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 Texas : Features : Columns :
Author Bob Bowman

Texas History
"BOB BOWMAN'S EAST TEXAS"

Formerly "All Things Historical"
A Weekly Look at East Texas History
Syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
NEW
The Quebe Sisters 11-15-09
If Bob Wills were around today, the chances are good that he would be delighted with three teenage sisters from Burleson. Listening to the Quebe Sisters play the western swing music pioneered by Wills in the 1930s and l940s, you realize they are special musicians who love what they’re doing...

Antlers Hotel 11-8-09
"The afternoon the building burned, hundreds of Dibollians stood watching the fire, tears streaming down their faces. Older Dibollians still recall “the day the town cried.”

The Roads of Upshur County 11-2-09
Most East Texas counties name their county roads with numbers or the names of people. But not Upshur County.

East Texas Ghosts 10-25-09
So, you don’t believe in ghosts? Well, read on and we may make a believer of you, especially since this week brings Halloween...

The Settlement of Cuthand 10-21-09
If Marvin Nichols Reservoir is built by Dallas on the Sulphur River in northern East Texas, dozens of small communities will be inundated, ending a rich part of the region’s history. One of the communites is Cuthand...


The Schools We Knew 10-11-09
From the 1800s to shortly after World War II, East Texas was made up mostly of farming communities--small in size, but big in community spirit. Some communities had a small general store and a church, but almost every community had a school which acted as the glue that held each settlement together...

A country legend 10-4-09
Someone once asked country singing legend Ray Price to name his favorite singers. Price paused a minute and finally said, “I have too many to name, but Gene Watson would be right at the top.” But Watson--who was born in Palestine and raised in Paris--is such a low-keyed individual that he considers singing “just something I like to do,” like working on cars in his shop.

The wooden-tracked railroad 9-27-09
It wasn’t the longest railroad in East Texas. And it certainly wasn’t the most profitable. But it taught its builders, the good people of Rusk, how not to run a railroad...

Unique Forest Areas 9-20-09
In the late l980s, a Connecticut-based forest products company launched a program that triggered the protection of some of East Texas' most unique forest areas...

Music in an Old Gym 9-13-09
On weekend nights at Lovelady, a small town south of Crockett in Houston County, it’s not unusual to hear country music wafting through the rafters of an old school gymnasium.

Where did John Wilkes Booth die? 9-6-09
When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he not only found a dark corner in American history; he may have became a part of Texas history, too.

Davy In East Texas 8-30-09
Now, a new book has captured the details of Davy's journey to Texas and the Alamo, where, as every schoolchild knows, he died on March 6, 1836, with more than 180 other defenders.

Ferries in East Texas 8-23-09
Long before modern bridges were built to span rivers in East Texas, ferries were maintained at places where roads crossed streams that were not fordable.

The Twirler
8-21-09
When Audrey Dean Leighton passed away in mid-2005, East Texas lost one of its most entertaining and colorful characters.

Lick Skillet 8-9-09
Lick Skillet is a name that courses through the history of rural East Texas. For more than a hundred years or so, it has been attached to communities, creeks, roads and anything else where people have a sense of humor.

Making history 8-2-09
In August of 1945, when the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Charlie Kimble of Lufkin was part of the American landing party that toured Japan’s shambles and helped free 4,500 Korean prisoners of war.

Ghost Road in Hardin County 7-26-09
The best time to visit the Ghost Road in Hardin County is late in the evening when nightfall descends over the Big Thicket and your imagination begins to push aside conventional thoughts like, “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Skeptical, solid-thinking men and women have driven down the arrow-straight stretch of woodland road between Saratoga and Bragg--and emerged from the Thicket convinced they “saw something.”

The Town of Twin Groceries
7-18-09
A recent caller from Bowie County had an intriguing question recently, “Does East Texas have a town named Twin Groceries?” The answer is yes and no...

A new museum in Rusk 7-12-09
An old grocery store in Rusk now houses memorabilia telling the rich history of Rusk and Cherokee County--one of the oldest counties in East Texas.

Visitors from space? 7-5-09
Mysterious objects supposedly visiting Texas aren’t new. In the late 1800s, several towns in East Texas experienced aerial phenomena.

Bonnie and Clyde 6-29-09
During their Depression-era crime wave between 1931 and 1934, Bonnie and Clyde were suspected of killing at least twelve people, including nine peace officers. Their victims fell in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana...

A gunfight in Hemphill 6-20-09
With deep roots in East Texas, John Wesley Hardin was our most famous outlaw and gunfighter, but many of his raids and shootings in the pineywoods have remained unchronicled. A little-known incident in which he won a gunfight with a Sabine County deputy sheriff at Hemphill...

A cotton gin gets a new life 6-14-09
Thanks to the Depot Museum at Henderson, a cotton gin has now taken its place among other relics of the past...

The Darby-Holcomb Home 6-7-09
An East Texas landmark celebrated its 150th birthday this year, and it still looks as good as it did when it was built.

Country Stores 5-31-09
A friend who lives near Trawick was bemoaning the loss of country stores a few days ago. “When I was a kid, you could drive all over East Texas, and every little town had one or two stores and did a good business because the hometown folks always traded with them...

Jim Reeves and Cheyenne 5-24-09
As a one-time reporter, I covered the funerals of numerous East Texans, but the one I remember the most was that of Jim Reeves, the iconic country singer who grew up at Galloway in Panola County.

Jesse James in Texas 5-17-09
The recent hit movie, “The Assassination of Jesse James,” stirred more than a passing interest in East Texas, especially in Collin, Grayson, Hood and Leon counties. In 1863, during the Civil War, William Clark Quantrill led his guerillas from Missouri to winter quarters in north East Texas. Among the men who rode with him were Jesse and Frank James.

