not. All those in the pictures would be perfect


Oh I misunderstood you ... if I find anymore you will be welcome to it ... I'll only box it dead

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## Wildthings

I'll come get them!! 'specially if it's a load like that


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I'll come get them!! 'specially if it's a load like that


If I find that many I'm moving ... not many here .. but back home I've killed as many as 5 a day ... don't like those rattle bugs...


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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Today marks the 175th anniversary of one of the most notorious incidents in Texas history, The Black Bean Episode. The Black Bean Episode was an aftermath of the Mier Expedition and resulted from an attempted escape of the captured Texans as they were being marched from Mier to Mexico City. After an escape at Salado, Tamaulipas, on February 11, 1843, some 176 of the men were recaptured within about a week. A decree that all who participated in the break were to be executed was modified to an order to kill every tenth man. Col. Domingo Huerta was to be in charge of the decimation.
> 
> The victims were chosen by lottery, each man drawing a bean from an earthen jar containing 176 beans, seventeen black beans being the tokens signifying death. Commissioned officers were ordered to draw first; then the enlisted men were called as their names appeared on the muster rolls. William A. A. (Bigfoot) Wallace, standing close to the scene of the drawing, decided that the black beans were the larger and fingered the tokens successfully to draw a white bean. Observers of the drawing later described the dignity, the firmness, the light temper, and general courage of the men who drew the beans of death. Some left messages for their families with their companions; a few had time to write letters home.
> 
> The doomed men were unshackled from their companions, placed in a separate courtyard, and shot at dusk on March 25, 1843. The seventeen victims of the lottery were James Decatur Cocke, William Mosby Eastland, Patrick Mahan, James M. Ogden, James N. Torrey, Martin Carroll Wing,qqv John L. Cash, Robert Holmes Dunham, Edward E. Este, Robert Harris, Thomas L. Jones, Christopher Roberts, William N. Rowan, James L. Shepherd, J. N. M. Thompson, James Turnbull, and Henry Walling. Shepherd survived the firing squad by pretending to be dead. The guards left him for dead in the courtyard, and he escaped in the night but was recaptured and shot.
> 
> In 1848 the bodies were returned from Mexico to be buried at Monument Hill near La Grange in Fayette County. Today the Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Site raised a flag in memory of the 17 men who are buried there.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2009711979058984


I've been to that exact spot and looked at all the great history information there. It surprised me about the elevation rise going there!


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> I've been to that exact spot and looked at all the great history information there. It surprised me about the elevation rise going there!



I need to go, haven't seen it yet.


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I've been to that exact spot and looked at all the great history information there. It surprised me about the elevation rise going there!


Have not been .. on my bucket list

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Wildthings

Ah found a few of my pictures

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On March 9, 1985, the Tyler, Texas, Civitan club adopted a section of U.S. Hwy 69 to voluntarily clean up litter on the roadside. This was the very first Adopt-a-Highway in America. Since then, the idea has exploded across the nation.

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## woodman6415

Today is the 182nd anniversary of one of the saddest days in Texas history. It was on this day, March 27, in 1836 that Col. James Fannin and about 360 of his troops were executed under the orders of Santa Anna at and around the place shown here, Presidio La Bahia in Goliad, Texas. Fannin's troops had engaged the Mexican Army about a week before appoximately 10 miles away, been defeated, and marched back here. Fannin himself was executed in the courtyard behind these walls. I took this photo about three years ago. 

As I was walking around La Bahia I thought a lot about what had transpired there and those poor men and how brave and defiant some of them were at the end. I wondered if I could be the same and did not believe I could. They were a special kind of heroic and I felt quite small moving around, comfortable with my bottled water in hand. I hope that we, collectively, can do right by them. Their memory deserves no less.

May their spirits forever roam this sacred place.

Reactions: Thank You! 1 | Great Post 1 | Sincere 3


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## Wildthings

That's an awesome picture. Haven't been there but will!!


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the day is a description of Houston from 1848:

“Houston is a wretched little town composed of about twenty shops, and a hundred huts, dispersed here and there, among trunks of felled trees. It is infested with Methodists and ants.”

------ Emmanuel-Henri-Dieudonné Domenech, a French Catholic missionary who visited Houston in 1848

Still infested with ants


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Texas Quote of the day is a description of Houston from 1848:
> 
> “Houston is a wretched little town composed of about twenty shops, and a hundred huts, dispersed here and there, among trunks of felled trees. It is infested with Methodists and ants.”
> 
> ------ Emmanuel-Henri-Dieudonné Domenech, a French Catholic missionary who visited Houston in 1848
> 
> Still infested with ants



Wow, nothing has changed in 160 years.


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## woodman6415

Llano county ...

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## Wildthings

@woodman6415 Wendell is that a recent picture? Looking for reports! Heading out in the morning on an all day bluebonnet run through Washington County

Here's a few of mine from a couple years back







and just to prove I was actually there

Reactions: Way Cool 2 | Sincere 1


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> @woodman6415 Wendell is that a recent picture? Looking for reports! Heading out in the morning on an all day bluebonnet run through Washington County
> 
> Here's a few of mine from a couple years back
> View attachment 144535
> View attachment 144536
> 
> and just to prove I was actually there
> 
> View attachment 144537



How old is that pic????? You don't look like that now!!


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## Wildthings

2015 -- I'm a lot prettier now

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## Tony

They're in full bloom right now, all over the place. We got 3" of rain today, should be just incredible this weekend!

Reactions: Sincere 1


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> @woodman6415 Wendell is that a recent picture? Looking for reports! Heading out in the morning on an all day bluebonnet run through Washington County
> 
> Here's a few of mine from a couple years back
> View attachment 144535
> View attachment 144536
> 
> and just to prove I was actually there
> 
> View attachment 144537


Yes it was posted as a picture taken this morning... we rode from bandera .. comfort...Fredericksburg.. to Luckenbach on Saturday .. didn't see many .. have heard around Llano and Brady are good

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

More species of birds have been spotted in Brazoria County (one county south of Galveston on the Texas coast) than any other county in the United States. More than 425 species have been cited in Brazoria county, and new ones are added to the list nearly every year.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quotes of the Day are two different takes on the humble mesquite tree:

“I could ask for no better monument over my grave than a good mesquite tree, its roots down deep like those of people who belong to the soil, its hardy branches, leaves and fruit holding memories of the soil. ”

-------- J. Frank Dobie, Texas folklorist and writer

"Mesquite is the devil with roots. It scabs my cows, spooks my horses, and gives little shade.”

-------- W.T. Waggoner, pioneer northwest Texas rancher

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day is the inscription on the monument on Sam Houston's grave in Huntsville:

“The World Will Take Care of Houston’s Fame" ----- Andrew Jackson. 


Many of y'all have probably visited the grave and seen the quote, but here's the context: After Sam's victory over Santa Anna at San Jacinto in 1836, many Texians wanted to execute Santa Anna. Houston prevented this. Andrew Jackson, upon hearing of Houston's magnanimity toward his former adversary, said, "Let those who clamor for blood clamor on. The world will see to Houston's fame."

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## Wildthings

I have visited his final resting place!!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Back in 1861, the question of secession from the United States was before Texas. Most of the Lone Star State voted to secede, of course, but Travis County, with Austin as its seat, voted against it, 704 to 450. Some of Texas' leading Unionists (people who wanted to remain in the United States) called Austin home throughout the war. At the end of the war, Capt. Hubbard Carrington's "Austin Company" of the Union army fought in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch, Taxas, on May 13, 1865. Afterward, when the first bluecoats arrived in Austin on July 25, 1865, they met not opposition but a rally, at Congress Avenue and Pecan (now 6th) Street.


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## ripjack13




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## Wildthings

*The Texas Pearl Rush*

They called themselves pearlers. Those inclined to ridicule odd behavior called them water hogs, for their habit of rooting around in the mud of the Caddo Lake shallows on all fours.

That rooting started because of one man. Sachihiko Ono Murata. Folks called him George just because. As you may have guessed, he was no Dutchman. But the fact that he hailed from the land of the rising sun was about all anyone knew about George. 

George was working as a cook on an oil rig one day in 1909, cutting up Caddo Lake mussels to use as bait for catfish that would be used to feed the roughnecks. In one of those mussels George found a pearl.

Something in his mysterious past had taught him a few things about pearls and word soon got out that George had sold his bivalve bauble to Tiffany's for $1500.

The rush was on. But it was a different kind of rush. No Sutter's Mill shenanigans or Klondike claim jumping. The pearlers came in family units and seemed to be in it as much for the fun of the hunt as for the potential of striking it rich. They set up tent camps in the hills around Potter's Point, fifteen miles from Jefferson. As many as five hundred tents peppered the landscape at the peak of the rush. 

The men and boys gathered the mussels The women and girls opened them, searched the slimy innards for treasure and took care of the camp. Even if no pearls were found, a night of cool lake breezes and campfire comradery was reward for the day's work.

A pearl buyer, known only as Dr. Owen, set up housekeeping across the lake at Morningside, Louisiana. Every morning he'd put across the lake and open for business under a big tree. Lucky pearlers were paid in gold or silver, on the spot.

Average pearls brought $25 or $30 ($700 to $840 in today's dollars.)

Rare specimens would have Dr. Owen forking over $500 to $1000 (that's $14k to $28k to your debit card.)

The most valuable pearls were found in washboard mussels. The ones the pearlers called "white eyes" produced pink pearls, and buttermilk mussels laid down wine colored nacre.

It seems the pearlers genuinely had a good thing going. Even what could have been a big problem of all that clam meat rotting in the sun was quickly solved to everyone's satisfaction. A local farmer fattened his hogs on it. You have to wonder what taste it imparted to the hams.

The Caddo Lake pearl rush came to an end as quickly as it started. In 1912 Uncle Sam raised his dam at Mooringsport, Lousiana. Soon the prime mussel beds where under as much as ten feet of water. 

The farmers went back to their farms and the fishermen went back to their trotlines. George Murata opened a fish camp, which he ran until his death in 1946. He called it "The Jap's Camp." That couldn't have been good for business during the war.

The Caddo Lake pearl rush, however, was not the first in the history of Texas.

In 1650, Captain Diego del Castillo led an expedition from Santa Fe to what is now the San Angelo area and reported finding pearls in the Concho River. When the Spanish governor got the news, he sent Diego de Guadalajara along with thirty soldiers and a couple hundred Christianized Indians to bring back as many of those pink and purple fresh water gems as they could find.

The haul was underwhelming, but they did return to Santa Fe with two hundred freshly captured Indian slaves.



Caddo Lake is the largest natural lake in Texas. How old is it? 

About 200 years old, depending on how you look at it. 
The Caddo Indians, who gave the lake their name, claimed the lake formed after the New Madrid earthquake of 1812. That may be true, but in an indirect way. A good deal of the credit belongs to the Great Raft on the Red River. That immense jam of fallen trees, was discovered by the Freeman-Curtis expedition in the vicinity of Shreveport in 1806. It obstructed the main channel of the river for 160 miles, causing extensive flooding of the surrounding land. Caddo lake was already slowly forming at the time of the New Madrid quake. All that shaking just hurried things along.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> *The Texas Pearl Rush*
> 
> They called themselves pearlers. Those inclined to ridicule odd behavior called them water hogs, for their habit of rooting around in the mud of the Caddo Lake shallows on all fours.
> 
> That rooting started because of one man. Sachihiko Ono Murata. Folks called him George just because. As you may have guessed, he was no Dutchman. But the fact that he hailed from the land of the rising sun was about all anyone knew about George.
> 
> George was working as a cook on an oil rig one day in 1909, cutting up Caddo Lake mussels to use as bait for catfish that would be used to feed the roughnecks. In one of those mussels George found a pearl.
> 
> Something in his mysterious past had taught him a few things about pearls and word soon got out that George had sold his bivalve bauble to Tiffany's for $1500.
> 
> The rush was on. But it was a different kind of rush. No Sutter's Mill shenanigans or Klondike claim jumping. The pearlers came in family units and seemed to be in it as much for the fun of the hunt as for the potential of striking it rich. They set up tent camps in the hills around Potter's Point, fifteen miles from Jefferson. As many as five hundred tents peppered the landscape at the peak of the rush.
> 
> The men and boys gathered the mussels The women and girls opened them, searched the slimy innards for treasure and took care of the camp. Even if no pearls were found, a night of cool lake breezes and campfire comradery was reward for the day's work.
> 
> A pearl buyer, known only as Dr. Owen, set up housekeeping across the lake at Morningside, Louisiana. Every morning he'd put across the lake and open for business under a big tree. Lucky pearlers were paid in gold or silver, on the spot.
> 
> Average pearls brought $25 or $30 ($700 to $840 in today's dollars.)
> 
> Rare specimens would have Dr. Owen forking over $500 to $1000 (that's $14k to $28k to your debit card.)
> 
> The most valuable pearls were found in washboard mussels. The ones the pearlers called "white eyes" produced pink pearls, and buttermilk mussels laid down wine colored nacre.
> 
> It seems the pearlers genuinely had a good thing going. Even what could have been a big problem of all that clam meat rotting in the sun was quickly solved to everyone's satisfaction. A local farmer fattened his hogs on it. You have to wonder what taste it imparted to the hams.
> 
> The Caddo Lake pearl rush came to an end as quickly as it started. In 1912 Uncle Sam raised his dam at Mooringsport, Lousiana. Soon the prime mussel beds where under as much as ten feet of water.
> 
> The farmers went back to their farms and the fishermen went back to their trotlines. George Murata opened a fish camp, which he ran until his death in 1946. He called it "The Jap's Camp." That couldn't have been good for business during the war.
> 
> The Caddo Lake pearl rush, however, was not the first in the history of Texas.
> 
> In 1650, Captain Diego del Castillo led an expedition from Santa Fe to what is now the San Angelo area and reported finding pearls in the Concho River. When the Spanish governor got the news, he sent Diego de Guadalajara along with thirty soldiers and a couple hundred Christianized Indians to bring back as many of those pink and purple fresh water gems as they could find.
> 
> The haul was underwhelming, but they did return to Santa Fe with two hundred freshly captured Indian slaves.
> 
> 
> 
> Caddo Lake is the largest natural lake in Texas. How old is it?
> 
> About 200 years old, depending on how you look at it.
> The Caddo Indians, who gave the lake their name, claimed the lake formed after the New Madrid earthquake of 1812. That may be true, but in an indirect way. A good deal of the credit belongs to the Great Raft on the Red River. That immense jam of fallen trees, was discovered by the Freeman-Curtis expedition in the vicinity of Shreveport in 1806. It obstructed the main channel of the river for 160 miles, causing extensive flooding of the surrounding land. Caddo lake was already slowly forming at the time of the New Madrid quake. All that shaking just hurried things along.



People still hunt for pearls on the concho rivers and the lake that the north and south concho rivers dump into ... lake Nasworthy ... I never hunted them but I spent many an hour in a lawn chair on a bank watching others dive for them ...

The striking landscapes of West Texas not only yield some of the most remarkable sunsets in the world, but the rivers that run through it are home to another rare, naturally occurring treasure — the Concho Pearl. How rare, pray tell? Figure this: 95 percent of all the pearls in the world today are cultured and only 5 percent are created naturally.

It’s estimated that Concho Pearls were first discovered in the late 16th Century by Spanish explorers. Today, pearl hunters flock to rivers around San Angelo, Texas to try their hand at retrieving the freshwater mussels containing this sought-after iridescent pearl. Found only in the Crytoniaias tampicoensis variety, Concho Pearls are unique in size, shape and color, range from perfectly round to “baroque” (i.e., irregular in form), and from a soft pink hue to dark lavender.

Interestingly, these pretty pastels are the result of and dependent on the chemical makeup (caleche and other mineral content) of the riverbeds where they are found. The silver-lining of Texas’ current long-lasting drought is such that pearl mongers now have access to an array of mussels previously too deep to retrieve.

Those hunting ought to be ready to commit to the effort: River visibility is so bad, they will essentially be diving blind. Yet the effort pays off for professional pearl divers like Susan Martin, who has said, “It’s the adventure. In most of the places any divers dive, you cant see. . .It’s kind of like finding a golden Easter egg.”






Divers like Martin then pass off the pearls to specialty retailers like San Angelo’s Legend Jewelers, whose tagline fittingly reads: “We make magic!” Legend Jewelers is home to a 13-millimeter Concho Pearl appraised at $50,000, which visitors can see upon request.

A gemstone that’s come to symbolize purity and loyalty, it’s long since been rumored that some of the first-found Concho Pearls adorn Spain’s Royal Crown — making this unique Texas treasure, quite literally, fit for a king.

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day is a wonderful recollection of life in Texas back in the 1850s:

"In two weeks our leave was up, and we left for the Western frontier. We travelled two days, without incident or trouble, from San Antonio towards Fort Inge [near Uvalde]. Though the drive on the third day was long and tedious, we hoped to reach the post soon after dark. The roads were heavy from recent rains; any one at all familiar with the black and sticky Texas mud can understand the meaning of "heavy roads.'' Evening came upon us when we were still many miles from the fort. The mules showed signs of giving out, and the prospect of reaching home that night was anything but bright

Husband and the driver held a consultation on the situation; it was certain the mules could travel no farther. The driver thought there was a place not far off the road, where we might be allowed to spend the night; so we turned into a dim path, following it until we came to the house. It was so dark by this time we could scarcely see where we were going; but the door was found at last, and after thundering on it with tremendous force time and again, a voice called out, "What do you want ?"

Husband answered, "To stay all night." "You can't do it." "But we must; there is a lady here, our mules are broken down, and we cannot go on." "That makes it worse; having a lady, you can't stay." More parleying followed, when finally a reluctant consent was given for me to go into the house, and the door was opened. As the driver turned the wagon into the corral, a voice called to him "to be careful, as there was a bit of a bank near," which in the morning we found to be a sheer descent of at least two hundred feet to the river below, and we had gone close to the edge in the night, never dreaming of its vicinity.

We were taken into a small room, where a fire of big logs burned brightly. By the light of it I studied the owner of the voice who had talked in the darkness to us. It was a superb-looking old man I saw, with snow-white beard to his waist His mild, benevolent gaze gave me confidence at once, and his manner was kind and gentle.

There were several awkward girls and young men in the room, who were his children, he told us. Without asking permission, the old man mixed me a drink of whiskey and honey, which I declined; but he insisted so much on my tasting it, I did so, rather than hurt his feelings. One of the girls was preparing supper for us, of which we were much in need, and when ready we did full justice to it, simple as it was, — corn-bread, bacon, and coffee, but no butter nor milk.

In the course of the evening, one of the sons, recently married, came in, leading his bride by the hand. Her appearance was so ludicrous I could not repress a smile. Her frock came about to her knees, and below it appeared pantalettes to her heels. A large sun-bonnet, entirely concealing her face, completed her costume.

When time came to retire, we found we were to share the common sleeping-room of the family, there being no other. Indeed, we were fortunate to have a bed to ourselves! Besides the one given to us were several others, which were filled by two old men, two young men, two girls, and two boys, ten people in one small room ; only three were women, of whom I was one !

There was no sleep for me that night. It turned out the old men had been to a horse-race the day before, and they were going over it in their dreams, shouting and swearing incessantly. My faith in the patriarchal-looking old man was destroyed as I listened to his loud and angry voice while he slept. I lay watching for the dawn, and could plainly see the stars through the cracks in the roof. As they disappeared and morning broke, we got up and made hasty preparations for departure, and, after paying for our night's lodging, we left, very thankful to escape from such a place.

We heard, afterwards, the true character of these people. They were outlaws of the worst description: but while we were under their roof they treated us well. "

---- Lydia Spencer Lange describing a journey in the 1850s, "I Married a Soldier," 1893

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

Merle Haggard made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1983 for buying the entire audience at Billy Bobs Texas in Fort Worth a shot of whiskey. The bill totalled $12, 737 and equaled 40 gallons of the hard stuff.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Merle Haggard made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1983 for buying the entire audience at Billy Bobs Texas in Fort Worth a shot of whiskey. The bill totalled $12, 737 and equaled 40 gallons of the hard stuff.



Great place to visit! Right in the Stock Yard.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a dandy:

"People throughout Texas either knew, claimed they knew, or wanted to know Hallie Stillwell. She was a most remarkable lady, her honorary titles manifold. She had been recognized by the Texas senate, honored by Texas Governors, and designated a Texas Grand Dame by Texas Monthly. In 1992 she was inducted into the National Cowgirls Hall of Fame and, two months later, Texas governor Ann Richards welcomed her as a member of the Texas Women's Hall of Fame. Local honors include "Sweetheart of the Terlingua Chili Cookoff" and Alpine's "Bicentennial Queen." In addition, Hallie lived within site of several geographic landmarks that bear the family name ---- Stillwell Canyon, Stillwell Crossing, and Stillwell Mountain. Not surprising, she had emerged as one of Texas' most notable personalities.

Such honors come only to the deserving. She had driven covered wagons, punched cattle, taught school within pistol-shot of a Mexican revolution, owned and managed a ranch for seven decades, survived drought and the Depression, faced charging bulls and foreclosure-prone bankers, served as justice of the peace, jailed lawbreakers, and married eloping couples. She was a popular newspaper columnist, wrote books, delivered fascinating lectures, and operated a bustling trailer park and popular trading post. All the while she remained a lady of great eloquence, class, and charm. To her statewide cadre of friends and admirers Hallie Stillwell was a living legend; she preferred the more straightforward designation, ranch woman."

---- Kenneth B. Ragsdale's description of Big Bend legend Hallie Stillwell in "Big Bend Country: Land of the Unexpected." Hallie was 100 years old when she passed away in 1997 and I am proud to say that I met her.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Longtime Texas Panhandle cowboy Tom Blasingame was born in Waxahachie in 1898. He rode his first horse at the age of six. At ninety-one, he was still on the job at the JA Ranch south of Amarillo. Two days after Christmas in 1989, he dismounted his horse, Ruidosa, stretched out on the grass, folded his arms across his chest, and died.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

This gorgeous tree with its stunning red bark is Texas Madrone (Arbutus xalapensis), aka naked Indian tree or Lady's Leg. Texas Madrone is a species of flowering plant in the heather family. Texas madrone occurs in the Trans-Pecos and areas of the Edwards Plateau. This one was photographed in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It is found in canyons and mountains, on rocky plains, and in oak woodlands, at altitudes of up to 3,000 m (10,000 feet) in the south of the range, but lower, down to 600 m (1800 feet) in the north of the range.

Arbutus xalapensis is a large shrub or small to medium-sized evergreen tree growing from 17 to 84 feet tall with a trunk up to 20 inches or so in diameter. In early spring Texas Madrone produces clusters of the small, white lantern-shaped flowers that are so typical of members of the heather family. The yellow-orange to bright red berries that ripen in the fall rival those of any female holly tree. The evergreen leaves are dark green above and paler on the underside. Perhaps the greatest beauty of Texas madrone is its lovely exfoliating bark. When the older layers slough off, the newer bark is smooth and can range from white to orange through shades of apricot to dark red. You can see that this is one fantastic tree. They look somehow prehistoric to me, like wise, old survivors from eons long ago.

Reactions: EyeCandy! 2


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## JR Parks

Got a small dead madrone several years ago and was able to get some pen blanks. The beauty is definitely in the bark and tree as the wood was ok but bland. The tree was small so maybe no heartwood. They do stand out in the landscape. And here in the Austin area in order to propagate or should I say to have better luck in propagation- a layer of cedar (juniper) leaf mulch over the planted seed greatly increases germination.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day concerns Judge Roy Bean:

"That man did a world of good. He was the man for the place. The rough community where he settled would have tolerated no enforcement of the law as it was written in the statue books. But they tolerated Bean, because he was both law and equity, right and justice. He filled a place that could not have been filled by any other man. He was distinctly a creation of circumstances.

He was in control of the situation and his control was the only one possible. His decisions were not always according to the law and the fact, but they were accepted and that was the big point. Roy Bean's part in the pioneer history of west Texas cannot be written in a page. He was what he claimed to be: the law west of the Pecos."

------ Judge T.A. Farley, speaking to the El Paso Herald newspaper in 1914. Judge Farley was federal judge over the district that stretched from Del Rio to El Paso at the time Roy Bean was the Law West of the Pecos

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The lovely town of Fredericksburg, in the Texas HIll Country, has a friendly greeting built-in for folks who visit. The first letters of the street names going east along Main Street/290 from the Vereins Kirche spell "All Welcome." Those going west spell "Come Back." It's true. Going east we see Adams, Llano, Lincoln, Washington, Elk, Lee, Columbus, Olive, Mesquite, Eagle streets ("all welcome") and going west we see Crockett, Orange, Milam, Edison, Bowie, Acorn, Cherry, Kay ("come back"). I have met many folks who are from Fredericksburg who don't realize this, but it appears the city founding fathers were thinking ahead about hospitality!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The aroma of good chili should generate rapture akin to a lover's kiss." 

----- Motto of the Chili Appreciation Society International, headquartered (of course) in Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Before becoming the infamous judge and self-proclaimed "Law West of the Pecos," Roy Bean lived on the south side of San Antonio for almost 20 years. There he made a living by selling liquor, stealing wood, watering down milk that he then sold and poaching horses and cattle. The are where he lived on South Flores street became known as "Beanville." He was so disliked that he was paid $900 to leave the city.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The first part of the performance went fairly well, but in the middle of the show the audience suddenly got up en masse and disappeared through the front exit. Investigations disclosed that the customers had gone outside to view a runaway mule.

My father and his brothers, though accustomed to insults, were enraged by this one. When the customers filed back into the theater, 30 minutes later, the Marx brothers were no longer interested in giving a good performance. All they wanted to do was get even with the audience, and the only way they knew how was to burlesque the kind of singing they had been doing so seriously.

This quickly evolved into a roughhouse commedy bit, with the Marxes, led by my father, flinging insults about Texas and its inhabitants to the audience as rapidly as they could think of them.

My father is not very clear about the exact phraseology of some of these insults, but he does recall calling the Texans in the audience "damned Yankees" and throwing in couple of lines that went something like this:

"Nacogdoches
Is full of roaches."

And:

"The Jackass
Is the finest
flower of 
Tex-ass"

They were not looking for laughs; they fully expected to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. But instead the audience loved their clowning and greeted their insults and most tired jokes with uproarious laughter."

----- The metamorphosis of an unknown wandering vaudeville troupe called "The Four Nightingales" into the immortal Marx brothers, which was triggered by a rude Nacogdoches crowd in 1920, as told by Groucho's son Arthur in "My Life with Groucho Marx," 1954. That's right, folks: the Marx Brothers became "THE Marx Brothers" accidentally, and in Texas.

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## woodman6415

Happy San Jacinto Day! The final battle of the Texas Revolution was fought 182 years ago today.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I told you yesterday that I would not take sides in the war but, Sir, I now tender you my services as the Mexicans acted rascally with me."

---- Deaf Smith, hero of the Texas revolution, in a letter to Stephen F. Austin, 1835. Austin had previously appealed to Deaf Smith for his services in the upcoming siege of Bexar (San Antonio), but Smith refused. Deaf was comfortable in both the Anglo and Mexican cultures, having lived in Texas for 15 years and having married a Tejana, and he wanted to remain neutral in the battle for Texas independence. But his attitude changed when Mexican soldiers, on high alert for Texians, refused to let him and Arnold, a free black and later a member of Smith's spy company, back in town to see their families.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

During the blizzard of 1899, the temperature tumbled to 10 degrees below zero in Waco and people ice-skated on the Brazos River.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> During the blizzard of 1899, the temperature tumbled to 10 degrees below zero in Waco and people ice-skated on the Brazos River.


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one:

"In the late 1950s, Clint Murchison realized that the NFL was about to blossom into something really big and he wanted an expansion team for Dallas. There was only one problem: George Preston Marshall, owner of the Redskins, disliked Murchison and opposed a franchise in Dallas. But Clint was not to be denied. Details of the story vary, but Murchison learned that the rights to the song, "Hail to the Redskins" were for sale by the composer. Murchison, in a move that would warm the heart of J.R. Ewing, purchased the rights to it and informed Marshall that he couldn't play the beloved song at Redskins games ----- unless Marshall was willing to vote "yes" when the subject of a franchise for Dallas came up for a vote at the league meeting. The ploy worked: Murchison was awarded the franchise and the Redskins got their song back."

----- Wallace O. Chariton, "Texas Wit and Wisdom"

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Saloons will be closed tomorrow. Very likely, as usual, open at the back door. As a general rule, there are more drunks on election day than any other."

----- San Antonio Express newspaper, 1883

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The story of Wink, Texas began in 1926, when oil was discovered in the Hendrick oilfield in Winkler County. By mid-1927 the Wink Townsite Company was selling lots in the Horse Wells pasture on the T. G. Hendrick Ranch. The oil boom brought new people to Wink, causing a shortage of housing. Newcomers set up tents and built makeshift houses. Wink was originally named Winkler, Texas, for the county. But, when a post office was requested, postal authorities notified the applicant that there was a post office bearing that name already in operation, so the locals shortened the name to Wink and received a post office in 1927. In that year, the first public school was organized, and a temporary building was constructed. A Sunday school was started by November 1927, and the population of the town was reported to be 3,500. By 1929 that number climbed to 6,000. It is possible that the actual number of Winkites (hmmm ... Winkonians? Winksters?) may have reached more than 10,000 people at one point. Today the population is officially a little less than 1,000 but given the number of small trailers and man-camps I saw in the town last week, my guess is that a considerably larger number of people live there currently.

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## Wildthings

and Wink, TX has been back in the news due to its' sinkholes click well maybe not lately but still a good read

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Music was my only ticket out of town [Lubbock]. I was a failure at crime, and that was about my only other option if I’d stayed in Lubbock. There were several of the policemen on duty there at that time who just did not like musicians at all, especially young ones hanging out late. And it was suggested by several cops that it’d be a good idea if I went someplace else. They suggested that to several other people too. So, thank you, Lubbock Police Department!"

----- Bobby Keys, legendary saxophonist who went on to play with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and many others. Bobby passed away a couple of years ago.

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## FranklinWorkshops

For all you Texans, I just received a notice about this book today. For nearly 1500 pages, $2.99 is dirt cheap for a Michener book.

Can't seem to get the link to work so just go to Amazon and search on James Michener Texas.


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## Tony

FranklinWorkshops said:


> For all you Texans, I just received a notice about this book today. For nearly 1500 pages, $2.99 is dirt cheap for a Michener book.
> 
> Can't seem to get the link to work so just go to Amazon and search on James Michener Texas.



I own it, great book! Tony


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"No day can be counted entirely lost which begins with the smell of a mesquite fire at dawn and the taste of coffee boiled over it."

---- J. Frank Dobie, Texas historian and folklorist

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The city of Nolanville, Texas was named for Philip Nolan, who is one of the really interesting characters in Texas history, though few people know about him because he was killed in 1801, long before Texas won independence. As a completely random historical aside, after Nolan was killed his ears were cut off, presented to the governor in San Antonio, then forwarded to the commanding general in Chihuahua as proof that he really was dead. So, without further ado, I present Philip Nolan, per the Texas State Historical Association:

Philip Nolan, mustanger and filibuster, son of Peter and Elizabeth (Cassidy) Nolan, was, according to his own statement recorded in the 1794 Nacogdoches census, born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1771. He apparently received a good education. He became associated with Gen. James Wilkinson in Kentucky, moved into Wilkinson's home in 1788, and served as his bookkeeper and shipping clerk until 1791. During these years Nolan represented Wilkinson's business interests at New Orleans and learned of the opportunities for trade in the adjoining province of Texas. Through the influence of Wilkinson in 1791 he secured from Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró a passport to visit Texas on a trading expedition. His goods were confiscated, however, and after living with Indians for two years Nolan returned to New Orleans with fifty mustangs. The new governor of Louisiana, Louis Héctor, Baron de Carondelet, greeted him as a person "risen from the dead." By June 6, 1794, Nolan was back in Nacogdoches with a passport from Carondelet authorizing him to obtain horses for the Louisiana militia. He visited the provincial capital, San Antonio de Béxar, made the acquaintance of Governor Manuel Muñoz, and through him obtained permission of the commandant general of the Provincias Internas, Pedro de Nava, to export horses to Louisiana. Taking with him 250 head, Nolan returned to Natchez by the end of 1795.

On these two trips he gained much information about the "unknown land" but not without making Spanish officials suspicious about his loyalties. Their suspicions were further aroused when Nolan, returning from a mapping expedition up the Missouri River, arrived at Natchez with the party of Andrew Ellicott, boundary commissioner for the United States. Nolan attempted to mollify Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, governor of Natchez, and went on to New Orleans, where he obtained another passport, dated June 17, 1797, from Carondelet. According to his will, which he executed on June 20, he was the son of "Pedro" Nolan and "Ysabela Cassedy." His mother was deceased, and being still single he made his father his heir. Merchant Daniel Clark was given charge of his affairs. Nolan left for Texas in July, authorized to obtain more horses for the Louisiana regiment. This time he took a considerable load of trade goods, even though trade between Louisiana and Texas was strictly prohibited. He arrived at Bexar in October, presented his credentials, and claimed to have Carondelet's permission to go to Nuevo Santander in search of horses. Nava ordered Muñoz to assist Nolan in fulfilling his Louisiana contract and gave approval for the introduction of 2,000 pesos' worth of goods to defray expenses. Meanwhile, Gayoso had written to the viceroy of Mexico, warning against foreigners (like Nolan) who were stirring up the Texas Indians against Spanish rule. Advised of this development, Nava tried to justify his allowing Nolan to enter Texas but revoked the permission for him to introduce trade goods. Thinking that Nolan had left the province in the summer of 1798, Nava was alarmed to find him still there almost a year later. Governor Muñoz, in bad health, defended Nolan vigorously and claimed that his delays were unavoidable. With Muñoz's support Nolan left Texas safely. He arrived in Natchez in the latter part of 1799 with more than 1,200 horses and soon became aware of Gayoso's hostility toward him.

On December 19, 1799, Nolan married Frances Lintot, daughter of a prominent Natchez planter. He intended to meet with Thomas Jefferson, who had written him concerning Texas and its herds of wild horses, but the meeting apparently never took place. Instead, Nolan was soon making plans for another trip to Texas, even though he could not obtain a passport and knew that it would be a dangerous undertaking. It is unknown if he revised his will on this occasion. He left Natchez at the head of a body of well-armed men in October 1800 and made his way to the area north of Nacogdoches. He then proceeded to a McLennan or Hill County tributary of the Brazos River (the exact location is disputed), where he erected a small fortification, including some corrals, and began catching mustangs. He was killed there by troops from Nacogdoches sent out to intercept him. Historical sources conflict regarding the exact date of the attack and Nolan's death. Spanish commander Miguel Francisco Músquiz recorded the event on March 21, 1801, in his diary. In his memoir, Peter Ellis Bean, a member of Nolan's expedition, gave the date as March 22, 1801. His men were captured and tried, and spent years in prison for their part in Nolan's final expedition, the precise nature of which has not yet been satisfactorily explained.

Because of the decade Nolan spent in Texas on his mustanging expeditions he has become recognized as the first of a long line of filibusters that eventually helped to free Texas from Spanish and Mexican rule. He is often credited with being the first Anglo-American to map Texas, but his map has never been found. His observations were passed on to Wilkinson, however, who used them to produce a map of the Texas-Louisiana frontier around 1804. Nolan was survived only six months by his wife, who gave birth to a son shortly before she died. This son, Philip, did not live to adulthood. Nolan was named as the father of a girl, María Josefa, born out of wedlock at Bexar to Gertrudis Quiñones in 1798. According to the census of 1815 both mother and daughter were living at San José y San Miguel de Aguayo Mission at that time, but their fate is unknown.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Just keep living. Don't die."

----- Richard Overton, resident of Austin, Texas and America's oldest living man and the world's oldest living World War II veteran, gives his longevity advice. Mr. Overton, who was born in 1906, celebrated his 112th birthday yesterday. Richard smokes 12 cigars per day (!), drinks whiskey, and loves his coffee. Here's a photo of him, courtesy the Austin American Statesman. Born in 1906 .... can you imagine? He is a treasure and I hope he lives for 112 more years!

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## woodman6415



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## Don Ratcliff

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 147150


Same thing happens in hawaii. We also have Turkey dinner come to the back door.


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## Tony

Don Ratcliff said:


> Same thing happens in hawaii. We also have Turkey dinner come to the back door.
> 
> View attachment 147151



Give me bacon over Turkey every day of the week.

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## Don Ratcliff

Tony said:


> Give me bacon over Turkey every day of the week.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

“One week ago today (Thursday) a terrible affray occurred in our neighboring town of Abilene [Kansas], which has added another chapter, and we hope the last one, to its already bloody history. The particulars are briefly these: It seems that a party of Texans became intoxicated, quarrelsome, and generally riotous, forcing prominent citizens to treat them, etc. The City Marshall, "Wild Bill," endeavored to stop them, when, in defense, he asserts, he was compelled to shoot one of the party, named Phil Coe, an Austin (Texas) gambler. A policeman ran to the assistance of "Bill," when under the excitement of the moment, he mistook him for the enemy, and he, too, fell at his deadly hand----expiring instantly, His name was Mike Williams, and he leaves a wife and family in Kansas City. At last accounts, Coe was not dead, but it is thought he cannot recover. He resided in Salina for a short time during the past summer, and was regarded by those who knew him as a quiet and inoffensive man."

------ Saline County Journal Newspaper, October, 1871. It should be noted that Coe, who was born in Gonzales, Texas, in 1839, was the last man to die from the gun of Wild Bill Hickock. He is buried in the Prairie Lea Cemetery in Brenham, Texas. He was considered a very dangerous gunfighter in his own right and was good friends with the notorious gunfighter Ben Thompson. It should also be noted that the death of Mike Williams, who was coming to Hickok's aid when Hickok shot and killed him in the excitement of the moment, haunted Wild Bill for the rest of his life.

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## woodman6415



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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 147221



Love these!!!!

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> Love these!!!!


What he said!!

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## woodman6415

My favorite photo of Jaclyn Smith, 1978. She was born in Houston in 1945, the daughter of Margaret Ellen (née Hartsfield) and Jack Smith, a dentist, graduated from Mirabeau B. Lamar High School in 1964 and attended Trinity University in San Antonio. She was a "Breck Girl" before becoming one of Charlie's Angels. A friend of mine met her in 1977 and many years later said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. According to him, her skin was flawless. He said that Farrah, whom he had also met, didn't come close. Having said that, a friend of mine who knew Farrah when she was at UT said that Farrah WAS "all of that and a box of crackers" and that "the air still smelled sweeter a half hour after she walked by." All I know is that two of Charlie's Angels were Texas ladies!

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> My favorite photo of Jaclyn Smith, 1978. She was born in Houston in 1945, the daughter of Margaret Ellen (née Hartsfield) and Jack Smith, a dentist, graduated from Mirabeau B. Lamar High School in 1964 and attended Trinity University in San Antonio. She was a "Breck Girl" before becoming one of Charlie's Angels. A friend of mine met her in 1977 and many years later said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. According to him, her skin was flawless. He said that Farrah, whom he had also met, didn't come close. Having said that, a friend of mine who knew Farrah when she was at UT said that Farrah WAS "all of that and a box of crackers" and that "the air still smelled sweeter a half hour after she walked by." All I know is that two of Charlie's Angels were Texas ladies!
> 
> View attachment 147238



All these years later she's still a beautiful woman! Very classy too.


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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself."

------ Kris Kristofferson

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I've done made a deal with the devil. He said he's going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there, if I go there, so I won't put all the fires in hell out."

---------- Red Adair, famous oil-well firefighter. Amazingly, after a lifetime of dangerous adventures, Red died peacefully at the age of 89.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Like most substantial Texas cities at the turn of the last century, Austin had a rowdy red light district. Saloons, gambling houses, and brothels proliferated there, providing entertainment evenhandedly to legislators and cowhands alike. At one point the city council made a feeble attempt to criminalize the tawdry business of the red light district, but that effort proved futile when the local "ladies" threatened to publish their client lists.

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## Kenbo

Personally, I think this thread needs more pictures of Jaclyn Smith


I'm just putting it out there.

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## woodman6415

Kenbo said:


> Personally, I think this thread needs more pictures of Jaclyn Smith
> 
> 
> I'm just putting it out there.


I agree but I don’t want the boss to catch me ...

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Do right and risk the consequences."

----- Sam Houston

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"It's not the heat, it's the humanity."

----- seen recently on a bumper sticker in San Antonio

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Dallas/Fort Worth International airport, at almost 27 square miles, is larger than the island of Manhattan, which is 22.82 square miles. Yup.

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## Spinartist

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Dallas/Fort Worth International airport, at almost 27 square miles, is larger than the island of Manhattan, which is 22.82 square miles. Yup.




I'll be flying into DFW on my way to SWAT in Aug. My brother lives in Ft. Worth.

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## Spinartist

Kenbo said:


> Personally, I think this thread needs more pictures of Jaclyn Smith
> 
> 
> I'm just putting it out there.

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## Tony

One of my favorite books and movies!! Tony 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Ain’t much of a crime, whackin’ a surly bartender.”

----- Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall) to Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones) in the 1988 made-for-TV miniseries "Lonesome Dove." Woodrow had just admonished Gus for breaking the nose of a San Antonio bartender after the bartender had offered "doodlin' service."


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Texas State Railroad is a state park that allows visitors to ride trains pulled by diesel and steam locomotives between the park's Victorian-style depots and through the forests of East Texas. This short railroad line dates to 1883.

After the Rusk Penitentiary was completed near the city of Rusk, convict labor was used to build the railroad, which originally transported raw materials to the iron smelter located at the Rusk Penitentiary. In 1906, the line reached Maydelle, and by 1909, the line was completed when it reached Palestine. Regularly scheduled train service ceased in 1921. The line was leased to various railroad companies until 1969, when they abandoned it during restructuring. The Texas Legislature adapted the railroad as a state park in 1972, to be devoted to operating trains that showed some of the state's railroad history.

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## woodman6415

Robert Wadlow, the tallest man who ever lived, and the Sons of the Pioneers musical group meet each other at the Texas Centennial celebration in Dallas, 1936. That's none other than Roy Rogers himself with a guitar, bottom right, looking up at Wadlow. Note that Wadlow has a stand-up bass guitar in his hands and it looks pretty much like a normal-sized guitar in the hands of a normal-sized man. Wadlow was 8'5" tall in this photo but later grew to be 8'11". Sadly, he passed away at the age of 22.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The mesquite loves life and will grow almost anywhere. In fact, most West Texans think it prefers the dry red clay or the worst soil God had to offer. It has about its annual bloom a mysterious sense of danger in springing forth prematurely and it is traditional in West Texas that spring isn't safely abroad in the land until the mesquite acknowledges it. The late Frank Grimes, editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, made an annual affair of running his poem warning those who would disregard this prophet:

'We see signs or returning spring ---
The redbird's back and the grackles sing,
The ground's plowed up and the creeks run clean,
The onions sprout and the rosebud's near;
And yet they's a point worth thinkin' about ----
We note that the old mesquites ain't out!'

---- A.C. Greene, 1969, "A Personal Country"

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The last man to die in combat in the Civil War died on Texas soil. It's true. Though we're taught that the Civil War ended in Appamattox, Virginia, that's incorrect. It actually ended on May 13, 1865, in Texas ----- 34 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865. It was on May 12th and 13th that the Battle of Palmito Ranch was fought between Union and Confederate forces on the banks of the Rio Grande east of Brownsville. 4 Union soldiers were killed, including Private John J. Williams, the last man to die as a result of combat. For more, see the nice article here:

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qfp01

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.” 

― Robert E. Howard, "The Complete Chronicles of Conan the Barbarian." Howard who committed suicide 82 years ago today, on June 11, 1936, was born in Peaster, Texas and lived with his family in Dark Valley, Seminole, Bronte, Poteet, Oran, Wichita Falls, Bagwell, Cross Cut, and Burkett, Texas, before the Howards settled down permanently in Cross Plains, Texas, in 1917.

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## woodman6415

Captain Charles Nimitz, the founder of the Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg (left) and his Grandson Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II (right), when Chester was a young man. This remarkable photo was taken in Fredericksburg in 1905, where Chester had been born in 1885. Chester's frail, rheumatic father died before Chester was born, but Chester was significantly influenced by the grandfather shown here, who was a former seaman in the German Merchant Marine. I always thought it ironic that the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during the greatest military conflict in history was a Texan who was born and raised in a place as dry and as far from the ocean as Fredericksburg.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When songs fall from the sky, all I have to do is catch them before they hit the ground."

------- Willie Nelson

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day comes from legendary Big Bend dweller Bobcat Carter, who died in 1940 at the age of 97:

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness. A man ought to take a bath every seven years whether he needs one or not. I do."

----- Bobcat Carter, talking to another legend, Hallie Stillwell

Bobcat Carter was one of those figures who could only live in Texas and only in Big Bend. He was known for his lack of hygiene, among other things. One of his acquaintances, Guy Lee, said "I would just as soon of smelled a polecat as old Carter." But despite his lack of hygiene, Bobcat was in incredible health even into his 90s. He walked everywhere. He considered voting a sacred duty. He ordinarily went barefoot but, on election day, he would put on his voting clothes and his brogans and walk the 45 miles to Marathon and back. After voting, he did handsprings and sang and pranced down Main Street.

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## woodman6415

Texan A.J. Foyt and his teammate, Dan Gurney, celebrate winning the 24 Hours in Le Mans car race in 1967. They remain the only All-American team to have ever won this race. Foyt drove at Le Mans less than a week after winning the Indianapolis 500 for the third time in seven years. A.J.'s victory came in a car he’d never driven on a track he’d never seen and after a mere 10 laps of practice. In my mind he is the greatest race car drive of all time.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Texan A.J. Foyt and his teammate, Dan Gurney, celebrate winning the 24 Hours in Le Mans car race in 1967. They remain the only All-American team to have ever won this race. Foyt drove at Le Mans less than a week after winning the Indianapolis 500 for the third time in seven years. A.J.'s victory came in a car he’d never driven on a track he’d never seen and after a mere 10 laps of practice. In my mind he is the greatest race car drive of all time.
> 
> View attachment 148679



I met A.J. when I was much younger, very nice guy. Got to ride in his car as a matter of fact. The AJ stands for Anthony Joseph, which also happens to be my first and middle name. Tony

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> I met A.J. when I was much younger, very nice guy. Got to ride in his car as a matter of fact. The AJ stands for Anthony Joseph, which also happens to be my first and middle name. Tony


Was he short?

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Was he short?



I'm not even going to dignify that with a response Barry!

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## Mike Hill

Said somewhere near the BBQ capital of the world - and ALL texicans know where that is!


Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.
That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; 
that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil;
and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. 
You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, 
because those are the things worth believing in.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Alabama soldiers, all I ask of you is to keep up with the Texans."

----- Confederate General Robert E. Lee at The Battle of the Wilderness in May, 1864


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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On May 16, 1870, an Apache party of 8-10 warriors captured a 10-year old boy named Herman Lehmann near Mason, Texas. For the next eight years Herman lived among the Apaches and, toward the end, the Comanches, becoming fully a part of their culture. 

In July 1877, Comanche chief Quanah Parker, who had successfully negotiated the surrender of the last fighting Comanches in 1875, was sent in search of the renegades. Herman Lehmann was among the group that Quanah found camped on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Quanah persuaded them to quit fighting and come to the Indian reservation near Fort Sill, Indian Territory (in present-day Oklahoma). While Lehmann initially refused to go to the reservation, he later followed at Quanah's request.

Herman Lehmann lived with Quanah Parker’s family on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation in 1877-78. Several people took notice of the white boy living among the Indians. However, Lehmann's mother never gave up believing that she would one day see her son again. She questioned Colonel Mackenzie, the commanding officer of Fort Sill, whether there were any blue-eyed young men on the reservation. He said yes; however, the description led them to believe that this was not her son. Nevertheless, she requested that the the young man be brought to her

In April 1878, Lt. Col. John W. Davidson ordered that Lehmann be sent under guard to his family in Texas. Five soldiers and a driver escorted Lehmann on a four-mule-drawn ambulance to Loyal Valley in Mason County, Texas. Lehmann arrived in Loyal Valley with an escort of soldiers on May 12, 1878, eight years after his capture. The people of Loyal Valley gathered to see the captive boy brought home. Upon his arrival, neither he nor his mother recognized one another. Lehmann had long believed his family dead, for the Apache had shown him proof during his time of transition to their way of life. It was his sister who found a scar on his arm, which had been caused by her when they were playing with a hatchet. His family surrounded him welcoming him home and the distant memories began to come back. Hearing someone repeat "Herman", he thought that sounded familiar and then realized it was his own name. 

At first, he was sullen and wanted nothing to do with his mother and siblings. As he put it, "I was an Indian, and I did not like them because they were palefaces." Herman's readjustment to his original culture was slow and painful. He rejected food and was unaccustomed to sleeping in a bed

Throughout his life, Herman Lehmann drifted between two very different cultures. Lehmann was a very popular figure in southwestern Oklahoma and the Texas Hill Country, appearing at county fairs and rodeos. To thrill audiences, such as he did in 1925 at the Old Settlers Reunion in Mason County, he would chase a calf around an arena, kill it with arrows, jump off his horse, cut out the calf’s liver, and eat it raw.

Herman died on February 2, 1932, in Loyal Valley, Texas, where he is buried next to his mother and stepfather in the cemetery next to the old Loyal Valley one-room school house.

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## Mike Hill

Yummy - still quivering raw calf's liver!

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## woodman6415

Mike Hill said:


> Yummy - still quivering raw calf's liver!


Warm quivering calf’s liver

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

AT&T Stadium, the Cowboys’ home field since 2009, boasts the world’s largest column-free interior. Even with the retractable roof closed, the Statue of Liberty could stand inside the stadium with 15 feet of clearance. At 660,800 square feet, the stadium’s roof is larger than the area base of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and equivalent in size to 10 professional soccer fields.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"If you grab enough Texas land, somethin' good is bound to happen."

----- JAMES MICHENER, "Texas," 1986

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Live oak wood is one of the densest tree woods on the planet, weighing an average of 76 pounds per cubic foot, though some have been measured at 95 pounds per cubic foot. That’s why mature branches, laden with such weight, often bow to the ground. Once they touch the ground, they find the strength and support to begin reaching up again, seeking light and sky.

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## Tony

@ripjack13 
Tony's Texas Fact of the Day

From 1961 to 1963 there were a total of about 400 wild Texas turkeys released on all six major Hawaiian Islands. These birds prefer the dry, higher elevations and have thrived on the Big Island, Molokai and Lanai but not fared so well on Oahu, Maui and Kauai.

I guess there are a lot of barbequed turkeys on the big island now huh @Don Ratcliff?

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## ripjack13

Hahahahahaaaaa

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## ripjack13

They are not native to Hawai‘i; it is believed by some that they were introduced to the Big Island as far back as 1788.

In 1815, a domestic stock of free-range turkeys were brought into the islands from Chile.

Up until the 1940s, it was believed that the turkeys seen during that time were actually descendants of the 1815 stock.

In the early 1960s, wild Texas turkeys known as Rio Grande turkeys were released at Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a Ranch. A total of 400 were released on all six major Hawaiian Islands.

Preferring the dry, higher elevations, the turkeys have settled in comfortably on the Big Island, Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i. However, they have not fared well on Maui, Kaua‘i and O‘ahu.

Having no predators but men and the mongooses, which eat their eggs, they thrive and have multiplied rapidly.

While the exact population of these turkeys may not be known, it is estimated that there are now as many as 18,000 turkeys including Don, in the state of Hawai‘i.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Alamo defenders watched their adversaries pour into Bexar in what seemed like an unending stream. So that the rebels would not misunderstand their intent, Santa Anna ordered the red flag of no quarter to be hoisted atop the San Fernando Church. Then, in accordance with established procedures of siege warfare, he offered the Alamo garrison an opportunity to surrender and made the conditions known: 'The Mexican army cannot come to terms under any conditions with rebellious foreigners to whom there is no other recourse left, if they wish to save their lives, than to place themselves immediately at the disposal of the Supreme Government from whom alone they may expect clemency after some considerations are taken up.' Travis informed the enemy courier that a response would be forthcoming. And it was ----- a single shot hurled from the eighteen-pounder. There could be no mistaking the meaning of such a succinct reply."

----- Stephen L. Hardin describes the arrival of the Mexican army to the Alamo in the highly recommended "Texian Illiad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution," published by the University of Texas Press in 1994 and still available at all fine bookstores

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## Mike Hill

I'd like to think that one of my ancestors lit the fuse!

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## Tony

How big is Texas?

Texas is about 268,581 sq. miles in area. Here are the countries that are about the same size and smaller than Texas:

About the SAME SIZE as Texas. (within about 30,000 sq. miles difference or less)

Ukraine: 233,028 sq. miles
Afghanistan: 251,758 sq. miles
Myanmar (Burma): 261,149 sq. miles
Chile: 292,057 sq. miles
Somalia: 246,136 sq. miles
Central African Republic: 240,458 sq. miles
Zambia: 290,509 sq. miles

All countries SMALLER than Texas !

EUROPE:

Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Iceland
Ireland
Luxemgourg
Netherlands
Norway
Sweden
United Kingdom
Andorra
France
Italy
Liechtenstein
Malta
Monaco
Portugal
San Marino
Spain
Switzerland
Vatican City
Albania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Czech Republic
Greece
Hungary
Macedonia
Poland
Slovakia
Slovenia
Yugoslavia
Belarus
Bulgaria
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuani
Moldova
Romania

ASIA:

Bahrain
Iraq
Israel
Jordan
Kuiwait
Lebanon
Oman
Qatar
Syria
United Arab Emirates
Yemen
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Georgia
Maldives
Nepal
Sri Lanka
Japan
North Korea
South Korea
Kyrgystan
Taiwan
Tajikistan 
Turkmenistan 
Uzbekistan
Brunei
Cambodia
Laos
Malaysia
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Vietnam

OCEANIA:

New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
Solomon Islands

SOUTH AMERICA:

Belize
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Nicaragua
Panama

THE CARRIBEAN:

Bahamas
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Haiti
Jamaica

SOUTH AMERICA:

Ecuador
Guyana
Paraguay
Suriname
Uraguay

AFRICA:

Djibouti
Eritea
Kenya
Seychelles
Tunisia
Benin
Burkina
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea- Bissau
Ivory Coast
Liberia
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Togo
Burundi
Cameroon
Congo
Equatorial Guinea
Gabon
Rwanda
Morocco
Uganda
Botswana
Lesotho
Madagascar
Malawi
Swaziland
Zimbabwe

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

During the Civil War, San Pedro Springs Park in San Antonio was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp. It is the oldest park in Texas and the second oldest in the United States, after Boston Common. Archaeological findings have uncovered evidence that human presence in the area dates back 12,000 years. Martín de Alarcón founded the city of San Antonio by establishing San Antonio de Valero and Presidio San Antonio de Bexar at the Springs in 1718. He built an acequia (irrigation canal) in 1719. The springs and surrounding area were designated as public land by King Philip V of Spain in 1729. When the Canary Islanders began arriving in 1731, they first camped in the area around the springs. After the Civil War, Buffalo Soldiers used the park as a training camp. That's quite a bit of history for 46 acres!

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## Don Ratcliff

Lmao

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## Wildthings

I saw that and wished it was at all entry points of Texas!!

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## woodman6415

Don Ratcliff said:


> Lmao
> 
> View attachment 149092


The guy buckled under pressure and took it down ...


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## Don Ratcliff

Wildthings said:


> I saw that and wished it was at all entry points of Texas!!


Aside from being Africa hot in Texas I do like your base beliefs above all other states. I flick a lot of poo but I think Texas as a whole has their head on right.

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## woodman6415

I don't know how accurate this is but, according to Wunderground, it is 118 degrees in Alpine, Texas right now ---- and feels like 125.

https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/tx/alpine

Even for Texas, that is pretty dang hot!


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## Tony

Don Ratcliff said:


> Aside from being Africa hot in Texas I do like your base beliefs above all other states. I flick a lot of poo but I think Texas as a whole has their head on right.



What are you talking about? It's only 103 at 6:45 here!


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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

Violet (left) and Daisy Hilton were sisters known as "San Antonio's Siamese Twins." The two were literally joined at the hip, and this, combined with their musical talent, made them famous on the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s and 30s, where they met performers like Harry Houdini and Bob Hope. The twins made headlines in the Alamo City and across the country when they sued their managers for their freedom and earnings in the early 1930s, and were awarded $100,000. Shortly after winning their case, they went to Hollywood to appear in the 1932 horror film "Freaks."

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from Dandy Don Meredith, who was born and raised in Mount Vernon, Texas and went on to play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys:

As the then-powerful Oakland Raiders were destroying the then Houston Oilers 34-0 in the Houston Astrodome in a 1972 Monday Night Football game, the ABC cameras caught a portly Oilers fan alone in his section, sleeping late in the contest. The man awoke to discover he was being watched, and flipped the camera the bird. “There’s an Oilers fan who still thinks his team is #1″ Meredith deadpanned.

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## Tony

Let me brag a little here. This was posted on the Traces of Texas FB page that a lot of these posts come from. This man was one of my grandfather's best friends, they learned tailoring together. He is my Uncle's Godfather ad one hell of a man! Tony 

Blown away. Stunned. Incredulous. All of these describe my reaction when Traces of Texas reader Richard Sanchez sent in this photo of Ramon Galindo, taken in Austin in 2006. You see, back in the 1980s I was living in Austin and I needed to get some pants altered. Several friends told me "take it to Galindo the Tailor downtown. He is the best!" So I did, and that is where I met this man, Ramon Galindo. Mr. Galindo was a great tailor. Many famous people were his clients, including LBJ. A few years later I went to try to find him again but he had retired and closed up shop. Which is why I was amazed when Richard sent in this photo of Mr. Galindo and accompanied it with the following video, in which Mr. Galindo describes his experiences during World War II. He shot down enemy aircraft, entered Hitler's office right after the war etc... It's part of an oral history project made by KLRU that was recorded in 2013. Mr. Galindo is now 96 years old. I would love to meet him again. Here's the video:






The photos in the video are wonderful. I love the one of Mr. Galindo on the motorcycle in May, 1945. 

Thank you, Richard. This photo almost brought tears to my eyes. Truly, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

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## JR Parks

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> On May 16, 1870, an Apache party of 8-10 warriors captured a 10-year old boy named Herman Lehmann near Mason, Texas. For the next eight years Herman lived among the Apaches and, toward the end, the Comanches, becoming fully a part of their culture.
> 
> In July 1877, Comanche chief Quanah Parker, who had successfully negotiated the surrender of the last fighting Comanches in 1875, was sent in search of the renegades. Herman Lehmann was among the group that Quanah found camped on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Quanah persuaded them to quit fighting and come to the Indian reservation near Fort Sill, Indian Territory (in present-day Oklahoma). While Lehmann initially refused to go to the reservation, he later followed at Quanah's request.
> 
> Herman Lehmann lived with Quanah Parker’s family on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation in 1877-78. Several people took notice of the white boy living among the Indians. However, Lehmann's mother never gave up believing that she would one day see her son again. She questioned Colonel Mackenzie, the commanding officer of Fort Sill, whether there were any blue-eyed young men on the reservation. He said yes; however, the description led them to believe that this was not her son. Nevertheless, she requested that the the young man be brought to her
> 
> In April 1878, Lt. Col. John W. Davidson ordered that Lehmann be sent under guard to his family in Texas. Five soldiers and a driver escorted Lehmann on a four-mule-drawn ambulance to Loyal Valley in Mason County, Texas. Lehmann arrived in Loyal Valley with an escort of soldiers on May 12, 1878, eight years after his capture. The people of Loyal Valley gathered to see the captive boy brought home. Upon his arrival, neither he nor his mother recognized one another. Lehmann had long believed his family dead, for the Apache had shown him proof during his time of transition to their way of life. It was his sister who found a scar on his arm, which had been caused by her when they were playing with a hatchet. His family surrounded him welcoming him home and the distant memories began to come back. Hearing someone repeat "Herman", he thought that sounded familiar and then realized it was his own name.
> 
> At first, he was sullen and wanted nothing to do with his mother and siblings. As he put it, "I was an Indian, and I did not like them because they were palefaces." Herman's readjustment to his original culture was slow and painful. He rejected food and was unaccustomed to sleeping in a bed
> 
> Throughout his life, Herman Lehmann drifted between two very different cultures. Lehmann was a very popular figure in southwestern Oklahoma and the Texas Hill Country, appearing at county fairs and rodeos. To thrill audiences, such as he did in 1925 at the Old Settlers Reunion in Mason County, he would chase a calf around an arena, kill it with arrows, jump off his horse, cut out the calf’s liver, and eat it raw.
> 
> Herman died on February 2, 1932, in Loyal Valley, Texas, where he is buried next to his mother and stepfather in the cemetery next to the old Loyal Valley one-room school house.



An outstanding book on Lehmann's life is one by AC Greene entitled "The Last Captive"

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Scott Raschke was nice enough to share this and is pretty amazing. This photo is a little lacking in clarity (it's a photo of a newspaper photo) but it is so unusual I had to post it. This is The Four Speeds doing a gig at Kay Powell Chevrolet in New Boston, Texas in the early 1960s. Yes, that Four Speeds. You know, with DON HENLEY on the drums. I wonder what Don and/or his bandmates would have said had you told them that 15 or so years later, Don would sing a song (Hotel California) that would become famous worldwide, a tune recognized by hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people. I think I told the story that one time in college I ate dinner with a group of students from around the world: Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia etc... Every one of them knew that song and not just the song but the lyrics to the song. And here he is today trying to save Caddo Lake. What a journey for him.

Thank you, Scott. It's mind blowing to see this photo, knowing the rest of the story as we do now.

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

More than 50,000 beer cans cover the exterior of the Beer Can house in Houston. I like a man who knows what he likes, and apparently the house's creator, John Milkovisch, really, REALLY liked beer. He started his project now known as the Beer Can House in 1968 when he began inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks, and metal pieces into concrete and redwood to form unique landscaping features. When the entire front and back yard were completely covered because he "got sick of mowing the grass", he turned to the house itself and began adding aluminum siding - aluminum beer can siding, that is. Over the next 18 years the house disappeared under a cover of flattened beer cans for both practical and decorative reasons. Garlands made of cut beer cans hanging from the roof edges not only made the house sing in the wind, but also lowered the family's energy bills. Neat place to visit if you get the chance.

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## Wildthings

LOL been there done that Pretty crazy

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1898 and is wonderful:

"I will say to those who have applied to 'The Iconoclast' for information that they might do much worse than come to Texas. They can find here any kind of climate and soil they care to call for. Alpine claims to have had a snow storm in July, and the musical hum of the mosquito ushers in the glad new year at Galveston, and rises, alike a paean of praise, at Brownsville on Washington's birthday. While the norther in the Panhandle is taking an inventory of every bone in the human body, the Bohemian Club at Houston will be dallying in the shade of magnolia trees and conning its catechism. The soil in some sections is best adapted to the production of mesquite beans and mule-eared rabbits, while in others it is so prolific that an old corset plowed under will develop into a new woman, and a pair of discarded suspenders if properly planted and "hilled" will produce a candidate for Congress."

----- William Cowper Brann, "The Iconoclast," 1898


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1898 and is wonderful:
> 
> "I will say to those who have applied to 'The Iconoclast' for information that they might do much worse than come to Texas. They can find here any kind of climate and soil they care to call for. Alpine claims to have had a snow storm in July, and the musical hum of the mosquito ushers in the glad new year at Galveston, and rises, alike a paean of praise, at Brownsville on Washington's birthday. While the norther in the Panhandle is taking an inventory of every bone in the human body, the Bohemian Club at Houston will be dallying in the shade of magnolia trees and conning its catechism. The soil in some sections is best adapted to the production of mesquite beans and mule-eared rabbits, while in others it is so prolific that an old corset plowed under will develop into a new woman, and a pair of discarded suspenders if properly planted and "hilled" will produce a candidate for Congress."
> 
> ----- William Cowper Brann, "The Iconoclast," 1898



I need to try planting a corset!


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## FranklinWorkshops

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 147221


I bought a bag just recently down in Tennessee. Haven't seen them anywhere else in years. Was a childhood favorite.

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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> I need to try planting a corset!


Maybe just dig the hole knee deep and bury you feet and part of legs .. have Nikki water till you are adult height .. then dig you up ...

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## Tony




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## Spinartist




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## woodman6415

Spinartist said:


>


One of my favorite songs by King George ... and it’s true for me

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## FranklinWorkshops

woodman6415 said:


> One of my favorite songs by King George ... and it’s true for me


At least George had the good sense to move to Tennessee (my home state).

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## woodman6415

FranklinWorkshops said:


> At least George had the good sense to move to Tennessee (my home state).


In the song ... he lives on his ranch outside of Uvalde Tx.. and I believe he’s only been married once ..


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## FranklinWorkshops

Is he still performing? I saw him in Atlanta years ago. Great concert.


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## Tony

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Is he still performing? I saw him in Atlanta years ago. Great concert.



Yes he is. He doesn't do a full tour anymore but does play some shows.


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## woodman6415

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Is he still performing? I saw him in Atlanta years ago. Great concert.


Has some shows in Vegas ..

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## Tony

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Is he still performing? I saw him in Atlanta years ago. Great concert.



He's playing at the Houston rodeo next year and Nikki has said we're going. God help me, I'll be in the armpit of Texas....


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## FranklinWorkshops

Tony said:


> He's playing at the Houston rodeo next year and Nikki has said we're going. God help me, I'll be in the armpit of Texas....


Then you will need Pit Liquor. https://kdvr.com/2017/11/01/pit-liquor-colorado-inventors-make-whiskey-based-deodorant/ 
I bought some from them recently and it really works great.

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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> He's playing at the Houston rodeo next year and Nikki has said we're going. God help me, I'll be in the armpit of Texas....


Not a very nice thing to say friendly little Texas guy ....

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> He's playing at the Houston rodeo next year and Nikki has said we're going. God help me, I'll be in the armpit of Texas....



Nah you wont. Dallas/Ft Worth are the armpits -- Houston is the crotch

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Nah you wont. Dallas/Ft Worth are the armpits -- Houston is the crotch


I always said El Paso was the crotch .. but on second thought it might be a little further south of the crotch

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## FranklinWorkshops

woodman6415 said:


> I always said El Paso was the crotch .. but on second thought it might be a little further south of the crotch


You Texans don't need help from us foreigners in criticizing your home. You do very will without our help.

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## woodman6415

FranklinWorkshops said:


> You Texans don't need help from us foreigners in criticizing your home. You do very will without our help.


We know these places better than any outsider ..

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas

Late night humor:

"This is how it started. God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel, found him, resting on the seventh day. He inquired, "Where have you been?" God smiled deeply and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, "Look, Michael. Look what I've made." Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, "What is it?" “It's a planet," replied God, "and I've put life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a place to test Balance." “Balance?" inquired Michael, "I'm still confused." God explained, pointing to different parts of Earth. "For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, while southern Europe will be poor." God continued pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice." The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a land area and said, "What's that one?" “That's Texas, the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and plains. The people from Texas are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, humorous, but proud and they are going to travel the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of peace, and producers of good things." Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, "But what about balance, God? You said there would be balance." God smiled, "I will create Washington, DC. Wait till you see the fools I put there."

------ from Traces of Texas reader Horton Tim Sherri

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

German chocolate cake isn’t actually German at all. It’s named after Sam German, the genius who, in 1852, came up with the delicious dark chocolate used in the recipe. The recipe itself, invented by a Texas homemaker, was first published as a recipe of the day in The Dallas Morning Star in 1957.

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## FranklinWorkshops

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> God smiled, "I will create Washington, DC. Wait till you see the fools I put there."
> 
> ------ from Traces of Texas reader Horton Tim Sherri



Too true. This just happened in Fairfax County which is a suburb of D.C. and where many government workers live. https://canadafreepress.com/article/fairfax-county-implements-harmful-curriculum

Just can't make up how crazy these people are. Total derangement in the school board.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1857 by the man who subsequently became famous for designing New York's Central Park:

“The San Antonio Spring may be classed as the first water among the gems of the natural world. The whole river gushes up in one sparkling burst from the earth. It has all the beautiful accompaniments of a smaller spring, moss, pebbles, seclusion, sparkling sunbeams, and dense overhanging luxuriant foliage. The effect is overpowering. It is beyond your possible conceptions of a spring. You cannot believe your eyes, and almost shrink from sudden metamorphosis by invading nymphdom.”

------ Frederick Law Olmsted describing the San Antonio Springs in his classic 1857 travelogue, "A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier." The San Antonio Springs are hstorically the state's 6th largest, emerging on what is now the campus of Incarnate Word College in downtown San Antonio and flowing through Brackenridge Park. Because of these springs, Spanish missionaries located here in 1718; the City of San Antonio followed. The springs are fed by water from the Edwards Aquifer; this water reaches the surface through faults along the Balcones Escarpment. There have been more than 100 individual springs identified, but many of these are no longer active due to pumping demands on the Edwards Aquifer and sedimentation from the upstream Olmos Creek. During periods of drought, the springs sometimes stop flowing entirely, only to resume when water levels rise in the aquifer. The mean flow from the springs is now only 20 ft³/s. But what a site ---- and sight ------- they must have been back in Olmsted's day!

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## Wildthings

*July 4th, 1995 -- On This Day in Texas History*

*Willie goes to Luckenbach for the Fourth of July* 
On this day in 1995, Luckenbach, Texas, where "Everybody is Somebody," was the site of Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic. The event drew thousands to the "town," which had a population of three. Luckenbach is on Ranch Road 1376, thirteen miles from Fredericksburg in southeastern Gillespie County. It was founded in the 1840s or 1850s and had a population of 492 in 1904, after which the number of residents dwindled. Luckenbach was bought by Hondo Crouch, a former swimming champion, actor, and columnist who styled himself "mayor" and declared Luckenbach "a free…state of mind." Frequent festivals including an annual Mud Dauber's Day, an annual Hug In, a women's chili cook-off, and picnics like Willie's bring thousands to the pastoral setting.


Ahhh Luckenbach Where I was Somebody!!





​

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## FranklinWorkshops

Willie is one of my favorite singers. A real character whose music will transcend all of us. One of the first LPs I bought when we purchased a real stereo system in 1975 was "Red Headed Stranger" which I still love. I met Willie in 2006 through an introduction by my first cousin who was the stage manager for Brooks and Dunn. He is as much of a character in real life as he is on stage. He was a great song writer. "Crazy" recorded by Patsy Cline was written by him. Here's a link to a brief story about how Patsy decided to record it. http://lonestar995fm.com/willie-nelson-reveals-why-patsy-cline-recorded-crazy-video/

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> *July 4th, 1995 -- On This Day in Texas History*
> 
> *Willie goes to Luckenbach for the Fourth of July*
> On this day in 1995, Luckenbach, Texas, where "Everybody is Somebody," was the site of Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic. The event drew thousands to the "town," which had a population of three. Luckenbach is on Ranch Road 1376, thirteen miles from Fredericksburg in southeastern Gillespie County. It was founded in the 1840s or 1850s and had a population of 492 in 1904, after which the number of residents dwindled. Luckenbach was bought by Hondo Crouch, a former swimming champion, actor, and columnist who styled himself "mayor" and declared Luckenbach "a free…state of mind." Frequent festivals including an annual Mud Dauber's Day, an annual Hug In, a women's chili cook-off, and picnics like Willie's bring thousands to the pastoral setting.
> 
> 
> Ahhh Luckenbach Where I was Somebody!!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​



Great Hill Country bike ride from my place .. about hour away .. usually ride over a couple of times a year .. always have a live band on weekends... great place to hang out ..

Reactions: Agree 2


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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Great Hill Country bike ride from my place .. about hour away .. usually ride over a couple of times a year .. always have a live band on weekends... great place to hang out ..


And always stop at the ASC for a burger


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> And always stop at the ASC for a burger


Not sure what ASC is .. lots of pretty good places to eat in Fredericksburg..


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Not sure what ASC is .. lots of pretty good places to eat in Fredericksburg..



I'm glad you said it Wendell, I just thought I hadn't been there recently enough to know what that is either....


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## Wildthings

Alamo Springs Café

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Alamo Springs Café
> 
> View attachment 149672



That's the one right by the bat cave correct? I've heard both the food and bars are pretty dam good, need to get there.


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> That's the one right by the bat cave correct? I've heard both the food and bars are pretty dam good, need to get there.


That's the one!! Get the Cover burger and onion rings and share it with Nikki. Don't make the mistake and y'all order one each

Reactions: Like 1 | Thank You! 1


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Alamo Springs Café
> 
> View attachment 149672


Looks delish .. will be going soon ..

Reactions: Agree 1


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## FranklinWorkshops

You Texans eat avocado on your burgers? Is that arugula on top? Sad.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Looks delish .. will be going soon ..



Let me know when, we'll meet you there.


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## Tony

FranklinWorkshops said:


> You Texans eat avocado on your burgers? Is that arugula on top? Sad.



Bless your heart Larry, you don't know what you're missing.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## FranklinWorkshops

Now in my part of the South, "Bless your heart" is a curse. We use it when we want the person to think we're being nice but it really means "go to hell."

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Wildthings

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Now in my part of the South, "Bless your heart" is a curse. We use it when we want the person to think we're being nice but it really means "go to hell."


And your point hits home!!


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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Looks delish .. will be going soon ..


Closed on Mon & Tues. We will probably take my BIL & SIL there on Wednesday since we'll be in Fdbg closing on a BnB

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## FranklinWorkshops

Right. I use it frequently up here in PA. No one knows the difference except my wife, who only smiles.

Reactions: Funny 4


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Closed on Mon & Tues. We will probably take my BIL & SIL there on Wednesday since we'll be in Fdbg closing on a BnB



We'll be in Wimberley tomorrow for Market Days.

Reactions: Like 1


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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> We'll be in Wimberley tomorrow for Market Days.


Selling or just shopping?


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Selling or just shopping?



Just shopping


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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

It was out in front of Salado's Stagecoach Inn on the eve of the Civil War that old Sam Houston, piqued at his fellow Texans for trying to take Texas out of the nation into which he had struggled so hard less than two decades before to bring it, stood before an audience of rednecks and spoke for the Union.

"But General Sam," cried a frontiersman, "we could whip them Yankees with cornstalks."

"But," fired back the elderly Houston, "those Yankees wont agree to fight with cornstalks."

---- Richard Dunlop, "Great Trails of the West," 1971. The Stagecoach Inn, of course, still stands and is in the process of being renovated.


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## Mike Hill

FranklinWorkshops said:


> At least George had the good sense to move to Tennessee (my home state).


GS lives in TN - I gotta go look him up!


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## Mike Hill

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Willie is one of my favorite singers. A real character whose music will transcend all of us. One of the first LPs I bought when we purchased a real stereo system in 1975 was "Red Headed Stranger" which I still love. I met Willie in 2006 through an introduction by my first cousin who was the stage manager for Brooks and Dunn. He is as much of a character in real life as he is on stage. He was a great song writer. "Crazy" recorded by Patsy Cline was written by him. Here's a link to a brief story about how Patsy decided to record it. http://lonestar995fm.com/willie-nelson-reveals-why-patsy-cline-recorded-crazy-video/


H E double hockey sticks. I remember when Willie wore suits and slicked back his short hair and played High School Gyms.


