texas – Page 53 – Texas History Notebook

Apollo 13

Apollo 13 may be the most well known Apollo mission, save for the first lunar landing mission, Apollo 11. It included a crew of three, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. It was also conceived to be a lunar landing, but that part of the proposed mission was aborted after two days into the flight when an explosion of an oxygen tank damaged the service module. The flight had launched on April 11, 1970 from Cape Kennedy. It was the seventh manned mission of the Apollo series and was intended to be the third to have included a lunar landing.

Ivory Joe Hunter

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Ivory Joe Hunter, 63, who wrote between 2,000 and 3,000 country, blues and popular songs, died Friday of lung cancer in a Memphis, hospital. Among his best-known numbers are “My Wish Came True,” “I Need You So,” “Ain’t That Lovin’ You, Baby,” “and “I Almost Lost My Mind.” – The Kane Republican (Kane, Pennsylvania) Sat. Nov 9, 1974.

Ivory Joe Hunter was born to a musical family in 1914 (some accounts say 1911) in Kirbyville, south of Jasper, Texas. There is not much between Kirbyville and the Texas-Louisiana border other than farm land and woods. His father Dave Hunter was a guitar player and laborer and his mother Anna Smith Hunter was a gospel singer and a housewife. In the 1920 federal census, Ivory Joe was one of twelve children. Both of his parents seem to have died while he was young. By the 1930 census, Ivory Joe was living with an older sister Georgia and her family, along with several more of the Hunter siblings in the Port Arthur area where he attended school. Some accounts say that Ivory was a nickname, but as far back as the 1920 census, he was listed with the name Ivory Joe Hunter and his name was given to him by his mother.

Sanger Brothers

Phillip, Isaac and Alexander Sanger are credited for having founded Sanger Brothers. They were three sons of Elias and Barbetta Sanger of Bavaria. Elias was a wine merchant and farmer. Isaac had been born in Bavaria (Germany) in 1836 and emigrated to the United States when he was 16, in 1852. Lehman (born in 1838) and Phillip (born in 1841) followed him when they each turned 16. They had all learned the mercantile business from Elias. Isaac worked for a few years in Connecticut for an uncle before coming to Texas in 1857. There he settled in McKinney and co-founded a store, Baum and Sanger. Lehman soon joined them. The partners relocated their store to Weatherford for a while and gradually expanded to other north Texas towns including Decatur, adding Morris Lasker as an associate.

Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter was born in 1890 at Indian Creek, Brown County, Texas to Harrison Boone Porter and the former Mary Alice Jones, both of whom were native Texans. Although it is sometimes discussed, as far as we can determine, she is not closely related either to explorer Daniel Boone or author William Sydney Porter (perhaps better known by his pen name as O. Henry). Her mother died when she was about two years old, after which she, her father and her siblings lived with her widowed grandmother, Catherine Anne Skaggs Porter in Kyle, Hays County, Texas. Her father was a school teacher and/or a farmer. Her grandmother died when Katherine was eleven years old out in Marfa, Texas when they were on a family visit there. Afterward, Katherine moved with her family wherever they were living until she married at age fifteen. She was very bright, but did not have an extensive formal education.

Don Baylor

Don Edward Baylor was a major league baseball player. He was born in Austin in 1949 to George E. Baylor and Lillian Joyce Brown Baylor, and was one of at least three siblings. His father George had served in the United States Army and then been employed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad out of Austin. Don was at the least a fourth generation Texan with his father, grandfather Carey and great grandfather Amsted all having been born in Texas.