My One Hundredth Post

     I first posted on this blog January 10, 2012.  This week represents my one year anniversary and I feel that I should do something to celebrate that milestone.  I searched my mind for some appropriate method of acknowledgement and came up with what I consider a brilliant idea.  I’ll post an essay.  This will be my one-hundredth post.

     During the past year, I have written about subjects near and dear to my heart.  I have tried to be honest, objective, and fair in my stories, but I admit I’m human and have my biases which might accidently show through.  I have written about Barbeque, oil fields, a road trip and my Uncle John Burleson.  I have discussed and included recipes for pecan pie, lemon velvet ice cream, enchiladas, guacamole, apple pie, and refried black-eyed peas.

     I did a series of articles about the Texas Revolution, the luck of Sam Houston and the egotistical arrogance of General Santa Anna.  A friend chastised me for mentioning that William Barrett Travis, the hero of the Alamo, was eaten up with gonorrhea.  My friend does not understand that I want to tell truthful things that were not in my history books.  Travis was no less a hero because of his propensity to dip his wick in tainted wells—he still wrote a mean letter and he wrote several beauties from the Alamo during the siege.  He was self-treating his affliction with mercury at the time, but I don’t want to infer that those fine letters were the product of a deranged mind.

     When I wrote about sweet Panchita Alavez, I mentioned the inept Col. James Walker Fannin.  Fannin felt he should have been supreme commander of the Texas army, based on twenty-one months undergraduate work he did at West Point.  He managed to leave the safest fort in Texas and allow his troops to be surrounded and captured in the middle of a pasture near Coleta Creek.  He did not do this by making an honest mistake.  He did it by repeatedly ignoring Houston’s orders through obstinacy, arrogance, indecision and stupidity.  The Mexicans forced him to watch the execution of his entire command before they shot him.  I’ll get back to him later.

     I have lately been involved with a series on the remarkable women of Texas, and there are many.  My reasons for focusing on the women are simple.  They are more fun than most of the men.  And tougher.  And better looking. This fixation on Texas women started when I looked at a family picture of my father’s parents, taken around nineteen hundred.

      In the picture, Amanda, my grandmother, was a wisp of a girl, twenty-four years old, maybe ninety-five pounds, surrounded by her husband and eight children.  The children were all dressed to the nines in homespun clothing, starched and ironed.  Mandy wore a lacey, fitted black dress and grandfather was decked out in a suit and tie.  Mandy made all their clothing and probably starched and ironed everything that morning.  She was radiant in the picture, contented and smiling.  She was most likely pregnant, but her waist was still tiny.  The pregnancy did not yet show.

     I mention that because Amanda went on to have six more children in the next six years.  Dad was the youngest.  I’ve often wondered if some sympathetic doctor tied her tubes then, because she had the last of fourteen children at age thirty.  By the way—in the picture I mentioned Mandy was radiant and smiling.  James, my grandfather, had a different expression.  He looked for all the world like a deer caught in headlights—he was scared to death, perhaps wondering how he could afford to pay the photographer.

     Oddly, my most popular post has been the Pecan Pie Recipe, with 180 hits, most of them during the recent holiday season.  The “Village Blacksmith Outed,” about my friend R.G. Box and his creation “Rowdy,” follows with 107 hits, then Tom T. Hall with 106, and the cute, transplanted little Texan, Gus Gaunt, with 74.  The road trip story about Fresno and Bakersfield is next with 66 hits, then the World’s Championship Barbeque Cook-off, and on and on.

       I have not counted, but I estimate that I have written over 125,000 words here in the past year, and it is still fun.  I indulge myself with my writing—no one is grading it, so I do as I please.  I always capitalize “Barbeque” and refuse to capitalize “yankee.”  Drives the spell-check crazy, but pleases me.

     I’ll wrap this up.  My blog is most popular in the U.S., with over 12,000 page-views.   Russia is second with 375, but Russia has quit hitting the last few months and I don’t understand why.  Guatemala is third, with 137 hits, I’m sure because my friend John Bacon spends time down there.  I had 13 hits from Spain while Hugh and Ken visited Andalusia, and a few from Costa Rica where Jack and Mandy Robbins vacationed.  The rest are scattered around the world, probably spread among insomniacs with computers in some third world country with electricity.

     One last observation—I have accrued $30.76 in my Google account.  They pay me based upon how many people view the little ads in the top corner of each entry.  When I get $100.00, they will send me a check.  I had hoped this to be a source of fun and profit, but it looks like I’ll have to settle for fun.  You all go back and read something I wrote last year and stay with me now, ya hear.

Is Cinco de Mayo some kind of Mexican Sandwich?

                                                         

      If the number of people moving into Texas keeps rising, will Texas be able to pass on the Texas State of Mind?  That is the question asked by Robyn, a friend of mine who worries about such things.  Robyn grew up in California, and loves that state, but she has always been intrigued by the deep sense of pride and unwavering loyalty to homeland that defines Texans.

