Texas Civil War Museum

The Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth boasts the largest collection of Civil War memorabilia west of the Mississippi River. It is housed in a modern facility which opened in 2006, but I did not have the opportunity to tour it until a Saturday in April 2017. Accompanied by my brother Mike, I found the museum busy with tourists. Three of our great-grandfathers served in Confederate units from their home states: Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. I have toured virtually all of the important Civil War battlefields, and I lectured about the conflict for four decades. For nine consecutive Decembers (when U.S. History classes study the Civil War) I organized Confederate encampments on the campus of Panola College. Since becoming State Historian I've provided programs for Sons of Confederate Veterans chapters in Carthage, Tyler, Center, Athens, Lufkin, and Marshall, as well as United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters in Longview and Henderson. Any of these SCV or UDC members, any Civil War re-enactors would enjoy a visit to the Texas Civil War Museum.  

 

Mike O'Neal at the entry memorial

 

There are 15,000 square feet in Fort Worth's Texas Civil War Museum, but the core of the collection began with the Texas Confederate Museum late in the 19th century in a room in the State Capitol building. The Albert S. Johnston Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy obtained the room for the collection of the uniforms, weapons, flags, and artifacts they began to gather. As a result of statewide appeals, the collection grew rapidly, and under the Texas Division of the UDC the Texas Confederate Museum was moved into the historic Land Office Building. By the 1990s items from the collection were on loan to the Bob Bullock Museum and to several other reputable museums, while the Texas Association of Museums, the Summerlee Foundation, and the UDC sought a permanent home.  

Robert E. Lee served in Texas before the Civil War.

 

In 2006 the Texas Civil War Museum opened on the west side of Fort Worth. Now there are excellent battle dioramas, artillery, and a vast collection of female antebellum clothing. The magnificent collection belongs to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and there is a UDC Office in the museum. The gift shop features a great deal of Gone With the Wind memorabilia.

 

 

  

 

Other sites in Texas that Civil War buffs will relish must start with the Sabine Pass Battleground, where Lt. Dick Dowling led a 46-man artillery company to victory over a Federal invasion force of 17 ships and 5,000 men. There is an impressive statue of Dowling. The last battle of the Civil War was a Confederate victory led by Col. John S. "RIP" Ford at the Palmito Ranch Battlefield. In Corsicana the Pearce Collection Museum on the campus of Navarro College offers superb Civil War displays. Perhaps the most striking monument in the Texas State Cemetery is the gravesite of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, killed while commanding Confederate forces at Shiloh.   

Wiley College Honors Convocation

On Monday evening, April 10, I was on the campus of Wiley College in Marshall for the Annual Honors Convocation. More than 140 students were designated to receive certificates recognizing their academic achievements as President's Scholars (3.80 to 4.00 GPA) or Dean's Scholars (3.79 to 3.50 GPA). I was present at the invitation of Dr. Bernadette Bruster, Academic Dean and Chair of the Honors Convocation Committee. Dean Bruster asked me to address the Convocation, and a full page of the 12-page program was devoted to the credentials and a color photograph of the State Historian.

The event was held in the Julius S. Scott, Sr., Chapel. We entered the auditorium in a formal processional, accompanied by organ music played by Dr. T. Bernard Clayton, Professor of Music. Following an invocation, we were entertained by a magnificent organ selection from Dr. JuYeon J. Lee of the music faculty.

I was introduced by Dr. Raquel Henry, Assistant Professor of History. My remarks related highlights of Wiley College, which was established in 1873 and is the oldest African-American college in Texas. The students were unaware, for example, that the Wiley Wildcats won three national football championships, one each in the decade of the 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s. More familiar was the triumph of the Wiley debate teams under English professor and poet Melvin B. Tolson, portrayed by Denzel Washington in the 2007 motion picture, The Great Debaters. Along with anecdotes and facts about their institution, I told the honorees about my admiration for higher education students who are academic achievers.

A professional photographer was present to record the moment when, as each honoree, having been presented his or her certificate, ascended the stage and shook hands with Dr. Bruster. As the first student walked toward Dean Bruster, I was surprised when I was summoned from my chair to help welcome each student. I was informed that the honorees wanted the Texas State Historian to shake their hands and offer words of congratulations and pose with Dean Bruster and each fine student. I was immensely proud to be included in the ceremony in this unexpected manner.



Afterward we repaired to the nearby Freeman P. and Carrie E. Hodge Building, where refreshments and a reception had been prepared. Wiley College could take pride in the memorable occasion that had been staged to honor their best students.   

