Texas History Notebook

Santa Claus Bank Robbery

Friday, December 23, 1927 in Cisco, Texas began like any other day in the Eastland County town. People were going about their business and finishing their Christmas shopping when around noon, four bandits stepped into the First National Bank of Cisco and announced that there was a robbery. The next day, an eye witness named Marion Olson gave his account as reported in the December 24, 1927 issue of the Fort Worth Record Telegram. Marion was a recent graduate of University of Texas at Austin and was home to visit his family during a Christmas break from a semester of Harvard Law School.

Charles Bellinger Stewart

Charles B. Stewart was born February 18, 1809 in Charleston, South Carolina to Charles and Adriana Bull Stewart and was the second of their two children. His full name was Charles Bellinger Tate Stewart. Charles was about eleven years old when his father died in Georgia in 1817 and was not quite twenty years old when his mother died in 1825.

Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, Inc.

Zelick Greenberg was the face of the smoked turkey business for 40 years, beginning in 1942. His son Sam Greenberg took over in 1982. The business began with Samuel I. Greenberg, father of Zelick. Samuel and his wife Selma Solinger Greenberg were both immigrants who became naturalized United States citizens. Each was born in Europe, Sam in Warsaw, Poland and Selma in Koenigsberg, Germany. Per one of the Federal census reports (and not surprisingly), both grew up in households that spoke Hebrew as the primary language. Sam came to the United States around 1900, apparently not accompanied by any adult relatives when he was still a young boy of about 13 to 15 years old. He was later routed to Galveston (the port of entry for many Jewish immigrants in Texas) by friends, arriving around 1903. Both of Sam’s parents and numerous other family members later joined Sam in Texas. Selma and Sam were married in Tyler in 1909. Their sons, Isadore and Zelick were each named for a father of the couple. Sam and Selma settled in to life in Tyler. Over the years, Sam had various jobs including working as a blacksmith, later as a kosher butcher and he also began a dairy business.

Peter Aloysius Molyneaux

Peter Molyneaux was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on April 18, 1882 to James Molyneaux and Rosana Lawler Molyneaux and was the oldest child of the couple. There is not a lot of biographical information available regarding his parents but his father James was listed as a day laborer in the 1900 census. Peter was one of two sons and five daughters in the family.

Peter is not known to have had a great deal of formal education early on, but began to work in the newspaper business while he was still in his upper teens. By 1898, he was working for the New Orleans Daily News and soon became a reporter for that publication. Molyneaux later worked for other local publications including the New Orleans Item and Daily States.

Texas Becomes a State

In an 1892 newspaper interview, historian John Henry Brown recounted certain key dates and steps which occurred in the months leading up to Texas annexation by the United States as the 28th state in the union.