Traces of Tx (today)

[Rifletom]

'ol Perry was some kind of guy! Tough man. Keep 'em coming Jake, these are awesome posts.

[Shakey Jake]

Today's Texas story comes from the Traces of Tx Facebook page:
This is Laura Bullion (aka "The Thorny Rose"), the only female member of Butch Cassidy's "Wild Bunch" Gang. Laura was most likely born in Knickerbocker, Texas in 1876, though there are also claims that she was born in Arkansas or Kentucky. She was probably of German and Native American heritage
In the 1890s, Laura Bullion was a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang; her cohorts were fellow outlaws, including the Sundance Kid, "Black Jack" Ketchum, and Kid Curry. For several years in the 1890s, she was romantically involved with outlaw Ben Kilpatrick ("The Tall Texan"), a bank and train robber and an acquaintance of her father, who had been an outlaw, as well. In 1901, Bullion was convicted of robbery and sentenced to five years in prison for her participation in the Great Northern train robbery. She was released in 1905 after serving three years and six months of her punishment.
Laura Bullion moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1918, posing as a war widow and using assumed names. She supported herself as a householder and seamstress, and later as a drapery maker, dressmaker and interior designer. Her fortunes declined in the late 1940s, at which time she was without an occupation. In 1961, she died of heart disease at the Shelby County Hospital in Memphis. Her final resting place is at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1834, Robert Hamilton, a native of Scotland, settled in the Red River area of Texas. Hamilton, a wealthy merchant, was one of the five men sent by Pecan Point and vicinity, or the Red River District, to the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He was probably the wealthiest man to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence. Because of his financial experience, wealth, and extensive connections, Hamilton was appointed, with George C. Childress, on March 19, 1836, to go to Washington, D.C., to seek recognition of the independence of Texas and establishment of commercial relations with the United States.

[Shakey Jake]

Here's an interesting read about Olive Oatman. Olive died in Sherman, Tx in 1903. Robin McLeavy's character in Hell on Wheels was loosley based on her:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2029984/med ... _=nm_ov_ph
Story:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/814 ... CFuZVRv2uo

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1863, Confederate colonel Sul Ross assumed command of a brigade formed from the Third, Sixth, Ninth, and Twenty-seventh Texas Cavalry regiments, and the men in these units thereafter fought together as Ross's Brigade. Lawrence Sullivan Ross was born in Iowa in 1838; his family moved to Texas a year later. He realized his early ambition to become an Indian fighter like his father, Shapley Ross, when he served in campaigns with the Texas Rangers against the Comanches in 1858 and 1860; in the latter year he led the raid that resulted in the recapture of Cynthia Ann Parker. With the coming of the Civil War he joined the Confederate forces and rose to command the Sixth Texas Cavalry. He was promoted to the rank of general soon after taking command of Ross's Brigade. Under his able leadership, his brigade saw action in the Atlanta and Franklin-Nashville campaigns, although Ross was in Texas on furlough when his men surrendered at Jackson, Mississippi, in May 1865. After the war he served Texas as a state senator and then as governor from 1886 to 1891.

[Shakey Jake]

Today's post comes from the Traces of Tx Facebook page:
"Experts" have largely accepted that the original version of the familiar smiley face was first created almost 60 years ago in Worcester, Massachusetts by the late Harvey Ross Ball, an American graphic artist and ad man, who came up with the image in 1963 when he was commissioned to create a graphic to raise morale among the employees of an insurance company after a series of difficult mergers and acquisitions. And yet I, Traces of Texas, say unto those experts: HOGSWALLOP! As anybody who has studied the brand registration books in the Pecos County courthouse will IMMEDIATELY have to concede, the smiley face logo was created by a rancher in Pecos County, Texas and recorded on May 8, 1882!

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1860, Texas Rangers under the command of Lawrence S. Ross attacked a Comanche hunting camp at Mule Creek. During this raid the rangers were surprised to find that one of their captives had blue eyes; it was a non-English-speaking white woman with her infant daughter. She was Cynthia Ann Parker, captured by Comanche warriors on May 19, 1836, at Fort Parker in Limestone County. She was with the Indians for almost twenty-five years and had become thoroughly assimilated to Comanche life. She had married Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and eventually had two sons, Quanah Parker and Pecos, and a daughter, Topsannah. After her "rescue" she was never reconciled to living in white society and made several unsuccessful attempts to flee to her Comanche family. After three months at Birdville, her brother Silas took her to his Van Zandt County home. She afterward moved to her sister's place near the boundary of Anderson and Henderson counties. She died there, probably after 1870. Her son Quanah, a noted Comanche chief, later moved her body to Post Oak Cemetery, near Cache, Oklahoma. After his death her body was again reinterred near him at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

[Shakey Jake]

Taylor Sheridan (producer of the series Yellowstone) purchased the 6666 for 341.7 million dollars a couple of years ago. It's almost twice the size of metropolitan Chicago (266,225 acres.) Here's a photo of Capt. Samuel "Burk" Burnett, who founded the ranch in 1870. He was good friends with Theodore Roosevelt and Quanah Parker and actually held a wolf hunt on the ranch that both Teddy and Quanah attended. He saw his wealth explode when oil was discovered on the property. Burk received little formal schooling, but he used his practical education to become eventually one of the wealthiest ranchers in Texas. His first trail drive occurred in 1866. The following year he served as trail boss, driving his father's 1,200 cattle along the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. In 1868 he became a partner with his father, and in 1871 he acquired his own brand and began building what became one of the largest cattle empires in Texas history—the Four Sixes Ranch. Burnett weathered the panic of 1873 by holding over the winter the 1,100 cattle he had driven to Kansas. The following year he sold this stock for a profit of $10,000. He was one of the first ranchers in Texas to buy steers and graze them for market. At first his herd consisted of longhorn cattle, but later he introduced Durhams and then Herefords into the herd, thus producing what many considered to be among the finest cattle strains in the state. He passed away in 1922 at the age of 74.

[Shakey Jake]

From the TSHA wesite:
On this day in 1832, San Antonio became the first Texas town to present a list of grievances to the legislature of Coahuila and Texas. The document known as the Bexar Remonstrance was signed by José Ángel Navarro, alcalde of San Antonio. It sought repeal of that part of the Law of April 6, 1830, banning immigration from the United States. It also sought the separation of Texas from Coahuila.

[Shakey Jake]

Source TSHA
On this day in 1835, the garrison at Goliad declared its independence from Mexico. The community of Goliad originated as one of the oldest Spanish colonial municipalities in the state, dating back to 1749. Nuestra Señora de Loreto Presidio, the fort at Goliad, supplied Spanish soldiers to the army of Bernardo de Gálvez during the American Revolution, garrisoned Spanish troops during the Mexican war of independence, and after 1812 saw four separate attempts to establish Texas independence. Goliad's role in the Texas Revolution began in October 1835 when Texans under Benjamin R. Milam and George Collinsworth captured the fort and its stores of arms and ammunition from the twenty-four-man Mexican garrison. On December 20 Goliad citizens and South Texas colonists met in the presidio chapel to sign a document known as the Goliad Declaration of Independence, written by Ira Ingram and the first such declaration for Texas, and afterwards hoisted the first flag of independence, designed by Capt. Philip Dimmitt, above the walls. The document had ninety-one signatures, the signers including José Miguel Aldrete and José María Jesús Carbajal, Texans of Mexican descent.