* * Old Texas

49,175 Views | 337 Replies | Last: 4 yr ago by BU84BEAR
Assassin
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Kicking off a really fun thread we had on BFans. Anything old and Texas based.

A little Baylor stuff to punt this thing inside the 10;



Baylor Athletic Building and Grandstand, around 1920. From the book, "Baylor Diamond Jubilee 1845-1920". Published in 1921.
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Assassin
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Some of the original land grants
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Assassin
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Texas bucks!
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Assassin
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Texas cowboy Bill Pickett - invented "bulldogging"
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BU84BEAR
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Oldest Known Photo of anything in Texas and of the Alamo:

http://www.wideopencountry.com/picture-of-the-alamo/
saabing bear
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Assassin said:


Is that a tarp over the upper seats?
Roy Rogers
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Great thread.
"Sic em yesterday, sic em today, sic em forever"
BU84BEAR
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Arlington Journal
Thursday September 22, 1904

To Extend Wireless System.

Fort Worth, Sept. 14. Fort Worth is to be headquarters for a vast western territory for the De Forest wireless telegraph. F. G. McPeak is in receipt of instructions from St. Louis to secure a site for a monster tower to be erected, which will be tall enough and sufficiently isolated to prevent possible interference with other electrical appliances. Mr. McPeak thinks he will locate it on the north side. Operations at Fort Worth are suspended for the time being.
Assassin
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Another cool map of the Texas land grants
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Assassin
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Bridge over the Rio Grande at Laredo, looks about 1920 or so
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Assassin
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I'll be your cowboy... and you can be my cowgirl...
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BU84BEAR
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Bartending was a respected profession in the late 1800's. Membership in the Bartenders' International League of America union came with many benefits One of which was a burial plot in a grave provided by the Union. 18 bartenders are laid to rest together in Oakwood Cemetary in Fort Worth in 3 rows together, appropriately called Bartender's Row.



Assassin
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BU84BEAR said:



Bartending was a respected profession in the late 1800's. Membership in the Bartenders' International League of America union came with many benefits One of which was a burial plot in a grave provided by the Union. 18 bartenders are laid to rest together in Oakwood Cemetary in Fort Worth in 3 rows together, appropriately called Bartender's Row.




Never heard of that before
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Assassin
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Assassin said:



I'll be your cowboy... and you can be my cowgirl...
just noticed that the cowgirls are riding side saddle. Thought that was a European and fancy east coast thing
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BU84BEAR
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The Union's logo. Notice, it is the same logo as on the first headstone in Bartender's Row:

BU84BEAR
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BU84BEAR
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One of Ft Worth's most influential "boarding house" operators (Madame) in Ft Worth's Hell's Half Acre. Her string of bordello's were located where the Ft Worth Convention Center is now located.



Irish born Mary Porter was on a first name basis with many influential businessmen, including W. H. Ward and E. B. Daggett. Both men "occasionally" posted bond on her behalf. As her prosperity increased, the madam paid larger fines. Just in the four year period from 1893-1897, Porter had 130 offenses on record, yet never spent a night in jail.

Ward was proprietor of the famous White Elephant Saloon, and owned the Ft Worth Cats at the time. Daggett was the only white son of E.M. Daggett, the grandfather of Ft Worth. E.M. had a son and a daughter by one of his slaves.
BU84BEAR
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Some boarding house ladies:

BU84BEAR
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Early map of Ft Worth (1876)

BU84BEAR
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Cotton Palace-Waco TX (former home of Baylor Football (though it was played there after this picture)

Roy Rogers
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If you're on Facebook, I highly recommend a page called Traces of Texas. Fascinating stuff.
"Sic em yesterday, sic em today, sic em forever"
Moondoggie
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Assassin said:

Kicking off a really fun thread we had on BFans. Anything old and Texas based.

