The Black Bean Episode
Despite the glorious story of Texas winning its independence from Mexico in that eighteen-minute battle at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the new republic remained embroiled in a series of political, economic, and military struggles. The Black Bean Episode was the culmination of all those forces coming together for a grand failure. Although Santa […]
Queen of the Confederacy
Lucy Pickens’ life was a contradiction—she was an outspoken, determined, and forceful woman who was ahead of her time, and she was a southern-belle, a beauty, and a charming hostess who was very much a part of her time. She graced the stage of the Russian Czar and Czarina and the grand plantations of the […]
Former Texas Slaves Serve in Civil War
Three Holland brothers—Milton, William, and James—were slaves born in the 1840s on Spearman Holland’s plantation near Carthage. Apparently their father was Spearman’s half brother, Capt. Bird Holland. Capt. Holland purchased his sons from Spearman and moved them to Travis County. Little is known of their early life except that Bird Holland served as a captain […]
Peter Pan, A Texas Girl
Growing up in Weatherford, twenty-five miles west of Fort Worth, Mary Virginia Martin was a mimic—dancing and acting like Dick Powell’s co-star, Ruby Keeler and singing like the crooner Bing Crosby. Martin’s mother, a violin teacher, had planned to have a son in 1913. Instead, her lively little girl became the family’s tomboy, romping and […]
Susanna Dickinson: Alamo Survivor
Nothing tells the Texas story—the struggle for survival, the choices that bring personal tragedy, and the triumph of success—better than the life of Susanna Dickinson. She was only fifteen in 1829 when she eloped in Hardeman County, Tennessee, with the dashing U.S. Army artillerist, Almeron Dickinson, a man almost twice her age. Two years later […]
Stein House is Published
For several weeks I have been blogging about the central coast of Texas where the first huge wave of German settlers landed in December 1844 on a bare shell beach that developed into the thriving seaport of Indianola. The blog posts have been an introduction to the exciting history of the place where Stein House, […]
Indianola Rising
Matagorda and Lavaca bays, tucked behind barrier reefs edging the central Texas coast, teemed with commercial potential, and sea captains took note as ships carrying thousands of German immigrants precipitated the beginnings of the thriving seaport of Indian Point. The United States War Department built a wharf and opened its Army Supply Depot to serve […]
Indianola: Gateway to the Southwest
Waves lap the sunbaked shell beach of a ghost town that never should have been. Despite its locale at near sea level, people built the thriving seaport of Indianola that rivaled Galveston as a major shipping point on the Texas coast. Its shore became the landing site for thousands of Germans escaping poverty in the […]
Backstory of Historical Fiction
In the early 1970s, while living on the Texas coast, I interviewed a ninety-four-year-old woman about her German ancestors who had come into Texas through the thriving seaport of Indianola. Her family did not travel inland as so many other Germans had done. Instead, they stayed and helped build the farming and cattle region along […]
The Wreck of the Three Hundred
Three Spanish galleons, caught in a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, wrecked on the sandbars just off Padre Island on April 29, 1554. Ironically, as the flotilla sailed from Veracruz, a Dominican missionary on his way for an audience with the Pope, shared his sinister forebodings: “Woe be to those who are going to […]