Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

William G. Butler, one of the earliest and most active trail drivers of South Texas, was born on June 14, 1831, in Scott County, Mississippi, the son of Burnell and Sarah Ann (Ricks) Butler. In 1852 he moved to Karnes County, Texas, with his parents and twelve siblings. In 1858 he married Adeline Burris, who bore him eight children. During the Civil War Butler volunteered for Confederate service and was mustered into the Escondido Rifles, a company of mounted riflemen raised in Karnes County in July 1861. Later, as a member of Franklin C. Wilkes's cavalry, he was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department for service in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. After the war, like many other South Texans, Butler started ranching and trail driving "to connect the four-dollar cow with the forty-dollar market." He soon became important in the cattle industry in South Texas. His first string of cattle was driven to Abilene in the spring of 1868. For many years he and Seth Mabry of Austin were partners, and together they sent up the trail an estimated 100,000 cattle. In Karnes County, Butler owned nearly 75,000 acres of land, leased another 25,000, and stocked 10,000 cattle. He also helped secure the passage of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway through the county. He died in Karnes County on June 20, 1912, and was buried in the family cemetery at his home near Kenedy.

One of Butler's sons was killed in Helena, Tx. W.G. went to town and demanding to know who had killed his son. After no one came forth he yelled, "Alright then, I'll kill the town that killed my son !" The railroad agreed to bypass Helena after being paid a "hefty" sum. Helena became a ghost town several years later. https://williambutlernhd.weebly.com/helenas-end.html

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1862, the Confederate government issued $100 notes bearing a portrait of the renowned Southern beauty Lucy Pickens. Lucy Holcombe was born in 1832 in Tennessee. Between 1848 and 1850 the Holcombes moved to Wyalucing plantation in Marshall, Texas. Lucy became highly acclaimed throughout the South for her "classic features, titian hair, pansy eyes, and graceful figure." In the summer of 1856 she met Francis Wilkinson Pickens, twice a widower and twenty-seven years her senior. Her acceptance of his marriage proposal, it is said, hinged on his acceptance of a diplomatic post abroad. President James Buchanan appointed him ambassador to Russia, and Pickens and Lucy were wed in 1858 at Wyalucing. Lucy was a favorite at the Russian court, but Pickens resigned his diplomatic post in the fall of 1860 in anticipation of the outbreak of the Civil War. Upon his return home he was elected governor of South Carolina. By selling the jewels that had been given her in Russia, Lucy helped outfit the Confederate Army unit that bore her name, the Lucy Holcombe Legion. Her portrait was also used on the one-dollar Confederate notes issued on June 2, 1862. She died in 1899.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ent ... plantation

[Shakey Jake]

This is John Holland Jenkins circa 1885. He is thought to have been the youngest participant in the Battle of San Jacinto, being only 13 years old on that fateful day. Yesterday marked the 123rd anniversary of his death, which occurred when he was killed in a gunfight in Bastrop in an attempt to save his son, the sheriff, from an ambush. Jenkins, born in Alabama in 1822, was a man of little formal education but learned to write in a vigorous and cultivated style. He and his family came to Texas in 1828 or 1829 and settled near the site of present-day Bastrop in 1830. In 1833 Jenkins's father was murdered and young Jenkins became the ward of Edward Burleson. At age thirteen Jenkins joined Burleson's First Regiment, Texas Volunteers and fought at San Jacinto.
After the Texas revolution, Jenkins joined the Texas Rangers and fought at the battle of Plum Creek. During the Civil War he served as a private in Parsons's Brigade and later served as a captain in the Frontier Battalion. In 1884, with the aid of his daughter-in-law, Jenkins completed his memoirs for the Bastrop Advertiser. A typescript was preserved in the Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas at Austin. It was edited by his great-great grandson, John H. Jenkins III (who also died under mysterious circumstances and man oh man what a story that is!) and published in 1958 by the University of Texas Press under the title "Recollections of Early Texas." It is an excellent read, on par with Noah Smithwick's more famous book "The Evolution of a State, or, Recollections of Old Texas Days".

[Shakey Jake]

To follow up on the above post here is the link to John H Jenkins III Texas Monthly article. You can read up to two articles for free. It's a long read but very fascinating.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texa ... oks-texas/

[Shakey Jake]

