THE SANCTIFIED SISTERS
Scorned, ridiculed, and later admired, they operated the only known woman’s commune in the U.S., and they were serious capitalists in an age when women enjoyed few rights. The Sanctificationists owed their beginning to Martha McWhirter, who with her husband George and their twelve children moved into Belton in Central Texas after the Civil War. George […]
DIAMOND BESSIE MURDER TRIAL
Jefferson, a thriving inland port in deep East Texas, enjoyed a cosmopolitan air of success in 1877. Steamboats designed to carry a thousand bales of East Texas cotton on only three feet of water left the port of Jefferson and returned from New Orleans with the latest fashion in clothing and home design as well […]
ANGEL OF GOLIAD
Many stories survive from the 1836 War for Texas Independence from Mexico, but several almost forgotten tales surround the deeds of a beautiful young Mexican woman whose name is shrouded in the mists of history. To a person they called her the “Angel of Goliad.” She steps onto the scene as the woman accompanying Capt. […]
SHANGHAI PIERCE, A FAIR LIKENESS
It is unusual for a cattleman to come to Texas as a stowaway on a ship. But that is exactly how 19-year-old Abel Head Pierce made his way to Port Lavaca in 1854. Discovered when the ship reached the high seas, he earned his passage by mopping the deck and hauling cargo at ports-of-call along […]
LOS EBANOS FERRY
Named for the ebony trees in the area and for the tiny town hugging Texas’ southern border, this ancient crossing on the Rio Grande serves as the only government-licensed, hand-operated ferry between the U.S. and either its Mexican or its Canadian border. For years before Spain began issuing land grants on the Texas side of […]
THE LADY WITH THE PEN
Elise Tvede Waerenskjold (1815-1895) marched to her own drummer in both Norway and Texas. The daughter of a Norwegian Lutheran pastor, Elise was a women’s advocate when feminists were unheard of in Norway. After a genteel education at home by private tutors, she became a teacher, a rare move for a woman at that time. […]
TEXAS’ BLOODLESS WAR
If you visit downtown Austin, on the corner of Congress Avenue and 7th Street, you will see a larger than life bronze of barefoot Angelina Eberley lighting an equally gigantic cannon. The story requires a little explanation. After Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836, Sam Houston won the election as the new Republic’s first president. […]
HEARTBREAK ON THE TEXAS FRONTIER
It is probably legitimate to say she died of a broken heart, a heart that started breaking when she was about nine years old. Cynthia Ann Parker’s family and several members of the Parker clan moved from Illinois to North Central Texas in the spring of 1835 and built a log fortress they called Fort […]
THE POMPEIIAN VILLA
The Pompeiian Villa, built in 1900 in Port Arthur is a replica of a first century Roman villa complete with the deep pink exterior, Doric columns, and ten rooms circling a grand peristyle. Although it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and bears a Texas Historical Marker, its heyday symbolizes an era […]
World Renowned Sculptor in Texas
When most people think of Texas in the late 19th Century, they think of cattle drives and stage coaches, one-room schoolhouses and dirt roads. They think of saloons, not salons. But there is more to the story. Long before anyone heard the phrase “women’s libber” Elisabet Ney fit the mold. Born in Münster, Westphalia, in […]