There was still no news from Galveston on Aug. 18, 1915 two full days after a hurricane packing 125 mile-per-hour winds slammed into the island.

Texans on the mainland, including 7,000 refugees from the stricken city, could only worry and wonder whether the new seawall had saved Galveston from a repeat of the calamity of 1900.

Two hurricanes in the summer of 1886, especially the August storm that finished off Indianola, got some Galvestonians to thinking again about building a barrier on the beach.  But they were, as usual, badly outnumbered by neighbors, who took it as an article of faith that the Oleander City was immune to nature’s wrath. Continue reading →

    Afraid no editor would take the time to read a two-and-a-half-foot thick manuscript, a wealthy Waco businessman mailed the first 300 pages of his record-breaking novel to an East Coast publishing house sometime in mid-August 1951.

Madison Alexander Cooper, Jr. was born in 1894 with, as he good-naturedly conceded, “at least a silver-plated spoon in my mouth.”  His father was a well-to-do grocer and prominent pillar of the Central Texas city, that would be “Matt” Cooper’s home for life.

After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in English, he fought in France as a doughboy captain.  Returning in one piece to Waco, he honored his parents’ wishes by taking his rightful place in the family business.

Afterhours, however, the young executive pursued a very private dream.  He spent nights and weekends writing short stories and even sold a few to national magazines.  But those early efforts failed to meet his high standards, and in the 1930’s he moth-balled his typewriter.

Although Cooper kept his nose to the grindstone during the Depression, he did not neglect his first love.  He took three correspondence courses in creative writing from Columbia University, which inspired his switch from the short story to the novel.

Before putting a single word down on paper, Cooper thought his epic tale through from beginning to end.  Allowing ten years to write, ten years to sell and another decade to edit, he did not expect to see the book in print before 1970.

Cooper’s pet project was a secret he shared with no one.  His elaborate precautions were so effective than even his closest friends never suspected the plain-vanilla businessman was hard at work on the Great American Novel.

Cooper brought the imaginary town of Sironia, Texas to life in a study on the third floor of his turn-of-the-century mansion.  A detailed map of the fictitious place and a genealogical chart with the 83 main characters hung on the wall behind his desk.  Visitors were admitted to the sanctuary only by appointment, and prior to their entrance a large map of the Lone Star State was pulled down to hide the fantasy props.

Self-discipline enabled Cooper to change hats without derailing his train of thought.  “I can be in the middle of writing what I consider a poignant love scene,” he once explained, “be interrupted by a tenant whose plumbing has to be repaired, and then after arranging the repair I can return effortlessly to my interrupted scene.”

Learning from the bitter experience of a fellow novelist, who lost his life’s work in a fire, Cooper typed each chapter in triplicate.  He stored one copy in a closet, the second in a vacant store and the third in a bank vault.

After 11 years of tedious toil, Cooper entrusted the finished product to two student typists he swore to the strictest secrecy.  The finger-weary pair pounded out a manuscript two and a half feet thick!

Cooper was stunned speechless.  He knew his novel had run a little long but nearly 900,000 words?  That was more than the Old and New Testaments combined and twice the length of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.

Cooper convinced himself that no book baron in his right mind would wade through the 2,864-page manuscript.  So he sent the first 300 pages to Houghton-Mifflin in the faint hope of piquing the interest of the Boston publisher.

To the apprehensive author’s amazement, Houghton-Mifflin immediately asked for the whole enchilada.  Still believing the sheer size would result in rejection, Cooper mailed the next 500 pages.  The response was again swift and favorable, and the repeated request for the rest of the manuscript had an air of urgency.

Cooper summoned the courage to comply and anxiously awaited the verdict.  The publisher phoned in December 1951 to invite him to Boston to discuss the book, but the Texan got cold feet and begged off with the lame excuse that he was too busy to make the trip.

Weeks went by without a word from Houghton-Mifflin, and Cooper cursed himself for blowing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  He finally placed a long-distance call to Massachusetts only to discover that his book was a done deal and would be printed in its record-breaking entirety.

Enough readers bought the boxed, two-volume first edition at the unheard-of price of ten dollars to put Sironia, Texas on the New York Times best-seller list for 11 weeks.  Cooper basked in the glow of his hard-earned acclaim, which included several prestigious literary awards, and took pride in the fact that he had beaten his timetable by 18 years.

Wacoans naturally looked for their ancestors among the fictitious inhabitants of Sironia in spite of Matt Cooper’s emphatic assurance that he had not based any characters on real persons living or dead.  But when his files were deliberately destroyed after his death in 1956, folks could not help but wonder.

    “Secession & Civil War” – newest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.

Two “river pilots” on patrol over the international border on Aug. 10, 1919 mistook the Rio Conchos River for the Rio Grande and took a wrong turn deep into the Mexican interior.

A chronic burr under the Lone Star saddle since San Jacinto, Mexican bandits once again were making life miserable on the border, especially in the Big Bend.  Utilizing the latest technology in the war against this old menace, the Border Patrol took to the skies in June 1919.

From an airfield at Marfa, four biplanes flew daily surveillance over the shallow waterway separating Texas and Mexico.  Eagle-eyed “river pilots” scanned the barren landscape for any sign of the elusive outlaws.

While on routine patrol on Aug. 10, Lt. H.G. Peterson and Lt. Paul Davis became so confused they followed the Rio Conchos west into Mexico instead of setting a northerly course by the Rio Grande.  When the engine of their two-seater suddenly sputtered, the two were forced to make an emergency landing 80 miles inside Mexican territory.

After a picture-perfect touchdown, the young officers removed the machineguns from their disabled craft and hid the high-powered prizes in the brush.  Walking to a nearby hut, they met a friendly peasant who agreed to lead the lost gringos back to the border.

Six miles later, the trio was surrounded by a score of riders headed by Jesus Renteria, a former follower of Pancho Villa who had gone into business for himself.  Known as Gacho, he wore a steel hook in place of a severed hand.

Recognizing the potential profit in the chance encounter, Gacho ordered the fliers in flawless English to inform their superiors that the price of their freedom was $15,000 in cold American cash.  Given the choice of writing the ransom note or dying, the aviators obliged their host.

When the river pilots failed to return to base, civil and military authorities launched a massive air and ground search.  The hunt was seriously hampered by President Carranza, who true to form banned American planes from Mexican air space.

A Mexican boy riding a burro delivered the ransom note to a U.S. Army cavalry camp just over the border.  In a matter of hours, local ranchers raised the 15 grand, and Capt. Leonard Matlack was assigned the hazardous duty of arranging the exchange.

Negotiating by messenger, Matlack and Gacho ironed out the details of the swap.  Late in the evening of Aug. 18, the Mexican would flash a light from the hostile bank of the river, which would be the signal for the American to come alone with $7,500 for the first hostage.

Seeing no signal light, Matlack impatiently plunged ahead with the plan.  He located Lt. Peterson ready and waiting, handed Gacho’s henchmen the money and retraced his steps with the rescued hostage.

Depositing the grateful pilot in safe hands, the captain went back for his comrade.  Making his way slowly through the darkness, Matlack overheard a couple of bandits discussing in Spanish the tempting idea of killing both gringos and vamoosing with the loot.

Approaching the second pilot and his armed guard, Matlack whispered to Lt. Davis to jump aboard his horse.  The prisoner instantly complied, and the soldier whipped out a six-shooter in lieu of the balance due.

“Tell Gacho to go to hell!” Capt. Matlack shouted at the frozen bandits.  “He’s had his last American dollar!”  Before the dumbfounded Mexicans knew what had happened, the duo disappeared into the night.

A five-day expedition turned up no trace of the kidnappers, and the controversial incursion was marred by the execution of four Mexicans whose complicity in the crime was open to question.  Left in the custody of civilian scouts, the victims were gunned down as soon as the cavalry was out of earshot.

During the mischievous mission, two excited pilots reported killing a bandit with a hook.  Before a skeptical Matlack could confirm Gacho’s death, the jittery Army brass called of the chase rather than risk an international incident in a clash with government troops.

A few months later, Capt. Matlack sent a trusted Mexican agent to determine the fate of the bandit chieftain.  He discovered Gacho fit as a fiddle in a cantina.  After the airborne Americans had returned his fire, he played possum until they flew away.

In the public ovation that greeted the heroics of the courageous cavalryman, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico sounded a solitary sour note.  He argued that Capt. Matlack deserved to be court-martialed for refusing to pay the rest of the ransom.  But sanity prevailed, and the matter was dropped much to the embarrassment of the grandstanding politician.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.

    Doak Walker ended the speculation about his future in football by announcing on July 29, 1955 that he had agreed to play one more season with the Detroit Lions.

Grantland Rice, dean of American sportswriters, called him “the most authentic all-around player in football history.”  Doak Walker could do everything – run, pass, catch, punt and kick – and did it with a modest grace that endeared him to fans who never had heard of Southern Methodist University.

The three-time consensus All-American led the Mustangs to back-to-back Southwest Conference championships in 1947 and 1948, while winning every individual honor college football had to offer.  (He was the first underclassman awarded the Heisman Trophy.)  The Cotton Bowl had to add an upper-deck to accommodate the record crowds the triple threat attracted and became known as “The House That Doak Built.”

Following an injury-plagued senior season at SMU, an East Coast coach the Texan met at the College All-Star Game urged him to skip the NFL.  There was no way his 5-foot-11, 165-pound body could withstand the punishment of the brutal professional sport with its crazy rule that the ball carrier was fair game even when he was down.

But Doak could not resist the challenge nor the long-awaited reunion with high school teammate Bobby Layne.  The coach of the Detroit Lions was none other than Bo McMillin, one of the earliest All-Americans from the Lone Star State, and it was his brilliant idea to bring the two old friends back together in the same backfield.

In addition to Walker and Layne, McMillin stocked the Lions with other native Texans, several of whom were stars in their own right.  They included with position, hometown and college:  Yale Lary (safety and punter, Fort Worth, Texas A&M), Harley Sewell (lineman, Saint Jo, Texas), Cloyce Box (receiver, Hamilton, West Texas State) and Bob Smith (halfback, Ranger, Iowa).

In 1950 Doak proved beyond all doubt that talent trumped size.  He led the league in scoring with five rushing touchdowns, six receiving TD’s, eight field goals and 38 PAT’s to come within 10 points of the single-season best.  The guy, who was too small for the National Football League, was everybody’s choice for Rookie of the Year.

