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, […]
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 […]
Flapper Bandit
Just before Christmas in 1926, Rebecca Bradley, a twenty-one-year old student at the University of Texas in Austin, decided to rob banks to pay her college tuition. First, she set fire to a vacant house near downtown Round Rock and rushed into the nearby bank thinking the employees would be distracted by the blaze. When […]
Don Martin De Leon, Empresario
Soon after winning independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico began issuing empresarial grants, contracts allowing men to bring settlers into Mexico’s northernmost state of Texas. Ironically, of approximately thirty empresarial grants issued between 1821 and 1832, only one went to a Mexican. Don Martín De León and his wife Doña Patricia De León were wealthy […]
Ladies Fought the Second Battle of the Alamo
The second battle of the Alamo began in the early 20th century as a disagreement between two powerful women over the proper way to preserve the Alamo, which had been allowed after the famous battle in 1836 and the slaughter of the men who fought there, to fall into an embarrassing state of neglect and […]
The Four Gospels Railroad
The twenty-two mile rail line did not begin in 1909 as anything other than a central Texas business scheme to move Williamson County’s huge cotton crops to the Missouri-Kansas and Texas “Katy” Railroad at Bartlett. Granted, farmers and residents along the line were so happy to have a railroad that when the last of the […]
Saga of Sophia Suttonfield Aughinbaugh Coffee Butt Porter
Two official Texas historical markers sit on the shore of Lake Texoma, the enormous reservoir separating North Texas and Oklahoma. One marker commemorates Holland Coffee’s Trading Post, now under the waters of Lake Texoma. The neighboring marker calls Sophia Coffee Porter a Confederate Lady Paul Revere. The colorful lives of Sophia and Holland Coffee came […]
Niles City: “Richest Little City in Texas”
Three miles north of Fort Worth’s business center, Niles City, a tiny strip of land spreading over a little more than one-half square mile and boasting a population of 508, incorporated in 1911. Within its bounds sat the Fort Worth Stock Yards, Swift & Company, Armour & Company, two grain elevators, and a cotton-oil company, […]
San Antonio Landmark: The Menger Hotel
In 1855, German immigrants William and Mary Menger built a one-story boarding house and brewery on the dusty plaza next to the Alamo. A sheep pen (where Rivercenter Mall now stands) served as the Menger’s other neighbor. Mary’s cooking and William’s beer proved so popular that local hacks picked up guests at Main and Military […]
Houston: The Second Choice
Houston reigns as the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States, but it hasn’t always enjoyed top billing. In 1832 brothers Augustus C. and John K. Allen came to Texas from New York and joined a group of land speculators. During the 1836 Texas War for Independence from Mexico, the […]