A little Baylor stuff to punt this thing inside the 10;



Baylor Athletic Building and Grandstand, around 1920. From the book, "Baylor Diamond Jubilee 1845-1920". Published in 1921.


I wonder if this is what's left of memorial stadium near the old cotton palace grounds. Well I just answered my own question looking at the posts above me.
Moondoggie
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BU84BEAR said:

One of Ft Worth's most influential "boarding house" operators (Madame) in Ft Worth's Hell's Half Acre. Her string of bordello's were located where the Ft Worth Convention Center is now located.



Irish born Mary Porter was on a first name basis with many influential businessmen, including W. H. Ward and E. B. Daggett. Both men "occasionally" posted bond on her behalf. As her prosperity increased, the madam paid larger fines. Just in the four year period from 1893-1897, Porter had 130 offenses on record, yet never spent a night in jail.

Ward was proprietor of the famous White Elephant Saloon, and owned the Ft Worth Cats at the time. Daggett was the only white son of E.M. Daggett, the grandfather of Ft Worth. E.M. had a son and a daughter by one of his slaves.


I would welcome any info on Waco's famous madam Mollie Adams;
BU84BEAR
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pitchman said:

BU84BEAR said:

One of Ft Worth's most influential "boarding house" operators (Madame) in Ft Worth's Hell's Half Acre. Her string of bordello's were located where the Ft Worth Convention Center is now located.



Irish born Mary Porter was on a first name basis with many influential businessmen, including W. H. Ward and E. B. Daggett. Both men "occasionally" posted bond on her behalf. As her prosperity increased, the madam paid larger fines. Just in the four year period from 1893-1897, Porter had 130 offenses on record, yet never spent a night in jail.

Ward was proprietor of the famous White Elephant Saloon, and owned the Ft Worth Cats at the time. Daggett was the only white son of E.M. Daggett, the grandfather of Ft Worth. E.M. had a son and a daughter by one of his slaves.


I would welcome any info on Waco's famous madam Mollie Adams;


http://wacohistory.org/items/show/93

The first noted record of prostitution in Waco is documented in an 1876 city directory. Matilda Davis of 76 N. Fourth St. is listed as a madam with 10 occupants in her house. The women listed their occupation as actress. Waco had no playhouse at the time. In 1879, the city issued the first license for a bawdy house for an annual fee of $200 and a good behavior bond of $500.

Waco officials legalized prostitution within the Reservation in 1889 making Waco the first town in Texas and the second in the United States to condone a controlled red-light district. Madams paid a yearly fee of $12.50 for each bedroom and $10.00 for each bawd. Prostitutes paid an additional $10.00 license fee and paid the city physician $2.00 twice a month for a medical exam. This guaranteed they didn't ply their trade outside their designated territory and were disease free. The city prohibited drinking within the area. Fines for violators ranged between $50 and $100. With the large number of prostitutes it's easy to see the city benefited from trade within the Reservation.

Prostitutes were prohibited from being seen on the streets outside the Reservation yet they were allowed to trade with local businesses. No more than two at a time could travel via a city hack to the stores. Usually tradesmen sent clerks to the curb with merchandise. Some storeowners required the prostitutes to stop at the back door.

Life was hard for these working girls. Violence abounded in the bordellos as did drug and alcohol use and abuse. Though licensed, the police had little to do with the establishments. The madams disciplined the women in their houses and maintained order among their clientele. On occasion the police were called when robberies or assaults occurred.


Waco's most famous madam was Mollie Adams. She had worked in another house but in 1890 opened her own three-room operation. By 1893 she had a seven-room establishment. In 1910 she'd obtained enough wealth to commission a house to be built by the same firm that built the First Baptist Church of Waco and the building now the Dr. Pepper Museum. Her home at 408 N. Second St., had indoor plumbing, electric fixtures, two parlors, a dance hall, and a bell system wired to every room. Her portrait, included here, hung over the fireplace.