     She first noticed this phenomenon as a teenager when exposed to Texas children in California schools.  In the 1940s, southern families came to California in droves, forced by the Depression and the Dust Bowl to relocate or starve.  Some children, those from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and other beleaguered southern states, began to assimilate the culture of California, and adjust to their surroundings.  Not so the Texans.  They had no desire to adjust to this foreign country.  They incessantly griped about the weather, the scenery, the way people talked.  They constantly compared everything to Texas, and everything came up short.  They were slow-talking, loud-mouthed, uncouth little disciples from the land of the Rio Grande, and were going back there as soon as circumstances permitted. 

     My friend Robyn, and most everyone else in California, soon became tired of the obnoxious visitors, but she couldn’t help but wonder about a land that marked its people so deeply.  Now, as a Texas resident, she sees this unnatural pride of place, deep reverence for local history, and unjustifiable loyalty from a new perspective—and she sees it up close and personal.

      Her Texas friends and neighbors make statements like, “The best cantaloupes in the world come from Pecos, Texas.” "Everybody knows the Cowboys are the best team in football, except for the Texans.”  “The Texas Hill Country has the sweetest water on God’s green earth.”  “They grow more cotton in Lubbock County than they do in Egypt.” “Ain’t no watermelons as good as the ones from Luling, Texas.”  “Texas ought to secede from the Union—let them yankees freeze in the dark.” “Did you know the hamburger was invented in Athens, Texas?” “All the helium in the United States comes from some wells up by Amarillo.” “The best looking women in the world come from Dallas.”

     Texans make these statements in a matter-of-fact tone, leaving no room for discussion.  Robyn realizes, after years of conditioning, that Texans are not purposely being rude, they truly do not recognize any other point of view.  These “facts,” and many others, are ingrained into Texans from birth.  Texans know they are true—no sense arguing about it.

     The short answer to Robyn’s question—with the population increase, will Texans be able to pass on their state of mind—is no.  In my lifetime, the Texan mindset has eroded dramatically and will continue to do so.  The great leveling influence, forced by the passage of time and the influx of people, will slowly work to homogenize Texans into the same bland beings that inhabit the rest of our country.  As with other current trends, seemingly logical and just actions have unforseen consequences.

    Individualism, the very rock of the Texas spirit, is actively discouraged in today's world.  Individuals are viewed as selfish, greedy, and not to be trusted.  The popular view holds that individuals create and hoard vast resources and refuse to share with a needy public.  The public is needy through no fault of its own—it was not given the opportunity to accumulate a fortune at the expense of others.  Even if it had been, it was far too noble to have done so.

      Consider the spoken word.  Texans’ unique accents and mannerisms are disappearing.  College students, especially coeds, spend hours practicing enunciation to get rid of their drawls.  A “Texas Drawl” is considered a liability in the business world and seems to be forbidden in the entertainment industry.  Actors like Sam Elliot are allowed to keep their natural accents, and they are type-cast to emphasize their speech patterns, often for comic relief or ridicule.

     As with so many facets of our existence, our country—the United States, not Texas—puts a high value on diversity, then exerts every effort to suppress it.  For an example, look at television news.  More and more women, and blacks, and Hispanics, and even a few token Arabs are broadcasting the evening news, but they all sound as if they had the same speech coach.  Women are welcomed, so long as they have fantastic legs and are willing to display them in impossibly short skirts.  They cannot get comfortable, knowing that the slightest movement will expose their assets.  Even the weather girl needs a boob job to get out of the sticks and onto the network.  We are encouraged to diversify as much as we want, so long as we conform.

     In my lifetime, I have watched colorful parades and lavish celebrations of San Jacinto Day dwindle to a scant mention in the back pages of the newspaper.  More people in Houston, and the rest of Texas, celebrate Cinco de Mayo than Texas Independence Day.  I was grown before I learned Cinco de Mayo was not some kind of Mexican sandwich.  The more diversified we are, the more people who crowd in to take our jobs, the less important our heritage becomes. 

     A few of us are working to keep that heritage strong, focusing on old-time values, reminding others of the great history of this state, and instilling Texas pride in our young people.  We are moderately effective, but people are indifferent, and the tide is turning. My son is a true Texan, but he lives in Colorado, where his son will grow up talking funny.  My daughter has a fervent faith in all things Texan, but her children’s eyes glaze over when I start to tell about how Cap'n Jack Hays and the Texas Rangers once fought the Comanche in our little valley. 

     I will keep spreading the word, and I will keep losing ground.  The Texas that I once knew--flamboyant oilmen,  frugal ranchers,  gritty promoters,  optimistic farmers--still exists, but is fading fast.  Ambition is viewed as a character flaw.   Courage, ethics, fortitude, and determination are laughed at by lawyers and spin doctors who know that image is everything, and reality is contrived to fit the situation. 
     No, Robyn, we won’t be able to pass on our heritage, our spirit, our love of this place.  That will all die—but it will die hard, and I will be lucky.  I will die first.

Juanita Dale Slusher---Texas Women Series

    No listing of notable Texas women would be complete without reference to Juanita Dale Slusher.  Writing poetry was not chief among her accomplishments, but held an important place in her heart.  She poured out her soul in poems such as this:

Hate the world that strikes you down,

A warped lesson quickly learned.