Under the guidance of Buddy Parker, another Texan who stepped in for terminally ill McMillin, the Lions played in three straight NFL title games.  Each time the opponent was the Cleveland Browns, and Walker, Layne & Company took two out of three.

Doak was instrumental in both victories.  After missing much of the 1952 season with a bad hamstring, he put the game out of reach with a sensational 67-yard touchdown run.  The next year, he accounted for 11 of the Lions’ 17 points, including the PAT that broke a 16-16 tie late in the fourth quarter.

Doak was never an athlete in denial and always knew deep down that someday he would have to give up the game he loved.  Looking back decades later on his decision to retire at the age of 28, he said, “I didn’t want to be one of those guys who stayed a year too long.  I didn’t want to leave burned out or crippled.”

Then he added on a more positive note, “I’d been on three division champions, two world champions.  I’d been to five Pro Bowls.  I’d been All-Pro four times.  What else was there to do?”

No one on either side of the field, not the Detroit Lions or the Philadelphia Eagles, kidded themselves about the unusually large turnout for an exhibition game on a hot August night in Dallas.  The forty thousand fans were not about to miss Doak’s final appearance in the Cotton Bowl.

In a halftime ceremony, Number 37’s many admirers showered him with praise and presents.  The State Fair gave him a solid gold, lifetime pass to the stadium he “built,” and not to be outdone Matty Bell, his former coach, handed him a solid gold membership card in the Mustang Club.  It was hard to top the showroom-new Cadillac from a group of anonymous donors, but Doak’s ex-teammates gave it the good, old college try with a gag gift – a broken-down jalopy.

The guest of honor almost made it through his appreciation speech but choked up when he tried to thank his parents.

Three months later, 43,000 Detroit faithful braved sub-freezing weather to pay a final tribute to the little Texan that had won their hearts.  It certainly was not their team that made them risk pneumonia for the Lions were about to finish a disappointing campaign with nine losses in 12 games.

The lieutenant governor of the state of Michigan set the tone for Doak Walker Day by saying, “I want you to know that personally and officially we all regret seeing you leave.”  Then came all the gifts and testimonials.

Finally, it was Doak’s turn at the microphone.  “Looks like Christmas came early,” he drawled.  “I just want to thank you for giving me a home in Detroit and from a Texan that’s really something.”

    “Secession & Civil War” – newest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.

California Democrats allowed David Smith Terry, chief justice of the state supreme court, to address their convention on July 18, 1859 after he promised to behave himself.

Nothing was more important to the transplanted Texan than his good name, and he never backed down from a fight.  While other 13 year old boys stayed home with their mothers, he risked his life for Lone Star independence.  When Texans fought a second war with Mexico, the young lieutenant won the respect of fellow Rangers twice his age.

Bitten by the gold buy in 1849, David Terry joined the army of fortune hunters that invaded California.  He soon realized, however, that prospecting was a losing proposition and returned to practicing law.

As a Know-Nothing candidate in 1855, Terry was elected to the highest court of the 31st state.  In two short years, he was promoted to the post of chief justice.

With his term due to expire at the end of 1859 and the Know-Nothings no longer an influential force, Judge Terry tried to get back in the Democrats’ good graces.  But his old allies held a grudge and refused to reward the defector with a reelection nomination.

Given the opportunity to address the state convention, Terry turned what was supposed to be a swan song into in a double-barreled blast at Sen. David C. Broderick, leader of the party’s anti-slavery faction.  The Tammany Hall product was a Douglas Democrat, the Texan slyly conceded, but his hero was black abolitionist Frederick Douglas not presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas.

A few days later over breakfast with a good friend of his accuser, Broderick responded to the charge.  Calling Judge Terry “a miserable wretch,” the senator snarled, “I have spoken of him as the only honest man on the bench in a corrupt supreme court, but now I find I was mistaken.  He is just as bad as the others.”

Broderick had impugned his integrity, and Terry would not stand for it.  Believing a jurist should not break the law by dueling, he waited until the fall elections to submit his resignation and to seek satisfaction as a private citizen.

Terry wanted to be fair, which meant allowing Broderick to retract his rash remark.  But Broderick was not about to apologize, and preparations proceeded for the one-on-one combat.

Hoping to avert senseless bloodshed, a mutual acquaintance knocked on the senator’s door the night before the duel.  A cocky crony refused entrance to the peacemaker explaining, “It’s no use.  You are too late.  The fight has got to come, and this is the best time for it.  Broderick never had a better chance.  He can hit the size of a ten-cent piece at this distance every time.”

The overconfidence in the senator’s camp went all the way to the top.  “Don’t you fear,” Broderick assured a worried supporter.  “I can shoot twice to Terry’s once.”

In sharp contrast to the devil-may-care attitude of his adversary, Judge Terry kept

to himself preferring to let his pistol do the talking.  His reply to the “good luck” encouragement of a friend revealed grim determination mixed with compassion.  “I will hit him, but I do not want to kill him.”

The combatants waited for an hour and a half on the morning of Sept. 13, 1859 for their seconds to work out the details.  Terry lost the coin toss and had to face the rising sun.

Six San Francisco newspapers covered the confrontation, the most famous in California history.  Their eyewitness accounts told the riveting story.

“Mr. Broderick lost all presence of mind and trembled,” reported the Eco del Pacific.  “Meanwhile, his antagonist remained as immovable as a statue.”  That was how the correspondent for The Phare saw it too.  “Judge Terry was as cold as a marble statue.  Not a muscle of his body moved.  Broderick was less collected.  His cheeks were flushed.”

The Alta described the fateful exchange.  “Mr. Broderick partly raised his arm, when his pistol went off prematurely.  Mr. Terry raised his weapon deliberately, covered the breast of his opponent and fired.”

Sen. Broderick collapsed with a mortal wound.  He lingered at death’s door for three days before finally passing through.

Overnight the slain senator became the martyr of the northern cause.  Suitable last words were put in his mouth:  “They have killed me because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery.”

Since saints do not lose their nerve and fire wildly into the ground, a diabolical plot had to be invented.  Broderick was handed a pistol with an unusually sensitive trigger fiendishly designed to go off at the slightest touch.  The senator’s two seconds, who examined the weapon, disputed the ridiculous claim in sworn testimony.

In spite of the inquest verdict and his murder trial acquittal, David Smith Terry still stands accused of killing Sen. David Broderick in something less than a fair fight.  As recently as 1997, a cable-television documentary on dueling presented the hair-trigger fantasy as fact.

   “Secession & Civil War” – newest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.

   On July 12, 1839, Sam Houston wrote his favorite pen pal, who was young enough to be his daughter, to say how much he missed her and his beloved Texas.

The three sides of the best known romantic triangle in Lone Star history first laid eyes on each other in 1833.  Fourteen year old Anna Raguet had settled recently in Nacogdoches with her father Henry.  Dr. Robert Irion, 15 years the beauty’s senior, had buried his wife the previous year, and Sam Houston was at 40 only four years removed from the scandalously short marriage to a teenaged debutante that led to his resignation as governor of Tennessee.

The night before Houston left to assume command of the rebel forces in January 1836, he was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the Raguets.  Hearing the dashing hero grumble that he lacked a belt for his sword, Anna fashioned one from red cloth and presented it to him at his dawn departure the next day.

As soon as the Texans’ crushing victory was secure, the victorious general sent a sprig of laurel by special messenger to his young admirer.  An enclosed note made clear the thought behind the gift:  “These are the laurels I send you from the battlefield at San Jacinto.  Thine, Sam Houston.”

Like most educated men of his day, Houston was a prolific letter writer and corresponded on a regular basis with dozens of individuals.  But he seemed to take special pleasure in the steady stream of mail from the blond maiden.  In October 1836, an astonished aide watched him plant a score of kisses on the latest letter from Miss Anna.

Up until then, Houston had shown little interest in severing the legal tie which still bound him to Eliza Allen back in Tennessee.  But divorce suddenly became a pressing priority, and in April 1837 the republic he served as president issued the necessary decree.

Houston’s infatuation was such common knowledge that friends and those keen on currying his favor kept him well informed on Anna’s hectic social life.  While admitting the parlor of “the brightest and loveliest star of Texas” was the busiest place in Nacogdoches, an accomplished flatterer gave the many suitors no chance against “the Conqueror who gave our banner to the breeze.”

Houston often wondered why Anna did not wed this or that young man and went so far as to review the qualifications of each candidate.  His sincerity was clearly suspect since the real question may have been whether she considered him husband material.

He once came right out and asked the junior miss why she did not marry their personal postman, the good doctor Irion.  Was sly Sam unaware of their mutual affection or giving her the opportunity to deny the rumored romance?

Nowhere in the extensive correspondence, which has survived the wear and tear of a century and a half, did Houston ask Anna to be his wife.  But a letter penned in June 1838 implied that he had proposed marriage because it contained his pledge never to raise the subject again.

By contemporary standards, Houston was acting the fool and an old fool at that.  He was 45 in the summer of 1838 – three years older than Anna’s father – and she was still in her teens.  Even though the union of middle-aged men with females young enough to be their daughters was more widely accepted in those days, Houston’s conduct made him a laughingstock in some quarters.

Houston was between presidencies in 1839 and treated himself to an extended vacation.  Passing through Alabama, he was introduced to Margaret Lea, a southern belle the same age as Anna with matching blue eyes.

In a letter to Dr. Irion soon after the chance encounter, Houston wrote, “You have basked this summer in the sunshine of Miss Anna’s countenance and must be very happy. She is a great woman!  Who will marry her?  If she were out of the way, I would be better off in my feelings.”

Eight months later, Anna was no longer on the market thanks to Robert Irion.  They eloped over the objections of her father, who had a rich Philadelphia businessman all picked out, and exchanged vows on March 30, 1840.

While it is true that Houston did not exactly marry Margaret Lea on the rebound, the fact remains he tied the knot for the last time six weeks after Anna ceased to be available.

The two couples maintained a close and treasured friendship despite any lingering emotions from the three-sided relationship.  The Irions honored the odd man out by naming their first son Sam Houston.

Anna Raguet Irion outlived her husband, who died on Houston’s birthday in 1861, by 22 years.  She never mentioned much less discussed the carefully preserved private papers discovered after her death.