An Unlikely Partnership 5-10-09
They were an unlikely business partnership--a German immigrant, an Irish storekeeper, and two Jewish brothers. But in 1900, Joseph Kurth, Simon W. Henderson, and Sam and Eli Wiener pooled their resources and created the Angelina and Neches River Railroad...


Finding Dextra 5-4-09
Doris, my wife of more than 51 years, loves researching old East Texas communities as much as I, but driving down muddy county roads frightens her as much as a growling bear.

A life of hardships 5-3-09
When you start worrying about the hardships life has thrown at you, consider the plight of the Clyde Thurman Owens family of Henderson County.

Frontier Jails 4-26-09
There are a lot of jails like the old Tyler calaboose all over East Texas and, thankfully, jailhouse restorations are happening with increasing frequency these days in East Texas.

A forgotten town 4-20-09
Deep in the woods of southeastern Angelina County, a few miles from the brown-watered Neches River, the settlement of Philistine lies in eternal slumber. Little has been written about the old community; the morsels of information available have come from word of mouth passed along from generation to generation.

More Blues Brothers
4-12-09
Some of the earliest blues pioneers lived and played in East Texas...

Remembering Fastrill 4-11-09
Some time in the distant future, if Dallas has its way, a new reservoir could be built on the Neches River in Cherokee and Anderson County. If the proposal ever becomes reality, the lake would inundate a landmark in the history of the forest products history--an old logging camp known as Fastrill.

The President for a Day 3-29-09
Barack Obama isn’t really our 44th President; he is actually the 45th. As it turns out, a little-known politician born in Kentucky in 1807 served as President for a single day back in 1849, but he is rarely mentioned in presidential histories...

A grand old library 3-22-09
Most historians spend a considerable time in libraries and, invariably, many of them gravitate to the Jefferson Library, which has a unique history of its own.

A letter from Mark Twain 3-15-09
When William H. Hamman, a two-time candidate for Texas governor, was murdered on the streets of New Birmingham in 1890, he left a legacy as an enterprising businessman and investor. But often overlooked was his friendship with Samuel Clemens...

Pistol Packing Mamma
3-8-09

One of the most popular songs in the U.S. during the mid-1940s was “Pistol Packing Mama,” which became Billboard Magazine’s most played jukebox favorite in 1944. But few know that the song came from East Texas and was written and performed by an Cherokee County musician Al Dexter.

The Bravest Man
3-2-09
Those who lived in Lufkin during the Depression years knew Homer Garrison, Sr., as a kindly, genteel man who gave away pennies to children and felt he had cheated them “because I always got a two-bit smile.”

100-year-old Aggie 2-22-09
When William B Holsonbake of Hughes Springs celebrated his 100th birthday last May 15, someone asked him how he had managed to become a centurion "Well," he said with a twinkle in his eyes, "it could have been because I was an Aggie." And, indeed, he was quite an Aggie.

Bright and Early Coffee and Tea 2-16-09
Once upon a time, Bright & Early Coffee and Tea signs, usually painted on the sides of barns and country stores, could be found in most Southern states, including Texas.


A county seat’s troubles
2-8-09
As Hopkins County’s first seat of government, Tarrant had more troubles than most frontier communities in East Texas. In the end, the misfortunes converged to cause the town’s demise after 24 years of tenuous existence.

Nazis in East Texas 2-2-09
During World War II, German soldiers who had been captured in Europe were brought to the U.S. and conscripted as loggers...

The Wisdom Table 1-25-09
In towns across East Texas, big and small, there’s usually a place where elderly men gather each morning to have a cup or two of coffee--and solve the world’s problems. Well, maybe some of the problems...


The oldest town in Texas? 1-18-09
For longer than most of us can remember, Texans have been squabbling over which community is the state’s oldest. The principal players in this ongoing feud are a couple of East Texas cities, Nacogdoches and San Augustine, and a West Texas village, Ysleta. Now, it appears there may be another contender...

Who? Hoo Hoo. That’s Who
1-12-09

Separated by more than 200 miles, Gurdon, Arkansas, and Lufkin, Texas, share a unique legacy: the Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo, an international fraternity of lumbermen...

Fawil 1-5-09
Fawil, it has been said, is a town that got its name by accident...

Bobo and Blair 12-30-08
Two Shelby County, Texas, communities might have passed into history without as much as a footnote if a singing cowboy had not popularized a marching and dice playing chant by East Texas soldiers.

"All Things Historical"
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bob-bowman.com

Books by Bob and Doris Bowman:
Historic Murders of East Texas
The most unusual and bizarre murders in East Texas
Order Here
More Historic Murders of East Texas
An additional collection of unusual and bizarre murders in East Texas
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Historic Murders of East Texas, Book 3
18 more famous murders
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Historic Murders of East Texas, Book 4
Additional 23 murders between 1834 and 1947
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Bob Bowman Books

Making Music for the Snarks
By Bob Bowman
The unique story of Lufkin's famous Hoo-Hoo Band
Order Here

The Forgotten Towns of East Texas, Vol. I
By Bob and Doris Bowman
66 stories about forgotten town in 45 counties
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Bob Bowman's East Texas
Bob Bowman
A timely gift for any East Texan. Sample a little of East Texas here, a little there--and come away with a good helping of stories you might not know if you didn’t read this book.
Order Here
The Mystery of Lady Bountiful
Bob Bowman, Doris Bowman and Edward Barrett
The story of East Texas’ first timber baroness, a twice-accused murderess
Winner, Best Book of Year, East Texas Historical Association
Order Here
 
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