The legends of the Lost Silver Mines of the Hill Country date back to the mid 1700s, alternately referred to as the San Saba Silver Mine, the Llano Silver Mine, the Los Almagres Mine and the Spanish Silver Mine. The stories appear to possibly involve several locations of buried treasure in the same general area. The following is intended to be a high level look at the mystery.
Continue reading Llano’s Lost Silver Mine StoriesCategory: folklore
Chepita Rodriguez
Josefa “Chepita” Rodriguez ran an inn on the old Cotton Road between Refugio and Aransas Pass around the time of the Civil War. Sometimes her name is spelled Chapita or Chipita, but Chepita appears to be the most common spelling. Her story began when John Savage, a cotton dealer and horse trader, was found dead, his body wrapped in burlap in the Aransas River near San Patricio.
Unsolved Mystery: Billy the Kid
Saturday, December 29, 1950, there was a funeral in Hico, Texas for O. L. Roberts (some accounts call him William Henry Roberts) who claimed to be Billy the Kid. He had come to Hico in the late 1930s from his previous home in Gladewater, claiming to be Billy the Kid, who was born Henry McCarty and also known as William Bonney. We’ll refer to the outlaw as Bonney.
The Cowgirl Who Passed Herself Off as a Cowboy
Samuel Dunn Houston told of his experiences on the cattle trails in the latter part of the 1800s. He had worked his way up from being a hand on the trail to being a trail boss, having previously done enough cattle drives that he felt that he had made more trips over the cow trail from Southern Texas and New Mexico than “any man in the country.” He had been engaged by the Holt Live Stock Company of New Mexico to head up a trail drive in the spring of 1888.
Continue reading The Cowgirl Who Passed Herself Off as a Cowboy
Sally Scull
Depending upon where you may have heard of Sally Scull, you might get the impression that she was a Texas Civil War heroine, a “black widow” husband-killer or just about anything between the two. You may also see her name spelled Skull as well as Scull, but for this purpose, we will use the latter. She had a reputation for being able to shoot as straight with her left hand as with her right. She usually carried two six shooters, often wore mens’ clothing and had a rough vocabulary that she used freely, and often.
TEXAS HISTORY NOTEBOOK 