Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

Today's selection comes from the TSHA web portal. A lot of people have heard of the "Yellow Rose" of Texas, the Mulato woman that kept Santa Ana "busy" during the battle of San Jacinto, but not too many have heard of Sarah Bowman outside of Texas. She was a large woman standing at 6'2". This is a long read but some of you will find it interesting:

Sarah Bowman, commonly known as the Great Western or the Heroine of Fort Brown, legendary camp follower of the Mexican War, hotelkeeper, and sometime prostitute, was born Sarah Knight in 1812 or 1813, but whether in Tennessee or Clay County, Missouri, is unclear. She acquired several husbands during the course of her travels, many without benefit of clergy, so there is considerable confusion about her surname. In various sources and at different times she is referred to as Mrs. Bourjette, Bourget, Bourdette, Davis, Bowman, Bowman-Phillips, Borginnis, and possibly Foyle. A mountain of a woman who stood six feet two inches tall, she picked up the nickname Great Western, probably in a reference to the contemporary steamship of that name, which was noted for its size. John Salmon Ford wrote that she "had the reputation of being something of the roughest fighter on the Rio Grande and was approached in a polite, if not humble, manner." Little is known about Sarah before the Mexican War. Rumors claim that she was with Zachary Taylor's forces during the Seminole Wars, but her first substantiated appearance occurred in 1845, when she accompanied her husband, a soldier in the Eighth United States Infantry and a member of Taylor's army of occupation, to Corpus Christi. At that time the wives of enlisted men could enroll with the army as cooks and laundresses and follow their husbands into the field. Among these camp followers was the Great Western, who cooked for appreciative officers. Sarah first distinguished herself as a fighter at the crossing of the Arroyo Colorado in March 1846, when she offered to wade the river and whip the enemy singlehandedly if Gen. William Jenkins Worth would lend her a stout pair of tongs. The legends surrounding her exploits grew during the bombardment of Fort Brown in May 1846, when she refused to join the other women in an underground magazine but calmly operated her officers' mess uninterrupted for almost a week, despite the fact that a tray was shot from her hands and a stray shell fragment pierced her sunbonnet. Her fearlessness during the siege earned her another nickname, the Heroine of Fort Brown. She traveled with the army into the interior of Mexico and opened a hotel in Saltillo, the American House, where she again demonstrated her bravery during the battle of Buena Vista by loading cartridges and even carrying some wounded soldiers from the battlefield to safety. During this period she was married to her second husband, known variously as Bourjette, Bourget, and Bourdette, a member of the Fifth Infantry. Sarah apparently remained in Saltillo as a hotelkeeper until the end of the war, but in July 1848 she asked to join a column of dragoons that had been ordered to California. By this time her husband was probably dead, and she was told that only married women could march with the army. Undaunted, she rode along the line of men asking, "Who wants a wife with fifteen thousand dollars and the biggest leg in Mexico? Come, my beauties, don't all speak at once. Who is the lucky man?" After some hesitation a dragoon named Davis, probably David E. Davis, stepped forward, and the Great Western once again marched with the army.
In 1849 Sarah arrived in El Paso and briefly established a hotel that catered to the flood of Forty-niners traveling to the gold fields. She leased the hotel to the army when she left for Socorro, New Mexico, with a new husband, Albert J. Bowman, an upholsterer from Germany. When Bowman was discharged on November 30, 1852, the couple moved to Fort Yuma, where Sarah opened another restaurant. She lived first on the American, then the Mexican, side of the river, to protect her adopted children. By the mid-1860s she was no longer married to Bowman, but she served as company laundress and received an army ration. In 1856 she traveled to Fort Buchanan to set up a hotel ten miles below the fort. She had returned to Fort Yuma by 1861. Although Sarah was well known as a hotelkeeper and restaurateur, she probably had other business interests as well. One chronicler referred to her as "the greatest whore in the West," and Lt. Sylvester Mowry, a soldier stationed at Fort Yuma in 1856, wrote of Sarah that "among her other good qualities she is an admirable `pimp'." The date of Sarah's death, reportedly caused by a tarantula bite, is unclear, though one contemporary source indicates that she died in 1863. She was buried in the Fort Yuma post cemetery on December 23, 1866, with full military honors. In August 1890 the Quartermaster's Department of the United States Army exhumed the 159 bodies buried at the Fort Yuma cemetery and moved them to the presidio at San Francisco, California. Among these bodies was that of Sarah Bowman.