So if Miss Anna never loved Sam Houston, how come she held onto his letters for nearly half a century?

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

    Catholicism was the state religion of Mexico, and conversion to the official faith was a condition of citizenship for all immigrants.  This religious requirement rankled the vast majority of Anglo-American settlers, who had been brought up as Protestants, but they had to swear allegiance to Rome or lose their land grants.

The awkward arrangement made hypocrites out of the colonists, whose convenient Catholicism was a sham, as well as the authorities who pretended not to notice the charade. The one troubling catch was that Mexican law recognized only those marriages performed by a priest, which meant that with each passing year more and more couples were living in sin and raising their offspring out of wedlock.

By 1830 the Austin colonists grudgingly accepted the need for a padre to sanctify the ties that bound them and to sprinkle their children.  But he had to be an understanding cleric, who would respect their peculiar relationship with mother church and not try to cram Catholic dogma down their throats.

Early the next year on a visit to Saltillo, Stephen F. Austin found the perfect pastor for his finicky flock.  His excitement leaped off the page as he described his discovery as “a very intelligent and gentlemanly man quite liberal in his ideas.”

Father Michael Muldoon was a middle-aged Irishman, who had been forced by the repressive British occupation of his homeland to go abroad to study for the priesthood.  As a member of the Dominican order, he was sent to Mexico on the eve of independence with an ill-fated traveling companion – the last Spanish viceroy.

After ten years in the interior, Muldoon was ready for the change and challenge Texas offered.  To Austin’s delight, he eagerly agreed to serve as spiritual shepherd and started making the rounds of the scattered settlements in April 1831.

Before long the good-natured friar learned there was no pleasing his many critics so zealously certain he had been sent by Satan to subvert their souls.  They complained he overcharged for his services, while taking little interest in their salvation.

But those that gave Father Muldoon half a chance invariably wound up liking him.  And as momentous events soon showed, they never had a better friend.

Gen. Manuel de Mier y Teran, military commander of the northern district of Mexico, came to Texas in November 1831 to check out reports of seditious activity.  Muldoon accompanied his old friend on the inspection tour and filled his head with praise for the salt-of-the-earth newcomers.  At the same time, the clever priest, who must have been a spy in a previous life, kept Austin posted on the investigation.

If Muldoon had done nothing more than leak vital information to the colonists, he would have been worth his weight in gold.  But the fearless father was not content with working quietly behind the scenes and gladly stuck his neck out for his adopted congregation.

When push finally came to shove at Anahuac in June 1832, Muldoon was Johnny on the spot.  He volunteered to trade places with the Texans taken prisoner by government troops, but the officer in charge wanted no part of a swap that left him holding a holy man hostage.

Muldoon returned to Mexico two months later and published a spirited defense of the much maligned colonists.  Strong suggestions from secular and ecclesiastical sources that he stop dabbling in politics only served to strengthen his resolve to aid the Protestant pioneers.

Muldoon was living in Mexico City in 1834, when Austin was detained in the capital on the vague and unfounded suspicion of plotting rebellion.  During the three months the frail empressario was held incommunicado, the courageous clergyman was his sole contact with the outside world.  He even persuaded an American businessman to post bond for the prisoner, but Santa Anna insisted on keeping Austin under lock and key.

Muldoon’s most audacious act of Christian charity occurred in Matamoros in the spring of 1837, when the engineered the escape of William H. Wharton.  The Republic of Texas diplomat, who had been thrown in jail after a high-seas kidnapping, walked right past the guards disguised as a priest in a robe secretly supplied by the daring Irishman.

Father Muldoon’s last recorded visit to independent Texas took place in 1842.  Secretary of state Anson Jones presented him with a testimonial tribute which read in part:  “The people of Texas will not cease to have an abiding recollection of the great friendship you evinced and the valuable service you rendered our distinguished Fellow Citizen, Gen. S.F. Austin, while detained a prisoner in Mexico.”

And with that Michael Muldoon vanished leaving no trace of his later adventures or the date and place of his earthly departure.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by for a visit!

The case against Monroe Edwards, con artist and fugitive from Lone Star justice, went to a New York jury on June 17, 1842.

    The case against Monroe Edwards, con artist and fugitive from Lone Star justice, went to a New York jury on June 17, 1842.

    The cunning Kentuckian never earned an honest dollar in his life.  Already incorrigible when he came to Texas in 1827 at the age of 19, Edwards made a fast and fabulous fortune smuggling slaves from Cuba.  He invested most of his ill-gotten gains in prime real estate, which became the Brazoria County plantation Chenango.

    Edwards took on an equally unscrupulous partner named Christopher Dart and remained active in the illicit slave trade right up until the independence insurrection.  Although he dodged the dangers of the historic conflict by leaving the province, his cowardly conduct did not keep him from masquerading as a hero of the Texas Revolution.

    Deciding to dump Dart, Edwards devised a fiendishly clever way to dissolve their partnership without sharing the proceeds of the joint venture.  He chemically erased the text of a letter from his associate and above his signature wrote a phony bill of sale for the patsy’s portion of the plantation.

    Dart retaliated with a lawsuit, which was tried at Brazoria in March 1840.  The jury found in favor of the plaintiff awarding him substantial damages and freezing the assets of the dismayed defendant.

    But that was only the beginning of the con artist’s problems.  He was arrested the very next day on a forgery charge and held without bond in Brazoria.  Jailbird or not, Edwards was entitled to the special treatment accorded any gentleman.  As a result, the sheriff allowed Kitty Clover, a mulatto slave disguised as a manservant, to join her master and lover in his cell.

    Granted bail at a habeas corpus hearing in San Antonio, Edwards sent Kitty back to Brazoria to snoop around.  She found out that fresh charges had been filed to ensure his pretrial detention and rushed to warn him.  The couple quickly fled Texas with all the gold they could carry.

    During a brief layover in NewYork, Edwards wrote a number of renowned Americans to obtain their autographs.  Employing the same technique used in the failed attempt to cheat his business partner, he transformed polite replies from Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren and other prominent personalities into glowing letters of introduction.

    Edwards then traveled to England, where the counterfeit credentials opened every door.  Posing as a saintly abolitionist dedicated to freeing the slaves he had sold into bondage, the charlatan was warmly welcomed by the British elite and even presented to parliament.

    The Lone Star minister was not nearly so gullible and dug up the dirt on the flashy fraud.  James Hamilton put the impostor on notice in November 1840:  “I beg to inform you that I have been apprised that you are a fugitive from the public justice of the Republic of Texas charged with the commission of an infamous crime.”

    Threatened with exposure and possible imprisonment, Edwards caught the next boat back to New York.  But he had one more trick up his silk sleeve.

    With a few expert strokes of the pen, Edwards invented an impressive identity – John P. Caldwell, wealthy Arkansas planter.  Putting up a thousand nonexistent bales of cotton as collateral, he applied for a $25,000 loan from a merchant bank in Manhattan.  He cashed the check on Aug. 28, 1841 and vanished into thin air.

    Edwards and his latest accomplice, Alexander Powell, hid out in Philadelphia waiting for the bamboozled bankers to lose interest in their whereabouts.  But the five-figure reward offered for their apprehension only turned up the heat and persuaded the pair to split up.

    The plan called for Powell to slip into Boston, where he would book passage for Europe, while Edwards headed south for New Orleans.  To divert attention from his own departure by sicking the law on his confederate, Edwards mailed an anonymous tip on the date Powell was supposed to sail.

    But the swindler outsmarted himself.  Powell’s cruise was delayed three days enabling the police to grab him on the gangplank.  He took one look at the unsigned letter responsible for his capture, recognized the handwriting and in a fit of temper unmasked “John P. Caldwell.”

    Edwards still would have made a clean getaway if not for an uncharacteristic act of compassion.  He stayed overnight in Philadelphia in order to provide for Kitty and their five month old child.  Moments after opening an account in her name, he was collared by the cops.

    Convicted in the cotton caper, Monroe Edwards was sent up the river to notorious Sing Sing prison.  Abandoned by his beloved Kitty, he tried twice to escape.  A severe flogging following his second attempt commuted the fugitive Texan’s long prison term to a death sentence in 1847.    

    Nine “Best of This Week in Texas History” column collections to choose from at twith.com. Order on-line or by mail from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.

When the lukewarm trail of a horse thief led the Karnes County sheriff to the Cortez place on June 12, 1901, retired Texas Ranger Brack Morris and two of his deputies dropped by to ask a few questions.

   When the lukewarm trail of a horse thief led the Karnes County sheriff to the Cortez place on June 12, 1901, retired Texas Ranger Brack Morris and two of his deputies dropped by to ask a few questions.

    Following a familiar pattern, the Cortez clan came over to the Texas side of the Rio Grande in 1887.  Romaldo and younger brother Gregorio spent a decade hiring out as temporary hands until they saved enough money from their meager wages to buy a modest spread in Karnes County.

    Few words passed between Sheriff Morris and the older Cortez before the lead began flying.  As the Mexican fell, two bullets in swift succession struck Morris, who staggered several yards before collapsing.  Gregorio pumped a third slug into the defenseless lawman, grabbed his gun and escaped with his wounded brother.

    Abandoned by his panic-stricken deputies, who did not lift a finger during the brief battle, Brack Morris slowly bled to death.  Meanwhile, Gregorio deposited Romaldo, who was in no shape to travel, with kinsmen in Kenedy and fled on foot.

    Scores of riders combed the countryside and soon took Romaldo into custody.  Figuring his straight-shooting sibling would make a beeline for the border, all routes west were closely watched.

    But the fugitive did the unexpected by heading due north.  He ate breakfast the next morning in his victim’s hometown and went on his way unnoticed by grieving residents paying their last respects to the slain sheriff.

    At sundown the following day, Gregorio found shelter at Belmont east of Seguin.  A posse recklessly rushed the hideout in the early hours of Jun. 15, and when the smoke cleared a second sheriff, Robert Glover of Gonzales County, lay dead.

    Gregorio again eluded capture but not before plugging a civilian member of the posse.  Ten miles away near the banks of the Guadalupe, he picked up a pistol and a fresh horse from a friend, whose generosity cost him two years in the penitentiary.