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## woodman6415

Mike Hill said:


> H E double hockey sticks. I remember when Willie wore suits and slicked back his short hair and played High School Gyms.

Reactions: Like 1


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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The old jail in San Elizario, Texas, is the only jail that Billy the Kid ever broke INTO. It seems that Billy the Kid traveled from Las Cruces, New Mexico, into San Elizario after learning that his friend, Melquiades Segura has been arrested in San Elizario. Upon his arrival at around 3 am, Billy the Kid knocked on the door of the jail, waking up the Mexican guards. Billy the Kid posed as a Texas Ranger and told the guard he had two American Prisoners. As the guard opened the door, he found himself eye to eye with Billy’s 44 revolver. Billy quickly took the guard’s guns, helped his friend out, put the guard in the jail and threw away the key. Billy and his friend Segura immediately crossed over the Rio Grande into Mexico, which at that time was only two and a half miles away from San Elizario. Here's a photo of what the jail looks like today. The statue on the right is none other than Billy the Kid. It's now a museum, and an interesting one at that.

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## FranklinWorkshops

woodman6415 said:


> View attachment 149750



Willie in 1965

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## woodman6415

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Willie in 1965


A living legend

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

These stats maybe before the shale boom hit and San Angelo became an oil town too 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Because of oil and gas revenue, Midland County (population 161,000, county seat is Midland) generates as much sales tax for the state of Texas as Lubbock, San Angelo and Abilene combined. Put together, those three cities have a population of about 490,000 people.

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Happy, Texas, which lies on the border of Randall and Swisher Counties in the Texas Panhandle, derives its name from Happy Draw, a stream named in the 19th century by the team of cowboys who were happy to find water there. Happy has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names. The town's motto is "The Town Without A Frown." The population of Happy is roughly 680 joyous folks.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day:

"You can just say that I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaws, but have no use for that stinking coward class of these who can be found in every locality, and who would betray a friend or comrade for the sake of their own gain. There are thee or four jolly good fellows on the dodge in my section, and when they come to my home they are welcome, for they are my friends and would lay down their lives in my defense at any time the occasion demanded and go the full length to serve me in any way."

----- Belle Starr, the infamous outlaw queen, in an interview in the Dallas News, 1886

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## Wildthings

Wildthings said:


> Alamo Springs Café
> 
> View attachment 149672



The Arcane fact of the Day!!

I can only eat half that burger!! Their Fried Portabella Mushroom Strips are awesome.

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## Wildthings

And we made it back to Luckenbach also

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> And we made it back to Luckenbach also
> 
> View attachment 150016


Makes you somebody

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

35 miles east of downtown El Paso lies a square mile of huge, jumbled syenite rock known as "Hueco Tanks." As the rock dissolved unevenly through time, it formed depressions ("tanks") in the ground capable of holding large amounts of water. In the middle of the desert, this awesome waterhole has attracted both humans and animals for millennia. Among the rocks are caves, canyons, and overhanging cliffs. Prehistoric Indians camped there, and two of their cultures (Jornada and Mogollon) adorned the walls with art, as did early Europeans. Much of the art remains uninterpreted but in Comanche Cave, the largest cave in the complex, the art is believed to tell of a massacre of Indians by Spanish or Mexican cavalry.

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## Wildthings

Hueco Tanks

Haven't been there...…. YET!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Hueco Tanks
> 
> Haven't been there...…. YET!


On my bucket list .. far enough away from El Paso .. a town I’d love to never drive through again

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## woodman6415

Okay, so in doing a little research about Willie Nelson's 2nd 4th of July Picnic, held in College Station, Texas, in July, 1974, I found Robert Earl Keen retelling the story of how his car caught on fire while parked at that concert. This is a transcript of Robert Earl's appearance on NPR's "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" radio show. Robert Earl is being questioned by Peter Sagal. One of the show's panelists, Charlie Pierce, also comments:

SAGAL: As I was listening to your catalog, I came across this picture on your album cover "Picnic." And it's two cars and one of them, it seems, is on fire. And I found out that was not staged.

Robert Earl KEEN: No, no. I went to a Willie Nelson second picnic and my - I was there doing the Willie thing, you know, in the Willie way, as we all know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The Willie thing.

Robert Earl KEEN: And I over did it and I took a nap in the afternoon. And I woke up to the emcees hollering out names and license plate numbers. And he said, and the next winner is RHP997.

SAGAL: Right.

Robert Earl KEEN: And I said, that's my car, man. And everybody around me who was, you know, they hardly any clothes on. They said wow, that's awesome. And they were clapping. And so I ran out there and there was my car. It was burnt to a crisp.

SAGAL: So what happened?

Robert Earl KEEN: What happened to the car or what happened to - how did I get home or what?

SAGAL: Oh, I...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Look, man. This sounds like it's the kind of story that could take the rest of the show, so it's yours.

Robert Earl KEEN: Somebody from the festival came to me and said, you know, the least we could do is let you meet Willie. So I said, OK, that's cool. So I went and met Willie and he said sorry about your car. And he says I got to go jam with Leon Russell. I'll see you next time.

SAGAL: And how did the car catch fire?

Robert Earl KEEN: There was a guy - there was - you know, he was in the Willie way as well. And he was out of the parking lot. And he was taking a nap in his car with the air conditioner on. And the exhaust caught the grass on fire, which then the wind blew it and it burned up 16 cars totally, it burned up.

CHARLIE PIERCE: Whoa, whoa, whoa. The exhaust caught the grass on fire. He was asleep and somebody knocked on his window and he just, you know, looked up in a panic and just shoved it in drive and just spilled an entire line of fire across this dry grass field.

(LAUGHTER)

PIERCE: What the kind of car is this?

SAGAL: That's awesome - this guy is driving through the grass parking lot leaving a trail of flames.

PIERCE: With flames coming out of his tailpipe.

SAGAL: And so then - and the emcee is like - and these are all the cars that are burnt. And he's reading off license plates and everybody's going yay, 'cause it's a Willie Nelson concert.

SALIE: 'Cause it's the Willie way.

Robert Earl KEEN: You know, there was more love back then I think.

SAGAL: Yeah, people were happier.

Robert Earl KEEN: Yeah, people were really happy.

(LAUGHTER)


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Okay, so in doing a little research about Willie Nelson's 2nd 4th of July Picnic, held in College Station, Texas, in July, 1974, I found Robert Earl Keen retelling the story of how his car caught on fire while parked at that concert. This is a transcript of Robert Earl's appearance on NPR's "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" radio show. Robert Earl is being questioned by Peter Sagal. One of the show's panelists, Charlie Pierce, also comments:
> 
> SAGAL: As I was listening to your catalog, I came across this picture on your album cover "Picnic." And it's two cars and one of them, it seems, is on fire. And I found out that was not staged.
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: No, no. I went to a Willie Nelson second picnic and my - I was there doing the Willie thing, you know, in the Willie way, as we all know.
> 
> (LAUGHTER)
> 
> SAGAL: The Willie thing.
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: And I over did it and I took a nap in the afternoon. And I woke up to the emcees hollering out names and license plate numbers. And he said, and the next winner is RHP997.
> 
> SAGAL: Right.
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: And I said, that's my car, man. And everybody around me who was, you know, they hardly any clothes on. They said wow, that's awesome. And they were clapping. And so I ran out there and there was my car. It was burnt to a crisp.
> 
> SAGAL: So what happened?
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: What happened to the car or what happened to - how did I get home or what?
> 
> SAGAL: Oh, I...
> 
> (LAUGHTER)
> 
> SAGAL: Look, man. This sounds like it's the kind of story that could take the rest of the show, so it's yours.
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: Somebody from the festival came to me and said, you know, the least we could do is let you meet Willie. So I said, OK, that's cool. So I went and met Willie and he said sorry about your car. And he says I got to go jam with Leon Russell. I'll see you next time.
> 
> SAGAL: And how did the car catch fire?
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: There was a guy - there was - you know, he was in the Willie way as well. And he was out of the parking lot. And he was taking a nap in his car with the air conditioner on. And the exhaust caught the grass on fire, which then the wind blew it and it burned up 16 cars totally, it burned up.
> 
> CHARLIE PIERCE: Whoa, whoa, whoa. The exhaust caught the grass on fire. He was asleep and somebody knocked on his window and he just, you know, looked up in a panic and just shoved it in drive and just spilled an entire line of fire across this dry grass field.
> 
> (LAUGHTER)
> 
> PIERCE: What the kind of car is this?
> 
> SAGAL: That's awesome - this guy is driving through the grass parking lot leaving a trail of flames.
> 
> PIERCE: With flames coming out of his tailpipe.
> 
> SAGAL: And so then - and the emcee is like - and these are all the cars that are burnt. And he's reading off license plates and everybody's going yay, 'cause it's a Willie Nelson concert.
> 
> SALIE: 'Cause it's the Willie way.
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: You know, there was more love back then I think.
> 
> SAGAL: Yeah, people were happier.
> 
> Robert Earl KEEN: Yeah, people were really happy.
> 
> (LAUGHTER)
> 
> View attachment 150079



It's a whole lot more entertaining to hear Robert Earl tell this story!


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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Tyler, Texas, is home to the largest rose garden in the United States, a 14-acre public garden complex that boasts over 38,000 rose bushes of at least 500 different varieties. Tyler, which was founded in 1846, was named for President John Tyler in recognition of his support for admitting Texas to the United States.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Tyler, Texas, is home to the largest rose garden in the United States, a 14-acre public garden complex that boasts over 38,000 rose bushes of at least 500 different varieties. Tyler, which was founded in 1846, was named for President John Tyler in recognition of his support for admitting Texas to the United States.


Been there done that and there is a whole lotta roses to see. Also it's the home of the "Tyler Rose" Earl Campbell

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## Tony



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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader George Richeson's father, G. Leland Richeson, was the first employee of HEB, before it even was HEB. He was employed by the company when it was still C.C. Butt grocery Here he is with Howard E. Butt (for whom the grocery chain is named) in one of the company's first motorized delivery vehicles.

I just love this image. Look at that car! To think that a chain that now employs more than 85,000 people came from such beginnings. It's a pretty remarkable story and it makes me wonder what I'm doing with one, single, granted life.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"He's a carved-in-granite, samurai poet warrior Gypsy guitar-pickin' wild man with a heart as big as Texas and the greatest sense of humor in the West."

------- Kris Kristofferson, speaking about his friend Willie Nelson

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## woodman6415

It does get cold in Texas

Traces of Texas
The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The worst cold front in Texas history occurred from Feb.11-13, 1899. In Dallas the wind reached 35 miles an hour and the mercury fell to 5 degrees below zero. The mayor ordered city hall to stay open and heated for the homeless. A McKinney doctor went to his stable to hitch up his horse and found the animal dead, frozen stiff. Cattle as far south as Houston froze to death. Seven inches of snow fell in Alice, Laredo, Eagle Pass, and the Rio Grande Valley. The bays at Galveston, Matagorda, and Corpus Christi froze. Galveston recorded a temperature of 7.5 degrees, the coldest ever recorded there.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> It does get cold in Texas
> 
> Traces of Texas
> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> The worst cold front in Texas history occurred from Feb.11-13, 1899. In Dallas the wind reached 35 miles an hour and the mercury fell to 5 degrees below zero. The mayor ordered city hall to stay open and heated for the homeless. A McKinney doctor went to his stable to hitch up his horse and found the animal dead, frozen stiff. Cattle as far south as Houston froze to death. Seven inches of snow fell in Alice, Laredo, Eagle Pass, and the Rio Grande Valley. The bays at Galveston, Matagorda, and Corpus Christi froze. Galveston recorded a temperature of 7.5 degrees, the coldest ever recorded there.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day:

"I have the honor to report my arrival here with the camels. They are in good condition, considering their long confinement on shipboard and the tossing upon the sea that they have been subjected to and, with the exception of a few boils and swollen legs, are apparently in good health. On being landed and feeling once again the solid earth beneath them, they became so excited to an almost uncontrollable degree, rearing, kicking, crying out, breaking halters and, by other fantastic tricks, demonstrating their enjoyment of the liberty of the soil."

----- Major Henry C. Wayne, delivering camels imported from Egypt to Texas for testing as an alternative to horses and mules for the Army, 1856

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
Gary Cooper, Texan Gene Autry, and John Wayne, 1958. Gene was born in Tioga, Texas, in 1907.

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## Wildthings

*Seeing Red in Texas*


*Early *travelers who visited our part of the world wrote without exception that this was a land blessed with natural resources.

*One* of those resources which early Texans sought to exploit was a color. Red.

*Before* the discovery of aniline dyes in the 1850s and 60s, the world was a pretty drab place for average people. The means for coloring your world were rare and expensive. Especially red.

*So *what was the source of this Texas red?

*Go* find some prickly pear cactus. You're looking for pads covered with a white fluff.






*Dig* into the fluff and you will find a small insect. His name is Cochineal. Pull him out. Now squeeze him between your fingers. You will find them covered in a vivid red.






*That's *carmine or carminic acid. From the sixteenth century until those cheap, bright aniline dyes, derived from coal tar, came along, the world was crazy for it.

*Col. Juan Almonte*, on his inspection tour of Texas before the Revolution, noted that there was much potential for the development of the cochineal industry. The twice yearly crop was already being gathered and hauled to Laredo to be sold, ultimately, to agents of the British crown.

*What* did the Brits want with these bugs? They where what made the Red Coats red.




A British Red Coat from the American Revolution

*They *also supplied the red for Indian blankets and war paint. It colored the crimson sashes of Texas Army officers. And, when the Lone Star flag was adopted in 1839, the red field was bug red. This was nothing unusual. The red stripes on just about every American flag before the Civil War were dyed with cochineal.

*It* was even used in medicine. In 1854, Josiah Camillis Massie, a physician and planter residing near Channelview, produced the first medical book written in Texas: A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice of Medicine. With its pages he included a prescription for treating whooping cough in infants and children. It contained cochineal...along with ammonia, licorice, ipecac and opium.

*Despite *it's potential, the cochineal industry never reached its potential in Texas. The Oaxacans had developed cultivation secrets, but were not eager to share them, especially after that whole independence business. Then came the aniline rainbow, and the cochineal industry died. Or went to sleep.

*Over *the last several decades demand has grown steadily. People in search of natural and environmentally friendly colorants have rediscovered cochineal. Only now it is more likely to be found in your mouth than on your clothing.

*Read* the ingredient label on a box or can from your pantry. If you see Natural Red #4, (or just 'natural coloring' in a red tinted product,) that is our little friend.

*Is *it time for Texas take part in the new cochineal boom? Maybe someday Landmen will be on the hunt for bug leases.

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Ann B. Davis, who played Alice the housekeeper in TV's "The Brady Bunch," is buried in Boerne. Texas, at the Saint Helena Columbarium and Memorial Gardens in that fair city. Ann was living in San Antonio when she passed away at the age of 88 in 2014.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When our party left Corpus Christi it was quite large, including the cavalry escort, Paymaster, Major Dix, his clerk and the officers who, like myself, were simply on leave; but all the officers on leave, except Lieutenant Benjamin—afterwards killed in the valley of Mexico—Lieutenant, now General, Augur, and myself, concluded to spend their allotted time at San Antonio and return from there. We were all to be back at Corpus Christi by the end of the month. The paymaster was detained in Austin so long that, if we had waited for him, we would have exceeded our leave. We concluded, therefore, to start back at once with the animals we had, and having to rely principally on grass for their food, it was a good six days' journey. We had to sleep on the prairie every night, except at Goliad, and possibly one night on the Colorado, without shelter and with only such food as we carried with us, and prepared ourselves. The journey was hazardous on account of Indians, and there were white men in Texas whom I would not have cared to meet in a secluded place. Lieutenant Augur was taken seriously sick before we reached Goliad and at a distance from any habitation. To add to the complication, his horse—a mustang that had probably been captured from the band of wild horses before alluded to, and of undoubted longevity at his capture—gave out. It was absolutely necessary to get for ward to Goliad to find a shelter for our sick companion. By dint of patience and exceedingly slow movements, Goliad was at last reached, and a shelter and bed secured for our patient. We remained over a day, hoping that Augur might recover sufficiently to resume his travels. He did not, however, and knowing that Major Dix would be along in a few days, with his wagon-train, now empty, and escort, we arranged with our Louisiana friend to take the best of care of the sick lieutenant until thus relieved, and went on.

I had never been a sportsman in my life; had scarcely ever gone in search of game, and rarely seen any when looking for it. On this trip there was no minute of time while travelling between San Patricio and the settlements on the San Antonio River, from San Antonio to Austin, and again from the Colorado River back to San Patricio, when deer or antelope could not be seen in great numbers. Each officer carried a shot-gun, and every evening, after going into camp, some would go out and soon return with venison and wild turkeys enough for the entire camp. I, however, never went out, and had no occasion to fire my gun; except, being detained over a day at Goliad, Benjamin and I concluded to go down to the creek—which was fringed with timber, much of it the pecan—and bring back a few turkeys. We had scarcely reached the edge of the timber when I heard the flutter of wings overhead, and in an instant I saw two or three turkeys flying away. These were soon followed by more, then more, and more, until a flock of twenty or thirty had left from just over my head. All this time I stood watching the turkeys to see where they flew—with my gun on my shoulder, and never once thought of levelling it at the birds. When I had time to reflect upon the matter, I came to the conclusion that as a sportsman I was a failure, and went back to the house. Benjamin remained out, and got as many turkeys as he wanted to carry back.

After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to make the remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus Christi just in time to avoid "absence without leave." We met no one not even an Indian—during the remainder of our journey, except at San Patricio. A new settlement had been started there in our absence of three weeks, induced possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening of the first day out from Goliad we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf yet roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved. I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have "seconded the motion" but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask: "Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack?" Knowing where he was from, and suspecting that he thought I would over-estimate the number, I determined to show my acquaintance with the animal by putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct, and answered: "Oh, about twenty," very indifferently. He smiled and rode on. In a minute we were close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just TWO of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted their associates. There are always more of them before they are counted."

----- former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant describes Texas his life as a soldier in Texas on the cusp of the 1846 US-Mexico War. Grant wrote this many years later, in 1884, after his time in the White House. His memoirs are actually quite fascinating. You can read them in their entirety here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4367/4367-h/4367-h.htm

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## woodman6415

This the Katy Freeway in Houston, TX. It is officially the widest freeway in the world

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Mr. and Mrs. Fritz Luckenbach and Mr. and Mrs. Bud Westbrook passed through an exciting experience while on their way to Fredericksburg, Saturday. The roads were as slippery as only West Texas roads can get and Mr. Luckenbach was driving at a moderate speed when within a few miles of Mason, the car hit a hole in the road, skidded and turned turtle, pinning the party under the body of the car. Fortunately because of Mr. Luckenbach's care in driving, nobody was hurt and the only damage done to the car was a broken wind shield and a broken radius rod, which, if we got the telephone message correctly, was broken by coming in contact with Bud Westbook's head. However, the party righted the car and made the rest of the trip without any more accidents."

----- The Menard Messenger newspaper, Thursday, February 25, 1915

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> This the Katy Freeway in Houston, TX. It is officially the widest freeway in the world
> 
> View attachment 150729



Last Sunday coming home from the Hill Country (Concan) it should have only taken about 4.5 hours and it took closer to 8 hrs. and here's proof. See the white Semi truck about halfway up the picture in the right-side lanes, We were right behind them!!

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Last Sunday coming home from the Hill Country (Concan) it should have only taken about 4.5 hours and it took closer to 8 hrs. and here's proof. See the white Semi truck about halfway up the picture in the right-side lanes, We were right behind them!!


Reason I never go Houston .. ever

Reactions: Agree 1


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## JR Parks

Wildthings said:


> *Seeing Red in Texas*
> 
> 
> *Early *travelers who visited our part of the world wrote without exception that this was a land blessed with natural resources.
> 
> *One* of those resources which early Texans sought to exploit was a color. Red.
> 
> *Before* the discovery of aniline dyes in the 1850s and 60s, the world was a pretty drab place for average people. The means for coloring your world were rare and expensive. Especially red.
> 
> *So *what was the source of this Texas red?
> 
> *Go* find some prickly pear cactus. You're looking for pads covered with a white fluff.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Dig* into the fluff and you will find a small insect. His name is Cochineal. Pull him out. Now squeeze him between your fingers. You will find them covered in a vivid red.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *That's *carmine or carminic acid. From the sixteenth century until those cheap, bright aniline dyes, derived from coal tar, came along, the world was crazy for it.
> 
> *Col. Juan Almonte*, on his inspection tour of Texas before the Revolution, noted that there was much potential for the development of the cochineal industry. The twice yearly crop was already being gathered and hauled to Laredo to be sold, ultimately, to agents of the British crown.
> 
> *What* did the Brits want with these bugs? They where what made the Red Coats red.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A British Red Coat from the American Revolution
> 
> *They *also supplied the red for Indian blankets and war paint. It colored the crimson sashes of Texas Army officers. And, when the Lone Star flag was adopted in 1839, the red field was bug red. This was nothing unusual. The red stripes on just about every American flag before the Civil War were dyed with cochineal.
> 
> *It* was even used in medicine. In 1854, Josiah Camillis Massie, a physician and planter residing near Channelview, produced the first medical book written in Texas: A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice of Medicine. With its pages he included a prescription for treating whooping cough in infants and children. It contained cochineal...along with ammonia, licorice, ipecac and opium.
> 
> *Despite *it's potential, the cochineal industry never reached its potential in Texas. The Oaxacans had developed cultivation secrets, but were not eager to share them, especially after that whole independence business. Then came the aniline rainbow, and the cochineal industry died. Or went to sleep.
> 
> *Over *the last several decades demand has grown steadily. People in search of natural and environmentally friendly colorants have rediscovered cochineal. Only now it is more likely to be found in your mouth than on your clothing.
> 
> *Read* the ingredient label on a box or can from your pantry. If you see Natural Red #4, (or just 'natural coloring' in a red tinted product,) that is our little friend.
> 
> *Is *it time for Texas take part in the new cochineal boom? Maybe someday Landmen will be on the hunt for bug leases.



Also great for the foreheads and cheeks of cub and boy scouts!!!!

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Reason I never go Houston .. ever


But I gotta go through it to go anywhere...well almost


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> But I gotta go through it to go anywhere...well almost


Your life sucks .. sorry

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

Y'all are going to LOVE the Texas Quote of the Day:

"Most of my childhood Yule seasons were conventional for the time and place: Texas in the 1930s. They were old-fashioned country Christmases, highlighted by the obligatory big feasts cooked by a mother determined to shower upon her out-at-elbows brood all it was within her power to give.

Certainly Neiman-Marcus gifts were beyond her dreams or comprehensions; perhaps she could do nothing to discourage Santa Claus from leaving more and better toys under the trees of my cousins in Cisco or Putnam or Rotan. No King in Texas, however ---- or in England, for that matter ----- would sit down to a more complete, groaning table for Christmas dinner.

I loved the preparations of those dinners almost as much as their consumption; the fine odors of bubbling pots on the castiron wood-burning stove and companion pans baking in the oven; the strong, sweet smell of the smokehouse as my father removed a home-cured country ham suggesting essence of brown-sugar and sage; the digging of sweet potatoes from the underground bin where they had been stored against the mischief of Jack Frost; the opening of summer peaches my mother had canned in fruit jars and stored in the rude dirt cellar against the good promise of winter cobblers; the warm and joyous bustle as I performed small, presumably helpful chores to the music of mother's hymns celebrating her personal understanding with Jesus.

Everything my mother prepared, everything we ate in that good and rare season ----- excepting a few condiments ----- had been raised in our family garden, orchard, or animal lots. That each family member had contributed to the feeding and currying or to the planting, cultivation and harvesting of these foodstuffs somehow made our feasts taste all the better."

----- Larry L. King, "Warning: Writer at Work," 1975

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The book is a good read 

Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson. Joaquin was a legend. He appeared in movies, was good friends with Robert Duvall, was the model for Jeff Bridges' character in the excellent "Hell or High Water," and wrote a best-selling autobiography titled "One Ranger." He was 80 years old when he passed away after a short bout with cancer in Alpine, Texas, two years ago.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

I met this wonderful man .. 
he was a hoot .. could tell a million jokes and never that I know the same one twice..
Last time I ran into him was at the Terlingua Chili cookoff .. don’t remember the year .. I went 8 or 9 years .. was one big party and a lot of beer was consumed... 

This is "Jalapeno Sam" Lewis, the inventor of the jalapeno lollipop and a man who made a fortune staging armadillo races around the world. He passed away in San Angelo in 2003. He was a true Texas character and his obituary is quite interesting. I apologize for any weird formatting:

Sam Lewis, 80, Tireless Armadillo Promoter

Sam Lewis, who made himself a Texas legend by staging armadillo races around the world, not to mention inventing the jalapeño lollipop, died on Jan. 10, 2003 at his home in San Angelo, Tex. He was 80.

The cause was cancer, his daughter, Kathleen Maxwell, said.

Mr. Lewis was representative of an exuberant breed of Texan who likes to push the boundaries of convention, whether at fight-to-the-death chili cook-offs, ersatz cowboy re-enactments or society balls attended both by people in formal address and by longhorn cattle. He was a nonstop Stetson-wearing promoter whose biggest brag was that he never did an honest day's work in his life.

Mr. Lewis's inspiration was to capitalize on the armadillo, an armored prehistoric-looking animal whose corpses have long been as common along Texas highways as mesquite trees and empty Lone Star beer cans. Not only did he race them, he rented them: to movie producers (one played opposite Kevin Costner in ''Tin Cup''); to the Rolling Stones, who used armadillos for an opening act; and to medical researchers who used them to study leprosy.

''We will send an armadillo to anyone who has a legitimate need for one, a legitimate need,'' he said. ''We won't send them to nuts.''

As owner and chief executive of the World Armadillo Breeding and Racing Association and president of the International Armadillo Appreciation Society, he maintained an armadillo ranch and an armadillo rental agency. He caught armadillos by hand and sent them to zoos around the world. He advised James Michener on armadillos for Mr. Michener's two-volume work, ''Texas.''

As the armadillo became central to the Texas chic that blossomed in the 1970's, Mr. Lewis led the charge. He created San Angelo Sam, an armadillo that was the West Texas answer to Pennsylvania's groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. In 1995, Texas finally heeded his lobbying and made the armadillo its official state small mammal.

Meanwhile Mr. Lewis had sold rights to his idea of jalapeño products, including olives stuffed with the peppers. He remained as a pitchman, never traveling without an armadillo and always driving because, he said, armadillos did not like to fly.

Samuel Thomas Howze Lewis was born in Mississippi, though family members are not sure which town. He ran away from home at 14 and ended up in San Angelo. He saw his first armadillo at 15 while raccoon hunting and was completely charmed. In World War II, he was a tail gunner on a B-29 and later managed a pizza parlor. In 1951, he came up with the idea of racing an armadillo against a horned toad. A bet had something to do with it, though nobody recollects which animal won. When Mr. Lewis later entered a high-stakes duck race, his armadillo was definitely not up to the challenge.

But armadillo against armadillo was something else. Humans are not allowed to touch the contestants but they can blow on their backsides. This excites the hair on the back of the armadillos' legs and they jump like crazy. Mr. Lewis said the speed record for an armadillo was 40 feet in three seconds.

His wife, the former Betty June Meek, died in 1999. In addition to his daughter, who lives in Irving, Tex., he is survived by his son, Samuel Jr., two grandsons, two brothers and four sisters. The family intends to keep raising armadillos.
''Why did the chicken cross the road?'' Mr. Lewis would joke. ''To show the armadillo it can be done.''

New York Times

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas

This is Bill Pickett, the cowboy who invented bulldogging. Here's his life story, and it is a remarkable one:

Willie M. "Bill" Pickett (December 5, 1870 - April 2, 1932) was a cowboy, rodeo, and Wild West show performer.

Bill Pickett was born in the Jenks-Branch community of Travis County, Texas near Taylor, Texas in 1870. He was the second of 13 children born to Thomas Jefferson Pickett, a former slave, and Mary "Janie" Gilbert. Pickett had four brothers and eight sisters. The family's ancestry was African-American and Cherokee.

In 1890, Pickett married Maggie Turner, a former slave and daughter of a white southern plantation owner. The couple had nine children

He invented the technique of bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground. It was known among cattlemen that, with the help of a trained bulldog, a stray steer could be caught. Bill Pickett had seen this happen on many occasions. He also thought that if a bulldog could do this feat, so could he. Pickett practiced his stunt by riding hard, springing from his horse, and wrestling the steer to the ground. Pickett's method for bulldogging was biting a cow on the lip and then falling backwards. He also helped other cowboys with bulldogging. This method eventually lost popularity as the sport morphed into the steer wrestling that is practiced in rodeos.

Pickett soon became known for his tricks and stunts at local country fairs. With his four brothers, he established "The Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Association." The name Bill Pickett soon became synonymous with successful rodeos. He did his bulldogging act, traveling about in Texas, Arizona, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.

In 1905, Pickett joined the 101 Ranch Wild West Show that featured the likes of Buffalo Bill, Will Rogers, Tom Mix, Bee Ho Gray, and Zach and Lucille Mulhall. Pickett was soon a popular performer who toured around the world and appeared in early motion pictures, such as a movie created by Richard E. Norman. Pickett's ethnicity resulted in his not being able to appear at many rodeos, so he often was forced to claim that he was of Comanche heritage in order to perform. In 1921, he appeared in the films "The Bull-Dogger" and "The Crimson Skull."

In 1932, after having retired from the Wild West Shows, Bill Pickett was killed when he was kicked in the head by a wild bronco.

Bill Pickett has a headstone beside the graves of the Miller brothers at the Cowboy Hill Cemetery, but he is buried near a 14-foot stone monument to the friendship of Ponca Tribal Chief White Eagle and the Miller Brothers on Monument Hill, also known as the White Eagle Monument to the locals, less than a quarter of a mile to the north-east of Marland in Noble County, Oklahoma.

In 1971, he was inducted into the National Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Source: Wikipedia

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day:

"I've studied the Texas problem from many angles and for many years. And of course one of my truths is inevitably canceled by another. Outside their state I think Texans are a little frightened and very tender in their feelings, and these qualities cause boasting, arrogance, and noisy complacency ----- the outlets of shy children. At home Texans are none of these things. The ones I know are gracious, friendly, generous and quiet. In New York we hear them so often bring up their treasured uniqueness. Texas is the only state that came into the Union by treaty. It retains the right to secede at will. We have heard them threaten to secede so often that I formed an enthusiastic organization ---- The American Friends for Texas Secession. This stops the subject cold. They want to be able to secede but they don't want anyone to want them to.

Like most passionate nations Texas has its own private history based on, but not limited by, facts. The traditon of the tough and versatile frontiersman is true but not exclusive. It is for the few to know that in the great old days of Virginia there were three punishments for high crimes ----- death, exile to Texas, and imprisonment, in that order. And some of the deportees must have descendants.

------ John Steinbeck, "Travels With Charley, 1962

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> The Texas quote of the day:
> 
> "I've studied the Texas problem from many angles and for many years. And of course one of my truths is inevitably canceled by another. Outside their state I think Texans are a little frightened and very tender in their feelings, and these qualities cause boasting, arrogance, and noisy complacency ----- the outlets of shy children. At home Texans are none of these things. The ones I know are gracious, friendly, generous and quiet. In New York we hear them so often bring up their treasured uniqueness. Texas is the only state that came into the Union by treaty. It retains the right to secede at will. We have heard them threaten to secede so often that I formed an enthusiastic organization ---- The American Friends for Texas Secession. This stops the subject cold. They want to be able to secede but they don't want anyone to want them to.
> 
> Like most passionate nations Texas has its own private history based on, but not limited by, facts. The traditon of the tough and versatile frontiersman is true but not exclusive. It is for the few to know that in the great old days of Virginia there were three punishments for high crimes ----- death, exile to Texas, and imprisonment, in that order. And some of the deportees must have descendants.
> 
> ------ John Steinbeck, "Travels With Charley, 1962



One of the best, most accurate summaries of this great place and it's people I have ever read. Tony

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day is particularly good:

"She was one of those 'Land's Sake' and 'Mercy Me' women, a beatitude in an old print dress, and he was tall and quiet and solemn with the inner peace of a Buddhist monk, though that analogy would offend his Baptist soul. He died first, in his eighties and very tired, and she wept softly and privately, then washed and folded his clothes, packed his worn farm tools in wooden boxes, and gave everything to others. She kept nothing of her husband but a few faded photos and 55 years of memories.

When she died a decade later, also in her eighties and also tired, her passing was as calm and untraumatic as his. Neither feared death because neither had feared life. After her funeral the family gathered and someone remarked that an era had died with the old man and woman, that a chapter of traditional ideas and ideals, customs and social mores had closed on American Southern life that could never be reopened. Not really, of course. Not yet. Eras don't end with the deaths of individuals but are dissolved by time until the generational images are too dim to register on the collective human psyche. The past becomes textbook footnotes and museum displays.

But too soon, with the framework of history, the era of the old man and woman will die and its passing, I think , is to be as dramatic as the disappearance of dinosaurs. Their generation is the last to have been born in and nourished by rural America. Forever after the world is urban, scientific, glossy, and perhaps unredeemably complex.

The old couple was born into a society that had changed little in four or five centuries. It was agrarian and simple, though often hard and harsh, that final decade of the nineteenth century, a time when Southern America's philosophy was a trinity of land, God, and work."

---- Jerry Flemmons, 1980, from an essay entitled "Passing," part of a collection of essays entitled "Plowboys, Cowboys, and Slanted Pigs," published in 1984 by TCU Press. It comes highly recommended.

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## Tony

The best tombstone of all time. Of course it's here in Texas! Tony

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"“IT WAS the white man's fault," declared Mrs. G. O. Otte, an eyewitness of the Fredericksburg tragedy in 1852, "that there ever was any trouble between the Indians and my people." 

The feeble light of an oil lamp sparsely illuminated the small room of Mrs. Otte's farm house, where she sat amidst a small family group reminiscing of the days gone by. The oil lamp was burning low and the final hour of day was waning, thus providing a symbolic setting to her own life which had attained the seriptual height of fourscore years. 

She told how as a girl of five years of age she came over from Germany with her parents, who settled at Fredericksburg, then a frontier village of barely 300 inhabitants. Hundreds of Comanche Indians had their wigwams just one hundred yards from the Otte home on the eastern border of the little German village. 

A close bond of friendship existed between the red man and the white settlers of the town. The white man exchanged his commodities for the hunting trophies of the Comanche. Their children played together. 

Then came the tragedy, Mrs. Otte's oldest sister, Caroline, was employed in the home of the butcher of the town. One morning early in the summer of 1852, an Indian boy, about 13 years of age is supposed to have come to the butcher's home holding one hand on his mouth and the other on his forehead, indicating that he was hungry and suffering from a headache. The butcher's wife was preparing food and medicine for the boy, when her husband entered the house. He is supposed to have grabbed for the boy, who with Indian alertness jumped behind the woman and begged her to protect him. She did not intervene. The boy was caught, his hands and feet securely tied, loaded on the butcher's wagon and taken to the Nimitz Hotel, until recently a landmark of the now prosperous town. 

"A crowd gathered, among them my playmates and l." Mrs. Otte related. "After a lengthy conference, the mob moved about one half mile west of town at 'the village creek.' The boy was forced to gather Wood for his own funeral pyre, built in the shade of a large pecan tree. Then the boy was fastened to the trunk of the tree. A number of men stepped forward and leveled their shotguns, and riddled the body of their youthful victim with more than thirty loads of shot. The boy's body was thereupon burned upon the wood, which he himself had gathered.' 

This savage action of the white man, according to Mrs. Otte, was watched by a small number of Lulian warriors, who silently and solidly stood a little distance above the mob scene. 

"This bloody murder perpetrated by the white man upon an innocent Comanche boy, started all the trouble." continued Mrs. Otte. "Several weeks later the blood of the first white man, George Brode, was shed in revenge by the fierce warriors of the Comanches. Horses and cattle were stolen. The butcher was never killed." 

The Indians never ransacked a single home. Their attacks were made upon individuals whom they encountered unprotected. Among those killed and scalped were many women and children. A number of children were kidnapped, one of them Herman Lehman, a brother of Adolf Lehman of Brady, who until this day lives as a faithful member of an Indian tribe in Oklahoma. 

Mrs. Otte and her husband settled in McCulloch County, eight miles south of Brady, thirty-nine years ago, where they bought a tract of 160 acres of land, which by rigid economy, endurance and labor they increased into a substantial ranch. 

The law of the gun was to a great extent the law at that, time in this section of west Texas. Their slow rise to a small fortune was fraught with innumerable hardships. Wild beasts and cattle thieves decimated their small herd of 460 head of cattle, which they had brought along from Fredericksburg during their first year of residence in McCulloch County. 

"My husband and I have lived through many exciting experiences on this ranch," Mrs. Otte related. Her husband was wounded in an encounter with a notorious cattle thief, who suspected him of testifying against him before a grand jury. 

Among the stories told was the attempted lynching of a cattleman, whom his fraternity had suspected of being a thief. The scene was enacted under one of the stately live oak trees in front of the Otte home. The rope had already been thrown over one of the stalwart branches of the tree and tied around the neck of the alleged offender. The doom of the man was narrowly averted by the sudden appearance of a prominent McCulloch County ranchman. 

Mrs. Otte has always been numbered among the most respected and law abiding citizens of this community. She is the mother of eleven children, and is a firm believer in secular and religious education."

----- Frontier Times Magazine, May, 1927

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

About 400 feet west of the spot on Dallas' Elm Street where JFK was assassinated sits Martyrs Park, a simple, half-acre enclosure of grass and trees. This small park marks the spot where three slaves were hanged for allegedly starting the 1860 fire that destroyed downtown Dallas. Without a trial—and in spite of evidence of careless smokers and three-digit July temperatures—Patrick Jennings, Samuel Smith, and a man identified as Old Cato were hanged. Though a park, there is no sign or marker to clue folks in to the sad event that happened there.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

On Dec. 23, 1837 the Republic of Texas issued Bounty Warrant No. 1295 to David Crockett's heirs. That certificate entitled Elizabeth Patton Crockett, David's wife, to 1,280 acres in North Texas in return for her late husband’s service to the Republic. Unfortunately for her, the Comanches who roamed the area saw the land as theirs. In 1853, eight years after Texas became a state, Elizabeth left Tennessee with her son Robert and her daughter Matilda to claim her land. The three stayed in Waxahachie until a surveyor could fix the exact boundaries of her land. He did the job in exchange for half of the property. Elizabeth ended up with 640 acres on Rucker's Creek, about six miles from Granbury. She spent the last six years of her life there, in a cabin that her son built. On Jan. 31, 1860, she went out for a walk and fell dead, presumably of a heart attack.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Texas quote of the day:

"Boil down two or three curs and pour them in a mold the shape of a monkey. Take out as soon as cold, and you will have an animal similar in smell, form, and substance to the editor of the 'Comanche Chief."

----- the Eastland Review newspaper "disses" the editor of the Comanche Chief newspaper, May 17, 1878, showing that, thought we like to think of the pioneers as typically nice and civil, they could be quite cheeky from time to time.

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## FranklinWorkshops

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> On Dec. 23, 1837 the Republic of Texas issued Bounty Warrant No. 1295 to David Crockett's heirs. That certificate entitled Elizabeth Patton Crockett, David's wife, to 1,280 acres in North Texas in return for her late husband’s service to the Republic. Unfortunately for her, the Comanches who roamed the area saw the land as theirs. In 1853, eight years after Texas became a state, Elizabeth left Tennessee with her son Robert and her daughter Matilda to claim her land. The three stayed in Waxahachie until a surveyor could fix the exact boundaries of her land. He did the job in exchange for half of the property. Elizabeth ended up with 640 acres on Rucker's Creek, about six miles from Granbury. She spent the last six years of her life there, in a cabin that her son built. On Jan. 31, 1860, she went out for a walk and fell dead, presumably of a heart attack.



It really is a small world. Elizabeth Patton Crockett had a sister named Margaret and she married one of my relatives Abner Burgin. Abner appears as a witness on many of David's land transfer records and they lived near the Crocketts in Weakley County, TN, prior to the time of David going to Texas. Abner and ten others rode part way to Texas with David on that doomed trip but he and four others turned back after escorting David several hundred miles so they could harvest the crops. 

Some interesting reading about all of these events is at http://theburginfamily.org/crockett.html and at http://www.obcgs.com/crockett-david-and-elizabeth-patton/

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## woodman6415

This is a great story:
THE OIL PATCH WARRIORS OF WORLD WAR II

Seventy-five years ago this month, a Band of Roughnecks went abroad on a top secret mission into Robin Hood's stomping grounds to punch oil wells to help fuel England's war machines.

It's a story that should make any oilman or woman proud.

The year was 1943 and England was mired in World War II. U-boats attacked supply vessels, choking off badly needed supplies to the island nation. But oil was the commodity they needed the most as they warred with Germany.

A book "The Secret of Sherwood Forest: Oil Production in England During World War II" written by Guy Woodward and Grace Steele Woodward was published in 1973, and tells the obscure story of the American oil men who went to England to bore wells in a top secret mission in March 1943.

England had but one oil field, in Sherwood Forest of all places. Its meager output of 300 barrels a day was literally a drop in the bucket of their requirement of 150,000 barrels a day to fuel their war machines.

Then a top secret plan was devised: to send some Americans and their expertise to assist in developing the field. Oklahoma based Noble Drilling Company, along with Fain-Porter signed a one year contract to drill 100 wells for England, merely for costs and expenses.

42 drillers and roughnecks from Texas and Oklahoma, most in their teens and early twenties volunteered for the mission to go abroad. The hands embarked for England in March 1943 aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth. Four National 50 drilling rigs were loaded onto ships but only three of them made landfall; the Nazi U-boats sank one of the rigs en route to the UK.

The Brits' jaws dropped as the Yanks began punching the wells in a week, compared to five to eight weeks for their British counterparts. They worked 12 hour tours, 7 days a week and within a year, the Americans had drilled 106 wells and England oil production shot up from 300 barrels a day to over 300,000

The contract fulfilled, the American oil men departed England in late March 1944. But only 41 hands were on board the return voyage. Herman Douthit, a Texan derrick-hand was killed during the operation. He was laid to rest with full military honors, and remains the only civilian to be buried at The American Military Cemetery in Cambridge.

"The Oil Patch Warrior," a seven foot bronze statue of a roughneck holding a four foot pipe wrench stands near Nottingham England to honor the American oil men's assistance and sacrifice in the war. A replica was placed in Ardmore Oklahoma in 2001

Here is the statue in Ardmore. This confirmed the story. 

https://aoghs.org/petroleum-in-war/roughnecks-of-sherwood-forest/

It is by no means a stretch to state that without the American mission, we might all be speaking German today.

Special thanks to the American Oil and Gas Historical Society.

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## woodman6415

There's a new world record longhorn steer! Nine year old Sato yesterday measured an incredible 125 and 3/4 inches! That's 10 feet 5 and 3/4 inches! Congratulations to the owners of Sato, the Evans of Bay City, Texas.

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## Tony

The Texas quote of the day: 

"There is no back door to the Alamo. That’s why they were all heroes.”

------ Maury Maverick Jr., the mayor of San Antonio, to President John F. Kennedy at the Alamo in 1960 after Kennedy asked to be escorted out the back door of the old mission because of the crowds gathered at the plaza in front.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day comes from the El Paso Times newspaper and was written in 1894:

"Several of the young men have been in the habit lately of buying reserved seats in the opera house and presenting them to prostitutes. It is bad enough for them to buy the seats for these women at all, but it is a thousand times worse when they take advantage of the management to purchase seats in parts of the house where they know full well these women are not allowed to sit. Several prostitutes occupied such seats on the night of "Charley's Aunt," and the managers are anxious for the public to understand how it occurred, and to know exactly where the blame should rest. Fallen women are not allowed in any seats in the opera house except from the third dress circle row back, and in the gallery. And if they impose upon the management again as they have been doing, they will have to occupy the gallery or not enter the house. And further than this, the name of the person who buys tickets for them in the wrong part of the house will be published."

---- El Paso Times Newspaper, 1894

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1867, when he was 15 years old and attending his father's school in Bonham, Texas, the infamous John Wesley Hardin, who would later shoot and kill between 27 and 42 men, was taunted by another student, Charles Sloter. Sloter accused Hardin of being the author of graffiti on the schoolhouse wall that insulted a girl in his class. Hardin denied writing the poetry, claiming in turn that Sloter was the author. Sloter charged at Hardin with a knife but Hardin stabbed him with his own knife, almost killing him. Hardin was nearly expelled over the incident. Incidentally, In 2002, an auction house in San Francisco, California, auctioned three lots of John Wesley Hardin's personal effects. One lot containing a deck of his playing cards, one of his business cards, and a contemporary newspaper account of his death, sold for $15,250. The bullet that killed Hardin sold for $80,000.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The pretty little East Texas town of Dekalb (in Bowie County) was named by none other than David Crockett. Crockett passed through what was then a nascent small settlement that was looking for a name as he was on his way to the Alamo in the winter of 1835-1836. Crockett suggested that they citizens name it "Dekalb" in honor of the Prussian Baron de Kalb, a general of the American revolutionary army during the United States' Revolutionary War. The name stuck.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The roots of Texas music run deep. Although some people may think of Texas music as mainly "country," the music of Texas and the American Southwest is as diverse and distinctive as the many different groups who have lived in the region over the past several centuries. Music also has played a central role in the daily lives of all those who have called the Southwest their home. Native Americans have long used music to mark births, deaths, marriages, harvests, and a variety of other important events in their lives. For Hispanic people living in Texas, corridos, rancheras, cumbias, and other musical forms have played a prominent part in both religious and secular ceremonies. African Americans in Texas have articulated their experiences through gospel, blues, ragtime, jazz, and other types of music. French-speaking blacks and whites in East Texas still celebrate their culture through zydeco and Cajun music. Whether a fiddle breakdown, a polka, a rag, a canción, a Volkslied, or any other form of musical expression, music has been vital in shaping and reflecting the historical and cultural development of Anglo, Irish, Scottish, African, German, Czech, Mexican, Polish, Jewish, Asian, Slavic, and other ethnic groups in Texas. 

Not only has the Lone Star State served as a crossroads for so many different ethnic groups, but the particular social, political, and economic forces that have shaped the area have helped make the Southwest one of the most complex and diverse regional societies in the country. Nowhere is this tremendous diversity more apparent than in Texas music. An astounding variety of musical genres have thrived in the region, often cross-pollinating to create new subgenres. Blues, gospel, ragtime, jazz, conjunto, Tejano, Cajun, zydeco, polka, western swing, rock and roll, and a number of other musical styles have mixed and mingled in the Southwest as they have nowhere else. Texas also has contributed some of the most influential artists to modern American music. Scott Joplin, Bob Wills, Buddy Holly, Van Cliburn, Janis Joplin, Lead Belly, Selena Quintanilla, Charlie Christian, Ornette Coleman, Sippie Wallace, Willie Nelson, Flaco Jiménez, Roy Orbison, Gene Autry, Lydia Mendoza, Don Henley, Big Mama Thornton, Kenny Rogers, Stephen Stills, and ZZ Top all are from Texas, and all have had a significant impact on mainstream American music."

----- "The Roots of Texas Music," edited by Lawrence Clayton and Joe W. Specht, Texas A&M University Press, 2003

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day:

"Margaret! Margaret! Texas! Texas!"

----- the last words of Sam Houston according to Jeff Hunt, who was in the room in Huntsville when Sam passed away. "Margaret" was Sam's wife. I've always been impressed that, as he was crossing that river, Sam's heart and thoughts were in the right place.

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## Wildthings

*August 17th -- Today in Texas History*


*Davy Crockett born* 

On this day in 1786, frontier icon and Alamo defender Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee. He began his military career as a scout in the Tennessee militia in 1813 and was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1821. After a turbulent political career, during which he split with President Andrew Jackson, a fellow Tennessean, and acquired a national reputation as a sharpshooter, hunter, and yarn-spinner, Crockett grew disenchanted with the political process and decided to explore Texas. He set out in November 1835 and reached San Antonio de Béxar in February 1836, shortly before the arrival of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Crockett chose to join Col. William B. Travis, who had deliberately disregarded Jackson sympathizer Sam Houston's orders to withdraw from the Alamo, and died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. No matter how many fabrications gathered around him, the historical David Crockett proved a formidable hero in his own right and succeeded Daniel Boone as the rough-hewn representative of frontier independence and virtue.


*Black Jack Ketchum is captured in New Mexico* 

On this day in 1899, the criminal career of Thomas Edward (Black Jack) Ketchum ended. Tom and his brother Sam were members of a gang of outlaws that terrorized Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. Tom was born in San Saba County, Sam in Caldwell County. Tom left Texas about 1890, and Sam joined him in New Mexico in 1894. There the brothers began a life of crime that included killing a merchant in Carrizo and robbing post offices, stagecoaches, trains, and a railroad station. On September 3, 1897, the gang held up the Colorado Southern passenger train near Folsom. On July 11, 1899, apparently without Tom, the gang held up the same train again. Sam was wounded and captured. He died two weeks later in prison. Tom, unaware of Sam's failed attempt, tried singlehandedly to rob the same train on August 16. He was wounded by the conductor and was picked up from beside the tracks the next day. He was sentenced to death and was hung at Clayton, New Mexico, on April 26, 1901. The Ketchum gang was blamed for many crimes they may not have committed. Black Jack Ketchum may have inherited the nickname and reputation of Will "Black Jack" Christian.

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## FranklinWorkshops

The historical fascination with David Crockett and Daniel Boone has more to do with Walt Disney making them into heroes during our childhood than their actual exploits. They were brave, great hunters, fearless in facing near death experiences, and consequential in opening up settlements in Kentucky and Western Tennessee. But both had their downsides, including running away from financial debts. They were in front of judges or magistrates several times for cheating people. Many other frontiersmen and women did just as much or more to build our country but were overlooked by Disney. 

A great historical book looking at Boone and Crockett among many other consequential early settlers is 
"The History of Western North Carolina" written by John Preston Arthur in 1913. It's a great read and full of interesting history. You can read it on line for free at https://books.google.com/books?id=rHNtrkPD8UMC&pg=PA79&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

I highly recommend it.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The tallest building in Texas is the JP Morgan Chase tower in Houston, which is 75 stories high and stands at 1,002 feet. Incidentally, Houston is also the most diverse city in the U.S:

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-...-became-the-most-diverse-city-in-11133665.php

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## Wildthings

*August 18th -- Today in Texas History*


*Gutiérrez-Magee expedition squashed in bloodiest Texas battle* 

On this day in 1813, the Spaniards defeated a would-be Texas republic in the bloodiest action ever fought on Texas soil. The battle of Medina ended the filibustering efforts of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition. The expedition collided with the Spanish royalist army twenty miles south of San Antonio in an oak forest then called el Encinal de Medina. The republican force of 1,400 men was under the command of Gen. José Alvarez de Toledo y Dubois. The royalist army of some 1,830 men was commanded by Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo and included the young Lt. Antonio López de Santa Anna. On the morning of August 18, royalist scouts lured the republican army into an ambush. A four-hour slaughter ensued. Only 100 of the defeated republican army survived, whereas Arredondo lost only fifty-five men. The dead royalists were buried the next day on the way to San Antonio. The bodies of the fallen republicans were left to lie where they fell for nine years. The first governor of the Mexican state of Texas ordered a detachment of soldiers to gather the bones and give them an honorable burial under an oak tree growing on the battlefield.


*Mexican Congress passes colonization law* 

On this day in 1824, the Mexican Congress passed a national colonization law. This law, and the state law of Coahuila and Texas passed the following year, became the basis of all colonization contracts affecting Texas, with the exception of that of Stephen F. Austin. Among the members of the congressional committee that drafted the legislation was Erasmo Seguín, the father of Juan N. Seguín. In effect, the national law surrendered to the states authority to set up regulations to dispose of unappropriated lands within their limits for colonization, subject to certain limitations, but reserved the right to stop immigration from particular nations in the interest of national security. Six years later the federal government invoked this reservation in forbidding the settlement in Texas of emigrants from the United States; the resulting Law of April 6, 1830, helped touch off the Texas Revolution

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

Sounds really tasty 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"When the Rangers were outside the buffalo region there was nothing for them to eat but prairie dogs. The only fault they could find with prairie dogs was that they were too small and very hard to get. Rangers always tried to keep a little flour on hand to thicken soup and prairie dogs, being very fat, made good soup, but this was not very satisfying; after a meal of it one became hungry again within two or three hours. Rangers would boil a prairie dog or two, the more dogs in the kettle the better, and with a little flour make quite a pot of soup."

------ Charles Goodnight, from interviews conducted over several years with J. Evetts Haley, published in the Southwest Review, 1925


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> Sounds really tasty
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "When the Rangers were outside the buffalo region there was nothing for them to eat but prairie dogs. The only fault they could find with prairie dogs was that they were too small and very hard to get. Rangers always tried to keep a little flour on hand to thicken soup and prairie dogs, being very fat, made good soup, but this was not very satisfying; after a meal of it one became hungry again within two or three hours. Rangers would boil a prairie dog or two, the more dogs in the kettle the better, and with a little flour make quite a pot of soup."
> 
> ------ Charles Goodnight, from interviews conducted over several years with J. Evetts Haley, published in the Southwest Review, 1925

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## woodman6415

Tony said:


>


Taste just like chicken..

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Taste just like chicken..



I don't like yardbird.


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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

This is Major George Lawson Keene of Crockett (later Houston), Texas, the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War I. He was born in Crockett in 1898 and passed away in Houston in 1956.

From a brochure produced by the Houston County Historical Commission:

Born in Crockett, Texas, of southern heritage, George Lawson Keene loved stories of history and heroes, especially as told by his grandfather, a veteran of the Civil War. His great-grandfather, Edward Keene, was a participant in the Texas Revolution. His early ancestors settled in Kentucky, founding the renowned horse farm, "Keeneville", where the original home was built in 1800. His mother, a great-niece of General Stonewall Jackson, died when he was three years old.

Lawson Keene, as he was known around Crockett, was proud of the coat-of-arms of his French Huguenot ancestors, and kept it at the home he and his wife, Dewey Kennedy Keene, built in Baytown, Texas. The couple was married on Nov. 11, 1921.

A high school graduate at the age of 16, Lawson Keene planned to enter Texas A&M College, his father's alma mater; but he decided his duty was to his country when the U.S. entered WW I. Realizing the courage and love of country that his boy had, the elder Keene gave his consent and Lawson went to San Antonio to enlist as a private. After much persuasion, he was transferred to the 28th Infantry, American Expeditionary Force and sent overseas. He was reputedly the first and youngest American combat soldier to set foot on French soil and one of the last to leave, serving in the Army of Occupation at the end of the war. 

So that means that the most decorated soldiers of both World War I and World War II (Audie Murphy) were Texans.

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## woodman6415

General Dwight David Eisenhower Supreme Allied Commander WW2. Born Denison, Texas. 

Admirial Chester W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral of the United States Navy. Born Fredericksburg, Texas.

Texas A&M University. More officers and enlisted than all of the Service academies combined WW2.

Texas A&M is the largest of the 7 Senior Military Colleges in the United States.

Texans have never been afraid to meet tyranny with fire, steel and courage.

God bless Texas!!!

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## Wildthings

God bless Texas!!!

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## woodman6415

Today is Sunday, August 19, 2018

Today in
Texas History

1749 - In San Antonio, four Apache chiefs buried a hatchet in a peace ceremony. The ceremony signified the Apaches' acceptance of Christian conversion for Spanish protection from Comanche raids. 

1837 - Robert Alexander crossed the Sabine River into the Republic of Texas. In October, he formed the first Methodist missionary society in Texas at Caney Creek. 

1895 - At El Paso's Acme Saloon, Constable John Selman killed the notorious John Wesley Hardin in a gunfight. Selman had been hired by Hardin to assassinate Martin Morose. 

1906 - Eddie Durham was born in San Marcos, TX. He became known as one of the most important Swing era composer-arrangers. 

1921 - Eugene Wesley (Gene) Roddenberry was born in El Paso, TX. Roddenberry's first career was as an airline pilot. Later, he created the TV series Star Trek. 

1949 - Thomas Campbell Clark began serving on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was the first Texan to serve on the court. 

1962 - Homero Blancas shot a 55 at the Premier Invitational Golf Tournament held in Longview, TX. It was the lowest score in U.S. competitive golf history. 

1984 - The Republican convention in Houston nominated Ronald Reagan to continue as president.

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## Wildthings

*August 20th -- Today in Texas History*


* Peace--finally!--between the U.S. and Texas* 

On this day in 1866, President Andrew Johnson, declaring that "the insurrection in the State of Texas has been completely and everywhere suppressed and ended," officially ended the Civil War by issuing a proclamation of peace between the United States and Texas. Johnson had declared a state of peace between the U.S. and the other ten Confederate states on April 2, 1866. The last land battle of the Civil War took place at Palmito Ranch near Brownsville on May 13, 1865, more than a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.


* Repeat hurricane dooms Indianola* 

On this day in 1886, the town of Indianola suffered through the second day of a devastating two-day hurricane. The settlement, on Matagorda Bay in Calhoun County, was founded in August 1846 and named Indian Point. It was renamed in February 1849 and soon became the second busiest port in Texas (after Galveston). Indianola was the county seat of Calhoun County from 1852 to 1886. With a population of more than 5,000, the town was at the peak of its prosperity when a hurricane struck in 1875, causing great loss of life. The community rebuilt on a smaller scale, but then was almost obliterated by the hurricane of August 19-20, 1886, and the accompanying fire. By 1887 the site had been abandoned.

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## Wildthings

Speaking of Indianola -- it's considered a Texas Ghost Town and I love to check them out. Here's a couple photos from there



 


 



 

This one was up the road a little bit

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I was drafted to go out and fight with the Rangers. While I was out with the Rangers one of them lied to me and talked me into joinin' 'em .... He said Rangerin' was a easy life, lyin' around in camps, goin' to dances, and drawin' pay. There was no danger he said as long as you didn't get too close to the Comanches, which was the only true thing he said .... We didn't go to no dances, except when the Indians was around, and then we danced lively gettin' away from 'em. The horses was crowbaits, and the grub was what you could shoot with the poor ammunition they furnished."

----- anonymous author, Amarillo New-Globe, August 14, 1918

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day,

"Governor, you run things there in Austin and I'll run things here. My court never cost the State any money." 

----- Judge Roy Bean in a letter to Governor Stephen Hogg, 1890s. The Governor had received complaints that no funds ever came to Austin from Bean's court - so the Governor wrote to Langtry. The Judge replied as noted. Nothing more was heard from the Governor.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Par is whatever I say it is. I've got one hole that's a par 23 and yesterday I damn near birdied the sucker.” 

---- Willie talks about the benefits of owning his own golf course

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## woodman6415

The Not-So-Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On the very first day of the Tour de France this year, Houstonian Lawson Craddock crashed, breaking his scapula (shoulder blade) and tearing up his face (see photo). Most professional cyclists probably would have quit, knowing that there was still 20+ stages and 2,000 + miles to ride. But most professional cyclists aren't Texans. Not only did Lawson get back on his bike and ride 50 miles to finish the stage, but he decided to continue on in the race. Later that night he he decided to dedicate 100 dollars to Hurricane Harvey relief for each stage that he finished. Then he set up a Go Fund Me that, as of right now, has raised more than 279,000 dollars for Harvey relief. Folks, I was a fairly good cyclist earlier in my life and there is no doubt in my mind that professional cycling is the world's toughest sport. The suffering that the riders do is beyond imagination, and that's WITHOUT having a broken shoulder blade and a bloodied face. 22 days later, Lawson finished the Tour de France in dead last place ------ but he finished. I am in awe and y'all should be, too.

Way to go, Lawson! What an amazing accomplishment!

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The age of the cattle drives was relatively short. By the mid-1880s, barbed wire fencing closed the open ranges forever. Cattle could now be kept inexpensively in enclosed spaces. Fences and expansion of the railroads made the trail drives obsolete. Despite their short lifespan, however, trail drives left a Texas-sized legacy: the American Cowboy.

Romanticized and idealized by writers from the beginning, the cowboy rapidly became an American hero, a symbol of the human qualities Americans hold most dear. Even after fences closed the range and changed the cowboy lifestyle, the public remained enamored with those rugged sons of the West. The national fascination with cowboys and the American West was so great that many easterners were inspired to come out west for a taste of cowboy life."

----- Joe Carr and Alan Munde, "Prairie Nights to Neon Lights: The Story of Country Music in West Texas," 1995

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
I have always felt that we should teach our children good sportsmanship. Here is a handy list of things to remember when you're watching your kids play little league baseball or softball.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The first college football game ever played in Texas occurred on Oct. 19, 1894: 1894, when the then Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, as well as the first matchup against the University of Texas. Texas A&M’s players, referred to as “College”� or the “Farmers,”� traveled to Clark Field in Austin to take on Texas’ “Varsity”� squad. Texas claimed the victory at this first contest with a 38-0 win. The two teams would not meet again until 1898, and that game would begin the third longest rivalry in college football history.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Punt returns will kill you quicker than minnows can swim a dipper."

------ Former Texas Longhorn Coach Darrell K. Royal

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day comes from Jeff Hamilton, Sam Houston's former slave.

"I was born in the state of Kentucky, in 1840. I came to Texas when I was three years of age. My mother, Kitty McKem , and three sisters came with me. We came with a man by the name of McKem . We located in Fort Bend County, only stayed there a short time and moved to Moscow, Texas. We moved from Moscow, Texas, to Greenville, Texas, where we made one crop. The next year we moved to Old Sumster, county seat of Trinity County. Mr. McKem, my master. was not good to me nor to his own familly. He would get drunk and run the entire family away from home, at times. Times were not good in Trinity County at that time, so he decided to sell me to get some needed cash.

I was sold to General Sam Houston , in Trinity County, in 1852, for $450.00. I hated to leave my mother and sisters. The separation from them caused me to weep. General Sam Houston went in a store and bought me a new straw hat with a feather on the side, which I was very proud of. General Sam Houston was a member of Congress at that time. He served two years in Congress after he bought me. He ran again and was elected. I served him during the time he was Governor. We moved from Austin when General Sam Houston served out his term as Governor, to Chambers County on the Galveston Bay. We made one crop there and sold it to the landlord before it was harvested. We then moved back to Huntsville, where he lived on the farm until he died. My work was to 'tend to General Sam Houston and herd sheep.

The General was very kind to me. He allowed me to live in the house with him and kept the fires burning all night. I wore good common clothes. General Sam Houston never allowed his slaves to work in bad weather. I have lived by his advice, he would say to me "My boy you can not be the most truthful man in the world nor can you be the most honest, but you can be as good as any man. Respect old age." I think General Sam Houston was one of the greatest men that ever lived. I had the pleasure and honor of attending the dedication ceremonies of a State Marker on the former home-site of General Sam Houston , located on Tri-Cities Beach, Chambers County, August 8th, 1937. I was with Colonel Andrew Jackson , the last living son of General Sam Houston , on this program. It was a great affair. "

------- Jeff Hamilton, 1937. He was 97 years old when this interview was conducted and would talk to anybody about his life. The interviewer wrote, "Jeff Hamilton lives with his son-in-law, Charles H. Graves , just south of Baylor College, in northwest Belton, and he can be seen there almost any time."

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

When you enter Big Bend National Park from the north (i.e. from Marathon, Texas), you usually stop at the Persimmon Gap ranger station in order to pay your entrance fee. That ranger station is smack dab right in the middle of the old Comanche Trail, the trail that Comanches used to invade and attack Mexico. All manner of artifacts were found there. Next time you're there in that narrow, little gap, try to imagine what it looked like 145 years ago as the Comanches swept through, under a Comanche Moon.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1837 by somebody who was a very early traveler through Texas:

"At the hour of twelve o'clock, we arrived at the house of our friend, which stands upon the edge of the Brazos timber. But the country here, as well as everywhere else, was alive with deer. The great abundance of this kind of game has been a subject of wonder to all those who have traveled through Texas. They start up around the traveler in droves, and he may see as many as fifty or a hundred at once, scampering over the plain. It is rare sport, on a good horse, to pursue them over the prairie, when there is nothing to obstruct the chase. At this time the fawns were about six weeks old and were seen in great numbers, bouncing through the grass after their dams. They are easily caught with dogs, and many of them fall victim to the wolves, which prowl over the country in great numbers and whose howl is often the only sound to break the stillness of night, as the traveler rides over the prairie or lays himself down upon the earth to sleep."

------ "Texas in 1837," Andrew Forest Muir, Editor

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"As certain as truth and God exist, the admission of Texas into this Union will prove, sooner or later, an element of overwhelming ruin to the Republic."

- U.S. Rep. Daniel Barnard of New York, 1845, making one of the worst predictions in history.


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "As certain as truth and God exist, the admission of Texas into this Union will prove, sooner or later, an element of overwhelming ruin to the Republic."
> 
> - U.S. Rep. Daniel Barnard of New York, 1845, making one of the worst predictions in history.



Dam Yankees....


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## Wildthings

probably a Democrat

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History - September 20th
*
*Texan flies in first airship?* 
On this day in 1865, pioneer aviator Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck may have made the first flight in an airplane--almost forty years before the Wright brothers--in a field about three miles east of Luckenbach. The Württemberg native settled in Fredericksburg in 1847. He had always had an interest in mechanics and inventing; in Germany he had attempted to build a self-winding clock, and in 1869 he designed an ice-making machine. His most cherished project, however, was his "air-ship," with a propeller powered by coiled springs. The 1865 model featured an enclosed space for the "aeronaut," a water propeller in case of accidental landings on water, a compass, and a barometer. The machine was said to have risen twelve feet in the air and traveled about 100 feet before the springs unwound completely and the machine crashed to the ground. Another account, however, says that the initial flight took place in San Pedro Park, San Antonio, where a bust of Brodbeck was later placed. Yet another account reports that the flight took place in 1868, not 1865. All the accounts agree, however, that Brodbeck's airship was destroyed by its abrupt landing, although the inventor escaped serious injury. After this setback, his investors refused to put up the money for a second attempt, and he embarked on a unsuccessful fund-raising tour of the United States. Brodbeck returned to Texas and lived on a ranch near Luckenbach until his death in 1910.

*Baptist university opens in Dallas* 
On this day in 1905, Texas Baptist University, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, began its first classes. Church-related institutions of higher education had become quite important in Texas in the previous century. The Methodists had started twenty-one, the Baptists were next with ten, followed by the Presbyterians with eight, the Catholics with four, the Christian Church with three, the Episcopalians and Lutherans with two each, and the Congregationalists with one. The school in Oak Cliff was founded by the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas. Dr. J. R. Pentuff was president, and A. S. Laird was professor of mathematics. Though the institution grew respectably during its first few years, it was closed in 1912. It had been dependent upon the missionary association, which lost the support of many congregations. Such ephemeral institutions as TBU continue to open and close, while hundreds of colleges and universities, both church-related and secular, provide higher education in Texas.

*Hurricane Beulah wracks Texas coast*
On this day in 1967, Hurricane Beulah, the third largest hurricane of the twentieth century, struck South Texas. It battered the state for two days. The storm hit Brownsville with winds estimated at 140 miles an hour, moved northwest across South Texas to the vicinity of Alice, then turned southwest, crossed the Rio Grande between Zapata and Laredo, and finally blew itself out in Mexico. Tornadoes spawned by Beulah did extensive damage to South Texas and northeast Mexico. On September 28, President Johnson declared twenty-four counties in South Texas a disaster area. Official estimates in these counties set the number of dead at 18, the injured or sick at 9,000, and the number of homes destroyed or heavily damaged at 3,000. Property damage was estimated at $100 million, crop damage at $50 million. Some 300,000 people were evacuated during the storm and subsequent flooding.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 
The Texas quote of the day:

"The [Big Bend] country is big, unspoiled, and lonesome, and the scenery is second to none. I was setting on [my horse] "old Red" on the south rim of the Chisos Mountains talking to Ventura Gamboa, a Mexican that worked for me. We were enjoying the view of the Rio Grande, which we could see for 107 miles from Santa Elena Canyon to Boquillas, and I asked Ventura how far we were looking across the river into Mexico. He said, "Senor, como ocho dias a caballo." Sir, about 8 days horseback.

I was coming out of Costolon Country several years ago and a fellow waved me down a few miles south of Alpine, Texas, and wanted to know if I knew Polk Hinson. I said I did. He wanted to know where he lived. I told him that Polk lived in the first house on the left, down the road. He thanked me and started to drive off. He stopped and asked, "By the way, how far is it?"

I said, "About a hundred miles."

----- C.M. "Buck" Newsom, "Shod with Iron," 1975

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## woodman6415

I would say they are already living in hell ... 

Traces of Texas 
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Most of Houston will spend eternity in hell."

----- evangelist Billy Graham


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## Tony




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## Wildthings

Good thing I live in the suburbs

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Good thing I live in the suburbs


Amen on the burbs

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History October 8th*


*Witte Memorial Museum opens* 

On this day in 1926, the Witte Memorial Museum opened in San Antonio. The museum was largely the brainchild of Ellen D. Schulz Quillin, who helped start the San Antonio Museum Association and raised $5,000 to purchase Henry Philemon Attwater's collection of natural history specimens. She initially stored the collection at Main Avenue High School, where she was a science teacher, but successfully petitioned the city for a site and funds for a museum to showcase the collection and others like it. The building was constructed with public funds and a $65,000 bequest to the city from local businessman Alfred G. Witte, who stipulated that a museum be built in Brackenridge Park in memory of his parents. The facility was known as the Witte Memorial Museum until 1984, when the name was simplified to Witte Museum. The San Antonio Museum of Art, which opened with much fanfare in 1981 in a former brewery, was originally an outgrowth of the Witte.


*Filibusters captured at La Bahía* 

On this day in 1821, a filibustering army under James Long surrendered at La Bahía to Mexican forces commanded by Colonel Juan Ignacio Pérez. The Long expedition was an early attempt by Anglo-Americans to wrest Texas from Spain. The expedition was mounted by citizens in the Natchez, Mississippi, area who were opposed to the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase as set up in the Adams-Onís Treaty. After initial successes in 1819, the filibusters were driven out by Pérez in October of that year. Long regrouped and joined forces with José Félix Trespalacios, who was organizing an expedition in New Orleans to support the Mexican liberals. Long established his headquarters at Point Bolivar, where he was joined by his wife, Jane Long, the "Mother of Texas." He later broke with Trespalacios, and the expedition led an uncertain existence at Fort Las Casas on Point Bolivar until September 1821, when Long and fifty-two men sailed to capture La Bahía. The town fell easily, but four days later Long was forced to surrender to Pérez. Long was taken prisoner and sent to Mexico City, where about six months later he was shot and killed by a guard. With Long's defeat and capture at La Bahía the early filibustering era in Texas came to an end.


*Liberty Gazette announces Shakespeare reading by Ada Bertha Théodore* 

On this day in 1855, the Liberty _Gazette_ carried an advertisement announcing that Ada Bertha Théodore would be giving readings of Shakespeare. As Adah Menken she went from poetry readings in Texas to a minor stage career in the South and on to fame and controversy for her daringly suggestive performance in _Mazeppa; or The Wild Horse of Tartary_ on the city stages of the Midwest, the East Coast, and Europe.

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Nearly 40 years before the Wright brothers flew their plane at Kittyhawk in 1903, a Texan flew a fixed-wing powered airplane near Fredericksburg in 1865. Newspaper articles reveal that Jacob Brodbeck successfully flew an airplane that he had built which was powered with coil springs. Some accounts say that the plane reached an altitude of 12 feet, others say that it reached "tree top" height. It crashed into a hen house, killing numerous chickens and scaring many children. Brodbeck, a teacher and inventor, came to Texas from Germany in 1846 and lived in Luckenbach.

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## Tony

Charles Goodnight was an ass by all accounts but did amazing things for Texas and the rest of the country.

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Famed rancher Charles Goodnight was born in Illinois on March 5, 1836 ----- one day before the Alamo fell to Santa Anna's forces about 1,000 miles away. Goodnight liked to joke that he would have been in San Antonio to help but that he was "a tad too young."

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day comes from old Texas Ranger J.K.P. Lankford:

"A hundred names of men I knew come back to me, and most of them, I suppose, are now dead. Hard lives, hard men, maybe ---- but they come back to me like murmurs of far-off voices sometimes, something soft, like a flute's sweet wine that has a message left to tell. Maybe I didn't see them so soft those days, because it was all too close. Life is something like a gun battle. A man doesn't know what he really thought until the shooting's over. That's the way I went through a lot of things down there. Never saw the danger then."

------ J.K.P. Langford, remembering his Texas Ranger life along the Rio Grande in the San Antonio Express, May 25, 1930. Langford's observations are not only beautifully, sensitively expressed, but profound on several levels. I love this: "Life is something like a gun battle. A man doesn't know what he really thought until the shooting's over." Doesn't that seem EXACTLY like how an old Texas ranger should express this sentiment?

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Bugs Bunny’s catchphrase “What’s Up, Doc?” originated in Dallas. Looney Tunes animator Tex Avery, who attended North Dallas High School, introduced the phrase. He later said that he didn’t take much note of it at the time because it was such a common phrase used where he grew up.

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## woodman6415

It’s 44 miles from Eden to San Angelo 
I bet the roads back then were not that great
Wonder how long it took

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> It’s 44 miles from Eden to San Angelo



Yeah but it's a nice paved highway all the way. Surely it's always been that way!!

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## woodman6415

4 lane paved highway now ... should have been no problem... well except for the traffic


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Yeah but it's a nice paved highway all the way. Surely it's always been that way!!



Ya, but you have to stop at Venison World in Eden. Good eats!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day was published in the New York Times back in 1885 and is just so great:

An Aggrieved Texas Ranger

Laredo, Texas, June 28. ---- A serious shooting affrain occurred here late last night, which has thrown the entire community into a state of high excitement. During the session of the last Legislature Senator E.F. Hall bitterly attacked the efficiency and integrity of the State Ranger force, which for years has guarded the frontier. The Senator was particularly severe in denunciation of those troops located in his district, which were under the immediate command of Capt. Joseph Sheely. These attacks resulted in the disbandment of Capt. Sheely's command. Sheely has long been known as one of the bravest men on the frontier, and his departure caused great regret.

For months past every male inhabitant along the border has taken sides for or against the Rangers, and the feeling between hall and Sheely became intensely bitter.

About 11:00 o'clock last night Sheely sauntered into the gallery of Holland's Theatre. Seeing Senator Hall sitting in the front row, near the aisle, Sheely approached and struck him squarely in the face with his open hand. he repeated this blow, when Hall succeeded in getting to his feet, and instantly both men drew their revolvers and began firing, Sheely retreating backward. A perfect panic ensued in the theatre, and the people rushed wildly to the street to escape the flying bullets. Bystanders immediately expected Hall to drop with a bullet in his heart, Sheely being famous as a dead shot. The Senator, however, faced his antagonist in the most desperate fashion, stepping forward and firing every time Sheely fired.

