history – Page 16 – Texas History Notebook

Lufkin, Texas

The town of Lufkin, Texas was founded in 1882 as the Houston, East and West Texas Railway planned a stop on its line to connect Houston,Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana, per the Texas Almanac. The article continues to say that the railroad company’s president, Paul Bremond, named it for his friend Abraham Parker Lufkin.

Ignacio Zaragoza

Probably most people who are familiar with Texas have heard of the annual celebration called “El Cinco de Mayo” or just “Cinco de Mayo,” but fewer may know the actual event that it celebrates and memorializes.

Tex Rickard

George Lewis “Tex” Rickard was a well known boxing promoter and the founder of the New York Rangers hockey club. He was born January 2, 1870 in Kansas City, Missouri to Robert Wood Rickard and Lucretia J. Ferguson Rickard. When George was about four years old, his family moved to Texas, first settling in Cambridge, a few miles south of the Red River in Grayson County. They later moved to Henrietta in Clay County in North Texas where Robert worked as a carpenter. In the 1880 census, the family consisted of Robert and Lucretia, daughter Minnie, son George, son Merlin, son Robert Jr. and daughter Kate. Another sister named Alice was born after the census had been recorded. Robert was a veteran, having previously served four years in the Union Army during the Civil War and died of unknown causes in 1881 at the age of forty-three. Lucretia was left to raise her six children. She married Samuel C. Adams, a grocer, later in the 1880s. As the children of Lucretia and her late husband Robert matured and moved away, she and Samuel had two more children, one of whom lived to be an adult. They were living in Henrietta as of the 1900 census. Two years later, Samuel died from complications of asthma. Lucretia survived him another thirty-five years.

Saragosa Tornado, 1987

On May 22, 1987 a violent tornado touched down outside of the small community of Saragosa, Texas and stayed on the ground for about three miles with a width of roughly 1,000 yards. When the twister left the area, the residents began to recover from the storm to find that dozens of people had been killed and many more were injured.

The C. C. Slaughter Family

C. C. Slaughter was the oldest son of George Webb Slaughter (1811 – 1895) and Sarah Mason Slaughter (1818 – 1894). C. C. was born to the couple February 9, 1837. He was married to Cynthia Ann Jowell on December 5, 1861. To this union were born six children:

George Morgan Slaughter (1862 – 1915)
Minnie Slaughter (1864 – 1955)
Dela Slaughter (1866 – 1956)
Eugene Ewell Slaughter (1868 – 1870)
Robert Lee Slaughter (1870 – 1938)
Edgar Dick Slaughter (1873 – 1935)

C. C. and Cynthia had moved their family to Dallas in 1873. Two to three years later, Cynthia Ann became ill and passed away in her sleep on May 17, 1876. Her obituary was not specific on the cause, calling her death “unexpected” and saying that she had been ill with “a complication of diseases.” This left C. C., then about thirty-nine years old, to take care of his five surviving children who ranged from around three to about fourteen years old.

In his excellent biography (1) of C. C. Slaughter, author David J. Murrah relates how C. C. and his second wife, Carrie Averill met at a church social in Kansas later in 1876. Carrie was the twenty-four year old unmarried daughter of a local Baptist minister and his wife, Alexander McCormick Averill and Rebecca F. Morton Averill. After a long and somewhat methodical courtship, the couple was married on January 17, 1877. To this union were born the following children:

Christopher Columbus Slaughter (1879 – 1940)
Walter Webb Slaughter (1880 – 1881)
Alexander Averill Slaughter (1881 – 1931)
Carrie Rebecca Slaughter (1883 – 1958)
Nelle Louise Slaughter (1892 – 1964)