    Scrapping his plan to seek sanctuary in North Texas, Gregorio lit out for Mexico cleverly weaving a zigzag course.  Running two mounts to death, he dodged one posse after another as hundreds of volunteers joined the manhunt and heeded the advice of the San Antonio Express “to fill up every nook and corner and guard every avenue of escape.”

    The tenth day of the chase, Gregorio came upon a deserted sheep camp 30 miles from the Rio Grande.  He huddled inside a crude hut and calculated the date – June 22, his birthday.  What a celebration there would be once he waded the river!

    But a fellow Mexican spoiled the party.  Spotting the famous fugitive with the thousand-dollar price on his head, he flagged down a passing patrol of Rangers.  Moments later, the most wanted man in the Lone Star State surrendered with a struggle.

    Gregorio was jailed at San Antonio, as the competing counties argued over which would get first crack at him in court.  Only then did the exhausted prisoner learn to his amazement that Mexicans on both sides of the river hailed him as a hero.

    The editor of a Spanish-language newspaper in the Alamo City organized a legal defense fund for the destitute defendant and in no time at all was up to his ears in cash contributions.  The money came in handy as Gregorio stood trial six times in three years on a long list of charges.

    Three convictions were overturned on appeal, and an all-Anglo jury in Corpus Christi ruled the killing of Sheriff Morris a case of self-defense.  But Gregorio would not go unpunished.  A Columbus trial ended with a guilty verdict in the death of the Gonzales County peace officer and a sentence of life imprisonment.

    Gregorio entered the state pen at Huntsville on New Year’s Day 1905.  As the years dragged by, loyal supporters lobbied tirelessly for clemency and in 1913 finally found a receptive ear.

    Gov. Oscar Colquitt had marked his 51st birthday the previous December by freeing 51 inmates.  In spite of the fact that Gregorio stubbornly refused to express the slightest remorse for the murder, he was released after serving only eight and a half years.

    Reactions to the pardon split along racial lines especially in The Valley.  While most Mexicans applauded Colquitt’s controversial act of clemency, most Anglos agreed with the Beeville paper that blasted him as “a chicken-hearted governor” for turning loose “the state’s most heinous coward and murderer.”

    Following a series of public appearances, Gregorio went to Nuevo Laredo and jumped feet-first into the Mexican Revolution.  Shot up for his trouble, he retired to the West Texas town of Anson to lick his wounds.

    After three short years of freedom, Gregorio Cortez died suddenly at the age of 41.  The official cause of death was a heart attack, but his devoted fans suspected foul play.  To this day, many believe the cop-killing folk hero was poisoned by South Texans seeking revenge for the murders of their two sheriffs.

    Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

The nation hardly notice when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.

     The nation hardly notice when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.

The Washington insider the press nicknamed “Lyndon’s boy” did not hail from Texas, as many misinformed Americans presumed, but from South Carolina.  Sent to Capitol Hill as a senate page at the impressionable age of 14, the ambitious errand boy cut his teeth on corruption.

    When Lyndon Johnson moved up a congressional rung in 1949, Baker already was a smooth operator with seven years experience at satisfying senators’ every need.  “Bobby was the man you called,” a contemporary remembered candidly.  “He had the head count.  He knew who was drunk, who was out of town and who was unreachable.  He knew who was against a bill and why.  Bobby was it.”

    Hitching his star to LBJ’s, Baker rose to prominence right alongside the powerful Texan.  The selection of Johnson in 1955 as majority leader by senate Democrats automatically landed the plum post of majority secretary for his subordinate.

     After LBJ traded his senate seat for the vice-presidency six years later, Baker reported to his reclusive replacement.  Unlike Johnson, who always kept the wheeler-dealer on a short leash and out of serious trouble, Sen. Mike Mansfield gave him free rein to do as he pleased.

    For Baker that meant drinking his fill at the public trough.  By the fall of 1963, he had his sticky fingers in a score of lucrative pies that included a law firm, travel agency, housing developments and a Maryland resort which catered to the Potomac power brokers.

    Baker bought a townhouse for his mistress, who doubled as his secretary, and a $124,000 mansion for his wife and five children.  Not bad for a government worker with a modest annual income of $19,612.

    The bubble finally burst in October 1963.  A disgruntled business partner sued the influence peddler for reneging on a promise to install thousands of vending machines in defense installations.  Baker quickly resigned in the faint hope of staying out of the slammer.

    But a squeaky clean senator insisted upon putting his crooked affairs under the microscope.  A subsequent investigation complete with sensational disclosures coincided with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the elevation to the Oval Office of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

    At a January 1964 press conference, LBJ admitted receiving a six hundred-dollar stereo from Baker but characterized the gift as an innocent exchange of presents.  Later that month, he emphatically denied the ex-aide was ever his “protégé” and added, “He was there before I came to the senate for ten years, doing substantially the same job.  He was elected by all the senators.”

    But past statements that hinted at a much closer relationship came back to haunt the president.  “If I’d had a son, Bobby, I would want him to be just like you,” was undoubtedly the most damaging quotation dug up by reporters.  A glowing tribute to Baker on the senate floor in August 1957, during which the Texan ranked him as “one of my most trusted, most loyal and most competent friends,” also proved embarrassing.

    The Republican challenger tried hard to make a campaign issue out of the incumbent’s ties with Baker, but voters could not have cared less.  Seventy-three percent interviewed for an April 1964 poll said the scandal had not tarnished their opinion of the president, and three percent even indicated they thought more highly of him.

    LBJ rode out the storm and buried Barry Goldwater at the polls in November.  For Baker, however, the worst was yet to come.  A federal grand jury indicted him in January 1966 on nine felonies ranging from theft to income tax evasion.

    A year later almost to the day, the balding boy wonder went on trial.  Even though he faced a maximum punishment of 48 years behind bars and $47,000 in fines, he loved the limelight.  When a stranger asked for directions to the highly publicized proceedings, Baker bubbled, “Right in there!”

    At the heart of the government’s case was a six-figure bribe the defendant solicited in 1962.  California savings and loan executives owned up to the illegal $100,000 “contribution,” and Baker admitted taking the money.  The question for the jury to decide was whether he pocketed the cash, as the prosecutor claimed, or delivered the bundle to Sen. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma.

    The wealthy Sooner had since gone to this reward.  So it was Baker’s word against the reputation of a dead politician staunchly defended by family, friends and senate colleagues.  To no one’s surprise, the verdict was a clean sweep for the prosecution.

    In spite of his conviction on all counts, the judge gave the white-collar criminal the customary slap on the wrist.  After serving 17 months of a three-year sentence, Bobby Baker faded into richly deserved obscurity where he remains today at the age of 81.

Nine “Best of This Week in Texas History” column collections to choose from at twith.com. Order on-line or by mail from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.

The craggy face of Texas oil tycoon Clint Murchison graced the cover of the May 26, 1954 issue of Time magazine.

    The craggy face of Texas oil tycoon Clint Murchison graced the cover of the May 26, 1954 issue of Time magazine.

    Absent from the layout but with his old friend in spirit was fellow Athenian Sid Richardson.  Both were born in the last decade of the nineteenth century – Richardson in 1891 at Athens and Murchison four years later at Tyler.  The Murchisons soon moved to the Henderson County seat, where the head of the family continued a career in banking and the eighth of nine children trapped raccoons and skunks to sell their pelts.

    Clint Murchison gave Trinity University the good old college try but lasted less than a semester.  Caught shooting craps, the defiant freshman dropped out rather than sign a no-gambling pledge.  He toiled as a teller for his dad until the day a bank examiner demanded a strict accounting of his till.

    A lay-off a few years before had put 16 year old Sid Richardson on the road to riches.  Losing a dollar-a-day job at the cotton compress, he wandered to Louisiana and found his true calling.

    Richardson’s impersonation of a down-on-his-luck city slicker elicited so much sympathy from Pelican State farmers they practically gave him their prize calves.  On the $3,500 profit from the sale of the charitable contributions, he was able to afford a year and a half of higher education.

    Richardson sometimes pulled a stranger’s leg just for fun.  Many years after his Louisiana escapade, a hot-shot magazine writer crashed a party planning to interview the “billionaire bachelor.”  Introducing himself as his own chauffeur, he supplied the gullible journalist with a fictitious scoop on his reclusive boss.

    While Lt. Murchison was winning the First World War, Richardson made his first killing in the Lone Star oilfields.  He could not resist flaunting his new-found wealth by rolling into Athens behind the wheel of a shiny new Cadillac.  As he recalled decades later with a big grin, “When I left, all those guys sitting on those benches around the square jumped up and followed me right out of town.”

    Eager to show his boyhood buddy how it was done, Richardson whisked the skeptical veteran off to the Burkburnett field within days of his homecoming.  When it took just 24 hours of buying and selling oil leases to quadruple their $50,000 grubstake, Murchison was hooked.

    Each immediately launched his own drilling operation, and by the mid-1920’s the two wildcatters were filthy rich.  Confident he could live comfortably on five million dollars, Murchison bowed out of the oil business at the tender age of 30.  But he jumped back in the game in 1927 in order to take his mind off the tragic loss of his wife to jaundice.

    The fabulous East Texas boom cut both ways for Richardson and most of his contemporaries.  He made money hand over fist until the piney woods crude glutted the market in 1931 dropping the price to pennies a barrel.

    “I had a monthly income of $25,000.  Six months later, my income was $1,600 a month, and the bank was taking it all as payment on the $250,000 I owed.  But by March 1932, the price of oil was up again.  I had four ten-dollar bills and was ready to go.”

    It was full-steam ahead for Richardson, who in 1935 opened the Keystone Field in Winkler County.  He not only kept his head above water but became, according to an inside source at Chase Manhattan Bank, the first bona fide billionaire west of the Mississippi.

    Murchison was never far behind, though exactly how far he would not say.  Irritated by nosy questions about the size of his fabulous fortune, he once snapped, “After the first hundred million, what the hell!”

    Murchison spread his risk after World War II by expanding his interests beyond the oil patch.  He bought a New York publishing house in the belief that the baby boom was bound to increase the demand for textbooks.  Foreseeing a work force with more leisure time, he purchased Field & Stream and a fishing-tackle manufacturer.  By the mid-1950’s, the Murchison empire encompassed 48 companies with 50,000 employees.

