biography – Texas History Notebook

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.

Frances Cooke Lipscomb Van Zandt and Isaac Van Zandt

Although her husband Isaac Van Zandt is probably better known, Frances Cooke Lipscomb Van Zandt’s pioneer story is interesting. She was born March 4, 1816 to William Lipscomb and Ann Day Cooke Lipscomb. Isaac was born July 10, 1813 in Franklin, Tennessee to Mary Margaret Isaacs Van Zandt and Jacob Van Zandt. Isaac’s ancestry was Dutch, but both his grandfathers had participated in the Revolutionary War.

Acknowledging Frances’ 90th birthday, she and her daughter Ida gave a newspaper interview in which they provided more details about Frances’ life in the early days on the frontier of Texas. Frances was married to Isaac Van Zandt in Franklin County, Tennessee on December 18, 1833 when she was 17 and he was 20 years old and working as a merchant in the family store. Around two years later, the couple decided to make their home in Coffeeville, Mississippi along with their daughter Louisa and son Khleber. Life was good, but only for a short time until 1837 when there was a widespread economic depression, leading Isaac to close his business. Isaac studied law and was admitted to the Mississippi bar. Then in 1838, the family decided to move to the Republic of Texas and set out to make the journey by wagon. They got as far as the Louisiana-Texas border before running low on funds. Isaac and the family stopped at an abandoned garrison known as Camp Sabine, formerly a post of the United States Army, located east of the Sabine River. There they remained for the rest of that year before moving on to northeast Texas.