Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1915, Mexican raiders attacked the Norias Division headquarters of the King Ranch, an episode in the "Bandit Wars" that troubled the Texas-Mexican border between 1912 and 1915. Norias is some seventy miles north of Brownsville. On the afternoon of the 8th, in response to a report about Mexican horsemen, Texas adjutant general Henry Hutchings and twelve Texas Rangers went to the ranch. Three customs inspectors and the Cameron County sheriff arrived at Norias by train and joined the first group, making a total of sixteen men at the headquarters. At dusk horsemen carrying a red flag began firing at the ranch house. The besieged men took cover and returned fire while the cook telephoned Kingsville for help. The raiders were variously reported to number from fifty to seventy. About two hours after dark the firing suddenly stopped and the raiders vanished. In the fight Manuela Flores, a ranch employee, was killed and four defenders were wounded. Five of the raiders were reported killed and perhaps a dozen wounded. The raid provoked outrage in the lower Rio Grande valley, and the United States Army increased its presence in the area.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1908, blues pianist Robert Shaw was born in Stafford, Texas. His parents had a Steinway grand piano and provided music lessons for his sisters, but Shaw's father did not permit the son to play. Years later Shaw told an interviewer that he would "crawl under the house" to catch the musical strains coming from the piano lessons, and he played the piano when the rest of the family was away from home. Reportedly, the first song he learned was "Aggravatin' Papa Don't You Try to Two-Time Me." By the time he was a teenager, Shaw would slip away to hear jazz musicians in Houston and at the roadhouses in the nearby countryside. In time, despite his father's opposition, he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz musician. Shaw learned his distinct brand of "barrelhouse" piano playing from other musicians in the Fourth Ward, Houston, the center of black entertainment in the city. His career flourished in the 1920s and 30s, then suffered a thirty-year hiatus while he ran a grocery store in Austin. Shaw began performing again in 1967 and gained international recognition before his death in 1985.

[Shakey Jake]

The Civil War pretty much bankrupted Texas and left the state impoverished. The only real asset that Texas had was its huge surplus of longhorn cattle that roamed the prairies freely. There was a problem, though: getting the cattle to hungry markets on the East Coast. This was made worse by the fact that Missouri and Kansas had closed their borders to Texas cattle due to the Texas fever they carried.
To meet that demand for beef, Joseph G. McCoy of Illinois sought provide Texas cattle. In 1867, McCoy convinced Kansas Pacific officials to build a siding in Abilene, Kansas, on the edge of the quarantine area, and began constructing pens and loading facilities. He notified Texas cowmen of the new cattle market, and that year, he shipped 35,000 head. The number of cattle shipped doubled each year until 1871, when 600,000 cattle were sent east.
Meanwhile, in 1867, O.W. Wheeler and his partners purchased 2,400 steers in San Antonio and planned to winter them on the plains before continuing on to California. While at the North Canadian River in Indian Territory, they stumbled upon wagon tracks. They followed them. The tracks belonged to Jesse Chisholm, a Scot-Cherokee who had been transporting trade goods to Indian camps south of Wichita since 1864. Originally known as the Trail, the Kansas Trail, the Abilene Trail, or McCoy's Trail, Texas cowmen began calling it the Chisholm Trail from the Rio Grande to central Kansas. The Kansas Daily Commonwealth first referred to the Chisholm Trail in 1870, and by 1874, the Denison, Texas, Daily News mentioned cattle being driven up "the famous Chisholm Trail."
Although the Chisholm Trail was used only from 1867 to 1884, in its brief existence it had been followed by more than five million cattle and a million mustangs ---- the greatest migration of livestock in world history.

