The Newton Boys
The Newton family had eleven kids, four of whom would become history’s most successful bank and train robbers. As sharecroppers the family moved around, scratching out a living in the cotton fields of Texas. The boys’ mother Janetta Pecos Anderson Newton regaled the boys with outlaw stories with such success that Willis, the eventual leader […]
Breadline Banker
Part of the fun of writing a weekly Texas history blog is discovering a story that jumps up unexpectedly. While researching Panna Maria, the oldest permanent Polish settlement in the United States, I read an account claiming that an Irishman named John Twohig (love that name) in 1854 sold the original 238 acres for the […]
Lady Trail Driver
She buried three husbands and then hit the cattle trail in 1873 with her children and a grandchild in tow. Margaret Heffernan was born in Ireland, and when she was five years old, two Irish empresarios went to New York to recruit newly arrived immigrants to settle on their land grant in South Texas. In […]
The Man Who Beat “Ma” Ferguson
Last week’s blog post covered the political career of Ma Ferguson, the Housewife Governor of Texas. This week we are going to talk about the man who beat her in the bid for a second term. Ma Ferguson was Texas’ first female governor. Daniel James Moody, Jr. set a record number of firsts: the youngest, […]
Myra Invites You!
Internet Radio Interview Thursday, June 19, from 9 to 9:30am (CST) Myra talks about Stein House, her award-winning historical novel Tough Talk with Tony Gambone www.toughtalkwithtonygambone.com click: Listen Live (Be patient—it takes a few seconds to load) Saturday, June 21, from 1 to 6pm Malvern Book Store 613 W. 29th Austin […]
From “Booger Town” to “All-American City”
A friend told me that in the 1920s her father’s job of hauling construction materials in the Texas Panhandle required that he drive through Borger. The place had such a bad reputation that her father carried a loaded .45 on the seat beside him. On one occasion a man jumped on the truck’s passenger-side running […]
Margaret Hallett, Legendary Pioneer Texan
The story that places Margaret Leatherbury Hallett in early Texas merits being called a “legend” because not every part of her saga meets the truth test. Born on Christmas Day 1787, she was the youngest daughter of a prominent Virginia family and probably the feistiest. At eighteen she fell in love with John Hallett, a […]
Black History Month–Part I
In celebration of Black History Month, I plan to write a series highlighting the often-brief stories of black men and women that made their mark on Texas history. Estevanico (often called Esteban and Esteban the Moor) was captured in 1513 in Morocco when he was about thirteen years old and sold to a Spanish nobleman. […]
Susanna Dickinson: Alamo Survivor
Nothing tells the Texas story—the struggle for survival, the choices that bring personal tragedy, and the triumph of success—better than the life of Susanna Dickinson. She was only fifteen in 1829 when she eloped in Hardeman County, Tennessee, with the dashing U.S. Army artillerist, Almeron Dickinson, a man almost twice her age. Two years later […]
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 […]