Tag: texas

Dad’s Trip to the Texas Centennial State Fair, 1936

In September 1936, Dad was living in Alvord, Texas, on Hubbard Street at the edge of town. There were no house numbers back then, he recalls. His aunt Ovie and uncle Bunk who lived in Petrolia, Texas had made plans to take Dad and his cousin Jimmy to the state fair in Dallas. Dad was about 10 1/2 and Jimmy was about six months older. Uncle Bunk was a tailor and had a shop in Petrolia. Dad said that the night before, Uncle Bunk had driven his family down to Alvord to be ready to leave for Dallas the next morning.

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Lorenzo de Zavala

Manuel Lorenzo Justiniano de Zavala y Sáenz was the first vice president of the Republic of Texas, serving under interim President David G. Burnet.  He was born October 3, 1788 in the Yucatán area of Mexico and died November 15, 1836 at the age of 48 in Channelview, Texas.  His family heritage was Spanish and he was in the third generation of his family to be born on the American continent.

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Crone W. Furr

furrs

Crone Webster Furr was the founder of the Furr Food Store chain, a familiar group of stores in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico.  Furr was born May 8, 1878 in North Carolina into a family that included five brothers and four sisters.  In 1894, when he was still a teenager, his family moved to Collin County, Texas.  Two years later, he married Annie Furr, whose family was unrelated but bore the same last name, and shortly thereafter he began farming a rented farm a few miles out of McKinney, Texas.  Furr was industrious and opened a small grocery store at a crossroads near his farm.

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Bonham, Texas

Bonham, Texas (33°35′2″N 96°10′54″W) is the county seat of Fannin County and is named for James Butler Bonham (1807-1836), one of the defenders who died at the Alamo.  He was born to James and Sophia Butler Bonham on February 10, 1807 in Red Banks, South Carolina.  Bonham was raised in South Carolina and attended but did not graduate from South Carolina College.  He then studied law and began a law practice in South Carolina in 1830 where he would remain until about 1834 when he moved west to Montgomery, Alabama, where the family also had relatives.

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