[Shakey Jake]

Traces of Texas reader Lilian Vaught was so kind as to send in this remarkable photo of the Ellersly Plantation in Brazoria Texas in 1895, a couple of years before it burned down. For quite a while it was considered the finest house in Texas. Per the TSHA:
Ellersly (Ellersley, Ellerslie) Plantation was established by John Greenville McNeel on land granted to him and his brother, George W. McNeel, by the Mexican government under Stephen F. Austin's first contract in 1824. It included one-half league on the Brazos River and one-half league on the San Bernard River. George died, and John Greenville built a prosperous sugar plantation in the area known as Gulf Prairie, on the San Bernard River eight miles from the Gulf of Mexico in Brazoria County. The plantation house was located in a grove of live oaks between two roads, and the entrance gates were flanked by hand-hewn oak posts topped by carved replicas of a spade, a diamond, a club, and a heart. The two-story house was constructed of slave-made bricks. It had twenty-one rooms, and galleries with pillars extended the length of the house on the west and south. The stairs and bannisters were made of mahogany, and the ceilings were plastered and decorated with intricate medallions. The fireplaces and mantels were made of marble, and the floors were carpeted. The furniture was either walnut or mahogany. Atop the house was a laboratory with a telescope. All in all, Ellersly was considered the finest home in Texas before the Civil War.
The plantation had an immense brick sugar mill that resembled a turreted castle and enclosed a double set of kettles. Outbuildings included a brick overseer's house, a cotton gin, a blacksmith's shop, and a hospital. The brick slave quarters lined a street leading off the main road; each consisted of two rooms with a double fireplace that accommodated two families.
Greenville and his family entertained often-dancing, fishing, hunting and riding. He had a stallion that cost $6,000. His brothers, Sterling McNeel, Pleasant McNeel, and Leander McNeel, lived on neighboring plantations. Ellersly was prosperous; in 1852, for example, it produced 408 hogsheads or nearly 149,000 pounds of sugar. In 1860 the census appraised J. G. McNeel's real property at $100,000 and his personal property at $216,400. He owned 176 slaves. The 1870 census reflected his losses during Reconstruction, however, for he was listed with no property.
After his death in 1876 his heirs sold the plantation to James Marion Huntington, who was married to Greenville's niece. After her death Huntington remarried. The main house burned in the 1890s, and the family moved into the old brick hospital. It blew down in the Galveston hurricane of 1900, and they moved into the overseer's house, The descendants sold the house and property to the Phillips Petroleum Company in 1974. The overseer's house burned in 1983.
Source: René Harris, "ELLERSLY PLANTATION," Handbook of Texas Online
Thank you, Lilian! I had no idea that this house ever existed!

[Shakey Jake]

182 years ago today the Comanches were defeated by Gen. Felix Huston at the Battle of Plum Creek. The sacking of Victoria and Linnville in August 1840 in what was then Victoria County was the strategic object of a great Comanche raid in 1840, the most terrifying of all Comanche raids in Southeast Texas. The attack originated as an aftermath of the Council House Fight in San Antonio in March 1840. By August the Penateka Comanches were able to accept the leadership of their remaining chief, Buffalo Hump, the others having been killed in the Council House Fight. In what became the largest of all southern Comanche raids, Buffalo Hump launched a retaliatory attack down the Guadalupe valley east and south of Gonzales. The band numbered perhaps as many as 1,000, including the families of the warriors, who followed to make camps and seize plunder. The number of warriors was probably between 400 and 500, though witnesses put the figure higher. The total included a good number of Kiowas and Mexican guides.

The raiders first appeared at Victoria without warning on the afternoon of August 6, and upon crossing Spring Creek were mistaken at first for Lipans, members of a friendly group that often traded with settlers around the town. "We of Victoria were startled by the apparitions presented by the sudden appearance of six hundred mounted Comanches in the immediate outskirts of the village," wrote John J. Linn, who recorded the attack on Victoria and the burning of Linnville in his Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas (1883). The Comanches killed a number of slaves working in fields and also some Whites who were unable to reach Victoria. They captured over 1,500 horses belonging to area residents and to some Mexican horse traders who had arrived with a large herd. The Indians surrounded the town, but the settlers' defensive efforts apparently prevented their sacking the town itself. The attackers retired to Spring Creek at day's end and killed a White settler and two Black enslaved people before a group of Victoria men left for the Cuero Creek, Lavaca, and Gonzales settlements for help. The next day the Comanches killed a party of men returning to town, except for Jesse O. Wheeler and a companion, who reached safety.

