Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

Either you like fruitcake or you hate it. ...

Yup, hate it.

About the same category as mincemeat for me.

My mother made the best mincemeat pies. Oh, goodness, I still remember how they taste!
Jake
p.s also her strawberry rhubarb pies!

[markiver54]

Wait now...strawberry rhubarb is a different story.

[Mags]

Wait now...strawberry rhubarb is a different story.

Especially with a hard frozen scoop of strawberry ice cream on top.

[Shakey Jake]

This is from the Traces of Texas Facebook group (a couple of days late but still a good read).
75 years ago today, on Dec. 22, 1947, Bob Lemmons died near Carrizo Springs, Texas. He was believed to be 100 years old. Bob ---- shown here in a 1936 photo taken by Dorothea Lange ----- was a legend, "the most original mustanger," according to J. Frank Dobie. He was born about 1847 and moved to Texas in 1854. Bob was the slave of John English, who had come to make a home at Carrizo Springs in Southwest Texas. Bob's original birth name is not known.
After being freed, he came under the tutelage of Texas rancher Duncan Lemmons, who took the seventeen-year-old youth to Eagle Pass to work for him. Out of respect for his new employer and friend, Lemmons adopted the rancher's last name. He worked at the Eagle Pass ranch learning the techniques of ranching and mustanging (mustanging is the hunting of wild horses either for military use or for slaughter as pet food). When Duncan Lemmons died, Bob continued to work as a "brush cowboy" and ranch foreman in the Carrizo Springs area. He eventually purchased his own ranch near Carrizo Springs and worked it until his failing eyesight forced him to retire.
His fame came about as a result of his mustanging methods. Said Lemmons, "I grew up with the mustangs....I acted like I was a mustang...made them think I was one of them." His methods were unusual because he would mustang alone. When working a herd of mustangs, Lemmons lived off the land, taking for comfort only a Mexican blanket, which served as both cover and slicker. The legend of the man who lived as a mustang and gained the confidence of the wild horses spread throughout Texas, but his career as a mustanger ended when the Carrizo Springs area population began to grow and when fences sprang up on the landscape.
Though he could no longer mustang, Lemmons determined to live "alone in the brush." In 1931 author J. Frank Dobie interviewed Lemmons for his book The Mustangs (1952). Lemmons was eighty-four years old. As mentioned earlier, he died in Dimmit County on December 23, 1947.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1852, the first railroad locomotive in Texas was placed in service by the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway. It was named for Gen. Sidney Sherman, one of the owners of the railroad. The engine, believed to have been built by the Baldwin Company about 1837, had a top speed of about thirty-five miles an hour. It was purchased used from a Massachusetts railroad company and arrived at Galveston in 1852. The locomotive operated until 1870. After retirement it stood as a derelict until 1899 when it was scrapped.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1917, some forty-five Mexicans, possibly followers of Pancho Villa, crossed the border and attacked Luke Brite's Presidio County ranch. The Christmas holiday found the Brites and most of their workers away from the ranch; the family of ranch manager T. T. Van Neill fought the invaders, but were forced to surrender the key to the ranch store. The raiders looted the store of food, clothing, and cash and stole the best horses and all the ranch's saddles. The mail stage arrived during the raid and the postman and two passengers were murdered. After several hours, neighbors and members of the Eighth U.S. Cavalry arrived and drove off the raiders. On the following morning, the raiders crossed back into Mexico. Some 200 cavalry troopers followed, killing ten of the bandits and recovering some of the stolen goods. A few weeks later, Texas Rangers killed fifteen Mexicans in Porvenir, in part in retaliation for the Brite Ranch raid; the Porvenir Massacre was one of the most serious acts of ranger misconduct cited in the Texas Ranger investigation of 1919.

[Shakey Jake]

Todays post come from the Traces of Tx facebook group:
Oh, Lordy, y'all aren't going to believe this. Traces of Texas reader Bob McSpadden was kind enough to send in this photo of the groundbreaking at the San Jacinto monument on April 21, 1936 --- 100 years to the day after the battle. The plow being used is a 100 year old plow and behind the plow is Andrew Jackson Houston, Sam Houston's son, who was 85 years old. Andrew lived to see the completion of the monument, which must have been a very proud day for him. Handling the cattle is E.H. Marks, the owner of the LH7 ranch in Barker, Texas, the outfit that donated the cattle for the event. This was given to Bob by E.H. Marks' daughter, Atha Marks Dimon.
You know, I've seen a lot of different photographs of the monument, its history etc.. but I have never, ever seen this. And Sam Houston's son to boot! What a treasure! Thank you, Bob!