Rebellion, a universal sound,

Nobody cares, no one’s concerned.

Fatigued by unyielding strife,

Self-pity consoles the abused.

And the bludgeoning of daily life,

Leaves a gentle mind…..confused.

     Juanita wrote this poem in 1962, while serving time in the Goree State Prison Farm for Women, outside Huntsville, Texas. At the time, she was married to a fellow named Jack Sahakian, the Hollywood “hairdresser to the stars” of that day.  Jack was Juanita’s third husband and they were married in 1959, while she was headlining at a the EL Rancho Vegas Hotel.  Two weeks later, she was arrested by the FBI.  Her four-year-old daughter stayed with Jack while Juanita Dale served her time.

Who needs captions?

     You may know of Juanita by her stage name—Candy Barr.  Barney Weinstein, owner of both the Theater Lounge and the Colony Club in downtown Dallas, gave her that name because of her teenage craving for Snickers candy bars.  It was 1951 and she was a sixteen-year-old divorcee with an angelic face and  unbelievable body.

     Juanita was born in Edna, Texas, on July 6, 1935, the youngest of five children.  Her mother died in a car accident when she was nine, and her dad remarried.  The stepmother was physically abusive, and Juanita experimented sexually with a teenage neighbor boy and an older babysitter.  Knowing Juanita's proclivities, it was playful sex among consenting adolescents, but today it would be considered sexual abuse.  When she was thirteen, Juanita ran away.  She left the ninth grade and moved to Dallas, where she grew up quickly.

     Juanita Dale worked as a chambermaid in a cheap hotel and, when she was fourteen, was briefly married to a safe cracker named Billy Joe Debbs.  When the marriage dissolved, she started working as a cigarette girl and cocktail waitress in seedy men’s clubs.  Because of her perky good looks, quick wit, saucy humor, and willingness to share that fantastic body, she quickly became a favorite of the lonely patrons. 

     While most girls her age were learning ninth-grade geography, hoping to make cheerleader, and holding hands with their boyfriends, Juanita was dealing with drunken salesmen, obscene conventioneers, and immature frat boys.  She learned to dispense her charms in direct relation to the size of the bills the customers stuffed into her skimpy costume.  Most of her patrons were allowed a suggestive pat or perhaps a kiss on the cheek, but some of the more generous were invited to share her bed.  It was more Texas hospitality than outright prostitution.  As Reba McIntyre said, “Be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy, and they’ll be nice to you.”

     By the time she was sixteen, Juanita was five-feet-three, voluptuous, and absolutely beautiful.  A “producer” approached and asked her to do a screen test for a starring role in a movie.  She should have wondered when the “screen test” was held at a San Antonio motel.  She said she was drugged and coerced at gunpoint into making the fifteen-minute hardcore film, but that did not hurt her performance.   The 8mm pornographic movie was called “Smart Alec” and became an “underground” sensation

      At the urging of Barney Weinstein, she bleached her hair, stepped onstage at the Colony Club and soon became the most sought-after stripper in Dallas.  Weinstein named her “Candy Barr” and paid her $85.00 per week, about the same as a good civil engineer made in 1951.  Her trademark costume was a white cowboy hat, pasties, bikini panties, cowboy boots and two pearl handled six-guns, strapped low on her hips.  At sixteen years old, she brought the house down as she finished her act firing the cap pistols into the air while strutting offstage.

     In 1953, she married Troy Phillips, a night club denizen who became her manager.  In late '54, she had a daughter.  Business at the Colony Club suffered when Candy was out with her pregnancy.   When her body regained its dazzle, Weinstein signed her to a $2,000.00 per week contract.  The sweet-looking, abused teenager from Edna, Texas, was making a $100,000.00 per year on the stage, taking off her clothes in a theater full of drunks. She was a product of the times.

38-22-36  But who's counting?

     Candy’s marriage went on the rocks and she filed for divorce from the abusive Phillips.  At five one morning, very drunk, he came to her apartment and kicked in the door, intending to beat her.  After warning him three times and trying to run away, she shot him in the lower stomach with a .22 rifle.  In her statement to the police, Candy said she missed high.  Charges against her were dropped when Phillips recovered and verified her story.  It was early 1956, and Candy was just twenty years old.  Next year, she could legally vote.

     After the public sensation caused by the shooting, Candy was more popular than ever.  She had long been playing to standing room only crowds, but the Colony Club was now forced to turn away customers.  Her notoriety caused the powers that be in Dallas to feel that Candy’s lifestyle was staining the reputation of the city. 

      Police started a wire tap on her phone, which soon led to her arrest for possessing four-fifths of an ounce of marijuana. According to Candy, she was keeping it for a friend. At that time, the penalty for such an offense in Texas was up to life in prison.  Even though the police burst into her apartment without a warrant, and the wire tap evidence would be illegal in today’s world, Candy was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.  Today, if prosecuted at all, the same crime carries a six-month sentence. 

