Joseph Stephen Cullinan

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(Image credit: Houston Chronicle)

The name Joseph Cullinan might not be that familiar to some Texans regarding the state’s oil boom, but he was involved in the development of several of the early large Texas oil fields and had significant interests in several companies that are major energy companies today.

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Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz

Chester William Nimitz came from a German Texas family having a long seafaring tradition.  His grandfather, Charles Henry Nimitz, a former seaman of the German Merchant Marine, broke the string when he moved to the Hill Country of Texas to landlocked Fredericksburg and built the hotel that bears the family name.

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John Camden West

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John Camden West, Jr. was a lawyer, a judge, an educator and an author in Waco, Texas. He was born on April 12, 1834 in Camden, South Carolina from which he and his father got their names.  He was 20 years old when he graduated from the University of South Carolina. He had a brother, Charles S. West, who by that time was already practicing law in Austin, Texas, and John joined him there in 1855.

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Warren Angus Ferris

Warren Angus Ferris was a surveyor and tracker.  He is credited with being one of the first persons to map out Dallas County (prior to the better-known John Neely Bryan) and several other parts of Texas.  He was born the day after Christmas in 1810 to Angus and Sarah Ferris of Glen Falls, New York, a family with a Quaker and Puritan heritage.  He also had a younger brother named Charles Drake Ferris.

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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.

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