Willie Newbury Lewis was an author who became known for her work pertaining to the early days of Anglo settlement in North Texas and the Panhandle. Her biographical information has been recounted in numerous newspaper articles, which are the main sources for this brief sketch.
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William Sidney Porter (O. Henry)
William Sidney (sometimes also spelled Sydney) Porter was an American author. He was the son of physician Algernon Sidney and Mary Jane Swaim Porter and was born in North Carolina in 1862. His mother Mary Jane died in 1865 when he was three years old and Porter was raised by his paternal grandmother. He was by all accounts highly intelligent, though he had little formal education. Porter had attended school through the age of fifteen and became a licensed pharmacist, working in his uncle’s pharmacy.
Liz Carpenter
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland Carpenter was born in Salado, Bell County, Texas on September 1, 1920 to Thomas Shelton and Mary Elizabeth Robertson Sutherland. Her father was a state highway inspector and her mother was a homemaker. Liz was the middle child of five children. According to traditional genealogical sources, her mother, Mary Elizabeth Robertson was the daughter of Maclin Robertson who was in turn the son of Sterling Clack and Sarah Maclin Robertson. Sterling Clack Robertson was born in 1785 in Tennessee and came to Texas as empresario of his own colony, settling in what would become Bell County near the current town of Salado. Robertson was also a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. On Liz’s father’s side, her Texas roots went back just as far. Her father was Thomas Shelton Sutherland III. His father was Thomas Shelton Sutherland II and his father was George Sutherland, born in Alabama and by profession a cowboy and rancher, who is noted as having served in the Texas Army and fought in the Battle of San Jacinto.
Horton Foote, Author
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Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was born in 1916 in Wharton, Wharton County, Texas which is located about halfway between Rosenberg and El Campo on Highway 59, heading southwest from Houston. His parents were Albert Horton Foote, Sr. and Harriet Gautier Brooks Foote, both of whom native Texans. Horton was the oldest of three brothers including Tom Brooks Foote and John Speed Foote. The brothers were all named for ancestors, with Horton being named for ancestors on his father’s side. Horton’s great great grandfather Stephen Daniel Foote had come to Texas from Virginia just before the Civil War. His paternal Texas roots were deep.
Texas State Longhorn Herd
The Longhorn has come to be one of the best loved symbols of Texas. How they came to be here is an interesting story of its own to be dealt with later, but by the 1830s they were fairly plentiful and they ranged widely in Texas.
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