Jewel on the Baylor Campus
Baylor University boasts a claim to fame that has nothing to do with its football team. The world’s largest collection of works pertaining to the Victorian poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning reside in the elegant Armstrong Browning Library. The unlikely repository of the English poets’ books, letters, and manuscripts on a campus in Central […]
Tough Victorian Lady
Lucy Ann Thornton was a bundle of contradictions—a lady ahead of her time who believed women should be educated also touted the need for women to hold home and family above all else. Born into an old southern family in Kentucky in 1839, the barely five-foot-tall Lucy enjoyed a genteel education in the classics […]
Lucy Kidd-Key, Tough Victorian Lady
Born into an old southern family in Kentucky in 1839 and given a genteel education in the classics and fine arts, the barely five-foot-tall Lucy Ann Thornton was a bundle of contradictions—a lady ahead of her time who believed women should be educated, also touted the need for women to hold home and family above […]
Early-Day Home for Unwed Mothers
In a plan to redeem prostitutes and “combat the social evil of fallen women” in 1894, the Rev. J. T. Upchurch and his wife Maggie Mae organized the Berachah Rescue Society in Waco. One newspaper account claims he was “driven away [from Waco] by angry fellow Methodist church members who opposed his missionary work with […]
Ex-Slave Becomes Community Leader
Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1845, Nelson Taylor Denson moved, at age eleven, to Falls County in East Texas with his master. Denson, who had been educated by his master, developed high regard for Sam Houston after hearing Houston speak when he visited Marlin in his campaign for governor. Denson admired Houston’s devotion to […]
LOVE AFFAIR BECOMES A LEGEND
If you are in deep East Texas on TX 63 southwest of Burkeville, be sure to read the historical marker designating the site of Shankleville, a black community named for an ex-slave. Jim Shankle was born in 1811 on a Mississippi plantation. When he married Winnie, she already had three children. Soon after the marriage, […]