I'm a bit board today so have been reading some articles about the Texarkana murders in the late 40's. Here is one about the Texas Ranger that investigated that case. He was said to have killed 75 criminals but commented that all were out of necessity. Below is a picture of Manuel.
GONZAULLAS, MANUEL TRAZAZAS [LONE WOLF] (1891–1977).Manuel T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas, Texas Ranger, the son of Manuel and Helen (von Droff) Gonzaullas, was born in Cádiz, Spain, on July 4, 1891. His father, a native of Spain, and his mother, a native of Canada, were naturalized American citizens visiting in Spain at the time of his birth. Gonzaullas was a major in the Mexican army at age twenty, then a special agent in the United States Treasury Department for five years. He married Laura Isabel Scherer in Riverside, California, on April 12, 1920, and enlisted in the Texas Rangers the same year.
His first assignment was in the oilfields of Wichita County, where he served under Capt. Roy W. Aldrich. The first printed reference to him as "Lone Wolf" was carried in the Wichita Falls Daily Times of December 29, 1920. Along the Rio Grande, he later became known as El Lobo Solo. Gonzaullas was involved in control of gambling, bootlegging, bank robbery, riots, prostitution, narcotic trafficking, and general lawlessness from the Red River to the Rio Grande and from El Paso to the Sabine during the 1920s and 1930s.
Along with most others on the force, he was fired by Governor Miriam A. Ferguson the day after she took office in 1933. Recognizing the necessity of removing the rangers from personal control by the governor's office, the Forty-fourth Legislature authorized the establishment of the Texas Department of Public Safety in August 1935 and made the rangers a division of that agency. Gonzaullas was appointed superintendent of the Bureau of Intelligence of the new department. Under the leadership of Gonzaullas and DPS director Col. H. H. Carmichael the bureau turned to scientific analysis in the solution of crimes. It gained a reputation for having a laboratory second only to that of the FBI in Washington.
On February 14, 1940, Gonzaullas resigned from the bureau and returned to ranger service. He was made captain of Company B, headquartered in Dallas. In the following years one of his most notable assignments was to Texarkana, in connection with murders committed in 1946 by the "Phantom Killer." Gonzaullas's experiences there were used as the basis for the motion picture The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1977). He retired from the rangers on May 3, 1951, and went to Hollywood as a technical consultant for radio, television, and motion pictures, in particular the long-running 1950s radio and TV show Tales of the Texas Rangers. Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, a Mason and Presbyterian, died in Dallas on February 13, 1977, at the age of eighty-five.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1884, noted outlaw and cattleman Joseph Graves Olney came to an ignominious end after a colorful and controversial life. Olney, born in 1849 in Burleson County, first became embroiled in a cattle dispute and shot a man in Llano County in 1874. The following year he killed a man named Moses Baird, thereby becoming part of the Central Texas Hill Country’s notorious Mason County War. After mortally wounding a deputy in a gunfight, Olney escaped to New Mexico and established a ranch under the alias of Joe Hill. Fleeing a warrant for his arrest, he was in Arizona by 1879. A rash of cattle rustling and stage robberies in the early 1880s attracted the attention of Wyatt Earp himself, who tried to pin the crimes on Olney, but there was no evidence to indicate his guilt. Olney finally died when his horse fell on him while he was working on his ranch.

[JEBar]

Olney finally died when his horse fell on him while he was working on his ranch.

very interesting .... I'm sure that type of thing happened more often ....

[Shakey Jake]

Cottonwood Mott, named for the motte or cluster of trees that grew near some weeping springs on the headwaters of the Middle Pease River, is the site of what was probably the first house in Motley County. The log house was built by Frank Collinson twelve miles west of Matador in the winter of 1878 and was originally part of a line camp shared by the Jinglebob and Hall Ranch cowboys, whose job was to ride the line between ranges, pushing their respective herds back toward their headquarters. Perhaps because of its distance from the civilizing forces even of the ranch center, Cottonwood Mott was the site of at least two gunfights. A shoot-out occurred on January 1, 1880, when line riders Jim Barbee of the Jingle Bob Cattle Company and Jim Harkey of J. M. Hall's Spur Cattle Company disagreed over the singing of "Yankee Doodle." Taking offense at Harkey's song, Barbee drew his gun and mortally wounded him; Harkey drew and killed Barbee. Two freighters from San Saba witnessed the shooting, notified authorities, and helped bury the two side by side in a grave only eighteen inches deep and dug with an ax.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1928, Carl G. (the Big Swede) Cromwell drilled the world's deepest oil well. In the wake of his 1923 success with the famed Santa Rita No. 1, Cromwell had become drilling superintendent of the Texon Company's rapidly expanding field on University of Texas land in Reagan County. He also acquired his own leases and became known as an honest, generous, free-spirited wildcatter. In association with company engineer Clayton W. Williams, Cromwell experimented in drilling deeper than the average 3,000 feet. In 1926 Williams located a site and Cromwell's crews began work. In late November 1928, because of mounting expenses and problems, Cromwell was directed to shut down. Instead, he disregarded orders, went into hiding, and kept drilling. On December 4, at 8,525 feet, University 1-B came in. It remained the world's deepest oil well until 1931, the same year in which Cromwell died in an automobile accident.

[Shakey Jake]

This magnificent circa 1916 photo of a west Texas cowgirl was taken by noted border photographer W.D. Smithers in the Big Bend. Trace of Texas reader Rod Garcia found it years ago in an attic at a house in Houston that had been sold and which was being made ready for the new owners. The sellers were just going to leave all these wonderful photos to whatever fate and Rod couldn't stand it so he rescued them. He has more and I surely hope he sends some of them in.
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Thank you, Rod. Sensational image! Thanks for saving it from the ash heap!