Dr. Bruster presented a plaque to me commemorating the State Historian's participation in the 2017 Honors Convocation.

 

In 1907 Wiley President Matthew Dogan obtained a Carnegie Grant to erect a public library on the Wiley campus. Thirteen of the 33 Carnegie library buildings in Texas still stand, and four are still used as libraries. During the 1970s the Carnegie structure on the Wiley campus was converted to an administration building.

Following the devastating campus fire of 1906, a new President's Home was built, utilizing student labor.

 

The Chisholm Trail at 150

I spent the first weekend in May representing Texas at the 150th anniversary celebration of the Chisholm Trail, held in Caldwell, Kansas. Caldwell, located just above the Kansas-Oklahoma  line, became known as the "Border Queen."  For more than a decade the Border Queen was a wild trail town, the first place since leaving Texas that cowboys had access to liquor and other recreational possibilities. Before driving their herds farther north to a Kansas railhead, drovers could drink and cavort with sporting women in Caldwell. Where liquor flowed so freely there were brawls and shootouts, along with lynchings, and violence continued after Caldwell became the Chisholm Trail railhead. Indeed, the casualty list in and around the Border Queen was greater than that in Abilene or Wichita or Dodge City. 

On the approach to Caldwell from the South, these silhouettes were erected
by volunteers in 1995.

This arch overlooks the principal intersection of Main Street.

When I was invited as State Historian to represent Texas at the Caldwell Chisholm Trail Festival, it was explained to me that there would be dignitaries from Kansas and Oklahoma. Of course, I felt that there SHOULD be a Texas representative, since both the cattle and the cowboys came from the Lone Star State. I was asked to make an address about frontier Caldwell and to sign copies of a book I had written, Border Queen Caldwell, Toughest Town on the Chisholm Trail. Through the years I had written articles about the Border Queen, as well as a biography about the murderous city marshal, Henry Brown, and I donated to the Border Queen Museum a scale model of Caldwell in the 1880s. Through all of these projects I was aided by a remarkable Caldwell historian, Karen Sturm. Karen has energy, enthusiasm, and organizational gifts, and she has put together a number of heritage events for the Border Queen, including the Caldwell Chisholm Trail Festival.  

Caldwell's first Opera House was saved and restored by volunteers.

The scale model of early Caldwell that I researched and built is still displayed by the Border Queen Museum.

The most famous of all cattle trails, the Chisholm Trail, opened in 1867, and during the next 18 years more than 4 million longhorns were driven up the historic route to Kansas railheads. The first railhead was developed by cattle buyer Joseph G. McCoy at Abilene, where Texas drovers enjoyed raucous sprees after months on the trail. By 1871 tracks were laid toward the south, and Abilene became nearly deserted, while Newton had one season as railhead before the tracks moved on to Wichita, which remained end-of-track for the Chisholm Trail during the rest of the decade.

 Historical markers have been placed all over downtown Caldwell. This one quotes me from a book I wrote, "Border Queen Caldwell: Toughest Town on the Chisholm Trail."

 But a farmers' quarantine law blocked the Chisholm Trail, even though business was too lucrative to abandon. So in 1880 railroad tracks were extended 49 miles southwest to Caldwell, then another three miles to the state line, where a large stockyard was erected. Texas steers entered the stockyard through gates in Oklahoma, before being driven onto cattle cars without violation of the quarantine law. Caldwell thus became the last railhead on the Chisholm Trail, until the penetration of Texas by railroads ended the famous Long Drives and closed the cattle trails.



With fellow Texans, David and Rena French



On Friday night a "Ghost Walk" up and down Main Street attracted
an unexpectedly large crowd.

 

The Caldwell Chisholm Trail Festival began on Friday, May 5, when area fourth-graders, along with early-bird tourists, toured the museums and exhibits and historic sites. The town's first opera house displayed a traveling exhibit, "Chisholm Trail Sesquicentennial: Driving the American West, 1867-2017." At the Border Queen Museum a Western art collection was exhibited, while upstairs a "Robbers Roost" displayed a bordello suite.   

 

With sporting lady

The original Boot Hill was north of town, and the few remaining markers were moved to Caldwell's permanent cemetery.