     No one knows who ordered the wiretap, or why it was done.  Candy obviously ticked off someone downtown, and  it may have been as simple as refusing sexual favors to some well-connected, vindictive official.  In any case, she received a call, asking her to hold something for a friend.   The friend dropped by, and two hours later, the police raided her apartment.  The police never admitted the wiretap or revealed the name of her "friend." She was a victim of the times.

     I was one of the endless stream of  “immature frat boys” who went to Dallas periodically back then for football games and weekends of debauchery.  My friends and I went to the Colony Club, the Carousel, or the Theater Lounge, depending upon who was on stage.  The rest of Texas, and Lubbock in particular, had no such entertainment.  The strippers were hard-looking older women, the clubs were sleazy, and I always left feeling dirty.  Even so, I went back every return trip to see if conditions had improved.
  
     I stared at the poster of Candy Barr in front of the Colony Club, but never saw her on stage.  I will always remember the picture.  Her face was so sweet, it made June Alison look slutty, and her 38-22-36 body was absolute female perfection.  I opined the picture was touched up and probably many years old, but a friend who had seen her on stage told me it did not do her justice.

     As the long appeal process continued, Candy took her act on the road.  She appeared to packed houses in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Hollywood.  Everywhere, men lined up to pay for the privilege of watching her take off her clothing.  She became involved with Mickey Cohen, a west coast gangster, after appearing in the Largo Club on Sunset Strip.  Cohen helped pay her legal bills and financed the appeals process.  He introduced her to Hollywood.

     Twentieth Century Fox hired Candy as a choreographer and technical advisor for the film, Seven Thieves.  She taught Joan Collins how to striptease for her part in the film.  Collins said, in her autobiography, “She taught me more about sensuality than I learned in all my years under contract.”  Joan also said, “…she was a down-to-earth girl, with an incredibly gorgeous body and an angelic face.”   Candy was twenty-four years old.

      In late November of 1959, Candy married Jack Sahakian, her hairdresser.  Her appeals of the marijuana conviction exhausted, she entered the prison farm two weeks later on December 4, 1959.  Juanita used the prison time to augment her eighth-grade education and served three years and three months before being paroled on April 1, 1963.  The terms of her parole forbid her return to exotic dancing or living in Dallas. 
  
      Candy returned to her family home in Edna and began a quiet life, raising pure-bred dogs.  She married her fourth husband, a railroad worker, and lived in seclusion.  Candy was pardoned of the marijuana charges in 1967 by Governor John Connelly, and returned to the burlesque stage briefly in 1968, her dancing career all but over.  She spent a weekend shacked up with Hugh Hefner in 1971, but nothing came of it.  They both must have felt the other would look good on their resume. 

      In 1972, Juanita published  A Gentle Mind....Confused,  a thin book of  poetry.   When she was a 41 year-old grandmother, in  1976,  Candy posed, scantily clad, for the cover of Oui Magazine.  For several pages of alluring nude pics, and the cover, she was paid $5,000.00.  Her last appearance as a stripper took place in the Ruby Room in Dallas in 1997, when she was sixty-two.

     Juanita died at age seventy in Victoria, Texas.  For business reasons in 1970 she changed her legal name, and those of her children, to Barr.  Her grandson, Ryan Barr, named his first daughter “Candy” after her.  Another of her great-granddaughters is named “Snickers.”

    



Candy Barr was a product and a victim of the times--beneath it all, she was a gentle mind....confused.



Jane Long----Self-Proclaimed Mother of Texas

      Jane Wilkinson was born in Maryland in 1798.  By 1813, she was orphaned and living with an older sister near Natchez, Mississippi.  At age sixteen, she married James Long, a nineteen-year-old Army surgeon who served with Andrew Jackson’s troops at the Battle of New Orleans.  The young couple bought a plantation near Vicksburg and Jane had her first child, Ann, in November of 1816. James, very industrious, operated the plantation, set up a medical practice at Port Gibson, and became a merchant in Natchez.

     Along with many of the South's landed gentry, James Long was upset about the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 (also called the Florida Treaty), which transferred ownership of Florida and established the border between the United States and New Spain.  At the time, New Spain consisted of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California, and parts of Oregon and Utah.  The treaty was worked out by John Quincy Adams, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Louis de Onis of Spain. Florida was ceded to the United States and the border definition and other provisions of the treaty were very generous to the United States.  Spain was in a poor negotiating position, desperately fighting a revolution in Mexico and losing power in Europe.

     Prominent citizens in Mississippi, however, wanted the cotton land in Texas and decided they would take matters in their own hands.  They financed and recruited a three-hundred man army and placed James Long in charge.  A Mexican citizen, Jose Felix Trespalacios, joined the group and became friends with Long.  The politically astute Trespalacios had long been involved in the Mexican uprising against Spain, and shared his knowledge with the filibusters.  The Long Expedition set out in June of 1819 and, with little opposition, occupied Natchcogdoches.

     Jane Long did not accompany her husband because she was in the advanced stages of her second pregnancy.  Her new baby, Rebecca, was born on June 16, 1819, and two weeks later Jane left for Texas with her daughters and Kian, a slave girl.  After a difficult trip, she arrived in Natchcogdoches in August, only to have to flee in October.  The Spanish army decided to put an end to the foolishness in East Texas and sent a detachment to remove the filibusters from Spanish soil.