[cooperhawk]

We've been there a couple of times and it is very impressive. WE also were on the battleship Texas while we were there.
I understand it's in Galveston being restored now.

[Shakey Jake]

We've been there a couple of times and it is very impressive. WE also were on the battleship Texas while we were there.
I understand it's in Galveston being restored now.

The LH7 no longer exists. It's now part of the Barker-Cypress Resevoir. One of the descendants got ownership of the brand and is now in the Bandera area of Texas.
https://www.bing.com/maps?q=barker+cypr ... PC=EDGEDSE

If you click on the link the area to the left that is in green is the general area of where the LH7 ranch was. It's now owned by the Corp of Engineers and is used as a watershed for controlling water in Brays Bayou. This is also where the American Shooting Center is where I go to shoot and George Bush Park.
Jake

[Shakey Jake]

From TSHA on the LH7 Ranch:
LH7 RANCH.The LH7 Ranch, in western Harris County, was established by Emil Henry Marks in 1907. Marks's grandparents were Prussian immigrants; his father, A. T. Marks, was born as their ship arrived at Galveston in 1843. E. H. Marks was born on October 26, 1881, at Addicks, the youngest of A. T. and Elizabeth (Schulz) Marks's two daughters and three sons. Orphaned at age ten, E. H. began working as a cowboy for an uncle who ranched at Pattison on the Brazos River. He later worked for other East and Southeast Texas ranchers. In 1898 he registered the LH7 brand in Harris County. The letters had no special significance; the seven represented the number in his family. In 1907 Marks married Maud May Smith of Fairbanks and started ranching on sixty-three acres east of Addicks. In December 1917 he moved the LH7 Ranch three miles west to 640 acres of prairie near Barker. To entertain neighboring ranchers who helped him with the spring branding of 1918, at a time of manpower shortages during World War I, Marks staged a small riding and roping contest. The branding party grew into an annual ranch rodeo that attracted large crowds from nearby Houston for thirty years.
Marks was among the first Gulf Coast cattlemen to cross Brahman bulls imported from India with the common longhorn cattle. By 1924 he was using three Brahman bulls on the LH7, one from the estate herd of Abel H. (Shanghai) Pierce and two imported from Brazil. Highly resistant to heat and parasites, the breed proved exceptionally well-suited to the rigors of the Gulf Coast climate. The LH7 became an important supplier of quality Brahman breeding stock for ranges from South Texas to Florida. At the same time, Marks protected the foundation stock of the LH7-the Texas longhorn-from extinction. As early as 1923 he began hand-picking a herd of the old-time Texas cattle to keep the breed alive. Choosing outstanding specimens from the thousands of East Texas cattle he traded in, Marks built one of the nation's finest and largest herds of authentic longhorns. By the 1930s, when the LH7 was running 6,670 head of crossbred range cattle on a 36,000-acre lease west of Houston (between Highway 90 and Hockley), Marks was separately maintaining a herd of 500 pure Texas longhorns. With the revival of the breed, the Marks line became one of the "seven families" of longhorn cattle, as determined by the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America (established in 1964).
Ranch operations were severely curtailed during the Great Depression. In January 1936 Marks and Houston oilman W. A. Paddock dissolved a thirteen-year partnership in the ranch, and Marks was left with little more than his private longhorn herd and about 1,000 acres. It was the end of the LH7 as one of the largest ranches in Southeast Texas. World War II took a further toll; to protect the war industries at Houston from flooding along Buffalo Bayou, the United States Army Corps of Engineers claimed 450 acres of the LH7 for the Addicks-Barker flood-control reservoirs, built in 1945–48. The condemned land included the LH7 rodeo grounds, and Marks abandoned the annual ranch rodeo.
In January 1952 he rode with three others in the first Salt Grass Trail Ride, thus inaugurating one of Houston's most enduring traditions. The trail ride is reenacted each February to kick off the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Though well into his eighties, Marks continued to ride horses and work cattle. He died in Houston on September 15, 1969. The LH7 Ranch at Barker passed to his youngest daughter, Maudeen Marks, who continued to maintain a herd of longhorns on land surrounded by Houston. After their father's death, Maudeen and her brother Travis agreed to share the LH7 brand for their separate longhorn herds at the original LH7 Barker headquarters, at Maudeen's newer ranch near Bandera, and at Travis's ranch near Fannin. In 1985 the Texas Historical Commission designated the LH7 a state archeological landmark.