As Sheely reached the foot of the stairs, Hall ran to the top and fired the last bullet in his pistol. Sheely gave no signs of having been hit, but pulled off his coat and his shirt was red with blod. This explained why the Senator escaped with his life in the fearful duel. Sheely had been wounded by the first bullet from Hall's pistol, thus rendering his aim uncertain. The ball entered the right shoulder, coming out just beneath the shoulder joint. Senator Hall believes he wounded Sheely on the last instead of the first fire, but Sheely does not agree with him. Six shots on each side were exchanged. Hall's clotihng is perforated, while a bullet grazed Sheely's temple

The bloody feud will undoubtedly be renewed as soon as Sheely recovers sufficiently. No arrests have been made. Other encounters, as the outgrowth of this difficulty, are expected to occur at any moment between friends of the combatants.

------ New York Times, June 29, 1885


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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> Ya, but you have to stop at Venison World in Eden. Good eats!


As a very big portion of my family comes from and a lot still reside in Eden .. my Mom was a native there ... I spent many summers there and have built cabinets for countless houses .. last year built and installed cabinets in the new ER at hospital...
Years ago when venison world was built it was owned by the same guy that owned the funeral parlor .... I always wondered about that and have never tried his venison..

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1598, a Thanksgiving feast was held on the banks of the Rio Grande in what is now San Elizario, Texas. Mind you, this was 23 years BEFORE the pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Also, some historians believe that Coronado, the Spanish explorer, held a day of Thanksgiving near current-day Canyon, Texas, in 1541. If true, it would be the first Thanksgiving in what became the United States. 

https://www.myplainview.com/news/ar...JCvL_WkpXJ2iXazik5DIspXwRdMm3_S35tU4yNvmz5qzg

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one:

"An old, old man got to remembering down in Texas the other day, and when somebody questioned a statement he made, he hauled forth from the tray of an ancient horsehair trunk yellowed letters that have the haughtiest crest of British royalty, and two very famous signatures.

When he showed them around, he not only convinced his hearers that his story was true, but he made public for the first time a tale of both homely and historic value ---- a tale that casts a very human sidelight upon the most famous of modern monarchs, Queen Victoria.

The venerable Texan's name is Shannon ----- last survivor of that famous family that, headed by Colonel Thomas Jefferson Shannon, prairie-schoonered its way into that vast and howling wilderness in the days of head-rights and buffalo. The old Colonel, a bluff, hard riding, sharp-shooting old plainsman, is remembered as the man who introduced the Red Durham strain into the cattle business of the West.

It now appears that that start ----- probably the parent herd of all the Durham cattle in America today, was a male and two females sent to Colonel Shannon by none other than Victoria, herself, and sent to him merely because he wrote her a letter saying he'd like a sample of the cattle she liked best.

He was only a plainsman living in an uncharted wilderness, but ... he sat down and wrote the Queen of England ... simply asked her to sell him some of her livestock. He told her who he was, where he lived, and what he wanted with it. The order was for a male and two females, and he generously offered to let her set any price she thought was fair.

Two months later the Queen herself wrote. It was a friendly but business-like letter. She said she'd be glad to let the colonel have the stock as he requested, and if he'd pay the freight on them from New Orleans to his North Texas home, she'd be glad to make him a present of them .... and in 1848 the bull and two cows landed from a British ship in New Orleans.

The colonel conveyed them carefully from there to North Texas. There were no railroads, but he placed them in wagons. At frequent intervals he unloaded them, fed them, and let them graze for a day or two. He at last got them home in perfect condition and they founded the herd that was the sensation of the old Southwest.

The old colonel never forgot the graciousness of England's queen. He sent her reports from time to time as to how her transplanted stock was flourishing in the New World. He named his first daughter "Victoria" in her honor and one of his sons was christened "Albert" in honor of her consort."

------- Norfolk (Virginia) News, March 20, 1926. I have to say that I love little slices of human-interest history like this one. To think that the Queen of England would be so humored by this simple man's letter that she would actually send a bull and two cows all the way to New Orleans at her own expense is just too great.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

It was 54 years ago today, on November 23, 1964, that Dr. Michael Debakey performed the world's first successful coronary artery bypass in Houston. Many people owe their lives to this man. Dr. Debakey's innovative artery grafts were first made in 1952 on his wife's sewing machine. They used dacron they had bought at a fabric store.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Flooding occurred on the Trinity River in the years 1844, 1866, 1871, and 1890, but it was a major event in the spring of 1908 that set in motion the harnessing of the river. On 26 May 1908, the Trinity River reached a depth of 52.6 feet and a width of 1.5 miles . Five people died, 4,000 were left homeless, and property damage was estimated at $2.5 million. Dallas was without power for three days, all telephone and telegraph service was down, and rail service was canceled. The only way to reach Oak Cliff was by boat. West Dallas was hit harder than any other part of the city—the Dallas Times Herald said "indescribable suffering" plagued the area. Much to the horror of residents, thousands of livestock drowned in the flood and some became lodged in the tops of trees. The stench of their decay hung over the city as the water subsided.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> Much to the horror of residents, thousands of livestock drowned in the flood and some became lodged in the tops of trees. The stench of their decay hung over the city as the water subsided.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Some Texans have been known to own large ranches and many were never satisfied with even a few hundred thousand acres. W.T. Waggoner, owner of the 500,000+ acre Waggoner Ranch, was asked in 1921 if he planned to buy all the land in Texas. He replied, 'No, I only want to buy the land adjoining mine.'"

----- Wallace O. Chariton, Texas Wit and Wisdom

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"No city in the country recovered from the Civil War faster than Galveston. In fact, Galveston's rise to prominence as one of the most prosperous and dynamic seaports in America was greatly assisted by the war, which had delayed construction of railroad connections between Houston and the cities and towns of the interior. Southern cities had been shattered by the war, physically annihilated, and spiritually rent with deep class conflict and racial antagonism. In the Texas heartland the planter gentry had been destroyed: most families who had money and station before the war found themselves bankrupt and humiliated in the years that followed. Islanders had not only been spared all that, they had been left with a near monopoly on trade and commerce.

The Island was the undisputed gateway to Texas,and hence to the Midwest: Galveston was 700 miles nearer the producing fields of Kansas and Nebraska, for example, than any Atlantic port, and 360 miles nearer than any Gulf port. Ninety-five percent of all trade goods entering or leaving Texas came through Galveston. By the late 1870s Galveston ranked third in the world in cotton exports and continued to rank in the top five until well after the turn of the century. Galveston was one of the country's most prodigious grain exporters, too, and was destined to become the Gulf terminus of two great continental railway systems, the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.

While the citizens of Central and West Texas were still fighting off Comanches, Galveston became the largest, bawdiest, and most important city between New Orleans and San Francisco. In the streets of most Texas cities, armed mobs of bitter, unemployed soldiers rioted or marched against local authorities. You didn't see that on the Island. Galveston's main business street, the Strand, became known as the Wall Street of the Southwest, and its ornate Victorian buildings were the envy of cities all of the country. Five of the largest banks in Texas were located on the Strand, as well as eight newspapers. The city had six public squares, two parks, two miles of esplanade,street railways drawn by horses, thirteen hotels, three concert halls, and an opera house. Fancy shops sold fine English carpets; French china, wine, and brandy; and German-made rosewood pianos. In 1858 alone Islanders purchased 23 grand pianos."

----- Gary Cartwright, "Galveston: A History of the Island"

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Rebecca Ann Jordan thoughtfully forwarded this really nice photo of the San Antonio City Limits sign back in 1955. It's grown a bit since then!

Thank you, Rebecca Ann! Neat historical photo!

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## woodman6415

Love how the pig gets bigger as the story is told 

Traces of Texas 

It has been brought to my attention that it is time for the annual retelling of the story of me and Paul and the pig. 

Growing up in Texas is different from growing up in other states. For one thing, your stories tend to revolve around old train bridges, prickly pear cacti, beer that reaches thermonuclear meltdown temperatures and explodes in the trunk of your car, and pigs.

This here is a story about me and Paul and a pig named Wilbur.

About 10 years ago my friend Paul, who is the caretaker of a 600 acre ranch in Manchaca, Texas, a few miles south of Austin, called me up a few days before New Years Eve and said, "hey, on New Year's Eve we're going to roast a pig here on the ranch. Do you want to come?" Paul said he was going to roast the pig "vaquero style," over hot coals in a pit that he had dug in the earth. I didn't know if that truly is "vaquero style" or not but I have several precepts by which I live my life and one of them is that when somebody invites you to a pig roast you don't say "no." So I said I'd be happy to come. 

A couple of days before the roast Paul called me up and said "hey, I'm going to go and get the pig. Do you want to help me?" I said I would help so Paul attached a horse trailer to his pickup truck, drove into Austin from his ranch near Manchaca, picked me up, and we headed north to a farm out near Taylor, a small town a few miles northeast of Austin.

We got to the farm and met the seller of the pig, a 16-year old blonde-headed girl named Jessica. She had ribbons in her hair and was very nice in the way that Texas farm girls are. The pig, a 250 .lb Duroc, had been her FFA/Ag project, and she had named it "Wilbur." "Just like in "Charlotte's Web," Jessica said. I thought he was a fine-looking pig ---- a deep, almost mahogany red ----- but apparently Willbur hadn't shown real well in the County Jr. Fair and Livestock show, so it was time for him to go so she could get another one and try again the next year. Jessica had grown quite attached to Wilbur and she knew why we wanted him. There was a briefly emotional scene as we loaded him into the trailer but she gathered her inner farmgirl and managed to get hold of herself. Still, I could see that there were tears in her eyes as we drove away. I'm not ashamed to admit that, seeing her, I, myself, was a little choked up, too.

We left Taylor, drove back to I-35, and headed south down the interstate through downtown Austin toward Manchaca. We took the Manchaca exit, and turned right, onto an FM road. Paul said that he needed gas so we stopped at a convenience store. Paul got out and to pump the gas. All of the sudden he said, "Oh, crap. The pig is gone!" I said, "what?" Paul replied "I kid you not! THE PIG IS NOT IN THE TRAILER! REPEAT! THE PIG IS NOT IN THE %*$&$#&# TRAILER!"

I was inclined to think that he was pulling my leg but there was something in the tone of his voice in that second "THE PIG IS NOT IN THE %*$&$#&# TRAILER!" that was somehow convincing. I got out, looked in the trailer, and sure enough, our 350 .lb pig was gone!

I kept closing my eyes, rubbing them, then re-opening them, as if somehow this missing 450 .lb Duroc would magically reappear in this little horse trailer, but to no avail: that trailer was empty and it was staying empty.

I have to interrupt for a moment to describe the trailer. It was a trailer that was designed for a single horse, the horse facing forward, of course. At the back there were two doors with iron bars that ran vertically from the top of the trailer to the bottom. These doors had a big window cut into them, I guess so if it's a little larger horse then his rump can extend out through that window.

My first thought was that somehow we "lost" the pig before we ever left Jessica's, that we hadn't closed the doors properly etc... but the doors were closed and secured and, besides, I helped put that pig in the trailer and KNEW that there was a pig in it when we left Jessica's house.

Paul and I started groping toward the only possible explanation: the pig had somehow managed to either jump or crawl through the hole in the bars at the back of the trailer. "Maybe the pig jumped, sensing his imminent demise," Paul said. Really, "imminent demise." That's how he talks. Immediately, my brain was filled with visions of a 500.lb Duroc pig running wild on I-35 with tires screeching and 18-wheelers swerving and cars crashing because of this huge, scared animal. 

We stood there for about two minutes, not knowing what we should do. If we retraced our route, we might come across either the pig or the pig's carcass on I-35, surrounded by crashed vehicles and injured people. Of course, in such a scenario, our inborn sense of Texas values would kick in and we would have to own up to our mistake. Then we thought for a moment that we should just go on home and hide. Finally Paul said, "Maybe Wilbur jumped when we exited I-35, got onto the access road, and slowed to make that right turn at that stop sign a few miles back." So we agreed to just drive back to I-35 to see if we could find Wilbur. If he wasn't somewhere on the way, Paul said solemnly, then "It's in God's hands."

We drove slowly back to the highway but did not see our pig. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach as I began imagining the carnage that a frightened 550 .lb Duroc could cause on a major interstate highway. But right there where the FM road and the I-35 access road meet there was a pickup truck pulled over in the grass. The driver motioned for us to roll down our window.

"Did y'all lose a pig?" he asked, in the thickest Texas drawl I think I've ever heard. We didn’t see any visible damage to his truck but maybe it was on the side away from us, where we couldn’t see.

Finally Paul said, in a halting voice, “Well, I think we might have." As if we would have had some doubt about whether or not we had lost a pig. Mind you, one of the things you learn early here in Texas is if your pig is lost. It is an “either/or” proposition, kind of like being pregnant. You have either lost your pig or you have not.

Before we could say anything else, the man said "I've got him tied up to my back bumper."

Sure enough, we walked around to the back of his truck and there was Wilbur, roped and tied up. And I remember thinking that only in Texas does a random passerby have a rope with him and also have the technical proficiency with the rope to lasso a crazed pig. What I mean is that I grew up in a rural area of Texas and was a member of FFA and on a very good dairy cattle judging team and even with that background I don't believe I could lasso a pig, no sirree bob.

We couldn't believe our luck.

Paul was pretty upset with the pig and didn't want to take any chances so he took a large mallet or sledgehammer from his toolbox and brained Wilbur between the eyes, dropping him. Unfortunately, in his haste, Paul hadn't pondered all the repercussions of having a lifeless, 650 lb. Duroc pig on the side of the road, like a sack of flour. It took quite an effort to get the pig into the trailer but finally we managed. We wanted to give the man some money as a reward for arresting our fugitive pig but of course, him being a Texan and all, he would not take it. So we invited him to our pig roast. He said he would try to make it but did not. Probably thought he'd be safer just about anywhere in Texas than on a ranch with the likes of me and Paul. 

We got Wilbur back to Paul's place. Paul already had a pit prepared. I won't go into the rest of the details, but suffice to say that we had a magnificent feast a couple of days later. Vaquero style

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## Tony

RIP Mr. President 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them."

----- President George H.W. Bush, reflecting on how the educated mind can hold two conflicting ideas at the same time. It strikes me that, in these partisan times, that is a thought worthy of reflection.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a trilingual sign posted in San Antonio in the 1890s:

"Walk your horse over this bridge or you will be fined.

Schnelles reiten über dieses Brücke ist verboten!

Anda despacio con su caballa, o' teme la ley."

----- sign at the Commerce Street bridge in San Antonio, 1890s

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## Wildthings

I love the translations per Google:

Schnelles reiten über dieses Brücke ist verboten! Fast riding over this bridge is prohibited!

Anda despacio con su caballa, o' teme la ley. Go slowly with your mackerel, or 'fear the law.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader George Richeson's father, G. Leland Richeson, was the first employee of HEB, before it even was HEB. He was employed by the company when it was still C.C. Butt grocery Here he is with Howard E. Butt (for whom the grocery chain is named) in one of the company's first motorized delivery vehicles.

I just love this image. Look at that car! To think that a chain that now employs more than 85,000 people came from such beginnings. It's a pretty remarkable story.

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## Tony

These eleven states combined could fit inside Texas with room left over: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey, and Ohio.

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## ironman123

With that left over room, we could throw @Tony in there and he would never get out.


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## Tony

ironman123 said:


> With that left over room, we could throw @Tony in there and he would never get out.



I ain't never leaving Texas anyway!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: If you go to Dallas' Greenwood Cemetery, you'll find the grave of William Stewart Simkins. It is generally believed that William, as a 16 year-old private, fired the first shot of the Civil War. While serving under General J.E. Jackson, he heard the Federal gunboat "Star of the West" creep into the harbor at Fort Sumter, SC in April 1861, awakened his comrades, and fired the first shot. He later became professor of Law at the University of Texas from 1899-1929, writing many law books that became standard textbooks in Texas and beyond.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We gathered the heads growing in the middle of the mescal plant. This had the color and almost the shape of a white cabbage head. A hole was dug, a fire built in it, and after the whole cavity had been heated, the coals and ashes removed. The bottom was lined with cactus leaves, from which the thorns had been burned. The mescal was deposited and covered by cactus leaves; a layer of dirt was placed over them, and a fire built on top of all. It should have been burning all night. We judged it had been allowed to wane; the mescal was not properly cooked the next morning. We ate it nearly half raw. The writer was in the possession of a first-class appetite. He could not eat horse meat. It tasted like a sweaty saddle blanket smells at the end of a day's ride. The liver had an offensive smell; by holding his nose he forced down some of that strong-scented viand. He made a hearty breakfast on mescal and, as a result, suffered from colic."

---- Ranger John Salmon Ford describes some of the hardships he encountered on the trail from Austin to El Paso, 1849. Makes me wonder why he didn't stop at that Flying-J in Fort Stockton. ;)

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## ripjack13

Ok...the loser with the shortest straw eats it first...


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## ripjack13

You gotta wonder what they're thinking when you read this. 
**hmmm...lets cook this plant and eat it. See what happens.


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## Tony

I guess when there's nothing else to eat...


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## woodman6415

I have always questioned who was the person that watched a hard white object fall out of a chickens rear and decided to crack it open and eat it ..

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> I have always questioned who was the person that watched a hard white object fall out of a chickens rear and decided to crack it open and eat it ..



Somebody that didn't have a dam thing else to eat.


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## woodman6415

Tony said:


> Somebody that didn't have a dam thing else to eat.


Well the chicken was there

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## Tony

Maybe he was too slow to catch it.

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## Wildthings

How about the first guy to eat a raw oyster??

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

A 154 years ago today, January 8, one of the largest Indian battles in Texas History took place southwest of present day San Angelo, along the banks of Dove Creek (pictured below). 

A unit of about 150 combined Confederate and State militiamen attacked a much more superior force of around 300 Kickapoo Indians. Unknown to the Texans, the Kickapoos had no intentions of attacking the isolated settlements and settlers, and were on their way to Mexico from Kansas in order to avoid being caught up in the Civil War. 

Since the Kickapoos were going to be passing directly through the heart of the Comanche Empire, the Federal government in Kansas had given each male member of the tribe a confiscated Enfield musket for their protection while en-route to Mexico. Because of the Comanche’s ferocity, the Kickapoos had been training with their rifles since departing their reservations. All of these factors were unknown to the Texans and Confederate troopers at Dove Creek. 

The Battle of Dove Creek lasted five hours, with heavy losses on both sides. At around 4 pm on the evening of January 8, the fight had finally lulled enough for the Confederates and Southerners to begin retreating to a fall back position on Spring Creek (which was to the north of where they had entrenched themselves along the bank of Dove Creek). 

Lying on the prairie between the Confederates and the Native Americans, as well as on the bank of Dove Creek, were 20-30 men dead. To make matters worse, one of the heaviest snowstorms in West Texas history dropped 15 inches of snow on the area in only a few hours. 

The following day, January 9, 1865, the Texans began a daunting 30-40 mile march towards the nearest settlement, hauling the wounded in strechers of wood and blankets the entire way. Many more died along the route and are currently buried in unknown locations along the Concho River. 

In the years following the Civil War, the Kickapoo people began extracting their revenge on the Texans with a raging fury. When the Union Army began re-establishing their occupation of Western Texas, the Kickapoo were some of their fiercest enemies. 

The Battle of Dove Creek had been spurned on by fear and poor reconnaissance. Many of the militia members in Brown, San Saba, and other western regions had declined the choice of joining the expedition because of the lack of evidence that the Indians were indeed hostile. 

There has yet to be uncovered an accurate number of causalities that the Kickapoos sustained in the battle. But, based on all the sources available, their numbers were far less than those of their opponent. However, the 1865 battle had lasting consequences on the residents and soldiers in the post-war years.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is unbelievable:

If you go to the Pioneer Cemetery in Fort Davis, Texas, you will find a grave that contains the bodies of seven children belonging to the Bentley family, all of whom died of diphtheria within a two-week period in 1891. The seven Bentley children, who are buried together in a common grave, ranged in age from two months to seventeen years and their parents watched helplessly as, one by one, their precious offspring died of the disease. Death by diphtheria is unbelievably cruel: it's a highly-contagious upper respiratory disease that is frequently caused by bacteria in unpasteurized milk. Those afflicted suffer sore throats, raging fevers and increasingly impaired breathing as a membrane grows across the trachea, eventually resulting in death by suffocation. 

The story goes beyond this, though. In Fort Davis there is a large pecan tree that was planted in 1873 by Flora, the oldest of the children who died in this tragedy. Her father, George Bentley, had been a private who had first come to Fort Davis as a Buffalo Soldier in 1868 and, a couple of years later, when his enlistment expired, returned to that fair town to become a teamster and a civilian packer. George married a woman named Concepción Rodríguez, acquired some cattle, and had seven children. Then the tragedy struck and George and his wife lost all of their kids to diphtheria. As if burying their children was not enough heartbreak, a vicious rumor was spread that their deaths had come as the result of a curse that had been placed upon George for bayoneting an Apache child while he had been in the Army ---- a rumor that does not appear to be true and that is totally unsupported by the historical record.

I believe that this sad series of events would have crushed me, but it did not crush George and Concepción: they went on to have three more children, all of whom survived. One of them, George Bentley, Jr., was born in 1900, passed away in 1987, and is also buried in the St. Joseph Cemetery in Fort Davis.

Pecans normally live for only about 75 years or so, but Flora's tree has been alive for nearly twice that long and is still producing bumper crops of pecans. I have noticed that, properly tended, things can live a long time in West Texas. This tree is certainly testimony to that. 

I have a call in to the Fort Davis Chamber of Commerce, requesting the address of the tree. If they are able to provide it, I will edit this post.

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## Wildthings

Please do add it to the post!! I did find a waymark which talks a little about the Pioneer Cemetery

Cemetery

edited to add link

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Please do add it to the post!! I did find a waymark which talks a little about the Pioneer Cemetery
> 
> Cemetery
> 
> edited to add link


This is copied from Traces of Texas 
If he adds to the post I’ll share here

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The glassware is all of the very finest obtainable by a conjunction of money and taste, and is imported. There are two mirrors in the front room exact in size and pattern with those in the assembly room. One of the beauties of the place is that gentlemen, who are not disposed to drink, and are disposed to admire themselves, can drop in and pose in some half dozen reflectors at once."

----- the San Antonio Express describes the new bar at the Menger Hotel, October 12, 1890

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In downtown La Grange at the intersection of N. Washington Street and W. Colorado Street stands an old oak tree called "The Muster Oak." This oak tree was the mustering place for 36 Texan militiamen who signed up under Captain Nicolas Mosby Dawson as a company of Fayette County Mounted Volunteers who met at its base on September 15, 1842. Some 17 other militiamen from Fayette County also joined the company on the march to San Antonio to help Col. Matthew Caldwell. Col. Caldwell was fighting Mexican soldiers under the command of Gen. Adrian Woll, who had captured San Antonio de Bexar. By Sept 18th, Dawson met up with Caldwell at Salado Creek just outside San Antonio. They were caught in cannon fire and 36 men were killed, 15 were captured and 2 escaped. The Texan prisoners were marched to Mexico City and imprisoned.

The Mier Expedition also included many Texan soldiers from La Grange, TX. The expedition was partly inspired as revenge against the Mexican Army for the Dawson Massacre and partly for reinforcing the dominance of the white settlers claim to the Republic of Texas boundary with Mexico. The Texan troops marched into Mexico and on December 26-27, 1842 fought Mexican soldiers at Ciudad Mier, Mexico. The Texans were soundly defeated and many were captured and marched to Mexico City. When Santa Anna heard of the captives, he ordered them all killed. However, Governor Mexia, the governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila, refused to carry out the order. Some time later, Santa Anna changed his order such that only 1 in 10 would be executed. Thus, of the 176 Texan captives, 17 prisoners from the Mier Expedition were the ones who drew black beans and were shot to death.

In 1847, during the Mexican-American War, Captain John E. Dusenbury, himself a white bean survivor of the Mier Expedition, was assigned duty in Mexico and while there found and exhumed the remains of the martyered Texan militiamen. Capt. Dusenbury returned the remains of the 17 men to La Grange, TX to be buried along with the remains of those exhumed remains of the Dawson Expedition. These remains were interred in a common large crypt on Monument Hill near La Grange, TX.

The oak tree has ever since been the mustering point of military personnel who hail from La Grange. The oak tree has been damaged in recent times but was repaired by a concrete support and is reported to be in better health now than in the past few decades. Military recruits from six conflicts, beginning with the struggle for Texas independence from Mexico have mustered at this historic oak tree. You can see a photo of the tree here, at the wonderful Texas Tripper dot com site:

https://www.doggonetexas.com/blog-p...yI4kqxc9uGfAN2H1VEfqhRZG3_1mqK46oibmkuXt68-xw

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds one Texas musical legend discussing two others:

"The thing that blows me away is listening to his [Buddy Holly's] melodies and wondering. Here's this guy, he didn't have a lot of resources in Lubbock. There weren't a lot of things he could have possibly drawn from in the early fifties, when he was first listening to play. I'm always amazed at how he could have come up with the melodies he did. It was almost like they came to him from some other place. Roy Orbison was the same way, with those really haunting melodies, and for both of those guys to grow up at pretty much the same time, less than 100 miles from each other, almost scared me to death when I thought about it too hard."

----- Joe Ely describes the influence of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison in an interview with the Austin American Statesman newspaper

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## Gdurfey

Heard on the radio today two famous "Texan" musicians played together for the first time over the weekend: Willie and King George.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is an 1882 description of "The Texas Red Ant." I love the droll way they described things back then.

"THE TEXAS RED ANT.

To begin at the front end of the ant, he has two feelers growing out of the bumps of mirthfulness on his large, full forehead. These feelers are used in shaking hands with other ants.

Like the man who has his quarrel just, the red ant is doubly armed, having for a mouth a pair of pincers that will bite off the corner of an iron safe. At the southern end of him Providence has provided him with a javelin not unlike the hip-pocket weapon of the wasp, and which he uses with both celerity and liberality when occasion offers. At barbecues and picnics, when man tramples on the rights and property — the hearths and homes of the ant --- that insect is very apt to take part in a joint discussion; and usually a delegation of ants, with a reprehensible lack of modesty, will climb upward under the clothing of the seeker of rural joys, and seizing a piece of him in their unmerciful jaws, shake and tug at it as the boarder does in his efforts to masticate the spring chicken of the city boardinghouse. Having securely anchored his head, the ant humps himself, like unto an irate cat on a fence, and then drives several yards of envenomed sting into the leg of the unsuspecting excursionist, who, for a moment afterward, is undecided whether he should climb a tree or take off his clothes and go in swimming. He usually compromises by dancing the Can-can and using language not intended for publication, but merely given as a guarantee of good faith.

The way a single red ant can make a lazy man get up and move around is truly wonderful. Solomon must have had such a scene in his mind when he told the sluggard to go to the ant.

The ant does not work during the winter months, but remains at home and sits by the fire all day telling lies about the peculiar winters they used to have when he first came to Texas. It was for a long time a disputed point as to whether ants worked at night, until a scientist from Boston received light and other experience on the subject, when he was visiting Austin last year for the benefit of his health. He procured the services of the hotel clerk to aid him in his researches. Armed with a walking-cane and accompanied by a lantern, they went out one night and found an ant hill. The scientist brought an eye-glass to bear on the ant hill at short range, while the genial hotel clerk stirred up the ants' nest with the cane. Soon the doubts of the scientist as to the late working hours of the ant were removed. When he returned to his room, upward of twenty healthy specimens of an ant, with a Latin name a yard long, were removed from his scientific anatomy with a pair of tongs."

----- Edwin J.K. Sweet, "Texas Siftings," 1882

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## Wildthings

Hate the little Ba$turds


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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Hate the little Ba$turds



They sure do a good job of getting the bugs out of Mesquite!


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## ironman123

Another true Texas Fact: At 8:30 PM I went to my shop and emptied my Shop Vac for the first time. Filled up 3 large cardboard boxes with sawdust. Check them more than once every 6 months.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas reader Chino Chapa graciously sent in this dynamite historical photo of former Erath County farmer-turned-train robber Rube Burrow in his coffin, propped up against a train, in October, 1890. Chino included this super interesting history behind this photo:

"Burrow moved from Alabama to Texas in 1872, when he was 18, to farm with his uncle in Stephenville. Story goes he was intent on working hard and living right, which he did initially, saving enough money to secure some land, get married, and have children. He farmed in Stephenville until 1880, when his wife died, leaving him a widowed father of two at 25.

In 1884, he remarried and moved to Alexander, Texas. But when his crops failed two years in a row during a drought and his second marriage ended, he became bitter and turned to crime, robbing trains with his younger brother, Jim. His first robbery was a FW&D train near Bellevue, Texas, on December 11, 1886. His next hold-ups were T&P trains in Gordon, Texas, and Benbrook, Texas, in 1887. From there his life of crime escalated as he and his gang robbed trains from Arkansas to Alabama.

When he killed a conductor and a passenger, he became despised by the railroads & the target of one of the most widespread manhunts in American history for the next few years. Eluding authorities for almost 5 years, Burrow was captured by two black men, Jesse Hildreth and Frank Marshall, with the help of two white planters, John McDuffie and Jeff "Dixie" Carter, in Myrtlewood, Alabama on October 7, 1890.

Former slaves Hildreth and Marshall jumped Burrow and held him for McDuffie and Carter. Rube offered Hildreth $100 to let him go, but Hildreth said, "I couldn't use it then, 'cuz you'd kill me first," All four captors took Burrow, known as a charmer, to jail in Linden, Alabama, with Burrow entertaining them all the way with funny stories.

While in jail the next morning of October 8, 1890, Burrow complained of hunger and talked his jailers into handing him his bag, which had ginger snaps inside. It also contained a gun and Burrow whipped it out and held it at the head of one of the guards. He thought he'd escaped, locking two guards in his cell and taking another as hostage to get back the stolen money taken from him. However when Burrow went outside, Dixie Carter was again waiting for him and a gun fight erupted. Afterwards, Burrow lay dead in the street.

Burrow’s body was shipped by train back to Lamar County, Alabama, where he grew up. At a transfer connection stop in Birmingham, this photo was taken before the beginning of a publicized public display. Thousands showed up to walk past & view the corpse, some snatching buttons from his coat, cutting hair from his head and even stealing the boots off his feet. His guns, however, were removed before the event for safe keeping.

Burrow's father Allen met the train at its final destination, Vernon, Alabama, where train attendants threw the coffin at his feet. He took his son's body back to his home and buried him. Moral of the story, kids: Don't grow up to be train robbers."

THAT, dear readers, is how you do a history post! Thank you, Chino. An astounding shot, indeed.

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## Tony

Were Texas its own country, its economy would be the 11th largest in the world ---- larger than that of South Korea, Canada, Russia, Spain etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

It was 156 years ago today, on January 23rd, 1863, that Confederate soldiers hanged the man shown in this photo, Martin D. Hart, in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Martin was an attorney from Hunt County who had served in the Texas legislature, where he spoke out against secession. After secession, he resigned his government post and organized the Greenville Guards, pledging the company's services "in defense of Texas" against invasion. Under his Confederate commission, however, he spied against the Confederacy. In Arkansas he led a series of rear-guard actions against Confederate forces, and is alleged to have murdered at least two prominent secessionists. He was captured on January 18, 1863, by Confederate forces and hanged five days later.

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## woodman6415

Andrew Jackson Sowell, Texas ranger, lifelong soldier, and eyewitness to so much Texas history. He was born in Tennessee in 1815 but moved with his family to Texas before the Texas Revolution. He was a participant in the revolution and, survived the siege ---- though not the Battle ----- of the Alamo. Andrew fought in the Battle of Gonzales, when the town would not surrender the "Come and Take It" cannon to Francisco de Castañeda and his Mexican troops sent to retrieve it. His father had been one of the "Old Eighteen", defending the colony's right to keep the cannon. This incident was the first shot fired in the Texas Revolution. Sowell went on to take part in the Battle of Concepción and the "Grass Fight." Although a participant in the Texians' attempt to take San Antonio, he was unprepared for inclement weather, and like many others he returned home for the winter. In December the Texians drove the Mexican soldiers under General Martín Perfecto de Cos from Mexican Texas after this siege of Bexar.

In February, 1836 Sowell volunteered again during the Siege of the Alamo Although he served in the old mission fort while the army of Santa Anna was already in the vicinity of San Antonio, he and Byrd Lockhart were sent out as couriers and foragers. They went as far as Gonzales, Texas to buy cattle and supplies for the Alamo garrison. But upon their return to San Antonio, they were not able to enter as the Alamo was surrounded by Santa Anna's army. From the Alamo they headed to Gonzales, where Sowell assisted the Texian settlers who became refugees in the Runaway Scrape. After insuring the safety of the civilians, he marched towards San Jacinto to join Sam Houston's troops, arriving after the Battle of San Jacinto had taken place. 

Andrew continued his service during the years of the Republic of Texas, in the Mexican–American War, and the Civil War. He was a frontier defender, an early Texas Ranger, and a friend and scout with Kit Carson. He died in Seguin, Texas on January 4, 1883, and is buried some miles east of town in the Rogers-Mofield Cemetery, north of U.S. Route 90 Alternate (Texas) near Darst Creek, Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

On the night of the Great Storm of 1900, Galveston was the second richest city per capita in all of the United States. The only city with more wealth per capita than Galveston was Newport, Rhode Island.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Drunk in a ditch, Sam Houston is worth a thousand of Mirabeau B. Lamar or David G. Burnet."

------ Newspaper editorial during Houston's campaign for a second term as President, 1841

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

After organization of the Texian "Army of the People" under Gen. Stephen F. Austin at Gonzales, the famed "Come and Take It" bronze cannon that had been used at Gonzales was assigned to Capt. James C. Neill's artillery company, hauled to San Antonio and used during the Siege of Bexar. After the capture of Bexar in December 1835, the cannon remained at the Alamo, where it was one of twenty-one large artillery pieces commandeered by the Mexican army upon the recapture of the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

The Gonzales cannon was buried with other captured Texan cannons inside the Alamo compound. It was unearthed by Samuel Maverick in 1852, and sent to New York by his widow Mary Maverick in 1874, where it was recast into a bell that currently hangs in the belfry of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio.

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## Casey Botts

Woodman6415, do you write these from facts you have picked up or are these copied from things you have read? In any case I really enjoy reading them. In The fourth grade, I lived in Houston. I was always so proud, being from Tennessee, to learn how Tennesseans kept turning up in so much of Texas history.

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## woodman6415

Casey Botts said:


> Woodman6415, do you write these from facts you have picked up or are these copied from things you have read? In any case I really enjoy reading them. In The fourth grade, I lived in Houston. I was always so proud, being from Tennessee, to learn how Tennesseans kept turning up in so much of Texas history.


I copy them from a page on Facebook called Traces of Texas .. the guy post all kinds of Texas stuff ... old pictures.. stories .. Texas Facts ... look it up .. great page

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I will describe Jim Bowie's knife for you, for I have frequently seen and handled it. It was seventeen and one-half inches in the blade, two inches in width, until within five inches of the point, when it widened a half inch, and then, curving backward a little ran off suddenly to a point. In weight it was just three pounds.

The handle was made of the lower part of a horn of an elk sawed in two halves and neatly riveted on to the shank of the blade, the handle and blade being twenty-three inches in length with a handsome cross-piece where the two joined. The knife was ground down and then put on an oil stone until it was so sharp that it would shave the hair off one's hand, so admirable was its temper. The sheath was made of two pieces of this pine wood neatly covered with alligator skin. It could be used for both cut and thrust, and it never failed when Jim Bowie got a fair blow."

----- James Madison Wells, former Louisiana Governor, quoted in "Origin of the Bowie Knife and How It Looked," Sept. 8, 1889 - Fort Worth Gazette

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## Casey Botts

That was a hefty knife for sure


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## woodman6415

Bonus Texas Quote of the Day, written in 1882:

"Underneath this rough exterior the Texas Ranger hides a heart as simple and guileless as a child's and a soul whose tenderest chords are instantly touched by human misery or woe. He cleans his gun, washes his shirt, and repairs his saddle on Sunday, but he will share his only dollar with a man in want and throw his last biscuit to a hungry dog. His salary is meager, and he does not profess to love his country as dearly as he does a candidate for the Legislature, but he will tackle a bunch of rustlers single-handed, and round em up, too. He never saw the inside of a college but he has been the advance courier of civilization and has made life and property safe in Texas. Half the time he receives no credit for his work. He does his duty all the same. Short-sighted Legislators grumble and growl when they are called upon to pay him his pittance, and every year cut down the appropriation. Penurious taxpayers insist that he is a burden upon the State. He returns them their stolen horses and cattle, brings to justice the man who robs them on the highway, and guards their houses day and night.

The Ranger is hardly ever out of the saddle. He is the original and only "solitary horseman" who has been scouring the plains in search of Indians ever since the dawn of the dime novel. He is Young America's beau ideal of border chivalry. The Ranger can ride harder, fight longer, live rougher, and talk less about it than anyhting that walks on two feet. He wears a sombrero and spurs, thus accoutred, and with a two dollar government blanket, he will defy alike the rains of summer and the snows of winter. he generally dies with his boots on, and as the State does not furnish rosewood caskets and cemetery lots for her fallen rangers, his comrades wrap him up in and old blanket and, 

In an unmarked shallow grave,
They lay him to rest;
His saddle for a pillow
His gun across his breast

---- Alexander Edwin Sweet, "Texas Siftings," 1882

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

I mentioned that yesterday was Farrah Fawcett's birthday. Most Texans don't know that the song "Midnight Train to Georgia," which was such a huge hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1973, was inspired by Farrah. In 1972, the song's writer, Jim Weatherly, phoned his friend Lee Majors, who was Farrah's husband at the time. Farrah picked up the phone and answered the call. Weatherly and Farrah chatted briefly and she told him she was going to visit her mother, taking "the midnight plane to Houston." Although Lee Majors and Farrah were already both successful by that time, Weatherly thought Farrah's line was a good one and used Farrah and Lee as "characters" in his song, which is about a failed actress who leaves Los Angeles and is followed by her boyfriend who cannot live without her. Eventually the genders were swapped to a failed actor who leaves Los Angeles and is followed by his girlfriend who cannot live without him, a train replaced the plane, and Houston was changed to Georgia. Here is Jim Weatherly singing the original song, the song that Farrah inspired, "Midnight Plane to Houston." As soon as you hear it, you'll recognize it.






RIP Farrah Fawcett

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 


The Texas Quote of the Day:

“If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him 'pop.' Don't tell him 'rock 'n' roll' or they won't even let you in the hotel.” 

----- Buddy Holly, who died 60 years ago today, on Feb. 3, 1959

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## woodman6415

Col. Robert Hall photographed in 1898 in San Antonio at the age of 84. The back of the photo reads "Col. Robert Hall Old Texas Veteran, Indian Figheter and Spy in General Taylor's Army During the Confederate War." Robert died the next year and was buried in Cotulla, Texas.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 4th*

*La Bahía becomes Goliad*

On this day in 1829, the Mexican government issued a decree officially changing the name La Bahía to Villa de Goliad. The term _La Bahía_ (“the bay”) historically referred to several entities, including La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (present Matagorda and Lavaca bays) and Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission and its accompanying presidio. Coahuila and Texas state legislator Rafael Antonio Manchola proposed the change, arguing that the name of the settlement around the presidio was meaningless because neither the mission nor presidio were located on “the bay.” His suggestion of “Goliad” was actually an anagram for the name of Father Hidalgo, the priest who led the fight for Mexican independence. For a time during the 1830s settlers called the town both La Bahía and Goliad. The community played a key role in the Texas Revolution and became the site of the signing of the first declaration of independence for Texas.


*Republic of Texas authorizes ill-fated Peters colony* 

On this day in 1841, the Republic of Texas passed a law authorizing the president to enter into an empresario contract with William S. Peters of Pennsylvania and his associates. The contract required Peters to bring 200 colonists to North Texas every three years. The colony was headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and its bumpy history contrasts sharply with that of such earlier colonies as the Austin colony partly because the successful earlier empresarios lived in their colonies and managed them personally. After the initial authorizing law, the Peters colony entered four contracts with the republic. Each was an effort to correct some defect in the previous one, or to relax the demands of the government on colony officials, who failed to bring in the requisite colonists. Peters and his investors soon gave up, and in 1844 the Texas Emigration and Land Company was founded to take over the colony. The company continued the earlier management's precedents for rapacious demands on the colonists and inept management. The installation in 1845 of the officious Henry O. Hedgcoxe as the company's agent in residence inflamed the colonists and precipitated the Hedgcoxe War, in which the agent was driven from the colony. A settlement was eventually reached, and the deadline for colonists to file their claims was extended to May 7, 1853. But it took nearly ten legislative enactments over nearly twenty years to bring final settlement of the land titles. The colony that helped settle North Texas brought little if any profit to the investors and much disgruntlement to the settlers.


*Hero from Rio Grande valley dies in Vietnam* 

On this day in 1968, Marine sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez died near Thua Thein, Vietnam, after action that earned him the Medal of Honor. On January 31 the native of Edinburg was commanding a platoon in a truck convoy formed to relieve pressure on the beleaguered city of Hue. After being wounded, he moved through a fire-swept area and rescued a wounded comrade. On February 3 he was again wounded, but refused medical treatment. The next day, as the enemy inflicted heavy casualties on his company, Gonzalez knocked out a rocket position and suppressed much enemy fire before falling. The missile destroyer USS _Alfredo Gonzalez_, named for him, is the first United States military ship named for a Hispanic.

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## woodman6415

One of the nicest descriptions of Lubbock 

Traces of Texas 
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Lubbock reminds me of a huge monster that fell out of the sky. Every once in a while it moves, but they don't know who to call in to kill the damn thing." 

----- C.B. "Stubb" Stubblefield, legendary barbecue pitmaster

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Driskill Hotel in Austin is named for the man who built it, cattleman Jesse Lincoln Driskill. Jesse was born on November 4, 1824, in White County, Tennessee. At the age of twenty-three Jesse Driskill moved to Barry County, Missouri, where he married Nancy Elizabeth Jane Day, originally from Columbus, Georgia, on September 5, 1847. The couple lived in Missouri four years and then moved to Bastrop, Texas. Driskill went into the merchandising business, moving first to San Antonio and later to San Marcos and Bryan. In 1857 he entered the cattle business, and for three years during the Civil War he furnished beef to the Confederate army and the Texas Rangersqv. Driskill was paid for his efforts in Confederate dollars and by the end of the war, with no cattle and no money, had gone broke. 

He began to rebuild his herds. In the early days of the Chisholm Trail, Driskill could be found driving cattle to northern markets with his brother-in-law, William H. Day. Driskill was said to have been an adventurous drover and fearless ranchman, and through persistence he became successful once again in the early Southwestern cattle trade. Business fell off sharply after 1871, when permanent residents of Abilene, Kansas, the destination of many trail drives, became fed up with the cattle trade and the wranglers who accompanied it. In that year Driskill moved his wife, four daughters, and two sons to Austin, the westernmost metropolis in the state at that time. He also continued on in the cattle trade, establishing ranches in South Texas, Kansas, and the Dakota territories. 

In 1885 he purchased the site for his future hotel, an entire city block for $7,500. The Driskill Hotel opened on December 20, 1886. For many years it served as a social and political center in Texas society. The Driskill family lost their fortune in 1888, when a late spring freeze on the northern plains killed 3,000 cattle. Payments on the hotel could not be met, and Driskill was forced to sell to S. E. McIlhenny. Driskill died, some said a broken man, on May 3, 1890, of a stroke. He was 65 years old. He is buried in Austin's Oakwood Cemetery. The inscription on his tombstone reads "He loved his fellow man."

Citation: Handbook of Texas Online, Mary Jayne Walsh, "DRISKILL, JESSE LINCOLN," accessed February 04, 2019

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas
This is Jacob Luckenbach, the man who created the community that ultimately became Luckenbach, Texas. His TSHA entry is interesting:

"Jacob Luckenbach, early settler, was born in Marienberg, Nassau, on October 6, 1817. He married Justina Ruebsam in 1839 or 1840. They had two small daughters and were classified as farmers when they signed with the Adelsverein in 1845. Accompanied by Jacob's two younger brothers and three sisters, the Luckenbachs sailed from Bremen in early December on the Johann Dethardt and landed at Indianola at the end of December 1845.

In January 1846 the family was among first settlers to arrive in Fredericksburg, a new community carved out of the three-million-acre Fisher-Miller Land Grant, purchased by the German Immigration Company in 1844. Luckenbach was allocated a town lot in the new village and a ten-acre lot southwest of town, where he built the family's first home. The Luckenbach family became American citizens in 1852 and shortly thereafter sold both Fredericksburg properties and moved twelve miles southeast to the site that later became Luckenbach. During this time Luckenbach was deeded 640 acres of land through the state immigration program.

He aided in forming Gillespie County in 1848 and from 1854 to 1858 was county commissioner and school supervisor. He opposed secession but served in Capt. Engelbert Krauskopf's Home Guard during the Civil War. His youngest brother, August, joined a group of Union sympathizers and was killed by Confederate forces in 1862. Jacob's other brother, William, was appointed justice of the peace in Gillespie County in 1865 and served several years in that capacity.

Jacob's son Albert was engaged to Sophie Engel when she was appointed postmistress at Luckenbach. She named the post office Luckenbach, in honor of her future husband. They later moved to a new settlement in eastern Gillespie County, where Sophie was again appointed postmistress. She named that post office "Albert."

Jacob and Justina Luckenbach raised three boys and nine girls. In 1883 they sold their property in Luckenbach and retired in Boerne, to be near six of their children who lived there. At the time of Mrs. Luckenbach's death on February 27, 1907, eleven of their children survived her. There were also forty-two grandchildren and twenty-two great-grandchildren. Jacob Luckenbach died on February 27, 1911, four years to the day after his wife's death."

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, Garland Perry, "Luckenbach, Jacob"

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## Wildthings

I love the area around Luckenbach

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> I love the area around Luckenbach


Usually ride bike over 2 or 3 times a year ... beautiful country ... usually good music

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## Wildthings

Luckenbach. Where everybody is somebody!!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Waylon Jennings had never been to Luckenbach when he and Willie recorded and released the classic "Luckenbach, Texas."

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## woodman6415

My home town 

San Angelo’s racial climate generally typified other civilian-military communities in Texas; however, the infamous 1881 Fort Concho Mutiny raised serious doubts and concerns about the posting of black units in close proximity to white townships.

By 1875, the frontier army had permanently vanquished the Indian threat from West Texas and that in return brought about significant changes. In less than a decade, Saint Angela, once a quiet German pioneering community, became San Angelo, one of the rowdiest frontier towns in the state especially when it came to civilian-military relations. Flooded with ex-Confederates, extreme lawlessness, racial prejudice, and anti-Union sentiment, San Angelo was an iniquitous hotbed waiting to explode. Much of the turmoil centered on rancorous hostilities between black Tenth Cavalry troopers stationed at nearby Fort Concho and racist townspeople. In fact, following the senseless murder of one black soldier, what many called a mutiny ignited.

From 1868 through 1881, racist attacks on black soldiers dogged the Concho river valley. Simmering tensions finally boiled over early in 1881. While at Powell’s saloon, local rancher Tom McCarthy shot and killed Tenth Cavalry trooper Private William Watkins for no apparent reason. Some insisted he acted in self-defense; then again, conflicting statements painted McCarthy to be a cold-blooded murderer.

As the news reached post, riled and well-armed Tenth Cavalry troopers feverishly debated about what to do. Soon thereafter, they crossed the North Concho River in search of McCarthy, whom they believed was holed up in the Nimitz hotel. Bullets then rained down on the hotel for several minutes.

One witness claimed the troopers acted more like a firing squad. “A large body of Negro soldiers marching single file along Chadbourne Street. When directly opposite the Nimitz hotel they halted in perfect alignment, stepped back three or four paces and opened fire. They then moved around on Concho Avenue and poured volley after volley into the Nimitz,” stated the man.

Conversely, duty officer William George Wedemeyer inferred that the soldiers believed they were being attacked. “About dark some cowboys came to the creek opposite the post and fired at the post and a sentry. Just before taps alarm was given some cavalry soldiers went to town with their arms. I heard and saw the flashes of shots, evidently firing indiscriminately into the house. About 200 shots were fired,” said Wedemeyer.

Three days later, on February 3, both black and white Fort Concho soldiers notified San Angelo residents that they would wipe out the entire town if hostilities persisted. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers were called in to restore order.

For whatever reason, Regimental Commander Col. Benjamin Grierson failed to notify his superiors until February 8, after he had relocated the regiment to a nearby encampment. Grierson insisted to superiors that his soldiers acted strictly out of self-defense. Despite tremendous public outcry, no troopers were found guilty of any wrongdoing. To ease tensions, by the following summer, the regiment had been sent to Fort Davis, an isolated frontier outpost in the state’s rugged and unsettled Trans-Pecos region. The United States military thus renewed its unofficial policy of posting black units at desolate frontier locations apart from white settlements.

I think this pretty much nails it down San Angelo was indeed a wild and wooly frontier West Texas town.

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## woodman6415

‘Dead” Ellis’ by Mike Cox

Private Ellis could be the life of any party.

A cavalryman stationed at Fort Concho across the Concho River from the community of San Angelo, Ellis crossed the stream whenever he had the time and money to enjoy the various amenities only civilian proprietors could provide. One of those was booze.

Not one to enjoy too little of a good thing, Ellis often became over served.

On one such occasion, the soldier passed out in one of San Angelo’s many saloons. Several of his friends grabbed available appendages and carried their comrade back to their barracks, throwing him down on his hay-stuffed mattress before calling it a night themselves.

When the bugle sounded early the next morning, the hung-over soldiers dutifully climbed out of their beds, dressed and assembled on the parade ground. Everyone except Ellis.

After dismissing the company, Ellis’ sergeant went to not-so-gently awaken the drunken trooper and have him escorted to the guard house. But Ellis would not budge.

That’s when the sergeant noticed that Ellis’ muscles had gone rigid. Though still warm to the touch, the soldiers did not appear to be breathing. 

The sergeant sent a solider to the post hospital to fetch the surgeon. The doctor arrived and examined the unconscious trooper. Finding no heartbeat or pulse, the surgeon pronounced Ellis dead from alcohol poisoning and ordered his removal to the small white frame house behind the hospital, a structure better known as the Death House.

In the days before refrigeration and the common practice of embalming, a death house was a standard ancillary structure at most hospitals. Bodies went to the death house to be prepared for burial, a process on the frontier that did not amount to much more than tidying up the newly departed and placing the remains in a pine coffin for interment in the post cemetery the following day.

Though Fort Concho had been established in 1867 as part of a chain of forts intended to protect Texas from Indian raids, most of those who ended up in the graveyard were people who died from natural causes. For most soldiers, boredom loomed as a bigger threat than violent death at the hands of Comanches or Kiowas.

Three years after the Army came to the Concho, the government completed a two-story stone hospital with a one-story ward on each side, the most imposing structure on the post. The post surgeon provided the best medical care of the day, but he could not perform miracles. The only thing he could do for Ellis was complete the necessary paperwork so that his family could learn of his demise while in the service of his country.

Ellis had several good friends, most of them having been present on his spree the night before. In a final gesture of respect, his soldier pals gathered in the death house to sit with his body.

To assuage their sense of loss, the soldiers took turns sipping from a jug of whiskey somehow slipped past the sentries whose job it was to monitor those who passed between the fort and San Angelo.

Sometime after midnight, nearly 24 hours after Ellis’ death, the soldiers heard what sounded like a moan coming from their buddy’s coffin. Dismissing the noise as the prairie wind, the soldiers heard the sound again. A moan, no question. Readily prepared to fight hostile Indians, the soldiers had no interest in taking on inhabitants of the spirit world.

The troops retreated not-so-orderly through the closest window or door, not caring which as long as they got out of that house and away from Ellis’ ghost. But, as the saying goes, reports of Ellis’ death had been greatly exaggerated. He had only been dead drunk, not dead. 

Ellis’ friends had found the situation no less terrifying than Ellis, whose blood-alcohol level had finally dropped low enough to allow a return to consciousness. Realizing he lay in his dress uniform inside a wooden coffin just a few hours away from being buried alive, the soldier jumped from the box and crashed through a window to catch up with his fleeing friends.

The damage to government property, not to mention his drinking spree, cost the soldier some time in the guard house but it also netted him a nickname that lasted the rest of his long life: “Dead” Ellis.

The military abandoned Fort Concho in 1889, the last company of soldiers marching off to San Antonio. The military reservation became private property and the hospital was converted into a rooming house. Later, it became a hay barn.

In 1911, lightning sparked a fire that heavily damaged the building, leaving it a stone shell. Eighteen years later, the rest of the structure was razed.

But like “Dead” Ellis, the building came back to life. Following an extensive archaeological investigation, the building was rebuilt to its original specifications in 1986-1987. Now it and most of the other structures at the fort are a National Historic Site.

And docents guiding tours of the reconstructed hospital still tell the story of “Dead” Ellis. 

© Mike Cox

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## woodman6415

A very good article 
From Traces of Texas 

Famous musician Phil Collins talks about his obsession with the Alamo and his collection of Alamo memorabilia. Great photos!

https://truewestmagazine.com/its-my-obsession/

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## Tony

For all y'all that think in-and-Out is good. (Bless your hearts)

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## Wildthings

Amen to that brother!! Whataburger til I die!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 21st*

Other than being my brother's 75th birthday here are some interesting tidbits - Happy Birthday James!!

Don't forget - The siege of the Alamo begins on the 23rd


*Roy Bean stages a prize fight* 

On this day in 1896, colorful lawman Roy Bean staged a heavyweight championship fight on a sandbar just below Langtry, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Bean, known as the "Law West of the Pecos," was appointed justice of the peace for Pecos County in 1882. He settled at Eagle's Nest Springs, which acquired a post office and a new name, Langtry, in honor of the English actress Lillie Langtry, whom Bean greatly admired. Bean soon became known as an eccentric and original interpreter of the law. When a man killed a Chinese laborer, for example, Bean ruled that his law book did not make it illegal to kill a Chinese. And when a man carrying forty dollars and a pistol fell off a bridge, Bean fined the corpse forty dollars for carrying a concealed weapon, thereby providing funeral expenses. He intimidated and cheated people, but he never hanged anybody. He reached his peak of notoriety with his staging of the match between Peter Maher of Ireland and Bob Fitzsimmons of Australia. The fight was opposed by civic and religious leaders such as Baptist missionary Leander Millican, and both the Mexican and the U.S. governments had prohibited it. Bean arranged to hold it on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, knowing the Mexican authorities could not conveniently reach the site, and that Woodford H. Mabry's Texas Rangers would have no jurisdiction. The spectators arrived aboard a chartered train; after a profitable delay contrived by Bean, the crowd witnessed Fitzsimmons's defeat of Maher in less than two minutes. Among the spectators was another somewhat disreputable lawman and boxing promoter, Bartholomew "Bat" Masterson.


*WASPs arrive at Sweetwater Army Air Field* 

On this day in 1943, the first trainees of what would become the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) arrived at Sweetwater Army Airfield (better known as Avenger Field). Organized the previous year as the Womens Flying Training Detachment and the Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the organizations were consolidated as the WASPs in August 1943. Under the direction of famed aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, experienced women pilots in civil-service status were trained to fly army planes to relieve men for World War II combat duty. For a brief period, Avenger Field trained both men and women, but in April 1943 it became the "only all-female air base in history," except for the male instructors and support crews. Fourteen classes, totaling 1,074 pilots, earned their wings in every type of army plane before the WASPs were disbanded on December 20, 1944.The WASPs flew sixty million miles for the AAF and received high praises from their commanders; thirty-eight pilots died in service.


*New county seat given new portmanteau name* 

On this day in 1902, Dalhart became the county seat of Dallam County. The name is a combination of the names Dallam and Hartley. The original settlement began where the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad crossed the tracks of the Fort Worth and Denver line, on the boundary between Dallam and Hartley counties. It was first known as Twist Junction. Subsequently, it adopted its first portmanteau name, Denrock, derived from the names of the two railroads. When the ever-unpredictable postal authorities objected, the name was changed to Dalhart

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## woodman6415

From Traces of Texas
The Texas Quote of the Day is an article about West Texas that was written by the Los Angeles Times in 1998 and it is very entertaining!

BROWNWOOD, Texas — Diners at the Brownwood Country Club glanced up from their salad and sirloin one Saturday night to see gun-toting strangers descending on the kitchen.

Moments later, a waitress emerged, looking a mite sheepish.

"I don't think we're going to serve you all anything else," she whispered. "Everybody in the kitchen has his hands up."

Invading drug agents soon left with their target, the chef, in tow.

And so it goes in West Texas, zany and unpredictable, often maligned and misunderstood.

It is a place where folks considered bootlegging not a crime but a public service. Where a guy could lose $1 million and laugh about it. Where a rookie roughneck might find himself welcomed to the oil business with a rattlesnake on the floorboard of his truck.

More than a state of mind, West Texas is a world unto itself--and proud of it.

There is a monument to a horned toad in Eastland and a statue of a jack rabbit in Odessa. In Monahans, there is a museum in an oil storage tank.

A guy near Abilene rolls his Lincoln out of the garage and into an approaching hailstorm every other year or so. Why? An insurance scam. A rancher convicted of smuggling drugs arrived as ordered at the federal prison in Big Spring. In his private jet.

A modern-day poker game in Odessa ended in gunfire. The lone survivor ran to a nearby house for help and was shot to death by the frightened occupant.

The little Panhandle town of Lefors once tried to give itself away, offering 14 free residential lots in a drawing. Only four winners came forward.

Worse, confessed city secretary Virginia Maples, "I haven't heard from those people in quite some time."

In the Panhandle, the town of Happy is known as "The Little Town Without a Frown." San Angelo's civic charms include Miss Hattie's Museum, a bright red, richly restored bordello.

During a football game at Lubbock, host Texas Tech was penalized because zealous fans insisted on throwing tortillas on the field.

In 1856, writing in "Expedition Through Unexplored Texas," W.B. Parker assessed West Texas thusly: "For all purposes of human habitation--except it might be for a penal colony--these wilds are totally unfit."

A Vast Mix of Contradictions

Today, author A.C. Greene insists West Texas is "A Personal Country," a vast mix of contradictions scattered throughout large, small and remote cities, mountains, prairies, deserts, ranch lands and farmlands.

Its people are tough, earthy, proud and fiercely independent.

The region's most enduring treasure, Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, has been around for 90 million years. There, a blazing sunset reflecting off the reddish and rocky walls and pinnacles is nothing less than a spiritual event.

Less fetching is a chunk of land about halfway between Dallas and Lubbock christened "The Big Empty" by native writer Jim Corder. Larger than a couple of New England states, it has fewer than 25,000 people, many living on small farms and ranches.

Outsiders, Corder said, miss the strange and lonesome beauty of the mesquite, cactus, tumbleweeds, red and rocky terrain and purple and gray stunted hills.

They also miss the rural majesty of Old Glory fluttering above the tiny post office in Old Glory and the small-town rivalry of six-man football games between such teams as the Rochester Steers and Jayton Jaybirds.

When the discovery of oil brought new folks and mounds of money, much of West Texas was a wide, sparsely populated expanse of cattle lands. It was ripe for cattle rustlers familiar with the long, strung-out herds that moved over the winding trails to market.

Of course, Hollywood loves West Texas, portraying it as wild, warped and woolly, an untamed land of cowboys, Indians, crooks, killers, con men, oilmen, boozers, crazies, rowdies and rattlesnakes.

That's distorted, of course, but not altogether wrong.

In 1920, a Texas Ranger submitted his report on a cattle thief: "Mean as hell. Had to kill him."

West Texas is home to a group called the Republic of Texas, whose members consider Texas an independent nation. They got everyone's attention during a weeklong armed standoff last year with 300 state troopers and Texas Rangers in the rugged Davis Mountains.

The pioneer spirit and relentless solitude of West Texas are reflected in West Texans such as Judge Roy Bean of Langtry, "the Law West of the Pecos."

The judge, with his beer-drinking bear at his side, once fined a dead man all the money he had on him. Got him for loitering.

Famous Con Man Still Wheels, Deals

It could have been a similar instinct that motivated con man Billie Sol Estes.

Once a Pecos entrepreneur and Democratic confidant of Lyndon Johnson, Estes, 73, now resides in Brady. The best-known fertilizer salesman in Texas history still is wheeling and dealing despite two federal prison stints and several other brushes with the law.

Then there was "The Wizard of the West," the late Tom "Pinkie" Roden. Pinkie was a shy, gentle, stuttering, freckle-faced hulk who grew up dirt poor, made a fortune on illegal whiskey and then founded the most far-flung legal liquor store chain in all of Texas.

During his earlier days, investigators quietly bought his souped-up used cars for a better chance to catch his drivers.

"He drove us crazy," the late Coke Stevenson Jr., once the state liquor board administrator and an improbable admirer, had said. "But I couldn't help but like him."

Fifty or 60 years ago, golfer Hoolie White made a hole-in-one at the No. 6 hole on the Anson municipal course. Did it again last year, at age 91.

"The women in town have been all over him since the news came out," fellow golfer Jeep Spurgin said.

For West Texans, there is no need to travel to Florida to find Miami or to Tennessee to visit Memphis. There's also an Eden and a Nazareth. Levelland is in fact level, and the view from Plainview is indeed plain. Trees do grow in Notrees, and although there is no real lake in Big Lake, there once was a giant pool--of oil.

The University of Texas owned much of the arid grazing land around Big Lake when the Santa Rita No. 1 gushed on May 28, 1923, making the university one of the richest schools in America.

If Fort Worth is truly the "City Where the West Begins," then most of the state somehow lies in West Texas. And not to pick on Brownwood, but its residents proclaim their West Texas heritage while living right smack in the state's geographic center.

The historic Chisholm Trail lives on, much of it as the Cholesterol Trail. There's no escaping MonA Wild, Western State of Mindkey's brisket in Borger, Bar-L's ribs in Wichita Falls, Sarah's enchiladas in Fort Stockton or Allen's family-style fried chicken in Sweetwater.

On Interstate 40 in Amarillo, there's the Big Texan Steak Ranch, which ballyhoos a 72-ounce chunk of beef on the house for anyone who can eat it in an hour. Ben Heiple of Pampa showed up recently with Taboo the tiger, who wolfed down the monster in 90 seconds.

"For dessert, they gave him a second one," Heiple said, grinning. "They were really nice people."

Although West Texans rarely hang horse thieves anymore, justice sometimes is iffy.

Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, the noted defense attorney, figured in a West Texas case in which police brutality was rivaled only by police stupidity. Several of Borger's finest chased a fugitive onto the famous Four Sixes Ranch, and in the darkness and confusion gunned down not the fugitive but the ranch foreman.

They even handcuffed the mortally wounded rancher and jerked him around before he died. Thanks to Racehorse, that cost the city of Borger a bundle.

Almost as bizarre was the case of Ralph Erdmann, who was West Texas' main forensic pathologist in the 1980s, handling bodies for 48 counties.

Make that mishandling bodies.

Among his more gruesome errors were a misplaced head and parts from two corpses packed as one. Erdmann once ruled a woman's death was accidental, but it was determined later that she had been smothered by her former lover.

Strange things happen in West Texas.

Foremost, perhaps, is the weather: droughts, floods, tornadoes, dust storms, hailstorms, searing heat, blue northers.

Blackie Sherrod, the Dallas sports scribe, says there once was a West Texas county so dry that "rainwater was wet only on one side."

It's a fact that West Texans shielded their dinner tables during the Dust Bowl days by eating under sheets.

Years ago, someone staged a rock concert outside Lubbock. It attracted as many state troopers and reporters as ticket-holders and was memorable only because of the hot weather followed by blowing dirt, rain, cold and finally an ice storm.

All within hours.

Just last June 1, decades-old high-temperature records fell in Lubbock, where it was 105; Amarillo, 103; Midland, 106; and San Angelo, 105. Temperatures soared to 109 in Wichita Falls and 110 in Childress.

A freak hailstorm near Dalhart once dumped waist-deep volumes of pellets, closing farm roads.

A wordsmith named George Autry says God was working on West Texas when darkness fell, delaying his plans to include such wonders as lakes and trees. By daybreak, the ground had hardened "like concrete."

God's solution, says Autry: "I'll just make some people who like it this way."

------ "Wild, Wild West Texas," Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1998

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In the 1870s, a parrot caused a cattle stampede through Stephenville. It happened like this:

In those days some of the north-bound cattle herds passed through Stephenville. It wasn't much of a village and a few fenced-in fields made going around it inconvenient. There were six or seven log cabins, with shed rooms of rawhide lumber, strung along the trail and out away from it. The central and largest structure served as a courthouse. It had a gallery covered with boards made of pin oak. The liveliest place in town was a saloon, where, for two-bits, a purchaser could get a 'fair-sized drink' of wagon-yard whiskey drawn from a 50 gallon barrel. Usually a group of cowboys were congregated there, but dogs far outnumbered people in the town, and dog fights were the chief entertainment. The sheriff owned a large parrot that habitually perched on the roof of the courthouse gallery. It had picked up a considerable vocabulary from the cowboys, including (naturally) profanities. Its favorite expression was "Ye-oh, sic 'em!" which usually started a dog fight.

On this particular day a herd was stringing through town, shying but keeping the middle of the road, when the parrot flapped his wings, gave a cowboy yell, and screeched "Ye-oh, sic em!" In a second all the dogs commenced to fighting. Some charged the herd, which stampeded. The cattle knocked down all the galleries, including the one the parrot was perched on, rammed through the sheds, and even demolished some of the cabins. Stephenville looked like a tornado hit it.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 23rd*
You could look back 1 year ago and probably 2 years ago and read about the 13 day siege and fall of the Alamo OR just read on --

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! 

Day 1 - Tuesday, February 23, 1836*
This battle, though neither final or decisive, was the seminal moment in the Texas War of Independence.

Near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio) was an 18th century Spanish Mission. Abandoned at the end of that century, it was briefly turned into a garrison for Spanish troops; who gave it the name, "Alamo". After Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the Alamo was held by a Mexican garrison; till this force was expelled by Texians under the famous knife-fighter James "Jim" Bowie, a land-owning resident of San Antonio, in December of 1835.

Bowie was at first ordered by the new Texian Army commander, Sam Houston, to dismantle the fort and retrieve the 19 cannons of various caliber left behind by the Mexicans. Instead, upon finding he had insufficient transport to effectively evacuate the guns, Bowie decided to improve the defenses (with the aid of engineer Green B. Jameson) and hold the Alamo. Bowie felt strongly that the Alamo could be a bastion defending Texas from Santa Anna's coming attack. In a letter to Henry Smith, a leader of the Texas War or Independence Party, Bowie argued that "the salvation of Texas depends in great measure on keeping Bexar (San Antonio) out of the hands of the enemy. It serves as the frontier picquet guard, and if it were in the possession of Santa Anna, there is no stronghold from which to repel him in his march towards the Sabine."

Bowie shared command of the mixed "regulars" and "volunteers" with Colonel James C. Neill. Neill sent to Houston and the provisional government for supplies and additional men; but at this stage both the Texas government and Houston's incipient army were in disarray; and no help was sent to the Alamo.

On February 3, 1836 Lt. Colonel William Barret Travis arrived at the Alamo with 18 cavalrymen of the new Texan army; to take over as Neill's second-in-command. Travis was a young lawyer from Alabama, recently come to Texas to build a new life. Five days after Travis' arrival, another group of volunteers, these from Tennessee arrived at the Alamo. They were led the famous frontiersman and former U.S. Congressman, David ("Davy") Crockett; a man who was already a legend in his own time; famous for his abilities as a sharpshooter.

When on February 11th Neill had to absent himself from the Alamo because of family matters, he left Travis, the highest-ranking "Regular" army officer in command of the garrison. Bowie, who led a band of 30 "Volunteers", would act as his co-commander. Bowie and Travis detested each other, and as they prepared the fort against eventual attack, tension between the two men was high. But all supposed that Santa Anna would not attempt a winter campaign, and long before he arrived in the spring Neill would have returned; likely with reinforcements.

However, Santa Anna, who fancied himself as "the Napoleon of the West", was doing what all great generals attempt: the unexpected. In the dead of winter, he was marching north toward Texas, at the head of an army of 6,019 soldiers. This force had set out in December, even as Bowie was capturing the Alamo in the first place. Their progress was slow as the army worked its way over difficult and sometimes frozen terrain; encumbered by artillery, supply wagons, and numerous camp followers. Santa Anna had spent 1835 putting down rebellions and fighting battles in Mexico against well-armed local militias; and the core of his army was comprised of loyal veterans. However, many of the soldiers were newly recruited replacements, and their officers used the march north to train their men. On February 12, Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande, undetected by the Texian defenders. It was not till the morning of February 23 that Travis' scouts reported the approach of Santa Anna's 1,500 strong advance guard, when it was only 1.5 miles outside of town.

While the surprised and unprepared Texians hurried into the Alamo, the Mexican army occupied San Antonio Bexar. A parlay soon followed, in which Bowie sent his engineer, Green B. Jameson, to ask terms. According to Mexican sources, he was informed by Santa Anna's aid, José Bartres, that El Presidente demanded unconditional surrender ("on discretion"):

... according to the order of His Excellency... the Mexican army cannot come to terms under any conditions with rebellious foreigners to whom there is no recourse left, if they wish to save their lives, than to place themselves immediately at the disposal of the Supreme Government from whom alone they may expect clemency after some considerations.

This was in keeping with Santa Anna and the Mexican government's official position toward the Texian rebels: In late December 1835, the Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree, declaring foreigners fighting in Texas against Mexico "pirates", to be treated with summary justice. Santa Anna had in the previous year shown no clemency to rebels in Mexico, and his reputation preceded him. Even had the Texian garrison within the Alamo been so inclined, they were under no illusions that they could expect mercy at the hands of Santa Anna.

Not that they were so inclined:
To this demand for unconditional surrender, Travis and Bowie answered with a blast from the fort's 18 pounder cannon; signaling their defiance.

In response, Santa Anna ordered the raising, over the highest tower in the nearby town, of a blood-red flag and the playing of the Degüello; a bugle call used by Spanish armies, signaling "no quarter" to their opponent. The name "Degüello" derives from the Spanish verb for the act of throat-slitting; and so the tune was also known as the "cut throat" song!
This battle would be to the knives.

 GOD BLESS TEXAS

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 23rd*

There are some other things to read about -- I guess!!

*Marines raise flag on Iwo Jima* 

On this day in 1945, Cpl. Harlon Block of Weslaco appeared in one of the most indelible images to come out of World War II. For three days the men of Company E, Second Battalion, Twenty-eighth Marines, had fought their way to the top of Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot-high extinct volcano at the southern end of the island of Iwo Jima. They first raised a small flag to signal their victory to their fellows below, and a larger flag later. In Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's picture of the six men raising this second flag, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the twenty-year-old Block was the stooping figure guiding the base of the flagpole into the volcanic ash. He never saw the famous picture, however, as he was killed in action on March 1 as his unit advanced in the direction of Mishi Ridge. Block was buried in the Fifth Marine Division cemetery at the foot of Mount Suribachi, though his body was taken home to Weslaco in 1949.


*Legislature establishes Gillespie County* 

On this day in 1848, the Texas legislature formally marked off Gillespie County from Bexar and Travis counties. The first known residents of Gillespie County, in west central Texas, were the Tonkawa Indians. By the nineteenth century, Comanches and Kiowas had also moved into the area. The future county was first settled by Europeans in 1846, when John O. Meusebach led a group of 120 Germans sponsored by the Adelsverein to the site of Fredericksburg, which became one in a series of German communities between the Texas coast and the Fisher-Miller Land Grant. Fredericksburg and the surrounding rural areas grew quickly, and in December 1847, 150 settlers petitioned the legislature to establish a new county, which they suggested be named either Pierdenales or Germania. Instead, the legislature named it after Capt. Robert A. Gillespie, a hero of the recent Mexican War, and made Fredericksburg the county seat. Gillespie County originally included areas that today are parts of Blanco, Burnet, Llano, and Mason counties. The people of Gillespie County have always been proud of their German heritage and pioneer history. In 1896 Robert G. Penniger wrote a book in German marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Fredericksburg and, with it, Gillespie County. The people of Gillespie County marked this occasion with a gala celebration at which the fifty-five surviving original settlers were honored.


*Secession referendum passes by landslide* 

On this day in 1861, the people of Texas went to the polls to vote on a referendum to secede from the Union. The vote was 46,153 for secession and 14,747 against. Of the 122 counties casting votes, only eighteen cast majorities against secession. Only eleven others cast as much as 40 percent against. The referendum was held pursuant to a decision in favor of secession in the state Secession Convention.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 24th*
You could look back 1 year ago and probably 2 years ago and read about the 13 day siege and fall of the Alamo OR just read on --

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *

*Day 2 - Wednesday, 1836*

The second day of the siege began early with the Texians facing a newly established battery erected by the Mexicans during the night. The battery consisted of two eight-pounders and a howitzer and was located approximately 400 yards to the west of the fort. It was known as the River Battery.

The defenders were busy that night as well. They had captured at least one Mexican soldier and six pack mules during a nighttime patrol. According to Enrique Esparza, the defenders used the captured soldier to decipher bugle calls for the Texians throughout the siege.

Sometime around eleven that morning, Santa Anna began his survey of the Alamo fortifications and surrounding area to familiarize himself with the area.

The Mexican army pillaged the Texian's stores in Béxar and began the bombardment of the Alamo in earnest. The Texian artillery returned fire with no obvious results.

James Bowie, in command of the garrison, fell ill. The garrion's surgeon described his illness as a "A peculiar disease of a peculiar nature." Jim Bowie relinquished his command of the garrison to Travis.

The Alamo's well proved inadequate in supplying the garrison's water needs. This forced the defenders to obtain water from the acequia and reservoir to east of the compound setting the stage for several skirmishes.

Travis penned his "Victory or Death" letter. Defender Albert Martin carried the letter from the Alamo and added his own comments to the back of the document.

*To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World

Fellow citizens & compatriots

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country VICTORY OR DEATH.

William Barret Travis, 
Lt. Col. comdt.

P.S. The Lord is on our side. When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn. We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.*

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 25th*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *

*Day 3 - Thursday, 1836*

The morning of February 25, 1836 dawned with summer-like temperatures opening one of the most eventful days of the siege.

The Mexicans launched an attack with approximately 400 - 450 soldiers personally led by General Castrillon. The Matamoros Battalion and three companies of cazadores made up the attacking force. They came from the area of the river battery through Pueblo de Valero's jacales and buildings advancing to within 50-100 yards from the Alamo's walls.

After two hours of fighting, The Texians finally forced a Mexican withdrawal using the ditches and outworks. They inflicted only light casualties on their attackers. Sometime during the fighting, Texian sorties burned the jacales closest to the Alamo. At the same time, the Mexicans established new fortifications near the McMullen house.

As the Mexicans advanced through the pueblo, they discovered a young woman and her mother in one of the houses. Although already married, Santa Anna took advantage of the situation, arranged a false marriage, and quickly consummated the relationship.

That night, the temperatures dropped into the 30's. Under the cover of darkness, William B. Travis sent Colonel Juan Seguin to find General Houston and ask for help. The defenders ventured out again burning even more jacales. There is some evidence that at least nine men deserted the garrison and gave information to Santa Anna where the Texians had hidden at least 50 rifles.

