Saturday, December 29, 1950, there was a funeral in Hico, Texas for O. L. Roberts (some accounts call him William Henry Roberts) who claimed to be Billy the Kid. He had come to Hico in the late 1930s from his previous home in Gladewater, claiming to be Billy the Kid, who was born Henry McCarty and also known as William Bonney. We’ll refer to the outlaw as Bonney.
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The Cowgirl Who Passed Herself Off as a Cowboy
Samuel Dunn Houston told of his experiences on the cattle trails in the latter part of the 1800s. He had worked his way up from being a hand on the trail to being a trail boss, having previously done enough cattle drives that he felt that he had made more trips over the cow trail from Southern Texas and New Mexico than “any man in the country.” He had been engaged by the Holt Live Stock Company of New Mexico to head up a trail drive in the spring of 1888.
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C. M. “Dad” Joiner
Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner was a familiar name to folks in the early days of the oilfields in Oklahoma and Texas. The East Texas town of Joinerville is named for him. Joiner is credited for having discovered the East Texas oil field in 1930 when his third wildcat well came in west of Henderson, Texas.
Angelina Eberly
Angelina Peyton Eberly is credited with having saved Austin as the capital of Texas by preventing the state archives from being removed to another location. While her name may not be as familiar as others, her story is one worth knowing.
Death of Oliver Loving
Charles Goodnight wrote of the death of his friend Oliver Loving in the book The Trail Drivers of Texas by J. Marvin Hunter. The book is widely available for purchase, and also can be downloaded. In it, Hunter has assembled sketches and observations of the cattle drivers of the 1800s.
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Texas History Notebook 