    During the ensuing travel, the baby Rebecca died and James Long took Jane, six-year-old Ann, and the twelve-year-old slave girl, Kian, to Bolivar Peninsula, just across the channel from Galveston Island.  Jane wrote of having dinner with Jean Lafitte on Galveston Island, as James tried unsuccessfully to obtain Lafitte’s help against the Spanish.

     After Mexico won its independence from Spain, James Long stubbornly continued his filibustering efforts.  He and Jane made a fund-raising trip to New Orleans and returned to Bolivar.  He left a pregnant Jane there in September of 1821, as he went on a mission to occupy La Bahia at Goliad.  He promised to return in a month and Jane promised to wait for him as long as it might take.  Unknown to Jane, Long was captured and taken to jail in Mexico City.

     Because of dwindling supplies, the other occupants of Bolivar abandoned the settlement, but Jane stubbornly stayed on to wait for her husband.  She and the girls fired a small cannon daily to make hostile Indians believe the fort was still occupied.  Near starvation, the women survived by pure determination, raw courage, and raw oysters.

     On December 21, 1821, Jane gave birth to her third daughter, Mary James. She claimed this to be the first Anglo child born in Texas.  It was bitter cold and the child was born inside an ice-crusted tent, with only Kian and little Ann to help.  The group stayed through the winter, vainly awaiting James’ return.  Twenty-nine-year-old Dr. James Long would not return—he was “accidentally” shot in a Mexico City jail and died on April 8, 1822.

     James Long almost certainly met Jean Lafitte when they both served under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.  If James William Hayes, the first husband of Margaret Theresa Wright, died of wounds in that battle, Dr. Long may well have treated him.  There is evidence that Jose Felix Trespalacios paid a guard to “accidently” shoot Long in Mexico City.  No motive is suggested, but Long must have possessed embarrassing or compromising information about Trespalacios.  The world was a smaller place, there were fewer people, and politics makes strange bedfellows.

     When Jane learned of her husband’s death, she made her way to San Antonio and applied for a pension to the new Governor.  Guess who?  Long’s old friend, the wily Jose Felix Trespalacios.  After ten unsuccessful months, she gave up and moved back in Louisiana, where she lived with her sister’s family.  In 1824, little Mary James, the Texas baby, died and Jane and her family moved back to Texas.  Jane received a league of land in Fort Bend County and a labor in Waller County from Stephen F. Austin, but chose not to live on the property.   Until 1830 she lived in Sam Felipe, the bustling colonial capital of Texas.

     In 1832, Jane bought a boarding house in Brazoria and operated it for five years.  She claimed romantic connections with several prominent Texans, and these may have happened while she owned the boarding house.  Jane was thirty-eight years old when Texas won its independence, a lady of some means who owned a boarding house and several thousand acres.  That same year, Sam Houston was forty-two, Ben Milam was forty-seven, Mirabeau Lamar was thirty-seven and William Barrett Travis was twenty-six.  She suggested romantic ties with all of them.

     Ben Milam was killed by a sniper in December, 1835, but she knew him before the revolution.  They lived in the same vicinity for several years.  Buck Travis was younger than she, but he was a rounder who kept records of his sexual conquests, and was not the least bit discriminating in his selection of partners.  He and Jane certainly knew each other, and if she was agreeable, Buck would never let a little thing like age difference slow him down.  That union probably didn’t happen, because there is no record of Jane ever having contacted gonorrhea.

     According to Jane, Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar both proposed marriage to her.  No one can prove they didn’t.  Neither would have known her before the revolution, but both were in her vicinity after.   They were such different personalities, and so intensely disliked each other, it is hard to imagine them vying for the same woman.   Perhaps Jane was one source of their mutual distrust.

     Lamar spent a lot of time with Jane, working on his history of Texas book, which he wrote in 1837 while the revolution was fresh in his mind.  Jane, knowing her words were being recorded for posterity, might have embellished her stories with events that she felt should have happened.  She and Lamar might have had a real love affair, or she might have imagined one.   They were the same age, both unattached and lonely, and Jane was wealthy.

     Regardless of her wealth, life had been tough for Jane.  She almost starved during the winter of 1821, while she waited for her husband’s return.  She lost two baby girls before they were three years old.  She operated a boarding house, raised cotton and cattle, ran a prosperous plantation, traded real estate, and owned nineteen slaves at the start of the Civil War.  She did all this when women were considered second class citizens and not allowed to vote.   Frontier Texas was especially hard on women, and Jane didn’t need to embellish her story.  She was a strong-minded, strong-willed woman who lived in a colorful, exciting, and very dangerous time.  

      Kian, the faithful slave girl, had been allowed to marry and stayed with Jane’s family until her death.  She had four children, whose descendents may still live in the Richmond area.

       Jane died at age 82 in 1880 and is buried in Richmond, near the site of the league of land deeded her by Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and, according to Jane, another of her suitors.

Two Little Mothers of Texas

Believe me, you'd rather see a picture of a building than either of these women.

