Just Talkin' Texas

The month of March always makes me think of Texas Independence Day, which makes me think of Sam Houston. Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on his birthday, March 2. It doesn’t get more Texan than that!

Just Talkin' Texas

William Barton lived here and there in Texas until he settled at the mouth of an unnamed tributary flowing in from the south side of the Colorado River in 1837. The tributary took his name and today is still called Barton Creek.

Just Talkin' Texas

Frontier artists and writers left many visual and verbal images of Indians hunting buffalo from horseback. Relatively little notice was given, however, to the Spanish ciboleros, who predated their Indian counterparts.

Just Talkin' Texas

Texas trivia question: What is the only Texas county named for a woman? Hint: The same remarkable woman also gave her name to a river and a national forest in East Texas. Answer: Early European explorers knew her as Angelina, the Little Angel.

Just Talkin' Texas

Will and Florence Harrington built their ranch house 90 miles south of a tent city called Amarillo. Will got the board-and-batten walls up before the first blizzard of 1888 struck. The Harrington’s nearest neighbors were line riders from a place called Sod Camp on the sprawling XIT Ranch.

Just Talkin' Texas

“From my earliest youth, I was very fond of fishing and hunting. Before I was able to handle a gun, I could bring down game with a bow and arrow with the dexterity of an Indian.”

Just Talkin' Texas

When the great herds of buffalo had all but disappeared from the Southern Plains, the Indians moved out of the Texas Panhandle and onto reservations. Settlers began taking up land, so O.W. Williams found work surveying the uncharted High Plains in 1878.

Just Talkin' Texas

Before he reformed, Andrew Jackson Potter had a knack for getting into trouble. He admittedly had made it a practice to “drink, get drunk, blaspheme, fight, gamble and horse-race” since the age of 10.

Just Talkin' Texas

Daniel Boone made his mark in Kentucky. In his later years, however, the legendary frontiersman lived in Missouri and continued adventuring westward even as an octogenarian. Apparently, the buckskin-clad Boone kept his sense of humor, as well as his wanderlust, to the end.

Just Talkin' Texas

In 1808, Anthony Glass came to the Taovaya villages of the Wichita Indians on the Red River, near present-day Spanish Fort, Texas, east of today’s town of Wichita Falls. Glass found several hundred Wichitas living there.