The day's fighting was not a victory for the Texians. The Mexicans had established artillery and infantry entrenchments in La Villita and the Alameda, but the Texians proved that as unorganized as they were, they could fight.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 26th*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *

*Day 4- Friday, 1836*


The Texians burned more jacales during the night. It soon became obvious that the Alamo's water well would not supply the needs of a 150+ people in the garrison. They would have to obtain water from the nearby acequia.

The overnight arrival of a norther dropped the temperatures to near freezing. As daylight broke, a Texian foray went outside the walls to obtain water and wood. A small skirmish erupted with the Mexican troops under General Sesma. Mexican casualties were slightly heavier than in earlier fights due to the Texian's eastern-facing cannon.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day is a good one "God knows what we are to do! I am determined, for one, to go with my countrymen, right or wrong, sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish." 

----- William Travis, writing in a letter to Jim Bowie on July 30, 1835. The letter was prophetic, as Travis died in the Alamo a little more than seven months later.

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: Jim Bowie's mother, Elve Bowie, was a remarkable woman in many ways. Once, when Jim's father, Rezin Bowie, was arrested for shooting a squatter, she armed herself with a brace of pistols and broke her husband out of jail. Illiterate when she married Rezin, she taught herself to read and write as an adult and became very proficient in both.

As an aside, Jim Bowie's family tree included the viking warrior Bue the Thick, said to have sprung from Odin himself, and Eocha Bui, or King Eugene IV, who reigned over Scotland from 605 to 621 AD.

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## woodman6415

I attended the cook off 8 years running 
Always had a large good time 
Met good folks from all over the country 
Seen a lot of things you wouldn’t see anywhere else where 40000 peeps are camping and partying non stop for days .. 
dessert/ foothills of mountain .. not much there ... if you need it you will have to bring it 

Traces of Texas 
It took me awhile to transcribe the Texas Quote of the Day, so I hope y'all enjoy it. Written by one of the greatest Texans of all time, Hallie Stillwell:

"I was born in 1897, and until 1918, when I married and come to the Stillwell Ranch in the Big Bend country, I had never heard of chili. It was a dish never served by my own family. You can imagine the shock I had when my husband Roy served me a bowl. It was so hot with pepper that I couldn't eat it. Out on the ranch in those early years we did not have many spices. Later, though, I learned to make my own favorite chili, using venison, tomatoes, Gebhart's chili powder, water, salt and pepper. Chili was just one of the many things I encountered as a bride on the Stillwell Ranch.

When I had that first shocking taste from a "bowl of red" in 1918, I never dreamed that chili would bring me so many wonderful friends and bring so many visitors to my corner of the Southwest. For sixteen years I was justice of the peace in Alpine, Texas, and Frank X. Tolbert, a newspaper columnist in Dallas, would call me at my office to verify any rumor that he had heard from the Big Bend country. Tolbert and I became friends via these telephone reports.

When Frank X. Tolbert's book "A Bowl of Red" was published in 1966, it ignited a great chili war. H. Allen Smith, a New York critic, announced that Tolbert's recipe for chili produced a bowl of "slop." Smith, in a "Holiday Magazine" article modestly titled "Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do," presenting his own recipe. Proper chili, he wrote, must have tomato paste and green peppers.

Smith challenged Tolbert to a cook-off in Terlingua, in the great Big Bend country of southwest Texas. Terlingua, he claimed, was the chili capital of the world. Tolbert, whose talents were more literary than culinary, asked Wick Fowler, chief cook of the Chili Appreciation Society (International) of Dallas, to take the challenge. I was asked to be a judge at the confrontation, along with Floyd Schneider, vice-president of a San Antonio Brewery. We were blindfolded to sample the chili. My vote was cast; it went to Smith's chili. Schneider cast his vote for Fowler's chili. Dave Witt, the mayor of Telingua, was the final judge, so he had to break the tie. He sampled one pot and choked. He tried some of the concoction from the other pot and spit it out. "My taste buds are paralyzed," he gasped. He declared the contest a tie and scheduled another confrontation for the next year.

The cook-offs are still taking place each year on the first weekend in November. People come by the thousands, from far and near, to Terlingua for the annual chili cookoff. There are many cooks in the contest and many entertainers present, and most of the spectators are there to have a good time. Frank Tolbert's daughter Kathleen Tolbert Ryan and son Fran Tolbert, Jr. are very active in the association, and I look forward to their visit every year. I hope to attend many more cook-offs in Terlingua. I have made many friends. I cherish each and every one of them, especially, H. Allen Smith, Wick Fowler, and of course Frank Tolbert. He shared with me his knowledge and skills in newspaper reporting and writing, something I've been dabbling in since 1930. Years have passed and days have gone by, but my admiration and love for Frank Tolbert has never diminished. He is the shining star in my memory, and I am blessed that I could call him my friend."

----- Hallie Stillwell's forward to Frank X. Tolbert's book "A Bowl of Red." Hallie wrote this in 1993 from Alpine, Texas

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 27th*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Five – Saturday, 1836*

The fifth day of the siege was again cold with temperatures ranging in the 30s.

Having exhausted their own supplies, the Mexicans pillaged BŽjar of foodstuffs and perishables. When they in turn depleted these, they sent troops to nearby ranchos to forage livestock and corn.

In a decisive move, the Mexicans cut off the eastern acequia's water supply at its source: the San Antonio River. Not only did this end the minor skirmishes that had taken place from the beginning of the siege; it essentially eliminated the defender's major source of water. In the mean time, the Texians finished digging a new water well inside the walls.

The Matamoros battalion began work on trenches to the South of the Alamo compound. These entrenchments did not pass Santa Anna's inspection and so he ordered his men to dig new entrenchments closer to the Alamo under the direct supervision of General Amador.

Throughout the day, the Texians maintained constant fire on the Mexican work party. According to General Filisola, the Texians were seen working frantically on their own ditch inside the parapet of the cattle pen. This effort later proved fruitless and was harmful to the Alamo's defense by undermining the walls, essentially removing any walkway the defenders might have had exposing them to Mexican fire.

General Gaona received Santa Anna's letter of the 25th requesting him to send three battalions as quickly as possible. Gaona immediately complied, yet failed to forward any heavy siege guns because Santa Anna neglected to include this request in his dispatch.

*From Gonzales to the Alamo - 32 Men*
As news of the Alamo's plight spread, Texans gathered at Gonzales preparing to go to their aid. The nearest garrison of any strength was 90 miles away at Goliad, commanded by Colonel James Fannin. The men gathering at Gonzales waited impatiently for days for Fannin to march and join them in going to Travis' succor. Fannin finally set out on February 26 with 320 men, four cannons, and several wagons filled with much needed supplies. However, only a mile out they returned to Goliad. Why Fannin failed to move is unknown. He blamed his officers, and they his indecision.
Some 32 men from those in Gonzales, tired of waiting for Fannin to act, rode to the Alamo; where after a brief skirmish with a Mexican cavalry patrol, they arrived at the Alamo on the night of the 27th. They were greeted with joy by the beleaguered garrison.

*Further South in San Patricio*
Shortly after the defeat of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos at San Antonio there was a clamor among newly arrived volunteers from the United States to mount a campaign to strike a crippling blow on the Mexican army in their homeland. This tied in with crosscurrents of a revolt against Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico. Liberal forces at the Consultation, who were aligned with Mexican liberals, somehow managed to send Stephen F. Austin to the United States as a commissioner and deprive Gen. Sam Houston of power by appointing Col. James W. Fannin, Jr., as the General Council's agent, with similar powers given to Houston. Simplified, the problem facing the new Texas government was one of supply.

Houston proposed to concentrate forces at port El Cópano in order to be able to control supplies to Texas and also to withhold them from any Mexican army. The picture was further clouded by Dr. James Grant and Col. Francis W. Johnson, who set up an independent Matamoros expedition under their private control, with the approval of the Council. After raiding supply warehouses in San Antonio, Grant moved to Goliad and took horses and other supplies from Philip Dimmitt's command.

Houston spoke to assembled troops in Refugio and convinced some of the men under Johnson and Grant that the Matamoros expedition was folly. Johnson and Grant took the remaining men, estimated at from sixty to 100 by historians, to San Patricio. Grant learned that Capt. Nicolás Rodríguez was in the area with a few men. He surprised them and took the prisoners and their horses to San Patricio, where in a few days the prisoners escaped.

In order to get more horses the Texans went all the way to the Santa Rosa Ranch (near the site of present-day Raymondville). Johnson took the horses and returned to San Patricio while Grant sought additional horses. Upon his return Johnson sent horses to the ranch of Julián de la Garza about four miles south of San Patricio. The men divided up, with Captain Pearson and eight men camping on the public square and the rest in three different houses.

Gen. José de Urrea, through a network of spies, had kept track of the Johnson-Grant forces and had left Matamoros with about 400 men. Upon learning that Johnson was camped at San Patricio, he put his men through a forced march during a bitterly cold, wet night and arrived at San Patricio at 3:00 A.M. on February 27. His first action was to send thirty men under Capt. Rafael Pretala to the ranch where the horses had been taken. In the attack four men were killed and eight taken prisoner.

In San Patricio Urrea reported sixteen killed and twenty-four taken prisoner. Johnson and four men quartered with him managed to escape and made their way back to Goliad. Legend tells the story that Urrea sent word ahead to loyalists to leave a light burning in their homes and they would not be molested. It so happened that Johnson was working late-with a light. Of the thirty-four Texans at San Patricio eight were killed, thirteen taken prisoner, and six escaped. At least seven of them were Mexicans. Possibly two other Texans, whose names have not been uncovered, were also killed.

Urrea reported that "the town and the rest of the inhabitants did not suffer the least damage." McGloin reported that those killed were "interred next day by the Rev. T. J. Malloy in the church yard of the same place." Legend also tells that the dead were buried in the Old Cemetery on the Hill.

On March 2 Urrea's men ambushed Grant's men near a creek crossing at Agua Dulce; all except six were killed or captured. Grant was killed. Urrea remained camped somewhere in the vicinity of San Patricio until March 12, when he took some of the cattle, arms, and ammunition that Grant and Johnson had gathered

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## Clay3063

woodman6415 said:


> I attended the cook off 8 years running
> Always had a large good time
> Met good folks from all over the country
> Seen a lot of things you wouldn’t see anywhere else where 40000 peeps are camping and partying non stop for days ..
> dessert/ foothills of mountain .. not much there ... if you need it you will have to bring it
> 
> Traces of Texas
> It took me awhile to transcribe the Texas Quote of the Day, so I hope y'all enjoy it. Written by one of the greatest Texans of all time, Hallie Stillwell:
> 
> "I was born in 1897, and until 1918, when I married and come to the Stillwell Ranch in the Big Bend country, I had never heard of chili. It was a dish never served by my own family. You can imagine the shock I had when my husband Roy served me a bowl. It was so hot with pepper that I couldn't eat it. Out on the ranch in those early years we did not have many spices. Later, though, I learned to make my own favorite chili, using venison, tomatoes, Gebhart's chili powder, water, salt and pepper. Chili was just one of the many things I encountered as a bride on the Stillwell Ranch.
> 
> When I had that first shocking taste from a "bowl of red" in 1918, I never dreamed that chili would bring me so many wonderful friends and bring so many visitors to my corner of the Southwest. For sixteen years I was justice of the peace in Alpine, Texas, and Frank X. Tolbert, a newspaper columnist in Dallas, would call me at my office to verify any rumor that he had heard from the Big Bend country. Tolbert and I became friends via these telephone reports.
> 
> When Frank X. Tolbert's book "A Bowl of Red" was published in 1966, it ignited a great chili war. H. Allen Smith, a New York critic, announced that Tolbert's recipe for chili produced a bowl of "slop." Smith, in a "Holiday Magazine" article modestly titled "Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do," presenting his own recipe. Proper chili, he wrote, must have tomato paste and green peppers.
> 
> Smith challenged Tolbert to a cook-off in Terlingua, in the great Big Bend country of southwest Texas. Terlingua, he claimed, was the chili capital of the world. Tolbert, whose talents were more literary than culinary, asked Wick Fowler, chief cook of the Chili Appreciation Society (International) of Dallas, to take the challenge. I was asked to be a judge at the confrontation, along with Floyd Schneider, vice-president of a San Antonio Brewery. We were blindfolded to sample the chili. My vote was cast; it went to Smith's chili. Schneider cast his vote for Fowler's chili. Dave Witt, the mayor of Telingua, was the final judge, so he had to break the tie. He sampled one pot and choked. He tried some of the concoction from the other pot and spit it out. "My taste buds are paralyzed," he gasped. He declared the contest a tie and scheduled another confrontation for the next year.
> 
> The cook-offs are still taking place each year on the first weekend in November. People come by the thousands, from far and near, to Terlingua for the annual chili cookoff. There are many cooks in the contest and many entertainers present, and most of the spectators are there to have a good time. Frank Tolbert's daughter Kathleen Tolbert Ryan and son Fran Tolbert, Jr. are very active in the association, and I look forward to their visit every year. I hope to attend many more cook-offs in Terlingua. I have made many friends. I cherish each and every one of them, especially, H. Allen Smith, Wick Fowler, and of course Frank Tolbert. He shared with me his knowledge and skills in newspaper reporting and writing, something I've been dabbling in since 1930. Years have passed and days have gone by, but my admiration and love for Frank Tolbert has never diminished. He is the shining star in my memory, and I am blessed that I could call him my friend."
> 
> ----- Hallie Stillwell's forward to Frank X. Tolbert's book "A Bowl of Red." Hallie wrote this in 1993 from Alpine, Texas



We lived in Amarillo when I was a teen. It was 365 miles from our front door to my grandparents home in Burleson, Tx, just south of Ft. Worth. We made the trek from our house to theirs on a pretty regular basis for years. And I knew that more times than not, that a nice hot steaming bowl of Texas Red would be waiting on our arrival; usually late in the evening. My grandfather used to make it fresh from scratch in a large cast iron skillet. It was the bomb! One trip, he had to work late and was unable to prepare a pot of chili for our arrival so my grandmother decided to take it upon herself to prepare the chili so we would have something warm to eat before we went to bed. Instead of making it from scratch she decided to use a package of Wick Fowler's Three Alarm Chili mix. When we got settled and all the luggage unloaded, we sat down to a bowl of her chili. My dad asked her what happened. LOL. She said, and I quote, "I bought a package of that three alarm chili mix that Wick Fowler puts out. It turned out to be a false alarm instead. Sorry. I won't make that mistake twice." And she didn't. Ever. - Clay

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## Gdurfey

So, I didn't grow up on "Texas Red," mom was from Iowa and my Dad's taste buds didn't run that direction (he was from Wellington, TX; I grew up in Midland) so it was much later in life when I discovered Texas Red. But i have an incredible fascination with Terlingua from a totally different direction, yet the two intersects.........one of my true heroes (non-military type of hero) is Mr. Carroll Shelby...........there are many stories about him and his friends and that part of the country back in the "early" days.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- February 28th and the 29th*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Six – Sunday February 28, 1836*

Mexicans receive intelligence that 200 Texian reinforcements from Goliad are en route to the Alamo.

The morale within the compound is high. According to Mrs. Dickinson, Crockett took up a fiddle and challenged John McGregor, a Scot with bagpipes, to a contest of instruments.


*Day Seven – Monday February 29, 1836*

The Mexican's Jimenez battalion and the cavalry under command of General Ramirez y Sesma are ordered down the Goliad road to intercept any reinforcements that might have been sent by Fannin.

The Mexicans propose a three-day armistice and several Tejanos leave Alamo during the cease-fire.

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## woodman6415



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## Gdurfey

Re, the bluebonnet: my uncle pasted away and I was unable to attend the service. Was visiting my aunt sometime later, the following year, whenever, and she took by the grave to show me the beautiful headstone and....she had tears in her eyes as she was so happy to have bluebonnets spreading over the grave plot. Wellington Texas; 3o miles north of Childress. Thanks for the above!!!

Re, the story of the Alamo: William Travis was apparently a good family friend of my distant relatives up in the panhandle. The name William has been used for generations with respect/fondness/memory.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Big Bend National Park in west Texas has more species of birds than any other national park. More than 450 different kinds of birds have been spotted.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 1st*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Eight – Tuesday March 1, 1836*

Thirty-two reinforcements from Gonzales arrive. The total number of Alamo defenders now stood at between 180 and 190.

General Sesma advances towards Goliad to seek out Texian reinforcements coming to the aid of the Alamo. Finding none, he returns to Bexar.

The Alamo's 12-pound gunnade fires two shots, one of them hitting Santa Anna's headquarters.

Gertrudis Navarro (1816-1895)
The sister of Juana Narvarro Alsbury, Gertudis entered the Alamo at the same time as Juana and James Bowie. She is listed as an Alamo survivor.

Enrique Esparza (1828 – 1917)
The eight-year-old son of Alamo defender Gregorio Esparza, Enrique was one of the youngest eyewitnesses to the battle who later recorded his memories of the fateful day. His oft-quoted testimony was given to a San Antonio paper in 1907.

Another great scene from the movie. DAGGUM wind!!





Started this one at 3:40 mark

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## Wildthings

IN OTHER NEWS

*Today in Texas History -- March 1st*

*Texas loses stagecoach mail and passenger service* 

On this day in 1861, the 2 1/2-year history of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas came to an end. The Butterfield line began operations on September 15, 1858. It carried passengers and mail between St. Louis, Memphis, and San Francisco, a distance of 2,795 miles. A government contract called for the company to carry letter mail twice weekly in both directions in four-horse coaches, or spring wagons suitable for carrying passengers. Each trip was to be completed in twenty-five days. The postage rate was ten cents per half ounce. Passenger fare was $200 each way. Stage service in Texas was terminated in March 1861, when an agreement was made to modify the contract and move the route northward out of the state.


*Nature Conservancy buys Enchanted Rock* 

On this day in 1978, the Nature Conservancy, a private concern based in Arlington, Virginia, bought Enchanted Rock for $1.3 million and agreed to act as interim owner until the state could take over, thus guaranteeing that the area would not be opened to private development. Enchanted Rock, a spectacular granite dome near the Gillespie-Llano county line in southern Llano County, rises to 1,825 feet above mean sea level and is the second largest such mountain in the United States. Its name derives from Spanish and Anglo-Texas interpretations of Indian legends and related folklore, which attribute magical properties to the ancient landmark. The first owners of this land were Anavato and María Martínez, to whom a headright certificate was issued in 1838. Over the ensuing 140 years the property changed hands numerous times; eventually Llano rancher Charles H. Moss and his wife Ruth acquired full title to the property but decided to sell it in 1978. Moss first offered it to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; the Nature Conservancy stepped in when the agency could not pay his price and deeded the land to the state six days later. Following eighteen months of renovations, the site reopened as Enchanted Rock State Park in March 1984. Today the 1,643-acre Enchanted Rock State Natural Area is a favorite destination of hikers, campers, rock-climbers, hang-gliders, and other outdoor enthusiasts from around the state.


*First president of Rice Institute retires* 

On this day in 1946, Edgar Odell Lovett retired as president of Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston. Rice Institute was chartered in 1891 by William Marsh Rice with a $200,000 note payable upon his death. The original charter very generally prescribed an institution "dedicated to the advancement of literature, science, and art." The board of trustees in Houston determined that it would be a university and in 1907 appointed Lovett, a mathematician and astronomer at Princeton University, as president. The institute's opening in 1912 was marked by an elaborate international convocation of scholars. From the beginning Lovett intended Rice to be a university "of the highest grade." Under his direction Rice Institute first developed major strength in the sciences and engineering, though distinguished instruction was offered from the beginning in the humanities and architecture. The curriculum broadened and the faculty increased greatly in size under the administration of Lovett's successor, physicist William V. Houston, and the school's name was changed to Rice University in 1960. After his retirement Lovett continued his association with the university as president emeritus, director, and consultant

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## woodman6415



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## Wildthings

On this date...March 2, 1836...the Republic of Texas declared its independence from Mexico in a meeting held at Washington-on-the-Brazos. However, it wasn't until March 3, 1836 that the delegates signed the Texas Declaration. The delegates read and approved the document on that day, but remember that they did not have a photocopier at their disposal...LOL. Clerks worked through the night and the five hand-written copies were not ready for signatures until the following day...March 3, 1836. Even then, seven delegates had not yet arrived on March 3, 1836. As they dragged in, the latecomers added their names for a total of fifty-nine signatures.

Four days later, the Alamo fell, but it wasn't until six weeks later on April 21, 1836 that General Sam Houston’s army swept the Mexican camp at San Jacinto. On that afternoon, enraged Texans slaughtered 650 Mexican soldiers and took another 700 prisoner. Most important, the following day Texans captured President-General Santa Anna, the Mexican dictator, which made the battle victorious and secured independence.

To my fellow Texans, I'd recommend spending a little time today putting your boots up, opening up a Shiner and raising it in the air to a toast for the Republic of Texas!


Some Texas Independence Day fun facts:

-George C. Childress is widely considered the author of the Texas Declaration of Independence
-59 people, including Sam Houston, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence
-The Texas Declaration of Independence was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos
-Texas was declaring its independence from Mexico
-Texas Flag Day and Sam Houston Day are also celebrated on March 2. Houston was born on March 2.
-After the declaration was signed, five copies were made and dispatched to Bexar, Goliad, Nacogdoches, Brazoria and San Felipe.
-Of those five copies only one remains. It was found at the U.S. State Department in 1896 and is now at the Texas State Archives in Austin.

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## Wildthings

NOBODY SAYS IT BETTER

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## Tony

https://www.bing.com/search?q=slaid...-40&sk=&cvid=048AB9B529D947AF8DDD48D93A716BEB

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## Tony

TRUTH!!!!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 2nd*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Nine– Wednesday, March 2, 1836*

*The Alamo - Day 9 - March 2, 1836*

The siege continues. Unbeknownst to defenders of the Alamo, the provisional Texas government at Washington-on-the-Brazos declares independence from Mexico. (see above post)

Travis receives a report that there is corn at the Seguin ranch. He sends a detachment headed by Lt. Menchaca to retrieve it.

Mexican forces discover a hidden road within pistol shot of the Alamo and post the Jimenez battalion there to cover it.


*David (Davy) Crockett
Age: 50
Rank: Colonel
Birthplace: Tennessee
In early February Crockett arrived at San Antonio de Béxar; Antonio López de Santa Anna arrived on February 20. Susanna Dickinson, wife of Almaron Dickinson, an officer at the Alamo, said Crockett died on the outside, one of the earliest to fall. Joe, Travis's slave and the only male Texan to survive the battle, reported seeing Crockett lying dead with slain Mexicans around him and stated that only one man, named Warner, surrendered to the Mexicans (Warner was taken to Santa Anna and promptly shot). When Peña's eyewitness account was placed together with other corroborating documents, Crockett's central part in the defense became clear. Travis had previously written that during the first bombardment Crockett was everywhere in the Alamo "animating the men to do their duty." Other reports told of the deadly fire of his rifle that killed five Mexican gunners in succession, as they each attempted to fire a cannon bearing on the fort, and that he may have just missed Santa Anna, who thought himself out of range of all the defenders' rifles. David Crockett proved a formidable hero in his own right and succeeded Daniel Boone as the rough-hewn representative of frontier independence and virtue. In this regard, the motto he adopted and made famous epitomized his spirit: "Be always sure you're right-then go a-head!"*

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 3rd*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Ten – Thursday, 1836*

James Butler Bonham arrives with news of reinforcements, he is the last friendly person to enter the Alamo. Bonham reports that sixty men from Gonzales are due and that an additional 600 would soon be en route. Travis receives a letter from his friend Major Robert M. “Three-Legged Willy” Williamson carried in by James B. Bonham that details efforts to send aid to the Alamo. In the letter, Williamson asks Travis to hold out a little longer until help arrives.

The Texians fire several shots into the city in celebration.

Santa Anna receives word of Mexican General Urrea's victory at San Patricio. In celebration, the Mexcians ring church bells and there is revelry in the camp.

The lead elements of General Gaona's Brigade arrive, Santa Anna receives 1,100 reinforcements These are reinforcements needed for a successful assault. They now have 2400 men and 10 cannons.

Travis sends out his last known appeals for assistance, stating, “I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and may my bones reproach my country for her neglect.”

James Bonham
Age: 29
Rank: Second Lieutenant
Birthplace: South Carolina
Bonham reached Texas in November 1835 and quickly involved himself in political and military affairs. On December 1, 1835, he wrote to Sam Houston from San Felipe volunteering his services for Texas and declining all pay, lands, or rations in return. On December 20, 1835, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Texas cavalry, but apparently was not assigned to any specific unit. He had time to set up a law practice in Brazoria and was advertising the fact in the Telegraph and Texas Register by January 2, 1836.

Bonham and Houston quickly developed a mutual admiration. On January 11, 1836, Houston recommended to James W. Robinson that Bonham be promoted to major, for "His influence in the army is great–more so than some who `would be generals'." Bonham probably traveled to San Antonio de Béxar and the Alamo with James Bowie and arrived on January 19, 1836. On January 26 he was appointed one of a committee of seven to draft a preamble and resolutions on behalf of the garrison in support of Governor Henry Smith. 

He was sent by Travis to obtain aid for the garrison at Bexar on or about February 16, 1836. He returned to the Alamo on March 3, bearing through the Mexican lines a letter from Robert M. Williamson assuring Travis that help was on its way and urging him to hold out. Bonham died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. He is believed to have died manning one of the cannons in the interior of the Alamo chapel.

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## Tony

Here are some little known, very interesting facts about Texas:

1. Port Arthur to El Paso : 889 miles. Port Arthur to Chicago: 770 miles

2. Brownsville to Texline (north of Amarillo): 956 miles. Texline to Canada: 960 miles

3. El Paso is closer to California than to Dallas

4. World's first rodeo was in Pecos, Tx July 4, 1883.

5. The Flagship Hotel in Galveston is the only hotel in North America built over water. Destroyed by Hurricane Ike - 2008!

6. The Heisman Trophy was named after John William Heisman who was the first full-time coach at Rice University in Houston, Texas .

7. Brazoria County has more species of birds than any other area in North America.

8. Aransas Wildlife Refuge is the winter home of North America 's only remaining flock of whooping cranes.

9. Jalapeno jelly originated in Lake Jackson in 1978.

10. The worst natural disaster in US history was in 1900, caused by a hurricane in which over 8,000 lives were lost on Galveston Island.

11. The first word spoken from the moon, July 20, 1969, was " Houston ," but the Space Center was actually in Clear Lake City at the time.

12. The King Ranch in South Texas is larger than Rhode Island.

13. Tropical Storm Claudette brought a US rainfall record of 43" in 24 hours in and around Alvin in July of 1979.

14. Texas is the only state to enter the US by TREATY, (known as the Constitution of 1845 by the Republic of Texas to enter the Union ) instead of by annexation. This allows the Texas Flag to fly at the same height as the US Flag, and Texas may choose to divide into 5 states.

15. A Live Oak tree near Fulton is estimated to be 1500 years old.

16. Caddo Lake is the only natural lake in the state.

17. Dr Pepper was invented in Waco in 1885. There is no period in Dr Pepper.

18. Texas has had six capital cities: Washington-on-the Brazos, Harrisburg , Galveston , Velasco, West Columbia and Austin .

19. The Capitol Dome in Austin is the only dome in the US which is taller than the Capitol Building in Washington , DC (by 7 feet).

20. The San Jacinto Monument is the tallest free standing monument in the world and it is taller than the Washington Monument .

21. The name ' Texas ' comes from the Hasini Indian word 'tejas' meaning "friends". Tejas is NOT Spanish for Texas .

22. The State Mascot is the Armadillo. An interesting bit of trivia about the armadillo is they always have four babies. They have one egg, which splits into four, and they either have four males or four females. 

23. The first domed stadium in the US was the Astrodome in Houston.

24. The Beck family ranch land grant is one days ride by horse (25 miles) in each direction from the headquarters.

25. The name of the XIT ranch in Dalhart Texas stands for "ten in texas". That means 10 counties in Texas!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 4th*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Eleven – Friday March 4, 1836*

Santa Anna gathers his officers for a council of war.

It is decided that when the final assault takes place, that they will take no prisoners. The time for the assault will be determined tomorrow.

Having been consolidated into two batteries, the Mexican artillery, is brought to within 200 yards of the compound.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 5th

The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! 


Day Twelve – Saturday, 1836*

Santa Anna issues orders for the assault to begin on the following day utilizing four assault columns and one reserve column.

Santa Anna calls for reconnaissance to determine Mexican attack positions and approaches.

A messenger arrives at the compound with the grim news that reinforcements aren't coming.

Travis gathered his command together one final time to offer them the chance to leave. According to one account, *Travis draws a line in the sand and asks the garrison to make a decision to stay or leave. Only one man, Moses Rose, chooses to leave.*


*To Jesse Grimes
March 3, 1836

Do me the favor to send the enclosed to its proper destination instantly. I am still here, in fine spirits and well to do, with 145 men. I have held this place for ten days against a force variously estimated from 1,500 to 6,000, and shall continue to hold it till I get relief from my country or I will perish in its defense. We have had a shower of bombs and cannon balls continually falling among us the whole time, yet none of us has fallen. We have been miraculously preserved. You have no doubt seen my official report of the action of the 24th ult. in which we repulsed the enemy with considerable loss; on the night of the 25th they made another attempt to charge us in the rear of the fort, but we received them gallantly by a discharge of grape shot and musquertry, and they took to their scrapers immediately. They are now encamped in entrenchments on all sides of us.

All our couriers have gotten out without being caught and a company of 32 men from Gonzales got in two nights ago, and Colonel Bonham got in today by coming between the powder house and the enemy's upper encampment....Let the convention go on and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand, and the world will understand, what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms, and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day, and to drive away the monster who is fighting us under a blood-red flag, threatening to murder all prisoners and make Texas a waste desert. I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms, yet I am ready to do it, and if my countrymen do not rally to my relief, I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and my bones shall reproach my country for her neglect. With 500 men more, I will drive Sesma beyond the Rio Grande, and I will visit vengeance on the enemy fighting against us. Let the government declare them public enemies, otherwise she is acting a suicidal part. I shall treat them as such, unless I have superior orders to the contrary.

My respects to all friends, confusion to all enemies. God Bless you.

W. Barret Travis*

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## woodman6415

From Traces of Texas 
As I sit here early this morning, contemplating how they must have felt, I wonder: did they really realize that today, this day, was going to be the end of their earthly existence? Did they say to one another that this is it, that Santa Anna's army had drawn so close that there would be no salvation now? I reckon that most had come to terms with the fact that no help would be coming. And so what did they say to each other? Did they whisper or did they abide in stoic silence? What was the mood in the final days? Were most of them asleep when the attack finally came? So many things I would like to know. We learn about them in 4th grade and again in 7th grade but so much of what I would like to know is, in fact, forever unknowable. To weep for them seems so beneath them. And so we stand out in the early morning light as the sun slowly creeps in from the east and we plead with the fates to let us be worthy of them, to stand silently and peacefully with one another and to request their blessing, that this great experiment that we call "Texas" might be allowed to continue. Remember The Alamo.

My front view ... faces the direction San Antonio ... the Alamo sets 42 miles from my house. 



 
Remember The Alamo 
Wendell

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> From Traces of Texas
> As I sit here early this morning, contemplating how they must have felt, I wonder: did they really realize that today, this day, was going to be the end of their earthly existence? Did they say to one another that this is it, that Santa Anna's army had drawn so close that there would be no salvation now? I reckon that most had come to terms with the fact that no help would be coming. And so what did they say to each other? Did they whisper or did they abide in stoic silence? What was the mood in the final days? Were most of them asleep when the attack finally came? So many things I would like to know. We learn about them in 4th grade and again in 7th grade but so much of what I would like to know is, in fact, forever unknowable. To weep for them seems so beneath them. And so we stand out in the early morning light as the sun slowly creeps in from the east and we plead with the fates to let us be worthy of them, to stand silently and peacefully with one another and to request their blessing, that this great experiment that we call "Texas" might be allowed to continue. Remember The Alamo.
> 
> My front view ... faces the direction San Antonio ... the Alamo sets 42 miles from my house.
> 
> View attachment 161975
> Remember The Alamo
> Wendell



From wherever you are in Texas the Alamo stands tall and proud.

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## FranklinWorkshops

Tony said:


> From wherever you are in Texas the Alamo stands tall and proud.


It means a lot to us Tennesseans also.

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## Herb G.

I loved a woman in Texas once.



No... twice.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 6th*

*The Alamo Remembered - 13 Days to Glory! *


*Day Thirteen – Sunday, 1836*

At Midnight on March 5, 1836, Santa Anna's troops began moving into position for their planned attack of the Alamo compound. For several hours, the soldiers lay on the ground in complete darkness. About 5:30 A.M., they received the order to begin the assault.

The massed troops moved quietly, encountering the Texian sentinels first. They killed them as they slept.

No longer able to contain the nervous energy gripping them, cries of "Viva la Republica" and "Viva Santa Anna" broke the stillness.

Inside the compound, Adjutant John Baugh had just begun his morning rounds when he heard the cries. He hurriedly ran to the quarters of Colonel William Barret Travis. He awakened him with: "Colonel Travis, the Mexicans are coming!" Travis and his slave Joe quickly scrambled from their cots. The two men grabbed their weapons and headed for the north wall battery. Travis yelled "Come on boys, the Mexicans are on us and we'll give them Hell!" Unable to see the advancing troops for the darkness, the Texian gunners blindly opened fire; they had packed their cannon with jagged pieces of scrap metal, shot, and chain. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated the landscape and it was with horror that the Texians understood their predicament. The enemy had nearly reached the walls of the compound.

The Mexican soldiers had immediate and terrible losses. That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. Colonel José Enrique de la Peña would later write "...a single cannon volley did away with half the company of Chasseurs from Toluca." The screams and moans of the dying and wounded only heightened the fear and chaos of those first few moments of the assault.

Travis hastily climbed to the top of the north wall battery and readied himself to fire; discharging both barrels of his shotgun into the massed troops below. As he turned to reload, a single lead ball struck him in the forehead sending him rolling down the ramp where he came to rest in a sitting position. Travis was dead. Joe saw his master go down and so retreated to one of the rooms along the west wall to hide.

There was no safe position on the walls of the compound. Each time the Texian riflemen fired at the troops below, they exposed themselves to deadly Mexican fire. On the south end of the compound, Colonel Juan Morales and about 100 riflemen attacked what they perceived was the weak palisade area. They met heavy fire from Crockett's riflemen and a single cannon. Morales's men quickly moved toward the southwest corner and the comparative safety of cover behind an old stone building and the burned ruins of scattered jacales.

On the north wall, exploding Texian canister shredded but did not halt the advance of Mexican soldiers. Cos's and Duque's companies, now greatly reduced in number, found themselves at the base of the north wall. Romero's men joined them after his column had wheeled to the right to avoid deadly grapeshot from the guns of the Alamo church.

General Castrillón took command from the wounded Colonel Duque and began the difficult task of getting his men over the wall. As the Mexican army reached the walls, their advance halted. Santa Anna saw this lag and so committed his reserve of 400 men to the assault bringing the total force to around 1400 men.

Amid the Texian cannon fire tearing through their ranks, General Cos's troops performed a right oblique to begin an assault on the west wall. The Mexicans used axes and crowbars to break through the barricaded windows and openings. They climbed through the gun ports and over the wall to enter the compound.

That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. General Amador and his men entered the compound by climbing up the rough-faced repairs made on the north wall by the Texians. They successfully breached the wall and in a flood of fury, the Mexican army poured through.

The Texians turned their cannon northward to check this new onslaught. With cannon fire shifted, Colonel Morales recognized a momentary advantage. His men stormed the walls and took the southwest corner, the 18-pounder, and the main gate. The Mexican army was now able to enter from almost every direction.

In one room near the main gate, the Mexican soldiers found Colonel James Bowie. Bowie was critically ill and confined to bed when the fighting began. The soldiers showed little mercy as they silenced him with their bayonets.

The Texians continued to pour gunfire into the advancing Mexican soldiers devastating their ranks. Still they came.

When they saw the enemy rush into the compound from all sides, the Texians fell back to their defenses in the Long Barracks. Crockett's men in the palisade area retreated into the church.

The rooms of the north barrack and the Long Barracks had been prepared well in advance in the event the Mexicans gained entry. The Texians made the rooms formidable by trenching and barricading them with raw cowhides filled with earth. For a short time, the Texians held their ground.

The Mexicans turned the abandoned Texian cannon on the barricaded rooms. With cannon blast followed by a musket volley, the Mexican soldiers stormed the rooms to finish the defenders inside the barrack.

Mexican soldiers rushed the darkened rooms. With sword, bayonet, knife, and fist the adversaries clashed. In the darkened rooms of the north barrack, it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Mexicans systematically took room after room; finally, the only resistance came from within the church itself.

Once more, the Mexicans employed the Texians' cannon to blast apart the defenses of the entrance. Bonham, Dickinson and Esparza died by their cannon at the rear of the church. An act of war became a slaughter. It was over in minutes.

According to one of Santa Anna's officers, the Mexican army overwhelmed and captured a small group of defenders. According to this officer, Crockett was among them. The prisoners were brought before Santa Anna where General Castrillón asked for mercy on their behalf. Santa Anna instead answered with a "gesture of indignation" and ordered their execution. Nearby officers who had not taken part in the assault fell upon the helpless men with their swords. One Mexican officer noted in his journal that: "Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers."

Santa Anna ordered Alcalde Francisco Ruiz to gather firewood from the surrounding countryside and in alternating layers of wood and bodies the dead were stacked.

At 5:00 O'clock in the evening the pyres were lit. In this final act, Santa Anna's "small affair" ended.

*To David Ayers
March 3, 1836

Take care of my little boy. If the country should be saved, I may make for him a splendid fortune; but if the country be lost and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country.

W. Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Com*

The letter to David Ayers is the last known letter written
by Travis before the fall of the Alamo on the morning of
March 6, 1836.

William Barret Travis died at his post on the cannon
platform at the northeast corner of the fortress.

He was 26 years old.


*Ordinary men doing extraordinary things for a place many of them traveled across continents and oceans to get to. May God bless Texas and keep her aligned with the principles these brave men stood for and exhibited.*











*God Bless Texas and her heroes. This may be the end of the Alamo BUT it's not the end of the story...………..*

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 7th


Bluebonnet proclaimed state flower*

On this day in 1901, the Texas legislature proclaimed the bluebonnet the state flower. In the 1930s the state began a highway-beautification program that included scattering bluebonnet seed beside roadways, thus extending the flower's range. The flower-called in some Indian lore a gift from the Great Spirit-is the subject of countless photographs and paintings. It usually blooms in March and April.

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## Wildthings

That's my son's backyard in Willow City!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 8th*


*Birthday of the "Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution"* 

On this day in 1798, Mathew Caldwell was born in Kentucky. He settled in Dewitt County, Texas, in 1831. Caldwell earned the name "Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution" because he rode from Gonzales to Bastrop to call men to arms before the battle of Gonzales in October 1835. He was also called "Old Paint" because his whiskers were dappled. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Caldwell commanded a company in the defense of Goliad. He was captured during the Santa Fe expedition and imprisoned in Mexico. He died at his home in Gonzales in 1842 and is buried there. Caldwell County was named in his honor.


*Creuzbaur's brave plans for Sea King* 

On this day in 1862, the battle of the Civil War ironclads _Merrimack_ and _Monitor_ near Chesapeake Bay sounded the death knell for a Texas gunboat before it ever got out of the planning stages. Texas mapmaker Robert Creuzbaur had proposed an innovative design for an iron-plated gunboat called _Sea King_ in November 1861. With a hot-air engine that powered propellers at the stern, this wood and iron vessel, Creuzbaur estimated, could reach a speed of 18 mph. Topside armaments would provide ample defense, but the ship’s most unique weapon was a gun beneath the waterline. This “submarine cannon” would surely blast through the Union fleet’s vulnerable wooden hulls. Fifty years before its time, the inventive cartographer envisioned a version of the modern torpedo tube. Governor Francis R. Lubbock appointed a scientific committee, and soon Texas legislators, excited about the great military potential of _Sea King_, appropriated $500 for Creuzbaur to present his plan to the Confederate War Department. But when the ironclads later engaged in their historic showdown all realistic chances for experimentation on a project like _Sea King_ were lost.


*Black traildriver born into slavery* 

On this day in 1850, George Glenn, black traildriver, was born into slavery, probably in Colorado County, Texas. He was raised on the ranch of Robert B. Johnson of Columbus and trained in ranching skills and as a trail cook. After the Civil War and emancipation, Glenn evidently continued at the Johnson ranch as a cowhand. In the spring of 1870 he accompanied Johnson on a cattle drive to Abilene, Kansas. At the Red River, when a fresh group of cowhands displaced the original ones, Johnson and Glenn continued with the new group to Abilene, where they sold the herd. Johnson fell ill and died at age thirty-six in Abilene in July 1870. Glenn had his employer embalmed and buried in a metal casket in the area. The following September he decided to bring Johnson's body back to Texas for burial and had the casket disinterred and placed in a wagon. Reportedly, Glenn traveled alone with Johnson's body for forty-two days across three states, arriving in Columbus in November 1871. He did not continue as a cowhand but maintained a lifelong friendship with his former employer's nephew, Texas Ranger and cattleman John Edwards Folts. Glenn died in 1931; his death certificate lists his occupation as "laborer." He was honored as one of the handful of black members of the Old Trail Drivers Association at the 1924 and 1926 annual meetings.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 8th*

The Texas Revolution Continues.....


*March 8, 1836*
Travis's letter penned on March 3 reaches Washington on the Brazos. Sam Houston sends orders for Fannin at Goliad and Neill at Gonzales to go to the aid of the Alamo. Sam Houston and his staff head for Gonzales.
At the Alamo, Mexican Generals Antonio Gaona, Adrián Woll, Vicente Filisola, and Juan Arago arrive with artillery and the remainder of the First Brigade.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 15th*


*Mexican army captures Texas Masonic soldier* 

On this day in 1836, Texas Revolutionary soldier Lewis T. Ayers was captured by the Mexican forces of Gen. José de Urrea. Ayers was involved in the series of skirmishes between March 12 and March 15 that came to be known as the battle of Refugio. He was serving with Captain Amon King in an action against the Mexican rear guard when he was captured. Ayers was one of thirty-three prisoners subsequently led out to be shot, but was saved by the intervention of one of Urrea's subordinates, Col. J. J. Holzinger, who halted the execution so that German prisoners might be reprieved. Though he was not a German, Ayers was spared, and afterward set free, reportedly because he gave a Masonic sign that was recognized by the Mexican general.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"No day can be counted entirely lost which begins with the smell of a mesquite fire at dawn and the taste of coffee boiled over it."

---- J. Frank Dobie, Texas historian and folklorist

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 10th*

I've really been slacking so let me get caught up

*The Battle of Refugio*
Colonel James Fannin and his men had improved the fortifications at the old Presidio La Bahía in Goliad and renamed it "Fort Defiance." News of the fate of Texians under Frank W. Johnson at the Battle of San Patricio and James Grant at the Battle of Agua Dulce created confusion rather than stirring the volunteers gathered at Goliad into action. Centralist sympathizers in the area had gathered and raided Victoria earlier in the month. To make matters worse, Fannin learned that some colonists who supported the revolt were in danger from Urrea's advance.

On March 10, he sent William C. Francis on area patrol and sent Amon B. King with a small force and wagons to collect families and escort them back to Goliad. March 11 was spent gathering families and loading carts for the return trip. However, on the 12th, King decided to confront the Centralista forces of Carlos de la Garza and the rancheros who rode with him. The opposition forces proved to be greater than imagined and King asked Fannin to send help.

King and the Kentucky Mustangs took refuge in the old Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission at Refugio on March 12. Receiving word, Fannin dispatched William Ward, commanding a group from Peyton S. Wyatt and the Georgia Battalion to assist King. Ward made his stand at the mission and a furious battle ensued. Although successful in breaking up the siege on the 13th, the arrival of Ward at Refugio led to a conflict over command between the two officers. This dispute caused the insurgents to break into several smaller detachments. King left and ventured to attack a nearby ranch, believed to be occupied by Centralistas, killing 8.

As more of Urrea's troops arrived, the fighting with Ward's men continued. The groups held their own on the 14th, repelling four assaults, killing 80 – 100 Mexican troops and wounding 50. The Texians suffered light losses, (about 15), but were now short on ammunition and supplies. King returned from his raid in the evening but could not get to the mission for safety. They had to fight from a tree-line across from it, near the Mission River, where they also inflicted heavy losses upon the Mexican army. Ward sent courier James Humphries to Fannin for orders. Edward Perry returned word from Fannin to fall back to Victoria, where Texian forces were to later regroup.

At night, the groups attempted the escape. The wounded and a few others would remain behind. Their flight seemed successful at first, but there were overwhelming numbers of Mexican troops in wait. Each group was subsequently defeated and its survivors captured by Urrea's troops. After battling for twelve hours and inflicting heavy casualties on their enemies, the last group of fleeing Texians only suffered one killed and four wounded. King and thirty-two men surrendered on the 15th because their remaining powder had become unusable after crossing the river. They were returned as prisoners of war to the Refugio Mission. On March 16, fifteen men were executed; King and the remnants of his company, and several of Ward's men. Juan José Holzinger, a German-Mexican officer, saw fit to save Lewis T. Ayers, Francis Dieterich, Benjamin Odlum and eight men from local families. The remaining fifteen men were spared to serve the Mexican army as artisans (blacksmiths, wheelwrights, mechanics).

Ward and the bulk of his men escaped toward Copano, then turned at Melon Creek and headed for Victoria, where he thought Fannin should be, hearing the gunfire on the Coleto Creek as they moved on. At Victoria, they found no time for rest; it was overrun with Urrea's troops. The group was forced to scatter after a short skirmish with Urrea's cavalry. Staying off the main roads, they moved toward Lavaca Bay, with ten of them eventually escaping. The remainder were captured on March 22 by Urrea, two miles from Dimmit's Landing. Informed of Fannin's surrender, Ward's group was marched back to Victoria, where Holzinger again saved twenty-six men, by conscripting them as laborers for Urrea. Urrea had left Colonel Telesforo Alavez, in charge of Victoria. Señora Francita Alavez intervened with her husband as well, to make sure the captive laborers' lives would be saved. The remainder were sent to Goliad by March 25.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 19th*

*The Battle of Coleto - Day 1 - March 19, 1836*
Colonel James Fannin was the commander of the Texan troops at Fort Defiance in late 1835 and early 1836. During the siege of the Alamo in February 1836 he attempted a march of 100 miles to relieve the Texan forces at the Alamo but due to poor preparation for the journey and word that General Urrea's Mexican forces were approaching Goliad, he turned back. After the Alamo fell to Santa Anna's forces the Texians received orders from General Sam Houston to fall back to Victoria. Fannin therefore abandoned the fort but proceeded without adequate supplies and without haste on his retreat.

By 09:00 on March 19 they began their retreat from Goliad, during a period of heavy fog. The Texan force included the San Antonio Greys, the Red Rovers, the Mustangs commanded by Burr H. Duval, a militia from Refugio commanded by Hugh McDonald Frazer, Texan regular soldiers commanded by Ira Westover, and the Mobile Greys. Nine heavy artillery pieces with different calibers were ordered by Fannin to be taken by the Texans, along with 1000 muskets, but he neglected to ensure that a good amount of food and water was transported. Carts loaded with heavy equipment were being pulled by hungry and tired oxen. Urrea did not realize the Texians had left until 11:00. The two hour lead was removed, when a Texan cart crossing the San Antonio River broke, a cannon had to be brought out of the river, and Fannin ordered that the oxen be allowed to graze for a period of time after the Texans had proceeded about a mile past Manahuilla Creek, resulting in the retreat being stopped. John Shackelford, Burr H. Duval, and Ira Westover opposed Fannin's decision to allow the oxen to graze, arguing that they should continue their retreat until they reached the protection of the Coleto Creek timber. Shackelford would state that Fannin argued that the Mexican army against them was poor, and that Urrea would not follow them.

In an effort to catch Fannin's troops Urrea left his artillery, and some of his men, in Goliad. He began his pursuit with, according to Mexican sources, 80 cavalrymen and 360 infantrymen. Mexican mounted scouts determined the location of the Texans, and reported the size of the force, which Urrea concluded was smaller than he originally thought. As a result, he ordered 100 of his soldiers to go back to Goliad to help secure Presidio La Bahía. He also ordered the artillery he left in Goliad to be brought to him, and that the artillery would be escorted by some of the soldiers he was sending back. Meanwhile, Albert C. Horton's 30 cavalrymen were serving as advance guards, and were positioned to cover all sides of the Texan force. The rear guard was not alert, and did not detect the Mexican cavalry that was approaching the Texians. Shortly after they resumed their march another Texan cart broke down, and its cargo had to be transferred to another one, delaying the retreat again. Shortly after, Fannin had sent Horton to scout the Coleto Creek timber that was in sight, then the Mexican cavalry overtook Fannin's Texians. As the Texans tried to get to high ground 400 to 500 yards away from the position they were in when the cavalry overtook them, the ammunition cart broke.

The Texan soldiers formed a square against the Mexicans. The high grass of the prairie meant the Texan view of the Mexicans was impaired. The Texians had little water. Each Texian soldier received three to four muskets. The square was three ranks deep. The front line contained the San Antonio Greys and Red Rovers, whilst Duval's Mustangs and Frazer's Refugio militia formed part of the rear line. The left flank was covered by Westover's regulars, whilst the right was protected by the Mobile Greys. In the corners of the square, the artillery had been positioned. Fannin stood in the rear of the right flank. In addition, a number of sharpshooters were deployed around Abel Morgan's hospital wagon, which could no longer be moved after the ox that was moving it was killed by Mexican fire.

The Mexican soldiers then attacked the square. The left of the Texian square was confronted by the rifle companies under Morales, and the right was assaulted by the grenadiers and part of the San Luis Battalion. The Mexican formations involved in this attack on the right of the square was under the personal supervision of Urrea. The Jiménez Battalion under Col. Mariano Salas fought the front, and Col. Gabriel Núñez's cavalry was ordered against the rear of the square. By sunset, when Urrea ordered the Mexicans to cease any more major attacks against the square due to a lack of Mexican ammunition, the majority of the action of 19 March was over. The Mexicans had assaulted the square three times. Making effective use of their bayonets, multiple muskets, and nine cannons, the Texians had prevented the Mexicans each time from breaking the square. Urrea said that he was impressed with the fact that the Texians had managed to maintain the square against the three charges, and he was also impressed with the Texian weapon fire. Dr. Joseph H. Barnard, a Texian, recorded that by sunset seven Texians had been killed. He also recorded that sixty Texians, including Fannin, had been wounded. Forty of the sixty had been wounded several times.

After sunset, Urrea ordered Mexican sharpshooters to be positioned in the tall grass around the square, and that they fire at the Texians. Before Texian sharpshooters were able to remove the threat posed by the Mexican sharpshooters, by firing at the flash caused by the Mexican guns, the Mexican sharpshooters were able to inflict more Texian casualties. As a result of all the fighting that occurred on 19 March, the Texians had suffered at least ten dead and sixty wounded, whilst the Mexicans suffered an unspecified high amount of casualties. The fighting of 19 March had not demoralized the Texian soldiers. They were encouraged by the thought that Horton would succeed in getting Texian reinforcements from Guadalupe Victoria to Fannin. However, Horton had not been able to break through the Mexican defenses. During the day's fighting the Texian soldiers that were retreating to Guadalupe Victoria after the earlier battle of Refugio were close enough to Fannin to hear gunfire. However, they were exhausted and hungry, and did not move to the square. Urrea stationed three detachments of Mexican troops around the square, to prevent the Texians in the square from escaping, and during the night Mexican false bugle calls were sounded to keep the Texians alert.

The Texians' lack of water, and the inability to light fires in the square, meant the wounded Texians could not be treated. The pain being experienced by the wounded resulted in the general decrease in morale amongst the Texian soldiers during the night. The poor weather during the night further lessened the morale of the soldiers. The lack of water also meant that the artillery could not be used effectively the next day, because water was needed to cool and clean the cannons. The fighting of 19 March had also left many Texian artillerists casualties, and ammunition for the cannons was low. All these factors contributed to the conclusion by Fannin and other officers during the night that they could not sustain another day of fighting. An idea for the Texians to escape to a more defendable position under cover of darkness, before Urrea received reinforcements, was rejected because it was decided that those who were too injured to escape, which included friends and relatives of unwounded Texians, should not be left behind. It was therefore decided that the Texians should attempt to make another stand from their current position the next day. As a result, during the night, the Texians dug trenches and erected barricades of carts and dead animals. Urrea, meanwhile, had been reinforced with munitions, fresh troops, and two or three artillery pieces from Goliad. He positioned the Mexican artillery on the slopes overlooking the Texian square.

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 20th*

*The Battle of Coleto - Day 2 - March 20, 1836*
At 06:15 on March 20, the Mexicans were grouped for battle. After one or two rounds were fired by Mexican artillery Fannin and his officers re-iterated their conclusion that the Texians could not take another day's fighting, and decided to seek honorable terms for surrender. They drafted terms of surrender, which included statements that the Texian wounded would be treated, that they would be given all the protection expected as prisoners of war, and that they would be paroled to the United States of America. However, Santa Anna had stated earlier that any Texian can only be allowed to surrender unconditionally. As a result, Urrea could not guarantee that all the terms would be followed by Santa Anna. He stated that he would talk to Santa Anna on behalf of the terms of surrender presented by the Texians. The document of surrender was signed by Benjamin C. Wallace, Joseph M. Chadwick, and Fannin. As a result of the signing, the battle of Coleto ended.

Those Texans that could walk were sent to Goliad, under Mexican escort. It would take until about March 23 until those Texans that could not walk were transported to Goliad. During that time, Mexican physicians were told that wounded Mexicans were a priority to treat, as opposed to the wounded Texans. Fannin arrived in Goliad on March 22. Urrea, meanwhile, had moved onto Guadalupe Victoria, from where he wrote to Santa Anna a letter recommending that the Texan prisoners should be treated with clemency.

The Battle of Coleto was significant because it showed that Texan troops involved in the battle, despite being relatively untrained, were able to stand up to the Mexican troops against them and obey their commanders. The battle was primarily lost because Fannin did not act decisively enough to ensure success and he underestimated the quality of the Mexican force against him. It also illustrated that Fannin was reluctant to coordinate his actions with other Texan forces, a trait that was common amongst many Texian commanders.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas
The Texas Quote of the Day comes from none other than famed Texas Ranger Bigfoot Wallace, as told to John C. Duval in 1870:

"I had been introduced to one young woman by the name of Matilda, who was as pretty as a pink! Her teeth were as white as an alligator's, and her eyes were as bright as two mesquite coals, and her mouth looked like a little gash cut in a juicy peach. She was a "deadener," I tell you, and a regular "knee-weakener," in the bargain; and I wanted to have a little talk with her the worst in the world; but somehow I felt a little afraid to venture. After a little while, however, she came up to me of her own accord, and began to ask me a great many questions about Texas and the Indians, wild horses, and the prairies, etc. Among other things, she asked me if young women were in great demand in Texas.

"I should think they were," said I. "The day the first young woman came into our settlement there were fourteen Spanish horses badly foundered on sedge-grass by the young men who flocked in to see her, from forty miles around; and the next morning she had seventeen offers of marriage before breakfast! The young woman was a little confused by so many applications at once, and before she could make up her mind which one to take, one of the "rancheros" watched for his chance, and the first time she walked out he caught her up behind him on his horse, rode off full speed to San Patrico, drew his six-shooter on the padre, and forced him to marry them on the spot. This saved the woman all further trouble on the subject, and they are now living happily together on one of the finest cattle ranches in the County of Karnes.

Oh! I declare," said Miss Matilda, "that is delightful ! How romantic to be run off with in that way by a handsome young 'ranchero.' I think, Mr. Wallace, I shall have to go to Texas."

------ Legendary Texas Ranger and Indian Fighter Bigfoot Wallace, "The Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace," 1870. If you'd like to read the full text, here is the fourth edition, published in 1921:

https://archive.org/stream/adventuresofbigf00duvarich…

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- March 27th*

*Remember Goliad - March 27, 1836*
After the battle of Coleto those Texans that could walk were sent to Goliad, under Mexican escort. It would take until about March 23 until those Texans that could not walk were transported to Goliad. During that time, Mexican physicians were told that wounded Mexicans were a priority to treat, as opposed to the wounded Texans. Fannin arrived in Goliad on March 22. Urrea, meanwhile, had moved on to Guadalupe Victoria, from where he wrote to Santa Anna a letter recommending that the Texan prisoners should be treated with clemency.

On March 23, Santa Anna replied to Urrea's letter regarding Fannin and the other captured Texans. In this communication, he directly ordered Urrea to execute the prisoners which he dubbed "perfidious foreigners." This order was repeated in a letter on March 24. Concerned about Urrea's willingness to comply, Santa Anna also dispatched a note to Colonel José Nicolás de la Portilla, the commander at Goliad, ordering him to shoot the prisoners. Received on March 26, it was followed two hours later by a conflicting letter from Urrea telling him to "treat the prisoners with consideration" and to use them to rebuild the town. Though a noble gesture by Urrea, the general was aware that Portilla lacked sufficient men to guard the Texans during such an endeavor. Weighing both orders during the night, Portilla concluded that he was required to act on Santa Anna's directive. Santa Anna sent a direct order to the "Officer Commanding the Post of Goliad" to execute the prisoners in his hands. This order was received on March 26 by Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla, whom Urrea had left at Goliad. Two hours later Portilla received another order, this one from Urrea, "to treat the prisoners with consideration, and especially their leader, Fannin," and to employ them in rebuilding the town. But when he wrote this seemingly humane order, Urrea well knew that Portilla would not be able to comply with it, for on March 25, after receiving Santa Anna's letter, Urrea had ordered reinforcements that would have resulted in too large a diminution of the garrison for the prisoners to be employed on public works.

Portilla suffered an unquiet night weighing these conflicting orders, but he concluded that he was bound to obey Santa Anna's order and directed that the prisoners be shot at dawn.

At sunrise on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, the unwounded Texans were formed into three groups under heavy guard commanded by Capt. Pedro Balderas, Capt. Antonio Ramírez, and first adjutant Agustín Alcérrica (a colonel in the Tres Villas Battalion in April 1836). The largest group, including what remained of Ward's Georgia Battalion and Capt. Burr H. Duval's company, was marched toward the upper ford of the San Antonio River on the Bexar road. The San Antonio Greys, Mobile Greys, qqv and others were marched along the Victoria road in the direction of the lower ford. Capt. John Shackelfordqv's Red Rovers and Ira J. Westover's regulars were marched southwestwardly along the San Patricio road. The guard, which was to serve also as a firing squad, included the battalions of Tres Villas and Yucatán, dismounted cavalry, and pickets from the Cuautla, Tampico, and Durango regiments.

The prisoners held little suspicion of their fate, for they had been told a variety of stories - they were to gather wood, drive cattle, be marched to Matamoros, or proceed to the port of Copano for passage to New Orleans. Only the day before, Fannin himself, with his adjutant general, Joseph M. Chadwick, had returned from Copano, where, accompanied by Holsinger and other Mexican officers, they had tried to charter the vessel on which William P. Miller's Nashville Battalion had arrived earlier (these men had been captured and imprisoned at Goliad, also). Although this was really an attempt by Urrea to commandeer the ship, the vessel had already departed. Still, Fannin became cheerful and reported to his men that the Mexicans were making arrangements for their departure. The troops sang "Home Sweet Home" on the night of March 26.
At selected spots on each of the three roads, from half to three-fourths of a mile from the presidio, the three groups were halted. The guard on the right of the column of prisoners then countermarched and formed with the guard on the left. At a prearranged moment, or upon a given signal, the guards fired upon the prisoners at a range too close to miss. Nearly all were killed at the first fire. Those not killed were pursued and slaughtered by gunfire, bayonet, or lance. Fannin and some forty (Peña estimated eighty or ninety) wounded Texans unable to march were put to death within the presidio under the direction of Capt. Carolino Huerta of the Tres Villas battalion.

From two groups shot on the river roads, those not instantly killed fled to the woods along the stream, and twenty-four managed to escape. The third group, on the San Patricio road, was farther from cover; only four men from it are known to have escaped. A man-by-man study of Fannin's command indicates that 342 were executed at Goliad on March 27. Only twenty-eight escaped the firing squads, and twenty more were spared as physicians, orderlies, interpreters, or mechanics largely because of the entreaties of Francita Alvarez, a "high bred beauty" whom the Texans called the "Angel of Goliad", and the brave and kindly intervention of Col. Francisco Garay. Many of those who eventually escaped were first recaptured and later managed a second escape. Two physicians, Joseph H. Barnard and John Shackelford, were taken to San Antonio to treat Mexican wounded from the battle of the Alamo; they later escaped.

After the executions the bodies were burned, the remains left exposed to weather, vultures, and coyotes, until June 3, 1836, when Gen. Thomas J. Rusk gathered the remains and buried them with military honors.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas quote of the day is the inscription on a marker in old Fort Davis:

"Here lies Indian Emily
An Apache Girl
Whose Love For A
Young Officer Induced
Her To Give Warning Of
An Indian Attack
Mistaken For AN Enemy
She Was Shot By A
Sentry But Saved The 
Garrison From Massacre

Erected by the State of Texas, 1936"

I saw this marker many years ago and wondered what the story was. I finally found out. I apologize for the formatting, but this is a cut-and-paste. It was written by someone named Norman Wells:

"OLD Fort Davis was established in 1854 in the Big Bend country of Texas, in the very heart of the Mescalero Apache territory. Under the leadership of the chief Espejo, the Apaches fought this fort like madmen to regain their red cliffs and their long deep canyons, their grassy hunting grounds and their prized water holes.

The fort had guts but that's about all. The usual complement of men ran to only a scant hundred and fifty, hardly enough to beat off a large force of attackers. Espejo, looking down from his fortress in the adjacent mountains, knew what the situation was, and laid elaborate plans to wipe the fort out of his valley in one grand, final sweep. So sure was he of victory that he even brought along the women and children of his village to share the glory and to later sort out and remove the loot he intended to carry away.

But one thing he did not know. A company of freighters had come in from the Chihuahua Trail, and these extra guns were the difference between victory and defeat for the Apaches, and life and death for the white people. Espejo's attack was brutally swift and once it began, the defenders scarcely had time to take aim, but so great was the crush of Indians that scarcely a bullet fled the confines of their rifles without making a strike.

When the Apaches withdrew at last, they carried with them as many dead and wounded as they could, but some were left behind, and of these, one was an Indian girl — a blazing-eyed, defiant Apache girl who shrank with loathing from the hands that reached out to help her, whose lips curled with scorn and hatred at the White-Eyes who spoke to her. But whether she liked it or not she was cared for in the white man's way. Her wound was treated. She was cleaned, more in one day than in all her years of Apache life. She was fed foods that delighted her.

There was no question of her leaving. The soldiers could not return her themselves, and to turn her loose in the wild country alone was the same as murder. She was given into the care of a Mrs. Easton and from her she learned the ways of the white people and the depth of the white peoples' compassion and love and affection. She gave in slowly, but gradually the awful yearning for her own people faded, and at last the day came when she looked full at the shaded crags of the Davis Mountains, smiled gently, and turned away at peace with herself.

Mrs. Easton called her Emily, and she came to love the name, though she found its softness strange on the tongue that was used to harsh Apache words. She came also to have a deep affection for Mrs.Easton and served her willingly both as a domestic and a daily companion. But most of all, more than anything or anyone, she came to love Mrs. Easton's son.

YOUNG Lieutenant Tom never knew. An Apache woman was by nature undemonstrative, and neither Emily's actions nor her glances gave her away. Deep in her eyes could be seen a soft glow when he entered a room, and there was a sadness on her tongue when she spoke his name, but that was all. Outwardly she remained toward him only what she had been before the love started — an Indian girl who laughed at his good-natured teasings, a comrade who listened to his troubles, a friend who would do anything in the world for him.

And so it went. But sometimes not too long after she fell in love, Lieutenant Tom came home with a strange girl clinging to his arm, with the sober, proud announcement that he was going to be married. Even then, not a muscle of Emily's face betrayed her. She smiled and there were none who noticed that she smiled with her lips alone, that her dark eyes suddenly shadowed, and that she turned and left the room almost before the smile faded. In the morning she was gone, and neither the ground around the house nor the trail leading out of Fort Davis nor the rocky land that rose into the mountains showed signs of her passing.

It was useless to search for her. Weeks passed, then months, then more than a year, and in all that time they did not hear from her. There were rumors of fresh Apache outbreaks in the territory and the daily fear of attack gave the Eastons other things to think about, but they talked of Emily often, and always there was the wonder of her disappearance. Mrs. Easton said once, sadly, as if Emily had been her own daughter, "Why — why did she leave? If we knew that — "

But there was no way of knowing, any more than they could know that Emily, safe in an Apache rancheria deep in the mountains thought of them, too — that she sat for hours dreaming into the camp fire lost in the memories she had carried with her when she returned to her people. Nor could they know that she turned cold, indifferent eyes on the warriors who spoke to her of marriage and refused them all. The Eastons could only know that she was gone, and that she would probably never return.

TROUBLE with the Apaches mounted around the fort. Victorio was their newest leader, and he led bold daylight attacks on small settlements, made deadly strikes against travelers and stagecoaches, and promoted raids that swept away herd after herd of precious cattle. The fort watches were doubled, defenses were strengthened, supplies were carefully put away against possible siege — a thousand steps were taken to avoid annihilation if attack should come.

Soldiers turned grim under the strain and snapped at each other, and their nerves played tricks on them — shadows in the night became creeping Apaches, giant rocks were soft-padding war ponies, miniature sproutings of cottonwoods were metal-tipped lances trembling in the hands of unseen warriors. Sometime during one of the endless, dangerous nights a rock skidded down a near- by slope, and there was the sound of a foot scraping along gravel. The sentry called out, and all other men on duty hugged their posts and raised their guns cheek-high ready for use. There was the crack of a single rifle in the hands of one, a strangled scream, a moment of stunned silence — and then a fort sprang to life.

An enlisted man bent over the silent figure on the ground, rolling its face up for all to see. Emily had returned, and this time she would not leave. She was carried to the Colonel's house and tended as gently as on the day Espejo had left her behind. Mrs. Easton was sent for, and it was she who bent over Emily and pushed the damp hair from her forehead and tried to understand the words that stumbled so haltingly from Emily's Lips:

"My people come 
with the light of the new day ....
"I tell you, so Lieutenant 
Tom does not die.''

MRS. Easton knew at last why Emily had left her, and her eyes were full of compassion as she bent low to stroke the soft cheek. 

She was still beside her when she died.

Many Apache warriors joined Emily at dawn. Never had the soldiers of Fort Davis fought so well or with such purpose, and the Apaches fell before their long guns like blades of grass in a brush fire.

Emily was buried at the foot of the mountain, near the rushing waters of Limpia Creek. A headboard was put up, a rough-hewn one, with its ugliness softened by the embarrassed, tongue-in-cheek legend:

"INDIAN SQUAW— KILLED BY 
ACCIDENT"

The grave was pointed out to all who entered the fort, and the story of Emily spread throughout the Big Bend country."

But the passing of time was not kind to her little wooden memorial. The inscription went first, and then bit by bit the board itself rotted away until there was nothing left but a little mound of stones to mark the grave.

In 1936 a new monument, a fine one of granite, was erected and it stands today with the symbolic Star of Texas at its top, while below, carved deep to protect it from the 
elements is the most fitting memorial of all:

"Here lies Indian Emily
An Apache Girl
Whose Love For A
Young Officer Induced
Her To Give Warning Of
An Indian Attack
Mistaken For AN Enemy
She Was Shot By A
Sentry But Saved The 
Garrison From Massacre

Erected by the State of Texas, 1936"

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## Wildthings

Today in Texas History -- March 29th

*What follows is a long read so get comfortable!!

Escape of the Four - March 27, 1836*
Big thanks to Mike Javi Cooper for posting this story a few year back. I believe it shows the bravery and tenacity of those that fought for the freedom of Texas!


_Escape of the Four Alabama Red Rovers
Dillard Cooper's Remembrances of the Fannin MassacreFrom Rangers and Pioneers of Texas by A.J. Sowell 1884 as reprinted from the American Sketch Book 1881. According to James T. DeShields in Tall Men With Long Rifles, Cooper died in extreme poverty in the 1890's in Llano, TX stating "during his later years the pitiful pension of $150.00 a year, provided by the great and opulent state of Texas, barely sufficed to buy food and medicines for the aged hero and his faithful wife. Napoleon was not far wrong when he said 'Republics are ungrateful.'"

......several....cried out for mercy. I remember one, a young man, who had been noted for his piety, but who had afterwards become somewhat demoralized by bad company, falling on his knees, crying aloud to God for mercy, and forgiveness. Others, attempted to plead with their inhuman captors, but their pleadings were in vain.....On my right hand, stood Wilson Simpson, and on my left, Robert Fenner....while some of them were rending the air with their cries of agonized despair, Fenner called out to them, saying: "Don't take on so, boys; if we have to die, let's die like brave men.....At that moment, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the flash of a musket....._


*On the morning of the 27th of March, 1836, about daylight, we were awakened by the guards, and marched out in front of the fort, where we were counted and divided into three different detachments; we had been given to understand that we were to be marched to Copano, and from there shipped to New Orleans. The impression, however, had in some way been circulated among us, that we were to be sent out that morning to hunt cattle; though I thought at the time that it could not be so, as it was but a poor way, to hunt cattle on foot.

Our detachment was marched out in double file, each prisoner being guarded by two soldiers, until within about half a mile southwest of the fort, we arrived at a brush fence, built by the Mexicans. We were then placed in single file, and were half way between the guard and the fence, eight feet each way. We were then halted, when the commanding officer came up to the head of the line, and asked if there were any of us who understood Spanish. By this time, there began to dawn upon the minds of us, the truth, that we were to be butchered, and that, I suppose, was the reason that none answered. He then ordered us to turn our backs to the guards. When the order was given not one moved, and then the officer, stepping up to the man at, the head of the column, took him by the shoulders and turned him around.

By this time, despair had seized upon our poor boys, and several of them cried out for mercy. I remember one, a young man, who had been noted for his piety, but who had afterwards become somewhat demoralized by bad company, falling on his knees, crying aloud to God for mercy, and forgiveness. Others, attempted to plead with their inhuman captors, but their pleadings were in vain, for on their faces no gleam of piety was seen for the defenseless men who stood before them. On my right hand, stood Wilson Simpson, and on my left, Robert Fenner. In the midst of the panic of terror which seized our men, and while some of them were rending the air with their cries of agonized despair, Fenner called out to them, saying: "Don't take on so, boys; if we have to die, let's die like brave men."

At that moment, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the flash of a musket; I instantly threw myself forward on the ground, resting on my hands. Robert Fenner must have been instantly killed, for he fell with such force upon me as almost to throw me over as I attempted to rise, which detained me a few moments in my flight, so that Simpson, my companion on the right, got the start of me. As we ran towards an opening in the brush fence, which was almost in front of us, Simpson got through first, and I was immediately after him. I wore, at that time, a small, round cloak, which was fastened with a clasp at the throat. As I ran through the opening, an officer charged upon me, and ran his sword through my cloak, which would have held me, but I caught the clasp with both hands, and tore it apart, and the cloak fell from me. There was an open prairie, about two miles wide, through which I would have to run before I could reach the nearest timber, which was a little southwest of the place from where we started.

I gained on my pursuers, but saw, between me and the timber, three others, who were after Simpson. As I neared the timber, I commenced walking, in order to recover my strength, before I came near them. When he first started, we were all near together, but as Simpson took a direct course across the prairie, I, in order to avoid his pursuers, took a circuitous course. There were two points of timber projecting into the prairie, one of which was nearer to me than the other. I was making for the furthest point, but as Simpson entered the timber, his pursuers halted, and then ran across and cut me off, I then started for the point into which Simpson had entered, but they turned and cut me oft from that. I then stopped running and commenced walking slowly between them and the other point. They, no doubt, thinking I was about to surrender myself, stopped, and I continued to walk within about sixty yards of them, when I suddenly wheeled and ran into the point for which I had first started. They did not attempt to follow me, but just as I was about to enter the timber, they fired, the bullets whistling over my head caused me to draw my head down as I ran.

As soon as I entered the timber, I saw Simpson waiting and beckoning to me. I went towards him, and we ran together for about two miles, when we reached the river. We then stopped and consulted as to the best way of concealing ourselves. I proposed climbing a tree, but he objected, saying that should the Mexicans discover us, we would have no way of making our escape. Before we arrived at any conclusion, we heard some one coming, which frightened us so, that I jumped into the river, while Simpson ran a short distance up it, but seeing me, he also jumped in. The noise proceeded from the bank immediately above the spot where Simpson was, and I could see the place very plainly, and soon discovered that two of our companions had made their escape to this place. They were Zachariah Brooks, and Isaac Hamilton. In the fleshy part of both Hamilton's thighs were wounds, one made by a gun-shot and another by a bayonet.

We all swam the river, and traveling up it a short distance, arrived at a bluff bank, near which was a thick screen of bushes, where we concealed ourselves. The place was about five miles above the fort. We did not dare proceed further that day, as the Mexicans were still searching for us, and Hamilton's wounds had become so painful as to prevent his walking, which obliged us to carry him. We remained there until about 10 o'clock that night, when we started forth, Simpson and myself carrying Hamilton, Brooks, though severely wounded, was yet able to travel. We had to proceed very cautiously and rather slowly.

Fort La Bahia being southeast of us, and the point we were making for, was about where Goliad now stands. We proceeded, in a circuitous route in a northeasterly direction. We approached within a short distance of the fort, and could not at first account for the numerous fires we saw blazing. We were not long in doubt, for the sickening smell that was borne towards us by the south wind, informed us too well that they were burning the bodies of our companions. And, here, I will state what Mrs. Cash, who was kept a prisoner, stated afterwards; that some of our men were thrown into the flames and burned alive. We passed the fort safely, and reached a spring, where we rested from our journey and from whence we proceeded on our travels. 

But the night was foggy, and becoming bewildered, it was not long before we found ourselves at the spring from which we started. We again started out, and again found ourselves at the same place; but we had too much at stake to sink into despondency. So once more took our wounded companion, thinking we could not miss the right direction this time; but, at last when day began to break, to our great consternation, we found we had been traveling around the same spot, and were for the third time back at the identical spring from which we had at first set forth. It was now impossible to proceed further that day, as we dared not travel during the day, knowing we should be discovered by the Mexicans. We therefore concealed ourselves by the side of a slight elevation, amidst a thick undergrowth of bushes.

By this time, we began to grow very hungry, and I remembered an elm bush that grew at the entrance of the timber where we were concealed, which formed an excellent commissary for us, and from the branches of which we partook, until nearly every limb was entirely stripped. About 9 o'clock that morning, we heard the heavy tramp of the Mexican army on the march; and they not long after that passed within a stone's throw of our place of concealment. It seems indeed, that we were guided by an over-ruling providence in not being able to proceed further that night, for as we were not expecting the Mexican army so soon, we would probably have been overtaken and discovered by them, perhaps in some prairie, where we could not have escaped.