     While doing research on Jane Long, believed to be the “Mother of Texas,” I discovered that Sam Houston, in a speech in 1856 or so, named Margaret Theresa Wright the “Mother of Texas.”  I wondered how could there be two “Mothers of Texas.” 

     Upon further investigation, I learned that Jane Long had designated herself the “Mother of Texas.”  She based this claim on the birth of her daughter at Galveston on December 21, 1821, which Jane decided was the first Anglo child born on Texas soil.  I imagine she repeated the story so often that she got to believing it.  According to the census records between 1807 and 1826, Jane was way down the list of English-speaking mothers in Texas.

     We’ll get back to Jane Long.  For now, understand that almost everything we know about her comes from stories she told Mirabeau Lamar for his book about the history of Texas.  You should not doubt the veracity of this information, anymore than you doubt what I tell you about being a “hell of a man” when I was young.

     Margaret Theresa Wright’s claim to the “Mother of Texas” title stems from her activities during the Texas Revolution, immediately after the Goliad Massacre.  Maggie was an abandoned wife at the time, living alone on a league of land adjacent to the Guadalupe River, about five miles from Victoria.  A few of the Goliad survivors, wounded and hungry, hid in the woods near the river on her property.   A detachment of General Urrea’s Mexican soldiers camped near her house as they searched for the rebels.

     Maggie discovered the survivors and worked out a way to feed them and nurse the wounded back to health, virtually under the nose of the Mexican army.  In a hollow tree, the Texians left notes advising her of their needs, and she carried supplies for them in her buckets as she went back and forth to the river for water.  Punishment for what she was doing was death, and she risked her life daily to help the men.  She even stole a gun from the Mexicans and gave it to the rebels.

     Imagine the scene in the Mexican camp.

     Sergeant Lopez, noticing Private Arreando has no weapon.  “Private, you miserable s.o.b., just exactly where is your piece?”

     “Sir, which piece do you mean, sir?  The private thinks he has all his pieces right here, sir.”

     “You complete idiot!  Privates are not allowed to think.  I’m speaking of your rifle.  Where is your rifle?  You cannot have misplaced it.  That is against army regulations.  Where is it?”

     “Sir, the private don’t know, sir.  The private went in the woods to take a dump and leaned his gun against a mesquite tree.  When the private came back, the gun, she was gone, sir.”

     “All right, Arreando!  That’s it!  You know the drill.  Get out in the middle of the parade ground; hold your rifle out with your left arm, and your male part in your right hand.  Say, ‘This is my rifle, this is my gun.  This is for fighting, this is for fun.’  Keep doing that till Thursday.”

     “Sir, the private don’t have no rifle to hold out, sir.”

      After being abandoned by her husband in 1835, Margaret Wright lived in isolation on a land grant she had obtained as a widow.  She had been married twice previously—James Williams Hays, her first husband died in 1812, and may have been killed in the Battle of New Orleans.  Her second union, a common law affair, was with Felix Trudeau, the commander of the garrison at Natchitoches, Louisiana.  Trudeau died in 1822 and soon after, Margaret moved to Texas with her five children. 

     She applied as a widow for a league of land in the De Leon Colony near Victoria, and married John David Wright in 1828, before the final title to the land was granted.  She and Wright had two daughters, but the marriage was unhappy and he stayed gone much of the time.  He abandoned her in 1835 and moved to the Rio Grande valley and lived for seven years in Mexico to escape prosecution for bad debts.

     In 1842, Maggie’s errant husband returned to take over her ranch.  Wright was, in today’s jargon, a real piece of work.  He had secretly obtained title to her land grant before he left for Mexico.  Wright discovered, in his absence Maggie had purchased an additional half league of land and deeded six hundred forty acres of it to her son, Peter Hays. Wright was furious and filed suit to reclaim the property, even though he had never owned it.  He lost the suit and he lost the first appeal.

     Before the second appeal was heard, in 1847, Maggie’s son, Peter Hays, was killed in an ambush.  Margaret was convinced that her husband did it.  She filed for divorce on March 6, 1848, charging Wright with habitual cruelty, fraudulent land transfer, and the murder of her son.  Divorces were hard to come by back then, but after a bitter court battle and three appeals to the Texas Supreme Court, Margaret was granted a divorce and awarded half of the joint property, over 5,500 acres and almost 600 head of cattle.

     Margaret Theresa Robertson Hays Trudeau Wright may deserve the title, “Mother of Texas.”  Sam Houston bestowed the name on her in a campaign speech in Victoria as he ran for Governor.  She was probably the first female in Texas to register a cattle brand, the C T, which she registered with the Republic of Texas in 1838.  She risked her life to help Texas soldiers during the revolution.  In 1848, she was granted what may have been the first divorce in the new state of Texas.  She was a courageous Texas pioneer and patriot, a long suffering wife, and the mother of seven children.  She died at age 89 in Victoria on October 21, 1878. 

You may pretend Nicole is either Maggie or Jane.  Ain't she cool?

      We will examine Jane Long’s claim in the next post.

Panchita--Angel of Goliad--Conclusion

Present day view from a cannon port at the La Bahia Presideo near Goliad.