Though wealthy at this point in her life, she died in an indigent home in 1944. Lorna Lane, the madam in Madison Cooper's epic novel, Sironia, is supposedly modeled after Mollie Adams.

In 1917, the US Government ordered cities with military bases to shut down red light districts to protect the health of America's soldiers. Not wanting to lose Camp MacArthur and its 36,000 troops, the city shut down the Reservation in August of 1917. It is rumored some bawdy houses managed to continue business through the 1920s.

It's interesting to note that the Waco Convention Center sits where the Red Light District, known as the Reservation, was once located.

The link is a similar but different writeup about The Reservation and the woman pictured there is Mollie Adams.
BU84BEAR
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Although most Waco residents today are totally unaware of the reputation of the Two Street district and the name Mollie Adams, in the early 1900s Mollie was an infamous character in Waco. She was beautiful. She was a financial success. And she was a woman of many connections in Waco, although she was shunned by proper society. Because of these connections, it was rumored that the city officials overlooked many of her indiscretions and allowed her more liberties than were given to the other madams on the Reservation.

Ms Adams' astute business skills can be traced in Waco's bawdy register. She first appeared in the mid-1880s as merely a prostitute, but then she acquired a brothel in 1891 consisting of three rooms. She slowly expanded to seven rooms, then she moved and was evidently financially successful enough to add indoor plumbing and electricity to her establishment. The house also had two parlors, a dance hall, a bar, several bedrooms and a bell system that could summon a particular woman for a certain customer with discretion. Interestingly, the architect for Ms Adams' brothel was also the architect for First Baptist Church Waco.
BU84BEAR
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Golly, Miss Mollie

Imagine my surprise to open the Trib on July 27 (2011) and see my picture of Mollie Adams gazing back at me in the story, "When paying for sin was legal in Waco." The last time I saw the original was at Fort Fisher. My copy is the centerpiece of my "garage museum" and she is like an old friend. I also have two brass swinging lamps which hung in her establishment. I can only imagine brandy sipped as cigar smoke swirled around those lamps in the red-velvet drawing room. It was 1910 and Mollie's glory days.

The items are still in my former home on Lake Highlands, but Mollie's picture has moved with me.

My father-in-law E.R. "Bubba" Nash used to regale us with tales of his childhood when he and his brother, Joe, rode their bicycles from their home at 15th Street and Columbus Avenue to The Reservation and peeked through the lace curtains. Frequently, they would come face to face with some of Waco's "pillars of propriety" at Miss Mollie's.

Mollie was a colorful, charismatic figure in her heyday, but she died penniless in 1944 in the McLennan County Home for Indigents at age 74. She was given a proper burial in Oakwood Cemetery, paid for by two prominent businessmen. I believe Mollie would have liked that.

Helen Nash-Weathers, Waco
Assassin
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Isaac Boyett, messenger, 1913 in the Waco Red Light district
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Assassin
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Billy the Kid born John William Guillot in Waco, Texas in 1936. Billy started his career in the 1950s, where he established himself as a wrestling 'bad guy'
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Assassin
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Mishmashed Old/New downtown Houston
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Assassin
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The old Playland Park in Houston - the precursor to Astroworld
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ABC BEAR
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Assassin said:



Bridge over the Rio Grande at Laredo, looks about 1920 or so
It looks like a woman in a burka (on right) just walked over from the Mexican side. This problem may have been going on longer than we thought.
Assassin
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ABC BEAR said:

Assassin said:



Bridge over the Rio Grande at Laredo, looks about 1920 or so
It looks like a woman in a burka (on right) just walked over from the Mexican side. This problem may have been going on longer than we thought.

That - or maybe Batman is Hispanic...
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BU84BEAR
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Brazos Flood of Waco: 1908

BU84BEAR
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Paul Quinn College Art Class 1916
Assassin
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BU84BEAR said:



Paul Quinn College Art Class 1916
Just imagine - no AC, coat and tie required... dang
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