Various members of the Baylor family have figured into Texas history over the years. John Robert Baylor was a nephew of Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, a judge and a preacher and also co-founder of Baylor University. John Robert was born in 1822 in Paris, Kentucky to John Walker Bledsoe and Sophie Marie Wiedner Baylor. John R. Baylor grew up in a military family, as his father was an Army doctor. John Robert was the brother of George Wythe Baylor, a Texas Ranger and Henry Weidner Baylor, also a surgeon and a Texas Ranger. Henry Weidner Baylor was the namesake of Baylor County in North Texas.
Continue reading John R. BaylorTag: history
Fort Davis
Fort Davis was one of the group of Texas frontier forts. Also located on the short-lived Overland Trail, it provided protection for the travelers and settlers as well as the U. S. Mail in this contested area. It was situated roughly equidistant between Fort Clark to the southeast and Fort Bliss to the northwest in what is now known as the Davis Mountains. We would think of it today as being the northern point of a triangle with the points of the southern base being Marfa to the west and Alpine to the east.
Choctaw Code Talkers
People are probably more familiar with the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, but the Choctaw Tribe is proud to acknowledge the United States military service of its members. As early as the Spanish-American War and in every conflict since, members of the Choctaw tribe have served as American soldiers.
West Texas Cowboy Revivals
The old cowboy camp meetings were started by a Presbyterian minister by the name of William Benjamin Bloys. Bloys was born in 1847 in Tennessee. Around the time of the Civil War, his Unionist family moved to Illinois. Bloys was educated there in Salem Academy, after which he graduated in 1879 from Lane Theological Seminary for the purpose of becoming a Presbyterian minister. He was married the same year to Catherine Yeck.
Continue reading West Texas Cowboy RevivalsSheriff Pat Garrett’s Life in Texas
Sheriff Pat Garrett is best known for having killed the outlaw Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. He was born in Alabama in 1850 and moved with his family to Louisiana where they owned a plantation but their business was destroyed by the Civil War and his father died a few years after the war’s end. Fewer people probably know that when he was younger, he spent some time working as a cowboy in the vicinity of Dallas, Texas. He then went on to work on the LS Ranch out in the Panhandle area (now Oldham and Hartley counties).
Texas History Notebook 