War Clouds Gather Over Indianola
Indianola was a southern town with a seaport’s connection to the broader cosmopolitan world of commerce, business cooperation, and a diverse blend of residents newly arrived from all over Europe. The soil—gritty shell beaches cut by a crisscross of shallow bayous and lakes—did not lend itself to cotton growing. The vast slave plantations thrived much […]
A Steady Onslaught of Immigrants
In 1844, Samuel Addison White saw an opportunity to make some money and develop his barren piece of property that jutted into the waters between Matagorda and Lavaca bays, a protected area along the Central Texas coast. Prince Karl of Solms Braunfels, an aristocratic emissary representing a group of German noblemen, had shown up on […]
Indianola: Gateway to the Southwest
Waves lap the sunbaked shell beach of a ghost town that never should have been. Despite its locale at near sea level, people built the thriving seaport of Indianola that rivaled Galveston as a major shipping point on the Texas coast. Its shore became the landing site for thousands of Germans escaping poverty in the […]
Immigrant Creates a Food Tradition
In 1892 when Adelaida and Macario Cuellar left their impoverished home in Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande, and were married in Laredo, they had dreams of working hard and finding success. They did not imagine that their family would eventually head a multi-million dollar food business. The Cuellars spoke very little English and worked on […]
La Reunion, Dallas Commune
On June 16, 1855, residents of the area around the village of Dallas (population 400) declared a holiday in anticipation of greeting about 200 very foreign-looking immigrants from France, Belgium, and Switzerland. The newcomers, who spoke French and wore odd-looking clothing and sabots (wooden shoes) arrived after a twenty-six-day trip from Houston—some walking, others on […]
Texas’ First Settlers: Canary Islanders
After the Frenchman René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle missed the mouth of the Mississippi where he planned to establish a colony and landed instead in 1685 on the middle Texas coast, the Spanish Colonial government became concerned about the French encroaching on Spanish Texas. The worry led to constructing missions in East Texas […]
Log Church Cathedral
A one-room log church sits on a lane leading off a country road in Wesley a farming community between Houston and Austin. Wesley boasts the first Czech school in Texas that started here in 1859 when the town was called Veseli meaning “joyous.” The church building, erected in 1866, housed the community school and the […]
Father of “The Father of Texas”
History takes little note of Moses Austin (1761-1821). The man known for his grand plans and bold schemes and really big failures initiated Anglo settlement in Texas, which led to Texas independence from Mexico, which led to Texas annexation to the United States, which led to the Mexican War, which resulted in the United States […]
LINDHEIMER: FATHER OF TEXAS BOTANY
If you have heard of the Texas prickly pear cactus, the Texas yellow star daisy, milkweed and loco weed, or the Texas rat snake, you may be surprised to know all five derive their scientific name from Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer—a botanist who scoured the wilds of Texas in the 1830s and 40s to discover several […]
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: RABBI HENRY COHEN
When you travel Texas highways, you see historical markers that tell some of Texas’ best tales. For several years I wrote some of those marker stories and in the process I discovered a lot of Movers & Shakers that history books never mention. I plan to share some of the stories in my blogs. I […]