     General Urrea was away in Victoria when Santa Anna’s orders to execute the prisoners at Goliad were carried out by Colonel Portillo on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836.  A young German boy, Herman Ehrenberg, managed to escape the massacre by running behind the thick smoke caused by the executioner’s muskets and diving into the San Antonio River.  He had been shot at, slashed with a saber, splattered with the blood of his comrades, and shot at again, but he escaped into the river and the wilderness beyond.  About thirty other prisoners managed to escape the slaughter.

     Three weeks later, sunburned, disoriented, thirsty, and half starved, Ehrenberg stumbled into a Mexican patrol and was recaptured near Matagorda.  General Urrea recognized the young German in a group of captives, and was delighted to see he had survived.  The general laughed, “…my little Prussian!”  Herman Ehrenberg lived a long and prosperous life and his writings give us much insight into the massacre at Goliad and the disastrous Runaway Scrape that followed.

     Panchita was travelling with Captain Alavez as General Urrea’s troops headed east, finding little resistance.  Most American settlers abandoned their homesteads and were dashing for the safety of Louisiana in what was called the “Runaway Scrape.” The settlers who remained were Mexican sympathizers and welcomed the troops, telling them of rebel movements, feeding and watering their horses, and wishing them well. 

     When word of the defeat and capture of Santa Anna reached General Urrea, he vowed to continue the fight.  The Mexicans had over 2500 seasoned troops in Texas and Urrea had not met a single defeat at the hands of the Texians.  He knew it would be a simple matter to conquer Houston’s rag-tag little army.  He was ambitious, had no respect or affection for Santa Anna, and saw the opportunity to further his career.  General Filasola, an Italian mercenary hand-picked by Santa Anna as second in command, overruled the young General.  He issued orders for complete withdrawal, thereby saving the life of Santa Anna and ceding Texas to the rebels.

     After the withdrawal, Captain Alavez was sent back to Mexico City, where he quickly abandoned the intelligent, beautiful, and strong-willed Panchita.   This should come as no surprise--Panchita had amply demonstrated that she was not good for his military career.  As fantastic as she may have been in bed, she was too idealistic, too moralistic, too headstrong, and too out-spoken to be accepted as an officer’s wife.  Telesforo, very ambitious, eventually worked his way to the rank of Colonel.

     Women, then and now, tend to seek out attractive, worldly men who have much experience in affairs of the heart.  The more charming, handsome, experienced, and desirable to other women, the better.  Once they discover such a man, they latch on to him and settle down expecting to live happily ever after.   When their man continues his normal behavior and starts screwing the neighbor ladies, they are surprised and devastated.  Telesforo found a new playmate and dumped Panchita exactly as he had dumped Augustina and his two children.  Someone else was scratching that little place behind his ear.  Same place—same results--different toe. 

     Panchita, destitute, made her way back to Matamoros and was taken in by families who knew of her kindnesses to the prisoners.  She disappeared from history at this point and, for a time, no one knew what became of her.

     In 1936, Elena Zamora O’Shea wrote of her experiences while teaching school on the Santa Gertrudis Division of the King Ranch, during 1902 and 1903.  After class, two older Kineros came to visit with her once a week.  She read to them from Mexican newspapers and told them of the Texas history classwork her students were doing.  When she mentioned the Goliad massacre, they became very excited and asked questions about ”the Angel of Goliad.”

     One of the Kineros was Matias Alverez, who said he was the son of Telesforo and Panchita.  He took the teacher to meet his mother, Dona Panchita, the Angel of Goliad, who was then bed-ridden in her nineties.  According to O’Shea, “she died on the King Ranch and is buried there in an unmarked grave….Old Captain King and Mrs. King knew and respected her identity.”

     Matias Alverez, the son of Panchita, had eight children, among them a daughter named Rita who married a man named Quintanilla.  Their daughter, Tomasa Alvarez Quintanilla, married Lauro Cavasos, who would become the foreman of the Santa Gertrudis Division of the ranch.

     Tomasa and Lauro Cavasos’ son, Bobby, was an All-American running back for Texas Tech, a Kleberg County Commissioner, and foreman of the Laureles Division of the King Ranch.  His brother, Richard E. Cavasos, was the first Hispanic to become a Four Star General in the U.S. Army, and another brother, Dr. Lauro Cavasos, was president of Texas Tech University and Secretary of Education under Presidents Reagan and Bush.  Dr. Cavasos was the first Hispanic to serve in the U.S. Cabinet.

     There is little doubt that these are descendents of Panchita, but she was not pregnant when she returned, alone and penniless, to Matamoros.  If Telesforo was the father of this clan, as Matias claimed, then he must have returned and re-united with Francisca.   While there is no record of a wedding,  he may have visited often enough to have impregnated her between assignments in the army.  On the other hand, Panchita may have married a man named Alvarez at some later date and he may have sired Matias and his brother Guadalupe.  That could explain the change of name from Alavez to Alvarez.

     The story is fascinating.  All three of the Cavasos’ brothers spent some of their formative years in Lubbock, attending Texas Tech and absorbing the atmosphere of the High Plains.  I cannot help but wonder—was it Panchita’s genes or the clear atmosphere and fresh air of the Panhandle?  Perhaps the combination of the two.    