We remained in our hiding place the rest of the day, and resumed our journey after dark, still carrying our wounded companion. Whenever the enemy passed us, we had to conceal ourselves; and we laid several days in ponds of mud and water, with nothing but our heads exposed to view. When in the vicinity of Lavaca, we again got ahead of the Mexicans; and, after traveling all night, we discovered, very early in the morning of the ninth day, a house within a few hundred yards of the river. We approached it, and found the inhabitants had fled. When we entered the house, we discovered a quantity of corn, some chickens, and a good many eggs lying about in different places. Our stomachs were weak and revolted at the idea of eating them raw, so we looked about for some means of striking a fire, first searching for a rock, but failing to find one, we took an old chisel and ground it on a grindstone for about two hours, but could never succeed in getting the sparks to catch. We then concluded to return and try the eggs raw. 

We had taken one, and Simpson was putting on his shoes, which he had taken off to rest his feet, which were raw and bleeding, and had just got one on when he remarked: "Boys, we would be in a tight place if the Mexicans were to come upon us now." So saying, he walked to the window, when to his horror, there was the whole Mexican army not more than a mile and a half off, and fifteen or twenty horsemen coming at full speed within a hundred yards of us. We took up our wounded man and ran to the timber, which was not far off, Simpson leaving his shoe behind him. We got into the timber and concealed ourselves between the logs of two trees, the tops of which having fallen together, and being very thickly covered with leaves and moss, formed an almost impenetrable screen above and around us. We had scarcely hidden ourselves from view, when the Mexicans came swarming around us, shouting and hallooing through the woods, but did not find us. We heard them from time to time, all throughout the day and next night. The next morning, just before day, the noise of the Mexicans ceased, and we concluded they had left. Simpson then asked me to go with him to get his shoe, as it would be difficult for him to travel without it, and I consented to do so. We went out to the edge of the timber and stopped some time to take observations before proceeding further. Seeing nothing of the Mexicans, we proceeded to the house, found the shoe, and possessing ourselves of a couple of ears of corn, and a bottle of water, we returned to our companions. We had no doubt that the Mexicans had gone, so we sat down and drank the water and ate an ear of corn, when Brooks asked Simpson to go with him to the house, saying he would get a chicken, and we could eat it raw. They started, and had hardly got to the edge of the timber when I heard the sound of horses’ feet, and directly afterwards the Mexicans were to be seen in every direction. I was sure they had captured Simpson and Brooks. Soon I heard something in the brush near us, but did not know whether it was the boys or Mexicans, but it turned out to be the boys, who crept undercover, and, in a few minutes, four Mexicans came riding by, passing within a few feet of where we were lying, with our faces to the ground. 

After going into the woods a short distance they turned and passed out again, but it was not long after when six of them came riding quite close, three on each side of us, and leaning down and peering into our hiding place. It seemed to me they could have heard us, for my own heart seemed to raise me almost from the ground by its throbbings. I felt more frightened than I ever had been before; for at the time of the massacre, everything had come on me so suddenly that my nerves had no time to become unstrung as they now were. The Mexicans passed and repassed us, through the day, so we dared not move from our hiding place. A guard was placed around us the following night, the main body having, no doubt, gone on, and left a detachment to search for us. I think they must have had some idea of our being some of Fannin's men, or they would scarcely have gone to that trouble. About 10 o'clock that night we held a consultation, and I told my companions it would not do to remain there any longer, as the Mexicans were aware of our place of concealment, and would surely discover us the next day. We all decided then to leave, and they requested me to lead the way out. I told them we would have to crawl through the timber and a short piece of prairie, until we crossed the road near which the Mexicans were posted; that they must be careful to remove every leaf and stick in the path, and to hold their feet up, only crawling on their hands and knees, as the least noise would betray us to the enemy. 

I was somewhat acquainted with the locality; for we were now not far from Texana, and I had some times hunted along these woods. Thus I led the way. Hamilton's wounds were so painful that we could move only slowly, and we must have been two hours crawling about 200 yards. When we at length passed the timber and reached the road, I stopped to make a careful survey of the situation. I could see the Mexicans placed along the road, about a hundred yards on each side of us. The moon was shining, but had sunk towards the west, which threw the shadow of a point of timber across the road, and concealed us from view. It would have been hard to discover us from the color of our clothes, as the earthy element with which they were mixed had entirely hidden the original fabric. We continued to crawl, until we reached a sufficient distance not to be discovered, when we rose up and walked. Although Hamilton had, with a great deal of pain, managed to crawl, yet it was impossible for him to walk, and his wounds had by this time become so much irritated and inflamed that he could scarcely bear to be carried. We traveled that night only a short distance, and hid ourselves in a thicket near a pond of water. Brooks had been trying to persuade me to leave Hamilton; but, although our progress was impeded by having to carry him, I could not entertain the idea for a moment. I indignantly refused, but still he would seize every opportunity to urge it upon me. He said it would be impossible for us to escape, burdened as we were with Hamilton. I could only acknowledge the truth of this, for it was a desperate case with us. The foe was around us in every direction. Brooks, finding that I was not to be persuaded, then attempted to influence Simpson.

On the tenth day out, they took the bottle and went to the pond nearby, for water. As they were returning, (I suppose Brooks did not know he was so near the place they left us), both Hamilton and myself heard Brooks urging Simpson to leave him. He told him if we remained with Hamilton, we would certainly lose our lives; but there was some slight chance of escaping, if we left him, and that Hamilton's wounds had become so much worse that he was bound to die, unless he could have rest; and, as we were doing him no good, and ourselves a great deal of injury by carrying him, it was, our duty to leave him. Now Brooks had never carried him a step; Simpson and myself having done that; yet Brooks was the first who had ever proposed leaving him; and, although there was a great deal of truth in what he was saying, yet I felt quite angry with him, as I heard him trying to persuade Simpson. Hamilton did not say a word to them when they came in, but sat with his face buried in his hands a long time. 

At length, he looked up, and said: "Boys, Brooks has told you the truth; I cannot travel any further, and if you stay with me, all will be killed. Go and leave me, boys; if I have rest I may recover, and if I ever should get off safe, you shall hear from me again." He spoke so reasonably, and we were so thoroughly convinced of the truth of what he said, after a brief consultation, we decided to depart without him. Hamilton had known Brooks in Alabama; he called him to him, and gave him a gold watch and $40 in gold, telling him to give it to his mother. We then bade Hamilton farewell, all of us shedding tears as we parted, but when we turned to go, my resolution failed me, and I could not find it in my heart to leave him. I said: "Boys, don't let us leave him." But Simpson and Brooks said that we could do neither him nor ourselves any good by remaining, and that they were determined to go. I told them I would remain with him, and do the best I could for him. So they started off without me; but Hamilton insisted so much that I should leave him, that I again bade him farewell, and followed and soon overtook the others. The reason that we started off in the day, was that it was raining quite hard, and we thought there would not be much danger in traveling, but we had not gone more than half way through the next prairie. when the weather cleared up, and we saw the whole Mexican army encamped at Texana, about two miles off; but they did not discover us, and we succeeded in reaching the timber on the Navidad. In the evening we walked out to a slight eminence which overlooked the prairie, to reconnoiter. While gazing across the prairie, we could see three men on horseback, but so indistinct were they that we could not at first tell whether they were Americans or Mexicans. As they approached, we hid in the undergrowth; and as they passed, we saw that they were Mexican couriers returning to the command.

At eight we again started forth, and coming out on the prairie, we discovered a road, which we concluded had been made by the refugees in their retreat from the enemy. During all this time we had nothing to eat but leaves and herbs, and the two ears of corn that we got at the house on Lavaca river. On the twelfth day, we reached the Colorado, at Mercer's crossing. As we were very tired, we sat down on the bank to rest a little, before attempting to swim over. While sitting there, a dog on the opposite side of the river began to bark. When we heard that well-known sound, our very souls thrilled with joy, and that was the first time since the awful day of the massacre that a smile had ever illuminated our faces. We looked at each other, and then burst into a great big laugh. We were all good swimmers, but I some times took the cramp while swimming, so we concluded to cross on a log. We procured a dead mulberry pole, and hanging on to it, one at each end, and one in the middle, we crossed over to the land of freedom, and a land where we found plenty to eat. After recruiting a little, we procured horses, with the intention of joining Houston's army; but before we reached there, San Jacinto had been fought and won.

It was more than a year before I ever heard anything of Hamilton. He remained in the same place where we left him nine days, sometimes lying in the pond of water, which assuaged the pain of his wounds. At the end of that time he was so much improved that he essayed to walk to Texana, and succeeded in doing so. He said the best eating he ever had in his life, was when he first entered Texana, and ate the meat from the rawhides the Mexicans had left. The next morning he took a skiff, and made his way down to Dimmitt's landing. He had scarcely reached there when he was taken prisoner by a Mexican soldier. Not long after, other soldiers came in, and tying Hamilton on a mule, started for camp. He suffered so much from his wounds that he fainted several times, on the way. Whenever this occurred, they would untie him, lay him on the ground, and throw water into his face until he revived, when they would again mount him on the mule and proceed on their way. Hamilton remained in their hands for some time and gradually grew well of his wounds. There was a Mexican who waited on him, who seemed much attached to him, and Hamilton was led to place much confidence in him. One morning, this Mexican told him that if he wanted to live another day, he must make his escape that night, as he had learned that he and two other prisoners were to be shot before morning. Hamilton then arranged a plan for the escape of himself and two of his companions, which was a success, after many trials and tribulations.*

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day is beyond awesome. It's an article about Mentone, Texas that was written by the celebrated Larry L. King for Life magazine in 1972. One of my friends once said that he wrote like Texans think. I'd give several digits to be able to write one thing as good as this:

"As the nation moved west seeking new frontiers, Texas, a rude young empire won in blood, was inhabited by restless and adventurous men chasing their own special dreams. One of these was Oliver Loving, a legendary cattleman who, passing through the barren reefs adjoining New Mexico in 1867, was shot, scalped and left for dead. He crawled 18 miles, chewing an old leather glove for sustenance, and emptied his pockets of valuables to a roving band of Mexican traders against assurance that he would be packed in charcoal and returned east to Weatherford -- almost 500 miles -- for burial. It was perhaps typical of the breed, the period and the place that Oliver Loving stubbornly refused to die until he had arranged his own terms.

Our literature and our legends abound with tales of the frontier spirit, of men who lived out of saddlebags or sod huts, carving and sweating a new civilization in which they attended their own fractures, made there own rules and raised their sons to independent and taciturn ways. In 1893, 26 years after Oliver Loving's death, a county bordering on New Mexico in the westernmost part of Texas was named for him. Loving County today is the most sparsely populated county in the contiguous United States, 647 square miles with 150 people scattered among 451 producing oil wells. This is land no less desolate than in an earlier time, and it is reasonable to suspect that the folks who remain here -- the sons and daughters of gritty dry-gulch farmers, wild-horse tamers and oil-field roustabouts -- would naturally retain their forebears' adventuresome pioneer spirit, coupled with their own stubborn dreams of self-fulfillment.

Once the nation drew its strength from these lower regions, masses of individual songs melding into one symphony of hope and pride and individual doing. Now, so much in America seems to have homogenized and dulled us that it is not too much to imagine that one day soon we shall all sound like Jack Lescoulie. Perhaps out on those few old frontiers where there is still elbow room, we can rediscover charms, virtues and vitalities that speak well of our roots and suggest options for our futures. These are the hopes, at least, that one can bring to an examination of Loving County.

The best place to meet Loving County's last frontiersmen is in the town of Mentone, and more specifically in Keen's Cafe, popularly known as "Newt's and Tootsie's." Keen's is the only place in all the county where one may purchase a beer -- or anything else of value, though they do sell marriage licenses across the street at the squat county courthouse. On this boiling day, Weepin' Willie Nelson is warning on Newt Keen's jukebox of all the gratuitous troubles love provides when another kind of trouble -- wearing a big-brimmed hat and a snub-nosed pistol -- clatters through the front screen door.

Garnville Lacy, ruddy-faced to the bone, is toting the snub-nosed pistol under the aegis of the Texas Liquor Control Board. He has driven from Odessa across 78 miles of burning desert sands -- past oil-well pumps, nodding their rich extractions like gentled rocking horses, and past infrequent hardscrabble ranches -- to serve a seven-day suspension notice of the beer permit entrusted to Keen's Cafe.

Newt Keen, proprietor, is a graying former cowboy with jug ears and a sly country grin that says he knows the joke and the joke is not on him. He seem to harbor some secret mirth, a submerged mysterious bubbling that has survived tornado funnels, droughts, bedroll rattlesnakes, rodeo fractures and the purchase of a ranch from a salty old pioneer woman who, it developed, did not own a ranch to sell. Equipped by seasoning and history to expertly sense disaster in its many forms, Newt, on spotting the lawman, mumbles, "Oh, hail far! It's liable to get a whole lot drier around here."

Newt greets the liquor agent aloud, however, as if in the hire of Welcome Wagon: "Come in! Come in! Y'awl been getting any rain over your way?" He crashes about in scuffed cowboy boots, his body a tad stooped as if permanently saddle-sore, and offers the lawman a mug of thick coffee.

Granville Lacy sits at one of the two rickety counter between a factory-tooled sign instructing: AMERICA, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT! and a homemade sign running alternately uphill and down, as if maybe it had been painted in the dark: OUR BEER LICENSE DEPENDS ON YOUR GOOD CONDUCT. The six other customers in the cafe, which seats a maximum of 20, watch the lawman with obvious distaste and apprehension.

"Mr. Keen," the lawman says, "I've got some papers to serve on you."

Conveniently deaf, Newt gestures toward the coffee he's poured Lacy: "You want me to cripple that with a little dab of cream? Looks like it was dredged up from the Pecos River bottom." A head shake. Newt tries again: "How's them two big old boys of yours? They doing all right?" Above the counter are likenesses of Newt's own two older sons, Vietnam veterans, proudly in uniform.

The liquor agent unfurls and crackles his official documents: "Now, Mr Keen, this temporary suspension begins next Monday..." But Newt is clomping across the wooden floor to replenish beer supplies and honor orders for cheeseburgers or chicken-fried steaks with cream gravy.

Agent Lacy inspects his papers while Newt relays food orders to his red-haired wife. Tootsie, who retains a high faith in beehive hairdos. The jukebox has fallen dumb, permitting the lawman to better sample a united community hostility among the oil-field workers and ranchers. It is one thing to retard the flow of alcoholic comforts in any one of Manhattan's countless aid stations -- or even one of Odessa's -- but it is quite a deeper sin to dry up the only watering hole in all of Loving County. Newt and Tootsie dispense approximately 50 cases of beer each week; a shutdown theoretically would meanly deprive every man, woman and child in the county of eight bottles or cans. Better Granville Lacy had come to town to poison the water, which leads on the believe that Sheriff Elgin "Punk" Jones -- who reported the infraction -- will have to pay for his nefarious deed.

When Newt Keen next passes within range, the liquor agent reads in a low monotone: ... did on the some-oddth day of August, 1971, in violation of section this, paragraph so-and-so...

Newt shuffles, pulls an ear, shoot concerned glances at Tootsie. She attends her griddle with jerky motions of anger, slapping hamburger patties with unusual vigor...nor sell, nor give, nor consume, nor allow to be consumed, any alcoholic beverage on said premise until.... Wearing the abashed grin of an erring schoolboy, Newt laboriously scratches his signature.

Newt's formal surrender seemingly reassures the lawman, who jovially says: "Now I got another complaint. You've got four beer signs outside, and you're not allowed but two."

"Four? I can't count but three."

"Naw, four. Your main sign counts as two. One for each side of the sign."

Newt, uncertain of the bureaucratic bogs, says, "Well, what's the big gripe?"

"Congestion."

Newt is mute and uncomprehending. This is happening to him in downtown Mentone -- population 44 -- where from any vantage point one can see for three days in all directions and still have nothing to tell. He gazes across all that empty territory until his eyes lock on a distant windmill. "Well," he finally drawls, "I sure would hat to cause any traffic jams." When the locals snigger over their well-catsuped home fries, the lawman reddens: "We've got no choice but to enforce the law. It's an old law the church folks got passed back in the '30s." He makes it out the door unaided by any understanding nods.

Before the lawman's dust departs, all the customers compete to damn the prying old government. Warren Burnett, a prominent Texas lawyer who has paused at the cafe in mid-passage to El Paso, offers to represent Newt for free should he wish to fight the suspension order: "We'll claim cruel and unusual punishment! A man could die of thirst out here. Hell, Newt, your place is more than a community center -- it's an outpost, by God, offering new beginnings and shelter against the elements...." 

"Do it, Newt." Tootsie said.

"Naw, I got to live with that old boy. Besides, this ain't his fault."

"Well," the lawyer said, "come next Monday it'll be a long hot path to beer. So whose fault is it?"

Newt drawls it out like Gunsmoke's Festus: "Accordin' to that batch of official papers, it's mine!" After the laughter abate, he says, "Aw, one night a while back we got to dancing and barking at the moon in here and, well, maybe we run a little past closing time. Mister, I been in this country since the sun wasn't no bigger than a orange and there wasn't no moon a-tall and windmills wasn't but waist-high, and I've learnt that when you can sell something out here -- you better not worry about what time it is."

Tootsie says: "That ain't the whole story."

"Well, okay, Mama. Awright, I was drinking nearly as much as I was selling and business wasn't too bad. The sheriff -- old Punk Jones -- he come in and caught me and snitched to the liquor board."

"You oughta run for sheriff yourself, Newt," one of the locals suggests.

"Naw sir." Newt says, "I ain't gonna say a mumblin' word against old Punk -- right on up to election day." Appreciating the laughter, he fishes in icy waters and pops himself a beer. "Punk, he don't have nothing to do but enforce the closing laws in this one little old place, and I sure wouldn't wanta interfere with law and order here in Loving County."

The dominant political strain in Loving County runs to an abiding conservatism. The natives -- well-off and poor alike -- reject anything smacking of charity, and so they regard federal aid as being no less poisonous than the ever-present rattlesnake. When a federal court instructed every county in Texas to participate in the Family Food Assistance Program for the poor, Loving County Judge W. T. "Bill" Winston said: "We don't need it, we don't want it, and we can't use it if we're force to take it." Snorting and jiggling his beer glass in Newt's and Tootsie's now, Judge Winston gloomily says, "They finally forced it on us. We've got nine people getting it -- seven in one family. And they're Mexicans." When the Department of Health Education and Welfare ordered the county to either racially integrate Mentone's 16-pupil school or lose its federal money. Judge Winston fired off a terse letter informing Washington that Loving County: (1) had no black residents; (2) had never received a dime's worth of federal school aid; and (3) didn't covet any.

Television has brought the problems of New York, Watts and Saigon to the attention of the neglected territory. Everybody worries about blacks or dope or crime or the Vietcong just as if they had some. Newt Keen no longer goes off and leaves his cafe doors unlocked to accommodate stray customers because "you can't tell when somebody might come over from Monahans or Pyote and clean you out." But the Mentone jail has not had a customer in seven years, and Loving County's crime wave last year consisted of a profitless burglary of the schoolhouse and the theft of several rolls of steel cable from an oil lease.

Ann Blair, a pretty young blond who works in the courthouse for her mother, County Clerk Edna Clayton, frets that the outside world may taint her two small children. "Let's face it, it's boring here for adults, but there's no better place to raise kids." says Ann, a graduate of Odessa Junior College. "We have a good family life. My fifth-grade boy has learned work and the value of a dollar. When I went off to college, I saw wild kids and all kinds of temptation. And it's so much worse now, with drugs and sex crimes."

Inconvenience is taken for granted. The nearest movie house, beauty shop, physician, lawyer, bank, weekly newspaper, cemetery or grocery store is from 55 to 90 round-trip miles away. Fifteen of 16 Mentone School pupils are bused in from six to 60 miles away. Sixth-graders and above are bused almost 80 round-trip miles to Wink.

Despite the riches of oil and gas under the earth, each Loving County family must provide its own bottled-gas system. And there is no public water supply. Water is hauled in a tank from Pecos at 50 cents per barrel. Even cattle balk at drinking the brackish product of the Pecos River, long ago polluted by potash interests in upstream New Mexico, a fact that, surprisingly, no one here rails against even though their forebears always raised hell at anything - fences, sheep herds, squatters -- infringing on their freedoms or presuming to prosper at their expense.

The land is stark and flat and treeless, altogether as bleak and spare as Russian literature, a great dry-docked ocean with small swells of hummocky tan sand dunes or humpbacked rocky knolls that change colors with the hour and the shadows: reddish brown, slate gray, bruise-colored. But it is the sky -- God-high and pale, like a blue chenille bedspread bleached by seasons in the sun -- that dominates. There is simply too much sky. Men grow small in its presence and -- perhaps feeling diminished -- they sometimes are compelled to proclaim themselves in wild or berserk ways. Alone in those remote voids, one may suddenly half-believe he is the last man on earth and go in frantic search of the tribe. "Desert fever," the natives call it.

And while the endless dry doomed land and eternal sky may bring on the fever, so, too, can the weather. The wind, persistent and unengageable for half the year, swooshes unencumbered from the northernmost Great Plains, howling, whining, singing off-key and covering everything with a maddening grainy down. Court records attest that during the windy seasons the natives are quicker to lift their voices, or their fists, or even their guns, in rage.

The summer sun is as merciless as a loan shark: a blinding, angry orange explosion baking the land's sparse grasses and quickly aging the skin. In winter there are nights to ache the bone, cold, stinging lashings of frozen rain. Yet ever the weather is not the worst natural enemy. Outside the industrial sprawl of the prairie's mini-cities -- on the occasional ranches or oil leases or in the flawed little country towns -- the great curse is boredom. Teenagers in the faded jeans and glistening ducktail hairstyles of another day wander in restless packs to the roller rink or circle root beer stands sounding their mating calls by a mighty revving of engines. Old men shuffle dominoes in the shade of service stations or feed stores. There is the television, of course, and the joys of small-town gossip -- and in season a weekly high school football game may be secretly considered more important than even Vacation Bible School. Newt Keen laments the passing of country socials where people reveled all night at one ranch house or another: "Now you got to go over to Pecos to them fightin' and dancin' clubs. But, you know, it ain't near as much fun to fight with strangers."

The young and the imaginative in Loving County are largely disaffected, strangers in Jerusalem. And those who can, move on when they can. Today's desert youths belong to a transitional generation. Born to an exhausted frontier where there are no more Dodge Citys to tame, no more wild rivers to ford, no more cattle trails to ride or oil booms to follow, theirs is a heritage beyond preserving. The last horseman has passed by, leaving only myths and fences. Industrialization has come and gone: having drilled and robbed the earth, the swaggering two-fisted oil boomer, heir apparent to the earlier cowboy or Indian fighter, has clattered off to the next feverish adventure, leaving behind sterile sophisticated pumps and gauges and storage tanks that automatically record their own dull technological accomplishments. Only the land remains, the high sky, the eerie isolation. The wind hums mocking tunes of loss and the jukeboxes echo it: "...Just call Lonesome-seven-seven-two-oh-three..." "I'd trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday...."

The songs are of rejection, disappointment, aborted opportunities...of finishing second. And the music is everywhere, incessantly jangling, the call of the lonely. Even many graybeards who have trimmed back their dreams -- if they ever had any -- cannot sit still unless the jukebox or radio is moaning to them of unrequited love, of the tricks of the wicked cities, of life's rough and rocky traveling. Few know that the music says more about them than they say of themselves.

The young sense the loss of a grander and more adventurous past. It is these -- the young and those who secretly know they never will be truly young again -- who prove most susceptible to fits of desert fever. And so they sometimes go lickety-split down the rural highways at speeds dizzy enough to confuse the ambidextrous, running like so many Rabbit Angstroms, leaving behind a trail of sad country songs, beer vapors and the echo of some feverish, senseless shout. Some may find themselves at dawn howling in the precincts of a long-forgotten girl friend, or tempting the dangers of the "fightin' and dancin' clubs." Some keep running: to the army or to a Fort Worth factory or maybe to exotic Kansas City. Others, their fevers cooled and with no place to go, drive back slowly -- a bit sheepishly -- to join the private chaos and public tediums of their lives.

Newt Keen's son Jack begins to boot-stomp across the wooden floor in a jukebox dance with a tall visiting airline hostess. Jack is dipping snuff and wearing an outsized silver belt buckle he has won riding bulls. Over the whines and thumps of the music he regrets that after next weekend he can't rise at a 4:30 each morning to cowboy on one of the area ranches because school is imminent. Jack does not appear to be real partial to school, where they take a dim view of 12-year old, 83-pound boys who appreciate snuff more than arithmetic. To somebody who first dipped at age 5, who slew his first snake at 7 and who is impatient to ramrod his own ranch, the arbitrary restrictions on scholars can be mighty vexing.

Tootsie worries about her son. "Till school takes up, Jack's the only kid in Mentone. The rest live on ranches or oil leases. All he's ever been around is adults and he don't get along real well with kids." Jack proves his mother right on the second day of school, decking another boy who has earned his disapproval. Jack's reward is three licks from the principal's paddle. "It stung," he admits, taking a pinch of Copenhagen from his personal tin. "I got to sign the paddle, though. You ain't allowed to sign is unless you been whupped with it."

"What'd you hit that boy for?" Tootsie demands.

Busy roping a cane-bottomed chair, Jack says, "Aw, he's about half silly."

"Yes, but what'd he do, look at you crosseyed? Jack, dammit, stop roping them chairs. This ain't no rodeo arena."

Disengaging his lariat, Jack says, "He put his hands on my book."

"Oh," Tootsie says, apparently mollified.

Newt is amused: "Jack despises school much as I do a rattlesnake. He swears he's gonna quit when he gits to sixth grade."

"Or the seventh," Jack says. "Maybe the eighth."

"Why, Jack," Newt says, "you're liable to wind up a full professor. What's got into you?"

The boy, vaguely embarrassed, tilts his western hat over his eyes: "Mr. Knott says sixth grade ain't enough anymore."

Charles Knott, 43, is the new schoolteacher in Mentone. When asked why in mid-career he has deserted El Paso's modern school system for the lesser ecstasies of Loving County, he says, "I like small towns. I had 30-odd kids to the class in El Paso, damn few of them Anglos. The kids here are eager. You take little Jack Keen. Now, he may wind up ranching and live here all his life. If he wants that -- well, fine. But he ought to have options. He ought to know that another life exists. You know, kids from small towns -- well, there just seems to be more to them. I grew up in a little old East Texas town -- one picture show and a one-gallus night watchman. And a higher percentage of the kids there made it than ever will make it in El Paso. They were more aware of themselves, aware of life. Maybe it's nurturing their isolation, having time to think things through. Whatever, I think small-town kids use more of their potential."

The next day, as school lets out, Tootsie is gazing through the shimmying heatwaves when suddenly she say, "My Lord, little Jack must be sick. Yonder he comes wagging his school books home with him." Apparently she doesn't realize that Jack may have a growing dream.

Day after day, as the suspension lengthens, the mood in Newt's and Tootsie's beerless free-enterprise cafe grows more and more subdued. Since the suspension, Sheriff Punk Jones -- who rose to his present eminence after serving as courthouse janitor -- has begun to hear rumors that a disgruntled Newt Keen might oppose him on the ballot after all. A good country politician who knows that a handful of votes might return a sheriff to mopping the courthouse, Punk Jones begins to stress the vast stores of bookwork attending his office; it is well known that Newt's painfully concocted customers' checks for chili or cheeseburgers require more translations that the Rosetta Stone.

In the cafe, customers are infrequent. Those who drop in jangle around aimlessly, some lamenting the lack of liquid comforts with the sorrow of one whose dog has died. Tootsie sits at a table near the soundless jukebox, making do with coffee. Abruptly, she says to her husband behind the counter, "Newt, what we doing in this fool cafe business anyhow?"

"Well, hon, I just plain tard of being governor, and the gold-mining business was boring me."

Irked, Tootsie helplessly shakes her head. Daring for once to question life's random assignments, her reward is another of Newt's drawling jokes. One has the impression she suddenly requires answers to questions that did not exist for her before. Something in the restless sweeping of her eyes hints that she has come on some new, if myopic, vision.

"We've made a living," Newt defends, walking over and putting a quarter in the jukebox.

"Yeah," Tootsie says, "I don't buy a whole lot of diamonds."
"Naw, Mama, but you don't live in some old line shack and cook for the range camp neither." They are silent while Willie Nelson sings of how "it's a Bloody Mary mornin' since baby left me without warnin' sometime in the night..." "Say," Newt says, "you remember when we was fresh married and lived in that old dirt-floor dugout?" Tootsie nods, smiling, he face softened by some special old memory. "Well, hon, I always wanted to ask you something about that: when you snuggled up so close to me that first winter, was it on account of you loved me so much or because you was scared of the rats?"

In a monotone as flat as sourdough biscuits, she says, "I was scared of the rats." They look at each other and laugh.

"All this will straighten out in a day or two," Newt promises, seeming to have missed the point of her question, her mood.

"Hail, we got more food business that we do beer sales."

He shuffles over and sits beside Tootsie who is stirring her mug of thick coffee at the table. The two of them gaze out the screen door at the lost frontier. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is moving on the ribbon-straight highway. They sit and stare, their faces in repose as melancholy as a plain old three-chord hurtin' country song, while Eddy Arnold croons to them of big bouquets of roses.

Something old and precious and a close kinsman to steel -- some abiding chemistry of hope and grit -- seems to have disappeared from the frontier blood. The men who shaped and settled this desolate waste relied on a fierce, near-savage independence coupled with a vision that made them feel captains of their own fate. That vigor, that vision, is gone now, as exhausted as the frontier itself.

It is sad to see people so tamed and hobbled and timid and dreamless in a land born wild. The descendants of the old breed may roar like wounded lions at distant menaces -- the pretensions of sociologists, the pious prattlings of politicians, the mod and the unfamiliar -- but they grapple ineffectually with their immediate concerns, their boredoms, small, mean jobs, polluted rivers and officious bureaucrats. In the old days, the people simply would not have tolerated the closing down of their only communal outpost: No, they would have told Punk Jones that they would drink when thirsty, by God, no matter the preferences of some chair-bound Austin bureaucrat with nothing better to do than sign suspension orders. This lethargic acceptance of fate's happenstance gifts, with no more than a shrug or a token grip, gives one the sense of being a visitor at a wake, of witnessing some final burial of the spirit, of watching people without purpose merely getting through another day. Frontiers were made for better uses.

Still, on does encounter qualities to admire and enjoy here. A withered rancher who will identify himself only as "Jesse" contentedly saws into one of Tootsie's steaks and says, "This country's soothin'. The country's close to you out here. You feel a kinship with it. It don't have no boundaries." Newt Keen says of his neighbors: "We come together like a family when there's trouble. You take over here in Kermit" -- he jerks a thumb toward the highway -- "this stranded family stopped at a church one Sunday to ask for a little food and gas money. All the got was a promise the congregation would pray for 'em. Well, they limped on over here. We supplied 'em a big box of groceries and took up a collection for gas."

There is little Jack Keen, who probably has spunk and survival instincts superior to most children and surely has more room to discover himself. Some essence of the pioneer woman's endurance survives in Tootsie. Newt is improbably cheerful in a time full of frowning; he at once preserves the old colloquialisms and speaks a native American poetry.

That much has survived, and must be clung to. But over the years, generation by generation, the resources and the spirit of Loving County have been dried up, and there is a lesson to be learned here. As in the nation as a whole, each generation spoke much and thought little of the future requirements of its heirs.

Hereafter, we must plan far better with far less."

----- Larry L. King, "The Last Boomer is Dead," Life magazine, March 10, 1972

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The Texas flag, the Lone Star flag, was not a Texas idea. In November, 1835, a mass meeting took place in Macon, Georgia. It was called to discuss aid for the Texans in their struggle against Mexico. More than three thousand dollars in cash was raised and plans were made for organizing a company of volunteers. One hundred and fifty Georgians enlisted in the company, under command of Colonel Fannin, later to become immortal in the massacre of Goliad.

Johanna Troutman, inspired by the Texas cause, sacrificed a beautiful silk skirt. She converted it into a flag, on which she sewed a single azure star, a Lone Star, since that time the political symbol of Texas. Over the star, she placed the words, "Liberty or Death." Below it was the Latin inscription, Ubi Libertas Hbaitat Ibi Patria ---- "Where Liberty Dwells There is My Country." The flag designed by Miss Troutman was presented to the company of Georgians. At Valasco, Texas, on January 8, 1836, they raised the first Lone Star flag. After Texas had won independence, the government of the Republic honored the designer of the flag by presenting her with a spoon and a fork of solid silver, that had belonged to Santa Anna, the defeated Mexican general. Later, the state of Texas further paid homage to the memory of Miss Troutman by arranging to move her body from Georgia to the state cemetery in Austin. Her remains now rest in peace in a place of honor, close to those of Stephen F. Austin."

------- from "Saddle in the Sky" by J.H. Plenn, 1940

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 12th
The Revolution Continues...…..*

*Mexican forces under Santa Anna capture key Brazos crossing* 

On this day in 1836, Mexican forces under General Santa Anna captured Thompson's Ferry, on the Brazos River between San Felipe and Fort Bend. As Sam Houston's army retreated eastward, a rear-guard under Moseley Baker at San Felipe and Wyly Martin at Fort Bend sought to prevent the Mexicans from crossing the Brazos. At Thompson's Ferry on April 12, Mexican colonel Juan N. Almonte hailed the ferryman, who was on the east bank. Probably thinking that Almonte was a countryman who had been left behind during the retreat, the ferryman poled the ferry across to the west bank. Santa Anna and his staff, who had been hiding in nearby bushes, sprang out and captured the ferry. By this means the Mexican Centralists accomplished a bloodless crossing of the Brazos, which they completed by April 14. The Texan forces at Fort Bend and San Felipe were forced to abandon their defenses and join the rest of Houston's army in retreat. The Texans did not turn on their pursuers until April 21, when they destroyed Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto.

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## Eric Rorabaugh

I looked and in a little over 2 months, this thread has been going for 3 years. Ain't that long enough for the Texans to brag?!

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## Wildthings

3 years!! wow that means we're just getting started!!

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## Eric Rorabaugh




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## Tony

Eric Rorabaugh said:


> I looked and in a little over 2 months, this thread has been going for 3 years. Ain't that long enough for the Texans to brag?!




Be careful Eric..

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## woodman6415

Eric Rorabaugh said:


> I looked and in a little over 2 months, this thread has been going for 3 years. Ain't that long enough for the Texans to brag?!



Jealous much ?

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## Eric Rorabaugh

Just can't figure it out. Is it an inferiority complex or what that Texans have to talk themselves up so much?

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Most of y'all probably remember the "Miracle on the Hudson" about 10 years ago when, on January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, struck a flock of Canada geese just northeast of the George Washington Bridge and consequently lost all engine power. Unable to reach any airport, pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles glided the plane to a ditching in the Hudson River off midtown Manhattan. All 155 people aboard were rescued by nearby boats and there were few serious injuries. Anyway, what many Texans do not realize is that "Sully" is a Texan, having been born and raised in Denison, where he graduated from Denison high school in 1969. I mentioned the fact that "Sully" is a Texan to my friend Thomas and Thomas just said, "Well what else would he be?

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

In the 1870s, French vinyards were completely destroyed by a plant louse called phylloxera. Thomas Munson, a botanist in Denison, Texas, had been working to develop phylloxera-resistant grapes using native Texas mustang grape rootstock. The French wine industry, learning of Munson's expertise, requested that he send to France a whole mess of that Texas mustang-grape rootstock that he had developed during his studies. He shipped the rootstock to France, where it was grafted with varieties of European vinifera. Munson's work saved the French wine industry from total devastation. Current French grape vines are descendants of the grapevines that Munson shipped, which is why my friend Thomas calls French wine "Texas wine with French labels."

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"A guy named Joe Smith, from Muleshoe, Texas, claimed to know everybody, and a big Texas oilman challenged him when Joe says he knows the governor of Texas. The bet is on, and the oilman flies with Joe to Austin and the governor’s office. Joe tells the secretary he would like to have a word with the governor, and in a moment the governor rushes out and embraces Joe and pats him effusively on the back, and they jaw a little and Joe proves his point.

The oilman says, 'Well, I bet you don’t know the President of the United States' and Joe claims he does, so another bet is made. They fly to Washington, and when the word is passed to the President, he comes out and Joe greets him by his first name, and the President responds, indeed, as if Joe is an old personal friend.

The oilman is frustrated and says he is sure Joe does not know the Pope, but, of course, Joe says he does indeed know the Pope, calling him by his first name. So off they fly, in the oilman’s plane, to Rome and the Vatican. When they arrive, there is a huge crowd in the square before the Pope’s palace. Joe instructs the oilman to wait there while he goes to see his old pal. Pretty soon, the Pope comes out on the balcony, waving to the crowd, and there beside him is Joe, with his arm around the Pope. Suspicious, the oilman stops a street sweeper in the crowd and asks him if the man dressed in white is really the Pope.

"'I don’t know,' comes the reply, 'but the guy with him is Joe Smith from Muleshoe, Texas.'

----- Old joke that I've heard a million times, told to me again last night at my favorite watering hole

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

Bonus Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats at the Bracken Cave outside of San Antonio eat 147 tons of insects each night. That cave is the largest concentration of mammals in the world.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Traces of Texas
> 
> Bonus Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> The 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats at the Bracken Cave outside of San Antonio eat 147 tons of insects each night. That cave is the largest concentration of mammals in the world.



It's an incredible sight!


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> It's an incredible sight!


as is the ones in Rocksprings, Alamo Springs and the Waugh Drive Bridge in Houston

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## woodman6415

My hometown 

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The first irrigated farm in West Texas was Bismarck Farm, established by Jake Marshall in 1868, three miles south of Fort Concho on the South Concho River in what is now San Angelo. While I have you, I should note that before San Angelo became San Angelo it was called "Santa Angela" and, before that, "Over the River." I kind of wish they'd have kept the name "Over the River" because Over the River, Texas, has a very nice ring to it.

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## Wildthings

*At four o'clock one April afternoon* in 1836, some 900 men, unwashed, underfed, caked with mud and dressed in rags, began a slow walk through knee-high grass.

A half hour later they crested a low hill. What they did in the next eighteen minutes made our world possible. 

These were the Soldiers of San Jacinto.

They were the most dangerous group of men ever gathered on Texas soil. Not because they were born fighters. These were farmers, lawyers, and shopkeepers.

But they had been pushed to the edge, run from their homes, their crops and houses burned. They did not know if their families where safe. They had lost close friends and family at the Alamo and Goliad. They were set for blood and had nothing to lose.

The Texian victory at the Battle of San Jacinto changed the entire world.

That's no hyperbole. Without the deeds of the men who fought there, we would have no states of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada or Colorado. Take away those eighteen minutes and there would be no superpower on the American continent

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## Gdurfey

On April 21st, on the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, Aggies gather together wherever they are to commemorate fellow Aggies who have died the previous year. The Aggies will call the roll and a friend will answer “here”........ Aggie Muster...... the most famous being on Corregidor, just weeks before it fell to the Japanese......

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- April 21st*


*Texas forces win at San Jacinto* 

On this day in 1836, Texas forces won the battle of San Jacinto, the concluding military event of the Texas Revolution. Facing General Santa Anna's Mexican army of some 1,200 men encamped in what is now southeastern Harris County, General Sam Houston disposed his forces in battle order about 3:30 p.m., during siesta time. The Texans' movements were screened by trees and the rising ground, and evidently Santa Anna had no lookouts posted. The Texan line sprang forward on the run with the cries "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Goliad!" The battle lasted but eighteen minutes. According to Houston's official report, the casualties were 630 Mexicans killed and 730 taken prisoner. Against this, only nine of the 910 Texans were killed or mortally wounded and thirty were wounded less seriously.


*Legendary lawman joins the Texas Rangers* 

On this day in 1906, Frank Hamer enlisted in the Texas Rangers. Hamer, born in Fairview in 1884, was recommended for a position with the Rangers after capturing a horse thief while working as a cowboy in 1905. In 1908 he resigned from the force to become marshal of Navasota and then a special officer in Harris County. He rejoined the Rangers in 1915 and patrolled the South Texas border from the Big Bend to Brownsville. He was criticized for his use of force, and legislator José T. Canales accused Hamer of threatening him in 1918. In 1934 Hamer became a special investigator for the Texas prison system and was assigned to track down outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. After a three-month search, he and his men shot and killed them near Gibsland, Louisiana. Congress awarded Hamer a special citation for stopping the pair. Hamer retired in 1949 and lived in Austin until his death in 1955.


*First internees arrive at Kenedy Alien Detention Camp* 

On this day in 1942, the first group of internees--456 Germans, 156 Japanese, and 14 Italians--arrived at the Kenedy Alien Detention Camp on the outskirts of Kenedy, Texas. The United States Border Patrol had entered into an agreement to lease a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The lease was made for the purpose of establishing an internment camp for aliens from the United States and Latin America who were considered dangerous to the public safety. At the outset of World War II, when conditions were bleak for the Allies, the U.S. undertook to protect its national interests by entering into agreement with Latin-American countries to arrest and intern all resident aliens or citizens of German, Japanese, or Italian descent who could possibly aid the Axis war effort. From the time the Kenedy Camp received its first internees until it was converted into a prisoner of war camp on October 1, 1944, more than 3,500 aliens passed through its gates.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

Y'all are not going to believe the Texas Quote of the Day, written in an 1883 article in the San Antonio Express newspaper:

"Colonel Albert C. Pelton, whose beautiful twenty thousand acre ranch is out toward the Rio Grande, near Laredo, has been the "Peter the Hermit" of Texas for years. He has believed that he held a divine commission to kill Apache Indians. Colonel Pelton came to Texas in 1844, a common soldier. By talent and courage, he rose to the rank of colonel. Finally, in 1867, he commanded Fort McRae. That year he fell in love with a beautiful Spanish girl near Albequin, New Mexico. Her parents were wealthy and would not consent to their daughter going away from all her friends to live in a garrison... But after two years of courtesy and devotion, Colonel Pelton won the consent of the beautiful Spanish girl and they were married. 

Then commenced a honeymoon such as only lovers shut up in a beautiful flower-environed fort can have. The lovely character of the beautiful bride won the hearts of all the soldiers of the fort, and she reigned a queen among the rough frontiersmen. One day, when the love of the soldier and his lovely wife was at its severest, the two, accompanied by the young wife's mother and twenty soldiers, rode out to the hot springs, six miles from the fort, to take a bath. While in the bath, which is near the Rio Grande, a shower of Indian arrows fell around them, and a band of Apache Indians rushed down upon them. Several of the soldiers fell dead, pierced with poisoned arrows. This frightened the rest, who fled. Another shower of arrows and the beautiful bride and her mother fell in the water, pierced by the cruel shafts of the Apache. With his wife dying before his eyes, Colonel Pelton leaped upon the bank, grabbed his rifle and killed the [Apache] leader. But the Apaches were too much [and he] was pierced with two poisoned arrows, so he swam the river and hid under a ledge. After the Apaches left, the Colonel made his way to Fort McRae. Here his wounds were dressed and he finally recovered, but only to live a blasted life without love, without hope, with a vision of his beautiful wife dying perpetually before his eyes.

After the death of his wife a change came over Colonel Pelton. He seemed to think that he had a sacred mission from heaven to avenge his young wife's death. He was always anxious to lead any and all expeditions against the Apaches. Whenever any of the other Indians were at war with the Apaches, Colonel Pelton would soon be at the head of the former. He defied the Indian arrows and courted death. 

Once, with a band of the wildest desperadoes, he penetrated a hundred miles into Apache country [and] the Apaches fled, leaving their women and children behind. It was then that there darted out of a lodge a white woman. 'Spare the women,' she cried, and then fainted to the ground. When the Colonel jumped from the saddle to lift up the woman, he found that she was blind. 'How came you here, woman, with these d___d Apaches?' he asked. 'I was wounded and captured,' she said, 'ten years ago. Take, oh take, me back again.' 'Have you any relatives in Texas?' asked the Colonel. 'No; my father lives in Albequin. My husband, Colonel Pelton, and my mother, were killed by the Indians.' 'Great God, Bella! Is it you, my wife?' 'Oh, Albert, I knew you would come!' exclaimed the poor wife, blindly reaching her hands to grasp her husband. Of course, there was joy in the old ranch when Colonel Pelton got back with his wife. The Apaches had carried the woman away with them. The poison caused inflammation, which finally destroyed her eyesight." 

----- San Antonio Daily Express, January 25, 1883

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day finds old cowboy J.F. Harrell describing a visit to Fort Worth in 1884:

"We stayed in Fort Worth a few days. This was grand after having been on the road about four weeks. Fort Worth was really a boom town [with] a new rail road, street shows of every description and people of every kind, cattlemen, horse traders, bone haulers, gamblers and fakers of every conceivable nature. The town at night resembled some noted seashore pavilion. The streets and sidewalks were jammed. There were amusements of almost every description and everywhere. It seemed that every other door on either side was aglow and the music was mostly from fiddles and organs. There were not many violinists but many fiddlers, dance halls, saloons, shooting galleries and on the street, soap box orators and an occasional street preacher.

During the day, it was horse trading, cattle selling and conversations which usually included where was the best place to locate or where are you from and to what part of the state are you going. There were big herds of cattle from the west, for this was a big shipping point. Men with four to six horse wagons loaded with bones, others with horns and still others with only cowhides for sale. Many of the hides were so green or fresh, one could whiff the odor from them for several blocks. One might wonder where so many bones hides and horns could have been collected. If you could have made a trip across Western Texas during early spring at that time, you could have easily seen. As cattle wintered themselves on the dried grass, they were always poor by spring and as soon as the new grass began shooting up they would quit eating the dried grass and [with] the difficulty of trying to get enough of the young, tender green grass, they lost flesh and many of them would become so poor and weak, they would find themselves too weak to rise and after a few days would die of hunger. At this time, one riding over the country would scarcely ever be out of sight of a carcass. 

Cowhides sold at about $1.00 per hide. Many people made their living by riding the distant range and skinning dead cattle for their hides and no doubt in many instances, where it was seen that the cow could not regain her strength, she was killed and skinned and nothing further said about the matter."

----- J.F. Harrell, 1934

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## Tony



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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Denton, June 22 ---- This afternoon Mrs. Leona Lyles, wife of a prominent business man of this city, accosted W.B. Roberts at Ball and Poe's livery stables. She told him he had been slandering her and asked him to sign a libel, which he refused to do. She persisted in her request, telling him at the same time, that if he did not sign it he would regret it. He again refused, whereupon she drew a revolver and shot him five times. Each shot took effect --- two in his neck, breaking it, and one in the head. Either of these three shots was fatal. The other two shots entered his shoulder. Roberts died in a few minutes. Mrs. Lyles, after snapping several times upon empty cartridges, walked quietly from the scene and surrendered to the sheriff.

Roberts leaves a wife and two children. He was formerly sheriff of this county and stood high. Mrs. Lyles has a husband and two children. The shooting was incited by Roberts making statements that he had been intimate with Mrs. Lyles, which the woman pronounced to be false at the muzzle of a revolver. The coroners jury rendered a verdict in accordance with the facts. Public sympathy is with the woman."

------- Austin Weekly Statesman, June 24, 1886

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## woodman6415



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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day finds an old Texas trail driver describing a meeting with alien creatures in Kansas:

"We gave several camp dinners for them [rural Kansas settlers]. They would come in their wagons, the girls and all the families. Our cook would outdo himself in getting up all kinds of camp dishes. Our boys would do all kinds of stunts, riding bronco horses and roping, which interested and amused the people. At first they seemed to think we were a bunch of Arabs or outlaws. It was my first contact with real Yankee people, and to my surprise, they seemed just about like other people." 

------ Old Chisholm trail driver A. G. Mills, writing his personal memoirs in "Frontier Times" magazine, 1933

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

This awesome photo shows Dick "Night Train" Lane intercepting a pass as a rookie defensive back for the Los Angeles Rams in 1952. Night Train was born in Austin, Texas, in 1928. His mother was a prostitute and his father was a pimp. When he was three months old, he was abandoned by his birth parents. He was found in a dumpster. Night Train later recalled, "My father was called Texas Slim. I never saw him - I don't know if he's the one that told my mother to throw me away. A pimp told my mother I had to go. They put me in a trash can and took off. Some people heard me crying. They thought it was a cat."

Lane was adopted and raised by Ella Lane, who also had four other children. As a youth in Austin, Lane grew up poor, busing tables at local hotels and shining shoes on Congress Avenue. He also helped his mother with a laundry business she ran out of the home. Lane became known as "Cue Ball" and later recalled how he acquired the nickname: "I was in a pool hall in 12th street. We were playing for money, maybe a dime. As soon as I made the eight ball, the other guy took off running. He didn't want to pay. I grabbed that cue ball and just as he made the corner I threw it and hit him upside the head. The guy didn't know what had hit him."

Night Train went to high school at Anderson High in Austin. After graduating from high school, Lane lived for a time in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with his birth mother, Johnnie Mae King. She had visited during Lane's youth, and the two reconciled. His mother and a man had opened a tavern in Council Bluffs. While in Council Bluffs, a baseball scout signed Lane, and he played for a time with the Omaha Rockets, a farm team for the Kansas City Monarchs. 

In the fall of 1947, Lane enrolled at Scottsbluff Junior College in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. He played one season of college football at Scottsbluff. He was the only African American player on the team, and a clipping from the college newspaper noted, "He is outstanding for his vicious tackles, hard running and pass snatching." He then served in the U.S. Army for four years, getting honorably discharged in 1952. After that, he got a job building airplanes at a plant in Los Angeles.

While working at the aircraft plant, Night Train Lane passed the Los Angeles Rams offices on his bus ride to work. He walked into the office with a scrapbook of clippings in 1952 and asked for a tryout. He was recommended to the Rams by Gabby Sims and signed as a free agent. Lane initially tried out as a receiver, the position he had played at Fort Ord, but was switched to a defensive back by the Rams. In the Rams' first scrimmage on August 3, 1952, Lane drew praise as "the outstanding player in the scrimmage by a country mile" due to his "ferocious" approach to the game and his speed in chasing down Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch. After the scrimmage, Rams head coach Joe Stydahar said, "Lane came out here to make the ball club. Well, last night he got himself a job. 

Lane acquired the nickname "Night Train" during his first training camp with the Rams. Teammate Tom Fears had a record player in his room and frequently played the record, "Night Train", by Jimmy Forrest. The record was released in March 1952 and was the #1 R&B hit for seven weeks. According to an account published by the Los Angeles Times in August 1952, "Whenever Fears plays it Lane can be found in the hall outside Tom's room dancing to the music." Night Train was initially uncomfortable with the racial implication of the nickname, which had been bestowed on him by his white teammates, but he embraced it after a newspaper reported on his performance against Washington Redskins star Choo Choo Justice with the headline, "Night Train Derails Choo Choo".

As a rookie in 1952, Lane had 14 interceptions, a mark that remains an NFL record more than 65 years later. He played in the Pro Bowl seven times and was selected as a first-team All-NFL player seven times between 1956 and 1963. His 68 career interceptions ranked second in NFL history at the time of his retirement and still ranks fourth in NFL history. He was also known as one of the most ferocious tacklers in NFL history and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1974. He was also named to the NFL's all-time All-Pro team in 1969 and its 75th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1994. In 1999, he was ranked number 20 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. 

He had gone from being an unwanted baby to one of the greatest football players of all time and he had, in my opinion, the best nickname ever given to anybody in the history of football. Due to reduced mobility from diabetes and knee injuries, he spent the last two years of his life at the Five Star Assisted Living facility in North Austin. He died there from a heart attack in January 2002 at age 73, after playing dominoes and while listening to jazz in his room. His family believed that he also suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) brought on by football-related Injuries.

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## woodman6415

The very reason I retired in the Hill Country 

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day is an eloquent paean to Christmas and family in The Hill Country:

"When I return home during the Christmas season, I usually spend the first day just standing around in rooms. I peel tangerines while my mother talks about the hometown goings-on; I stare at the same family photographs I have been looking at in the bedroom for the past thirty years; I lean against the fireplace mantel and shell pecans. After dark I stand in the kitchen talking to my father, home from work at his feed store, and having perhaps my sixth or seventh cup of coffee of the day as I listen to my father's often-told tales. But on the second day I excuse myself from the house about noon and get into the car and take my traditional half-day drive: my simple-minded but satisfying tour through hills and trees and river places. I prepare myself, of course: I select a paperback or two from the grocery bag of books I had put in the trunk for Christmas reading; I stop at a 7-Eleven for a Lone Star and Fritos; and then I ease on down the road toward Medina, the first of the small hill country towns on my itinerary. 

It is a rewarding thing to do, this slow driving along the highway. I munch a Frito, gaze benevolently at the barbed wire of a rancher's fence, thinking of .... damn, just about everything. My thoughts freewheel nicely on that curving farm-to-market road. I notice, I welcome, the steady yellow lines down the center, the silvery shine of metal sign poles, the continuous fence-line posts, the white caliche roads that lead off to hunting cabins and farms. I coast through the mellow browns of winter grasses, pastures, hills while the sun covers the land like the bright fur of a hibernating animal. Cedars stand along the roadside like friendly country cousins. Midday shadows lie intimately across the road: beguiling, weightless pools. I feel almost sinfully pleased by such an agreeable home territory. I turn each curve knowing that I can come again in any season and drive along these same roads, gaze into these same fields. I look out my window and I smile: this is my place of worship, my personal museum of art.

In Bandera I go into Hilbrunner's Drug Store and head for the snug little Christmas corner behind the pharmacy's small counter: three tables, men drinking coffee. I sit at the counter and have hot tea. A rancher sitting next to me is wearing a new leather jacket, new Stetson, thick glasses. I drink my tea and look secretly at the mystery of his large old rancher ears, the red broke veins in the rancher nose. \

In Camp Verde I buy a bag of peanuts and another beer and stop for a look at Verde Creek. I get out, walk beneath the trees. Birds are moving slowly through the cypresses, not singing, flapping their wings heavily: cardinals, woodpeckers, robins down south for the winter. There is no wind, just sunlight coming strongly in an afternoon slant, the clean smell of the creek. Back in the car I pick up Brighton Rock and read a little. In Center Point, just about dusk, in clear Wyeth-light, I park beside an unplanted field. Beyond the field, several children are still out, idling away the last moments before dark. 

But the light, the light. It is ordinary for the hill country, for December, yet as I stand there beside the wire fence, with a windmill rising behind the field, with red and green Christmas bulbs strung around the side windows of nearby houses, with unpaved streets wandering off into the countryside, such light is almost like a voice, a soundless, continuous speaking from the sun-haloed oaks. Darkness comes; the land shuts down. I drive back toward home, sated, having feasted on cattle guards, creeks, pecan trees, earth." 

----- Elroy Bode, "This Favored Place," 1983. This book is a sensitive meditation on life and values and The Hill Country and comes highly recommended.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Houston is so large that Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Detroit could fit inside it ----- simultaneously.

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## woodman6415

Traces of Texas 

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The St. Leonard Hotel [in San Antonio] is much frequented by Texas ranchmen, some of whom are not very refined in their habits. On the staircase, at the time of my visit, a notice was displayed requesting, 'Gentlemen not to spit on the floors, walls or ceilings;', and the request was by no means unnecessary."

----- Mary Jaques, "Texas Ranch Life," 1894

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- May 3rd*

*The Sea of Mud (1836 Texas History)* 
On this day 183 years ago, the main part of the retreating Mexican army struggled through an "endless sea of mud" on the Lissie prairie. 

General Santa Anna, wanting to move fast to catch Sam Houston, had taken about 900 of his best soldiers to San Jacinto leaving several thousand to follow. When the following forces under General Filisola and Urrea got word of the defeat at San Jacinto, they planned to move West across the Colorado River and await orders from the Mexican government. In their view, the capture or death of Santa Anna did not mean an end to the conflict.

Almost 4000 Mexican soldiers and camp followers left Madam Powell's Tavern (near present day Kendleton) on the morning of April 26th. As soon as they crossed the San Bernard River the rains came. Heavy pouring rain that hardly let up for almost two days. Trapped between the Middle and West Bernard Rivers in "El Mar de Lodo" (a sea of mud), the withdrawing Mexican forces left behind wagons, artillery, and many other items in the knee to waist deep mud.

Slogging their way North, they finally reached the Atascocita crossing (present day Columbus) on May 9th...exhausted, sick, and with most of their weapons lost or ruined. 

The Battle of San Jacinto was a decisive victory for the Texans, but Mother Nature had put the final nails in the coffin of the Mexican forces. 

Artifacts from the Sea of Mud are currently on display at San Felipe de Austin State Historic Museum.

http://www.sealynews.com/stories/sea-of-mud,81247

Most of the research and artifact recovery of this significant event of the Texas Revolution is due to the efforts of Greg Dimmick, a pediatrician from Wharton....

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "On the day of battle I am glad to have Texas soldiers with me for they are brave and gallant, but I never want to see them before or after, because they are too hard to control." ----- General Zachary Taylor during the war with Mexico, September, 1846

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## woodman6415

In order to understand the Texas Quote of the Day, you need to know that a regiment of Texas Rangers commanded by Jack Hays fought in the War with Mexico in 1847. The Rangers took great pride in not being confused with regular soldiers. Per a Frontier Times magazine article, here's how two newspaper correspondents described the Rangers' arrival in Mexico City:

'1. 'There arrived here recently the greatest American curiosities that have as yet entered the City of the Aztecs They were the observed of all observers, and excited as much lively interest as if President Polk and the American Congress had suddenly set themselves down in front of the Palace, to organize a government and laws for the people of this blighted land. Crowds of men flocked to see them (however always keeping at a respectful distance) and women, affrighted, rushed from the balconies of their houses. Perhaps you would like to know whom these terrific beings are. Why, they are nothing more or less than Jack Hays and his Texas Rangers, with their old-fashioned maple stock rifles lying across their saddles, the butts of two large pistols sticking out of the holsters, and a pair of Colt's six-shooters belted around their waists, making only fifteen shots to the man. .. "The Mexicans believe them to be a sort of semi-civilized, half man, half devil, with a slight mixture of lion and the snapping turtle, and have a more holy horror of them than they have of the evil saint himself. We have several times been asked by some of the inhabitants if the Texans will be allowed to go into the streets, without a guard over them. It is really surprising that men with such a reputation should be among the very best disciplined troops in our army, and not disposed to commit outrages or create disturbances in any way." 

2. "They rode, some sideways, some upright, some by the reverse flank, some faced to the rear, some on horses, some on asses, some on mustangs, some on mules. On they came, rag, tag and bobtail, pellmell, helterskelter; the head of one covered with a slouched hat, that of another with a tower cocked hat, a third bareheaded, while twenty others had caps made of the skins of every variety of wild and tame beasts: the dog, the cat, the bear, the coon, the wild cat, and many others, had for this purpose all fallen sacrifice, and each cap had a tail hanging to it, and the very tail, too, I am keen to swear, that belonged to the original owner of the hide. "A nobler set of fellows than those same Texan tatterdemalions never unsheathed a sword in their country's cause, or offered up their lives on their country's altar. Young, vigorous, kind, generous, and brave, they purposely dressed themselves in this garb, to prove to the world at a glance that they were neither regulars nor volunteers, but Texas Rangers, as free and unrestrained as the air they breathe, or the deer in their own wild woods." 

------ Frontier Times Magazine, March, 1927. I have to say that I LOVE the words "affrighted" and "tatterdemalions" and shall endeavor post haste to add them to my daily conversation!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"It was high noon in the town of Ogalalla, Nebraska, the 6th day of August, 1877. A.I. (Babe) Moye and a dozen more Texas cowboys were seated at a table in a restaurant enjoying the noon meal. It was while the party were engaged with their meal that there sauntered into the room a man by the name of Bill Campbell. Campbell hung his hat on a nail, spoke to some of the boys he knew, and later made an uncomplimentary remark about a dish the party was eating sauerkraut. Hardly had he finished his remark than it was excepted to by Babe Moye, and in a manner that could leave no doubt in mind of anyone but what he meant what he said. Moye's remarks brought forth a sharp retort from Campbell, with the final result that it was agreed they would meet over at the saloon across the street and shoot it out after they finished the meal. By a strange coincidence neither Campbell or Moye was armed at the time, otherwise the quarrel would have been settled then and there. 

Moye soon walked out of the restaurant, going across the street to the hotel, where his brother, Andy, Monroe Hinton, Capt. Gosman, and W.G. Butler, were seated at a table figuring up some final details of a cattle sale. Babe Moye came in very abruptly and called for a pistol, and from his actions, his friends knew trouble was brewing. No one offered to let Moye have a pistol and he whirled around and walked out, followed by Andy [and the other men]. Babe Moye walked straight across the street and entered the rear door of the saloon. He walked boldly up to Campbell and without a word slapped Campbell in the breast with his left hand. Campbell immediately drew his pistol and [fired] at Moye. Andy Moye, a witness to what was going on, and thinking Campbell had shot his brother, suddenly jerked his pistol and fired before Campbell could shoot again. His aim was perfect and the ball entered Campbell's breast, a death shot. Both men then advanced on each other, shooting as they approached. Finally Andy Moye and Campbell clinched and continued shooting until both pistols were empty, and the latter crumbled on the floor stone dead, and with five bullet wounds through his body. 

When the smoke of the battle cleared away, Monroe Hinton was found to have two bullet wounds, one through his body and one through his leg. Campbell was dead and W.G. Butler had been struck in the thigh by a stray bullet. Capt. Gosman's life was saved by a watch he carried in his vest pocket... Andy was never indicted for the killing of Campbell, as it was considered that he had shot Campbell believing that Campbell had shot his brother and was acting in the defense of his brother's life."

------ article in The Kenedy, Texas, "Advance," September 2, 1926

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## Gdurfey

....wonder if that Campbell is a relation to me; early settlers up in the panhandle on Buck Creek and the Red; near present day Wellington and Childress (Loco). Inquiring minds want to know..........

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1878 and is a good one!

"On his return from San Antonio to Cove Hollow, on or about the 20th of December, 1877, Sam Bass and his gang conceived the plan of robbing the stage running from Fort Worth to Cleburne, Texas. They took their positions on the roadside, about ten miles from Fort Worth, and awaited the approach of the stage, which reached that point late in the evening, bearing two passengers. They threw their guns on the driver and ordered him to throw up his "props" [slang for "hands"], which he did promptly. They then called to the passengers to come forth and hold up their hands, while Bass examined their finances. The others held their guns on the victims, while Sam proceeded very coolly through their pockets. The results of his search was only eleven dollars. After some complaint about the meager state of the purses, and giving it as their opinion that there ought to be a law to prohibit such poor trash from traveling on the highway... ...

[A]bout the middle of February [Bass decided to rob] the stage running between Fort Worth and Weatherford. Passing the former place, they proceeded to look for a suitable spot for their operations, which they found at a gulch near Mary's Creek, about midway between Marysville and Fort Worth. They tied their horses, and masking themselves, they laid in wait by the roadside. In due time the stage came up, having on board three passengers. They presented their guns on the driver, saying they wanted some money. Bass called for the passengers to step out, which was promptly obeyed. No resistance was offered, and Bass went through them as usual, getting about $70 in money and three watches. This gave Bass considerable encouragement. He remarked, with evident satisfaction, "Well, this is the best haul I ever made out of a stage, and I've tapped nine of 'em so far. There's mighty poor pay in stages, generally, though." 

----- The Authentic History of Sam Bass and His Gang, Monitor Book and Job Printing Establishment, Denton, Texas, 1878

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## woodman6415

One of our favorite places to visit ..
Last year rode the bike 

How to get to Big Bend from Fort Davis:

"You go south from Fort Davis 
Until you come to the place 
Where rainbows wait for rain.... 
And the river is kept in a stone box 
And water runs uphill. 
And the mountains float in the air. 
Except at night, 
When they run away to play 
With other mountains." 

Directions from an old vaquero, as told to Dallas journalist Frank Tolbert. One of my own photos.
Traces of Texas

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## Wildthings

Great Photo, Wendell. Never been there but planning to go sometime


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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Great Photo, Wendell. Never been there but planning to go sometime


It is a great photo .. wish it was mine 
The guy that has the Traces of Texas page on Facebook travels all over Texas taking pictures .... you should go to big bend ... it’s a beautiful place ... spring and fall are the best times ... it gets really warm in summer

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## woodman6415

Have been to the springs many times .. still run clear 

Traces of Texas 
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The trail from Boquillas, Coahuila north into the United States [Big Bend] has been in use since Indian times. There have been many horse thieves, soldiers and outlaws, both American and Mexican, that have used it since back in the '80s. The Indians used it centuries before that. I have followed the tracks of stolen cattle and horses that were taken down the trail. Some of them I caught, some got across the Rio Grande into Mexico. McKinney Springs, the only water on the trail for over 60 miles, still runs clear and cold. The deer, panther, bobcats, javelina, coyotes and blue quail still water there, as they have for thousands of years. I have laid down on my belly on top of their tracks and drank the cold water countless times. Many a time, I have rolled out of my bedroll and spent the night in absolute solitude with no sound except [my horse] ''Old Red" eating the bunch grass, and now and then, a coyote barking. 

The drumming of the blue quail will wake you up at daylight, and occasionally a panther coming in for water will cause a little disturbance if you have hobbled your horse too close to the water. I don't know of any place on earth where the air is cleaner and the moon shines brighter than the McKinney Mountain area in Big Bend National Park. I don't blame the Indians for fighting for country like that. If I owned it, I would be damn hard to root out of there. There are graves beside the trail that attest to the fact that all that rode over it didn't make it. But I don't know of a better place to roost now. I like the sound of the desert wind, the sounds of the wildlife, and I like to hear the owls hoot."

----- C.M. "Buck" Newsome, retired border patrolman, "Shod With Iron," 1975

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I was just turning my sixth year when I had my first biscuits. It's a fact, and I was lucky to get 'em then for flour was not in general use until I was about 20. People all raised little patches of corn and bread made from that was all we had. Father took a trail herd up the year I was 6 and when he delivered it and collected the money he spent some of it for a wagon and flour enough to load it to the full. When he drove home with all that flour it was some sight. All of the neighbors came to see and share in it; for of course he let them have their part. I'll never forget it if I live to 100, how anxious I was to taste bread made of that white soft flour. Nor how good those first biscuits were. We saved every tiny crumb, for corn bread had never been plentiful enough to waste and biscuits were on a basis with cake those days. 

I was 16 years old before I had a pair of shoes that I could actually wear all the time. Rawhide was our only shoe material and all you could say for it was the hair was taken off. Talk about hard, dry, stiff, unbendable leather ------ that rawhide had the world beat and a mile to go on. If they were big enough to avoid all this trouble you couldn't walk in them, especially hunting, and we just had to hunt, for it was no trick at all to kill a big buck deer or antelope, a buffalo or all the wild turkey we could carry. And it was too much fun to give up just to wear shoes. A fellow with a grain of sense would rather trust to the calluses on his soles than to risk losing a shot and rubbing blisters on his feet with those rawhide hobbles. I might say honestly that I never did have any real shoe or boot comfort until I got my first pair of high-heeled, high-topped, hand-made cowboy boots. I still wear that kind, too, and always will for they are as much a part of me and every other open-range cowpuncher as his leather leggings, spurs and broad-brimmed hat." 

----- Cowboy/rancher Jim Rose, quoted in the Dallas SemiWeekly Farm News, April 8, 1927

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The mesquite is an erratic tree. Instead of seeking the sky and competing with its neighbors for height, it crawls and wallows in the sand. Its trunk never grows straight up, nor does it limit itself to one trunk only. It may have several trunks, snaking along on the ground, suddenly leaping upward for a few feet only to duck down again or circle in another direction. 

Unpredictable, extravagant in space and growth, unexplainable, it is like a snake in many ways. Its leaves are forked and thread-like as a serpent's tongue, with branching petals arranged like ladder rungs, reflecting sunlight in a bewildering variety of directions. The shade of green thus created is rich and delicate beyond that of any other foliage in the world. In the spring it is spangled with yellow blooms destined to mature into long bean pods. 

Sometimes the mesquite is almost like a vine, so dependent does it seem on the ground for the support of its whole serpentine length. The trunk can support a vast spread of limbs because the wood is tough and strong; and, though flexible enough not to break under a strain, it is hard to bend at will. From a distance, the mesquite does not resemble a tree, but looks like a huge half-grove of green, bubbling out of the ground. Its most outspread branches usually scrape the sand. 

Under, or rather inside, this living dome is a sort of cove where cattle can find protection not from the sun, for the foliage is too thin to keep out many rays, but from the rope, the dehorning tongs, the branding iron, and other human instruments of pain. 

In the sandy land of the vast river bed between Norias and the Gulf coast, mesquites grow close together, sometimes no more than three feet apart, each shooting its harum-scarum branches into the midst of those of its neighbors. In places, they are impossible to get through on horseback. In the loam around Sauz, below the southern boundary of the sandy area, they also grow in abundance, providing a safe haven for the successors of the longhorn cattle that had originally brought them there." 

----- Frank Goodwyn, "Life on the King Ranch," 1951

KingRanch

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## Wildthings

What a great, accurate description of a cool tree

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## Tony

Somewhere over yonder, just at the edge of the horizon, a tall, gangly man in a dirty cowboy hat stumbles around, muttering to himself. He appears to be searching for something. A closer inspection would reveal that he is sunburned, cactus-punctured, and caked with mud and dust and dried cattle spit and margarita salt and horny toad blood and only God knows what else. His sunglasses are shattered and his breath is a mixture of old coffee, warm beer, and stale Allsups burritos. His muttering becomes clearer as he approaches. "A laptop," he is saying, "a laptop ... my kingdom for a laptop ...." :) ;) :)

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day is so, so good: "In 1876, as an incident of the Taylor-Sutton feud, Dr. Philip Brazell and son George were called out of their home in Clinton, DeWitt County, by a number of masked riders and killed. Shortly before Christmas, Lieutenant Lee Hall of the Rangers was sent into the county with warrants for the arrest of seven men charged with the murder. On the night of December 20, Hall discovered that the men he was looking for were attending the wedding of Joe Sitterlie at the home of the bride's father, near Cuero. He set out with his troop in a driving rain, got to the scene and surrounded the house. Then, unarmed, he went to the front door of the house and announced himself. The music stopped. Frightened women ran off the dance floor as Bill Meador and other men moved forward. "What do you want?" Meador asked. "I have warrants for seven men," Hall answered. And he read the names. "How strong are you?" demanded Meador. "Seventeen, including myself," said the lieutenant, following the tradition of telling the exact truth. "Meador snorted. "We've got seventy!" he announced. "That's about the right odds," the Ranger said. "We'll fight." "Listen, all of you," he called out. "You people in the house have three minutes to move out your women and children, starting now. . ." You Rangers," he shouted at the men he had posted in a circle about the house, "at the end of three minutes, fire at will. Now you gentlemen in the house, get the women away. . .'' "I don't want to go killing," Meador answered in a shocked voice. "I'll surrender." And the rest of the wedding guests quickly joined him in handing over their weapons. Hall collected his prisoners in the gallery at the end of the house and the Rangers were bringing up horses when the bride suddenly ran up to him. "You're breaking up my wedding party," she accused him brokenly. "Why can't you wait for morning with your old law business?" "Now that you mention it, no reason at all," Hall assured. "Go ahead with your dance." He sent the prisoners back into the house, reassigned the Rangers so that, turn and turn about, half of them could mount guard while the other half danced, and then joined the party himself. When day broke, he bade goodbye to his hostess and rode away to put the chiefs of the Sutton faction in the county jail. There were no hard feelings between the captors and the captives. Meador and his men would have had no compunction about killing the Rangers if the job could have been done gracefully and safely. If compelled, Hall and his troop would have killed the assassins of Dr. Brazell with no qualms whatever. But until necessity arose for the departure from good social usage, there was no reason why they shouldn't all act like gentlemen." ----- Robert J. Casey, "The Texas Border," 1950

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: Regarding mesquite trees: the seedpods or beans of the mesquite can lie dormant for up to 40 years waiting for conditions to be just right for sprouting. Early-day ranchers like W.T. Waggoner called mesquite “the devil with roots” because they absorb all of the water in their surroundings, causing other plants and trees to wither away and die. This, in turn, allows more mesquites to move in and take over. Yup.


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## David Hill

About the Taylor-Sutton feud---that's my neck of the woods---happened right here in Cuer0! It really did happen. My SIL is of the Taylor line and one of my favorite neighbors is a Sutton----and yes they get along.

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum.


Been There Done That

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## Tony



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## Wildthings

Holy crap man!! Don't put New Jersey right on top of me. I feel nasty now

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery and paradox. Any observations of mine can be quickly canceled by opinion or counter-observation. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans."

----- John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley, 1962

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The highest point between Dallas and Houston is Tehuacana, Texas, at an altitude of 640 feet above sea level. Tehuacana is six miles northwest of Mexia in Limestone County and has a population of 283 hearty souls, plus a mess of dogs, cats and horses and one Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named "Lo-retta."

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## Wildthings

YEEEEHAAAWWWWWW!!!!! Wendell back on this thread!!

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## Eric Rorabaugh

Great to see you back to "your" thread oke buddy!

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## ripjack13

A True Texas Arcane fact of the day.....
This damn yankee was missin you....
Good to see this back on track. @Tony was a little short on facts, but he's forgiven.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> The highest point between Dallas and Houston is Tehuacana, Texas, at an altitude of 640 feet above sea level. Tehuacana is six miles northwest of Mexia in Limestone County and has a population of 283 hearty souls, plus a mess of dogs, cats and horses and one Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named "Lo-retta."


Ahhhh Tehuacana!! I've been through there and have some photos somewhere...hmmmmm….. in the meantime here's some info from Texas Escapes

*History in a Pecan Shell*

The town’s post office was called *Tewockony Springs* in 1847 – named after springs that had been named after the local Tawakoni Indians.

In 1852 the Tehuacana Academy opened, and the town became known as *Tehuacana Hills* – being the highest point of elevation between Dallas and Houston. The post office continued operation under the name Tewockony Springs, but it was renamed in 1869 after it reopened after a closing brought upon by the Civil War.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church made Tehuacana the site of Trinity University and it remained there until it moved to Waxahachie in 1902.

The property was then sold to the Methodist Church, which opened Westminster College.

Westminster College merged with Southwestern University in 1942 but the school closed its doors in 1950. The school opened as Westminster Junior College and Bible Institute in 1953.





Westminster College Athelic Team with school building in background.

The Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway came through in 1903 but was discontinued in 1942 when WWII created a need for the steel rails of short line and little-used railroads.

The population has fluctuated between a high of over 600 in the 1920s and a low of 265 in the early 1980s.

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## woodman6415

ripjack13 said:


> A True Texas Arcane fact of the day.....
> This damn yankee was missin you....
> Good to see this back on track. @Tony was a little short on facts, but he's forgiven.


Tony is a Little short period...

