Millions in Silver Hauled Across Texas
Hundreds of freight wagons, each drawn by six to eight mules, and brightly colored Mexican carretas, each pulled by four to six oxen, formed dusty weaving trains on the Chihuahua Road from the silver mines of northern Mexico to the port town of Indianola on the central Texas coast. The trail across Texas opened in […]
Angelina Eberly, Innkeeper/Cannoneer
Famous for firing the howitzer that started Texas’ “Bloodless War,” Angelina Eberly was really a smart businesswoman. Born in Tennessee in 1798, Angelina Belle married her first cousin Jonathan C Payton in 1818 and began a journey that ended in 1825 in San Felipe de Austin, headquarters of Stephen F. Austin’s colony. The couple operated […]
Book Signing Invite
To all you lovers of Texas history who faithfully read my weekly blog, I am sending a very personal invitation to two book signings for Stein House. If you have been on board for a few months, you already know that Stein House is historical fiction (the history is accurate) set in the thriving Texas […]
Stein House is Published
For several weeks I have been blogging about the central coast of Texas where the first huge wave of German settlers landed in December 1844 on a bare shell beach that developed into the thriving seaport of Indianola. The blog posts have been an introduction to the exciting history of the place where Stein House, […]
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 […]
Indianola Thriving
If anything proved to the citizens of Indianola that their seaport was making a name for itself in Washington D.C., it was not just the arrival of thirty-three camels on May 14, 1856, but a second shipment of forty-one camels the following February. The entire affair was an experiment initiated by the Secretary of War, […]
Indianola Rising
Matagorda and Lavaca bays, tucked behind barrier reefs edging the central Texas coast, teemed with commercial potential, and sea captains took note as ships carrying thousands of German immigrants precipitated the beginnings of the thriving seaport of Indian Point. The United States War Department built a wharf and opened its Army Supply Depot to serve […]
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 […]
Backstory of Historical Fiction
In the early 1970s, while living on the Texas coast, I interviewed a ninety-four-year-old woman about her German ancestors who had come into Texas through the thriving seaport of Indianola. Her family did not travel inland as so many other Germans had done. Instead, they stayed and helped build the farming and cattle region along […]