BIG THICKET–FOREST WONDERLAND AND CIVIL WAR HIDEOUT
Opinions vary as to the parameters of the Big Thicket in Southeast Texas. Early Spanish explorers believed this vast wilderness of yellow pine trees five and six feet in diameter towering over dense growth of ferns, cactus, orchids, and carnivorous plants spread from the Old San Antonio Road all the way to the Gulf of […]
WILLIAM COWPER BRANN–THE ICONOCLAST
His supporters called him a visionary and a brilliant writer. Some even dubbed him the “Prairie Voltaire” and the “American Carlyle.” His detractors called him the “Devil’s Disciple.” Even his biographer Charles Carver described him as “a mean Mark Twain.” Upon his death, after a gun battle that also killed his assailant, those who hated […]
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 […]
TEXAS’ LADY CANNONEER
I call it being organized–juggling several things at the same time. However, like a circus clown trying to toss one too many bowling pins, I’ve dropped the whole passel. Expecting Friday to be especially busy, I wrote my blog, even added all the photos and went to bed knowing at the appointed hour on Friday […]
AIRSHIP FLYS BEFORE WRIGHT BROTHERS?
Residents in the East Texas town of Pittsburg house in the local museum a full-size replica of the Ezekiel Airship, which many old timers declare flew almost a year before the Wright brother’s claim to fame at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Burrell Cannon, a mechanical genius and part-time Baptist preacher, inspired by the first and […]
PHILANTHROPIC MADAM
Mystery surrounds Miss Rita’s early life. Raised in a prosperous, but unnamed Oregon family in the early 1900s, she left home to dance for a time for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo before she joined the vaudeville circuit. During her first, brief marriage, no one knows why she became a prostitute. When the Great […]
SUTTON-TAYLOR FEUD
William Sutton was the only Sutton involved in this feud, but he had a lot of friends, including some members of Governor E. J. Davis’ State Police. The Taylor faction consisted of the sons, nephews, in-laws and friends of Creed and Pitkin Taylor. Creed apparently did not join the fight and Pitkin, an old man, […]
THE PADRE ISLAND STORY
The treasures of Padre Island, playground on the Texas Gulf Coast, reveal far more than sandy beaches and sand dunes rippling in the steady breeze. Dig beneath the sand castles and you find a legacy of grand visions and broken dreams. Padre, a textbook example of a barrier reef island, edges the Texas coast for […]
JOHN WESLEY HARDIN, KILLER
Handsome and gentlemanly John Wesley Hardin, named for the founder of the Methodist Church, was the son of a Methodist minister and circuit rider. Perhaps his proper upbringing caused “Wes” to view himself as a pillar of society who claimed he never killed a man who didn’t need killing. The numbers of dead differ, as […]
OBLATE FATHERS OF THE RIO GRANDE
Known as the horseback “Cavalry of Christ” to Mexican ranchers along Texas’ lower Rio Grande Valley, the Oblate Fathers arrived in 1849 to serve as Texas missionaries. The padres, young men from large cities in France, wore plain black soutanes resembling ankle-length, long-sleeved dresses with an Oblate cross hung around their necks. Experiencing a steep […]