biography – Page 53 – Texas History Notebook

Quantrill’s Raiders, Frank and Jesse James in North Texas

William Clarke Quantrill was known as a leader of a pro Confederate band of guerrillas during the Civil War. He was born in Ohio in 1837. By the age of sixteen, he had become employed as a school teacher in Ohio. He was from a large family the father of which was reportedly abusive, but who died when Quantrill was still a young adult. Quantrill left home when he was still under twenty and moved to Illinois where he was working in a rail yard. He was involved in an altercation in which a man was killed, with Quantrill claiming self defense, but Quantrill was not charged with the killing due to a lack of evidence. During the rest of the 1850s, Quantrill drifted between jobs and locations winding up in the state of Kansas by the end of the decade. One of his jobs was to capture runaway slaves for bounties, which he was likely doing at the outset of the Civil War. He formed a pro Confederate band of raiders having learned guerrilla tactics in other outfits. His band included Frank and Jesse James, brothers Jim, Bob and Cole Younger, Archie Clement, William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson and other individuals.

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Sara T. Hughes

Sara Augusta Tilghman Hughes was a pioneer in the legal profession. She was born in 1896 in Baltimore, Maryland to James Cooke and Elizabeth Haughton Tilghman. Her father was a shipping clerk in the dry goods business. She grew up in Baltimore where she attended Western Female High School, Salem Academy in North Carolina and then Goucher College, graduating in 1917 with a degree in biology. After graduating from college, she taught school for two years before enrolling in night law school classes at George Washington School of Law. During the day, she worked as a police officer in Washington, D. C. and she received her law degree in 1922.

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“Cactus Jack” Garner

John Nance Garner was born in a log cabin near Detroit, now in Red River County, Texas in 1868 to John Nance III (1834-1919) and Sarah Jane Guest (1850-1932) Garner. He was the first of about a dozen children. He attended law school at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, but did not graduate. In those days, it was common to serve as an apprentice to another lawyer and then sit for the Texas bar exam. Jack Garner passed the bar exam and set up a law practice in Uvalde, Texas where he met his future wife, Ettie Rheiner. A life long Democrat, Garner was elected county judge in 1893 and five years later elected as state representative.

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Benajah Harvey Carroll

Benajah Harvey Carroll was born in Mississippi to Benajah and Mary Eliza Mallard Carroll in 1843. The family was of Irish descent with B. H.’s great grandfather having been born in Ireland. The Carrolls moved first to Arkansas before settling in Burleson County, Texas near Caldwell in the late 1850s. He was known in his family as a reader and his brother Dr. J. M. Carroll recalled that on the trip to Texas, Benajah would ride a mule while reading a book. He often would get ahead of the wagons and come to a place to stop for the night. When his family arrived, Carroll would have built a large fire and would be sitting beside it, reading.

Dan Blocker

Dan Blocker was well known as an actor on the long running series, Bonanza. He was born Bobby Dan Davis Blocker to Ora and Mary Davis Blocker in DeKalb, Texas on December 10, 1928. He weighed 14 pounds at birth and is still believed to be the largest baby ever born in Bowie County, Texas. After suffering the effects of the Great Depression, in 1934, the family moved to O’Donnell in West Texas, where his father ran a mercantile store.

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