[Shakey Jake]

This mornings entry also comes from the TSHA web portal:
On this day in 1886, one of the biggest gun battles in the history of the American West broke out on the day after a city election in Laredo. In 1884 two political factions in Laredo and Webb counties designated themselves as Botas and Guaraches. The Botas ("Boots"), led by Raymond Martin and José María Rodríguez, were essentially the "wealthy" class, although they drew much support from the less fortunate. The reform club, which adopted the slogan Guaraches ("Sandals") to symbolize the lower class, included Santos Benavides and, later, Darío Gonzales. In the city election of 1886, the Guaraches won only two seats on the Laredo city council. In their celebration the following day, the Botas paraded the streets of Laredo promising to bury a Guarache in effigy. After the Guaraches attacked the Bota parade, as many as 250 men became involved in the fighting at one time or another. It took two companies of the Sixteenth United States Infantry and one company of the Eighth Cavalry to restore peace. Although the official number of dead in what was called the Laredo Election Riot was placed at sixteen, unofficial reports placed the number as high as thirty, with as many as forty-five wounded.

[Shakey Jake]

The battle of the Little Wichita River, a military engagement between troopers of the Sixth United States Cavalry and about 100 Kiowa Indians led by Kicking Bird, occurred in Archer County on July 12, 1870. Though the exact location of the conflict remains unclear, experts claim that it took place in the northwestern part of the county on the Little Wichita River, about six miles northwest of Archer City and just south of the site of present-day Lake Kickapoo. (Archer City was where "The Last Picture Show" was filmed.)
In general, the origins of the hostilities lay in the Kiowas' dissatisfaction with life on their reservation in southeastern Indian Territory. Frustrated by confinement and inadequate supplies, many warriors responded by crossing the Red River into Texas and terrorizing White settlements. Their raids enraged settlers and had the effect of aggravating an already tense situation. On the reservation, however, the raiders were greeted as heroes, and their new status as warriors effectively undercut the authority of those chiefs who counseled peace.
Kicking Bird was among those accused of cowardice for attempting to establish close relations with Whites. With his influence waning, he formed a war party of his own and sought to restore his lost prestige by doing battle with White soldiers. In late June or early July he led his followers, about 100 strong, across the Red River and into Wichita County. Their journey, which took them through portions of Archer and Young counties, was uneventful until a small group of young warriors broke away from the main group and, disregarding Kicking Bird's orders forbidding hostile contact with civilians, attacked and robbed a mail stage at Rock Station, near the site of present Jermyn, Jack County. Word of the attack reached Fort Richardson on the morning of July 6. In response, Capt. Curwen B. McLellan, commander of the Sixth Cavalry, assembled a force of fifty-five troopers, two officers, a surgeon, and a civilian scout to fight the Indians. About an hour and a half out of camp, McLellan arrived at Rock Station and found the stage upturned, part of the mailbag, and one package addressed to the quartermaster at Fort Richardson. After gathering the remaining bits of mail, the cavalry resumed its search for Kicking Bird. Moving northwest, McLellan's force pursued the Indians' trail for five days and about fifty miles but, despite several false alarms, failed to find the main group of Kiowas. In his report McLellan claimed that Kicking Bird was difficult to track because he divided his party and skillfully masked his trail.
He finally caught up with the Kiowas on the evening of July 11, and at 10:00 the following morning his forces attacked the Indian camp. However, shortly after attacking, McLellan realized that he was outnumbered by more than two to one and, to make matters worse, was facing a group that, armed with Spencer rifles, possessed superior weaponry. Making the most of his opportunity, Kicking Bird led a charge on the disorganized cavalrymen and, according to most reports, personally killed Cpl. John Given with a lance. For the rest of the afternoon McLellan's men were attacked from all sides as they tried desperately to retreat. Although the unit lost just two more soldiers during several hours of battle, the fighting was so fierce that the army was forced to abandon its dead on the field. Finally, after the Kiowas cut off their attack early in the evening, the cavalry was able to escape across the West Fork of the Trinity River. Exhausted and suffering eleven wounded in addition to the three killed, McLellan and his troops made camp ten miles northwest of Flat Top Mountain at midnight. There they were reinforced by a group of cowboys from Terrell Ranch and twenty cavalrymen stationed at nearby Jean.
The next morning McLellan dispatched couriers to Fort Richardson for ambulances and prepared to make his final retreat. Fearing another attack, he ordered all excess baggage burned and moved his unit to a more secure location. The ambulances arrived later that day, and on July 14 the Sixth Cavalry returned to Fort Richardson. In his report McLellan praised Kicking Bird's superior generalship and called for larger forces to protect the frontier. He reported that the Kiowas had suffered casualties of fifteen killed and an undetermined number of wounded. This was the last time Kicking Bird was involved in hostilities of any kind. After breaking off the attack and returning home with his prestige restored, he dedicated the remainder of his life to establishing peaceful relations between the Kiowas and the Whites.