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## TXMoon

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a Doozy:
> 
> In Brazoria, Texas, there is a park called the "Masonic Oak Park." It is named after a live oak tree that stands in the park. The tree is called the Masonic Oak because it was under that tree that Stephen F. Austin, Anson Jones (later President of the Republic of Texas), John A. Wharton (for whom Wharton is named), J.F. Caldwell (for whom Caldwell is named), A.E Phelps, Alexander Russell, and Asa Brigham met in March, 1835. to establish the first Masonic Lodge in Texas. Jones wrote, "The place of the meeting was back of the town of Brazoria near the place known as General John Austin's, in a little grove of wild peach or laurel, and which had been selected as a family burying ground for that distinguished soldier and citizen." They met underneath what was then a very prominent, 200 year-old live oak tree. The lodge was called the Holland Lodge, named for J.H. Holland who, at that time, was the Masonic Grand Master of Louisiana. The tree still stands and it is now estimated to be close to 400 years old. You can actually visit it. It's right here:
> 
> https://www.google.com/maps/@29.055...4!1sk8YlAS231ngqoTTI7DrU4A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
> 
> 
> If you look you can see both a historical marker and a granite marker erected by the Masons to mark the spot. HOW COOL IS THAT?. To think that this tree bore witness to that meeting and to every second of Texas history since then is pretty mind-blowing. I told y'all it is a doozy of an Arcane Texas Fact!


Very cool! We go out and visit "the Big Tree" near Rockport about once a year. Also, speaking of Brazoria, one of my favorite biker bars is called West of the Brazos on 36, in Damon, TX. Thank you for the History.

Reactions: Thank You! 2


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## David Hill

ripjack13 said:


> A True Texas Arcane fact of the day.....
> This damn yankee was missin you....
> Good to see this back on track. @Tony was a little short on facts, but he's forgiven.


Well...…._short_ anyway.
Just adding---didn't see Wendell's until after I posted.


GREAT to see ya back!

Reactions: Thank You! 1 | Funny 1


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## Wildthings

TXMoon said:


> Very cool! We go out and visit "the Big Tree" near Rockport about once a year.



Ahhhh Goose Island "Big Tree"!! I've been through there and have some photos somewhere...hmmmmm….. oh yeah here they are





Here it is with the original chainlink fence





and the info on it

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## Tony

EDIT: I unfortunately didn't buy this building.

History uncovered... We purchased our building on the north side of the square in Comanche in early 2019. Our intent is to bring back the history and original beauty this building has to offer. As with all historic renovation projects, there are setbacks and unforseen schedule changes due to the "unknowns" one always finds. Around the end of October we started prepping the inside walls of our building to paint. The east wall was stucco, as seen in the first picture. Our building was built sometime around the mid 1870s. Layer after layer of "new and improved" renovations had been done over the past 145 years; covering up the prettiest parts of the building. The stucco had been added to the wall sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s and then had been covered up since the late 1950s with studded sheetrock walls. You can imagine the dust and dirt on it. I had already crawled up into the space between the ceiling and the roof to identify a leak and discovered that behind the stucco was some old red brick. So it didn't take long to decide to chip off some of the stucco and expose the brick in the lobby and office portions of the building. But little did we know! When we were prepping the outside of the building for paint, I had the man running the powerwasher go ahead and wash the stucco wall. When he did, he knocked off a loose piece of stucco at the very top of the wall; which was black underneath it and not red brick. I stepped back and looked at it and said "Wouldn't it be neat if there was something painted on the brick under the stucco?" Well I don't by lottery tickets because if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all so the hope of something being painted on that wall left about as quick as I said it. After we finished washing the wall, I started chipping away at the bottom of the stucco down at the floor. And what did I find; red brick. Of course! However, after about the 4th swing of the hammer and chisel...it was still red; but red paint this time. I followed the red paint up about 3 feet but had no clue what I was looking at. So I chipped a little more to the left. Still no clue. So I chipped a little more to the right and found another color. White. What? So I chipped til I ran out of white paint and low and behold...I had a T. The red paint still made me curious so I stepped back to get a view of all of it and then it hit me. "That's the tail end of a cow!" To which made no sense at all so that only left 1 option. We had to see what WAS painted on that wall. Being somewhat smarter than I look, I figured that if it truly were a cow that that would only lead to more questions than answers so I decided to chip away in the direction of the T to see if we could uncover a word. Each letter uncovered brought a thousand guesses until it became evident we were dealing with TOBACCO. Most old buildings had tabacco on the floor; we now had it on the wall! So putting two and two together we googled tobacco brands and up popped BULL DURHAM. Duh! But really, did we seriously have an advertisement for Bull Durham Tobacco in Comanche, Texas let alone in our building? It took 2 1/2 days to slowly chip away the stucco covering this once in a lifetime find. Each swing of the hammer and small piece of stucco that fell was like opening a present on Christmas morning. You didn't know what you were going to get! The mural is in pristine condition considering it's age. After a brief amount of research, it was determined that this mural was most likely painted between 1890 and 1900. It is 18' tall and 18' wide. Bull Durham Tobacco was a world famous loose-leaf tobacco manufactured by W.T. Blackwell in Durham, North Carolina from 1850 until 1988. Blackwell heavily advertised his brand of tobacco all across the country with the trademark bull. He commissioned artists in 1869 to begin painting these large murals across the country. The success of Bull Durham Tobacco was due to Blackwells advertising tactics that made it world famous and made Durham, North Carolina the Tobacco Capital of the World. Blackwells company was the one of the first to use a large scale advertising campaign across the country. Before his Bull Durham advertising, large marketing campaigns were unheard of and considered risky; to which W.T. Blackwell proved them wrong. Legend has it that at the time this mural was painted there wasn't a building where our's is now but was more of a walk through area. Later, it is told by historians that when a building was built it was home to the Jack Wright Saloon where outlaw legend John Wesley Hardin shot and killed then Brown County deputy Charles Webb in 1874. All of us are proud to have found, uncovered and will be able to preserve this awesome piece of history and artwork for years to come. Our plan is to remove the loose dust from the wall once construction is complete and seal the mural as is. We look forward to getting the building completed this next month and moved into our new offices. Stop in and see us at 109 West Grand on the north side of the square in Comanche...or to see the mural! :)

Reactions: Way Cool 5


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## ripjack13

Tony said:


> EDIT: I unfortunately didn't buy this building.
> 
> History uncovered... We purchased our building on the north side of the square in Comanche in early 2019. Our intent is to bring back the history and original beauty this building has to offer. As with all historic renovation projects, there are setbacks and unforseen schedule changes due to the "unknowns" one always finds. Around the end of October we started prepping the inside walls of our building to paint. The east wall was stucco, as seen in the first picture. Our building was built sometime around the mid 1870s. Layer after layer of "new and improved" renovations had been done over the past 145 years; covering up the prettiest parts of the building. The stucco had been added to the wall sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s and then had been covered up since the late 1950s with studded sheetrock walls. You can imagine the dust and dirt on it. I had already crawled up into the space between the ceiling and the roof to identify a leak and discovered that behind the stucco was some old red brick. So it didn't take long to decide to chip off some of the stucco and expose the brick in the lobby and office portions of the building. But little did we know! When we were prepping the outside of the building for paint, I had the man running the powerwasher go ahead and wash the stucco wall. When he did, he knocked off a loose piece of stucco at the very top of the wall; which was black underneath it and not red brick. I stepped back and looked at it and said "Wouldn't it be neat if there was something painted on the brick under the stucco?" Well I don't by lottery tickets because if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all so the hope of something being painted on that wall left about as quick as I said it. After we finished washing the wall, I started chipping away at the bottom of the stucco down at the floor. And what did I find; red brick. Of course! However, after about the 4th swing of the hammer and chisel...it was still red; but red paint this time. I followed the red paint up about 3 feet but had no clue what I was looking at. So I chipped a little more to the left. Still no clue. So I chipped a little more to the right and found another color. White. What? So I chipped til I ran out of white paint and low and behold...I had a T. The red paint still made me curious so I stepped back to get a view of all of it and then it hit me. "That's the tail end of a cow!" To which made no sense at all so that only left 1 option. We had to see what WAS painted on that wall. Being somewhat smarter than I look, I figured that if it truly were a cow that that would only lead to more questions than answers so I decided to chip away in the direction of the T to see if we could uncover a word. Each letter uncovered brought a thousand guesses until it became evident we were dealing with TOBACCO. Most old buildings had tabacco on the floor; we now had it on the wall! So putting two and two together we googled tobacco brands and up popped BULL DURHAM. Duh! But really, did we seriously have an advertisement for Bull Durham Tobacco in Comanche, Texas let alone in our building? It took 2 1/2 days to slowly chip away the stucco covering this once in a lifetime find. Each swing of the hammer and small piece of stucco that fell was like opening a present on Christmas morning. You didn't know what you were going to get! The mural is in pristine condition considering it's age. After a brief amount of research, it was determined that this mural was most likely painted between 1890 and 1900. It is 18' tall and 18' wide. Bull Durham Tobacco was a world famous loose-leaf tobacco manufactured by W.T. Blackwell in Durham, North Carolina from 1850 until 1988. Blackwell heavily advertised his brand of tobacco all across the country with the trademark bull. He commissioned artists in 1869 to begin painting these large murals across the country. The success of Bull Durham Tobacco was due to Blackwells advertising tactics that made it world famous and made Durham, North Carolina the Tobacco Capital of the World. Blackwells company was the one of the first to use a large scale advertising campaign across the country. Before his Bull Durham advertising, large marketing campaigns were unheard of and considered risky; to which W.T. Blackwell proved them wrong. Legend has it that at the time this mural was painted there wasn't a building where our's is now but was more of a walk through area. Later, it is told by historians that when a building was built it was home to the Jack Wright Saloon where outlaw legend John Wesley Hardin shot and killed then Brown County deputy Charles Webb in 1874. All of us are proud to have found, uncovered and will be able to preserve this awesome piece of history and artwork for years to come. Our plan is to remove the loose dust from the wall once construction is complete and seal the mural as is. We look forward to getting the building completed this next month and moved into our new offices. Stop in and see us at 109 West Grand on the north side of the square in Comanche...or to see the mural! :)
> View attachment 176547 View attachment 176548 View attachment 176549



That doesn't look like you....

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## Nubsnstubs

Tony said:


> EDIT: I unfortunately didn't buy this building.
> 
> History uncovered... We purchased our building on the north side of the square in Comanche in early 2019. Our intent is to bring back the history and original beauty this building has to offer. As with all historic renovation projects, there are setbacks and unforseen schedule changes due to the "unknowns" one always finds. Around the end of October we started prepping the inside walls of our building to paint. The east wall was stucco, as seen in the first picture. Our building was built sometime around the mid 1870s. Layer after layer of "new and improved" renovations had been done over the past 145 years; covering up the prettiest parts of the building. The stucco had been added to the wall sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s and then had been covered up since the late 1950s with studded sheetrock walls. You can imagine the dust and dirt on it. I had already crawled up into the space between the ceiling and the roof to identify a leak and discovered that behind the stucco was some old red brick. So it didn't take long to decide to chip off some of the stucco and expose the brick in the lobby and office portions of the building. But little did we know! When we were prepping the outside of the building for paint, I had the man running the powerwasher go ahead and wash the stucco wall. When he did, he knocked off a loose piece of stucco at the very top of the wall; which was black underneath it and not red brick. I stepped back and looked at it and said "Wouldn't it be neat if there was something painted on the brick under the stucco?" Well I don't by lottery tickets because if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all so the hope of something being painted on that wall left about as quick as I said it. After we finished washing the wall, I started chipping away at the bottom of the stucco down at the floor. And what did I find; red brick. Of course! However, after about the 4th swing of the hammer and chisel...it was still red; but red paint this time. I followed the red paint up about 3 feet but had no clue what I was looking at. So I chipped a little more to the left. Still no clue. So I chipped a little more to the right and found another color. White. What? So I chipped til I ran out of white paint and low and behold...I had a T. The red paint still made me curious so I stepped back to get a view of all of it and then it hit me. "That's the tail end of a cow!" To which made no sense at all so that only left 1 option. We had to see what WAS painted on that wall. Being somewhat smarter than I look, I figured that if it truly were a cow that that would only lead to more questions than answers so I decided to chip away in the direction of the T to see if we could uncover a word. Each letter uncovered brought a thousand guesses until it became evident we were dealing with TOBACCO. Most old buildings had tabacco on the floor; we now had it on the wall! So putting two and two together we googled tobacco brands and up popped BULL DURHAM. Duh! But really, did we seriously have an advertisement for Bull Durham Tobacco in Comanche, Texas let alone in our building? It took 2 1/2 days to slowly chip away the stucco covering this once in a lifetime find. Each swing of the hammer and small piece of stucco that fell was like opening a present on Christmas morning. You didn't know what you were going to get! The mural is in pristine condition considering it's age. After a brief amount of research, it was determined that this mural was most likely painted between 1890 and 1900. It is 18' tall and 18' wide. Bull Durham Tobacco was a world famous loose-leaf tobacco manufactured by W.T. Blackwell in Durham, North Carolina from 1850 until 1988. Blackwell heavily advertised his brand of tobacco all across the country with the trademark bull. He commissioned artists in 1869 to begin painting these large murals across the country. The success of Bull Durham Tobacco was due to Blackwells advertising tactics that made it world famous and made Durham, North Carolina the Tobacco Capital of the World. Blackwells company was the one of the first to use a large scale advertising campaign across the country. Before his Bull Durham advertising, large marketing campaigns were unheard of and considered risky; to which W.T. Blackwell proved them wrong. Legend has it that at the time this mural was painted there wasn't a building where our's is now but was more of a walk through area. Later, it is told by historians that when a building was built it was home to the Jack Wright Saloon where outlaw legend John Wesley Hardin shot and killed then Brown County deputy Charles Webb in 1874. All of us are proud to have found, uncovered and will be able to preserve this awesome piece of history and artwork for years to come. Our plan is to remove the loose dust from the wall once construction is complete and seal the mural as is. We look forward to getting the building completed this next month and moved into our new offices. Stop in and see us at 109 West Grand on the north side of the square in Comanche...or to see the mural! :)
> View attachment 176547 View attachment 176548 View attachment 176549


Comanche, Texas. Home town of my uncles, aunts and mother. I was months away from being born there. Instead, my mom lost the battle as to where she wanted to live. So, I was born in Cajun Country... Comanche is a beautiful little town. I lived there twice, about 1947-8, and then from 53-55, then to Odessa for a year and back to Cajun Country. ............ Jerry (in Tucson)

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## Nubsnstubs

ripjack13 said:


> That doesn't look like you....


You're right Marck. He's too tall in that photo.............. Jerry (in Tucson)

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## vegas urban lumber

Wildthings said:


> Ahhhh Goose Island "Big Tree"!! I've been through there and have some photos somewhere...hmmmmm….. oh yeah here they are
> 
> View attachment 176546


i like whatever the fence rails are made out of
kinda like oversized diamond willow

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Nubsnstubs

vegas urban lumber said:


> i like whatever the fence rails are made out of
> kinda like oversized diamond willow


It's Texas, Trev. Everything's oversized in Texas, 'cept Tony........... Jerry (in Tucson)

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## Gdurfey

So was this mural on the outside of the original building?? Very cool.


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## Wildthings

Gdurfey said:


> So was this mural on the outside of the original building?? Very cool.


It's actually on the inside wall of the building between the Wild West Mercantile store and the store on the corner. There was an alley between the two stores and this was painted on the outside wall of the building on the corner. The alley was eventually closed in to contain a saloon as mentioned above.
Here's a Google street view of it






@Tony Are you saying you didn't buy that building or is that just part of the C&P

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> It's actually on the inside wall of the building between the Wild West Mercantile store and the store on the corner. There was an alley between the two stores and this was painted on the outside wall of the building on the corner. The alley was eventually closed in to contain a saloon as mentioned above.
> Here's a Google street view of it
> 
> View attachment 176550
> 
> 
> @Tony Are you saying you didn't buy that building or is that just part of the C&P



No, it's not mine, just copied the post from Traces.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "Cures for many diseases were .based on folklore, and error, and old wives' tales. Some physicians drew off a cup of blood at the first complaint of a patient, even before the ailment was diagnosed. Brown sugar was believed to be just the thing for smallpox. A Texas rancher posted a prescription for bad colds in his bunkhouse: ONE QUART OF WHISKEY AND A DOZEN LEMONS. DIRECTIONS: THROW THE LEMONS AT A FENCE POST AND DRINK THE WHISKEY." ----- Ross Phares, Texas Tradition, 1954

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is fantastic. I edited it ever-so-slightly to make it a tad clearer, so it's not verbatim:

"All old time printers and telegraphers of the 1880s remember 'Peg,' for he was a remarkable character, never to be forgotten. He had lost one of his legs in a railroad accident, having gone to sleep and fallen off the brakebeam, or something like that. The leg was really a fine one and "Peg" could, and did, get from $10 to $15 on it in any pawnshop. He was a great talker, and when only half-loaded, was very amusing. He told some good stories, too. I remember one in particular.... 

'Gentlemen,' said he, 'you can talk about your hot towns as much as you want to, but Santone takes the cake. I was out there last winter and I had the time of my life. There was a big variety show going on down on one of the plazas and, of course, I went to see it. 

The show was nearly over when a drunken cowboy came in. He had two big guns strapped round his waist and a Bowie knife that looked like a young sword. He swaggered about and the show had to stop for a few minutes and then catching sight of the boxes on the edge of the stage, he made for one. Everybody seemed to be afraid of him and tried to quiet and pacify him.

A fellow on the stage began to sing. The cowboy promptly ordered him to stop. The fellow paid no attention, but went on singing. The cowboy kept making a fuss. Finally the singer got mad and, advancing to the front of the stage, asked if there was not an officer in the house to take the drunken nuisance out and lock him up. There was no response so the singer advanced to the side of the stage and began climbing to the box. 

The cowboy reached out and dragged him into the box. They dropped to the floor in a clinch, but as they fell I saw the cowboy had his knife in his hand. Then I saw them rise, the cowboy holding the singer by the back of the neck. He rammed him face foremost against the wall and rammed that big knife through him twice and then, slamming it plumb through him between the shoulders, he left it sticking in his body and, picking him up, hurled him out of the box to the stage below. "It was all over in a minute and there was the biggest stampede you ever saw. The whole audience made for the door in one solid mass, and I was working well in the lead, in spite of having only one good leg to work with. 

When I struck the sidewalk I saw a policeman and rushed to him: I said, 'You had better go down yonder, a cowboy just murdered a man in the theater down there.' He looked at me and just grinned. 'That's all right,' said he. 'They been killing that same man for two nights now. It's part of the show.' "Next night I went back to enjoy the fun of seeing the stampede, now that I knew it was part of the show. I got a seat near the end of a row and there is where I was a fool. 

The cowboy came in and went through the same performance. There was the same stampede, too. and a big Dutchman near me stampeded at the first flash of the knife and took the whole tier of seats with him. In the rush they got my leg, the broomstick one, jammed in the seat and broke it square off. Then they walked all over me and I never saw a thing. When the dust settled they found me all spraddled out on the floor. The proprietor acted pretty square. He set 'em up two or three times, sent me home in a hack and next morning early they had a carpenter come 'round and fix my stem, and that night I left for El Paso. Santone was too strenuous for me.'


----- Samuel Oliver Young, True Stories of Old Houston and Houstonians, 1910

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"For several years [circa 1870s] Waco and Fort Worth were the wildest cowboy towns on the frontier. Barrelhouse saloons occupied the best business stands. The bar was in front and the gambling department behind, with folding doors between. It was the special thrill of drunken cowboys to ride into the saloons, shoot up the mirror and shoot holes in the heads of barrels of whisky and catch in glasses the amber liquor as it streamed out and then come around next day and pay the damages, leaving it to the saloon men to name the amount of the harm done, for they did not pretend to be conversant with the value of things.

Streams of wagons came and went, bringing in wool, buffalo, hides and meat and taking out supplies of various kinds. At all hours the streets and wagon yards were crowded. Great herds of cattle on the way to Kansas and the pastures and markets of the North crossed the Brazos at Waco. 

Later I made several trips as freighter to Lampasas and Brownwood, both wild towns, only on a somewhat smaller scale than Waco and Fort Worth. The people out that way could ride, rope and shoot straight. They were equally ready to settle any little dispute with you by shooting it out, or to give you anything they had if you seemed to need it worse than they did." 

------ Onetime freighter S.H. Hall remembers the old days in an article in the Dallas News, November 1930

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"My duties at Jacksboro for the past month [March 1867] had been entirely indoors, and I was not prepared for the beautiful and enchanting appearance of the landscape, as I now for the first time saw the prairies in all their spring beauty. The gorgeous wild flowers, covering the green sward in a thousand hues, that would have made many a cultivated flower garden blush with envy ----- numbers of them were new to me ----- the splendid grass, covering the earth with a luxuriant matting; the clear atmosphere, the pure and bracing breezes sweeping from the gulf, all combined to enchant me with my first Texas spring. And, after all these years, each recurring spring here is as delightful to me as ever; nowhere, in my knowledge, does nature so completely re-invigorate everything and fill everything with new life as it does each spring in Northwest Texas."

----- H. H. McConnell, Five Years a Cavalryman, 1889

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## Gdurfey

.........and clear down through the hill country...….I so miss springtime in Texas.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

You may count yourself among a very small group of Texans if you know the Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: the town of Bastrop was founded on June 8, 1832, and named for the Baron de Bastrop, who had been helpful to Moses Austin, Stephen F. Austin's father, in Moses' attempt to obtain land rights for the first American colony in Texas.

A couple of years later, Mexican authorities imprisoned Austin in Mexico City. The white settlers in the Bastrop area, wanting to show their loyalty to Mexico in hopes of getting Austin released, renamed the town of Bastrop "Mina," in honor of Francisco Xavier Mina, a national hero and martyr to the cause of liberty in Mexico. And so it was that, on April 24, 1834, Bastrop officially changed its name to "Mina."

Austin was subsequently released and Texas won its independence. No longer having to show deference to Mexico, Texas renamed Mina back to Bastrop on December 18, 1837. And it's been Bastrop ever since.

So, if you knew that Bastrop was called "Mina" for about five and a half years, go to the 'fridge, get yourself a Shiner Bock, and smile inwardly to yourself regarding your superior Texanhood. But don't rub your friends' faces in it; wouldn't be nice.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I'd rather be a dead Gram Parsons than a live Garth Brooks."

----- Kinky Friedman, musician, author, former candidate for Governor, gadfly

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Frontier judges were likely to lose patience with lawyers who spent too much time arguing over points of law. During a bitter altercation in a Texas court, one lawyer shouted at the other: "You are a lying son of a b**ch!" His opponent immediately shot back: "You are a lying son of a b**ch yourself." At this, the judge banged his gavel for order, then let silence hang over the room full of spectators who were certain he would levy a heavy fine upon the offending lawyers. Instead, the judge leaned forward, fixing his gaze first on one and then the other of the attorneys, and said slowly: "Now that you gentlemen have got acquainted with each other, we will proceed with the argument." 

------ Marshall Brown, Wit and Humor of the Bench and Bar, 1899

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## Maverick

Cool TX facts for me.... I grew up in Mesquite. my grandparents on my mom's side lived in Calvert TX and owned a home that had a historic marker placed on it a few years after they bought and restored the home. The house only had one story, but had 14' ceilings. I recall my grandfather showing me the square nails that it was built with. The marker says:

One of Calvert's earliest houses, Greek revival in style. Built about 1871 by George F. Randolph, local merchant, said to have been a kinsman of U. S. President Thomas Jefferson. Randolph and his bride, Lucy Garrett, lived here until he died in 1873 yellow fever epidemic. The widow married (1878) Scott Field, a rising statesman who in 1887-91 was a United States Congressman. House remained in the Field family until 1941. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970

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## Tony

Maverick said:


> Cool TX facts for me.... I grew up in Mesquite. my grandparents on my mom's side lived in Calvert TX and owned a home that had a historic marker placed on it a few years after they bought and restored the home. The house only had one story, but had 14' ceilings. I recall my grandfather showing me the square nails that it was built with. The marker says:
> 
> One of Calvert's earliest houses, Greek revival in style. Built about 1871 by George F. Randolph, local merchant, said to have been a kinsman of U. S. President Thomas Jefferson. Randolph and his bride, Lucy Garrett, lived here until he died in 1873 yellow fever epidemic. The widow married (1878) Scott Field, a rising statesman who in 1887-91 was a United States Congressman. House remained in the Field family until 1941. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970



That's too cool! Do you have any pictures of the house?


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## Maverick

Here is a picture from google street. I have not seen the house in over 30 years. I am pretty sure I climbed on a few of those trees as a kid. You can see the marker just to the right of the second post from the right.

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## Wildthings

Here's a closer look at the Marker on the house -- Been There Done That!! Too cool @Maverick 



The plan is the classic one of a central hall with balanced rooms on each side. The three center bays are covered by a pedimented porch carried on Doric columns. The two interior chimneys are offset, left and right. The house was built by George Randolph of Virginia, who is thought to be a descendant of Thomas Jefferson.

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## Maverick

Thanks Barry. Reading the description of the interior brought back many fond memories. I spent parts of many summers and holidays at that house.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I was just turning my sixth year when I ate my first biscuits. It's a fact, and I was lucky to get 'em then for flour was not in general use until I was about 20. People all raised little patches of corn and bread made from that was all we had. Father took a trail herd up the year I was 6 and when he delivered it and collected the money he spent some of it for a wagon and flour enough to load it to the full. When he drove home with all that flour it was some sight. 

All of the neighbors came to see and share in it; for of course he let them have their part. I'll never forget it if I live to 100, how anxious I was to taste bread made of that white soft flour. Nor how good those first biscuits were. We saved every tiny crumb, for corn bread had never been plentiful enough to waste and biscuits were on a basis with cake those days.

I was 16 years old before I had a pair of shoes that I could actually wear all the time. Rawhide was our only shoe material and all you could say for it was the hair was taken off. Talk about hard, dry, stiff, unbendable leatherthat rawhide had the world beat and a mile to go on. 

If they were big enough to avoid all this trouble you couldn't walk in them, especially hunting, and we just had to hunt, for it was no trick at all to kill a big buck deer or antelope, a buffalo or all the wild turkey we could carry. And it was too much fun to give up just to wear shoes. 

A fellow with a grain of sense would rather trust to the calluses on his soles than to risk losing a shot and rubbing blisters on his feet with those rawhide hobbles. 

I might say honestly that I never did have any real shoe or boot comfort until I got my first pair of high-heeled, high-topped, hand-made cowboy boots. I still wear that kind, too, and always will for th're as much a part of me and every other open-range cowpuncher as his leather leggings, spurs and broad-brimmed hat." 

------ Cowboy/rancher Jim Rose, quoted in the Dallas SemiWeekly Farm News, April 8, 1927

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## Maverick

*The first frozen margarita machine was invented in Dallas.*
Restaurateur Mariano Martinez, who drew inspiration from the Slurpee machines at 7-11, adapted a soft-serve ice cream machine to make frozen margaritas and called it “The World’s First Frozen Margarita Machine.” It is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

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## woodman6415

From my hometown... I knew him as did a Lot of San Angelo ... he always had a joke :


This is "Jalapeno Sam" Lewis, the inventor of the jalapeno lollipop and a man who made a fortune staging armadillo races around the world. He passed away in San Angelo in 2003. He was a true Texas character and his obituary is quite interesting. I apologize for any weird formatting:

Sam Lewis, 80, Tireless Armadillo Promoter

Sam Lewis, who made himself a Texas legend by staging armadillo races around the world, not to mention inventing the jalapeño lollipop, died on Jan. 10, 2003 at his home in San Angelo, Tex. He was 80.

The cause was cancer, his daughter, Kathleen Maxwell, said.

Mr. Lewis was representative of an exuberant breed of Texan who likes to push the boundaries of convention, whether at fight-to-the-death chili cook-offs, ersatz cowboy re-enactments or society balls attended both by people in formal address and by longhorn cattle. He was a nonstop Stetson-wearing promoter whose biggest brag was that he never did an honest day's work in his life.

Mr. Lewis's inspiration was to capitalize on the armadillo, an armored prehistoric-looking animal whose corpses have long been as common along Texas highways as mesquite trees and empty Lone Star beer cans. Not only did he race them, he rented them: to movie producers (one played opposite Kevin Costner in ''Tin Cup''); to the Rolling Stones, who used armadillos for an opening act; and to medical researchers who used them to study leprosy.

''We will send an armadillo to anyone who has a legitimate need for one, a legitimate need,'' he said. ''We won't send them to nuts.''

As owner and chief executive of the World Armadillo Breeding and Racing Association and president of the International Armadillo Appreciation Society, he maintained an armadillo ranch and an armadillo rental agency. He caught armadillos by hand and sent them to zoos around the world. He advised James Michener on armadillos for Mr. Michener's two-volume work, ''Texas.''

As the armadillo became central to the Texas chic that blossomed in the 1970's, Mr. Lewis led the charge. He created San Angelo Sam, an armadillo that was the West Texas answer to Pennsylvania's groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. In 1995, Texas finally heeded his lobbying and made the armadillo its official state small mammal.

Meanwhile Mr. Lewis had sold rights to his idea of jalapeño products, including olives stuffed with the peppers. He remained as a pitchman, never traveling without an armadillo and always driving because, he said, armadillos did not like to fly.

Samuel Thomas Howze Lewis was born in Mississippi, though family members are not sure which town. He ran away from home at 14 and ended up in San Angelo. He saw his first armadillo at 15 while raccoon hunting and was completely charmed. In World War II, he was a tail gunner on a B-29 and later managed a pizza parlor. In 1951, he came up with the idea of racing an armadillo against a horned toad. A bet had something to do with it, though nobody recollects which animal won. When Mr. Lewis later entered a high-stakes duck race, his armadillo was definitely not up to the challenge.

But armadillo against armadillo was something else. Humans are not allowed to touch the contestants but they can blow on their backsides. This excites the hair on the back of the armadillos' legs and they jump like crazy. Mr. Lewis said the speed record for an armadillo was 40 feet in three seconds.

His wife, the former Betty June Meek, died in 1999. In addition to his daughter, who lives in Irving, Tex., he is survived by his son, Samuel Jr., two grandsons, two brothers and four sisters. The family intends to keep raising armadillos.
''Why did the chicken cross the road?'' Mr. Lewis would joke. ''To show the armadillo it can be done.''

New York Times

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## woodman6415

From my hometown... I knew him as did a Lot of San Angelo ... he always had a joke :


This is "Jalapeno Sam" Lewis, the inventor of the jalapeno lollipop and a man who made a fortune staging armadillo races around the world. He passed away in San Angelo in 2003. He was a true Texas character and his obituary is quite interesting. I apologize for any weird formatting:

Sam Lewis, 80, Tireless Armadillo Promoter

Sam Lewis, who made himself a Texas legend by staging armadillo races around the world, not to mention inventing the jalapeño lollipop, died on Jan. 10, 2003 at his home in San Angelo, Tex. He was 80.

The cause was cancer, his daughter, Kathleen Maxwell, said.

Mr. Lewis was representative of an exuberant breed of Texan who likes to push the boundaries of convention, whether at fight-to-the-death chili cook-offs, ersatz cowboy re-enactments or society balls attended both by people in formal address and by longhorn cattle. He was a nonstop Stetson-wearing promoter whose biggest brag was that he never did an honest day's work in his life.

Mr. Lewis's inspiration was to capitalize on the armadillo, an armored prehistoric-looking animal whose corpses have long been as common along Texas highways as mesquite trees and empty Lone Star beer cans. Not only did he race them, he rented them: to movie producers (one played opposite Kevin Costner in ''Tin Cup''); to the Rolling Stones, who used armadillos for an opening act; and to medical researchers who used them to study leprosy.

''We will send an armadillo to anyone who has a legitimate need for one, a legitimate need,'' he said. ''We won't send them to nuts.''

As owner and chief executive of the World Armadillo Breeding and Racing Association and president of the International Armadillo Appreciation Society, he maintained an armadillo ranch and an armadillo rental agency. He caught armadillos by hand and sent them to zoos around the world. He advised James Michener on armadillos for Mr. Michener's two-volume work, ''Texas.''

As the armadillo became central to the Texas chic that blossomed in the 1970's, Mr. Lewis led the charge. He created San Angelo Sam, an armadillo that was the West Texas answer to Pennsylvania's groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. In 1995, Texas finally heeded his lobbying and made the armadillo its official state small mammal.

Meanwhile Mr. Lewis had sold rights to his idea of jalapeño products, including olives stuffed with the peppers. He remained as a pitchman, never traveling without an armadillo and always driving because, he said, armadillos did not like to fly.

Samuel Thomas Howze Lewis was born in Mississippi, though family members are not sure which town. He ran away from home at 14 and ended up in San Angelo. He saw his first armadillo at 15 while raccoon hunting and was completely charmed. In World War II, he was a tail gunner on a B-29 and later managed a pizza parlor. In 1951, he came up with the idea of racing an armadillo against a horned toad. A bet had something to do with it, though nobody recollects which animal won. When Mr. Lewis later entered a high-stakes duck race, his armadillo was definitely not up to the challenge.

But armadillo against armadillo was something else. Humans are not allowed to touch the contestants but they can blow on their backsides. This excites the hair on the back of the armadillos' legs and they jump like crazy. Mr. Lewis said the speed record for an armadillo was 40 feet in three seconds.

His wife, the former Betty June Meek, died in 1999. In addition to his daughter, who lives in Irving, Tex., he is survived by his son, Samuel Jr., two grandsons, two brothers and four sisters. The family intends to keep raising armadillos.
''Why did the chicken cross the road?'' Mr. Lewis would joke. ''To show the armadillo it can be done.''

New York Times

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Cowboys could perform terrible labors and endure bone-grinding hardships and yet consider themselves the chosen of the earth; and the grace that redeemed it all in their own estimation was the fact that they had gone-a-horseback. They were riders, first and last. I have known cowboys broken in body and twisted in spirit, bruised by debt, failure, loneliness, disease, and most of the other afflictions of man, but I have seldom known one who did not consider himself phenomenally blessed to have been a cowboy, or one who could not cancel half the miseries of his existence by dwelling on the horses had had ridden, the comrades he had ridden them with, and the manly times he had had."

———- Larry McMurtry, “In a Narrow Grave,” 1968

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## Maverick

I will just leave this here......

*Why Texans Don't Want Any More Californians*
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...t-any-more-californians/ar-BBZvKtf?li=BBnbfcL

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"One of the most ghoulish characters in Texas history [was] Black Peter. The huge man seemed immune to cholera and when he appeared to request employment as city undertaker [in Victoria, 1833], he was speedily appointed. His fee was $2.50 and a quart of whiskey for each body taken to the public graveyard. Each night and each morning Black Peter made his rounds, knocking at each door and shouting out the sickening cry to "bring out your dead." If there was no answer, Black Peter entered the house and conducted a thorough search. At the height of the cholera epidemic the alcalde notified Black Peter that the town could no longer pay him. That night Peter made his rounds as usual collecting his corpses but, instead of carrying them to the city graveyard, deposited them all on the alcalde's front porch. Next morning the alcalde resumed payments. From Victoria, Black Peter went on to New Orleans to pursue his grim trade." 

----- Curtis Bishop, "Lots of Land," 1849

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## Maverick

woodman6415 said:


> deposited them all on the alcalde's front porch.



That's one way to get their attention... 

I just wonder what he did with all that whiskey.....geez

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

At one time, Lubbock was the center of a prairie dog colony that spread over 37,000 square miles and counted some 400 million residents. And that was just one colony. As late as 1903 there were an estimated one billion prairie dogs in Texas. Prairie dogs are good eating, by the way, said to taste like squirrel. In the old days, when rangers were out of buffalo regions, there was often nothing to eat but prairie dogs. The only fault they could find with prairie dogs was that they were too small and very hard to get. Rangers always tried to keep a little flour on hand to thicken soup and prairie dogs, being very fat, made good soup. But prairie dogs were apparently not very satisfying because, after a meal of prairie dogs, rangers often complained of being hungry again in two or three hours. They would boil a prairie dog or two ------ the more dogs in the kettle the better ----- and with a little flour and maybe some spices, make quite a pot of soup

All this talk of prairie doges made me glad that Traces of Texas reader Jim Magnum generously shared this AWESOME photo of two prairie dogs in the act of being prairie dogs at what is perhaps my favorite state park, Caprock Canyons State Park near Quitaque. Prairie dogs are very affectionate and form tight bonds with one another and I guess this shot shows that. Jim took it his own self and it is quite a photo, indeed. 

Thank you, Jim. Super duper!

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "As Justice of the Peace and leading saloon keeper [Judge] Roy Bean gradually became a sort of alcalde to the neighborhood, performing wedding ceremonies, christening babies and arbitrating family troubles. Marriages constituted a steady source of revenue. Even Bean himself appreciated the humor of the situation, especially in the days when he was not a legal justice of the peace and thus had no lawful right to perform marriage ceremonies. 'Juan,' he said in a typical ceremony, 'do you take this woman for your lawful wife?' The answer is 'Si, Senor.' Obtaining the befuddled promise from Juan, he turned to the girl. 'Mafia, you want to marry this sorry maverick?' With the proper answer extracted from the participating parties, he dismissed them with, 'And Lord have mercy on your pore souls! Five dollars!' When the young husband did not have the five dollars, as was frequently the case, Justice Bean would permit him to work out the fee. 'Judge,' a downhearted cowboy bemoaned one day, 'that weddin' you give me shore didn't take. I caint get along with that gal atall!' Bean stroked his beard. His face brightened. 'By gobs!' he exclaimed. 'I guarantee all my weddin's. If yores ain't satisfactory, why, I'll just divorce you; but it'll cost you ten dollars.' He reasoned that it was worth twice as much to get out of a bad bargain as to get into it; and he found the cowboy willing enough to pay." ----- Ruel McDaniel, "Vinegarroon, The Saga of Judge Roy Bean," 1936

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Well, I never froze on the trail, but I I did starve for water, and I don't mean maybe either. It was my first drive, too - that was what made it so hard on me. In the spring of 1869 we left Pick Duncan's ranch with a bunch of W Cross L's for the head of the Concho to go from there to the Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. We left that good, clear Concho with one barrel of water, intending to refill at Hackberry water hole, mid-way on the plains. Halting to answer the cook's 'come and git it' at noon, we went on until dusk, when we pitched camp (no where near that water hole) and when supper was finished, so was the water - fourteen men and not a drop, not to mention the stock, and three days to go. 

We did not bed the cattle as planned but hit the trail all night and at nine o'clock next morning we stopped to rest an hour; then prodded 'em up and on toward that water hole. Finally when within a mile of it the boss said he would ride ahead and reconnoiter. He was back right now with 'It's so confounded dry you could bury a man in the cracks, they're so deep.' That settled it. We kept the herd hoofin' until three o'clock, halting for another hour, then trailing it straight through until the next day noon when we hit the canyon, twelve miles from Horsehead Crossing. 

The cattle got wind of the water and pulled out plumb pert. It was half an hour by sun when we got there, and when we got to that river not one of the fourteen boys could speak above a whisper and several could not shut their mouths for swollen tongues. If any of you have ever been as thirsty as we were, you know just how good water just plain, brackish, alkali, Pecos River water can taste. It was so good we laid up three days drinkin' our fill and enjoyin' ourselves. 

Water logged, full of good grub, rested and fresh as daisies, we started up the Pecos to the falls. There the horse wrangler, named Kuykendall, dismounted on herd and stood his gun by a bush. Remounting, he caught it by the barrel, the hammer caught in the brush, pulled back and blew his head off. We buried him and continued on to Hondo, thence to Denver where we delivered the cattle." 

------ Charlie Harmon, an old Texas cowboy, quoted in an interview in February, 1930

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Directly southeast of Rusk, Texas lies what used to be the town of New Birmingham. At one point it had 400 buildings, electrically lighted streets, a brick business district, and even a streetcar system. But today nearly all traces of it have almost entirely disappeared. It was established in 1888 as an iron-smelting town, flourished for a few years, but then was killed off by the financial panic of 1893. At one point the population of New Birmingham reached 1500 people. The town had a fantastic hotel, the Southern Hotel, which featured hot and cold running water, electric lights and call bells, restaurants, a smoking area, a billiard parlor, reception rooms etc... Such luminaries as President Grover Cleveland, railway magnate Jay Gould, and Texas governor Jim Hogg stayed in it. The hotel was the last intact building in New Birmingham but was destroyed by fire in 1926 and its shell demolished to make way for highway 69. Pretty much the only thing that remains of the town is the preserved Tassie Belle furnace and a few other relics at Tassie Bell historical park.

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## Maverick

Interesting post, I graduated from SFA in Nacogdoches, so I used to drive through that area fairly regularly. Love the history, thanks for posting these.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day was written in 1887:

"I have been in the heart of the "Big Thicket" in Polk and Hardin counties, Texas, for ten days. Nothing can be seen except the tangled underbrush and tall trees. In a ride of 150 miles through...there is one continuous dense growth of tall pines, oaks, magnolias and numerous other forest trees. As far as the eye can penetrate, it is the same; the tangled undergrowth and fallen trees block and interpose an almost impassable barrier in the way of any kind of vehicle. In many places we have to get down on our hands and knees to crawl through the thick, dose knitted growth of bay, gall bushes and cane-brakes. Not a human being can be seen for miles. Not a voice is heard except our own; and when we pass a grove of pines, the moaning of the wind makes us feel as if Judgment Day was about to come.

The people who live in the pine woods of Eastern Texas are very primitive in their habits. As this was the first part of Texas that was set-fled by the early pioneers, their descendants form the principal part of the population... You often find grown men and women that have never seen a prairie country, mountain or valley, railroad or steamboat. They grow to manhood and womanhood in the heart of the thick pine woods, and are contented and happy in their log cabins... Their diets would by no means please the stomach of an epicure. Corn-bread, bacon and potatoes, with an occasional treat of venison, give them perfect satisfaction. Nearly all the children born and reared in the pine woods have light hair; it is a rare sight to see a black-haired family. 

Very few own their own land. For the last forty years they have been in the habit of settling upon any land fit for cultivation. After finding a good, rich land, the piney woods settler will commence felling and cutting the trees and underbrush away from where he expects to have his field. When all the space he wants is cut down he informs his neighbors that on a certain day he will have a log-rolling. His wife makes preparations for a big dinner, and all his neighbors, for miles around, come and pile up the logs that have been cut, then put the brush in piles and set them on fire. In a few days his field is all cleared and ready for the plow.

After a hard day's ride I stopped at a house near the road for supper and shelter for the night. About fifteen minutes after arrival my host announced supper was ready. I cast my eyes over the anticipated meal. My digestive organs, after the inspection of the supper spread over me, rebelled and contracted. The following is the bill of fare complete: Corn-bread, very fat bacon, and clabber [curdled milk]. As I am not fond of clabber, I did not eat it. My host called his daughter and said: "Emma Jane, bring this man some water." The girl brought me a cup of water. My heart was sick within me to think I could not get a cup of coffee. I had not missed my evening coffee in ten years, and the result was that I suffered with a raging headache all night; and the next day the fat bacon and com-bread that I had partaken of could not or would not settle without the coffee. The next time I come along this way I will fill my pockets with ground coffee."

----- John A. Caplen, "The Sunny South," 1887

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I knowed one feller that had killed three men. Bud Knolles, it was. He killed his first one up at Batson during the oil boom, but there was so many killed up there that if it wasn't a plain case of murder, the authorities didn't even arrest them for it. That's what happened to Bud. The next one he killed was when they was building the Missouri Pacific railroad from Beaumont to Houston. Him and another mule-skinner got in an argument, and that evening after they come in and tended to their teams, they each got a singletree and got after each other. Bud got beat up some but finally split the feller's head open and then finished him off on the ground. They took that one to the grand jury, but they no-billed him on self-defense. The third was at Liberty. Him and somebodyI can't remember his name right offhad a falling out at the saloon and just fell out in the street with their pocket knives and cut each other down and then laid side by side and kept cutting til they was drug apart. Bud finally got over it, but the other feller died. They no-billed him on that'un, too. 

Well, after that lots of folks was skeered of Bud, and he knowed it and got pretty overbearing, 'specially when he'd had a few drinks. People would get out of his way and leave him alone all they could and try to get along any way they could, and he just got worse and worse. Well, he come to town one day and hit several saloons and was coming out of one just as old Cap'n Nance was going in, and Bud just pushed the old man down on the porch and told him to get the hell out of the way and went on. Now, if there ever was a mild man, it was the old captain. He'd fought from start to finish in the Civil War, and when he came back, he bought a place a mile or two out of town and settled down to minding his own business and leaving other folks alone, unless he was needed. He'd got too old to farm he was ever' bit of eightybut he'd walk into town every day, get the mail and one drink, and go back home. That's what he done after Bud pushed him down. Got his drink and went home. 

Well, sir, I heard he got some water and cooled awhile and then took a bucket and some other things and went out next to the road and set down on the bucket in a little patch of brush under a big tree. Directly he got up and cut a sprout and set back down and whittled on it while he was waiting. Just before sundown he heard a horse coming and leaned forward and jabbed the stick in the ground. It was forked, and he laid his old double-barrel on it, and when Bud Knolles got close on the road as he was coming, the captain cut him half in two with one barrel, and when Bud's horse run off and the dust settled, he took his time and walked over and give him the other barrel. I learnt two things out of that. One is that when they said Colonel Colt made all men equal, they didn't give near enough credit to Mr. Remington's ole double-barrels, and the other'n was that old folks don't like to be pushed around any more than young ones do." 

----- Bill Brett, "This Here's a Good'un," 1983

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## Tony

that'll teach the young wipper-snappers!

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In February 1970, at the age of 15, Stevie Ray Vaughan joined a band called "Liberation," which was a nine-piece group with a horn section. Having spent the previous month briefly playing bass with his brother Jimmie in Jimmie's band, "Texas Storm," Stevie had originally auditioned for Liberation as bassist. Impressed by Vaughan's guitar playing, Scott Phares, Liberation's original guitarist, modestly became the bassist. In mid-1970, Liberation performed at the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, where ZZ Top had also been asked to perform. During Liberation's break, Vaughan jammed with ZZ Top on the Nightcaps song "Thunderbird". Phares later described the performance: "They tore the house down. It was awesome. It was one of those magical evenings. Stevie fit in like a glove on a hand."

I think about this and think "how cool would it be to have been at the Adolphus that night in the summer of 1970 and seen a 15-year-old Stevie Ray Vaughan jam with ZZ Top?" Two future superstar musical acts as they were still figuring themselves out!

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> In February 1970, at the age of 15, Stevie Ray Vaughan joined a band called "Liberation," which was a nine-piece group with a horn section. Having spent the previous month briefly playing bass with his brother Jimmie in Jimmie's band, "Texas Storm," Stevie had originally auditioned for Liberation as bassist. Impressed by Vaughan's guitar playing, Scott Phares, Liberation's original guitarist, modestly became the bassist. In mid-1970, Liberation performed at the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, where ZZ Top had also been asked to perform. During Liberation's break, Vaughan jammed with ZZ Top on the Nightcaps song "Thunderbird". Phares later described the performance: "They tore the house down. It was awesome. It was one of those magical evenings. Stevie fit in like a glove on a hand."
> 
> I think about this and think "how cool would it be to have been at the Adolphus that night in the summer of 1970 and seen a 15-year-old Stevie Ray Vaughan jam with ZZ Top?" Two future superstar musical acts as they were still figuring themselves out!



Man, what I wouldn't give to have heard that....

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of old San Antonio:

"San Antonio was a very primitive town when we first came here. The houses were one-story and built of adobe, one room deep with dirt floors, and no connecting doors leading from room to room; a person went outside to enter another room at the back. The sills were more than a foot high, the window sills were three feet wide and the walls were three feet thick. The windows were iron-barred and one could sit in the window seat and chat with a passerby or flirt with an admirer. The floors were of dirt and kept hard by sprinkling and sweeping with brooms of brushy wood tops.

"The houses of the very poor were merely poles driven into the earth close together and the cracks filled with mud. Dried beef hides were spread on. the floor and the family sat on these to eat, breaking off small pieces of tortilla and folding these to form a spoon to dip up their chilli con carne and frijoles. The coffee was black, or, if diluted, goat milk was used. Frequently you saw a baby in a hammock hanging from the rafters. The hammock was made of hide.

There were no timid, frightened women there, nor were there women with frazzled nerves. Vicissitudes were their daily atmosphere and God's fresh air was their lipstick.

I remember the dreadful epidemic of cholera which followed the end of the war in 1865. People died on the streets, many from fear. So fast did they die and so many that there were no men to make the coffins. People were forced to nail pine boxes together as quickly as possible, haul them to the cemeteries and bury them in trenches side by side. But tragedy often has its comic side. There was a man in town who had never heard of prohibition, and his task of burying the dead was a gruesome one . He must have something to give him courage, so he took his courage in hand and started up to the cemetery on Dignowity Hill with a pine coffin on his dray.

"His eyesight was uncertain, the wheel struck a stump and when the driver looked back to ascertain what was the matter he saw his dead man sitting in the road with the broken coffin scattered about him. The "corpse" had only been dead drunk [not dead at all]."

----- Attributed to Mrs. H. Lucas, San Antonio Express, November 22, 1925

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## Wildthings

Wendell it sure is great having you back posting up these great stories. Thank you

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: 

Yesterday, Feb. 12, marked the 151st anniversary of the Mittie Stephens disaster on Caddo Lake. The Mittie Stephens was a sidewheel steamboat that ran from New Orleans to Jefferson, Texas, and caught on fire that day. Sixty-one people perished out of 107 passengers and crew members. 

The Mittie Stephens was built in Madison, Indiana, in 1863 and served as a Union naval transport and packet during the Civil War. She took part in the failed Shreveport campaign as a part of Adm. David Porter's fleet. In 1864 she was sold into private ownership and ran on the Missouri River and then in the New Orleans-Bayou Sarah trade. In 1866 the Mittie Stephens began serving on the New Orleans-Red River route. At that time Jefferson, Texas, was the head of navigation via Caddo Lake due to the great log raft that obstructed vessel traffic on the Red River. The riverboat traffic was quite heavy; 226 steamboats called at Jefferson in 1872.

The Mittie Stephens left New Orleans for Jefferson on February 5, 1869, with passengers and an assorted cargo, including 274 bales of hay. A breeze blew a spark to the hay from the torch baskets that lighted the bows of the boat, and the fire that resulted could not be contained. The boat headed for the shore, 300 yards away, but grounded in three feet of water. The bow and forward part of the boat was engulfed in flames; the stern was in deep water. The pilot and the engineer kept the wheels running in an attempt to force the boat to shore; the action of the wheels pulled the people struggling in the water into them and killed most of them. The Mittie Stephens burned to the water line. Her safe, bell, boilers, and machinery were salvaged shortly after the sinking. Serving as an eerie reminder, parts of the wreck could be seen above the water until the early twentieth century.

An exploratory survey was carried out by the Texas Antiquities Committee in association with the Marion and Harrison County historical commissions in the summer of 1982. The results of this survey were followed by the formation of the Mittie Stephens Foundation and raising of private funds for an in-depth scientific underwater archeological research project. Background research for this project was carried out by marine archeologists from Texas A&M University. Electronic surveying and underwater site-test excavation have been used to locate what may be the wreck of the Mittie Stephens on the Louisiana side of the border.

The ship's bell can be seen today at the historical museum in Jefferson.

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, J. Barto Arnold III, "MITTIE STEPHENS," 

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/etm02.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

According to the Salt Lick Cookbook, the Salt Lick barbecue restaurant in Driftwood goes through almost a million pounds of brisket every year. Lessee now .... I'm no mathematician, but if you take the average size brisket, divide by the number of weeks in the year, don't forget to carry the one, and multiply that by Willie Nelson's birthday, that equals ... hmm ... umm .... a LOT of briskets every day ----- about 215 or so, on average. Daily.

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## trc65

No wonder brisket has become one of the more expensive cuts...

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## Maverick

trc65 said:


> No wonder brisket has become one of the more expensive cuts...



And that’s just one restaurant.

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## Tony

It is February 24th. 184 years ago today, William Travis wrote probably the most famous document in the annals of Texas history. Remarkably, given the conditions under which it was written and sent out from the Alamo, Travis' letter still exists. Commandancy of the Alamo— Bejar, Fby. 24th 1836 To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World: Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death. William Barret Travis Lt. Col. comdt P.S. The Lord is on our side—When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves. Travis

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## Wildthings

Great Post. I know that letter well!

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## Wildthings

*Day 1 - Tuesday, February 23, 1836
This battle, though neither final or decisive, was the seminal moment in the Texas War of Independence.*

Near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio) was an 18th century Spanish Mission. Abandoned at the end of that century, it was briefly turned into a garrison for Spanish troops; who gave it the name, "Alamo". After Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the Alamo was held by a Mexican garrison; till this force was expelled by Texians under the famous knife-fighter James "Jim" Bowie, a land-owning resident of San Antonio, in December of 1835.

Bowie was at first ordered by the new Texian Army commander, Sam Houston, to dismantle the fort and retrieve the 19 cannons of various caliber left behind by the Mexicans. Instead, upon finding he had insufficient transport to effectively evacuate the guns, Bowie decided to improve the defenses (with the aid of engineer Green B. Jameson) and hold the Alamo. Bowie felt strongly that the Alamo could be a bastion defending Texas from Santa Anna's coming attack. In a letter to Henry Smith, a leader of the Texas War or Independence Party, Bowie argued that "the salvation of Texas depends in great measure on keeping Bexar (San Antonio) out of the hands of the enemy. It serves as the frontier picquet guard, and if it were in the possession of Santa Anna, there is no stronghold from which to repel him in his march towards the Sabine."

Bowie shared command of the mixed "regulars" and "volunteers" with Colonel James C. Neill. Neill sent to Houston and the provisional government for supplies and additional men; but at this stage both the Texas government and Houston's incipient army were in disarray; and no help was sent to the Alamo.

On February 3, 1836 Lt. Colonel William Barret Travis arrived at the Alamo with 18 cavalrymen of the new Texan army; to take over as Neill's second-in-command. Travis was a young lawyer from Alabama, recently come to Texas to build a new life. Five days after Travis' arrival, another group of volunteers, these from Tennessee arrived at the Alamo. They were led the famous frontiersman and former U.S. Congressman, David ("Davy") Crockett; a man who was already a legend in his own time; famous for his abilities as a sharpshooter.

When on February 11th Neill had to absent himself from the Alamo because of family matters, he left Travis, the highest-ranking "Regular" army officer in command of the garrison. Bowie, who led a band of 30 "Volunteers", would act as his co-commander. Bowie and Travis detested each other, and as they prepared the fort against eventual attack, tension between the two men was high. But all supposed that Santa Anna would not attempt a winter campaign, and long before he arrived in the spring Neill would have returned; likely with reinforcements.

However, Santa Anna, who fancied himself as "the Napoleon of the West", was doing what all great generals attempt: the unexpected. In the dead of winter, he was marching north toward Texas, at the head of an army of 6,019 soldiers. This force had set out in December, even as Bowie was capturing the Alamo in the first place. Their progress was slow as the army worked its way over difficult and sometimes frozen terrain; encumbered by artillery, supply wagons, and numerous camp followers. Santa Anna had spent 1835 putting down rebellions and fighting battles in Mexico against well-armed local militias; and the core of his army was comprised of loyal veterans. However, many of the soldiers were newly recruited replacements, and their officers used the march north to train their men. On February 12, Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande, undetected by the Texian defenders. It was not till the morning of February 23 that Travis' scouts reported the approach of Santa Anna's 1,500 strong advance guard, when it was only 1.5 miles outside of town.

While the surprised and unprepared Texians hurried into the Alamo, the Mexican army occupied San Antonio Bexar. A parlay soon followed, in which Bowie sent his engineer, Green B. Jameson, to ask terms. According to Mexican sources, he was informed by Santa Anna's aid, José Bartres, that El Presidente demanded unconditional surrender ("on discretion"):

... according to the order of His Excellency... the Mexican army cannot come to terms under any conditions with rebellious foreigners to whom there is no recourse left, if they wish to save their lives, than to place themselves immediately at the disposal of the Supreme Government from whom alone they may expect clemency after some considerations.

This was in keeping with Santa Anna and the Mexican government's official position toward the Texian rebels: In late December 1835, the Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree, declaring foreigners fighting in Texas against Mexico "pirates", to be treated with summary justice. Santa Anna had in the previous year shown no clemency to rebels in Mexico, and his reputation preceded him. Even had the Texian garrison within the Alamo been so inclined, they were under no illusions that they could expect mercy at the hands of Santa Anna.

Not that they were so inclined:
To this demand for unconditional surrender, Travis and Bowie answered with a blast from the fort's 18 pounder cannon; signaling their defiance.

In response, Santa Anna ordered the raising, over the highest tower in the nearby town, of a blood-red flag and the playing of the Degüello; a bugle call used by Spanish armies, signaling "no quarter" to their opponent. The name "Degüello" derives from the Spanish verb for the act of throat-slitting; and so the tune was also known as the "cut throat" song!
This battle would be to the knives.


*Day 2 - Wednesday, February 24, 1836*

The second day of the siege began early with the Texians facing a newly established battery erected by the Mexicans during the night. The battery consisted of two eight-pounders and a howitzer and was located approximately 400 yards to the west of the fort. It was known as the River Battery.

The defenders were busy that night as well. They had captured at least one Mexican soldier and six pack mules during a nighttime patrol. According to Enrique Esparza, the defenders used the captured soldier to decipher bugle calls for the Texians throughout the siege.

Sometime around eleven that morning, Santa Anna began his survey of the Alamo fortifications and surrounding area to familiarize himself with the area.

The Mexican army pillaged the Texian's stores in Béxar and began the bombardment of the Alamo in earnest. The Texian artillery returned fire with no obvious results.

James Bowie, in command of the garrison, fell ill. The garrion's surgeon described his illness as a "A peculiar disease of a peculiar nature." Jim Bowie relinquished his command of the garrison to Travis.

The Alamo's well proved inadequate in supplying the garrison's water needs. This forced the defenders to obtain water from the acequia and reservoir to east of the compound setting the stage for several skirmishes.

Travis penned his "Victory or Death" letter. Defender Albert Martin carried the letter from the Alamo and added his own comments to the back of the document.

*To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World

Fellow citizens & compatriots

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country VICTORY OR DEATH.

William Barret Travis, 
Lt. Col. comdt.

P.S. The Lord is on our side. When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn. We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.*

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## Wildthings

*Day 3 - Thursday, February 25, 1836*

The morning of February 25, 1836 dawned with summer-like temperatures opening one of the most eventful days of the siege.

The Mexicans launched an attack with approximately 400 - 450 soldiers personally led by General Castrillon. The Matamoros Battalion and three companies of cazadores made up the attacking force. They came from the area of the river battery through Pueblo de Valero's jacales and buildings advancing to within 50-100 yards from the Alamo's walls.

After two hours of fighting, The Texians finally forced a Mexican withdrawal using the ditches and outworks. They inflicted only light casualties on their attackers. Sometime during the fighting, Texian sorties burned the jacales closest to the Alamo. At the same time, the Mexicans established new fortifications near the McMullen house.

As the Mexicans advanced through the pueblo, they discovered a young woman and her mother in one of the houses. Although already married, Santa Anna took advantage of the situation, arranged a false marriage, and quickly consummated the relationship.

That night, the temperatures dropped into the 30's. Under the cover of darkness, William B. Travis sent Colonel Juan Seguin to find General Houston and ask for help. The defenders ventured out again burning even more jacales. There is some evidence that at least nine men deserted the garrison and gave information to Santa Anna where the Texians had hidden at least 50 rifles.

*The day's fighting was not a victory for the Texians. The Mexicans had established artillery and infantry entrenchments in La Villita and the Alameda, but the Texians proved that as unorganized as they were, they could fight.*

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

Yes, Siree, I Seen It With My Own Eyes," Said Cigaret Charlie. "I Seen A Kangaroo Rat Ride An Old White Steer In One Of The Skeeriest Stampedes I Ever Rode . . . "Oh, them little fellers," and he shook his head. "There are thousands of them in the Pecos Valley. They scratch out holes in the ground for nests and then cover 'em with dome-like mounds of dirt, with several openings for doors. The mounds are hollow and if a horse steps on one he goes down up to his belly. You may see a thousand of them nests in a day and nary a rat. They are wilder than jackrabbits and harder to see than baby antelopes. They have tails longer than most rats, with a little bunch of hair on the end. Their hind legs are extra long and the fore ones extra short. They don't have bags on their buzums to tote the babies in but they have a pair of saddle pockets, one in each jaw, to pack food to their young'uns. 

"The boss sold his ranch and was moving out of the Big Bend. We gathered all his cattle, about a thousand head, and they was all kinds, cows, calves, yearlin's and heifers, bulls and steers, all fat an' lazy. . . On this drive the herd leader was an old white steer, bigger than a saddle horse and almost as gentle. He was a born leader; had a lot of cow-sense. 

"One night, riding Setfast. . .I took a place pretty dose to him . . . Soon after the moon came up, I be danged if one of them long legged rats didn't prowl out of his hole. When he saw the slick white sides of that old steer he sat back on his hunkers, then he run and jumped on his back. Well, Old Whitey struck out like a bat outer hell a-flappin' both wings, every crazy cow in that herd tryin' to outrun him. 

"It was some race, me and Setfast doing our best to get up to Old Whitey's side so as to swing the cattle around into a mill, and that damn kangaroo rat settin' on Whitey's back holding on like a monkey a-ridin' a circus horse. 

"We was about set to turn them when Setfast struck both forelegs up to his belly in a rat nest and turned a complete wildcat. I spread out in front of him on my stumick, like a horned toad. Knowing Setfast was coming over to pancake me, I scratched sand and gravel to get out of his way and got up running. . . 

"After that, we sent a man ahead every evening before sundown to pick out a bed-ground that was free of rat nests and we had no more stampedes."

----- Virginia Madison, The Big Bend Country, 1955

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## Tony



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## Mr. Peet

Tony said:


> View attachment 181059



Girls with Tubas....so many things could be said, but should not...

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## Tony

Happy Independence Day!

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## Maverick

From a displaced Texan.

As they say, you can take the man out of Texas but you can’t take the Texan out of the man.

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## Gdurfey

Do you know where that is @Tony ?? For some reason it reminds me of Ft Davis; although I haven't been in that part of the country for ……..gee, 45 years or so.


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## TXMoon

Tony said:


> Happy Independence Day!
> 
> View attachment 181355


And to you as well!


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## Tony

Gdurfey said:


> Do you know where that is @Tony ?? For some reason it reminds me of Ft Davis; although I haven't been in that part of the country for ……..gee, 45 years or so.



Big Bend

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## Wildthings

YEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW

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## woodman6415

"I have sworn to be a good Texan, and that I will not forswear. I will die for that which I firmly believe, for I know it is just and right. One life is a small price for a cause so great. As I fought, so shall I be willing to die. I will never forsake Texas and her cause. I am her son." 

----- Jose Antonio Navarro, Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence

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## Maverick

I was not aware of this, there is a Texas Pledge of Allegiance............

"Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible."

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## Tony

Maverick said:


> I was not aware of this, there is a Texas Pledge of Allegiance............
> 
> "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible."



Oh ya, we said it in school every day.

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## Maverick

Tony said:


> Oh ya, we said it in school every day.



We did the Pledge to the American flag every day but I don't recall doing one to the TX flag.

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: An average Texas cattle drive in 1880 was made up of: 2,500/3,000 head of cattle 60 horses 1 trail boss 8 cowboys (drovers) 1 horse wrangler 1 cook 1 chuck wagon

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## woodman6415

As I sit here this morning and contemplate how they must have felt, I wonder: did they realize that today, this day, was going to be the end of their earthly existence? I reckon that most had come to terms with the fact that no help would be coming. Did they say to one another that this is it, that Santa Anna's army had drawn so close that there would be no salvation now? Did they whisper or did they abide in stoic silence? What was the mood in the final days? Were most of them asleep when the attack finally came? So many things I would like to know. We learn about them in our 4th grade and 7th grade Texas history classes but so much of what I would like to know is forever unknowable. To weep for them seems so beneath them. And so we stand out in the early morning light as the sun slowly creeps in from the east and we plead with the fates to let us be worthy of them, to stand reverently and peacefully with one another and to request their blessing, that this great experiment that we call "Texas" might be allowed to continue.

Remember The Alamo.

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> As I sit here this morning and contemplate how they must have felt, I wonder: did they realize that today, this day, was going to be the end of their earthly existence? I reckon that most had come to terms with the fact that no help would be coming. Did they say to one another that this is it, that Santa Anna's army had drawn so close that there would be no salvation now? Did they whisper or did they abide in stoic silence? What was the mood in the final days? Were most of them asleep when the attack finally came? So many things I would like to know. We learn about them in our 4th grade and 7th grade Texas history classes but so much of what I would like to know is forever unknowable. To weep for them seems so beneath them. And so we stand out in the early morning light as the sun slowly creeps in from the east and we plead with the fates to let us be worthy of them, to stand reverently and peacefully with one another and to request their blessing, that this great experiment that we call "Texas" might be allowed to continue.
> 
> Remember The Alamo.


God Bless Texas!!
Remember the Alamo!!

*Day Thirteen – Sunday March 6, 1836

At Midnight on March 5, 1836, Santa Anna's troops began moving into position for their planned attack of the Alamo compound. For several hours, the soldiers lay on the ground in complete darkness. About 5:30 A.M., they received the order to begin the assault.

The massed troops moved quietly, encountering the Texian sentinels first. They killed them as they slept.

No longer able to contain the nervous energy gripping them, cries of "Viva la Republica" and "Viva Santa Anna" broke the stillness.

Inside the compound, Adjutant John Baugh had just begun his morning rounds when he heard the cries. He hurriedly ran to the quarters of Colonel William Barret Travis. He awakened him with: "Colonel Travis, the Mexicans are coming!" Travis and his slave Joe quickly scrambled from their cots. The two men grabbed their weapons and headed for the north wall battery. Travis yelled "Come on boys, the Mexicans are on us and we'll give them Hell!" Unable to see the advancing troops for the darkness, the Texian gunners blindly opened fire; they had packed their cannon with jagged pieces of scrap metal, shot, and chain. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated the landscape and it was with horror that the Texians understood their predicament. The enemy had nearly reached the walls of the compound.

The Mexican soldiers had immediate and terrible losses. That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. Colonel José Enrique de la Peña would later write "...a single cannon volley did away with half the company of Chasseurs from Toluca." The screams and moans of the dying and wounded only heightened the fear and chaos of those first few moments of the assault.

Travis hastily climbed to the top of the north wall battery and readied himself to fire; discharging both barrels of his shotgun into the massed troops below. As he turned to reload, a single lead ball struck him in the forehead sending him rolling down the ramp where he came to rest in a sitting position. Travis was dead. Joe saw his master go down and so retreated to one of the rooms along the west wall to hide.

There was no safe position on the walls of the compound. Each time the Texian riflemen fired at the troops below, they exposed themselves to deadly Mexican fire. On the south end of the compound, Colonel Juan Morales and about 100 riflemen attacked what they perceived was the weak palisade area. They met heavy fire from Crockett's riflemen and a single cannon. Morales's men quickly moved toward the southwest corner and the comparative safety of cover behind an old stone building and the burned ruins of scattered jacales.

On the north wall, exploding Texian canister shredded but did not halt the advance of Mexican soldiers. Cos's and Duque's companies, now greatly reduced in number, found themselves at the base of the north wall. Romero's men joined them after his column had wheeled to the right to avoid deadly grapeshot from the guns of the Alamo church.

General Castrillón took command from the wounded Colonel Duque and began the difficult task of getting his men over the wall. As the Mexican army reached the walls, their advance halted. Santa Anna saw this lag and so committed his reserve of 400 men to the assault bringing the total force to around 1400 men.

Amid the Texian cannon fire tearing through their ranks, General Cos's troops performed a right oblique to begin an assault on the west wall. The Mexicans used axes and crowbars to break through the barricaded windows and openings. They climbed through the gun ports and over the wall to enter the compound.

That first cannon blast ripped a huge gap in their column. General Amador and his men entered the compound by climbing up the rough-faced repairs made on the north wall by the Texians. They successfully breached the wall and in a flood of fury, the Mexican army poured through.

The Texians turned their cannon northward to check this new onslaught. With cannon fire shifted, Colonel Morales recognized a momentary advantage. His men stormed the walls and took the southwest corner, the 18-pounder, and the main gate. The Mexican army was now able to enter from almost every direction.

In one room near the main gate, the Mexican soldiers found Colonel James Bowie. Bowie was critically ill and confined to bed when the fighting began. The soldiers showed little mercy as they silenced him with their bayonets.

The Texians continued to pour gunfire into the advancing Mexican soldiers devastating their ranks. Still they came.

When they saw the enemy rush into the compound from all sides, the Texians fell back to their defenses in the Long Barracks. Crockett's men in the palisade area retreated into the church.

The rooms of the north barrack and the Long Barracks had been prepared well in advance in the event the Mexicans gained entry. The Texians made the rooms formidable by trenching and barricading them with raw cowhides filled with earth. For a short time, the Texians held their ground.

The Mexicans turned the abandoned Texian cannon on the barricaded rooms. With cannon blast followed by a musket volley, the Mexican soldiers stormed the rooms to finish the defenders inside the barrack.

Mexican soldiers rushed the darkened rooms. With sword, bayonet, knife, and fist the adversaries clashed. In the darkened rooms of the north barrack, it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Mexicans systematically took room after room; finally, the only resistance came from within the church itself.

Once more, the Mexicans employed the Texians' cannon to blast apart the defenses of the entrance. Bonham, Dickinson and Esparza died by their cannon at the rear of the church. An act of war became a slaughter. It was over in minutes.

According to one of Santa Anna's officers, the Mexican army overwhelmed and captured a small group of defenders. According to this officer, Crockett was among them. The prisoners were brought before Santa Anna where General Castrillón asked for mercy on their behalf. Santa Anna instead answered with a "gesture of indignation" and ordered their execution. Nearby officers who had not taken part in the assault fell upon the helpless men with their swords. One Mexican officer noted in his journal that: "Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers."

Santa Anna ordered Alcalde Francisco Ruiz to gather firewood from the surrounding countryside and in alternating layers of wood and bodies the dead were stacked.

At 5:00 O'clock in the evening the pyres were lit. In this final act, Santa Anna's "small affair" ended.*

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## Wildthings

Here's a couple great reads about it from a couple survivors of the Alamo

Enrique Esparza

José Francisco Ruiz's account of the Fall of the Alamo

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## Tony

I went to a talk last night at the Alamo about the conservation efforts that are going on, very cool things they are finding out about how the inside of the Alamo looked before the Army whitewashed it, the original architecture, etc. They had some cool things out for us to see and there were only about 30 people there so got to see them up close and personal. A rifle from the battle that was made of beautiful Tiger Maple, a letter from Stephan F. Austin to Gail Borden, and the original Bowie knife that Jims' brother had made for him.

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## Wildthings

I'm jealous Brother!! Now show them what else you acquired!!


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## Tony

The biggest thrill for me last night was when we were walking in there was some limbs that had been cut down. I went and asked a guy about it and he said to email him and he would get an answer about getting some and write back. As we walked out he caught up to me and handed me a foot long piece of Pecan. I was super stoked!

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## Maverick

Sounds like a very memorable experience....and nice score on the piece of pecan limb.

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## Mike Hill

Wendell, you cause me to be contemplative and reflective this morning and that is a dangerous thing to do. Staying true to transparency, sometimes I like to hear myself type and get rather lengthy. From an early age, I was fascinated with cowboys, explorers, mountain men, covered wagon pioneers, etc. Yes, it was exciting to learn about their discoveries, but the true magic for me was way above that – their determination, fortitude, tenacity – their pluck and spunk! I cannot imagine how, if given, in 1803, commissioning by President Thomas Jefferson to explore and to map the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and to find a practical route across the western half of the continent, and to establish an American presence in this territory. How do you wrap your mind around that task? What makes up a man, a farmer, who can convince his wife to pack up everything they have into a covered wagon and travel for months and months to a place they know nothing about. That’s pluck! 


The same with the Alamo Defenders! What did they have that I don’t have within me? And why don’t I have IT?

 
Long before discovering some of my ancestors were Alamo Defenders, I was introduced to the lives of some of the Alamo Defenders by a dear history teacher in high school. I lived in Seguin at the time, and one half of the school year was to be local history. She attacked part of the local history by reviewing the live of Juan N. Seguin. Off and on – he was sometimes called one of the Cowards of the Alamo (the other “Coward” – probably erroneously called – was a guy named “Moses” Rose.). Sequin was at the Alamo during the siege, but was sent out prior to the final battle, by, probably Travis, to carry messages and probably to recruit reinforcements. He returned with reinforcements, but by that time, the Alamo had fallen. Note that the siege had started, the Alamo was surrounded by the Mexican Army, and Santa Anna had already declared “no quarter” so Seguin had to fight his way through that. 


At times, Seguin has been despised, but San Antonio should bow down and kiss the ground he walked. After Texas became a Republic, Seguin was appointed head of the San Antonio military. Texas army Brigadier General Felix Huston ordered Seguín in early 1837 to arrange for burial of the Alamo defenders' remains that had been left where they were burned. Ashes were identified and collected at three unrecorded sites. Twenty-eight years later in correspondence with Hamilton P. Bee, Seguín remembered placing the remains in a tomb inside the "Cathedral of San Antonio" now called San Fernando Cathederal. 


In 1839, at a town thirty miles east of San Antonio, he was honored by parade and celebration; that newly named town would now bear his own name, Seguin.


Texas became flooded with adventurous and land-hungry North Americans who were unfamiliar with the native Texans' history and their loyal support of Texas. Seguin's leadership and loyalty was challenged by these newcomers. General Huston attracted adventurers and “men of little discipline”. He feared San Antonio could not be defended in the event of another Mexican invasion, and ordered the town and the nearby Alamo to be burned.


However, Juan Seguín intervened, and the town and historic mission were spared from destruction. 

To be continued….

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## Mike Hill

What does “Remember the Alamo!” shouted by those under the command of Sam Houston at San Jacinto mean? I wonder if it is even mentioned in education today?

To succinctly explain the expression

A reminder to never give in.

To face death bravely

To remind that there is victory “of” and “in” death

To gain liberty may cost lives

The feelings I had during those discussions in that history class and the after-class discussion I had with the teacher were amplified as I did genealogical research on my family. Among Texas Rangers, sheriffs, game wardens, doctors, lawyers and just plain scoundrels I found men by the names of George Washington Cottle and Thomas J. Jackson. They were Brothers In Law in Gonzales and were members of the Old Eighteen who defended the cannon Gonzales against the Mexican Army. The next thing I found out is that both men also signed into force of 32 that headed west and fought their way into the Alamo on March 1 – the only reinforcements to arrive in time. Those nagging thoughts about pluck and spunk were coming back up. I cannot imagine fighting your way into a battle! What possessed those men that we/I do not have today?

Thomas J Jackson is my 4th Great Grandfather

George Washington Cottle is my 5th Great Uncle. 

About the time of the 175th anniversary of the Battle, I told my family that I wanted to visit the Alamo. It had been nearly 50 years since I last walked the Alamo. I will say it was an humbling and sobering experience. Made exquisite with the opportunity to run my fingers over the names of Thomas J Jackson and George Washington Cottle. The chills passing through my body were indescribable. The emotions almost overflowed my eyes! 

Thomas J Jackson was likely born in Ireland in 1808, came to America on the Brig “Planter” in 1826. He moved onto a land grant in DeWitts Colony in 1829. Seven years later he travels to San Antonio where he fights and dies in the Alamo. What drove the man?