    The key to his success was a keep-it-simple philosophy, which a subordinate learned on an errand to Mississippi.  He called Murchison at his downtown Dallas office to suggest there may have been more to the purchase of an insurance company than originally met his eye.  “There’s nothing complicated about it,” the tycoon snorted.  “A hundred thousand shares at $105.  That’s $10.5 million, just a simple business deal.”

    Sid Richardson feared the loneliness of retirement and swore, “I’ll still be trading when they bury me.”  True to his word, he passed away in his sleep in 1959 on his private island five miles off Rockport.

    In contrast, Clint Murchison learned how to take it easy in his twilight years.  Prior to his passing in 1968, he ran a county store in his hometown and studied the comings and goings of migratory birds.

    Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

Bill Doolin and his outlaw gang with the catchy name “Oklahombres” robbed a bank in Longview, Texas on May 23, 1894 and got away with $4,000 in cold cash.

    Bill Doolin and his outlaw gang with the catchy name “Oklahombres” robbed a bank in Longview, Texas on May 23, 1894 and got away with $4,000 in cold cash.

    For 10 years, the son of an Arkansas cotton farmer was a workaday cowboy with nothing more than his skill with a six-gun to distinguish him from the other ranch-hands in the Oklahoma Territory.  And he might have spent the rest of his days toiling in law-abiding anonymity if not for a chance encounter with a couple of Kansas constables in 1891.  

    Doolin was drinking beer with friends in a saloon, when the local lawmen crashed the party.  They demanded to know whose beer it was, and Doolin piped up, “Nobody owns it.  It’s free.  Help yourselves.”

    Instead of accepting the gracious invitation, the constables declared the foamy brew was illegal in Kansas and announced their intention to pour it out.  Doolin cautioned them against taking such rash action warning that someone was liable to get hurt.

    But the would-be prohibition agents ignored his advice and proceeded to do their duty.  Guns were drawn, shots were fired and both cops fell dead to the floor.    

    Bill Doolin realized in an instant that he had nothing to gain by waiting around for the authorities to determine who fired the fatal shots.  He jumped on his horse and rode off to join three brothers, who had graduated from cattle rustling to robbing trains and banks.

    The Daltons welcomed their old friend with open arms remembering what a great shot he was.  Doolin proved to be a valuable addition to the gang and took part in numerous holdups and several shootouts over the next year and a half.  

    Then in October 1892 Bob Dalton’s ego finally got the better of him.  Driven by a mad ambition to outdo the James and Younger brothers, he concocted the suicidal scheme of robbing two banks in the same town in broad daylight.

    So how did Doolin miss out on all the fun at Coffeyville, Kansas?  One story has him looking for a replacement for his lame horse as his comrades are being shot to pieces by the irate citizens of that targeted town.  Another alleges he quit the gang after arguing with Bob Dalton over his expected share of the loot.

    The third and least plausible version comes from Emmett Dalton, the only brother to survive the slaughter.  He claimed in his memoirs written years later that brother Bob fired Doolin for being “too undisciplined,” “wild and unruly” and “mentally awkward.”

    Whatever the reason for his no-show at Coffeyville, the demise of the Daltons provided Doolin with a terrific business opportunity.  By the spring of 1893, he had organized a gang of his own with the coolest name in the Old West.

The “Okahombres” included at any given time George “Bitter Creek” Newcomb, Ol Yantis, Little Dick West, Roy Daugherty (aka “Arkansas Tom Jones”), Charley Pierce, Dan “Dynamite Dick” Clifton, Bob Grounds, George “Red Buck” Weightman, Alf Sohn, Little Bill Raidler, Tulsa Jack Blake and Bill Dalton, the last of the brothers on the loose.

With this formidable supporting cast, Doolin went on a three-year crime spree in the Oklahoma Territory with an occasional side trip to North Texas.  He soon had not one, not two but all three of the legendary “Guardsmen” on his trail.

The trio of U.S. Marshals assigned to the Oklahoma Territory rarely pooled their resources in pursuit of a single outlaw or outfit.  But the only way to stop Doolin and the Oklahombres was for Danish-born Chris Madsen, formerly of the French Foreign Legion, Bill Tilghman, who later made a motion picture of his exploits, and Heck Thomas, a bounty hunter that turned down the Texas Rangers for the marshal appointment, to work together.

While Madsen was off fighting with the Rough Riders in Cuba, young Evett Dumas Nix filled in for him.  Only an inexperienced marshal like Nix would have tried to take on the Oklahombres on their home ground, the outlaw stronghold of Ingalls, and he paid for his bad judgment with no arrests and a shot-up posse.

Tilghman had better luck in January 1896.  Receiving a tip that Doolin was taking the cure for his rheumatism in the mineral waters at Eureka Springs, he disguised himself as a preacher and caught the next train for the Arkansas spa.  

The Guardsman got the drop on Doolin in a bathhouse and took him into custody without firing a shot – or throwing a punch, as some accounts had it.  On the “perp walk” to the federal lockup in Guthrie, hundreds of fans cheered the “king of the outlaws.”

On July 5, 1896, Doolin broke out of jail taking between 12 and 37 other prisoners with him.  He hid out at the Mexican ranch of western writer Eugene Manlove Rhodes before returning to the Oklahoma Territory for his wife and child.

But Marshal Heck Thomas was waiting, and on the night of Aug. 25 he walked right into the Texan’s trap on a dark road.  Doolin got off one or maybe two rounds with his pistol before Thomas and a deputy opened up with a shotgun and a rifle.    

The famous bare-chested photograph of the dead desperado shows many of the 21 bullet holes that ended Bill Doolin’s life at age 38.

    “Secession & Civil War” – newest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.

Thousands of Texans showed up in Austin on May 16, 1888 for the grand opening of the new state capitol paid for with three million acres of West Texas real estate.

    Thousands of Texans showed up in Austin on May 16, 1888 for the grand opening of the new state capitol paid for with three million acres of West Texas real estate.

    Billowing smoke and the crackling of a raging inferno interrupted Austinites’ lunch on Nov. 9, 1881.  Frantic cries of “The capitol is burning!” alerted everybody to the disaster, but breathless diners arrived too late to save the historic landmark.

    Flames quickly engulfed the building and in a matter of minutes caused the roof to collapse.  By dark the capitol was a smoldering skeleton with only scorched walls still standing.

    The blaze was blamed on a careless maintenance worker, who placed a red-hot stovepipe against the plank and paper walls of a storage room.  Once the sides of the cramped cubicle ignited, stacks of old books provided plenty of kindling.

    The conflagration consumed rare documents and treasured relics.  The complete records of the state supreme court were lost as well as prized portraits of immortal Texans and archives dating back to the proud past of Lone Star independence.

    Construction of a temporary capitol began immediately at the present intersection of Congress Avenue and 11th Street.  Ready for business in 14 months, the modest substitute sheltered officials until the completion of the permanent replacement.  Ironically the forgotten temporary capitol also burned to the ground around the turn of the century.

    Prior to the 1881 catastrophe, Texans regularly entertained ambitious plans for a new and improved state capitol.  As early as November 1875, a proposal was approved to finance the expensive enterprise by selling off a huge chunk of West Texas.

    The State of Texas held title to 61 million undistributed acres, mainly in the sparsely settled western region, in addition to 20 million set aside for the educational purposes.  With a combined holding of 81 million acres, nearly half of the original Republic’s total land mass, the public eagerly bought the idea of swapping a piddling three million for a first-class government headquarters.

    Although future generations would criticize the scheme as a short-sighted giveaway, Texans at the time thought it was a heck of a bargain.  Appraised at 50 cents an acre, the Panhandle parcel was worth only a million and half dollars on the open market.  In exchange for what was generally considered wasteland, Texas received a capitol that cost a staggering $3,750,000 and was the envy of the nation.

    In spite of coast-to-coast publicity, just two builders submitted bids.  The winner was an Illinois contractor, who turned a fat profit by selling out to a Chicago syndicate.

    The pleased proprietors of the XIT Ranch, the largest cattle spread in all of Texas, were a dry-goods merchant, his congressman brother, another politician and the man who raised Chicago from the ashes of the Windy City’s famous fire.  But the glory of the Panhandle ranch was short-lived.  By 1900 serious financial setbacks forced the systematic sale of sizable sections, and what was left of the XIT ceased breeding beef in 1912.

    Although ground was broken in February 1882, construction of the capitol was postponed for a year.  Problems aplenty plagued the project and occasionally halted progress for months at a stretch.

    Two years into the endeavor, the superintendent rejected as inferior the initial sample of limestone from a local quarry.  After a few years exposure to the elements, he argued, unsightly streaks were certain to appear.

    The suggestion that a better grade of limestone could be obtained in Indiana raised Texan hackles.  Adorn the Lone Star capitol with a midwestern mineral?  Never!

    Construction stayed at a standstill under the summer of 1885.  A way out of the impasse came from the generous owners of Granite Mountain outside Marble Falls, who donated their rock free of charge.  Fifteen thousand carloads of the red granite were required for the building’s beautiful exterior.

    The terms of the contract stipulated the state would supply convict labor, a practice in tune with the Texas tradition that inmates should earn their keep.  In protest of this “unfair competition,” the granite cutters staged a boycott and stonecutters brought in from Scotland finished the job.

    A gala parade preceded the dedication ceremony in May 1888.  State senator Temple Houston, the colorful 27 year old son of the San Jacinto hero, eloquently accepted the magnificent edifice on behalf of his fellow Texans.

    Touring the imposing structure, citizens were awed by its sheer immensity.  The seemingly limitless interior contained 392 rooms, 18 vaults and 404 doors with natural light provided by 924 windows.

    The architectural achievement was proudly described as “second in size only to the National Capitol at Washington, D.C. and larger and finer than the German Reichstag or English Parliament buildings.”    After all, the people of the greatest state in the Union would settle for nothing less than the biggest and the best.

    Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

An attorney acting as the front man for anonymous anticommunists, turned the May 4, 1953 meeting of the Houston school board into an inquisition by accusing the new deputy superintendent of political heresy.    An attorney acting as the front man for anonymous anticommunists, turned the May 4, 1953 meeting of the Houston school board into an inquisition by accusing the new deputy superintendent of political heresy.

    Sen. Joseph McCarthy was in his heyday working frightened followers into a frenzy with his reckless claims of insidious subversion.  For many apprehensive Americans, it was easy to believe that the government and important institutions were crawling with commies.  After all, former diplomat Alger Hiss was serving a short prison sentence for spying, and the Rosenbergs were only a month away from execution for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet Union.

