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 […]
Bonnie Parker, Dead at Twenty-three
She was an honor student and loved poetry, but she dropped out of school, married Roy Thornton before her sixteenth birthday, and had “Roy and Bonnie” tattooed on her right knee to celebrate the union. After a stormy two years, Thornton went to prison; Bonnie never divorced him and died five years later, still wearing […]
The Cattle Baron’s Daughter
An elegant 1930s Greek revival temple in Victoria, the Royston Nave Museum, has a story to tell of vast wealth, cultural challenge, creative genius, and high living as broad as the Texas landscape. In 2012 the Nave Museum held a month-long exhibit titled “The Cattle Baron’s Daughter and the Artists Who Loved Her—James Ferdinand McCan […]
Clash of Cultures
Over two years ago, I posted “Heartbreak on the Texas Frontier,” the story of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker, her younger brother, and other family members who were taken prisoner by the Comanches on May 19, 1836. I recounted the tragedy of Cynthia Ann’s life after she was “rescued” in 1860 and returned to her white […]
Alamo Survivor?
She lived well past 100—some say 105, others say 113. She claimed to have entered the Alamo to nurse the ailing James Bowie whose family accounts say he was suffering the fevers of typhoid. She even wore a scar on her chin acquired from the thrust of a Mexican bayonet as she threw herself across […]
Son Muy Hombres (?)
“Are They Real Men?” Alice Dickerson Montemayor, a Mexican American feminist of the 1930s, actually asked that question in an article in the LULAC News in March 1938. Montemayor was challenging what she viewed as gender discrimination and machismo in LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), the oldest Hispanic civil rights group in the […]
From Indian Captive to Texas Leader
Rebecca Jane Gilleland was seven when Comanches swooped down on her family, killed both parents, and took as captives Rebecca and her six-year-old brother William. Born in Philadelphia in 1831, Rebecca settled with her family near present Refugio about 1837. When Rebecca recounted her experiences to the Galveston Daily News in 1913, she said it […]
Elizabeth McAnulty Owens, Pioneer Reminiscences
Thanks to the stories that Elizabeth Owens told her daughters, we know about life in Victoria, headquarters for the De León Colony, during some of its most turbulent times. Elizabeth McAnulty was two years old when her mother and stepfather, Margaret and James Quinn, moved the family from New Jersey to Texas in 1829 as […]
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 IV
Black women have received little attention for the critical role they have played in maintaining their families and contributing to their communities. After running across a brief reference to Rachel Whitfield (1814-1908) a “former slave who made it on her own as head of a household, subsistence farmer,” I began searching for more. I found […]