George Washington Cottle was born in 1811 in either Missouri, or where I prefer – Tennessee (the Volunteer State). He also obtained a land grant in DeWitts Colony and also went to the Alamo and fought and died at the age of 25! 

All that was made even more poignant, when I finally made my connection to Sam Houston. Crazy as he was, he was instrumental and important to Texas. There is a rumor that there is a family connection to Davy Crockett – but cannot find it.

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## Tony

@Mike Hill with the blood of those men in your veins I have no doubt that if need be you would stand and remember their faces.

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## Gdurfey

Great stuff Mike, thank you. I have been told that Col. Travis was a very good friend of the family and I do see names in the family tree. My dad's mother's family settled up on Buck Creek and the Red River in the panhandle of Texas. But, no real artifacts to show that relationship and such and have not been in touch with those family members that have that genealogical data. I do know my aunt had the artifacts/information to be a Daughter of the Texas Revolution (believe that is the name of the group) as well as finally connecting the dots to be a DAR member; Daughters of American Revolution (for curiosity, they are still in existence; have not heard of them in a long time).

Thanks for sharing Mike; this was great.

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## Tony

Gdurfey said:


> Great stuff Mike, thank you. I have been told that Col. Travis was a very good friend of the family and I do see names in the family tree. My dad's mother's family settled up on Buck Creek and the Red River in the panhandle of Texas. But, no real artifacts to show that relationship and such and have not been in touch with those family members that have that genealogical data. I do know my aunt had the artifacts/information to be a Daughter of the Texas Revolution (believe that is the name of the group) as well as finally connecting the dots to be a DAR member; Daughters of American Revolution (for curiosity, they are still in existence; have not heard of them in a long time).
> 
> Thanks for sharing Mike; this was great.



Very cool! I think the name of the group you are talking about is actually Daughters of the Republic.

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## Nature Man

Gdurfey said:


> Great stuff Mike, thank you. I have been told that Col. Travis was a very good friend of the family and I do see names in the family tree. My dad's mother's family settled up on Buck Creek and the Red River in the panhandle of Texas. But, no real artifacts to show that relationship and such and have not been in touch with those family members that have that genealogical data. I do know my aunt had the artifacts/information to be a Daughter of the Texas Revolution (believe that is the name of the group) as well as finally connecting the dots to be a DAR member; Daughters of American Revolution (for curiosity, they are still in existence; have not heard of them in a long time).
> 
> Thanks for sharing Mike; this was great.


I would highly recommend making it a priority to get your hands on any/all genealogical data as soon as you can. Records tend to disappear over time. Would be terrific to pass that relevant info down to future generations. Chuck

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## Mike Hill

Nature Man said:


> I would highly recommend making it a priority to get your hands on any/all genealogical data as soon as you can. Records tend to disappear over time. Would be terrific to pass that relevant info down to future generations. Chuck


Amen to that Chuck! I'm a member of SAR through my Dad's side of the family.

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## JR Parks

My last visit to the Alamo several years ago I was honored to see and read right in front of me Travis' letter. Talk about goose bumps!!!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds Dr. Stephen L. Hardin describing why attacking San Antonio and the Alamo was such a blunder for Santa Anna:

"Given the strategic importance of the coast, which was obvious to both sides, Santa Anna's drive against Bexar [San Antonio] was a wasteful digression. Bexar was, of course, the political center of Mexican Texas, and His Excellency no doubt wanted to avenge his brother-in-law [Cos], but the difficult march on Bexar and the costly Alamo assault made little sense from a strategic viewpoint. San Antonio stood on the extreme edge of the western frontier. Santa Anna could have kept his army intact and driven up the coastal prairies along the same route that Urrea had earlier taken. Once Goliad had fallen, Santa Anna could have sent a column to Gonzales, which was defenseless. Such a movement would have severed the Alamo's lines of communication with the Texian settlements at little cost, thereby isolating the rebel garrison. Cut off from supplies and reinforcements, Travis would have had to abandon the fort, but he could have retreated only to the north or east where the Mexican lancers would be waiting for him. Had Santa Anna been the strategist that he envisioned himself to be, he would have seen that an assault on the Alamo was pointless. He could have easily neutralized the garrison without decimating his own army."

---- Dr. Stephen L. Hardin in "Texian IIiad," his excellent history of the Texas revolution

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## woodman6415

The rooster that saved Bastrop County

Rooster
by Mike Cox 

When news of the Alamo’s fall reached Gonzales, it triggered panic among the Anglo population of Texas.

Sam Houston ordered the town torched in advance of the Mexican Army and the residents fled to the east. Along the way, virtually every other settler joined the flight as Texas began to unravel that late winter of 1836.

Andrew Kent and his wife Elizabeth left the Gonzales area on foot with their nine children. Suffering in a climate that ranged from unseasonably cold to unseasonably wet, ten-year-old Elizabeth and her 16-month-old sister, Phinette, died of exposure. Andrew Jackson Kent, not yet 4, became separated from his family during a stream crossing and was never seen again.

While not an exodus of Biblical proportions, what came to be called the Runaway Scrape has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Thousands of people hastily left their homes and most of their belongings hoping to outrun Gen. Santa Anna and his troops.

“A few days before we arrived in Gonzales,” Mexican Army Lt. Jose de la Pena wrote in his diary, “Generals Ramirez y Sesman and Tolsa had passed by, and the troops under their command had consumed and taken with them everything they could.”

By March 17, Washington-on-the-Brazos had been deserted. By April 1, all of Texas between the Colorado and Brazos rivers lay virtually depopulated. Left behind were many fresh graves, including two for the Kent children.

The mass withdrawal continued until word spread of Houston’s April 21 defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Slowly, those who still wanted to give life in Texas a chance turned to the west and went back to what was left of their homes. And that’s when a nameless hero gave his all for Texas.

“Our folks with their neighbors returned to their log houses on the south bank of the Colorado River,” Smithville pioneer Rosa Berry Cole recalled in “Memories of By-Gone Days.” “Some found their houses burned, their crops gone and desolation everywhere, but they were free.”

Fences down and most of the rails burned, settlers had to start from scratch. The Kents discovered that the Mexicans had burned their cabin and slaughtered all their cattle, hogs and chickens. The blood and chop marks on Andrew’s carpentry table showed it had been as a butcher block.

Now, on top of everything else, the returning refugees faced a severe shortage of food and the means to produce it. Men saddled up to look for strayed milk cows while the womenfolk looked for loose chickens.

Mrs. Cole managed to find three hens that had escaped the skillets of the Mexican Army and others living on or near the Colorado in Bastrop County found a few more.

Problem was no one could find a rooster. No rooster, no chicks. No chicks, pretty soon no more setting hens or Sunday fired chicken dinners.

Finally, someone heard that a rooster was for sale upriver in Bastrop. Neighbors passed a hat to raise enough money to buy the needed male of the species and a volunteer rode to make the purchase.

The community rooster may not have fully appreciated his importance in rebuilding Texas, but he enthusiastically embraced the task at hand – and every hen along the river.

As Cole recalled, the busy bird “was taken from house to house, each keeping him a week till he made all the rounds and then back home and start over the same round.”

Before long, thanks to the seemingly undaunted patriotism of that rooster, Bastrop County residents never wanted for eggs or fried chicken.

Whether the rooster died of old age or exhaustion isn’t known, but his legacy kept clucking for a long time along the Colorado.

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## Wildthings

*Texas Revolution - Battle of Refugio 1836
Colonel James Fannin and his men had improved the fortifications at the old Presidio La Bahía in Goliad and renamed it "Fort Defiance." News of the fate of Texians under Frank W. Johnson at the Battle of San Patricio and James Grant at the Battle of Agua Dulce created confusion rather than stirring the volunteers gathered at Goliad into action. Centralist sympathizers in the area had gathered and raided Victoria earlier in the month. To make matters worse, Fannin learned that some colonists who supported the revolt were in danger from Urrea's advance.

On March 10, he sent William C. Francis on area patrol and sent Amon B. King with a small force and wagons to collect families and escort them back to Goliad. March 11 was spent gathering families and loading carts for the return trip. However, on the 12th, King decided to confront the Centralista forces of Carlos de la Garza and the rancheros who rode with him. The opposition forces proved to be greater than imagined and King asked Fannin to send help.

King and the Kentucky Mustangs took refuge in the old Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission at Refugio on March 12. Receiving word, Fannin dispatched William Ward, commanding a group from Peyton S. Wyatt and the Georgia Battalion to assist King. Ward made his stand at the mission and a furious battle ensued. Although successful in breaking up the siege on the 13th, the arrival of Ward at Refugio led to a conflict over command between the two officers. This dispute caused the insurgents to break into several smaller detachments. King left and ventured to attack a nearby ranch, believed to be occupied by Centralistas, killing 8.

As more of Urrea's troops arrived, the fighting with Ward's men continued. The groups held their own on the 14th, repelling four assaults, killing 80 – 100 Mexican troops and wounding 50. The Texians suffered light losses, (about 15), but were now short on ammunition and supplies. King returned from his raid in the evening but could not get to the mission for safety. They had to fight from a tree-line across from it, near the Mission River, where they also inflicted heavy losses upon the Mexican army. Ward sent courier James Humphries to Fannin for orders. Edward Perry returned word from Fannin to fall back to Victoria, where Texian forces were to later regroup.

At night, the groups attempted the escape. The wounded and a few others would remain behind. Their flight seemed successful at first, but there were overwhelming numbers of Mexican troops in wait. Each group was subsequently defeated and its survivors captured by Urrea's troops. After battling for twelve hours and inflicting heavy casualties on their enemies, the last group of fleeing Texians only suffered one killed and four wounded. King and thirty-two men surrendered on the 15th because their remaining powder had become unusable after crossing the river. They were returned as prisoners of war to the Refugio Mission. On March 16, fifteen men were executed; King and the remnants of his company, and several of Ward's men. Juan José Holzinger, a German-Mexican officer, saw fit to save Lewis T. Ayers, Francis Dieterich, Benjamin Odlum and eight men from local families. The remaining fifteen men were spared to serve the Mexican army as artisans (blacksmiths, wheelwrights, mechanics).

Ward and the bulk of his men escaped toward Copano, then turned at Melon Creek and headed for Victoria, where he thought Fannin should be, hearing the gunfire on the Coleto Creek as they moved on. At Victoria, they found no time for rest; it was overrun with Urrea's troops. The group was forced to scatter after a short skirmish with Urrea's cavalry. Staying off the main roads, they moved toward Lavaca Bay, with ten of them eventually escaping. The remainder were captured on March 22 by Urrea, two miles from Dimmit's Landing. Informed of Fannin's surrender, Ward's group was marched back to Victoria, where Holzinger again saved twenty-six men, by conscripting them as laborers for Urrea. Urrea had left Colonel Telesforo Alavez, in charge of Victoria. Señora Francita Alavez intervened with her husband as well, to make sure the captive laborers' lives would be saved. The remainder were sent to Goliad by March 25.*

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## Mike Hill

George Washington Cottle's married his second wife, Nancy Curtis Oliver on 21 Jun 1835 according to Gonzales Co marriage records. They had twin boys born after his death at the Alamo.

Nancy Curtis Oliver Cottle was first married to John Oliver in 1829. She was the daughter of James Curtis, a veteran of the War of 1812 from Tennessee and one of The Old Three Hundred of the Austin Colony. James Curtis (b. 1780), also known as "uncle Jimmie" at age 56 was said to be the oldest man at the Battle of San Jacinto which he is said to have joined to avenge the widowhood of his daughter and the death of his son-in-law Wash Cottle who he never got along with well in real life. General Thomas Rusk related in his anecdotes of the battle:

"On starting out from our camp to enter upon the attack, I saw an old gentleman, by the name of Curtis, carrying two guns. I asked him what was his reason for carrying more than one gun. He answered: 'D---n the Mexicans; they killed my son and son-in-law in the Alamo, and I intend to kill two of them for it, or be killed myself.' I saw the old man again, during the fight, and he told me he had killed his two men, and if he could find Santa Anna, he would cut a razor-strop out of his back."

Other legends say he accompanied each shot at the Mexicans in the battle with the words "Alamo! You killed Wash Cottle." At the end of the battle as Texan officers began to stop the carnage, Curtis was terrorizing a Mexican officer with a knife and yelling "You killed Wash Cottle. Now I’m going to kill you and make a razor strap from your hide." When Col. Wharton pulled the officer up on his horse stating "Men, this Mexican is mine," Curtis raised his rifle and coolly blasted the Mexican officer off the horse. Col. Wharton reacted with rage, Curtis calmly took a drink of whiskey, turned his back and walked away muttering "Remember Wash Cottle." Uncle Jimmie Curtis' fondness to his jug of 1836 homebrew was also the subject of an earlier episode related by Noah Smithwick in The Evolution of a State and in Kemp's biographies of San Jacinto veterans as the Texans were evacuating Bastrop toward San Jacinto in front of Gen. Cos' forces from San Antonio.

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## woodman6415

Texas Quote of the Day:

"The mesquite loves life and will grow almost anywhere. In fact, most West Texans think it prefers the dry red clay or the worst soil God has to offer. It has about its annual bloom a mysterious sense of danger in springing forth prematurely and it is traditional in West Texas that spring isn't safely abroad in the land until the mesquite acknowledges it. The late Frank Grimes, editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, made an annual affair of running his poem, warning those who would disregard the signs of this prophet:

'We see signs of returning spring ----
The redbir'ds back and fie' larks sing,
The ground's plowed up and the creeks run clean,
The onions sprout and the redbud's near;
And yet they's a point worth thinkin' about ----
We note that the old mesquites ain't out!"

----- A.C. Greene, "A Personal Country," 1969

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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Texas Quote of the Day:
> 
> "The mesquite loves life and will grow almost anywhere. In fact, most West Texans think it prefers the dry red clay or the worst soil God has to offer. It has about its annual bloom a mysterious sense of danger in springing forth prematurely and it is traditional in West Texas that spring isn't safely abroad in the land until the mesquite acknowledges it. The late Frank Grimes, editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, made an annual affair of running his poem, warning those who would disregard the signs of this prophet:
> 
> 'We see signs of returning spring ----
> The redbir'ds back and fie' larks sing,
> The ground's plowed up and the creeks run clean,
> The onions sprout and the redbud's near;
> And yet they's a point worth thinkin' about ----
> We note that the old mesquites ain't out!"
> 
> ----- A.C. Greene, "A Personal Country," 1969


True dat! and I also always say "Spring ain't here to the Pecans bud out"!

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## Mike Hill



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## Eric Rorabaugh

except mine are Virginia dirt roads! No matter where you're from, you understand this if you grew up country!

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## trc65

And here I thought Illinois was the only state left with all those dirt roads.....


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## Gdurfey

Tim, right next door in Iowa....bet I would get lost a few times, but my favorite memories are along some of those Iowa roads and I didn't even grow up there!!!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is exceptional:

"After leaving Waco [north] the character of the country began to change into a more open prairie, the settlements and farms were further and further apart, and everything bore evidence that we were leaving civilization behind us and approaching the frontier. 

I first, at this time [1866] particularly noticed the habit of carrying (''packing" they called it) firearms, new to me then, but soon becoming a familiar sight, and it impressed me as a most useless and dangerous habit, and I have never seen any reason to change my views. 

Every man and boy, old and young, rich or poor, at home or abroad, in church, at court, the wedding or the funeral, from the "cradle to the grave," the double-barreled shot gun, or the old-fashioned, brassmounted dragoon pistol, was inevitably carried by them, and it goes without saying that they all knew how to use them, and did so often without very much provocation. 

And yet I cannot look back on the practice as an unmixed evil either, for barroom brawling, fist fights and minor difficulties were pretty much unknown in those days. The treatment experienced by a bully or a bravado was "short, sharp and decisive;" if he insulted a woman, "took in" a town, or stole a horse, he was shot off-hand by some one, who thereby rendered society a service, at much less expense and without the uncertainty and delay that often attend the law's slow course.

Of course, in the days I write of, the times were more or less out of joint; the civil law was almost a dead letter; the country was filled with the disbanded armies of the collapsed Confederacy, and many of the men returning to find homes destroyed and family ties broken became reckless, if not lawless. 

But closer acquaintance with this class of men taught me that often an honest, a brave and noble heart was beating beneath the rough exterior, and that life and property were safer among them than they sometimes are among the "slick" fellows who wear a "boiled" shirt and live in the settlement. The frontiersman, as I saw him then, is rapidly becoming a feature of the past; he is disappearing before the advance of civilization, like the Indian and the buffalo, and I often wonder in my mind whether or not his more cultivated successor possesses the good quality of real nobility to the same extent. 

Soon he will be gone forever, passed away, and in the page of romance alone will be found his counterpart. But he blazed out the pathway of progress; his log cabin and rawhide door, its puncheon floor and stick chimney are gone; he made the present possible." 

----- H. H. McConnell, "Five Years a Cavalryman," 1889

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## Wildthings

*Massacre at Goliad - March 27, 1836
Santa Anna sent a direct order to the "Officer Commanding the Post of Goliad" to execute the prisoners in his hands. This order was received on March 26 by Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla, whom Urrea had left at Goliad. Two hours later Portilla received another order, this one from Urrea, "to treat the prisoners with consideration, and especially their leader, Fannin," and to employ them in rebuilding the town. But when he wrote this seemingly humane order, Urrea well knew that Portilla would not be able to comply with it, for on March 25, after receiving Santa Anna's letter, Urrea had ordered reinforcements that would have resulted in too large a diminution of the garrison for the prisoners to be employed on public works.
Portilla suffered an unquiet night weighing these conflicting orders, but he concluded that he was bound to obey Santa Anna's order and directed that the prisoners be shot at dawn. At sunrise on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, the unwounded Texans were formed into three groups under heavy guard commanded by Capt. Pedro Balderas, Capt. Antonio Ramírez, and first adjutant Agustín Alcérrica (a colonel in the Tres Villas Battalion in April 1836). 
The largest group, including what remained of Ward's Georgia Battalion and Capt. Burr H. Duval's company, was marched toward the upper ford of the San Antonio River on the Bexar road. The San Antonio Greys, Mobile Greys,qqv and others were marched along the Victoria road in the direction of the lower ford. Capt. John Shackelford's Red Rovers and Ira J. Westover's regulars were marched southwestwardly along the San Patricio road. The guard, which was to serve also as a firing squad, included the battalions of Tres Villas and Yucatán, dismounted cavalry, and pickets from the Cuautla, Tampico, and Durango regiments.
The prisoners held little suspicion of their fate, for they had been told a variety of stories-they were to gather wood, drive cattle, be marched to Matamoros, or proceed to the port of Copano for passage to New Orleans. Only the day before, Fannin himself, with his adjutant general, Joseph M. Chadwick, had returned from Copano, where, accompanied by Holsinger and other Mexican officers, they had tried to charter the vessel on which William P. Miller's Nashville Battalion had arrived earlier (these men had been captured and imprisoned at Goliad, also). Although this was really an attempt by Urrea to commandeer the ship, the vessel had already departed. Still, Fannin became cheerful and reported to his men that the Mexicans were making arrangements for their departure. The troops sang "Home Sweet Home" on the night of March 26.
At selected spots on each of the three roads, from half to three-fourths of a mile from the presidio, the three groups were halted. The guard on the right of the column of prisoners then countermarched and formed with the guard on the left. At a prearranged moment, or upon a given signal, the guards fired upon the prisoners at a range too close to miss. Nearly all were killed at the first fire. Those not killed were pursued and slaughtered by gunfire, bayonet, or lance. Fannin and some forty (Peña estimated eighty or ninety) wounded Texans unable to march were put to death within the presidio under the direction of Capt. Carolino Huerta of the Tres Villas battalion.
From two groups shot on the river roads, those not instantly killed fled to the woods along the stream, and twenty-four managed to escape. The third group, on the San Patricio road, was farther from cover; only four men from it are known to have escaped. A man-by-man study of Fannin's command indicates that 342 were executed at Goliad on March 27. Only twenty-eight escaped the firing squads, and twenty more were spared as physicians, orderlies, interpreters, or mechanics largely because of the entreaties of Francita Alvarez, a "high bred beauty" whom the Texans called the "Angel of Goliad", and the brave and kindly intervention of Col. Francisco Garay. Many of those who eventually escaped were first recaptured and later managed a second escape. Two physicians, Joseph H. Barnard and John Shackelford, were taken to San Antonio to treat Mexican wounded from the battle of the Alamo; they later escaped.
After the executions the bodies were burned, the remains left exposed to weather, vultures, and coyotes, until June 3, 1836, when Gen. Thomas J. Rusk gathered the remains and buried them with military honors.*

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## Wildthings

Warning!! If you start reading this you wont quit!! Long read

Great read about the four that escaped.

*Escape of the Four Alabama Red Rovers
Dillard Cooper's Remembrances of the Fannin Massacre From Rangers and Pioneers of Texas by A.J. Sowell 1884 as reprinted from the American Sketch Book 1881. According to James T. DeShields in Tall Men With Long Rifles, Cooper died in extreme poverty in the 1890's in Llano, TX stating "during his later years the pitiful pension of $150.00 a year, provided by the great and opulent state of Texas, barely sufficed to buy food and medicines for the aged hero and his faithful wife. Napoleon was not far wrong when he said 'Republics are ungrateful.'"
......several....cried out for mercy. I remember one, a young man, who had been noted for his piety, but who had afterwards become somewhat demoralized by bad company, falling on his knees, crying aloud to God for mercy, and forgiveness. Others, attempted to plead with their inhuman captors, but their pleadings were in vain.....On my right hand, stood Wilson Simpson, and on my left, Robert Fenner....while some of them were rending the air with their cries of agonized despair, Fenner called out to them, saying: "Don't take on so, boys; if we have to die, let's die like brave men.....At that moment, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the flash of a musket.....


On the morning of the 27th of March, 1836, about daylight, we were awakened by the guards, and marched out in front of the fort, where we were counted and divided into three different detachments; we had been given to understand that we were to be marched to Copano, and from there shipped to New Orleans. The impression, however, had in some way been circulated among us, that we were to be sent out that morning to hunt cattle; though I thought at the time that it could not be so, as it was but a poor way, to hunt cattle on foot.

Our detachment was marched out in double file, each prisoner being guarded by two soldiers, until within about half a mile southwest of the fort, we arrived at a brush fence, built by the Mexicans. We were then placed in single file, and were half way between the guard and the fence, eight feet each way. We were then halted, when the commanding officer came up to the head of the line, and asked if there were any of us who understood Spanish. By this time, there began to dawn upon the minds of us, the truth, that we were to be butchered, and that, I suppose, was the reason that none answered. He then ordered us to turn our backs to the guards. When the order was given not one moved, and then the officer, stepping up to the man at, the head of the column, took him by the shoulders and turned him around.

By this time, despair had seized upon our poor boys, and several of them cried out for mercy. I remember one, a young man, who had been noted for his piety, but who had afterwards become somewhat demoralized by bad company, falling on his knees, crying aloud to God for mercy, and forgiveness. Others, attempted to plead with their inhuman captors, but their pleadings were in vain, for on their faces no gleam of piety was seen for the defenseless men who stood before them. On my right hand, stood Wilson Simpson, and on my left, Robert Fenner. In the midst of the panic of terror which seized our men, and while some of them were rending the air with their cries of agonized despair, Fenner called out to them, saying: "Don't take on so, boys; if we have to die, let's die like brave men."

At that moment, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the flash of a musket; I instantly threw myself forward on the ground, resting on my hands. Robert Fenner must have been instantly killed, for he fell with such force upon me as almost to throw me over as I attempted to rise, which detained me a few moments in my flight, so that Simpson, my companion on the right, got the start of me. As we ran towards an opening in the brush fence, which was almost in front of us, Simpson got through first, and I was immediately after him. I wore, at that time, a small, round cloak, which was fastened with a clasp at the throat. As I ran through the opening, an officer charged upon me, and ran his sword through my cloak, which would have held me, but I caught the clasp with both hands, and tore it apart, and the cloak fell from me. There was an open prairie, about two miles wide, through which I would have to run before I could reach the nearest timber, which was a little southwest of the place from where we started.

I gained on my pursuers, but saw, between me and the timber, three others, who were after Simpson. As I neared the timber, I commenced walking, in order to recover my strength, before I came near them. When he first started, we were all near together, but as Simpson took a direct course across the prairie, I, in order to avoid his pursuers, took a circuitous course. There were two points of timber projecting into the prairie, one of which was nearer to me than the other. I was making for the furthest point, but as Simpson entered the timber, his pursuers halted, and then ran across and cut me off, I then started for the point into which Simpson had entered, but they turned and cut me oft from that. I then stopped running and commenced walking slowly between them and the other point. They, no doubt, thinking I was about to surrender myself, stopped, and I continued to walk within about sixty yards of them, when I suddenly wheeled and ran into the point for which I had first started. They did not attempt to follow me, but just as I was about to enter the timber, they fired, the bullets whistling over my head caused me to draw my head down as I ran.

As soon as I entered the timber, I saw Simpson waiting and beckoning to me. I went towards him, and we ran together for about two miles, when we reached the river. We then stopped and consulted as to the best way of concealing ourselves. I proposed climbing a tree, but he objected, saying that should the Mexicans discover us, we would have no way of making our escape. Before we arrived at any conclusion, we heard some one coming, which frightened us so, that I jumped into the river, while Simpson ran a short distance up it, but seeing me, he also jumped in. The noise proceeded from the bank immediately above the spot where Simpson was, and I could see the place very plainly, and soon discovered that two of our companions had made their escape to this place. They were Zachariah Brooks, and Isaac Hamilton. In the fleshy part of both Hamilton's thighs were wounds, one made by a gun-shot and another by a bayonet.

We all swam the river, and traveling up it a short distance, arrived at a bluff bank, near which was a thick screen of bushes, where we concealed ourselves. The place was about five miles above the fort. We did not dare proceed further that day, as the Mexicans were still searching for us, and Hamilton's wounds had become so painful as to prevent his walking, which obliged us to carry him. We remained there until about 10 o'clock that night, when we started forth, Simpson and myself carrying Hamilton, Brooks, though severely wounded, was yet able to travel. We had to proceed very cautiously and rather slowly.

Fort La Bahia being southeast of us, and the point we were making for, was about where Goliad now stands. We proceeded, in a circuitous route in a northeasterly direction. We approached within a short distance of the fort, and could not at first account for the numerous fires we saw blazing. We were not long in doubt, for the sickening smell that was borne towards us by the south wind, informed us too well that they were burning the bodies of our companions. And, here, I will state what Mrs. Cash, who was kept a prisoner, stated afterwards; that some of our men were thrown into the flames and burned alive. We passed the fort safely, and reached a spring, where we rested from our journey and from whence we proceeded on our travels. 

But the night was foggy, and becoming bewildered, it was not long before we found ourselves at the spring from which we started. We again started out, and again found ourselves at the same place; but we had too much at stake to sink into despondency. So once more took our wounded companion, thinking we could not miss the right direction this time; but, at last when day began to break, to our great consternation, we found we had been traveling around the same spot, and were for the third time back at the identical spring from which we had at first set forth. It was now impossible to proceed further that day, as we dared not travel during the day, knowing we should be discovered by the Mexicans. We therefore concealed ourselves by the side of a slight elevation, amidst a thick undergrowth of bushes.

By this time, we began to grow very hungry, and I remembered an elm bush that grew at the entrance of the timber where we were concealed, which formed an excellent commissary for us, and from the branches of which we partook, until nearly every limb was entirely stripped. About 9 o'clock that morning, we heard the heavy tramp of the Mexican army on the march; and they not long after that passed within a stone's throw of our place of concealment. It seems indeed, that we were guided by an over-ruling providence in not being able to proceed further that night, for as we were not expecting the Mexican army so soon, we would probably have been overtaken and discovered by them, perhaps in some prairie, where we could not have escaped.

We remained in our hiding place the rest of the day, and resumed our journey after dark, still carrying our wounded companion. Whenever the enemy passed us, we had to conceal ourselves; and we laid several days in ponds of mud and water, with nothing but our heads exposed to view. When in the vicinity of Lavaca, we again got ahead of the Mexicans; and, after traveling all night, we discovered, very early in the morning of the ninth day, a house within a few hundred yards of the river. We approached it, and found the inhabitants had fled. When we entered the house, we discovered a quantity of corn, some chickens, and a good many eggs lying about in different places. Our stomachs were weak and revolted at the idea of eating them raw, so we looked about for some means of striking a fire, first searching for a rock, but failing to find one, we took an old chisel and ground it on a grindstone for about two hours, but could never succeed in getting the sparks to catch. We then concluded to return and try the eggs raw. 

We had taken one, and Simpson was putting on his shoes, which he had taken off to rest his feet, which were raw and bleeding, and had just got one on when he remarked: "Boys, we would be in a tight place if the Mexicans were to come upon us now." So saying, he walked to the window, when to his horror, there was the whole Mexican army not more than a mile and a half off, and fifteen or twenty horsemen coming at full speed within a hundred yards of us. We took up our wounded man and ran to the timber, which was not far off, Simpson leaving his shoe behind him. We got into the timber and concealed ourselves between the logs of two trees, the tops of which having fallen together, and being very thickly covered with leaves and moss, formed an almost impenetrable screen above and around us. We had scarcely hidden ourselves from view, when the Mexicans came swarming around us, shouting and hallooing through the woods, but did not find us. We heard them from time to time, all throughout the day and next night. The next morning, just before day, the noise of the Mexicans ceased, and we concluded they had left. Simpson then asked me to go with him to get his shoe, as it would be difficult for him to travel without it, and I consented to do so. We went out to the edge of the timber and stopped some time to take observations before proceeding further. Seeing nothing of the Mexicans, we proceeded to the house, found the shoe, and possessing ourselves of a couple of ears of corn, and a bottle of water, we returned to our companions. We had no doubt that the Mexicans had gone, so we sat down and drank the water and ate an ear of corn, when Brooks asked Simpson to go with him to the house, saying he would get a chicken, and we could eat it raw. They started, and had hardly got to the edge of the timber when I heard the sound of horses’ feet, and directly afterwards the Mexicans were to be seen in every direction. I was sure they had captured Simpson and Brooks. Soon I heard something in the brush near us, but did not know whether it was the boys or Mexicans, but it turned out to be the boys, who crept undercover, and, in a few minutes, four Mexicans came riding by, passing within a few feet of where we were lying, with our faces to the ground. 

After going into the woods a short distance they turned and passed out again, but it was not long after when six of them came riding quite close, three on each side of us, and leaning down and peering into our hiding place. It seemed to me they could have heard us, for my own heart seemed to raise me almost from the ground by its throbbings. I felt more frightened than I ever had been before; for at the time of the massacre, everything had come on me so suddenly that my nerves had no time to become unstrung as they now were. The Mexicans passed and repassed us, through the day, so we dared not move from our hiding place. A guard was placed around us the following night, the main body having, no doubt, gone on, and left a detachment to search for us. I think they must have had some idea of our being some of Fannin's men, or they would scarcely have gone to that trouble. About 10 o'clock that night we held a consultation, and I told my companions it would not do to remain there any longer, as the Mexicans were aware of our place of concealment, and would surely discover us the next day. We all decided then to leave, and they requested me to lead the way out. I told them we would have to crawl through the timber and a short piece of prairie, until we crossed the road near which the Mexicans were posted; that they must be careful to remove every leaf and stick in the path, and to hold their feet up, only crawling on their hands and knees, as the least noise would betray us to the enemy. 

I was somewhat acquainted with the locality; for we were now not far from Texana, and I had some times hunted along these woods. Thus I led the way. Hamilton's wounds were so painful that we could move only slowly, and we must have been two hours crawling about 200 yards. When we at length passed the timber and reached the road, I stopped to make a careful survey of the situation. I could see the Mexicans placed along the road, about a hundred yards on each side of us. The moon was shining, but had sunk towards the west, which threw the shadow of a point of timber across the road, and concealed us from view. It would have been hard to discover us from the color of our clothes, as the earthy element with which they were mixed had entirely hidden the original fabric. We continued to crawl, until we reached a sufficient distance not to be discovered, when we rose up and walked. Although Hamilton had, with a great deal of pain, managed to crawl, yet it was impossible for him to walk, and his wounds had by this time become so much irritated and inflamed that he could scarcely bear to be carried. We traveled that night only a short distance, and hid ourselves in a thicket near a pond of water. Brooks had been trying to persuade me to leave Hamilton; but, although our progress was impeded by having to carry him, I could not entertain the idea for a moment. I indignantly refused, but still he would seize every opportunity to urge it upon me. He said it would be impossible for us to escape, burdened as we were with Hamilton. I could only acknowledge the truth of this, for it was a desperate case with us. The foe was around us in every direction. Brooks, finding that I was not to be persuaded, then attempted to influence Simpson.

On the tenth day out, they took the bottle and went to the pond nearby, for water. As they were returning, (I suppose Brooks did not know he was so near the place they left us), both Hamilton and myself heard Brooks urging Simpson to leave him. He told him if we remained with Hamilton, we would certainly lose our lives; but there was some slight chance of escaping, if we left him, and that Hamilton's wounds had become so much worse that he was bound to die, unless he could have rest; and, as we were doing him no good, and ourselves a great deal of injury by carrying him, it was, our duty to leave him. Now Brooks had never carried him a step; Simpson and myself having done that; yet Brooks was the first who had ever proposed leaving him; and, although there was a great deal of truth in what he was saying, yet I felt quite angry with him, as I heard him trying to persuade Simpson. Hamilton did not say a word to them when they came in, but sat with his face buried in his hands a long time. 

At length, he looked up, and said: "Boys, Brooks has told you the truth; I cannot travel any further, and if you stay with me, all will be killed. Go and leave me, boys; if I have rest I may recover, and if I ever should get off safe, you shall hear from me again." He spoke so reasonably, and we were so thoroughly convinced of the truth of what he said, after a brief consultation, we decided to depart without him. Hamilton had known Brooks in Alabama; he called him to him, and gave him a gold watch and $40 in gold, telling him to give it to his mother. We then bade Hamilton farewell, all of us shedding tears as we parted, but when we turned to go, my resolution failed me, and I could not find it in my heart to leave him. I said: "Boys, don't let us leave him." But Simpson and Brooks said that we could do neither him nor ourselves any good by remaining, and that they were determined to go. I told them I would remain with him, and do the best I could for him. So they started off without me; but Hamilton insisted so much that I should leave him, that I again bade him farewell, and followed and soon overtook the others. The reason that we started off in the day, was that it was raining quite hard, and we thought there would not be much danger in traveling, but we had not gone more than half way through the next prairie. when the weather cleared up, and we saw the whole Mexican army encamped at Texana, about two miles off; but they did not discover us, and we succeeded in reaching the timber on the Navidad. In the evening we walked out to a slight eminence which overlooked the prairie, to reconnoiter. While gazing across the prairie, we could see three men on horseback, but so indistinct were they that we could not at first tell whether they were Americans or Mexicans. As they approached, we hid in the undergrowth; and as they passed, we saw that they were Mexican couriers returning to the command.

At eight we again started forth, and coming out on the prairie, we discovered a road, which we concluded had been made by the refugees in their retreat from the enemy. During all this time we had nothing to eat but leaves and herbs, and the two ears of corn that we got at the house on Lavaca river. On the twelfth day, we reached the Colorado, at Mercer's crossing. As we were very tired, we sat down on the bank to rest a little, before attempting to swim over. While sitting there, a dog on the opposite side of the river began to bark. When we heard that well-known sound, our very souls thrilled with joy, and that was the first time since the awful day of the massacre that a smile had ever illuminated our faces. We looked at each other, and then burst into a great big laugh. We were all good swimmers, but I some times took the cramp while swimming, so we concluded to cross on a log. We procured a dead mulberry pole, and hanging on to it, one at each end, and one in the middle, we crossed over to the land of freedom, and a land where we found plenty to eat. After recruiting a little, we procured horses, with the intention of joining Houston's army; but before we reached there, San Jacinto had been fought and won.

It was more than a year before I ever heard anything of Hamilton. He remained in the same place where we left him nine days, sometimes lying in the pond of water, which assuaged the pain of his wounds. At the end of that time he was so much improved that he essayed to walk to Texana, and succeeded in doing so. He said the best eating he ever had in his life, was when he first entered Texana, and ate the meat from the rawhides the Mexicans had left. The next morning he took a skiff, and made his way down to Dimmitt's landing. He had scarcely reached there when he was taken prisoner by a Mexican soldier. Not long after, other soldiers came in, and tying Hamilton on a mule, started for camp. He suffered so much from his wounds that he fainted several times, on the way. Whenever this occurred, they would untie him, lay him on the ground, and throw water into his face until he revived, when they would again mount him on the mule and proceed on their way. Hamilton remained in their hands for some time and gradually grew well of his wounds. There was a Mexican who waited on him, who seemed much attached to him, and Hamilton was led to place much confidence in him. One morning, this Mexican told him that if he wanted to live another day, he must make his escape that night, as he had learned that he and two other prisoners were to be shot before morning. Hamilton then arranged a plan for the escape of himself and two of his companions, which was a success, after many trials and tribulations.*

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## Tony

When I worked in the beer business one of my best friends was an old man that had worked as a brewery rep for Pearl for many years. He told me this story then, it's a great story and one that fits very well in the beer business. Tony


Emma Koehler holds the first bottle of Pearl beer to come off the line after Prohibition was rescinded, 1933. It's an awesome photograph that is made more awesome by Emma's story, which should be made into a Hollywood movie. Per Joe Holley's excellent "Native Texan" column in the Houston Chronicle: "It was Emma Koehler who managed to keep Pearl open during Prohibition, 1919-1933, when almost every other brewery in the state went under. It's an appropriate name in honor of a formidable woman, although it could have been called the Three Emmas. With apologies to the late Paul Harvey, you have to know the rest of the juicy story to understand why. The Pearl Brewing Co. started here in 1883 under a different name and began producing bottles and wooden kegs of Pearl beer in 1886. Otto Koehler took over as president in 1902. Under his leadership, the business thrived, and he and his wife Emma built a three-story stone mansion on a hill in the Laurel Heights section a few blocks west of the brewery. In about 1910, Emma Koehler was injured in an auto accident, and her husband hired a live-in nurse to see after her. The nurse's name also was Emma. Emma Dumpke, known as "Emmi," was in her late 20s, brunette and petite. Not long after joining the household, she accompanied the Koehler family to Europe on an extended stay. Sometime later, a friend of hers - also a nurse, also named Emma - came by the Koehler home to have coffee. Emma Hedda Burgemeister, in her mid-30s, was blonde, gray-eyed and 5 feet 10 inches tall. Emma Dumpke - let's call her Emma II - told her friend about "the intimate relations" (quoting the San Antonio Light) that existed between her and the master of the house. At some point during the affair, the German-born beer baron and business mogul, one of the richest men in the Southwest, bought Emma II a little house across the river on Hunstock Street, just off South Presa. Koehler paid the expenses and gave Emma II $125 a month in spending money. Emma III - the tall blonde - soon moved in, as well. Koehler paid her $50 a month and deeded the house to both Emmas. He dropped by once a week or so at night, for two or three hours. This arrangement lasted until Dumpke (Emma II) informed Koehler that she planned to be married. Shortly before she became Emma Dumpke Daschiel, Koehler proposed to Emma III. She turned him down, she said later, because "Mrs. Koehler was a sick woman, and I would not leave her behind sick and helpless." On Nov. 12, 1914, at a little after 4 in the afternoon, Otto Koehler - age 59 and married for 22 years - left the brewery in his buggy and drove to the cottage on Hunstock Street. The Emmas were both at home. Within a few minutes of walking through the front door, Koehler was dead from bullets to the neck, face and heart. The shots were fired by one of the Emmas. According to detailed reporting in the San Antonio Light, Koehler on that fateful afternoon had brushed past Emma II in the living room and had headed straight to the bedroom, where he found Emma III lying on a bed with a cloth covering her eyes. He reportedly tried to kiss her, a quarrel erupted and Emma III shot him with a .32 revolver. The Koehler family told the Light that there had been a dispute over a bill that nurse Burgemeister (Emma III) had submitted for Emma Koehler's care. Otto Koehler drove to the house to settle the matter, and when he and Emma III started arguing, she got frightened and went for her gun. When police arrived at the cottage, they found Emma II in the living room with neighbors and Koehler's body sprawled on the living room floor. They also found two pistols and a case knife. Emma III was sitting on the floor with her head in the lap "of an old man," apparently a neighbor. Her left wrist was bleeding, from what she said was a self-inflicted knife wound. "I'm sorry, but I had to kill him," she told police. A grand jury no-billed Emma II but charged Emma III with murder. She decided about that time that wounded World War I soldiers needed her nursing skills, so she decamped to Europe. Surprisingly, she came back to San Antonio three years later to stand trial. Her lawyer was former Texas Gov. T.M. Campbell. "It was a sordid story which the unfortunate woman had to tell, but one which held the jury and the courtroom, packed to the utmost with spectators, breathless," the Light reported on Saturday, Jan. 19, 1918. "Miss Burgemeister wore a dress of dark material and a fur hat and muff, her face was covered with a veil." Emma III told the jury that she killed Koehler in self-defense and to protect the honor of her friend, Emma II. "Did you shoot him on the floor after he was dead?" the district attorney asked her. "I don't know," she said. "I only know I shot him as he raised the pistol. I thought he would get me again, and I shot him again. Then I raised the pistol to my head and pulled the trigger." "How many times?" "I don't know," Emma III said. "Your aim was better at Mr. Koehler than at yourself," the district attorney wryly observed. On Jan. 22, 1918, the all-male jury found Emma III not guilty. In 1919, she traveled to New Orleans, where she married a member of the jury. The newlyweds returned to San Antonio to live in the little house on Hunstock. Emma Koehler stayed in her own house, as well. She may have been "sick and helpless" at some point, but, as Elizabeth Fauerso of Pearl points out, "she was a very strong person, by all accounts. She was very smart and very strategic." Taking firm control of the company, she kept it going during Prohibition by brewing near-beer and operating various businesses. Pearl got into making ice, bottling soft drinks, advertising, even auto repair. Koehler, who was just as resourceful during the Depression, retired after almost 26 years as head of Texas' largest brewery, but she remained a formidable presence in the company until her death in 1943. The irony, of course, is that she might never have gotten her chance if two other Emmas, a century ago this month, had stuck to their nursing. Fauerso told me last week that Pearl is not quite sure how to tell the whole story when The Emma opens, although the hotel bar, she said, might feature a new drink. It'll be called "The Three Emmas." Its slogan will be, "It'll kill ya." http://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...arl-Brewery-rest-of-a-juicy-story-5923317.php

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We camped one night on a pretty grass plot. After midnight there was a Texas "shower," and soon there was six inches of water in our tents, and I made my first military mental note: when you see a green spot in Texas, ask why before you camp there."

----- Colonel Percy M. Ashburn, 1914

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## Gdurfey

My sister experienced that at lake Brownwood when I was a kid. Her sleeping bag tried to float out the tent........

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## woodman6415

Gdurfey said:


> My sister experienced that at lake Brownwood when I was a kid. Her sleeping bag tried to float out the tent........


Was camping on lake Brownwood once and a tornado came through... about 2 miles away ... flooded our tent but my sister and bil had their RV there .. was a long night

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## woodman6415

The Texas quote of the day finds early pioneer Noah Smithwick describing his arrival in Texas back in 1827:

"I again [1827] took up the line of march for Texas, this time on board a coasting schooner owned by parties in New Orleans, chartered by Carlysle & Smith and laden with supplies for the Mexican army. A steam tug towed us out to the mouth of the Mississippi as far as steamers ventured. The weather was lovely as a dream of Venice, and we founded the Balize [?] and sped away on the wings of the tradewinds over the placid waters.

We passed Galveston Island in plain view. There was no sign of human habitation on it, nothing to give promise of the thriving city which now covers it. It was only noted then as having been the rendezvous of Lafitte and his pirates and as such was pointed out to me. The trip was a delightful one and I was in fine spirits, when on the third day we threaded the Paso Caballo and ran into Matagorda Bay, having made the run in a little over forty-eight hours, a remarkable record in those days.

We cast anchor in the mouth of the Lavaca River, where we had calculated to find the Mexican troops, but the movements of the troops, as well as the government, were very uncertain, and there were no troops, no agent, no one authorized to receive the goods. There was not an American there. The colonization law exempted from settlement all land within twenty-five miles of the coast; so the territory was given over to the Karankawa Indians, a fierce tribe, whose hand was against every man. They lived mostly on fish and alligators with a man for fete days when they could catch one. They were the most savage looking human beings I ever saw. Many of the bucks were six feet in height, with bows and arrows in proportion. Their ugly faces were rendered hideous by the alligator grease and dirt with which they were besmeared from head to foot as a defense against mosquitoes.

It was a dreary place for a lone stranger to land. A few Mexicans came around, but they spoke no English, and I understood no Spanish. At length two men, Fulcher and McHenry, who had squatted on land six or eight miles up the river, sighted the schooner and came down in a dugout. They took me in with them and I spent my first night in Texas in their cabin. My first meal on Texas soil was dried venison sopped in honey. After having spent some months in New Orleans, where everything of the known world was obtainable, it looked like rank starvation to me. ..

------ Noah Smithwick, "The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days, 1900. You can read the entire text of this fabulous and important work online, here.

https://archive.org/details/evolutionofstat00smit/page/n8

It's one of the most important books regarding life in early Texas, so I recommend that you DO read it.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "The Russians might attack Washington but I'll be damned if they'd be insane enough to attack Texas." ----- Robert Kaufman, U.S. Navy rear admiral, defending the United States government's decision to place Project Sanguine, a U.S. Navy project for communication with submerged submarines using extremely low frequency (ELF) radio waves, in Texas, 1975.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day is in regards to when actress Drew Barrymore's great-great-grandfather got shot in East Texas:

"In the winter of 1878 there came through Marshall from New York a company of prominent young Thespians, who were just beginning to win their laurels in the theatrical world. The company was headed by that well known actor, Mr. John Drew ----- suave and witty ----- supported by the accomplished young actress, Miss May Cummings, and the dashing and handsome young matinee idol, Maurice Barrymore, father of Miss Ethel, Lionel and John Barrymore. On the fateful night they repaired to the Texas & Pacific depot to take the midnight train out... 

Jim Currie was of a prominent and well known Southern family, schooled and educated in the customs and traditions of his illustrious ancestors. He was addicted to the use of liquor and on that eventful winter's night he was around the depot, and was what is commonly known in jargon as "three sheets in the wind." [Currie made] some drunken and laughing remark which appeared to be addressed to the theatrical party. Actor Ben Porter got up from his seat and said something about being unarmed, but that he would defend a lady from insult. 

At this remark Currie jerked out his big smoke wagon and the shooting commenced. Porter staggered and tumbled over dead. By this time the handsome and debonair Maurice Barrymore was on his feet. [He glanced] at Ben Porter, whose life blood was by this time staining the floor. His eyes snapped like electric sparks, as he pushed Miss Cummings behind him and faced Currie. He must have known that he did not have a chance in ten thousand as he stood in front of Currie, who was inflamed by liquor and apparently either with the lust to kill or was just drunk and excited enough not to realize the seriousness of the situation. There was another shot and Barrymore, with a bullet through the shoulder, staggered around and collapsed on the floor. The room was partly filled with the fumes of black powder as Currie put up his gun, and taking hold of Miss Cummings, jollied her around with a drunken air of braggardism. 

Then came a potpourri of excitement and Currie was disarmed by deputy sheriff Arch Adams, who placed him in jail. Mr. Barrymore was taken in charge by Drs. B.F. Eads and John H. Pope, railroad surgeons, and they pulled him through. Miss Cummings remained and nursed him during his convalescence, and in due time they returned to New York City.' 

----- Clifton Seymour, Frontier Times magazine, January 28, 1927

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## Tony

The Texas quote of the day: "Last Friday night a fire broke out at Mollie McCabe's 'Place of Beautiful Sin.' She owned the building which was entirely consumed, together with her household goods and clothes. The fire was caused by one of the damsels of spotted virtue." ---- Jacksboro Frontier Echo, 1875

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## Maverick

I guess that is one way to be creative with words....spotted virtue....had never heard that one before.....and I have been wondering how to use these "smilies" in this forum....so here you go.. probably the one and only chance I will get . 

.  OR

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## Bigdrowdy1

Tony said:


> The Texas quote of the day: "Last Friday night a fire broke out at Mollie McCabe's 'Place of Beautiful Sin.' She owned the building which was entirely consumed, together with her household goods and clothes. The fire was caused by one of the damsels of spotted virtue." ---- Jacksboro Frontier Echo, 1875


MY semi qoute!!!
Sounds like my type women !! Hotter than h3ll !!! and willing to burn the house down from the heat from within!! Been with the few that would fit that bill in the pass. Growing OLD lowers the flame Thank the powers that be or i would be ashes by now!! Those words of Beautiful Sin resonate within myself of dreams come to pass!

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## woodman6415

Today's Texas Quote of the Day comes from none other than old Santa Anna who, 184 year ago today, got whupped up on by Sam Houston and the rest of the Texians at San Jacinto:

"So sudden and fierce was the enemy's charge that the earth seemed to move and tremble."

---- General Antonio López de Santa Anna on April 22, 1836, in a letter written to the citizens of Mexico on the day he was captured after the Battle of San Jacinto, which happened 184 years ago today. Happy San Jacinto day, y'all!

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## TXMoon

woodman6415 said:


> Today's Texas Quote of the Day comes from none other than old Santa Anna who, 184 year ago today, got whupped up on by Sam Houston and the rest of the Texians at San Jacinto:
> 
> "So sudden and fierce was the enemy's charge that the earth seemed to move and tremble."
> 
> ---- General Antonio López de Santa Anna on April 22, 1836, in a letter written to the citizens of Mexico on the day he was captured after the Battle of San Jacinto, which happened 184 years ago today. Happy San Jacinto day, y'all!


SaaaaaLute!!!

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## Wildthings

God Bless Texas!!

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## Gdurfey

.....and Aggie Muster; may a friend answer “here” for the roll call.....

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Among the "soldiers" who fought under Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto were roughly 100 men who had been born in Ireland.

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## woodman6415



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## Tony

Picture (not mine) of the San Jacinto monument after a rain storm.

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## Eric Rorabaugh

That's a neat picture


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## Wildthings

Right now on the Alamo facebook site LIVE 3pm

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Right now on the Alamo facebook site LIVE 3pm



Thanks Barry, that was dam cool! Have you been to San Felipe de Austin?


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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> Thanks Barry, that was dam cool! Have you been to San Felipe de Austin?


No I haven't or the Navarro house!! But I will!!

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> No I haven't or the Navarro house!! But I will!!



Neither have I, we need to get together and do that.

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"John Pimble's mule, Anatasia, died last week. Anatasia was standing in a field of popping corn which, due to the heat, began popping and covered the ground to a depth of 3 feet. The mule, thinking the pop corn was snow, froze to death."

----Texas Panhandle newspaper, Mobeetie, Texas, 1882

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## woodman6415



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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "Hell, Judge ... I've got that much in my right-hand pocket." "Then look in your left-hand pocket and see if you can find two years in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth." ----- Exchange between Galveston bootlegger John Nounes and Judge Joseph Hutcheson after the judge fined Nounes $5.000 in May, 1926

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We hadn't much more'n got to the herd when the air freshened an' things was gettin' right. Then it got cold an' we could hear it comin'. Thunder and lightnin' seemed to spring out of the mesquites. The foreman passed the word: 'Hold 'em till they git wet,' an' we began to circle. The cattle was on their feet in a second, with the first cold air; but we got the mill [circling] started by the time the storm hit. I've seen lightnin'. . .but thet was lightnin' right. As far as thet's concerned, I've seen balls o' fire on the end of a steer's horn many a time, but there was a ball o' fire on the end of both horns of every one of them thousin' steers, an' the light in the balls of their eyes looked like two thousin' more. Talk about a monkey wrench fallin' from a windmill an' giving you a sight o' the stars, or one of them Andy Jackson fireworks clubs puttin' off Roman candles at a Fort Worth parade! They're just sensations; this here show I'm tellin' you about was a real experience. We seen things." 

----- former trail cowboy Frank Hastings recalls a cattle stampede in "A Ranchman's Recollections," 1921

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## woodman6415

Today is Willie Nelson's birthday. He's 87. The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day was shamelessly purloined from Joe Nick Patoski's excellent biography of Willie Nelson, which I feel is mandatory reading for every Texan.

It seems that when Willie recorded the Red Headed Stranger album, it only took him five days of recording and one day of mixing. The total cost for those six days was 4,000 dollars. Columbia had advanced Willie 60,000 dollars for the recording, which was in keeping with the usual length of time it took to make such recordings back then, the infinite number of times each song was recorded before finally a "winner" was selected to go on the album, etc... The 60k advance was non-recoupable, meaning whatever Willie didn't spend on the advance he got to keep. Enough was left over to upgrade the band bus and instruments and still have some running change. It was the first time Willie had total artistic control over an LP and the lean, spare, laid-back style you hear on the record is exactly what Willie wanted.

Incidentally, folks who heard the LP before it was released were wondering what the heck Willie was doing. Phil York, the recording engineer, said "I didn't know this album was anything special. I knew it wasn't Nashville cookie-cutter formula. I remember thinking, 'What's he going to do with this? Nashville isn't going to buy it. It wasn't cut there and it isn't their sound." Joe Gracey, the famous KOKE-FM dee-jay from Austin said, "I thought it was a career-ending mistake, because it was too stark and too-off-the-wall. I thought he had just taken a really hard road."

Noted attorney Joe Jamail, one of Willie's really good friends, said to Willie, "Willie, that album isn't going to sell sh*t."

History has recorded how wrong they all were. "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," became one of Willie's biggest all-time hits. The album went multi-platinum and made Willie one of country music's most recognizable stars. And I was reading all this in Joe Nick's book and thinking, "Joe Jamail may be a super-smart trial lawyer, but his musical taste sucks!"

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIE!

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## Wildthings

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIE!

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## trc65

My one and only Willie Nelson experience was at the First Farm Aid concert in Champaign Il at the Univ of Illinois. I was a junior at the U of I and of course got tickets. No reserved seats, so we were in the stadium at 8:00 am to pick some good seats. Don't remember what time the event started, but it went on all day, into the night, and finally finished after midnight. At various times roamed the stadium to visit others and listen at different places. Unbelievable experience, with outstanding group of performers.

Willie finally took the stage around 11:00 pm and we figured that he would play maybe a half hour and they would finish the night with the promised fireworks by midnight. Nope, not Willie. He played the equivalent of a full concert himself, and refused to relinquish the stage until he was ready to quit. As I recall, it was almost 1:30 am by the time he stopped and the entirety of Champaign/Urbana was woken by the almost half hour fireworks show!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"As Gus Hartman came back from his Buffalo hunt from up north [about 1878], he come upon emigrant wagon and team, and a middle aged man and woman in great distress. He could see that the plains from the camp was all burned off. Their camp was where or near where Pampa Texas now stands. The woman told him they were on their way to New Mexico, that they had camped there the day before late in the afternoon, that their daughter, Frances, walked off south of their camp, as she usually took a walk, after riding in the wagon all day. And the woman and her husband had started a fire to prepare their supper. The buffalo grass was about knee high and thick on the ground, and the wind blowing quite hard from the north. Frances had walked off south from the camp. They accidentally let the fire catch in the dry grass. They tried to put the fire out but they could do nothing with it. Then they thought of Frances but the black smoke rolling on the ground, and the blaze leaping ten feet high and traveling almost as fast as a horse could run, they were sure Frances had been caught. [They] had been hunting for her since daylight but found no trace of her. They would go to places where they could see something still smoking and burning to find an antelope, deer, wolf or some other animal caught by the raging fire, and burned to death.

[Now], there had been an Indian following the wagon, and as they were up on the staked plains, a level country, they had not seen this Indian... The Indian saw this girl Frances, running before the fire. He mounted his horse and dashed in to the thick smoke, and a few feet ahead of that awful fire and grabbed Frances by one arm lifted her on his horse in front of himself, without slacking his own speed, and turned in the direction the fire was going. He had on only buckskin trousers and mockasons [sic], and an Indian blanket around his body. 

Frances did not know what had picked her up, as she had her apron over her face at the time. She said the heat and smoke had about smothered her, but she said she could hear the pounding of the horses feet on the ground, and knew she was on a horse. The Indian was riding a very fast horse & had to let him out to his fastest speed to keep ahead of the fire. The wind whipping the fire this way and that. The fire spread so fast he could not turn to the right or left. They ran south until they got down off the plains, then they took it more slowly until they cross a creek, some five miles farther. It was almost dark when the Indian let Frances down on the ground, then he got off of his horse and tied him to a tree that stood near by. He then pulled grass and fixed her a kind of bed in a small ditch, and motioned to Frances to get down in there, and spread his blanket over her. He watched over her through a long cold nite, and next morning took her back to within a half a mile or so of their wagon and pointed to it, and let her down on the ground. Then putting his hand on her head he looked in her eyes a long moment, whirled his coal black steed, and went like the wind back across the burned prairie, leaving only a trail of dust the way he disappeared." 

----- Rufe Lefors "The Autobiography of Rufe LeFors," 1946

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Famed Fort Worth honky-tonk Billy Bob's Texas was originally built as a cattle barn in the early 1900s. The building was later enclosed as a City of Fort Worth Centennial project in 1936. With sloped floors for easy cleaning due to the cattle pens, the building had the perfect setting for a concert venue, but that would have to wait nearly 40 years. During that gap, the building was used as an AT-10 airplane manufacturing plant and a department store. Clark’s Department Store was so large that the stock boys had to wear roller skates.

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> Famed Fort Worth honky-tonk Billy Bob's Texas was originally built as a cattle barn in the early 1900s. The building was later enclosed as a City of Fort Worth Centennial project in 1936. With sloped floors for easy cleaning due to the cattle pens, the building had the perfect setting for a concert venue, but that would have to wait nearly 40 years. During that gap, the building was used as an AT-10 airplane manufacturing plant and a department store. Clark’s Department Store was so large that the stock boys had to wear roller skates.



It's surely a great place to tip back some cold ones!

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## Tony

This is a long read but but dang interesting. 

This is Don Enrique Esparza, the last survivor of the Battle of the Alamo, late in his life. In November, 1902, the San Antonio Light Newspaper published the following article about Enrique Esparza and it is fantastic. Here is the text: "Since the death of Senora Candelaria Villanueva, several years ago at the age of 112 there is but one person alive who claims to have been in the siege of the Alamo. That person is Enrique Esparza, now 74 years old, who, firm-stepped, clear-minded and clear-eyed, bids fair to live to the age of the woman who for so long shared honors with him. Enrique Esparza, who tells one of the most interesting stories ever narrated, works a truck garden on Nogalitos street between the southern Pacific Railroad track and the San Pedro creek. Here he lives with the family of his son, Victor Esparza. Every morning he is up before daybreak and helps load the wagons with garden stuff that is to be taken up town to market. He is a farmer of experience and contributes very materially to the success of the beautiful five acres garden, of which he is the joint proprietor. While claims of Enrique Esparza have been known among those familiar with the historical work done by the Daughters of the Republic, an organization which has taken great interest in getting first-hand information of the period of Texas Independence, the old man was not available up to about five years ago, for the reason that he resided on his farm in Atascosa county. This accounts for the fact that he is not well enough known to be included in the itinerary when San Antonians are proudly doing the town with their friends. Esparza tells a straight story. Every syllable he speaks to uttered with confidence and in his tale, he frequently makes digressions, going into details of relationship of early families of San Antonio and showing a tenacious memory. At the time of the fight of the Alamo he was 8 years old. His father was a defender, and his father's own brother an assailant of the Alamo. He was a witness of his mother's grief, and had his own grief, at the slaughter in which his father was included. As he narrated to a reporter the events in which he was so deeply concerned, his voice several times choked and he could not proceed for emotion. While he has a fair idea of English, he preferred to talk in Spanish. "My father, Gregorio Esparza, belonged to Benavides' company, in the American army," said Esparza, "and I think it was in February, 1836, that the company was ordered to Goliad when my father was ordered back alone to San Antonio, for what I don't know. When he got here there were rumors that Santa Ana was on the way here, and many residents sent their families away. One of my father's friends told him that he could have a wagon and team and all necessary provisions for a trip, if he wanted to take his family away. There were six of us besides my father; my mother, whose name was Anita, my eldest sister, myself and three younger brothers, one a baby in arms. I was 8 years old. "My father decided to take the offer and move the family to San Felipe. Everything was ready, when one morning, Mr. W. Smith, who was godfather to my youngest brother, came to our house on North Flores street, just above where the Presbyterian church now is, and told my mother to tell my father when he came in that Santa Ana had come. (Northeast corner of Houston and N. Flores Streets.) "When my father came my mother asked him what he would do. You know the Americans had the Alamo, which had been fortified a few months before by General Cos. "Well, I'm going to the fort" my father said. "Well, if pop goes, I am going along, and the whole family too. "It took the whole day to move and an hour before sundown we were inside the fort. Where was a bridge over the river about where Commerce street crosses it, and just as we got to it we could her Santa Anna's drums beating on Milam Square, and just as we were crossing the ditch going into the fort Santa Anna fired his salute on Milam Square. "There were a few other families who had gone in. A Mrs. Cabury[?] and her sister, a Mrs. Victoriana, and a family of several girls, two of whom I knew afterwards, Mrs. Dickson, Mrs. Juana Melton, a Mexican woman who had married an American, also a woman named Concepcion Losoya and her son, Juan, who was a little older than I. "The first thing I remember after getting inside the fort was seeing Mrs. Melton making circles on the ground with an umbrella. I had seen very few umbrellas. While I was walking around about dark I went near a man named Fuentes who was talking at a distance with a soldier. When the latter got near me he said to Fuentes: "Did you know they had cut the water off?" "The fort was built around a square. The present Hugo-Schmeltzer building is part of it. I remember the main entrance was on the south side of the large enclosure. The quarters were not in the church, but on the south side of the fort, on either side of the entrance, and were part of the convent. There was a ditch of running water back of the church and another along the west side of Alamo Plaza. We couldn't got to the latter ditch as it was under fire and it was the other one that Santa Anna cut off. The next morning after we had gotten in the fort I saw the men drawing water from a well that was in the convent yard. The well was located a little south of the center of the square. I don't know whether it is there now or not. "On the first night a company of which my father was one went out and captured some prisoners. One of them was a Mexican soldier, and all through the siege, he interpreted the bugle calls on the Mexican side, and in this way the Americans know about the movements of the enemy. "After the first day there was fighting. The Mexicans had a cannon somewhere near where Dwyer avenue now is, and every fifteen minutes they dropped a shot into the fort. "The roof of the Alamo had been taken off and the south side filled up with dirt almost to the roof on that side so that there was a slanting embankment up which the Americans could run and take positions. During the fight I saw numbers who were shot in the head as soon as they exposed themselves from the roof. There were holes made in the walls of the fort and the Americans continually shot from these also. We also had two cannon, one at the main entrance and one at the northwest corner of the fort near the post office. The cannon were seldom fired. "I remember Crockett. He was a tall, slim man, with black whiskers. He was always at the head. The Mexicans called him Don Benito. The Americans said he was Crockett. He would often come to the fire and warm his hands and say a few words to us in the Spanish language. I also remember hearing the names of Travis and Bowie mentioned, but I never saw either of them that I know of. "After the first few days I remember that a messenger came from somewhere with word that help was coming. The Americans celebrated it by beating the drums and playing on the flute. But after about seven days fighting there was an armistice of three days and during this time Don Benito had conferences every day with Santa Anna. Badio, the interpreter, was a close friend of my father, and I heard him tell my father in the quarters that Santa Anna had offered to let the Americans go with their lives if they would surrender, but the Mexicans would be treated as rebels. "During the armistice my father told my mother she had better take the children and go, while she could do so safely. But my mother said: "No!, if you're going to stay, so am I. If they kill one they can kill us all. "Only one person went out during the armistice, a woman named Trinidad Saucedo. "Don Benito, or Crockett, as the Americans called him, assembled the men on the last day and told them Santa Anna's terms, but none of them believed that any one who surrendered would get out alive, so they all said as they would have to die any how they would fight it out. "The fighting began again and continued every day, and nearly every night,. One night there was music in the Mexican camp and the Mexican prisoner said it meant that reinforcements had arrived. "We then had another messenger who got through the lines, saying that communication had been cut off and the promised reinforcements could not be sent. "On the last night my father was not out, but he and my mother were sleeping together in headquarters. About 2 o'clock in the morning there was a great shooting and firing at the northwest corner of the fort, and I heard my mother say: "Gregorio, the soldiers have jumped the wall. The fight's begun. "He got up and picked up his arms and went into the fight. I never saw him again. My uncle told me afterwards that Santa Anna gave him permission to get my father's body, and that he found it where the thick of the fight had been. "We could hear the Mexican officers shouting to the men to jump over, and the men were fighting so close that we could hear them strike each other. It was so dark that we couldn't see anything, and the families that were in the quarters just huddled up in the corners. My mother's children were near her. Finally they began shooting through the dark into the room where we were. A boy who was wrapped in a blanket in one corer was hit and killed. The Mexicans fired into the room for at least fifteen minutes. It was a miracle, but none of us children were touched. "By daybreak the firing had almost stopped, and through the window we could see shadows of men moving around inside the fort. The Mexicans went from room to room looking for an American to kill. While it was still dark a man stepped into the room and pointed his bayonet at my mother's breast, demanding: "Where's the money the Americans had?" "If they had any,' said my mother, "you may look for it.' "Then an officer stepped in and said: "What are you doing? The women and children are not to be hurt. "The officer then told my mother to pick out her own family and get her belongings and the other women were given the same instructions. When it was broad day the Mexicans began to remove the dead. There were so many killed that it took several days to carry them away. "The families, with their baggage, were then sent under guard to the house of Don Ramon Musquiz, which was located where Frank Brothers store now is, on Main Plaza.(Southeast corner of Soledad and Commerce Streets, now a parking lot, 1991). Here we were given coffee and some food, and were told that we would go before the president at 2 o'clock. On our way to the Musquiz house we passed up Commerce street, and it was crowded as far as Presa street with soldiers who did not fire a shot during the battle. Santa Anna had many times more troops than he could use. "At 3 o'clock we went before Santa Anna. His quarters were in a house which stood where L. Wolfson's store now is.(Middle of Commerce Street, north side, between Main Avenue and Soledad Street). He had a great stack of silver money on a table before him, and a pile of blankets. One by one the women were sent into a side room to make their declaration, and on coming out were given $2 and a blanket. While my mother was waiting her turn Mrs. Melton, who had never recognized my mother as an acquaintance, and who was considered an aristocrat, sent her brother, Juan Losoya, across the room to my mother to ask the favor that nothing be said to the president about her marriage with an American. "My mother told Juan to tell her not to be afraid. "Mrs. Dickson was there, also several other woman. After the president had given my mother her $2 and blanket, he told her she was free to go where she liked. We gathered what belongings we could together and went to our cousin's place on North Flores street, where we remained several months." This photo of Enrique Esparaza is courtesy the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at UT-Austin. The Briscoe Center is a fantastically interesting repository to visit.

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The Comanches used to enter Mexico on raiding parties via the Comanche War Trail, which crossed the Trans-Pecos from the northeast, then split into two forks when it reached the Big Bend country. One fork crossed the Rio Grande near present-day Lajitas, then continued into Mexico via San Carlos and the Rio Conchos valley. The main trail crossed the Rio Grande at the Chisos ford, between Santa Elena and Mariscal Canyons, then continued by the Laguna de Jaco into the northern portion of the despoblado (uninhabited, open country or "no man's land"). So distinctive was this trail that early explorers never failed to mention it if they saw it. A mile wide in places, it was littered with the skeletons of livestock driven from Mexico. A Colonel Langberg reported that it was "wider than any royal road," and "so well beaten that it appears that suitable engineers had constructed it." The land was rutted and in some spots vegetation was burned off, graphically revealing the extent to which the Comanches had subdued the heretofore untamed Big Bend country. Today the trail is almost invisible, even to the trained eye. A research team from UT found that erosion and vegetation have made it almost impossible to distinguish the trail from the surrounding desert.

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## Nubsnstubs

woodman6415 said:


> The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
> 
> The Comanches used to enter Mexico on raiding parties via the Comanche War Trail, which crossed the Trans-Pecos from the northeast, then split into two forks when it reached the Big Bend country. One fork crossed the Rio Grande s vegetation was burned off, graphically revealing the extent to which the Comanches had subdued the heretofore untamed Big Bend country.* Today the trail is almost invisible, even to the trained eye. A research team from UT found that erosion and vegetation have made it almost impossible to distinguish the trail from the surrounding desert.*



Yep, and we have greenies whining we're destroying the landscape. It took just about 20 years for the desert to obliterate any evidence of a hole I dug 24-25 years earlier for a pit BBQ. I did manage to locate the spot because of a can I buried......... Jerry

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## Tony

A week ago, 4 tornadoes tore through East Texas, specifically Polk County, where my In-laws live. A tree fell on their house. They were unhurt but the house is a total loss. Nikki and I went there this weekend to help get what we could salvage out of the house. We drive through Huntsville on the way and I've passed by the sign pointing to Sam Houston's grave 100 times over the years. I'm embarrassed to say I've never stopped to see it and pay my respects. On the way back today I did. The cemetery is in disrepair, I hope it's only a temporary thing due to Covid-19. It's still an impressive thing to see.

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## Wildthings

yep been there done that! great place for history.

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## woodman6415

Arcane Texas Fact 

Barton Springs in Austin is named for early settler William Barton, who came to the area was still part of Mexico. William Barton died in 1840. What follows is his obituary, written by a long-gone newspaper at the time of his death:

Texas Sentinel, Austin, Texas, April 15, 1840:

Died, on Friday, 11 instant, near this city, Mr. William BARTON, aged 58 years. 

Mr. BARTON was a native of South Carolina, and moved to the state of Alabama during the wars with the Indians in 1816 and 1817. From that state he came to Texas. His whole life has been spent upon the frontier, and he has been aptly styled the Daniel Boone of Texas. He has seen many hairbreadth escapes and a narrative of his life would form a very interesting biography. He removed to the place where he died about three years ago. It was then twelve miles above the highest settlers on the east of the Colorado, and on the west there was not another person for more than forty miles. The Indians frequently surrounded his house and have taken a few shots at him. He has always contended that he should never be murdered by an Indian. In his manners he was frank and
confiding, and died not only lamented by his old companions upon the frontier, but by all who have become acquainted with him, since the rapid settlement and improvement of the country around him. He was emphatically an honest and an upright man.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "I landed in San Antonio once badly in need of a job. I made contact with Ab Blocker, noted trail boss who was starting to the Red Cloud Agency with an Indian contract herd. I asked him for a job. He said, "I'm shorthanded but I've got to know whether you are eligible or not. Can you ride a pitching bronc? Can you rope a horse out of the remuda without throwing the loop around your own head? Are you good-natured? In case of stampede at night, would you drift along in front or circle the cattle to a mill?" I said I certainly knew enough to mill them providing my night horse was fast enough to outrun the cattle. "Well," he said, "that is fine. Just one more question: Can you sing?" I said, "Yes," when I knew that I couldn't even call hogs, but I was sure needing a job. Things went along pretty well for about twenty days. It seemed every time I was on guard the cattle would get up and low and mill around the bed ground. I was afraid the boss would find out the trouble sooner or later. One night I hadn't been out ten minutes when I commenced singing to them and most of them got up and commenced milling. I was doing my best singing when all at once the boss slipped up behind me. He was in a bad humor and said: "Kid, you are fired. I thought you were causing this trouble. I thought you told me you could sing. It's a hell of a note that cattle can't stand your singing. You go back to camp and I'll finish your guard." Ab was a good singer and in a few minutes the cattle commenced laying down." ----- Cowboy Jack Potter, quoted by Floyd Benjamin Street in "The Kaw: The Heart of a Nation," 1941

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## woodman6415

"In 1948, I returned to France at the invitation of French Government. It was still a war-ravaged country ... but this time there was something different. It wasn't the absence of fighting, nor the silence of the big guns, nor the disappearance of uniforms and chow lines ... I didn't know what it was until one morning when I was taken to the grounds of a small French school. The children had been assembled in the play yard. They were grouped close together and arranged in wobbly little rows, their dark heads bobbing around like flower buds on long stems. One of the teachers rapped for silence. The kids quieted immediately and turned their eyes towards her. Their Faces were scrubbed and bright in the sunshine. The teacher raised her arms, and for a moment, there was no sound ... Then the teacher brought her arms down and the kids began to sing ... I Knew why I felt at home. The spirit of freedom was hovering over that play yard as it did all over France at that time. A country was free again. A people had recovered their independence and their children were grateful. They were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that. America, at that moment, never meant more to me ... The true meaning of America, you ask? It's in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman's badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper... In all these things, and many more, you'll find America. In all these things, you'll find freedom. And freedom is what America means to the world. And to me."

------ Audie Murphy

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## woodman6415

"The XIT brand was conceived of by an an old Texas trail driver named Ab Blocker, who placed it upon the first cow. She was not an animal of high pedigree, but a Longhorn from South Texas. Her color, gauntness, and perversity were historic. Nearly two centuries before, with the initial Spanish expedition into the province for the purpose of founding a settlement in 1690, there came a similar Mexican cow. She walked steaming from the waters of the Rio Grande, cropped the first grass on the northern shore, switched her tail at a persistent fly, and felt at home. Long of horn and leg, variegated in color, and belligerent of disposition, she was prophetic of the millions and millions of others to fatten upon the grasses of the border state.

As she pushed north and east with the expedition of Governor Alonzo de Leon and Father Massanet, the tallow thickened over her ribs, a little bit, and she became smooth and glossy. She sprang of hardy and wily stock. As she fled to the nearest pool or mud hole to escape the attentions of the heel fly, as she fought off the wolves by night and outran the thieving Indians by day, she built up a spirit of independence and of resourcefulness that made her a companion of the wilderness and a fighter of the frontier.

By the time the East Texas missions were abandoned, in 1693, the Longhorn had broken the ties that bound her to her native range, and when the soldiers and missionaries returned home to Mexico, she stayed in Texas. The Mexican cows matched with the wilderness, met claw and fang with horn and cow-sense, and when the Spaniards came again, twenty-three years later, Longhorn cattle grazed the East Texas grasslands. Since that first memorable day Texas has never been without cattle. For more than two centuries livestock has formed one of its chief sources of wealth. Wherever "Texas" is heard, steers are thought of, and the head of the Longhorn is as emblematic of Texas as is the lone star. Texas and Longhorns are almost synonymous."

---- J. Evetts Haley, "The XIT Ranch of Texas," 1936

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We had to sleep on the prairie every night, six days' journey .... except at Goliad, and possibly one night on the Colorado, without shelter and with only such food as we carried with us, and prepared ourselves. The journey was hazardous on account of Indians, and there were white men in Texas whom I would not have cared to meet in a secluded place"

---- Ulysses S. Grant describes journeying through Texas during the Mexican-American War, 1846

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Jesse James once refused to rob a bank in Mckinney, Texas, because that town had a chili parlor that Jesse liked, and he knew that he would not be able to return to eat there if he robbed the local bank.

