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KARNACK, TEXAS
Harrison County,
East Texas
FM 134 and FM 449 Near Caddo Lake
5 miles S of Uncertain
16 miles NE of Marshall
Population: Est. 775 (2000)
Southwest
of Karnack (2½ miles) on Highway 43, is Lady Bird Johnson's childhood
home.
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History
in a Pecan Shell
The exotic name is said to have derived from a comparison of distances.
Karnack's distance from Port Caddo (Republic of Texas port of entry)
was said to be exactly the same as the distance between the Egyptian
cities of Karnak and Thebes.
In the late 1890s the community was becoming known for shipping cotton.
A Karnack post office opened in 1898 and oilfields around Caddo Lake
began producing eight years later.
Karnack's population in 1915 was 100 (no figures available on the
population of Karnack, Egypt). A general store, gristmill and cotton
gin were in operation at that time.
By 1927 the population had quadrupled to 400 and peaked at 850 in
the early 1940s.
Southwest of Karnack (2½ miles) on Highway 43, is Lady Bird Johnson's
childhood home.
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Oonie
Andrews, the ghost who lives in Lady Bird Johnson's family home at
Karnack
She is as much a part of the old mansion that Jett Jones, who grew
up with Oonie, simply considers her "a lady who lives in the house
that nobody else can see."
In 1843, Milt Andrews built a splendid plantation-style mansion near
Karnack. Sometime in the l880s, Andrews' 19-year-old daughter, Eunice,
sat alone in an upstairs bedroom when bolt of lightning from a stormstruck
the chimney, raced down a fireplace, and hit Oonie. She was burned
to death.
Over the years, stories arose that the ghost of Miss Andrews never
left the bedroom. Eerie noises, odd happenings, and ghostly apparitions
soon became common. When the Andrews family sold the house to T.J.
Taylor -- Lady Bird Johnson's father -- in 1902, the ghost went along
with the sale. While Lady Bird said she never saw or heard the ghost,
she admitted feeling a sense of apprehension and unease in the house
as a child. - From Ghosts
in East Texas by Bob Bowman
©
Bob Bowman |
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