Texas’ First Historian
In 1527, six years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had not planned to become a historian when he set sail as the second in command of the Pánfilo de Narváez 600-man expedition. After desertions in Santa Domingo and a terrible hurricane in Cuba, the Spaniards spent the winter re-outfitting […]
He Came to Texas Seeking Revenge
It’s hard to know what’s truth and what’s myth about the adventures of William Alexander Anderson Wallace. He was a nineteen-year-old working in his father’s Virginia fruit orchard in 1835 when he heard that his brother and a cousin had been killed in the Goliad Massacre during the Texas War for Independence from Mexico. That […]
Politics and Salt Did Not Mix
Travelers driving east from El Paso may find it difficult to imagine the longtime controversies that took place in the shadow of the majestic Guadalupe Peak rising from the desert floor. The tallest mountain in Texas soars 8,751 feet above its western flank where an ancient salt flat sprawled across 2,000 acres. The salt and […]
El Paso Mission Trail
My long-range plans call for finding a book publisher interested in my Texas history blogs. With that goal in mind, I’m expanding my Texas coverage with a series of West Texas and Panhandle stories. This blog post was to be about the founding of the oldest Spanish mission in Texas and the first thanksgiving in […]
A Woman Before Her Time
Jane McManus Storm Cazneau was born in Troy, New York, in 1807, but after a failed marriage and being named in Aaron Burr’s divorce, she came to Texas in 1832 with her brother Robert McManus in an attempt to improve the family’s shrinking fortune. Although she received a contract from the Mexican government to settle […]
Post, Founded By a Cereal Magnate
C. W. Post was an inventor. His imagination ran the gamut—designing better farm implements, improving digestion with breakfast foods, creating a model town, and making rain by detonating dynamite—a genius that lived before folks talked about bipolar, instead they called him peculiar. Born in 1854, Post grew up in Illinois, attended two years of college […]
The Man Who Beat “Ma” Ferguson
Last week’s blog post covered the political career of Ma Ferguson, the Housewife Governor of Texas. This week we are going to talk about the man who beat her in the bid for a second term. Ma Ferguson was Texas’ first female governor. Daniel James Moody, Jr. set a record number of firsts: the youngest, […]
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 […]
John R. Brinkley, Medical Charlatan
By the time John Romulus (changed to John Richard) Brinkley came to Texas in 1933, he had amassed a fortune and become famous for transplanting goat glands into his male patients. A natural salesman with a smooth voice and plenty of confidence, Brinkley had been performing his $750 “restorative” operation at his clinic in Milford, […]
Rosenwald Schools
Black children in the South attended segregated schools that were dilapidated. They used books castoff from white schools. At times they attended classes in churches and lodge halls because the local school board did not provide buildings for black students. Two men worked to change all that. Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute and […]