With their spoils the Indians then left Victoria and thundered toward the coast. They camped the night of August 7 on Placido (now Placedo) Creek on the ranch of Plácido Benavides, about twelve miles from Linnville. There two wagoners were intercepted, of whom one escaped and the other was killed. Three miles from Linnville the raiders killed two Black men cutting hay. Tradition holds that Daniel D. Brown warned the citizens of the danger and that Mary Margaret Kerr Mitchell rode horseback across Prairie Chicken Reef with word of the attack on Victoria. Nevertheless, early on August 8, the Comanches surprised the town; most residents supposed them to be Mexican horse traders.

The Indians surrounded the small port of Linnville and began pillaging the stores and houses. They killed three Whites, including customs officer Hugh Oran Watts, who delayed escape to retrieve a gold watch; they captured Watts's wife of only twenty-one days, Juliet Constance, and a Black woman and child. The surprised people of Linnville fled to the water and were saved by remaining aboard small boats and a schooner captained by William G. Marshall at anchor in the bay. From their Gulf vantage point the refugees witnessed the destruction of their town. For the entire day the Comanches plundered and burned buildings. They tied feather beds and bolts of cloth to their horses and dragged them about in sport. They herded large numbers of cattle into pens and slaughtered them. One exasperated onlooker, Judge John Hays, grabbed a gun and waded ashore through the shallow water, but the Indians ignored him. When he returned to the schooner his gun was found to have been unloaded.

Goods valued at $300,000 were at Linnville at the time of the raid; many items were en route from New Orleans to San Antonio. Linn noted that in his warehouse were several cases of hats and umbrellas belonging to James Robinson, a San Antonio merchant. "These the Indians made free with, and went dashing about the blazing village, amid their screeching squaws and `little Injuns,' like demons in a drunken saturnalia, with Robinson's hats on their heads and Robinson's umbrellas bobbing about on every side like tipsy young balloons." After loading the plunder onto pack mules the raiders, attired in their booty, finally retired in the afternoon with some 3,000 horses and a number of captives, including Mrs. Watts, and encamped across the bayou near the old road.

By this time the men of Victoria had recruited reinforcements from the Cuero Creek settlement. On the morning of August 7 the combined forces joined volunteers from the Gonzales and Lavaca settlements under Adam Zumwalt and Benjamin McCulloch and skirmished with the Comanches about twelve miles east of Victoria on Marcado Creek and again on Casa Blanca Creek, two branches of Garcitas Creek. The Indians stole away with their captives and plunder but were defeated by volunteers at Plum Creek near the site of present Lockhart on August 12 (see PLUM CREEK, BATTLE OF). Although the Indians tried to kill their Victoria and Linnville captives during this final battle, Juliet Watts's corset prevented her arrow wound from killing her. She returned to the Linnville area, married Dr. J. M. Stanton, and opened the Stanton House, the first hotel in Port Lavaca, the new settlement established on the bay 3½ miles southwest by displaced Linnville residents.