[Shakey Jake]

I found another fine undated picture on the UTA web portal. This one is also from the Basil Clemons collection of a dressed up cowboy sitting on his saddle, in front of his horse, while holding a cigarette in his left hand.

[Shakey Jake]

Todays entry comes from the TSHA web Portal. William P. (Gotch) Hardeman, Texas Ranger, soldier, and public servant was born on November 4, 1816, in Williamson County, Tennessee. His father, Thomas Jones Hardeman, was an officer in the War of 1812 and a prominent Texas political figure. Mary (Polk) Hardeman, his mother, was an aunt of James K. Polk. Hardeman attended the University of Nashville and in the fall of 1835 moved to Matagorda County, Texas, with his father and a large group of Hardeman family members.Hardeman fought the Comanches in the battle of Plum Creek on August 11, 1840. In February 1842 he engaged in harassment of invading Mexican forces led by Gen. Rafael Vásquez. Nine months later he joined the Somervell expedition against Mexico. After the annexation of Texas by the United States, Hardeman served as a member of Benjamin McCulloch's Guadalupe valley rangers in Gen. Zachary Taylor's army. He engaged in the exploration of the Linares, China, and Cerralvo-San Juan River routes to the Mexican stronghold of Monterrey and scouted ahead of Taylor's main invading force. Hardeman's last Mexican War engagements were in the scouting expedition to Encarnación and the ensuing battle of Buena Vista. Subsequently he went to his Guadalupe County plantation, where he farmed with as many as thirty-one slaves.
Fifteen years later he returned to military life. After voting for secession in 1861 as a member of the Secession Convention, he raised a force from Guadalupe and Caldwell counties, forming the 800-man Company A of Col. Spruce M. Baird's Fourth Texas Cavalry Regiment, part of Henry H. Sibley's New Mexico Brigade. He fought and was twice wounded at Valverde, where he participated in the successful charge against Alexander McRae's battery of artillery (the Valverde Battery), after which he was promoted to regimental major. In April 1862 Hardeman commanded the successful defense of the Confederate supply depot at Albuquerque against Col. Edward R. S. Canby's much larger force and was credited with saving the artillery. After the defeat of Sibley's column, Hardeman was reassigned to the Gulf theater of war. He participated in Gen. Richard Taylor's Red River campaign, which turned back the numerically superior army of Union general Nathaniel P. Banks, and eventually rose to the command of the Fourth Texas Cavalry. After successful campaigns at Yellow Bayou and Franklin, Hardeman was promoted to brigadier general.
After the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Hardeman, like his cousin Peter Hardeman and thousands of other Confederates, became an exile. He joined a company of fifteen high-ranking officers, eluded Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, and escaped to Mexico. There he served briefly as a battalion commander in Maximilian's army and became a settlement agent for a Confederate colony near Guadalajara. In 1866 he returned to Texas, where he served as inspector of railroads, superintendent of public buildings and grounds, and superintendent of the Texas Confederate Home in Austin. He also helped avert bloodshed in the Coke-Davis controversy of 1873–74 and was one of the founders of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). Hardeman was twice married, first to his uncle Bailey's widow Rebecca, and after her death to Sarah Hamilton. He had two children by the first marriage and five by the second. He died of Bright's disease on April 8, 1898, and was buried at the State Cemetery in Austin.

