If you are looking for a good book about Texas history, Six Years With the Texas Rangers is very well written and quite interesting, first published in 1921. Though James B. Gillett was a Ranger for only six years, these were some of the six most important years for the post-Reconstruction Rangers in the Frontier Battalion.
Continue reading James Buchanan Gillett, Texas RangerAt the outset of the war, foreign prisoners of war were not a major consideration for the federal government, but as the war progressed, tens of thousands of foreign prisoners needed to be placed all over the United States. At the height of the program, Texas had some three dozen prison camps. They were located from as far north as Dalhart, as far west as El Paso, in the northeast to within a few counties of Texarkana to several on the Gulf Coast. In all, it is estimated that the United States held between 400,000 and 500,000 prisoners with roughly 20% of them held in Texas camps. The Geneva Convention provided that prisoners be moved to areas that were close to the climate where they were captured. Accordingly, many of Texas’ prisoners of war were German prisoners who surrendered in North Africa and Texas was deemed to be an appropriate site for them.
Larry McMurtry was born in Archer City, Texas to William Jefferson and Hazel Ruth McIver McMurtry, a ranching family. He relates that his family had been ranchers since the 1870s and that it had included several trail drivers among his uncles and other relatives. Accordingly, some of his tales were developed from stories he had been told when he was a boy. McMurtry lived on a ranch south of Archer City near a local landmark known as “Idiot’s Ridge” until he was old enough to go to school and his parents moved into town.
Continue reading Larry McMurtry
James Earl Rudder was born in the community of Eden, Texas in Concho County to Dee Forest Rudder and Annie Clark Powell Rudder. Upon graduation from high school, he attended college in Stephenville at the former John Tarleton Agricultural College in 1928 and 1929 before transferring to Texas A&M, previously known as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. After receiving his degree in Industrial Education, he began teaching and coaching football at Brady, Texas. He remained in Brady for a few years before becoming an instructor and coach at John Tarleton Agricultural College in 1938.
Bonnie and Clyde’s crime spree was short, only a few years, but whenever there happened to be an event involving them in a small town, people living there remembered it. There were at least two such events in North Texas’ Wise County.
Texas History Notebook 