Breadline Banker
Part of the fun of writing a weekly Texas history blog is discovering a story that jumps up unexpectedly. While researching Panna Maria, the oldest permanent Polish settlement in the United States, I read an account claiming that an Irishman named John Twohig (love that name) in 1854 sold the original 238 acres for the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 Thriving
If anything proved to the citizens of Indianola that their seaport was making a name for itself in Washington D.C., it was not just the arrival of thirty-three camels on May 14, 1856, but a second shipment of forty-one camels the following February. The entire affair was an experiment initiated by the Secretary of War, […]
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 […]
Women Pilots of WWII Trained in Texas
When the United States entered World War II, the top brass, including General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF), had doubts about women’s ability to pilot large aircraft. In the summer of 1941 even before the United States entered the war, two famous women aviators Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran and […]