    The Wisconsin witch-hunter had devoted disciples in every community in the country, but few were as rich and influential as the Houstonians who sang his praises and imitated his tactics.  Chronicle publisher Jesse Jones, an FDR cabinet member, used the power of his press to promote the crusade, while oil tycoon and philanthropist Hugh Roy Cullen hailed McCarthy as “the greatest man in America.”

    Doctors’ wives and the spouses of oil company executives gave the local chapter of the Minute Women, an anticommunist lobby created in Connecticut in 1949, its missionary zeal and pit-bull tenacity.  Compared to the well-to-do vigilantes, frontier lynch mobs seemed downright timid.

    The school board had a history of succumbing to pressure to keep ideological objectionable material out of the classroom.  A civics textbook was trashed because of a trivial reference to public education and the postal system as examples of socialism.  A gung-ho administrator, who purged the United Nations from the curriculum and banned art books containing nude paintings, was congratulated instead of canned.

    Dr. William E. Moreland, superintendent of Houston schools, searched far and wide before offering the job of deputy to a Portland, Oregon educator in July 1952.  He was delighted by George Ebey’s acceptance and even happier, when the board unanimously endorsed his choice.

    But a wary watchdog was far from pleased and promptly published a mimeographed critique entitled “We’ve Got Your Number, Dr. Ebey.”  Citing his encouragement of “non-discriminatory behavior” in the racially mixed Portland schools, the author warned the newcomer would deny Houstonians the right to “cherish their prejudices.”  In defense of the segregated status quo, she maintained “responsible citizens of both races prefer the traditional American manner of living to that advocated by Socialists and Communists.”

    The Minute Women turned out for the deputy’s debut but as always spoke as “concerned citizens” rather than sorority sisters.  The finger-pointers were shocked by the hostile reaction from school board president James Delmar, who chastised them for their “underhanded and un-American” comments.

    Ebey enjoyed a relatively rancor free autumn, as the Minute Women concentrated on the school board election.  Two members and the husbands of two others, all of whom carefully concealed their secret connection, conducted a scare campaign under the slogan “Keep America strong by keeping your schools safe from creeping Socialism and abortive Communism.”  Half of the slate succeeded in winning the voters over to their side.

    In January 1953, the prolific pamphleteer penned a second attack.  This tirade took Ebey to task for his involvement in the American Veterans’ Committee, a liberal alternative to the American Legion and VFW.  As California chairman, he was accused of coddling known communists.

    Ebey acknowledged the presence of “reds” in the AVC but emphasized the participation of Ronald Reagan, Henry Cabot Lodge and Harold Stassen.  He resisted an attempt to kick out the communists because in his opinion the struggle would have wrecked the organization.

    The Minute Women recruited a willing attorney to serve as their surrogate for the next phase of the character assassination.  In a May 1953 appearance before the board, he added Ebey’s opposition to the Franco fascists in the Spanish civil war and state-mandated loyalty oaths to the list of reasons for not renewing his contract due to expire in August.

    After a heated two-week debate, the board hired a team of former FBI agents to investigate the besieged deputy.  On Jul. 10, the sleuths submitted a 348-page report that cleared Ebey of communist sympathies but documented his New Deal liberalism.

    Five days later, the board convened to decide the educator’s fate.  Ebey rejected a last-minute plea from the panic-stricken superintendent, who begged him to resign rather than risk putting his neck on the chopping block.

    The school board president broke a 3-3 deadlock by voting to give George Ebey his walking papers.  He rationalized the decision by blaming the victim rather than the witch-hunters for the controversy that “has split our entire community.”

    Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

The high point of Larry Blyden’s show business career came on April 23, 1972, when the star of stage and the small screen was awarded a Tony for his performance in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”    The high point of Larry Blyden’s show business career came on April 23, 1972, when the star of stage and the small screen was awarded a Tony for his performance in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

    Ivan Lawrence Blieden was born into a comfortably middle-class Houston family in 1925.  But like so many children of his generation, the “nice Jewish boy” was badly scarred by the Depression.

    Times were suddenly tough for the Bliedens after the father, a respected lawyer, lost his job and could not find work for three long years.  Little Larry’s earliest memories were of “dodging creditors” and the losing battle to make ends meet.

    “I assumed that being poor was personal,” he reflected in a 1962 interview.  “It was hard for me to realize that it was a general condition and not my family’s fault.”

    Unhappy and feeling “personally insignificant,” teenaged Larry developed a deep inferiority complex.  Then in high school he discovered acting and learned “I didn’t have to be me.  I could be somebody else.”

    After graduation, Larry did his patriotic part by serving three years in the Marines.  He returned to the Bayou City and earned a degree at the University of Houston, while working part-time as a radio announcer and dabbling in community theater.

    With college behind him, Larry decided to devote himself to acting.  He studied at the Royal Academy of the Arts in London and with the famous Stella Adler in New York.  

    Changing the spelling and pronunciation of his last name, he landed a few bit parts in Broadway plays before fellow Texan Josh Logan provided his big break – the role of Ensign Frank Pulver in the hit “Mister Roberts.”

    Unlike most stage actors, Blyden did not turn up his nose at the new entertainment medium taking over America’s living rooms in the early 1950s.  And, with most television programs being produced in New York, he was able to juggle two careers at once.

    When Blyden was not on Broadway, he was on TV appearing in the weekly dramas so popular at the time.  “Playhouse 90,” “The Loretta Young Show,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and many others gave the comedian the opportunity to show his serious side.

    One such role is now considered a classic, that of “Rocky Valentine” in the “Twilight Zone” episode titled “A Nice Place to Visit” which aired on April 15, 1960.  Blyden played a small-time hoodlum, who thinks he has died and gone to heaven because in the afterlife he has everything he ever wanted.

    Blyden’s quick wit and charm were a perfect fit for the half-hour game show, which began to catch on with viewers in the 1950s.  He was a frequent panelist on “What’s My Line?,” “Password” and “To Tell the Truth.”

    His growing popularity with the TV audience convinced network bosses to try him in his own sitcom.  But both “Joe & Mabel” in 1957 and “Harry’s Girls” seven years later summer replacements that did not make to Labor Day.

    The only place Blyden did not succeed was Hollywood.  He made just three films:  “Kiss Them for Me” with Gary Grant and Jayne Mansfield in 1957, “The Bachelor Party” with Amarillo’s Carolyn Jones and Don Murray that same year and “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” with Barbra Streisand in 1970.  He summed up his short-lived movie career with the comment, “The fact that I’m in something sells very few tickets.”

    Despite his busy television schedule, Blyden’s first love was Broadway.  In the 1960s alone, he appeared with Bert Lahr in the musical “Foxy,” replaced Eli Wallach in the lead role of “Luv,” co-starred in the musical “The Apple Tree” and received rave reviews for the comedy “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running.”

    Blyden’s game-show experience coupled with his ability to work without a script, something very few actors can do, made him an ideal emcee.  His first gig as host was on “Personality” in 1967.  

    He soon became, as son Josh put it, “the guy that took over for other guys on game shows.”  When Bill Leyden suffered a brain hemorrhage, it was Blyden who stepped in as emcee of “You’re Putting Me On.” In the case of “The Movie Game,” it was poor ratings that led to his replacing the original host.  Finally, in 1972, Blyden filled the chair once occupied by the legendary John Charles Daly on “What’s My Line?”

    Nineteen seventy-two was also the year Blyden won a Tony, the Broadway equivalent of the Oscar, for his hilarious portrayal of Hysterium the slave in the slapstick comedy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

    After “What’s My Line?” finally ran out of gas in early 1975, Blyden signed to host “Showoffs” with a starting date of June 30.  Taking some much needed time off, he flew to Morocco to hunt for antiques, a favorite pastime.

    Larry Blyden was badly injured in a one-car accident on May 31, 1975.  Although the American consul reported his prognosis was good after emergency surgery, the talented Texan took an unexpected turn for the worse and died five days later at age 49.

    Nine “Best of This Week in Texas History” column collections to choose from at twith.com. Order on-line or by mail from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.

A Texas outlaw finally stepped out of his dead brother’s shadow with a daring daylight escape from Alcatraz on April, 14, 1943.  Floyd Hamilton was relegated to a supporting role in the crime drama starring Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and his younger brother Raymond.  Since his was the only face not regularly plastered across the front page, he purchased supplies, rented hideouts and coordinated prison breaks without attracting undue attention from the authorities.

    A Texas outlaw finally stepped out of his dead brother’s shadow with a daring daylight escape from Alcatraz on April, 14, 1943.

    Floyd Hamilton was relegated to a supporting role in the crime drama starring Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and his younger brother Raymond.  Since his was the only face not regularly plastered across the front page, he purchased supplies, rented hideouts and coordinated prison breaks without attracting undue attention from the authorities.

    It was Floyd, who engineered Raymond’s sensational escape in January 1934 from the Houston County state penitentiary where he was serving 263 years from murder and armed robbery.  The older Hamilton took care of everything from arranging for Bonnie and Clyde to be waiting with the getaway car to planting two pistols in the woods for his little brother and a convict accomplice.

    The bloody breakout bought Raymond just three months of freedom and put him on the waiting list for the electric chair.  Brandishing handguns supplied by a guard that Floyd probably bribed, six condemned killers fled the maximum-security confines of Death Row in July 1934.  The charter member of the Barrow Gang and two others successfully scaled the high wall and vanished in a hail of bullets.

    Raymond lay low until February 1935, when he teamed up with Floyd to lead lawmen on a wild five-state chase.  After sticking up a bank in East Texas, the bandits predictably took refuge in their old West Dallas neighborhood.  Surprised and surrounded by six detectives, they shot their way out of the trap with so much as a scratch.

    The fast-thinking fugitives drove south into unfamiliar territory to throw pursuers off their trail.  The Hamiltons replenished their private arsenal at a federal armory in Beaumont before doubling back to North Texas, where they had their pick of hiding places.

    But the boys nearly bought the farm in a blazing gunbattle outside McKinney.  Fearing they would wind up like Bonnie and Clyde, cut to pieces by a shoot-first posse, Raymond insisted upon parting company.  That was the least he could do for the devoted brother, who had done him so many dangerous favors.