[Shakey Jake]

A little more modern history today. I was in my first year at TCU when one of the students in the dorm had tickets to see John Mayall at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas. He gave me a ticket if I would give him a ride to the venue. This was the first real jazz/rock concert I ever attended. The only other one was a few years earlier when in high school I saw the Buckinghams play a concert/dance in Joplin, Missouri. Mayall shared the concert with Edgar Winter's White Trash on December 2, 1972. I enjoyed Mayall's concert a lot more the Winter's. Anyway, here's a brief history of the Bronco Bowl per TSHA:
The Bronco Bowl was a multi-purpose sports and entertainment venue located at 2600 Fort Worth Avenue in Dallas. The establishment, which occupied the site of the former Mustang Village federal housing project, was built for $3,000,000 by J. Curtis Sanford as a seventy-eight-lane bowling alley for oilman and sports team owner Lamar Hunt. The Bronco Bowl opened in 1961 with a large public event featuring a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by actress Jayne Mansfield.
In its initial existence the complex included not only bowling, but billiards, indoor archery, a pinball arcade, slot car racing, a miniature golf course, and a concert hall. Food concessions and a barber shop rounded out the building’s offerings. The Bronco Arena briefly was also home to the Dallas Broncos, a National Bowling League professional team, which held its first competition at the Bronco Bowl on October 12, 1961, to the cheers of some 2,000 fans in attendance.
While known for its sports attractions, the 136,000-square-foot complex became better known as a live music venue. The Bronco Arena could be converted to a 1,200 seat dancefloor used for everything from high school proms to roadshows.
A teen nightclub, the Pit Club, opened in 1963, and in 1964 local guitarist Floyd Dakil’s band won a competition to become the house band (The Pitmen) at the club. Their single "Dance, Franny, Dance" was recorded live at the Bronco Bowl and released locally on the Jetstar label and picked up for national distribution on the Guyden label. (Dakil [1945–2010] later played guitar in Louis Prima’s band.) Teen dances through the 1960s at the Bronco Bowl were regularly emceed by Ron Chapman, disc jockey and host of the Dallas music television program Sump’n Else.
The Bronco Bowl went into steep decline in the 1970s but enjoyed a renaissance during the 1980s. A reconfiguration of the main concert hall in 1982 enlarged seating capacity to 3,000 and into the 1990s featured local bands and internationally-known acts such as The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Bowie, Public Enemy, U2, Metallica, and Beck. An episode of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show was taped there as well. In its last incarnation the Bronco Bowl included the main concert hall, a sports bar, three smaller clubs, an arcade, billiard tables, and twenty-two bowling lanes.
The Bronco Bowl was shuttered in 1991 but was purchased by Tony and Danny Gibbs and reopened in 1996. The last concert at the venue was a nineteen-band eleven-hour showcase for new and local music talent held on August 16, 2003. The Bronco Bowl closed its doors for good in August 2003. The site was purchased by The Home Depot, Inc., and razed in late 2003.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1836, Mexican forces under General Santa Anna captured Thompson's Ferry, on the Brazos River between San Felipe and Fort Bend. As Sam Houston's army retreated eastward, a rear-guard under Moseley Baker at San Felipe and Wyly Martin at Fort Bend sought to prevent the Mexicans from crossing the Brazos. At Thompson's Ferry on April 12, Mexican colonel Juan N. Almonte hailed the ferryman, who was on the east bank. Probably thinking that Almonte was a countryman who had been left behind during the retreat, the ferryman poled the ferry across to the west bank. Santa Anna and his staff, who had been hiding in nearby bushes, sprang out and captured the ferry. By this means the Mexican Centralists accomplished a bloodless crossing of the Brazos, which they completed by April 14. The Texan forces at Fort Bend and San Felipe were forced to abandon their defenses and join the rest of Houston's army in retreat. The Texans did not turn on their pursuers until April 21, when they destroyed Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto.