A Series on the Women of Texas--Francisca Panchita Alavez--The Angel of Goliad

The Presidio at Goliad.  Walls three feet thick and ten feet high.  Fannin abandoned this fortress and allowed his troops to be trapped on the open plains at Coleto Creek.

     

  If Santa Ana had stayed in Mexico and sent the very competent General Jose de Urrea to Texas with orders to “bring me the heads of Sam Houston and Stephen Austin,” the Texas Revolution would have stalled in its tracks. The skulls of Houston and Austin would be artifacts in a museum somewhere in Mexico City, probably next to the Texian flag taken from the Alamo.  The “Napoleon of the West” however, had far too much ego for such foolishness, and was determined to gain the glory involved in quashing the rebellion, no matter how many peons he had to sacrifice.

     To keep General Urrea out of the limelight, Santa Ana sent him and 1200 men to Matamoros, with orders to move into coastal Texas and clean up any pockets of resistance.  The emperor, in the meantime, would lead the bulk of his army to center stage at San Antonio and take out the twenty-six year old, gonorrhea-ridden Buck Travis and his garrison at the Alamo.  Santa Ana’s intention was to put all rebels to the sword—take no prisoners and give no quarter.  General Urrea, a much better soldier, disagreed and considered executing prisoners a blueprint for disaster.

     Telesforo Alavez, a young captain, was paymaster for General Urrea.  Alavez had enlisted in the Mexican Army as a private when he was eighteen years old and, by age thirty-three, had worked his way up through the ranks to captain.  Anyone with military experience knows this guy was special.  Moving through the ranks from enlisted man to commissioned officer requires intelligence, ability, ambition, tact, polish, and good luck.  Captain Alavez was devilishly handsome, immaculately dressed, and very charming.  Women loved him.

     The young captain was married.  His wife, Maria Augustina de Pozo, lived in Toluca with their two children.  In 1834, Telesforo abandoned this family and continued his career in the military, eventually going off to Texas to fight the rebels.  Documents show Augustina tried unsuccessfully for years to get some sort of pension from the army.  She and the children were penniless and starving.

   Free of family responsibilities, Captain Alavez still required that precious commodity only a warm and willing woman can provide. The Mexican army allowed some officers to bring travelling companions, and he was accompanied to Texas by a black-eyed beauty named Francisca, who was assumed to be his wife.  Francisca (Panchita) Alavez generated a lot of attention.  For starters, she was knockout good-looking.  According to those who wrote about her at the time, she was “a high-born, black-eyed beauty.”  Barely twenty years old, she was idealistic, moralistic, and had the kind of beauty that caused lonely soldiers to lie awake at night and bite tent pegs in two.

      Accounts of a high-born woman rescuing Texian prisoners from certain death during the march of General Urrea’s forces are well documented.   From military records following Captain Alavez’s movements, we can surmise that Panchita was most likely that woman.  She was called “Senora Alavez” by one survivor; “Madame Captain Alverez” by another; “Pacheta Alevesco, wife of Captain A.” by yet another.  Some referred to her simply as the “wife of a Mexican officer.”

     General Urrea’s forces fought and won skirmishes at Copano, San Patricio, Agua Dulce, Refugio, and Victoria before capturing the inept Col. Fannin’s entire command at the battle of Coleto Creek.  With the exception of Coleto Creek, Panchita Alavez  was present at all these locations and was almost certainly the lady who intervened on behalf of the prisoners. 

     In Victoria, she and a priest stood between the firing squad and a group of Texians, telling the Mexican officer in charge that he would have to shoot her first to shoot the prisoners. The prisoners were spared.  She was instrumental in having prisoners relocated to Matamoros before they could be executed.  Later, she saved more than forty condemned men at Goliad, then proceeded to harangue Colonel Portillo unmercifully as he marched almost four hundred prisoners to their doom.

     Imagine the scene in Captain Alavez’s tent that night.

     “Francisca, you must cease to interfere with army business.  We must follow the orders of Generalissimo Santa Ana and execute all prisoners.   I will not allow you to interfere again.”

     “You only call me Francisca when you are angry.  Oh Tele, I wish you would call me your little Panchita.  I would be nice to you if you called me Panchita.”

      “Pay attention to me!  You should not have called Col. Portillo a ‘scum-sucking dog.’  He is my superior officer and can make life miserable for me.”

     “I would make life very nice for you if you called me your little Panchita.”

     “You cannot continue to—how nice?”

     “Very, very nice.  How would you like that little place behind your ear scratched?   You know what I mean.  I'll scratch it with my toe”

     “Ooh—my little Panchita—you know what I like.  Just one thing.  Can we hold down the noise tonight?  The quartermaster tells me the army is running out of tent pegs.”

     To be continued.....

Fannin's last request, "Boys, I'd appreciate it if you would not shoot me in the head," was ignored.  He was shot several times in the head  while he sat blindfolded in a chair in this courtyard.  I expect the WPA added the sidewalks and grass about a hundred years later.