Henry Ossian Flipper was born March 21, 1856 to Festus Flipper (1832 – 1918) and Isabella Buckhalter Flipper (1837 – 1887) in Thomasville, Georga, both of mixed race. Accordingly, he was born a slave. In the 1870 census, Festus was shown to be a cobbler or shoemaker. Henry entered Atlanta University, a historically Black college, in 1873. While still a freshman there, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, said to be the the fifth such appointment of a person of African American descent. Though his time at West Point was difficult due to prejudice, he graduated in 1877 as a 2nd Lieutenant. Accordingly, Flipper was the first African American graduate of West Point and the first African American commissioned officer in the United States Army.
Continue reading Henry O. FlipperTag: frontier times
Adobe Walls
It is now a ghost town in Hutchinson County, far north in the Panhandle, but in the 1800s it was a community that briefly came together during what would be the latter days of buffalo hunting in north Texas. It is also the site of two battles between the mostly Anglo inhabitants and the native tribes that came together to try and eliminate them.
Continue reading Adobe WallsWilliam Mosby Eastland
William Mosby Eastland was born in Kentucky on March 21, 1806 to General Thomas Butler Eastland and the former Nancy Mosby. William was one of at least about six siblings, mostly males, born to the couple before Nancy died in 1814. Shortly afterward, his father remarried and at least three more children were added to the family. The Eastlands were a military family. As he came up through the ranks, Thomas Butler is known to have served as Army quartermaster in Kentucky before William was born. Prior to the War of 1812, the family relocated to White County, Tennessee where they apparently remained until Thomas Butler died in 1860.
Continue reading William Mosby EastlandFort Duncan
Fort Duncan was founded on March 27, 1849 by Army Captain Sidney Burbank. Transferred there were three companies of the 1st United States Infantry. It was situated on the Rio Grande River. Later in the year 1849, he post was named Fort Duncan, after Col. James Duncan, a hero of the Mexican–American War.
Black Seminoles of Texas
The account of the Black Seminoles in Texas begins in Florida. Slavery had been abolished in Spanish Florida since the late 1600s and the area became a refuge for freed as well as fugitive slaves. Though some were taken as slaves by the Native tribes that resided there, those of African descent are generally believed to have interacted peacefully with the native tribes, with some amount of intermarriage and more significantly, the adoption of the tribal ways and customs. The people known as Seminoles are sometimes referred to as being a conglomeration of a number of tribes living in the area, including the Creek Tribe, although the Creek Tribe is also usually referred to separately. Tribes included the Lower Creeks, Mikusukis and Apalachicola, among others and they are believed to have migrated there from the areas now represented by the states of Georgia and Alabama.
Texas History Notebook 