    Raymond was captured on April 5, 1935 and rushed in chains to Huntsville.  To eliminate the possibility of another embarrassing escape, the 22 year old desperado made the fatal acquaintance of “Old Sparky” 35 days later.

    Floyd was in Leavenworth doing token time for aiding and abetting, when word came of the execution.  He could have turned over a new law-abiding leaf but chose instead to follow in Raymond’s footsteps.

    Facing certain conviction on a bank robbery charge, Floyd pleaded guilty hoping to receive a single-digit sentence.  However, the judge rejected leniency for the career criminal and shipped him off to escape-proof Alcatraz for 30 years.

    On that April morning in 1943, Floyd was working in the mat shop with Freddie Hunter, an associate of the notorious Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, and fellow bank robbers James Boarman and Harold Brest.  The four overpowered the single guard, jumped the captain on his rounds and bound and gagged them before proceeding with their plan.
    To save time the inmates already had sawed the bars in two on the outside window.  It took mere seconds to remove the metal rods and slide through the opening a plank long enough to reach the perimeter fence.

    Floyd went first crawling on his hands and knees to the fence, where he dropped to the ground and started a cautious descent down the steep cliff.  One by one his companions followed until the group reassembled at the edge of the ice-cold water.  They stripped to their underwear, smeared grease on their bodies for insulation and began the long swim across San Francisco Bay.

    By this time the captain had worked his gag loose, but his shouts could not be heard over the noise of the saw in the woodshop.  But he did manage to sound the alarm with a whistle he plucked with his teeth from the guard’s pocket.

    The marksman in the roof tower spotted the four escapees and opened fire in accordance with Alcatraz’s unwritten shoot-to-kill policy.  Brest was hit in the elbow, and Boarman died instantly from a bullet through the head.  The wounded convict treaded water until hauled aboard a launch, but the dead body of his comrade sank beneath the waves never to be recovered.

    Hamilton and Hunter swam underwater back to The Rock and took cover in a cave.  Guards flushed out Hunter a few hours later but did not think to look under a pile of debris, where the fourth prisoner was playing possum.

    Floyd Hamilton spent two wretched days and three miserable nights waiting to be caught, but search parties never reexamined the cave.  Half-starved, dehydrated and bleeding from hundreds of cuts, the Lone Star outlaw retraced his escape route to the mat shop, where a startled guard found him fast asleep the next morning.

   Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

The military occupation of Texas ended on April 13, 1870 when Gen. J.J. Reynolds passed the reins of power to the civilian chief execution, whose election he had engineered. Two weeks earlier on March 30, President Grant signed the act that restored Lone Star statehood.  Texans were, for better or worse, back in the Union after four years in the Confederacy and five as a conquered territory.

The military occupation of Texas ended on April 13, 1870 when Gen. J.J. Reynolds passed the reins of power to the civilian chief execution, whose election he had engineered.

Two weeks earlier on March 30, President Grant signed the act that restored Lone Star statehood.  Texans were, for better or worse, back in the Union after four years in the Confederacy and five as a conquered territory.

As soon as he heard the news, Gov. Edmund J. Davis dropped the word “provisional” from his title and ordered the legislature into session on the last Tuesday of the month.  

At his inauguration on April 28, the 42-year-old former judge and northern army officer swore he had never fought a duel nor taken up arms against the United States.  “Let us cultivate a belief that our neighbor who differs in opinion with us may so differ honestly,” the governor stated in a speech that repeated the conciliatory theme of his recent campaign and tempted Texans into hoping hate and strife were finally behind them.

But Davis had not changed his stripes.  He was the same inflexible zealot, who had branded ex-Confederates as “unfit to govern” and argued for their permanent disenfranchisement.  Now that most adult males again had the vote and Grant was pulling the troops out of Texas, it was up to the unrepentant Radical to punish the Rebs.

The day after the swearing-in ceremony, Gov. Davis unveiled his agenda for the assembled lawmakers.  To take the place of the federal occupation force, he proposed a state militia made up of all able-bodied males between the ages of 18 and 45.  He also asked for a free hand in imposing martial law wherever and whenever conditions warranted.  The third and ultimately most controversial item on his get-tough wish list was a new law enforcement agency called the state police.

Radical representatives quickly drafted the legislation to give the governor everything he wanted and more.  As commander-in-chief of two armed bodies – the state guard and reserve militia – Davis would be empowered to send as many citizen soldiers as he saw fit into any community or county.  He could on his own authority declare martial law, suspend habeas corpus, try civilians in military courts and compel the inhabitants of an occupied county to pay the expenses of their uninvited “guests.”

Speaker Ira H. Evans closed the House debate on the militia bill with a stirring appeal for passage “in the name of the thousands of widows and orphans, who have been made such by the Ku Klux (Klan) of Texas.”  His colleagues responded with a lopsided endorsement of the measure.

The sailing was not nearly so smooth in the Senate, where three moderate Republicans joined forces with 11 Democrats to water down the draconian act.  Their substitute, which put the militia under local control and omitted martial law altogether, fell just one vote short of adoption.

Before the Radicals could call the question for their stern alternative, 13 opponents broke the quorum and barricaded themselves in a separate room.  The fast-acting majority placed the bolters under arrest for “conspiracy” and released only enough to reconstitute a cooperative quorum, which approved the militia bill by a vote of 15 to 5.

Keeping their critics incarcerated for the next three weeks, the Radicals created the infamous state police – a 258-man force that answered only to the governor.  The fine print in the law also enabled him to remove any law enforcement official not to his liking.  In an unprecedented expansion of gubernatorial power, Davis was given the final say-so over voter registration and the authority to appoint mayors and aldermen.

The Radicals had the gall, some said good sense, to delay their inevitable day of reckoning.  The congressional and state elections scheduled for 1870 and 1871 were postponed until 1872.

Gov. Davis and his lackeys in the legislature went too far even for some leading Radicals.  For his outspoken objection to tampering with the election calendar, Speaker Evans was stripped of his post.  When Morgan Hamilton dared to disagree, Davis had his U.S. Senate election declared invalid and Gen. Reynolds chosen his successor, but Hamilton held onto the seat.  The governor had better luck installing a new state treasurer, waiting until the incumbent left town before ordering the state police to padlock his office.

Davis’ fondness for martial law and the unconscionable crimes of his hired guns pushed Texas to the brink of anarchy.  Homicidal maniacs like John Wesley Hardin and Clay Allison were hailed as public-spirited heroes for killing state policemen, while the governor was reviled as evil incarnate.

After Texans voted in a Democratic legislature and congressional delegation in November 1872, Edmund J. Davis spent the last 14 months of his term as a very lonely lame duck.  Stubbornly refusing to accept his own landslide defeat the following fall, he pleaded for federal troops to keep him in office.  President Grant wisely rejected the rash request, and the curtain finally fell on Reconstruction in Texas.       

Nine “Best of This Week in Texas History” column collections to choose from at twith.com. Order on-line or by mail from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.

 On April Fools’ Day 1962, Katherine Anne Porter published “Ship of Fools,” her first and last novel that put the uprooted Texan on easy street. Callie Russell Porter began her long life in 1890 at a wide spot in the road not far from Brownwood called Indian Creek.  She was just two, when her mother died and her father took his four small children home to Kyle between Austin and San Marcos.    On April Fools’ Day 1962, Katherine Anne Porter published “Ship of Fools,” her first and last novel that put the uprooted Texan on easy street.

    Callie Russell Porter began her long life in 1890 at a wide spot in the road not far from Brownwood called Indian Creek.  She was just two, when her mother died and her father took his four small children home to Kyle between Austin and San Marcos.

    For the next nine years, Catherine Anne Porter was the glue that held the family together.  She was the real-life inspiration for the strong women in her granddaughter’s fiction and undoubtedly would have been pleased to have Callie borrow her name.

    After Grandmother Porter’s death in 1901, Katherine Anne attended a private girls school in San Antonio.  But her formal education came to an abrupt end, when she had to move to Victoria and support her unemployed father as well as her herself by giving dance, voice and dramatic lessons.

    Desperate to get out of the house and away from her shiftless sire, Katherine Anne married a railroad clerk in June 1906 a month after turning 16.  Eight unhappy years later, she left husband number-one and caught a train for Chicago.

    Following a two-year battle with tuberculosis, Katherine Anne covered the theater and society beats for a Fort Worth newspaper.  She landed a job in 1918 as a reporter with the Rocky Mountain News but nearly died in Denver during the influenza epidemic.

    As soon as she was back on her feet and could afford the fare, Katherine Anne traveled to New York, which served as home base throughout the 1920’s.  She sold her first short story in 1922 to Century Magazine and turned four visits to Mexico into working vacations with several articles on south-of-the-border politics and culture.

    Her Roaring Twenties marriage was to a World War I pilot from England described by one biographer as “a charming rake, passive in temperament, who exasperated Porter.”  The knot the couple tied in 1925 was cut the next year.

    While in Mexico in 1930, Katherine Anne met Eugene Pressley.  They spent most of the Depression together, the last three years in Europe as husband and wife.  But the relationship finally ran its course, and she returned to the U.S. in 1936 without her third spouse.

    In May of 1936, Katherine Anne made a pilgrimage with her father to her mother’s weed-covered grave at Indian Creek.  The melancholy reunion supposedly brought them closer together but not close enough for her to attend his funeral six years later.

    The restless writer stayed on the move living in Pennsylvania, New York, New Orleans, Houston (where she shocked relatives with rouged earlobes!) and Baton Rouge over two hectic years.  She thrived on the gypsy existence cranking out a trio of classics with Texas settings – “Noon Wine,” “Old Morality” and “The Grave.”

    In 1938 Katherine Anne took her fourth and final walk down the aisle with a graduate student nearly half her age.  Twenty-seven year old Albert Erskine believed his blushing bride was in her thirties and did not discover until his wedding day that she was really 48.  Neither the groom nor the marriage ever recovered from the shock.

    The trilogy “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” made Katherine Anne a big-name author in 1939.  She was pleased to have her work nominated for the first book-of-the-year award from the Texas Institute of Letters but crushed when the prize went to J. Frank Dobie for “Apache Gold and Yanqui Silver.”

    Katherine Anne tried to put down roots with the World War II purchase of a home at Saratoga Springs, New York.  But a lack of cash caused her to lose the place, and she headed for Hollywood in 1945 with high hopes of making a bundle writing movie scripts.  This plan like so many others withered on the vine.

