A CHEROKEE TEXAN
Sarah Ridge survived a lifetime of tragedy before she arrived in Texas. Born in 1814 in the Cherokee Nation near present Rome, Georgia, she enjoyed a privileged life as the daughter of Major Ridge, a Cherokee leader, friend of Sam Houston, and plantation owner with black and Native American slaves. Sarah attended mission schools and […]
GALVESTON GRADE RAISING
The 1900 storm that struck Galveston still carries the designation, as the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Periodically, storms flooded the marshy bayou- creased island on the Gulf of Mexico, but experts believed that the lay of the land somehow protected the thriving seaport from the vicious storms that had already destroyed the port […]
WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD
A story, circulated since the 1830s in South Central Texas, contains enough truth to merit a Texas Historical Marker. Residents along the Navidad River bottom in Lavaca and Jackson counties began seeing strange footprints along the riverbank, and at the same time they began missing small amounts of sweet potatoes and corn. On moonlit nights […]
TEXAS’ BLOODLESS WAR
If you visit downtown Austin, on the corner of Congress Avenue and 7th Street, you will see a larger than life bronze of barefoot Angelina Eberley lighting an equally gigantic cannon. The story requires a little explanation. After Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836, Sam Houston won the election as the new Republic’s first president. […]
HEARTBREAK ON THE TEXAS FRONTIER
It is probably legitimate to say she died of a broken heart, a heart that started breaking when she was about nine years old. Cynthia Ann Parker’s family and several members of the Parker clan moved from Illinois to North Central Texas in the spring of 1835 and built a log fortress they called Fort […]
THE POMPEIIAN VILLA
The Pompeiian Villa, built in 1900 in Port Arthur is a replica of a first century Roman villa complete with the deep pink exterior, Doric columns, and ten rooms circling a grand peristyle. Although it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and bears a Texas Historical Marker, its heyday symbolizes an era […]
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, […]
World Renowned Sculptor in Texas
When most people think of Texas in the late 19th Century, they think of cattle drives and stage coaches, one-room schoolhouses and dirt roads. They think of saloons, not salons. But there is more to the story. Long before anyone heard the phrase “women’s libber” Elisabet Ney fit the mold. Born in Münster, Westphalia, in […]
Camels in Texas
Texans make a lot of extravagant claims. Sometimes they are true. Like the story about having camels in Texas. Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War (1853-1857) under President Franklin Pierce, convinced Congress to appropriate $30,000 to buy and import camels for military use as beasts of burden. Davis claimed that because camels carried tremendous loads, traveled […]