The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Measured by its results, the Battle of San Jacinto, which was fought 188 years ago today, was one of the most decisive battles in world history. The freedom of Texas led to the annexation of Texas by the United States and then to the Mexican… pic.twitter.com/yFIMUeyBDw

— Traces of Texas (@TracesofTexas) April 21, 2024

Those stinking Mexicans

https://www.yallogy.com/p/peggy-mccormack-damns-sam-houston?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Those stinking Mexicans

https://www.yallogy.com/p/peggy-mccormack-damns-sam-houston?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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That was an interesting read! Thanks for sharing!

On this day in 1689, Spanish explorer Alonso De Len discovered the ruins of a French settlement, Fort St. Louis, on the Texas coast. The fort had been established by Ren Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in the summer of 1685. In February 1685 La Salle, seeking the mouth of the Mississippi River, had landed 280 colonists, including 100 soldiers, at the mouth of Matagorda Bay in Spanish-claimed territory. The explorer made a temporary camp on Matagorda Island while he sought a more secure location farther up the bay. In April he chose a site on an eminence overlooking the "Rivire aux Boeufs." Though disease devastated his men, La Salle saw the building well under way by autumn, when he set out to explore the surrounding country. In January 1687 he departed on his last journey, leaving at the fort scarcely more than twenty men, women, and children in the charge of the Sieur de Barbier. In late 1688 or early 1689 the Karankawa Indians gained entry to the fort under guise of friendship and murdered all the occupants but five children. Meanwhile, news that the French had founded a settlement on the northern Gulf Coast had agitated New Spain in the mid-1680s. As a result, De Len led four expeditions between 1686 and 1689 seeking to find and destroy the French installation. The fourth expedition left Coahuila on March 27, 1689, with a force of 114 men, and found the deserted settlement on April 22.

Are we Spartans?

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/iBaNb3MY15XhrogW/?mibextid=NqTh7c

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Today is Roy Obrison's birthday. He would have been 88 years old, having been born in Vernon, Texas on April 23, 1936. His most enduring song, probably, is "Pretty Woman," which was written for Roy's first wife, Claudette Frady, by Roy and… pic.twitter.com/AQxCtgW67P

— Traces of Texas (@TracesofTexas) April 23, 2024

Copied from Traces of Texas

Late 1890s

"While the Babbs lived in the cedar and sacahuista house on the [Pecos] river, Mr. Babb and the older boys were gone away from home one time, and Mrs. Babb was at home with the children: Maudie, about 15 years old, Rosa, thirteen; Myrtle, three; Dillard, about two; and Walter, who was a small baby. During the night, Mrs. Babb got up to tend to Walter and as she walked around on the dirt floor a rattlesnake bit her on the foot.

Mrs Babb and the older girls killed the snake and lanced the place where Mrs. Babb had been bitten. Mrs. Babb told Rosa to go to the nearest neighbor's for help. Rosa saddled up a horse and started out in the middle of the night, heading up the river toward the Netherlands' house. She had to cross the river twice and ride several miles through rough brush country. As soon as Rosa reached the Netherlands, Mrs. Netherland rode back with her to help treat the snakebite. They killed a chicken, cut it open, and put Mrs. Babb's foot into the carcass so that the warm body could draw out some of the poison. Next they put black, crysillic salve, which was often used as a worm medicine, on the bite. After other remedies had also been tried, Mrs. Babb drank whiskey until she could feel no pain.

Bill Ike Babb and son Will were camped on Havensilla Draw. At daylight, one of the children was sent after them. When Babb got home, he sent Will to Juno to get a doctor, but by the time the doctor arrived there was little left for him to do: he provided additional treatment to Mrs. Babb and scolded the others for giving whiskey to a snakebite victim. The helpers never knew which of the remedies was most beneficial, but Mrs. Babb soon recovered."

No wonder she never made it on the BOR

"Hello, suckers!'' was her trademark greeting,

Texas guinan born in Waco, Texas, in 1884 was a famous bohemian character, the kind of wild American woman who in her time enthralled and inspired a generation of night crawlers.

Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan lit out of Texas at a young age to forge a career as a singer, showgirl, rodeo gal, raconteur, and Vaudeville performer. She was considered the first cowgirl to star in the movies, appearing in silent films with titles like The Gun Woman, Getaway Kate, The Girl of the Rancho, and The Hell Cat.

Like so many ambitious, audacious young people, Guinan soon made her way to New York City, arriving in 1906. One of the first women to helm a nightclub, she stocked the tiny, notorious 300 Club, at 151 West 54th Streeta hangout for luminaries, from George Gershwin to Rudolph Valentino to Gloria Swansonwith 40 nearly naked fan dancers. She was arrested several times for serving liquor (it was rumored that she once hid the Prince of Wales in the kitchen when the cops arrived), but she maintained she never sold a drop. These brushes with the law only made her more notorious.

How famous was Guinan? The eminent Edmund Wilson described her as "a formidable woman, with her pearls, her prodigious gleaming bosom, her abundant yellow coiffure, her bear trap of shining white teeth." Journalist Lois Long (herself quite a formidable womanshe was the quintessential flapper/reporter; her nom de plume was "Lipstick") wrote about Guinan in the October 9, 1920, issue of The New Yorker: "Mind you, there is one woman who gets away with vulgarity. And that, of course, is Texas Guinan . . . . The club is terrible. It is rowdy, it is vulgar, it is maudlin, it is terrifically vital . . . . At any rate, the place, after two o'clock, is always jammed to the doors . . . . Oh, it is a tough and terrible place, but everybody should go once in a lifetime."

When Guinan died in 1933she was in Chicago, on the road appearing in a show called Too Hot for Paris7,500 people attended her funeral. Left-wing journalist Heywood Broun was a pallbearer. The casket was open at Guinan's request, "so the suckers can get a good look at me without a cover charge."