[Shakey Jake]

Per TSHA:
Thomas Peck Ochiltree, Texas legislator, politician, promoter, newspaperman, and soldier, was born at Livingston, Alabama, on October 26, 1839, the son of William Beck and Novalene (Peck) Ochiltree. His family moved to East Texas that year, and he was reared at Nacogdoches and Marshall. He fought Indians with John G. Walker's company of Texas Rangers in 1854–55. In 1856 he became assistant chief clerk and sergeant at arms of the Texas House of Representatives, and in 1857 he was admitted to the bar by a special act of the legislature. Ochiltree practiced law in partnership with his father in Marshall and Jefferson. According to legend, when his father once erected a shingle that read “W. B. Ochiltree and Son,” the younger man replaced it with one that read “Thomas P. Ochiltree and Father.” Ochiltree was politically active, serving as secretary of the state Democratic convention in 1859 and delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1860. He edited the Star State Jeffersonian, a Jefferson newspaper, in 1860–61, then enlisted in Hood's Texas Brigade, in which eventually he was promoted to major. Ochiltree served on the staffs of Henry Hopkins Sibley, Thomas Green, Richard Taylor, Samuel Bell Maxey, and James Longstreet in the armies of North Virginia, New Mexico, Louisiana, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. He was brevetted a colonel four days before Robert E. Lee's surrender, captured near Appomattox, sent to prison camp on Johnson's Island in Lake Erie, and released when a friend appealed on his behalf to President Andrew Johnson.
After the Civil War, Ochiltree spent a few months in Europe. Upon returning to the United States, he continued newspaper work by writing for the New York News and editing the Houston Daily Telegraph in 1866–67. He later wrote the "Ranger" column for the New York Sportsman. In 1867 he made another extended trip to Europe as representative of the banking and shipping firm T. H. MacMahon and Company, which wanted to establish a steamship line from Liverpool to Galveston. During Reconstruction he became noted as a maverick in Texas politics. In 1868 he supported U. S. Grant for president and later promoted fair treatment for Black citizens. A colorful figure and powerful speaker, Ochiltree returned to public service as commissioner of emigration for Texas (1870–73), and as United States marshal for the Eastern District of Texas (1874). In 1882, he ran as an Independent for Congress and won a seat as representative of the Galveston district in the Forty-eighth Congress (1883–85). He played a role in lobbying for a deepwater harbor at Galveston and later was a representative and general counsel for the mining, railroad, telegraph, and cable interests of J. W. Mackay and investment counselor to the Marquis de Mores and John Thomas North. Between 1865 and 1902 he made more than sixty trips to Europe to promote Texas interests. Upon retirement from Congress, Ochiltree made his home in New York. He died at Hot Springs, Virginia, on November 25, 1902. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, but was reinterred in Mount Hope Cemetery, New York, on November 8, 1903.

[Shakey Jake]

I'm enjoying perusing the SMU Libraries digital collection. I'm seeing a lot of these "Cartes de Visite" pictures there. When I find an intersting picture I look it up and see if there's a good background story there, then post. I hope that others are enjoying these.
Jake

[Shakey Jake]

George Robertson Reeves, legislator and soldier, was born on January 3, 1826, in Hickman County, Tennessee, the fifth child of William Steel and Nancy (Totty) Reeves. The family moved to Crawford County, Arkansas, where, on October 31, 1844, Reeves married Jane Moore; the couple eventually had twelve children. In 1846 he moved to Grayson County, Texas; he subsequently held several county offices there. The community that developed around Fort Johnston in Grayson County was called Georgetown in Reeves's honor. He represented the county in the Texas legislature from 1856 to 1858. He raised a company for William C. Young's Eleventh Cavalry and later became colonel in command. The unit fought in Indian Territory and at Pea Ridge under Benjamin McCulloch, and at Corinth, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Knoxville, and Tunnel Hill as part of Ross's Texas Brigade. Confederate Camp Reeves, in Grayson County, was named for Reeves. Reeves again served the legislature in 1870, 1875, 1879, and 1881–82. In his last term he was speaker of the House. Reeves County, Texas, is named for him. The George R. Reeves Masonic Lodge of Pottsboro, where he was once master, is also named in his honor. After being bitten by a rabid dog, Reeves died of hydrophobia on September 5, 1882, and is buried in the Georgetown cemetery.