 

Hundreds of people came to town for Saturday's activities, which included stagecoach rides around town, mechanical bull rides, calf roping, longhorn cattle, Chisholm Trail Arts and Crafts Show, a street shootout, a Beard and Mustache Contest, a Chuck Wagon Dinner, an Old West Poker Tourney at a local saloon, and a Saturday night street dance. On Sunday morning all local churches combined for a Cowboy Church Meeting, and later there were two quilt shows. There were other weekend activities, too numerous to mention. It was a splendid celebration, staged by a community of 1,100 people with a deep appreciation of the important and colorful place in history held by their town.

Deputy Sherriff Cash Hollister was fatally wounded in a shoot-out with outlaws outside town.

An impressive G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) monument at the Caldwell Cemetery

Vendors

I used a poster showing my great grandfather, Jess Standard, with a trail crew.

 

Caldwell Mayor Mark Arnold reading a proclamation on our flatbed stage
(Karen Sturm is at left.)



The 150^th birthday cake at a private lunch on Saturday

My great-grandfather, Jess Standard, trailed cattle from Lampasas County to Kansas during the 1870s and 1880s. At Caldwell during May 5-6-7 I paid tribute, as State Historian, to Jess and the hundreds of other Texas cowboys who drove cattle herds up the Chisholm Trail. And like the drovers of long ago, I had a grand time in the Border Queen.  

With Karen Sturm, the dynamic Boss Wrangler of the Caldwell celebration

 

With Jesse Chisholm, great-great-grandson and namesake of the pioneer who blazed the Chisholm Trail

Signing books for a long line at the Border Queen Museum

Sporting ladies at the entrance to the upstairs Bordello replica

Sporting ladies in the Bordello parlor

Descendants of San Jacinto

One of the most memorable events of a busy State Historian spring schedule was the annual meeting of the Descendants of San Jacinto, held at Brady's Landing Restaurant on Saturday, March 25. I first met a large number of these Descendants on April 21, 2013, when I delivered the keynote address at the San Jacinto Monument. These men and women gathered for a group photo on the monument steps, and I was deeply impressed. During the ensuing years I've renewed several of these acquaintances at State Historian appearances during chapter meetings of Sons of the Republic of Texas and Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

With President General Fred Mead

 

At an SRT meeting in Conroe I encountered Fred Mead, currently serving as President General of the Descendants of San Jacinto. Two of Fred's ancestors played a key role in capturing Santa Anna following the Battle of San Jacinto. Fred and I have kept in touch, and he was kind enough to invite me to speak at the 2017 meeting of the Descendants of San Jacinto. He specifically asked me to talk about the Battle of San Jacinto, a program he had heard on a couple of previous occasions.    

 

Denton Bryant delivering a memorial for recently deceased Sam Houston IV

 

Brady's Landing Restaurant is located adjacent to the townsite of Harrisburg. Standing beside Buffalo Bayou at a site only a few miles west of San Jacinto Battlefield, Harrisburg was burned by General Santa Anna shortly before the famous battle, and Sam Houston's army saw the charred ruins on their way to San Jacinto. My program on the Battle of San Jacinto concludes with a dramatic incident that occurred a few hours after the battle, late on the afternoon of April 21, 1836.

Fred Mead and Judge Sharolyn Woods

With Marianne Messenger, Educator of the Year from Conroe ISD

I arrived early on the morning of the Descendants of San Jacinto luncheon. I found historical markers describing early-day Harrisburg, along with the pioneer cemetery and the homesite of Mr. and Mrs.  Harris, founders of the town. By the spring of 1836 Mrs. Harris was a widow, and she opened her home to David G. Burnet, interim president of the Republic of Texas, and his cabinet. They were on the run from Mexican forces, and when Santa Anna arrived only to find that they had escaped, he ordered the town destroyed. It was in these ruins on April 21 that a band of Texian refugees came, trapped, they thought, and soon to be captured by Mexican troops. But at the height of their desperation, a horseman suddenly galloped into sight . . . . 

Site of the Harris Home (founders of Harrisburg)

Venerable Glendale Cemetery

 When I entered Brady's Landing Restaurant Fred Mead was conducting the annual business meeting.  The lunch was excellent, and the State Historian's description of the battle produced a standing ovation. Afterward the Descendants presented several awards, inducted new officers, and offered a memorial to Sam Houston IV, who had passed away the previous week. Following a benediction the meeting adjourned, but a number of members wanted signed copies of my biography of Sam Houston, and it was a pleasure to visit with the Descendants and hear the stories of their illustrious ancestors.

Historical Marker at the Frost Bank