Legends of A Lady Pioneer
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 […]
Church Bell With a Story to Tell
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Cuero boasts three bells in its arched façade. The small copper bell claims a story of survival. It began life on the Reliance, a Morgan Steamship Line merchant vessel that sailed between New Orleans and the thriving Texas port of Indianola. Indianola residents were enjoying a party onboard the Reliance […]
BRITS LEARNED TO FLY IN TEXAS
In March 1941 the United States and Great Britain agreed on a secret operation under the Lend-Lease Program to train Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots in six civilian U.S. aviation schools. The plan was instituted in order to locate the RAF pilots out of danger of constant aerial attacks during their training and the scheme […]
THE RISE AND FALL OF INDIANOLA
Waves lap the sunbaked shell beach of a ghost town that never should have been. Despite its locale at near sea level, the thriving port of Indianola rivaled Galveston after the Civil War as a major shipping point on the Texas coast. In the 1840s a group of German noblemen heard of the cheap land […]
Padre Island, A Story of Hope and Heartbreak
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 […]
Campaign to Open the West
After the Civil War, views differed about what should be done about the Southern Plains Indian’s often-vicious determination to keep their hunting grounds free of white settlement. The Texas government wanted to see the Indians exterminated, while the federal government planned to move them to two reservations established in Indian Territory (present Oklahoma). Two turbulent […]
Texas’ Pioneer Inventor
A brilliant eccentric—Gail Borden reportedly rode about Galveston on a pet bull. He invented a “locomotive bath house,” a portable affair that allowed women to bathe privately in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico before he was “discouraged” by the city authorities. While he worked for the Galveston City Company laying out the streets, […]
SAGA OF A PIONEER WOMAN
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 […]
Oil Man Who Gave Away Millions
If you are driving south from Austin on US 183, you know when you’ve arrived in Luling. Even if you’re the passenger and your eyes are closed, you’ll recognize Luling. It stinks. Yes, oil pumping stations (pump jacks) operate all over town—even in the heart of the city. Nobody in Luling minds the odor. They […]
Galveston Refused to Die
The 1900 storm that struck Galveston still carries the designation, as the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Periodically, storms flooded the marshy bayou-creased island on the Gulf of Mexico, but experts believed that the lay of the land somehow protected the thriving seaport from the vicious storms that had already destroyed the port city […]