    In 1948 the financially strapped author stumbled into a new career as guest lecturer at a series of prestigious universities.  For someone who had never set foot in a college classroom, the invitations from Stanford, University of Michigan, The Liege in Belgium and Washington and Lee were especially gratifying.

    A $600 speaking fee plus the prospect of a triumphant homecoming enticed Katherine Anne back to Texas in 1958 ending her 20-year absence.  Surprised and flattered by the enthusiastic reception, she left with warm feelings toward her estranged state.

    No sooner had Katherine Anne unpacked than a letter arrived with an Austin postmark.  A high-ranking administrator gave her the distinct impression that the University of Texas had decided to honor her with a library.  She was thrilled beyond words and quickly wrote back with a promise to donate her papers to the project.

    But it was all a misunderstanding, according to UT officials.  Ground was never broken but an old woman’s heart was.

    And that’s how Katherine Anne Porter wound up next to her mother in the graveyard at Indian Creek and her papers halfway across the country at the University of Maryland.  Even in death the literary exile has not come completely home.

    “Secession & Civil War” – latest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.

Federal investigators and a blue-ribbon committee pressed ahead on March. 24, 1912 with probes of the worst man-made calamity in San Antonio since the fall of the Alamo.    Federal investigators and a blue-ribbon committee pressed ahead on March. 24, 1912 with probes of the worst man-made calamity in San Antonio since the fall of the Alamo.

    (Credit for bringing this long forgotten tragedy to light must go to Mike Cox.  A short chapter in his 2006 book Texas Disasters and contemporary newspaper accounts were the basis for this column.)

    Following a Christmas week wreck near Seguin, Number 704 had been undergoing repairs in the Southern Pacific roundhouse on the eastern edge of downtown San Antonio.  After three months in the shop, the 200,000-pound, ten-wheel steam locomotive was ready for the mandatory test run and, if all went well, return to service.

    No one was better qualified than senior engineer Walter Jourdan to put Number 704 through its paces.  At 63 he had more years with his hand on the throttle than anybody else in the entire Southern Division of SP.

    Jourdan was in no hurry on the morning of March 18, 1912.  Mindful of the fact that most of the repairs had been performed by “replacement” workers, he took more time than usual checking for damage the “scabs,” as the union called them, might have missed.    

    Only when Number 704 passed his personal inspection, did Jourdan give the order to fire up the boiler.  While he waited for the locomotive to build up a head of steam, the experienced engineer walked around the iron horse with a wrench and oil can.

    At precisely 8:55 a.m., the boiler exploded.  Cox described what happened next:  “…launching the huge cylinder through the roundhouse roof like a rocket lying on its side, breaking the big wheels from their hubs, and sending assorted pieces of iron, levers, pipes, rods, and other shrapnel-like hunks of metal in every direction at a deadly velocity.”

    Engineer Jourdan and as many as three dozen other workers in the huge brick building never knew what happened.  They were killed instantly, their bodies torn apart by the fantastic force of the blast.

    The explosion shook the city of 100,000 to its roots.  Residents rushed outdoors in the mistaken but understandable belief that San Antonio had been hit by an earthquake.

    Neighborhoods within a half-mile radius of the roundhouse suddenly became ground zero.  First was the shock wave, which “pulled trees from the ground, blew out windows, and rammed debris through the walls of houses….”  Then came the iron rain as fragments of the shattered locomotive fell back to earth.

    A massive chunk of the boiler landed between two homes gouging out a four-foot deep crater.  A group of children had been playing on that very spot just minutes earlier and surely would have been crushed to death had they not gone inside for breakfast.

    The front end of the locomotive reduced a frame house to kindling and badly injured the elderly resident.  A woman in her front yard barely missed being struck an air tank and a human torso that fell out of the sky only seconds apart.    

    Human remains were scattered over a wide area.  “Parts of jackets and coats and trousers containing portions of mangled limbs were found hundreds of yards from the immediate scene of the explosion,” read a report in the Dallas Morning News.  “Here and there heaps of blood-covered human flesh were located and covered with tarpaulins.”

    The first firemen and police officers to reach what was left of the roundhouse did not expect to find any survivors.  But P.J. Stoudt, who had the presence of mind to dive under a bench, was alive and remarkably well in the rubble as was Robert Lipscomb, who was blown 30 feet by the blast and awoke with a dead co-worker’s hat in his hand.   

    Others not killed by the explosion suffered an even more terrible fate.  Oil from a ruptured fuel car caught fire and burned them alive before the blaze could be put out.

    Relatives beat the authorities to the hellish site.  According to a heart-rending report, “Women came upon the bodies of their husbands and children upon those of their fathers.  There were scenes of horror, bitter weeping and fainting women on all sides.”

    Fort Sam Houston responded quickly to the emergency sending members of the Third Cavalry on horseback to aid overwhelmed local authorities.  The army also provided medical personnel and horse-drawn ambulances.

    Although 26 bodies were positively identified, bits and pieces were no help in the days before DNA and forensic science.  The best guess was that another 10 or 15 perished with approximately 50 more sustaining injuries from which they recovered.

    In the anguished days following the disaster, public opinion blamed union saboteurs.  But this theory was ruled out early in the parallel investigations by the Interstate Commerce Commission and a citizens committee.

    The final report of the ICC was released on May 17.  It said in part:  “It is our conclusion that this explosion was due to excessive steam pressure which was caused by an employee (of the railroad) tightening the adjusting screw of the safety valves, resulting in an accumulation of steam pressure beyond the endurance of the boiler.”

    In other words, human error was responsible for the horror of 1912.  

    Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.  And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

Santa Anna overruled his general on the ground on Mach. 23, 1836 and gave the infamous order for the mass execution of all the Goliad prisoners. The Tampico captives served as guinea pigs for the dictator’s get-tough policy toward meddlesome foreigners.  A number of Americans were among the 28 followers of Gen. Jose Antonio Mexia tried for piracy and put to death in December 1835.  Encouraged by the “so what?” reaction in the United States, Santa Anna issued the infamous no-quarter decree that his puppet congress made the law of the land on Dec. 30.    Santa Anna overruled his general on the ground on Mach. 23, 1836 and gave the infamous order for the mass execution of all the Goliad prisoners.

    The Tampico captives served as guinea pigs for the dictator’s get-tough policy toward meddlesome foreigners.  A number of Americans were among the 28 followers of Gen. Jose Antonio Mexia tried for piracy and put to death in December 1835.  Encouraged by the “so what?” reaction in the United States, Santa Anna issued the infamous no-quarter decree that his puppet congress made the law of the land on Dec. 30.

    Gen. Jose de Urrea, commander of the eastern army sweeping north up the Texas coast, believed the summary slaughter of prisoners was unconscionable overkill.  But he had to do something with the Texans taken at San Patricio on Feb. 27, 1836, and Santa Anna demanded their immediate annihilation.  A last-minute plea from an Irish priest gave him a good excuse for letting the rebels live, and he shipped them off Matamaros.

    Urrea faced an identical dilemma two weeks later at Refugio, where 33 armed insurrectionists raised the white flag.  He saved the problem this time by shooting the half that hailed from Kentucky and Tennessee and turning loose those claiming colonial residency and Mexican citizenship.

    Later in the week, Urrea fought a bloody two-day battle with Col. James W. Fannin, which was interrupted by the Georgian’s sudden and unexpected offer to surrender.  Since the Mexican had already lost 250 soldiers and feared more fatalities if the fighting continued, he was willing to promise his opponent the moon.

    Negotiations hit a serious snag, however, when rebel representatives insisted upon humane treatment as POW’s and prompt parole to the U.S.  Urrea took Fannin aside for a confidential chat and privately pledged complete compliance with the unacceptable terms, if only he would lay down his arms.            

    Fannin should have known better than to strike the fatal bargain.  He was well aware of Santa Anna’s standing order, which had been so mercilessly carried out at the Alamo.  What on earth made him think Urrea had the power to keep such a pie-in-the-sky promise?

    Reporting to his superior by messenger, Urrea recommended clemency for the captives.  Santa Anna answered with a direct order for the execution of every last one of the “perfidious foreigners” and, just to be on the safe side, sent the same instructions to the colonel in charge of the Goliad garrison.

    By the time Jose Nicolas de la Portilla received his orders on March 26, Urrea was long gone.  Resigned to the inevitability of the massacre, he preferred to be someplace else when the killing commenced.

    The prisoners were in unusually high spirits that dreadful night following word from Fannin, whose gullibility knew no bounds, that the Mexicans were busy making the necessary preparations for their safe departure.  The unsuspecting souls sang themselves to sleep with a few choruses of “Home Sweet Home.”

    Haunted by a hellish vision of what the morning would bring, the brave wife of a Mexican officer could not close her eyes.  The kind heart of Francita Alavez already had gone out to the prisoners at Capano Bay, where she coaxed the guards into loosening the ropes cutting off the circulation in their arms, but that act of compassion paled in comparison to her current mission of mercy.

    Senora Laves had a kindred spirit in a colonel named Francisco Garay, who was willing to risk his life to save as many prisoners as possible from the firing squads.  At first light he led a score or so of confused captives to his tent in a peach orchard and told them not to budge until he returned.

    As the condemned filed past, Senora Alavez spotted a young boy in the doomed ranks.  She pleaded with a high-ranking German mercenary to leave the lad with her, and without a word or change in expression the request was miraculously granted.

    Minutes later, the sound of musket fire and the screams of the dying shattered the Palm Sunday silence.  “Curse you, Santa Anna!” Francita Alavez shouted.  “What a disgrace you have brought to this country!”

    From his sanctuary in the orchard, Dr. J.H. Barnard heard the murderous madness.  “I saw through the trees several of the prisoners running with their utmost speed and directly after some Mexican soldiers in pursuit of them.

    “Colonel Garay now appeared and said to us, ‘Keep still, gentlemen.  You are safe.  This is not from my orders, nor do I execute the.’”

    Three hundred and forty-two died that day shot down like rabid dogs.  Of the estimated 65 survivors, no fewer than 37 owed their lives to the “Angel of Goliad,” as Francita Alavez always would be known, and the courageous colonel who refused to obey an immoral order.

    “Secession & Civil War” – latest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.