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## Tony




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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day finds Brownsville native Kris Kristofferson talking about how he wrote "Me and Bobby McGee" and how he felt when Port Arthur native Janis Joplin recorded it and then passed away shortly afterward:

"The title came from [Monument Records founder] Fred Foster. He called one night and said, ‘I’ve got a song title for you. It’s “Me and Bobby McKee.”’ I thought he said ‘McGee.’ Bobby McKee was the secretary of Boudleaux Bryant, who was in the same building with Fred. Then Fred says, ‘The hook is that Bobby McKee is a she. How does that grab you?’ I said, ‘Uh, I’ll try to write it, but I’ve never written a song on assignment.’ So it took me a while to think about.

There was a Mickey Newbury song that was going through my mind—‘Why You Been Gone So Long?’ It had a rhythm that I really liked. I started singing in that meter.

For some reason, I thought of La Strada, this Fellini film, and a scene where Anthony Quinn is going around on this motorcycle and Giulietta Masina is the feeble-minded girl with him, playing the trombone. He got to the point where he couldn’t put up with her anymore and left her by the side of the road while she was sleeping. Later in the film, he sees this woman hanging out the wash and singing the melody that the girl used to play on the trombone. He asks, ‘Where did you hear that song?’ And she tells him it was this little girl who had showed up in town and nobody knew where she was from, and later she died. That night, Quinn goes to a bar and gets in a fight. He’s drunk and ends up howling at the stars on the beach. To me, that was the feeling at the end of ‘Bobby McGee.’ The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. That’s where the line ‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ came from.

The first time I heard Janis Joplin’s version was right after she died. Paul Rothchild, her producer, asked me to stop by his office and listen to this thing she had cut. Afterwards, I walked all over L.A., just in tears. I couldn’t listen to the song without really breaking up. So when I came back to Nashville, I went into the Combine [Publishing] building late at night, and I played it over and over again, so I could get used to it without breaking up. Donnie Fritts came over and listened with me, and we wrote a song together that night about Janis, called ‘Epitaph’.

‘Bobby McGee’ was the song that made the difference for me. Every time I sing it, I still think of Janis.


Source: "Performing Songwriter" magazine. You can find the article and a treasure trove of wonderful music lore at their website, here:

http://performingsongwriter.com/kris-kristofferson-bobby-mcgee/

Really great stuff!

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## Maverick

For you guys and gals in SE Texas that have dreamed of visiting the Sahara Desert, looks like you can postpone your travel plans, the desert is coming to you this Friday. Enjoy!

" This thicker layer is likely to reach Texas by Friday and then take a turn to the east. If the forecast model is right, it will move over most of the Southeast and MidAtlantic states over the weekend. "

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## Wildthings

Maverick said:


> For you guys and gals in SE Texas that have dreamed of visiting the Sahara Desert, looks like you can postpone your travel plans, the desert is coming to you this Friday. Enjoy!
> 
> " This thicker layer is likely to reach Texas by Friday and then take a turn to the east. If the forecast model is right, it will move over most of the Southeast and MidAtlantic states over the weekend. "


One thing good is that it will keep the tropics at bay for a little while!!







yep


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## Tony

Today marks the 157th anniversary of the death of Sam Houston, who died on July 26, 1863. His last words were "Texas, Margaret, Texas." With him were his wife Margaret, most of his children, and Jeff Hamilton, his slave and faithful companion. His body was laid to rest during a rainstorm in Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville and, owing to the strife of the nation during the Civil War, there were very few people in attendance. An obituary appeared in the Dallas Herald, August 5, 1863, which read in part: “Let us not shed tears to his memory due to one who has filled so much of our affections. Let the whole people bury with him whatever of unkindness they had for him.” A very simple slab marker was placed on his grave. In 1936, in observance of the Texas Centennial, a marble marker by sculptor Pompeo Coppini was placed on the grave by the State of Texas. The inscription engraved on the monument is attributed to Andrew Jackson, a long-time friend. It reads: “The World Will Take Care of Houston’s Fame.”

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## Wildthings

Yessir Yessir

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## Tony

Wildthings said:


> Yessir Yessir
> 
> View attachment 191094View attachment 191095


Both are must see in my opinion.

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## Nubsnstubs

Wondering how long it's gonna be before someone will try to get this statue removed. Someone needs to paint it before that becomes an issue. ........... Jerry (in Tucson)


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## Wildthings

Nubsnstubs said:


> Wondering how long it's gonna be before someone will try to get this statue removed. Someone needs to paint it before that becomes an issue. ........... Jerry (in Tucson)


It was posted on social media awhile back that they were coming for it. A very large crowd of protectors showed up and no protestors did. 
I'll try to find a picture

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## Tony

Nubsnstubs said:


> Wondering how long it's gonna be before someone will try to get this statue removed. Someone needs to paint it before that becomes an issue. ........... Jerry (in Tucson)




This is Texas. You'll be shot immediately if you try to take down Mr. Sam.

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## Tony



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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "We're going to have to do something about this guy [Roger Staubach]. He's going to ruin the image of an NFL quarterback if he doesn't start smoking, drinking, cussing or something." ----- Dandy Don Meredith referring to the starting Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Roger Staubach

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## Maverick

Tony said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day: "We're going to have to do something about this guy [Roger Staubach]. He's going to ruin the image of an NFL quarterback if he doesn't start smoking, drinking, cussing or something." ----- Dandy Don Meredith referring to the starting Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Roger Staubach



Ahh, those were the days. I went to my first Cowboys game when Meredith was QB. Met Tom Landry and Staubach at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting when I was a Jr in HS. Fun times. Miss those days.

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## Tony

Sam Houston circa 1850. This portrait is wonderfully clear. It really gives you a sense of what he looked like.

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## Wildthings

Great photo and what a tie!!

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History

October 2nd, 1835 -- COME AND TAKE IT!*

On this day in 1835, fighting broke out at Gonzales between Mexican soldiers and Texas militiamen. When Domingo de Ugartechea, military commander in Texas, received word that the American colonists of Gonzales refused to surrender a small cannon that had been given that settlement in 1831 as a defense against the Indians, he dispatched Francisco de Castañeda and 100 dragoons to retrieve it on September 27. Though Castañeda attempted to avoid conflict, on the morning of October 2 his force clashed with local Texan militia led by John Henry Moore in the first battle of the Texas Revolution. The struggle for the "Come and Take It" cannon was only a brief skirmish that ended with the retreat of Castañeda and his force, but it also marked a clear break between the American colonists and the Mexican government.

and so it begans..........

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: The man shown in this photo, General David Emmanuel Twiggs, was the man who surrendered federal forces to the Confederates at the Alamo in 1861. What happened was this: After the Mexican–American War, Twiggs was appointed brevet major general and commanded the U.S. Army's Department of Texas. He was in this command when the Civil War broke out. Twiggs's command included about 20% of the Army guarding the Mexican border. On Feb. 8, 1861, as the states began to secede, Twiggs began talks with a quartet of Confederate commissioners, including Philip N. Luckett and Samuel A. Maverick. The talks were stalled by Feb. 15. That night, 90 of Ben McCullough's men stole into San Antonio and fixed guns on the Federal sentries and garrison in Alamo Plaza. 300 more Texas troops entered the city behind them. Twiggs forces were disarmed and held in quarters until Feb. 16, when Twiggs agreed to surrender his entire command, which included the Federal Arsenal at the Alamo, and all other federal installations, property, and soldiers in Texas, to the Confederacy. Along with him went 20 military installations, 44 cannons, 400 pistols, 1,900 muskets, 500 wagons, and 950 horses, valued at a total of $1.6 million. He insisted that all Federal forces were to retain personal arms and sidearms, all artillery, and flags and standards. However, already, shortly after the secession of South Carolina in December 1860, Twiggs had written a letter that proclaimed that Georgia was his home and that he (Twiggs) would follow the state if it left the Union. That's what he did. He went back to Georgia and was made a General in the Confederate Army but was too old to ever take command. He died at the age of 72 in 1862.

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## Tony

Traces of Texas reader Jennifer Baacke Schrade graciously shared this nifty photo of Santa in Goliad yesterday. Jennifer says that Santa rides his "reinsteer" in the Christmas parade every year there, making his way around the courthouse square. It doesn't get much more Texas-ish than this! Thank you, Jennifer. Looks like a good time was had by all.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> Traces of Texas reader Jennifer Baacke Schrade graciously shared this nifty photo of Santa in Goliad yesterday. Jennifer says that Santa rides his "reinsteer" in the Christmas parade every year there, making his way around the courthouse square. *It doesn't get much more Texas-ish than this! *Thank you, Jennifer. Looks like a good time was had by all.
> View attachment 197649


I think I found something that does!!

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## Tony

They now keep the door locked because couples were going in there and doing what couples do!

The Texas Quote of the Day is in regards to that giant set of cowboy boots at the North Star Mall in San Antonio: "On the north property line of North Star Mall and just off the frontage road of Loop 410, they sent out a tacit howdy to each passerby. These five-ton enormities peered out toward passing vehicles containing tourists and San Antonio newcomers who stared at these marvels completely bewildered. At forty feet tall and thirty-five feet wide, they set the world record for the largest “cowboy-wearin’-shoes”. Their eccentric design of black, brown, and white faux ostrich skin expressed their own sense of Texas pride beginning in 1980. They are none other than the “The Giant Justins.” However, locals came to know them simply as “The Boots of North Star Mall.” The artist, Austin native Bob “Daddy O” Wade created the Giant Justin's for the 1979 Washington Project of the Arts, an arts organization in D.C. (Davila 1B). He created the boots out of donated material in a vacant lot three blocks from the White House. After the exhibit, the issue of what to do with them puzzled Wade and the founders of Project of the Arts, so the massive boots stayed put in the lot. Then Wade received a phone call from the Rouse Company, owners of North Star Mall, telling him they wanted to purchase the boots and send them to San Antonio. So for a fee of $20,000, workers dismantled the boots, loaded them on three flatbed semi-trailers, and then sent them off to Texas. The boots were re-assembled on January 16, 1980 at their permanent home. With the excitement of these four story high boots in the Alamo city, thousands felt it necessary to get their pictures with the boots... quite specifically, on the boots. Wade had constructed the boots of a foam-like substance that is similar to the material used on fiberglass bodies of automobiles, but in 1982, workers added a concrete covering to the boots after continued issues arose including persistent and deliberate vandalism to these recent additions to the city’s cultural landscape. Along with the concrete covering, a coat of paint was applied that year. Later, in 2006, one of Wade’s ex-students from his time as an art professor at the University of North Texas, Style Read, took the job of giving the colossal boots fresh paint. As tedious and demanding as it was, Read began the process by administering a coat of white primer, followed by a sheet of caramel colored paint. The painting of the bottom portion of the boots cost an estimated $5,000. . The boots have provided a home to some astonishing guests. Radio disc jockeys from local country stations used the door located at the bottom of one of the boots to climb up an interior ladder to a platform at the top of the boot. From there, they broadcast their show during the weeks of the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. In their rodeo clothes, they waved to passing freeway commuters and soon attracted crowds of cowboys and cowgirls in the mall parking lot next to the boots. At other times, vagrants found shelter in the boots for short periods. Roland De La Garza, an employee of North Star Mall, made the comment, “When they put these boots up, they didn’t think it’d be a big thing. But now it’s one of the biggest things in San Antonio”. In the first three decades after their arrival in San Antonio they have appeared in television commercials, on the covers of books, postcards, billboards, and also on the Saks Fifth Avenue snow globe with other iconic symbols of San Antonio like the Alamo. The Christmas season had not truly begun for some San Antonians until North Star Mall lit the three thousand white lights shaped into stars on the prodigious footwear. These boots have really left a footprint on San Antonio." ----- Haley Hamilton in "Journal of the Life and Culture of San Antonio." You can find a lot more such San Antonio history at this link: https://www.uiw.edu/sanantonio/index.html

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> They now keep the door locked because couples were going in there and doing what couples do!
> 
> The Texas Quote of the Day is in regards to that giant set of cowboy boots at the North Star Mall in San Antonio: "On the north property line of North Star Mall and just off the frontage road of Loop 410, they sent out a tacit howdy to each passerby. These five-ton enormities peered out toward passing vehicles containing tourists and San Antonio newcomers who stared at these marvels completely bewildered. At forty feet tall and thirty-five feet wide, they set the world record for the largest “cowboy-wearin’-shoes”. Their eccentric design of black, brown, and white faux ostrich skin expressed their own sense of Texas pride beginning in 1980. They are none other than the “The Giant Justins.” However, locals came to know them simply as “The Boots of North Star Mall.” The artist, Austin native Bob “Daddy O” Wade created the Giant Justin's for the 1979 Washington Project of the Arts, an arts organization in D.C. (Davila 1B). He created the boots out of donated material in a vacant lot three blocks from the White House. After the exhibit, the issue of what to do with them puzzled Wade and the founders of Project of the Arts, so the massive boots stayed put in the lot. Then Wade received a phone call from the Rouse Company, owners of North Star Mall, telling him they wanted to purchase the boots and send them to San Antonio. So for a fee of $20,000, workers dismantled the boots, loaded them on three flatbed semi-trailers, and then sent them off to Texas. The boots were re-assembled on January 16, 1980 at their permanent home. With the excitement of these four story high boots in the Alamo city, thousands felt it necessary to get their pictures with the boots... quite specifically, on the boots. Wade had constructed the boots of a foam-like substance that is similar to the material used on fiberglass bodies of automobiles, but in 1982, workers added a concrete covering to the boots after continued issues arose including persistent and deliberate vandalism to these recent additions to the city’s cultural landscape. Along with the concrete covering, a coat of paint was applied that year. Later, in 2006, one of Wade’s ex-students from his time as an art professor at the University of North Texas, Style Read, took the job of giving the colossal boots fresh paint. As tedious and demanding as it was, Read began the process by administering a coat of white primer, followed by a sheet of caramel colored paint. The painting of the bottom portion of the boots cost an estimated $5,000. . The boots have provided a home to some astonishing guests. Radio disc jockeys from local country stations used the door located at the bottom of one of the boots to climb up an interior ladder to a platform at the top of the boot. From there, they broadcast their show during the weeks of the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. In their rodeo clothes, they waved to passing freeway commuters and soon attracted crowds of cowboys and cowgirls in the mall parking lot next to the boots. At other times, vagrants found shelter in the boots for short periods. Roland De La Garza, an employee of North Star Mall, made the comment, “When they put these boots up, they didn’t think it’d be a big thing. But now it’s one of the biggest things in San Antonio”. In the first three decades after their arrival in San Antonio they have appeared in television commercials, on the covers of books, postcards, billboards, and also on the Saks Fifth Avenue snow globe with other iconic symbols of San Antonio like the Alamo. The Christmas season had not truly begun for some San Antonians until North Star Mall lit the three thousand white lights shaped into stars on the prodigious footwear. These boots have really left a footprint on San Antonio." ----- Haley Hamilton in "Journal of the Life and Culture of San Antonio." You can find a lot more such San Antonio history at this link: https://www.uiw.edu/sanantonio/index.html
> 
> View attachment 198068


And with that link provided Tony you just created my reading adventures for the next few hours

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"People who come to Texas these days are preachers, or fugitives from justice, or sons of b*ches. Which one fits you?"

----- Captain Richard King, founder of the famed King Ranch, 1850

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## woodman6415

The Night Before Christmas, Texas Style:

'Twas the night before Christmas, in Texas, you know. 
Way out on the prairie, without any snow. 
Asleep in their cabin, were Buddy and Sue, 
A dreamin' of Christmas, like me and you.

Not stockings, but boots, at the foot of their bed, 
For this was Texas, what more need be said, 
When all of a sudden, from out of the still night, 
There came such a ruckus, it gave me a fright.

And I saw 'cross the prairie, like a shot from a gun, 
A loaded up buckboard, come on at a run, 
The driver was "Geein" and "Hawin", with a will, 
The horses (not reindeer) he drove with such skill.

"Come on there Buck, Poncho, & Prince, to the right, 
There'll be plenty of travelin' for you all tonight." 
The driver in Wranglers and a shirt that was red, 
Had a ten-gallon Stetson on top of his head.

As he stepped from the buckboard, he was really a sight, 
With his beard and mustache, so curly and white. 
As he burst in the cabin, the children awoke, 
And were so astonished, that neither one spoke.

And he filled up their boots with such presents galore, 
That neither could think of a single thing more. 
When Buddy recovered the use of his jaws, 
He asked in a whisper, "Are you really Santa Claus?"

"Am I the real Santa? Well, what do you think?" 
And he smiled as he gave a mysterious wink. 
Then he leaped in his buckboard, and called back in his drawl, 
"To all the children in Texas, Merry Christmas, Y'all!"

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "Goodbye, God. This will be the last chance I get to talk to you. We're moving to Texas." ----- Child's prayer in Arkansas as cited in the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper, 1858

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## Mike Hill

Coupla days late but:

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## Eric Rorabaugh

Thought you Texans might be interested in this. This is at the upper area of our boat ramp in my county where I work. Austinville, Virginia

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## Mike Hill

Too cool Hats off to Austinville, VA!!!


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## Eric Rorabaugh

I just can't get away from these Texans!

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## Maverick

Eric Rorabaugh said:


> I just can't get away from these Texans!


 Nor should you try.....

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## Tony

Eric Rorabaugh said:


> Thought you Texans might be interested in this. This is at the upper area of our boat ramp in my county where I work. Austinville, Virginia
> 
> View attachment 199303
> 
> View attachment 199304
> 
> View attachment 199305
> 
> View attachment 199306


I've read about that, very cool!

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## Don Ratcliff

Eric Rorabaugh said:


> Thought you Texans might be interested in this. This is at the upper area of our boat ramp in my county where I work. Austinville, Virginia
> 
> View attachment 199303
> 
> View attachment 199304
> 
> View attachment 199305
> 
> View attachment 199306


All great people were born on November 3rd but we also have some crazies born that day to we dont like to talk about.

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## Mike Hill

Maverick said:


> Nor should you try.....


John you took the words outta my mouth!

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## Wildthings

Thanks for sharing Eric. Really cool

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "Aren't you glad that Texas put the stars up in the sky? If heaven isn't Texas, partner, I don't wanna die." ---- The Austin Lounge Lizards, "One More Stupid Song about Texas"

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The first mule ever born in Lampasas county is 44 years old. Steve Smith says he has known the mule since 1895, and she was four years old at the time. The mule, named Mag, is now blind and hard of hearing, but she eats three times a day. Bran, oats and cottonseed meal are her rations and she can gobble up ten ears of corn as fast as any animal alive. She is branded U on the shoulder. 

Mag has had a varied career. Once a rider won $300 betting that she could out-race a pony at Goldthwaite. The pony was almost suffocated by mule dust. Again she has taken part in rodeos as a roping animal. Five years ago part of her tail dropped off. Old age was setting in. She stands in the shade of the trees, a cheap but effective drunk. Her original weight was 850 pounds, but it has dropped now to 650. 

For fifteen years she has done nothing but give out interviews to visitors who believe she is the oldest mule alive in the United States. Once a boy shot out an eye with a target rifle, and then the light in the other disappeared. For four years, she has been totally blind. She has never had but one owner and that is Cornelius McAnelley, the founder of McAnelley's Bend. Mr. McAnelley is confined to his wheel chair now but he is brought out in the yard at times to caress his ancient companion." 

------ Sam Ashburn, writing in the San Angelo Morning Times, June 1934

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

Back in "those days" a cowboy, drunk and happy, boarded a train in Dallas and gave the conductor a wad of bills.

"Where you bound for?" the conductor asked.

"To hell," the cowboy replied.

"The fare to Fort Worth is 1.50," replied the conductor as he counted out the change.

---- Boyce House, Texas humorist

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day relates how Snakey Joe, an old cowboy, got his nickname. 

Some cowboys were working on the Read Ranch in 1900, which lies in the eastern part of Howard County, where the Rattlesnake and Wild Horse mountains loom against the horizon. 

These cowboys were very busy making ready for a fall roundup of several thousand head of three-year old steers and to do some branding of the calves. Red and Joe started to catch their mounts, which were Spanish pintos. 

"Well," said Joe, "where did the wrangler stake our ponies? Look! the hobbles are broken." 

Taking his lasso, he started to find his horse. Not watching very carefully where he stepped, he stepped in a prairie dog cell and was bitten by a rattler on the ankle. The warning rattle of the snake did not attract his attention. Not having a first-aid kit with him he gave it a generous dose of tobacco juice, and trusting it to Lady Lack went on his way after his horse. 

Becoming tired and worried about his accident, he sat down to meditate upon the situation. However, not noticing where he chose to sit, the mate of the rattler was underneath him. After a few minutes of relaxation, he got up and, deciding that he was not seriously hurt, made another attempt to catch the pony, while the snake, all unknown, dangled from the seat of his trousers. 

Finally after a rather strenuous chase, he succeeded in catching the cayuse. Picking his saddle and tossing it on the horse and tightening the girth with a final click, he started to mount, but that was another question. The horse scented the snake and would not stand. 

The snake in its mad scramble trying to loose its entangled fangs made itself felt by its weight. 

Joe looked around and saw it. "WOW!" 

And loudly cursing, he threw up his hands trying to hold the reins in one hand and with the other, locate the trouble, all the while running in circles. 

His pal Red stood watching him, dying with laughter, throwing his sombrero in the air, and enjoying the sight. Seeing Joe had almost become exhausted and the frightened horse had begun to trample him, Red made two long jumps and grabbed the snake by one hand, and the horse with the other and separated the trio. 

The time had passed and noon-hour had arrived. While seated around the campfire, with the branding irons sizzling in the fire, they were served the famous dish of son-of-a-gun stew and black coffee as Red related the morning incident. All eyes and laughter turned toward Joe, crying "Snakey Joe!" 

----- Story related by "Red" Wiggins, 60-year-old cowboy on November 14, 1936, at Big Spring, Texas, for the WPA Writers Project

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## woodman6415

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Brewster County, at 6,192 square miles, is 41.5 times the size of Rockwall County, which is 149 square miles. I wouldn't mention it except for the fact that Rockwall County's population (estimated at 113,000 folks) is 12.5 times that of Brewster County (estimated at 9065 folks),

While I have you: Brewster County is not only larger than the State of Rhode Island but also 500 square miles larger than Connecticut. Brewster County was named for Colonel Henry Percy Brewster, a Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas.

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## Mike Hill

woodman6415 said:


> Brewster County, at 6,192 square miles, is 41.5 times the size of Rockwall County, which is 149 square miles. I wouldn't mention it except for the fact that Rockwall County's population (estimated at 113,000 folks) is 12.5 times that of Brewster County (estimated at 9065 folks),
> 
> While I have you: Brewster County is not only larger than the State of Rhode Island but also 500 square miles larger than Connecticut. Brewster County was named for Colonel Henry Percy Brewster, a Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas.


But I was put in my place by an Alaskan a few years back. While on his boat, eating deep water shrimp we just got out of his traps in Halibut cove off Kachemak Bay and pondering hiking to China Poot Lake (who names a lake that?) I mentioned something about Texas being the second largest state He cleared his throat and corrected me - Texas was the third largest state. With a half-eaten shrimp caught in my throat, I coughed and must have looked befuddled. He proceeded to state that if you split Alaska down the middle - each half would be bigger than Texas - so his summation was that Texas was the 3rd largest state. I couldn't argue - I was on his boat in the middle of wilderness (full of bears) - and about 4,300 miles from home

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> But I was put in my place by an Alaskan a few years back. While on his boat, eating deep water shrimp we just got out of his traps in Halibut cove off Kachemak Bay and pondering hiking to China Poot Lake (who names a lake that?) I mentioned something about Texas being the second largest state He cleared his throat and corrected me - Texas was the third largest state. With a half-eaten shrimp caught in my throat, I coughed and must have looked befuddled. He proceeded to state that if you split Alaska down the middle - each half would be bigger than Texas - so his summation was that Texas was the 3rd largest state. I couldn't argue - I was on his boat in the middle of wilderness (full of bears) - and about 4,300 miles from home


I would be tempted to try taking on the bears rather than listen to that!

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## woodman6415

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"Ask not what your bass player can do for you, ask what your drummer had for lunch."

----- Roy Orbison

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## Arn213

^”Lefty Wilbury” is one of the best American songwriter, singer and music that has ever lived. To me he is an icon and an American Legend- would we have “Rock and Roll” if he didn’t play a big part of that movement? Another Texan probably top 5 as my favorite guitar player is the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan! What do they grow in Texas where all these influential, inspiring, innovative and iconoclasts musicians leaves a mark in American history? Thank you T E X A S!

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## Tony

A traffic jam in south Texas, 1938.
Photo by Carl Mydans.

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## Nubsnstubs

Yesterday, a video was posted on MSN of a herd of cattle running in the proper lane on an Indiana hyway. There had to have been over 200 head, more than likely escaping the slaughter house. Holstien it looked like, and they were not dairy cows. ...... Jerry (in Tucson)

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "The mesquite is an erratic tree. Instead of seeking the sky and competing with its neighbors for height, it crawls and wallows in the sand. Its trunk never grows straight up, nor does it limit itself to one trunk only. It may have several trunks, snaking along on the ground, suddenly leaping upward for a few feet only to duck down again or circle in another direction. Unpredictable, extravagant in space and growth, unexplainable, it is like a snake in many ways. Its leaves are forked and thread-like as a serpent's tongue, with branching petals arranged like ladder rungs, reflecting sunlight in a bewildering variety of directions. The shade of green thus created is rich and delicate beyond that of any other foliage in the world. In the spring it is spangled with yellow blooms destined to mature into long bean pods. Sometimes the mesquite is almost like a vine, so dependent does it seem on the ground for the support of its whole serpentine length. The trunk can support a vast spread of limbs because the wood is tough and strong; and, though flexible enough not to break under a strain, it is hard to bend at will. From a distance, the mesquite does not resemble a tree, but looks like a huge half-grove of green, bubbling out of the ground. Its most outspread branches usually scrape the sand. Under, or rather inside, this living dome is a sort of cove where cattle can find protection not from the sun, for the foliage is too thin to keep out many rays, but from the rope, the dehorning tongs, the branding iron, and other human instruments of pain. In the sandy land of the vast river bed between Norias and the Gulf coast, mesquites grow close together, sometimes no more than three feet apart, each shooting its harum-scarum branches into the midst of those of its neighbors. In places, they are impossible to get through on horseback. In the loam around Sauz, below the southern boundary of the sandy area, they also grow in abundance, providing a safe haven for the successors of the longhorn cattle that had originally brought them there." ----- Frank Goodwyn, "Life on the King Ranch," 1951

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day is a story regarding LBJ and a prank he used to play using his amphibious car: "The President, with Vicky McCammon in the seat alongside him and me in the back, was now driving around in a small blue car with the top down. We reached a steep incline at the edge of the lake and the car started rolling rapidly toward the water. The President shouted, "The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!" The car splashed into the water. I started to get out. Just then the car leveled and I realized we were in a Amphicar. The President laughed. As we putted along the lake then (and throughout the evening), he teased me. "Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car." Then he’d roar." ----- Joseph A. Califano, Jr

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## Gdurfey

Tony said:


> The Texas Quote of the Day is a story regarding LBJ and a prank he used to play using his amphibious car: "The President, with Vicky McCammon in the seat alongside him and me in the back, was now driving around in a small blue car with the top down. We reached a steep incline at the edge of the lake and the car started rolling rapidly toward the water. The President shouted, "The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!" The car splashed into the water. I started to get out. Just then the car leveled and I realized we were in a Amphicar. The President laughed. As we putted along the lake then (and throughout the evening), he teased me. "Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car." Then he’d roar." ----- Joseph A. Califano, Jr
> View attachment 204158



So, my folks used to vac on Granite Shoals every year until I was 6 or so. I have a slight memory of the cabin cruiser running the lake with a couple of black speed boats, one on each side. Dad, back when I was that age, owned an old Mercury outboard he would take and then rent an aluminum boat from the campground they stayed at. It was the campground very close to the railroad trestle on the Llano arm. Anyway, he got back from fishing and said he had gotten run off the lake; beached, until the president went by.......

we were down there a few more times when I was older, saw the cruiser a couple of times but LBJ must not have been on it. The last trip there was after dad retired and we started doing trips. Left mom at home and I spent a week with him there........1976 I think. We moved from Texas the following year; I was 15 or 16 that trip. 

So, for the old Texans on this site, I guess you figured out which lake I was talking about. Dad also said all the locals hated the state changed the name. 

Great read above, very fond memories.

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## Wildthings

Happy Birthday TEXAS!!

Back in 2015 Kevin made this post (link here) and I copied it to a word doc that I have on my desktop. I've copied it here for all to read if you so wish. God Bless Texas!! Happy Birthday Mrs. Jaynes

*March 2, 1836:
The Myth and Meaning of Texas Independence*
_By Dr. Stephen L. Hardin
Professor of History
The Victoria College
Victoria, Texas_

March 2, 1836 dawned, frigid and gray; cutting winds blew through glassless windows. Texians – as they styled themselves – huddled close, pulled blankets tight, and gave birth to a dream. At the Town of Washington, fifty-nine representatives voted into existence a sovereign nation: the Republic of Texas. Tennessean George C. Childress had drafted the independence document. In word and spirit it borrowed heavily from Thomas Jefferson” original 1776 declaration. No matter. Anglo-Celtic Texians proudly embraced the values and traditions of their founding fathers. “The same blood that animated the hearts of our ancestors in ’76 still flows in our veins,”one frontier preacher affirmed. Still, not all the delegates were of that blood. Four Mexican residents signed the declaration on behalf of their Tejano constituents. By their presence and with their signatures, they demonstrated that they too shared Jefferson’s values – and his vision of liberty. Thus began a decade of independence singular in the annals of American history.

The ramshackle surroundings seemed neither appropriate, nor especially auspicious. The Convention met in an unfinished building lacking glass in the windows or even doors. In lieu of glass, delegates tacked rags tight across the windows. They could have saved themselves the trouble. On March 1, as the members gathered in the Town of Washington, a blue norther swept in. By the morning of the second, the thermometer had plummeted to a brisk thirty-three degrees as gusts whistled through fluttering window cloth.

If the Washington “Convention Center” proved bleak, so too did the rest of the rustic frontier settlement. It did not make a favorable impression upon Virginia native Colonel William Fairfax Gray. He may have tasted sour grapes, for he had earlier applied for the job of convention secretary. Although he did not receive the post, he nevertheless maintained a record of the proceedings in his diary. In numerous instances, Gray’s account is more complete than the official minutes. Still, he found the Town of Washington a “disgusting place.” Cold, uncomfortable, and unappreciated, Gray described Washington in wholly uncharitable terms:
_It is laid out in the woods, about a dozen wretched cabins or shanties constitute the city; not one decent house in it, and only one well-defined street, which consists of an opening cut out of the woods. The stumps still standing. A rare place to hold a national convention in. They will have to leave it promptly to avoid starvation._

Even here in Texas most folks still remain unclear about the meaning of that cold March day in 1836. Myth and misunderstanding also obscure the event. Many believe, for example, that the delegates signed the Texas Declaration on March 2. Not true. The delegates read and approved the document on that day, but remember that they did not have a photocopier at their disposal. Clerks worked through the night. Perforce, the five hand-written copies were not ready for signatures until the following day. Nor did all sign even then. Seven delegates had not yet arrived on March 3. As they dragged in, the latecomers added their names for a total of fifty-nine signatories. Nowadays Texans remember the small hamlet where the delegates gathered as Washington-on-the-Brazos. Nobody called it that in 1836. Texians back then simply called it the “Town of Washington.” Not until later would ‘Washington-on-the-Brazos” come into common usage.

Whether one observes March 2 or March 3, one constant remains; the delegates could not have picked a worse time to declare independence. To many contemporary observers, such confidence appeared reckless. As delegates brazenly declared Texas independent, the artillery of Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna hammered the walls of the Alamo. Just four days later his troops would assault the crumbling fort and wipe out every rebel defender. At the same time, General José Urrea’s division swept northward through the coastal prairies. He would subsequently capture the entire rebel command of Colonel James W. Fannin, Jr. following the Battle of Coleto on March 19. Acting upon Santa Anna’s orders, Mexican troops executed Fannin and the majority of his Goliad garrison, some 342 men. The twin defeats at San Antonio and Goliad generated panic among Texian settlers who fled toward the Louisiana border. The “Runaway Scrape” they called it. To declare independence amid all this chaos seemed more than unduly hopeful. Indeed, to most it resembled a fool’s errand.

On April 21, General Sam Houston’s vengeful army swept the Mexican camp at San Jacinto and the skeptics recanted. On that momentous afternoon, enraged Texians slaughtered 650 Mexican soldados and took another 700 prisoner. Most important, the following day Texians captured President-General Santa Anna. At San Jacinto Texians won a great victory, but only with the capture of the Mexican dictator did the battle become decisive.

Sandwiched between the defeat at the Alamo and the victory at San Jacinto, it is not all that startling that the importance of March 2 gets lost in the glare of those two shining episodes. The date is not a state holiday; public schools do not let out; newscasters rarely recall the event.

Even in 1836, Texians did not consider the approval of Childress’s declaration a momentous occasion. Nearly all the representatives had arrived in Washington knowing that independence was a forgone conclusion. Gray captured the lackadaisical nature of the proceedings in his diary, but was so underwhelmed that he could not manage to spell Childress’s name correctly. The important news of the day, at least as far as Gray was concerned, was the break in the weather: “The morning clear and cold, but the cold somewhat moderated.” Only then, did he mention – in an offhand manner – that the Convention had approved the declaration of independence:
_The Convention met pursuant to adjournment. Mr. Childers [sic], from the committee, reported a Declaration of Independence, which he read in this place. It was received by the house, committed to a committee of the whole, reported without amendment, and unanimously adopted, in less than one hour from its first and only reading. It underwent on discipline, and no attempt was made to amend it. The only speech made upon it was a somewhat declamatory address in committee to the whole by General Houston._

And it was done. At the end of the day, the delegates merely rubber-stamped a question that they had already decided.

So apathetic were the delegates concerning the document–or, perhaps, so chaotic were conditions–that all five of the original hand-written copies went missing. In 1896 an original copy turned up in the files of the U.S. State Department. It appears that Texas agent William H. Wharton deposited his copy there in 1836. As Commissioner of the Texas Republic, he had traveled to Washington, D. C. to inquire about admitting Texas into the Union. If annexation proved impossible, he then was to push for the recognition of Texas as an independent nation. He must have submitted one of the original copies to support the claim that Texas was, in fact, an independent nation and not merely a breakaway province within the Mexican Republic. State Department officials returned the precious document to Texas. Today this it resides deep inside a vault at the State Library in Austin. A reproduction of this copy is on permanent display at the state capitol. The archivists, having lost it for so long, are not willing to take chances with the only surviving original.

So here we are near the end of the twentieth century. What do the events of 163 years ago have to do with us? What does it all mean? Of late the delegates have not fared too well at the pens of activist historians. They see Texas independence as the action of ungrateful snits that willfully ignored Mexican generosity. Typical of this new breed is Colorado writer Jeff Long. In his book Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo, he sides with the Mexicans.
_It was grotesque that a host of squatters, land speculators, and short-term colonists should expect the Mexican government to grant them government conducted in the English language. Mexico had not forced the Anglo-Americans to come to Texas. Mexico had certainly not promised those who did come “that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.” To the contrary, those settlers in Texas who were legitimate had pledged themselves to a set of regulations extended by a whole new authority.”_

Like many of his ilk, Long has a reductionist understanding of Texas history. To be sure Mexicans were astoundingly generous to norteamericano colonists. A head of a household normally received a league and a labor. That amounted to a whopping 4,605 acres. Additionally, immigrants could also expect a tax rebate until they got on their feet in their adopted homeland. Americans who had been ruined in the Panic of 1819 flocked to Mexican Texas by the thousands. And they were grateful to Mexico for the chance–and a place–to make a fresh start. To most American immigrants, it seemed as if Mexico offered more opportunity than the “land of opportunity” itself. Still – and this is the part Mr. Long conveniently remembers to forget – most Texians immigrated under the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Under that covenant Mexican citizens enjoyed a republican form of government and most of the power of government resided at the state and local levels. Indeed, the Mexican federalists were great admirers of the United States Constitution of 1787 and employed it as a model for their 1824 charter. When Santa Anna revoked the Constitution of 1824 and declared himself dictator in 1835, all bets were off. American Mexicans considered themselves bound to the old constitution and were not about to sit still and be quiet while a military dictator appropriated the reins of government. They were not, however, alone it that. Many Federalistias –Mexicans loyal to the Constitution of 1824 – also took up arms to resist Santa Anna’s centralist regime.

So the revolt that began near Gonzales in October 2, 1835, was a civil war – not a bid for complete separation from Mexico. Both Anglo-Celtic Texians and the native Tejanos fought for self-government within the federalist system created by the Constitution of 1824. The war was not, as some have insisted, a “culture conflict.” Indeed, many Texas Mexicans joined with norteamericano neighbors to resist the centralistas.

Having said that, why did Texians overwhelmingly support complete separation from Mexico only five months later? Is Long correct? Was the Texas Revolution merely a shameless land grab? Once again, the answer is more involved than some allow themselves to believe. Texians were disappointed when Federalists from the interior did not rush to Texas to take up the struggle. Texian leaders had tried to squash any mention of independence, fearing that such remarks might alienate Mexican federalists. By February 1836, however, a majority of Texians had concluded that they could expect no help from that quarter. Why had the federalists south of the Rio Grande been so unwilling to support the Texian federalists? The short answer is that they simply did not trust the Anglo-Americans.

Mexican federalists had plenty of reasons to mistrust their northern neighbors. They recalled the two decades from 1800 to 1820 as the era of the filibusters. Throughout that period, American soldiers of fortune such as Philip Nolan, Augustus Magee, and James Long (apparently no relation to the Colorado revisionist) had attempted to wrest Texas away from Spain. Mexicans declared their independence from Spain in 1821, but many still remembered the filibusters and mistrusted Americans. Mexican Secretary of State Lucas Alamán expressed such concern succinctly. “Where others send invading armies,” he groused, “[the Americans] send their colonists.” He understood that American newspapermen wrote incendiary articles calling for the occupation of Texas. He knew that in 1829 President Andrew Jackson had dispatched the brutish Anthony Butler to Mexico with an offer to buy Texas. He was also aware that Americans almost constantly spoke of the “reannexation of Texas,” a crack-brained belief that Texas should have been a part of the Louisiana Purchase owing to the short lived La Salle colony of 1685. Little wonder then that Mexican federalist viewed the colossus to the north and its wayfaring citizens as a threat to Mexican nationhood.

Texas leaders came to understand that alone they could not win the war. If Mexican federalists would not lend a hand, they must enlist assistance from the United States. War is the most expensive of all human endeavors. While Texians claimed thousands of acres of disposable land, they were cash poor. To win this war they first had to fight it. But that required troops, weapons, and provender and all those items cost money – lots of it! They were not so naïve as to believe that President Jackson would risk an international incident by openly supporting the Texas rebels against Mexico. They did, however, hope to enlist the support of individual Americans who believed in their cause. The ad interim government dispatched Stephen F. Austin–the most famous Texian–as an agent to the United States. Once back in the “old states” the empresario appealed to citizens to provide volunteers, funds, and supplies for Texas. He and other Texas agents visited American banks to secure loans for the Texas war effort.

That is where they consistently encountered problems. Banks in the north would not even consider supporting with their money a cause that might ultimately bring another slave state into the union. Southern bankers, while more sympathetic, would not lend their money so long as the war remained a domestic Mexican squabble. They let Austin and the other agents know, however, that they might be interested if – and only if, Texians declared their complete separation from Mexico.

Why this southern support for Texas independence? Southerners anticipated that an independent Texas would remain independent for, say, three or for months, before entering the union as a slave state. In 1836 the United States had an equal number of free and slave states. Since both free and slave states voted as a block, it created a legislative gridlock with neither side being able to gain advantage. Southerners believed that adding Texas to the list of slave states would tilt the congressional balance of power in their favor.

Austin may have been lukewarm concerning slavery, but he was a firebrand in the cause of Texas. In a rambling letter dated January 7, 1836, he neatly summed up the situation.
_I go for Independence for I have no doubt we shall get aid, as much as we need and perhaps more – and what is of equal importance – the information from Mexico up to late in December says that the Federal party has united with Santa Anna against us, owing to what has already been said and done in Texas in favor of Independence so that our present position under the constitution of 1824, does us no good with the Federalists, and is doing us harm in this country, by keeping away the kind of men we most need[.] [W]ere I in the convention[,] I would urge an immediate declaration of Independence – unless there be some news from the [Mexican] interior that changed the face of things – and even then, it would require very strong reasons to prevent me from the course I now recommend._

When Stephen Fuller Austin spoke, Texians listened. By March 2, nearly all of them believed that their best hopes for the future rested on complete separation from Mexico.

How did Tejanos regard the independence announcement? The fighting had severely tested the loyalty of Texas-born Mexicans, most of whom resisted the inexorable movement toward independence. While many were willing to fight, even die, for the Constitution of 1824, they were understandably hesitant to support an open break with their mother country. The politically astute among them realized that in an independent Texas they would be woefully outnumbered by norteamericanos and thus relegated to minority status in a land dominated by foreigners who possessed little knowledge of or appreciation for their distinctive culture.

The war cast Tejanos into a whirlpool of changing politics and shifting loyalties. Wealthy landowners like José Antonio Navarro, Erasmo Seguín, and Plácido Benavides had been early proponents of American emigration. They were willing to abet slavery to promote the cotton trade and economic growth for the province. Having placed their economic and political bets on their new allies, when open revolt erupted federalist Tejanos could only try to play out their hand.

Independence forced Tejanos to make hard choices. Some like Navarro and the Seguíns opted to support the new republic. But others like Benevides, the alcalde of Victoria, could not force their principles to bend that far. Benevides was a Mexican first, a federalist second. He had seen much hard fighting at the siege and storming of Béxar in 1835, but when he heard of the March 2 declaration he went to Goliad commander James W. Fannin and informed him he was leaving the army. He could not abide centralist despotism, but neither could he be a party to striping Mexico of Tejas. He believed his only honorable option was to return to his ranch and sit out the war as a non-combatant. Fannin understood his plight and sent him home with his blessing. Still other Tejanos, like Carlos de la Garza, Juan Moya, and Agustín Moya, resented the influx of foreign settlers, view opposition as disloyalty to their motherland, and flocked to the centralist banner. These were not men who wet their fingers to test the prevailing winds; they did not plot their course according to the latest public opinion poll. They were deeply rooted in principle and tradition. Each of these Texas Mexicans followed his heart and while the path did not always lead to victory, it never led to dishonor.

That was then; this is now. Why should modern Texans observe the events of 163 years ago? Why should they stop for a moment every March 2 to reflect on the meaning of Texas Independence Day?

The first reason is historical – this day marks the creation of the Republic of Texas. For almost a decade Texas existed as a sovereign nation. It exchanged foreign ministers with other countries; it had a national army and navy (though neither was especially effective); it maintained a national currency (though, to be sure, the money was never worth much). When Texas joined the Union in 1845, it did so as a nation and thus demanded rights not accorded to mere territories. By order of Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress, Texas retained possession of its public lands. So large was the landmass of Texas, the same resolution allowed Texas to divide into as many a five states. In 1850 Texans did, in fact, sell a portion part their western holdings to pay off the debt incurred during the Republic period. Since then, however, they have been reluctant to part with even so much as an inch of their sacred soil – the resolution notwithstanding. Texas nationalism has proved stronger that political expediency.

The second reason is psychological, perhaps even spiritual. The Republic of Texas was an ephemeral empire. Like the spring bluebonnets, it bloomed, blossomed, and blanched with the sands of time. But also like the state flower, its scent lingers in the hearts and imaginations of every Texan. A moment ago I referred to Texas nationalism. Many outside the state would, no doubt, find that remarkably pretentious, but those who live here understand the truth of it. Texas existed as a nation for ten years; Texans got used to the idea; and nationalism is a difficult habit to break. The novelist John Steinbeck perhaps said it best:
*Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.*

March 2 is a day to celebrate Texas distinctiveness. Now I’m not saying that Texans are better that other folks, but I am saying that we’re different. And if a people consider themselves different, they are. March 2 should be to Texans what St. Patrick’s Day is to the Irish. But what if you are a Tejano. Should you want to celebrate the day that Texas separated itself from Mexico. You bet! Even as early as 1835 Tejanos were distinctive from other Mexicans. The ranching culture that developed in Texas produced its own clothing, its own music, its own customs, and its own food. Gringos call it “Mexican food,” but all one has to do to put the lie to that assertion is to eat the food in the interior – or try to. It is rather bland and not nearly as good as the Tejano food (we might as well call it what it really is) right here at home. We sometimes call it Tex-Mex, but in truth, it’s all Tex and precious little Mex. It is found nowhere else on earth. How many things might we say that of? Tejano music is not Mexican; it is not American. It is Texan and is found nowhere else on earth. Tejanos also speak a variety of Spanish called Tex-Mex. But try using it in Mexico City, or worse yet, in Seville. Again, it is a unique language and is found nowhere else on earth. Truth is if you’re a Texan – be you brown, black, white, yellow, or red – you don’t rightly belong anywhere else. Steinbeck nailed that too. “A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner,” he observed. That applies to Tejanos as much as, probably more than, other Texans. After all, whose family has lived here the longest?

Even today it is common to hear natives claim to be “Texans first, Americans second.” It is impossible to believe that they would feel that way had the Texas Republic never existed. There in Washington on that cold, windy day in March of 1836, delegates, both Anglo and Tejano, shouted to the world that they were different. Not Mexican were they, not American, but something else. They were, they insisted, TEXIANS. They gave birth not only to a dream, but also to a mystique. Not all Texians wanted to join the Union in 1845. Early settler, ranger, and Indian fighter, Robert Hall spoke for many of the old breed. “I was opposed to annexation,” he groused, “and voted first, last, and all time for the Lone Star.” The degree of Texas nationalism may be a matter of debate, but it is perhaps significant, that even when they joined the Union, the old Texians could not bear to part with their cherished flag. And even today, the banner of nation continues to swell over the Lone Star State.

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## Tony

Happy Independence Day from the Republic of Texas!

Reactions: Agree 1 | Great Post 1 | Sincere 1


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## Gdurfey

My feet may be in Colorado but my heart is always with Texas!!! No offense anyone, just read the story above.

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## Wildthings

I've stood in that building, where the delegation was held 185 years ago, in Washington-on-the-Brazos.

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## Mike Hill



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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 205273


If you stand on a Tuna can you can see the back of your head.

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## Mike Hill

Tony said:


> If you stand on a Tuna can you can see the back of your head.


We don't got no tuna, you must be referring to the the Islander!

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day: "During construction of the Pecos High Bridge, an incident occurred that involved one of the most colorful residents of Trans-Pecos Texas, Judge Roy Bean. As justice of the peace he held court in the nearby town of Langtry. Only one fatal accident took place during the construction of the bridge, and it brought Bean out to the construction site. A portion of the structure being erected had collapsed, and ten workers had fallen, seven of whom had been killed. Judge Bean rode muleback from Langtry to hold inquest into the deaths. Beside each of the seven corpses he reportedly gave the same verdict: 'This mans seems to have come to his death by timbers falling upon him.' He then turned his attention to the wounded me., pronouncing the same verdict over them even though they were still alive. An onlooker interrupted Bean. 'Those men are not dead, Judge,' he said, to which Bean reputedly replied, 'That's all right. They ain't dead yet, but they will be. And you don't think I'm going to ride that mule back up her later just to do what I'm doing now.' Despite being pronounced dead, all three recovered." ----- T. Lindsay Baker, "Building the Lone Star: An Illustrated Guide to Historic Sites," 1986. This book comes highly recommended, by the way.

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## Wildthings

Way cool! Had a deer lease with the camp in the shadow of that bridge. In fact we got our nonpotable water from the tower that used to supply the trains

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## Wildthings

*Today in Texas History -- June 10th

1821: Moses Austin dies*

On this day in 1821, Moses Austin died in Missouri. Austin, born in Connecticut in 1761, was the first man to receive permission to bring Anglo-American colonists into Spanish Texas. In 1798, while consolidating his position as a pioneer in the American lead industry, he established the first Anglo-American settlement west of and back from the Mississippi River, at modern Potosi, Missouri. When the Bank of St. Louis, which he had helped found, failed in 1819, Austin found himself in financial difficulties and developed a plan for settling American colonists in Spanish Texas. He traveled to San Antonio in 1820 seeking permission for his plan. Spurned by Governor Antonio María Martínez, he chanced to meet an old acquaintance, the Baron de Bastrop, who returned with him to the governor's office and convinced Martínez to endorse the plan and forward it to higher authorities. On the trip out of Texas, Austin contracted pneumonia. Shortly after he reached home, he learned that permission for the colony had been granted, but he lived barely two months more. It was his deathbed request that his son, Stephen F. Austin, take over the colonization scheme.

*1832: First armed clash between Anglo Texans and Mexican troops*

On this day in 1832, a rebel force attacked Anahuac in the first armed clash between Anglo-Texans and Mexican troops. In 1830, Manuel de Mier y Terán ordered John Davis Bradburn to locate a site for a fort, military town, and customhouse, to be named Anahuac. Bradburn encountered hostility from his fellow Anglo-Americans when he tried to carry out his orders, which included inspecting land titles, issuing licenses to Anglo lawyers, and enforcing Mexican customs laws. The attack was a response to Bradburn's arrest of William B. Travis and other insurgent leaders. Bradburn agreed to exchange Travis and the other Anglos for nineteen cavalrymen held by the insurgents. The cavalrymen were released, but when Bradburn discovered that a number of rebels had remained in town overnight, he refused to free his prisoners and began firing on the town. The insurgents withdrew to Turtle Bayou, where they drew up a series of resolutions explaining their action. Bradburn appealed for help from other military commanders in Texas. Col. José de las Piedras marched from Nacogdoches, but met with Anglo insurgents near Liberty and agreed to remove Bradburn from command and free Travis and the others

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## Tony

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: In 2019, the size of the Texas economy (GDP) moved up a notch in the world rankings. Prior to 2019, Texas' economy was the 10th largest in the world, behind that of Brazil and right before that of Canada. But in 2019 Texas surpassed Brazil to become the ninth largest economy on the planet, after Italy. Texas now has a GDP of $1.9 trillion. Italy, with a GDP of $2 trillion, is in eighth place, and Brazil, with a GDP of $1.8 trillion, is 10th, according to the IMF ranking of global economies. For those keeping score at home, here are the 10 largest economies in the world: 1) The United States 2) China 3) Japan 4) Germany 5) India 6) United Kingdom 7) France 8) Italy 9) Texas 10) Brazil It's pretty amazing to think that Texas' economy is larger than that of Russia, Spain, Brazil etc... but it's true. Hard-working bunch, those Texans!

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## JR Parks

Hopefully this video will load. It is about my favorite Texas hero. Roy Benavidez, born in Cuero, raised in El Campo (I drove rice trucks to the dryer in El Campo for my grandpa). This is just one of his speeches and just love his plain talk, heroism and love of country.

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## Tony

JR Parks said:


> Hopefully this video will load. It is about my favorite Texas hero. Roy Benavidez, born in Cuero, raised in El Campo (I drove rice trucks to the dryer in El Campo for my grandpa). This is just one of his speeches and just love his plain talk, heroism and love of country.


That's one hell of a man.

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## Wildthings

Tony said:


> That's one hell of a man.


Yessir he was for sure!!

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## Mike Hill

I vaguely remember my Granddad talking about him - they were both stationed at Fort Sam Houston at the same time.

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## Mike Hill

Who is this Saban dude that I hear talk about - just say'n!

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> Who is this Saban dude that I hear talk about - just say'n!


One pissed off dude this morning!

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## Gdurfey

Caught the 4th quarter…..wow!!! How about them Aggies.

like the good ole days, if we beat tu, it was a winning season.


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## Mike Hill

Gig'em!

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## Tony



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## Gdurfey

Tony said:


> View attachment 220139


Funny thing all these years. This is a fact I have never committed to memory…….whereas April 21, 1836 is always there…….

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## scootac

I got a fun fact for ya'll.

If Alaska was split in 2.....each piece would still be bigger than Texas!!!

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## Tony

Y'all just THOUGHT that I'd forget to mention that the famed Lone Star flag ----- the coolest flag in the history of forever ---- is 183 years old today. Yup, it was on Jan. 25, 1839 that the Republic of Texas adopted the Lone Star flag as its official flag. They said "[T]he national flag of Texas shall consist of a blue perpendicular stripe of the width of one third of the whole length of the flag, with a white star of five points in the centre thereof, and two horizontal stripes of equal breadth, the upper stripe white, the lower red, of the length of two thirds of the whole length of the flag."

Senator William H. Wharton introduced a bill on December 28, 1838, containing the flag's design, and the bill was referred to a committee consisting of Senator Oliver Jones and two unnamed senators. This committee reported a substitute bill embodying the flag design introduced by Wharton, and the substitute bill was passed by the Congress on January 21, 1839 and approved by President Mirabeau B. Lamar on January 25, 1839.

The official art for the Lone Star Flag, shown here, was drawn by Peter Krag and approved by President Lamar. The actual designer of the Lone Star Flag is unknown, but it could have been William Wharton. Note the Republic of Texas seal. This was signed on the top by Mirabeau Lamar, President of the Republic of Texas; John M. Hansford, Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; and David Burnet, President of the Texas Senate. 

Long may it wave!

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## Mike Hill

oh, wow - I've never seen that document before!

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## scootac

Since you brought up the lone star....here's what I think of.

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## Tony

The Texas Quote of the Day, written in 1845, shows that both Texas braggadocio and the way outsiders view that braggadocio are not new phenomena:

"They [the Texans] are citizens of the free and enlightened Republic of Texas, which boasts itself the smartest nation in all creation, and like most Yankees transplanted from their native localities to the rank soil of Texas, are lazy, reckless and rude beyond the conception of anything European."

----- Littell's Living Age magazine, January-March, 1845

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## Mike Hill

Just so Y'alls know!

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## JerseyHighlander

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 224951
> 
> Just so Y'alls know!


Likely more intelligent employees working in those branches than in any branch of Washington District of Criminals.

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 224951
> 
> Just so Y'alls know!


I love the other 2 but hate HEB. Too many years as a vendor for them....


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## woodman6415

Love HEB … hate Buc - ees


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## vegas urban lumber

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 224951
> 
> Just so Y'alls know!


had the pleasure of stopping at a couple of buc-ees while in texas recently. What A Place!!!


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## Wildthings

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 224951
> 
> Just so Y'alls know!





Tony said:


> I love the other 2 but hate HEB. Too many years as a vendor for them....





woodman6415 said:


> Love HEB … hate Buc - ees


Love Whataburger
Love HEB
Love Buc-ee's

What can I say...true Texan

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## woodman6415

Been a Texan for 66 years … still hate Buc-ees

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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Been a Texan for 66 years … still hate Buc-ees


Dude!!!!


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## Wildthings

woodman6415 said:


> Been a Texan for 66 years … still hate Buc-ees


67 years here


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## Mike Hill

Tony said:


> I love the other 2 but hate HEB. Too many years as a vendor for them....


Central Market then!

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> Central Market then!


That was the worst one of all!


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## Tony

woodman6415 said:


> Been a Texan for 66 years … still hate Buc-ees





Wildthings said:


> 67 years here

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## Mike Hill

We were Handy Andy and FedMart shoppers back then, but now I am disheartened!!! Back in young Lil Mikey days - We used to go to a church camp on the Frio River near Leakey. It was given by Howard E. Butt. It was so cool, literally the river was cold. I think there were two ways to get to the camp, but the way we always chose was to drive in the river itself for quite a ways. The river was wide, rock bottomed and very shallow in all but the channel itself. The river was probably 50+ feet wide, but the channel was perhaps 6' wide and some deeper. There was a certain place in the river that had a big bend in the channel and some stacked rocks that if you put in your watermelons, they stayed put and the cold water cooled them off nicely. Now Lil Mikey did not like watermelon (yeh, I know weird - eh!) but it was deemed cool nonetheless!

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## Mike Hill

woodman6415 said:


> Love HEB … hate Buc - ees


When I was back in Heaven to see my Nephew gradiduate from Aggieland - we stopped in the Buc-ees near Bastrop. Now their founder is an Aggie, so I might have lifelong allegiance to them! But for all said and done - that one convenience store - albeit - huge had more smokers than all stores in pitiful little Nashvegas - so i'm beholden! I'm sure we have more pedal taverns, party barges and drunk bachelorettes to brag about though!


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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> We were Handy Andy and FedMart shoppers back then, but now I am disheartened!!! Back in young Lil Mikey days - We used to go to a church camp on the Frio River near Leakey. It was given by Howard E. Butt. It was so cool, literally the river was cold. I think there were two ways to get to the camp, but the way we always chose was to drive in the river itself for quite a ways. The river was wide, rock bottomed and very shallow in all but the channel itself. The river was probably 50+ feet wide, but the channel was perhaps 6' wide and some deeper. There was a certain place in the river that had a big bend in the channel and some stacked rocks that if you put in your watermelons, they stayed put and the cold water cooled them off nicely. Now Lil Mikey did not like watermelon (yeh, I know weird - eh!) but it was deemed cool nonetheless!


I went to that same camp with 4H for many years. Met my first girlfriend there, great memories, thanks for bringing that up.

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## woodman6415

Wildthings said:


> Love Whataburger
> Love HEB
> Love Buc-ee's
> 
> What can I say...true Texan


I just don’t think being in love with all 3 makes a person a true Texan .. JMO

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## Mike Hill

Not a fact, but a question to the Texas Contingent- is the Twin Sisters Dance Hall in Blanco in danger of being torn down? I sure hope not - so many of the places Lil Mikey used to trip the light fantastic and fall in love are gone. - A couple in Seguin, Sangerhalle, Leon Springs Dance, One we called St. Hedwigs because it was in St. Hedwigs (i REALLY fell in love there!!!!), The Crystal Chandelier, Silver Spur Dance Hall in Bandera, Lakeview - near Texas A&M, even the Longhorn Ballroom (a place a young guy in tight jeans would have to beat the older ladies off) are a few. Luckily still have Hermann Sons, Kendalia, John T. Flores (I saw Willie there a few times - back in the ole days when he was clean cut and wore a suit), Gruene (but ain't what it used to be), Anhalt, Arkie Blue, Braun Hall and others. There were some in just old buildings that were not really dance halls, but empty building that occasionally they would get up a dance in - in some of the real small railroad stop towns like Geronimo and Kingsbury. Someday, hope to go back and relive some of the old times and dance the REAL cotton eyed joe ( the old version that Adolf Hofner made popular) and even the Texas schottische. I guess I'm just tearfully remembering the time we held our wimmen while dancing!

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## Nature Man

Mike Hill said:


> Not a fact, but a question to the Texas Contingent- is the Twin Sisters Dance Hall in Blanco in danger of being torn down? I sure hope not - so many of the places Lil Mikey used to trip the light fantastic and fall in love are gone. - A couple in Seguin, Sangerhalle, Leon Springs Dance, One we called St. Hedwigs because it was in St. Hedwigs (i REALLY fell in love there!!!!), The Crystal Chandelier, Silver Spur Dance Hall in Bandera, RiverView - near Texas A&M, even the Longhorn Ballroom (a place a young guy in tight jeans would have to beat the older ladies off) are a few. Luckily still have Hermann Sons, Kendalia, John T. Flores (I saw Willie there a few times - back in the ole days when he was clean cut and wore a suit), Gruene (but ain't what it used to be), Anhalt, Arkie Blue, Braun Hall and others. There were some in just old buildings that were not really dance halls, but empty building that occasionally they would get up a dance in - in some of the real small railroad stop towns like Geronimo and Kingsbury. Someday, hope to go back and relive some of the old times and dance the REAL cotton eyed joe ( the old version that Adolf Hofner made popular) and even the schottische


Looks pretty alive & well, according to their Web site. Chuck








Twin Sisters Dance Hall


Twin Sisters Hall, built by German immigrants in the nineteenth century, continues today to host public dances on the first Saturday of every month and to serve the community as a center for family functions, educational workshops and charitable functions. Twin Sisters Hall maintains these...




www.twinsistersdancehall.com


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## Mike Hill

But I heard something about 281 being expanded and it might have to go because of that.


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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> Not a fact, but a question to the Texas Contingent- is the Twin Sisters Dance Hall in Blanco in danger of being torn down? I sure hope not - so many of the places Lil Mikey used to trip the light fantastic and fall in love are gone. - A couple in Seguin, Sangerhalle, Leon Springs Dance, One we called St. Hedwigs because it was in St. Hedwigs (i REALLY fell in love there!!!!), The Crystal Chandelier, Silver Spur Dance Hall in Bandera, RiverView - near Texas A&M, even the Longhorn Ballroom (a place a young guy in tight jeans would have to beat the older ladies off) are a few. Luckily still have Hermann Sons, Kendalia, John T. Flores (I saw Willie there a few times - back in the ole days when he was clean cut and wore a suit), Gruene (but ain't what it used to be), Anhalt, Arkie Blue, Braun Hall and others. There were some in just old buildings that were not really dance halls, but empty building that occasionally they would get up a dance in - in some of the real small railroad stop towns like Geronimo and Kingsbury. Someday, hope to go back and relive some of the old times and dance the REAL cotton eyed joe ( the old version that Adolf Hofner made popular) and even the Texas schottische. I guess I'm just tearfully remembering the time we held our wimmen while dancing!


Not only did we grow up close together, we haunted a lot of the same places! I spent plenty of time in Floores and Gruene, a lot of the ones you talked about. Also, Farmer's Daughter (now a bbq place) and Tevas Dance Hall on 281. Saw Asleep At The Wheel there when I was 16, Little Ray Benson put on a hell of a show!

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## Wildthings

Mike Hill said:


> Not a fact, but a question to the Texas Contingent- is the Twin Sisters Dance Hall in Blanco in danger of being torn down? I sure hope not - so many of the places Lil Mikey used to trip the light fantastic and fall in love are gone. - A couple in Seguin, Sangerhalle, Leon Springs Dance, One we called St. Hedwigs because it was in St. Hedwigs (i REALLY fell in love there!!!!), The Crystal Chandelier, Silver Spur Dance Hall in Bandera, RiverView - near Texas A&M, even the Longhorn Ballroom (a place a young guy in tight jeans would have to beat the older ladies off) are a few. Luckily still have Hermann Sons, Kendalia, John T. Flores (I saw Willie there a few times - back in the ole days when he was clean cut and wore a suit), Gruene (but ain't what it used to be), Anhalt, Arkie Blue, Braun Hall and others. There were some in just old buildings that were not really dance halls, but empty building that occasionally they would get up a dance in - in some of the real small railroad stop towns like Geronimo and Kingsbury. Someday, hope to go back and relive some of the old times and dance the REAL cotton eyed joe ( the old version that Adolf Hofner made popular) and even the Texas schottische. I guess I'm just tearfully remembering the time we held our wimmen while dancing!





Tony said:


> Not only did we grow up close together, we haunted a lot of the same places! I spent plenty of time in Floores and Gruene, a lot of the ones you talked about. Also, Farmer's Daughter (now a bbq place) and Tevas Dance Hall on 281. Saw Asleep At The Wheel there when I was 16, Little Ray Benson put on a hell of a show!


Man oh man are those some great memories. Most of mine were in American Legon Halls on a Saturday night

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## Gdurfey

Wildthings said:


> Man oh man are those some great memories. Most of mine were in American Legon Halls on a Saturday night


My days at Aggieland it was the Hall of Fame, or jokingly Hall of Shame. Heard about a few of the others. Went to one in Waco but it may have been a Legion as well. 

Put a smile on my face tonight and my wife has no clue!!

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## Mike Hill

Wildthings said:


> Man oh man are those some great memories. Most of mine were in American Legon Halls on a Saturday night


Yup, Lil Mikey left some boot sole leather on American Legion hall floors also - especially the one in Seguin. It had some good dances, especially the wedding reception ones!

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## Mike Hill

Did a little more looking. On their facebook page - ......"We are asking for immediate help. TXDOT has informed us that from the Comal county line on Hwy 281 all the way to FT Worth, that 281 will become a Super Highway, with 6 Lanes and access roads. The ranch across from Twin Sisters hall is family owned for over 200 years, Twin Sisters built between 1875-1879. We are in jeopardy. I have been in contact with many of our Senators, Legislators, and officials, as well as Texas Historical Commission and Texas Dance Hall Preservation.........."

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## Nature Man

Mike Hill said:


> Did a little more looking. On their facebook page - ......"We are asking for immediate help. TXDOT has informed us that from the Comal county line on Hwy 281 all the way to FT Worth, that 281 will become a Super Highway, with 6 Lanes and access roads. The ranch across from Twin Sisters hall is family owned for over 200 years, Twin Sisters built between 1875-1879. We are in jeopardy. I have been in contact with many of our Senators, Legislators, and officials, as well as Texas Historical Commission and Texas Dance Hall Preservation.........."


Heard that 281 was going to be improved Northbound from Bulverde, but that no funding is in the budget for it at the present time. At the rate they are expanding 281 from San Antonio to Bulverde, it will be another couple of decades before they can reach Blanco, IF they continue the Northward migration of 281 from its present location. It is probably a good idea to not wait to alerting all the government powers to be of the absolute vital need to keep the Twin Sisters Hall though! Chuck

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## Wildthings

Mike Hill said:


> Yup, Lil Mikey left some boot sole leather on American Legion hall floors also - especially the one in Seguin. It had some good dances, especially the wedding reception ones!


Mine was in Needville and the go to band at the time were "The Red Barons"

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## Mike Hill

Our local that did a lot of the AL halls was Gordie and the Goolaks. A classmate and friend with his sister with their band. They were actually a pretty good dance band. He played at our last few big reunions. Wonder if he'll play at out fiftieth coming up in 2 years - egads - I must be that old too!

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## Tony

Jay Eric & Bleeder's Creek was our "house band" for most of the places we hung out at.


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## Gdurfey

driving me nuts, can't remember the house band at the Fame while I was there in the early 80s. Hmmmmmmmmm


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## Mike Hill

I cannot remember the name of the house band at Lakeview near A&M either. But they were real good. They put some sort of a spell on some of the purdy girls that allowed them to say yes to dancing with Lil Mikey! But then again - it might have been the longnecks! Lone Star of course!

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## Wildthings

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
The Red River, which is the is the second-largest river basin in the southern Great Plains, is salty through tributaries above Lake Texoma. The saltiness is caused by a natural phenomenon that dates back to ancient times. About 250 million years ago, an inland sea blanketed parts of what is now those states. As time passed, that sea evaporated, leaving salt deposits – mostly sodium chloride. Rock and silt eventually buried the deposits, but the salt continues to leach through natural seeps in tributaries above Lake Texoma, sending as much as 3,450 tons of salt per day flowing down the Red River.

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## Mike Hill

Today in history - how one itty bitty boat towed that big ole battleship from Houston to Galveston.

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## Wildthings

Mike Hill said:


> Today in history - how one itty bitty boat towed that big ole battleship from Houston to Galveston.


My plans were to be sitting at Morgan's Point to catch/video this relocation of the dreadnought. According to the schedule it should pass under the Hartman bridge between 11-12 am. If I got there at 10:30 I would have plenty of time to set up. It passed under the Hartman at 09:15 and where was I? Drinking coffee at home. Daggnabbit I should have struck to my original plan of getting there at 0900

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## Mike Hill

Yeh, I was watching live feed by 10:00 and it was past the bridge.


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## Mike Hill

Just heard that Robert Earl Keen just played his last concert in Helotes at Flores. That's a little sad for me - I wanted to hear him again live as it has been at least 44 or 45 years since I have heard him live. That was during the Aggie matriculation years of The Cow Paddy Daddy - otherwise known as "College Age Lil Mikey". Lil Mikey lived in a dorm just a short walk from Northgate and the famous Dixie Chicken and the more famous Campus Theater and their infamous, after midnight "Aggie Frolics". Back behind those precious institutions, at one time (now largely a parking lot/garage, was some rental houses. One of those houses a couple of students rented, lived in the upper floor but turned the bottom floor into a hamburger joint that paid for their college expenses. They put a couple of charcoal grills in the back yard and cooked the burgers on them. Big, thick, and juicy!! Lil Mikey frequented the area quite frequently. Keen rented part of a house that Lyle Lovett was also renting. They would play together on the front porch. And Lil Mikey would sometimes hear them while he was walking to get a burger or see a frolic. The dorm I was in had a "throw together band" that played on the front steps at least a couple evenings a week. I asked Keen and Lovett to join them. They never did though.

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> Just heard that Robert Earl Keen just played his last concert in Helotes at Flores. That's a little sad for me - I wanted to hear him again live as it has been at least 44 or 45 years since I have heard him live. That was during the Aggie matriculation years of The Cow Paddy Daddy - otherwise known as "College Age Lil Mikey". Lil Mikey lived in a dorm just a short walk from Northgate and the famous Dixie Chicken and the more famous Campus Theater and their infamous, after midnight "Aggie Frolics". Back behind those precious institutions, at one time (now largely a parking lot/garage, was some rental houses. One of those houses a couple of students rented, lived in the upper floor but turned the bottom floor into a hamburger joint that paid for their college expenses. They put a couple of charcoal grills in the back yard and cooked the burgers on them. Big, thick, and juicy!! Lil Mikey frequented the area quite frequently. Keen rented part of a house that Lyle Lovett was also renting. They would play together on the front porch. And Lil Mikey would sometimes hear them while he was walking to get a burger or see a frolic. The dorm I was in had a "throw together band" that played on the front steps at least a couple evenings a week. I asked Keen and Lovett to join them. They never did though.


It would've been a great show! I remember seeing him at Fatso's BBQ joint here more than 30 years ago. Me and my girlfriend (wife now) and 7 other people were sitting in a single row in front of him. Last time I saw him was 3 years ago in Kerrville at his 4th of July picnic. Always puts on a great show!

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## Gdurfey

Just ran across this on the internet regarding USS Texas and thought it was interesting:



MSN 中国

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## Mike Hill



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## Wildthings

Mike Hill said:


> View attachment 231570


actually 96 and expected to reach 100 by Thursday

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## trc65

Brotherhood with Texas today. Less than two days from fall and Illinois is sitting at 96° right now. Of course when fall does hit on Thursday, our predicted high is 65°!

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## Gdurfey

trc65 said:


> Brotherhood with Texas today. Less than two days from fall and Illinois is sitting at 96° right now. Of course when fall does hit on Thursday, our predicted high is 65°!


we get it tonight. Record highs, or near record, down in the Springs; about a 20 degree drop in highs tomorrow and Thursday.

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## Nature Man

91 here in Bulverde, and expected to be about the same for the remainder of the week.

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## Wildthings

A front is predicted for next Monday. Lows in mid 60s and high in mid 80s yippieee!! Can you say AUTUMN!!

But a tropical system is starting to loom up for the end of next week. Most models have it surviving the Caribbean and getting into the Gulf

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## SENC

Wildthings said:


> Lows in mid 60s and high in mid 80s yippieee!!


Nothing like a little cool, brisk, football weather in S Texas to get everyone excited! ;)

Hoping that sticks and the tropical stuff stays away - will be headed that way for dove late next week.

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## Gdurfey

SENC said:


> Nothing like a little cool, brisk, football weather in S Texas to get everyone excited! ;)
> 
> Hoping that sticks and the tropical stuff stays away - will be headed that way for dove late next week.


Dove. That's those birds that magically dodge shot, right????

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## Tony

Gdurfey said:


> Dove. That's those birds that magically dodge shot, right????


Actually they are the ones that taste great stuffed with jalapeños and wrapped in bacon.

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## Wildthings

SENC said:


> Nothing like a little cool, brisk, football weather in S Texas to get everyone excited! ;)
> 
> Hoping that sticks and the tropical stuff stays away - will be headed that way for dove late next week.


Ulvade area?


Gdurfey said:


> Dove. That's those birds that magically dodge shot, right????


Absolutely


Tony said:


> Actually they are the ones that taste great stuffed with jalapeños and wrapped in bacon.


No doubt but only if you can hit them. <see above quote>

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## Gdurfey

Wildthings said:


> Ulvade area?
> 
> Absolutely
> 
> No doubt but only if you can hit them. <see above quote>


my boss.....35 yours ago, shared a story from Field & Stream or some such on hunting dove. I had never done so at that time and although I have only bird hunted a couple of times now (never dove) the story was hilarious and has stuck with me all these years. Bottom line is what I said above and like you, every dove hunter I have talked to agrees.

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## SENC

Gdurfey said:


> Dove. That's those birds that magically dodge shot, right????


yes!


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## SENC

Tony said:


> Actually they are the ones that taste great stuffed with jalapeños and wrapped in bacon.


and that, too!

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## SENC

Wildthings said:


> Ulvade area?
> 
> Absolutely
> 
> No doubt but only if you can hit them. <see above quote>


yes, Uvalde area

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## Tony

A friend of mine was in London and took this picture.

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## Mike Hill

Gdurfey said:


> Dove. That's those birds that magically dodge shot, right????


My dad musta muffled quite a few guffaws watching Lil Mike shooting dove. Lil Mikey was given a single shot 410 for the task! Eventually he learned what to do and what not to do and was able to collect a few limits along the way - even though the limits sometimes took 3 days to get. When he got the 20 ga - Lil Mikey thought he could do anything! A 12 ga woulda made him faint with giddiness!

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## Gdurfey

Mike Hill said:


> My dad musta muffled quite a few guffaws watching Lil Mike shooting dove. Lil Mikey was given a single shot 410 for the task! Eventually he learned what to do and what not to do and was able to collect a few limits along the way. When he got the 20 ga - Lil Mikey thought he could do anything! A 12 ga woulda made him faint with giddiness!


I want to add a nice 20 ga over/under one of these days!!!! My dream gun if I can ever get back out and do some bird hunting.

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## 2feathers Creative Making

20 ga. Is a sweet spot. Decent reach without a fully contused shoulder come morning

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## Mike Hill

Ok, what is it with Texas and restaurants burning down. A couple of weeks ago Hillbillyz near Boerne, A year ago, Tapito Springs in Boerne, The Grill (also the original Macaroni's) in Leon Springs (near Boerne), The Old River Cafe in New Braunfels, Texas French Bread in Austin, even the beloved Dixie Chicken at A&M a couple of years ago!

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## Eric Rorabaugh

They don't know how to cook! Burning everything and it got out of control

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## Tony

Mike Hill said:


> Ok, what is it with Texas and restaurants burning down. A couple of weeks ago Hillbillyz near Boerne, A year ago, Tapito Springs in Boerne, The Grill (also the original Macaroni's) in Leon Springs (near Boerne), The Old River Cafe in New Braunfels, Texas French Bread in Austin, even the beloved Dixie Chicken at A&M a couple of years ago!


Are you talking about Midnight Rope-A-Hoe?


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## Mike Hill

Might have happened to others, but Lil Mikey always had the 15 minute walk of embarassment back to Law Hall.

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## Gdurfey

Mike Hill said:


> Might have happened to others, but Lil Mikey always had the 15 minute walk of embarassment back to Law Hall.


25 minutes back to the Corps dorms……but same walk!

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## Mike Hill

I was told that that was supposed to only happen to the Corps guys, but not to the non-regs!

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## Tony



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## Nature Man

Tony said:


> View attachment 235464


Wish we could become an independent nation again!

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## Mike Hill

I'll join ya!

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## scootac

Nature Man said:


> Wish we could become an independent nation again!


So do I!


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