Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1880, Myra Maybelle (Belle) Shirley Reed, the "Bandit Queen," married her second, or possibly third, husband, Sam Starr, in the Cherokee Nation. Belle Starr was born near Carthage, Missouri, in 1848. During the Civil War her family supported Confederate irregulars such as the raider William Clarke Quantrill. By 1864, after Carthage was burned, the family had migrated to Scyene, Texas, near Dallas. There, in July 1866 Cole, Jim, Bob, and John Younger and Jesse James, Missouri outlaws who had ridden with Quantrill, used the Shirley home as a hideout. Her first husband, Jim Reed, became involved with the Younger, James, and Starr gangs, which killed and looted throughout Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. After Jim Reed was killed by a deputy sheriff at Paris, Texas, in 1874, Belle may have married Bruce Younger. If that relationship existed, it soured before she married Sam Starr. Belle and Sam Starr were later charged with horse stealing, and she received two six-month prison terms. In 1886 she was acquitted of yet another charge of horse theft, but in the meantime her husband and an Indian policeman had shot each other to death. Belle Starr subsequently took several lovers, including Jim July (or Jim Starr), Blue Duck, Jack Spaniard, and Jim French. In 1889, while Starr was living in the Choctaw Nation, near the Canadian River, an unknown assassin killed her from ambush with a shotgun.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1979, Asa Earl Carter, part Indian, segregationist, politician, speechwriter, and novelist, died as a result of a fistfight in Abilene. Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama, in 1925. By the late 1950s he was in Birmingham, Alabama, where he hosted a radio show for the American States Rights Association and was a leader of the Alabama Council movement. Later he founded the North Alabama White Citizens Council. He was one of two writers said to be responsible for the words "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" uttered by Governor George Wallace. After an unsuccessful run against Wallace in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1970, Carter gave up politics and left Alabama. He adopted the pseudonym Bedford Forrest Carter and settled in Sweetwater, Texas, where he used the resources of the City-County Library to work on his first novel, Gone to Texas (1973). The highly successful film version starring Clint Eastwood is entitled The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Carter wrote three other books, including the purported autobiography The Education of Little Tree (1976), before his untimely death.

[Shakey Jake]

From T of T Facebook group:
This photo was sent to me by TOT reader Robin Webb-Lucas and shows Robin's great uncle, Calvin Warnell Polk, who was born in 1863 in Prairie Lea, Texas and died in 1904. He was a Chisholm Trail rider, a Texas Ranger, and town marshal, and in the posse that captured Billy the Kid. He was quite famous for being in the posse and you can Google his name to find quotes about the capture.
Thanks, Robin! Fantastic shot!

[Shakey Jake]

T of T Facebook Group:
Seeing these photos of New York City with the orange-colored skies on account of the smoke from the wildfires in Canada and all of these New Yorkers freaking out about it and thinking "clearly, these folks have never lived through a summer in West Texas before." Shown here: a typical Texas dust storm (haboob) in a photo taken on the Texas Tech campus in Lubbock by the student newspaper there, The Daily Toreador

[Shakey Jake]

Per TSHA:
On this day in 1894, a water-well contractor accidentally discovered the Corsicana oilfield, the first in Texas to produce oil and gas in significant quantities, while seeking a new water source for the city of Corsicana. Civic leaders of Corsicana needed a dependable water supply to promote commercial development. They contracted with the American Well and Prospecting Company to drill three water wells. The drillers took the first well to a depth of 1,027 feet, where they encountered oil. The first modern refinery in Texas, operated by the J. S. Cullinan Company, opened at the field in 1898. During its first century of operation, the field produced about 44 million barrels of oil; annual production peaked in 1900 at more than 839,000 barrels. The Corsicana field established the potential for commercial oil production in Texas; the industry has had incalculable effects on the state's subsequent development, public revenue, and culture.

[Shakey Jake]

Per T of T Facebook Group:

Traces of Texas reader James Hefley kindly shared this remarkable photo of Elvis eating breakfast at the Little Shamrock Cafe in Cleveland, Texas, on September 12, 1957. Mrs. Aline Landrum was his waitress that morning and she passed away in 2019 at the age of 92. She recalled that Elvis ordered a big breakfast consisting of 2 eggs, and order of bacon, double order of toast, coffee, pancakes, a piece of chocolate pie and a Pepsi Cola.

[Shakey Jake]

Per TSHA:
On this day in 1821, Moses Austin died in Missouri. Austin, born in Connecticut in 1761, was the first man to receive permission to bring Anglo-American colonists into Spanish Texas. In 1798, while consolidating his position as a pioneer in the American lead industry, he established the first Anglo-American settlement west of and back from the Mississippi River, at modern Potosi, Missouri. When the Bank of St. Louis, which he had helped found, failed in 1819, Austin found himself in financial difficulties and developed a plan for settling American colonists in Spanish Texas. He traveled to San Antonio in 1820 seeking permission for his plan. Spurned by Governor Antonio María Martínez, he chanced to meet an old acquaintance, the Baron de Bastrop, who returned with him to the governor's office and convinced Martínez to endorse the plan and forward it to higher authorities. On the trip out of Texas, Austin contracted pneumonia. Shortly after he reached home, he learned that permission for the colony had been granted, but he lived barely two months more. It was his deathbed request that his son, Stephen F. Austin, take over the colonization scheme.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1865, an estimated fifty desperadoes broke into the state treasury in Austin, one of the boldest crimes in Texas history. The robbery occurred during the chaotic period immediately after the downfall of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865. Gen. Nathan G. Shelley informed George R. Freeman, a Confederate veteran and leader of a small company of volunteer militia, that the robbery was imminent. By the time Freeman and about twenty of his troops arrived at the treasury, the robbers were in the building. A brief gunfight erupted in which one of the robbers was mortally wounded; all the other robbers fled toward Mount Bonnell, west of Austin, carrying with them about $17,000 in specie, more than half of the gold and silver in the state treasury. None was ever captured. The loot was never recovered, although some of the money was found strewn between the treasury building and Mount Bonnell. Freeman and his company of volunteers were later recognized by the state for their service in defending the public treasury, but the resolution providing a reward for their services never passed the legislature.

[Shakey Jake]

Here's a picture of Murdochs Bath House in Galveston taken before the great hurricane. It was rebuilt afterwards and here is as link to it as it stands today:
https://www.galveston.com/whattodo/shop ... bathhouse/

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1901, Gregorio Lira Cortez shot and killed Karnes County sheriff W. T. Morris and fled. The apparent misunderstandings that led to the killing, and the extended pursuit, capture, and trials of Cortez made him a folk hero. His exploits are celebrated in many variants of El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez, a popular ballad that has inspired books and at least one movie. Cortez, a Mexican native, was farming near Kenedy in 1901, when Sheriff Morris and his deputy, Boon Choate, questioned him about a stolen horse. With Choate interpreting, a misunderstanding apparently occurred that caused Morris to shoot and wound Cortez's brother Romaldo, after which Cortez shot and killed Morris. While newspapers followed the subsequent manhunt, Cortez became a hero to many Hispanics and some Anglos. Violent reprisals and a series of trials and appeals followed. During them, Cortez was held in eleven jails in eleven counties, after which he was finally granted a conditional pardon and released in 1913. The corrido lionizing him was sung as early as 1901.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdd_20JwndQ