Twenty-three settlers are known to have been killed in the Victoria-Linnville raid, including eight Blacks and one Mexican. There is evidence that this raid also was part of a scheme among Mexican Centralists to punish the citizens of Victoria and Linnville for providing Mexican Federalists a port and site for the short-lived provisional government of the Republic of the Rio Grande. The captured horses and plunder were evidently received by Centralist generals Valentín Canalizo and Adrián Woll and used in an invasion of Texas. Although this was the last great Comanche raid into the coastal settlements, Linnville never regained prominence and soon vanished in the wake of Port Lavaca's growth. The Victoria battle is commemorated by a historical marker on De León Plaza in downtown Victoria near the site of the Round Top House, the fortified home of colonist Plácido Benavides, which served as an improvised citadel against the attack. The site of Linnville is 3½ miles northeast of Port Lavaca on the bayfront, just off Farm Road 1090 in present Calhoun County.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1906, black soldiers of the Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry allegedly attacked citizens of Brownsville. The event resulted in the largest summary dismissals in the history of the United States Army. The soldiers, newly arrived at Fort Brown from the Philippines and Nebraska, confronted racial discrimination from some businesses and suffered physical abuse from some federal customs collectors. A reported attack on a white woman during the night of August 12 so enraged the citizens that Maj. Charles W. Penrose, after consultation with Mayor Frederick Combe, declared an early curfew. Just after midnight on the thirteenth, a bartender was fatally shot and a police lieutenant was wounded. Various citizens claimed to have seen soldiers running through the streets shooting, even though it was dark. Several civilian and military investigations presumed the guilt of the soldiers without identifying individual culprits. When suspects were not forthcoming, the army inspector general charged a "conspiracy of silence." On November 5 President Theodore Roosevelt discharged "without honor" all 167 enlisted men garrisoned at Fort Brown. This action fueled political and "due process" arguments for more than sixty years. In 1972 the Nixon administration awarded honorable discharges, without back pay, to the soldiers involved. The only surviving veteran, Dorsie Willis, received a $25,000 settlement.

[Shakey Jake]

A retrospective from T of T facebook group:
Traces of Texas reader Tory Roberts was nice enough to send in this wonderful photo of his Great Grandfather, John Alton Roberts, at his filling station in Meadow, Texas back in 1935. Per an attached note: " No water, no electricity. Windcharger for radio and lights. Gas was 15 cents for regular, 18 cents for Ethyl. Lived in back part of the station. Flats fixed 15 cents- 25 cents. New pavement finished Lubbock to Brownfield." All of that is pretty awesome stuff. And if you know that "Meadow" is pronounced "Med-ah" you can consider yourself a real Texan.

[Shakey Jake]

About two centuries ago, a Mexican boy named Jose Villarreal and a companion were captured by Comanches on a raid. The two escaped, finding their way out of the hostile wilderness by following the North Star. Decades later, in 1851, Villarreal, a blacksmith, built a simple iron sundial that was placed over an arched stone doorway of “El Fuerte,” the oldest structure in San Ygnacio, Texas and part of the Trevino-Uribe Rancho. According to local legends the sundial, which keeps Mexico City time, was Villarreal’s tribute to the celestial body that had guided him and his companion to freedom. The photo that I am posting of the sundial was taken in 1936, but the sundial and the fort still stand and recently underwent a significant restoration. The Treviño–Uribe Rancho is a historic fortified home at the junction of Trevino and Uribe Streets in San Ygnacio, which has a fascinating history. With a construction history dating to 1830, it is one of the oldest surviving buildings from the period of Spanish-Mexican settlement of the north bank of the lower Rio Grande. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998.

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1786, frontier icon and Alamo defender Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee. He began his military career as a scout in the Tennessee militia in 1813 and was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1821. After a turbulent political career, during which he split with President Andrew Jackson, a fellow Tennessean, and acquired a national reputation as a sharpshooter, hunter, and yarn-spinner, Crockett grew disenchanted with the political process and decided to explore Texas. He set out in November 1835 and reached San Antonio de Béxar in February 1836, shortly before the arrival of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Crockett chose to join Col. William B. Travis, who had deliberately disregarded Jackson sympathizer Sam Houston's orders to withdraw from the Alamo, and died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. No matter how many fabrications gathered around him, the historical David Crockett proved a formidable hero in his own right and succeeded Daniel Boone as the rough-hewn representative of frontier independence and virtue.

[Shakey Jake]

Doctors and misc. officers of the Bolivar Quarantine Station on Pelican Island circa 1910. When the federal government replaced state administrations in processing immigrants at the turn of the century, efforts began to redirect the flow of immigration from the Northeast to Texas. Pelican Island became federal property, and the government constructed an immigration center and quarantine station there. Galveston became a sort of "mini Ellis Island" at this time, and between 1906 and 1914 many Czechs, Germans, Austrians, Swiss, English, Poles entered the U.S. and began their lives as citizens right here. It was demolished in 1972.