The Hidden History of Texas

Hank Wilson
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Here is where you will find The Hidden History Of Texas podcast. The episodes cover Texas history from the earliest days of Indigenous peoples to Spanish exploration, control by Mexico, the Anglo’s take over, Texas becomes part of the U.S., the confederates move in, and back to the U.S. The audio files are accurate and try to tell the story as best as they can from all sides of the issues. The hidden history of Texas is a history replete with heroes and villains of all sorts. There were good and bad people throughout Texas history, just as there were throughout world history.

Episodes

  1. Oct 25

    Episode 101 — How Texas Families Became Families

    How Texas Families Became Families Welcome to the Hidden History of Texas. I'm your host, Hank Wilson. In our last episode, number one hundred, I told you about my ancestors William Gates and his son Samuel, who were among the earliest settlers in Stephen F. Austin's colony. We followed their journey into Mexican Texas in 1821, and how their descendants eventually became part of the history of the Texas Hill Country. I also shared something my father once told me. He said I reminded him of his uncles Don and Lonnie, because I was always wondering what lay beyond the next hill. Well, apparently that particular family characteristic hasn't disappeared. Because the more I research my family's history, the more I discover there's always another hill, another document, another question, and another story waiting to be uncovered. And that brings us to today's episode. How did Texas families become families? Not simply how people arrived in Texas, but how their lives intersected. How marriages connected families, how circumstances sometimes separated them, and how generations later we find ourselves trying to understand the people whose decisions made our own lives possible. To explore that question, we're going to follow two very different family journeys. One began among the earliest settlers of Mexican Texas. The other began somewhere in Norway. And eventually, those journeys came together. A Young Man from Norway Sometime around 1820 or 1821, a boy named Johannes Olsen was born in Norway. Exactly where he was born remains uncertain. For years, our family research associated him with Bergen, a historic Norwegian port city. And his United States Army enlistment document, dated November 27, 1845, actually lists Bergen as his birthplace. But one of my brothers traveled to Norway and discovered that Bergen was a common departure point for emigrants. So while the Army record gives Bergen as his birthplace, we don't know whether that was where Johannes was actually born or simply the city he associated with his departure. We don't know when he decided to leave Norway. We don't know what prompted him to leave. Was he looking for economic opportunity? Adventure? A chance to own land? Or was he simply one of those people who wanted to know what was beyond the next hill? We don't know. But somehow, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. And by November 1845, he was in New Orleans. On November 27 of that year, he enlisted in the United States Army. And by then, he was using another name. John Wilson. Now, this is where the story becomes particularly interesting. I have a copy of his enlistment document. It's an old document, and the copy isn't especially clear, but there's something remarkable about it. The name John Wilson appears on the form. But above the signature area, written in beautiful, flowing handwriting, is the name Johannes Olsen. And between John and Wilson, there's an X-shaped mark. My father, who spent his career in the United States Navy, examined that document years ago. He believed Johannes had written his Norwegian name himself. His reasoning was that an American Army recruiting officer would have had little reason to add the recruit's Norwegian name. Now, that doesn't prove who wrote it. But it's an interesting interpretation from someone who spent his professional life in the military. And whenever I look at that document, I wonder whether I'm seeing something more than an enlistment. Perhaps I'm looking at a young immigrant acknowledging the name he was born with, even as he began a new chapter of his life under another. It wasn't unusual for nineteenth-century immigrants to Anglicize their names. Johannes becoming John would have been a relatively straightforward change. Olsen becoming Wilson is another matter. And exactly why he made that change remains unknown. But the enlistment document gives us something tangible. A record created in 1845, identifying a young Norwegian immigrant who was about to begin five years of service in the United States Army. John "Norway" Wilson Within months of John's enlistment, the United States would be at war with Mexico. The Mexican-American War began in 1846. John served in the United States Army during that period, and eventually he was stationed at Fort Martin Scott, near Fredericksburg, Texas. And here's another fascinating detail. In a record associated with Fort Martin Scott, John was referred to as John "Norway" Wilson. Think about that. A man who had been born Johannes Olsen, enlisted as John Wilson, and was later identified at a frontier Army post as John "Norway" Wilson. Three versions of his name, all connected to one man's journey. We don't know whether "Norway" was a nickname used by fellow soldiers, an administrative identifier, or a description added by someone compiling the record. But it suggests that his Norwegian background remained part of how he was remembered or identified. And there's something else about his military service that interested my father. According to his research, John was apparently careful with his military pay. My father believed the records indicated John saved much of his earnings rather than spending them. I haven't personally verified all the original records behind that conclusion, but the story fits with something we know about John's later life. In June 1856, he purchased approximately 1,280 acres along the Blanco River from James Montgomery. The reported price was four hundred and fifty dollars. Think about the journey that represents. A young man leaves Norway. Crosses the Atlantic. Enlists in the American Army. Serves during a war. And eventually purchases a substantial tract of land in the Texas Hill Country. And here's something I've wondered about for years. John settled in the area around Wimberley, along the cliffs overlooking the Blanco River. I've spent a great deal of time in that part of Texas. And those limestone cliffs, rising above the river, have sometimes reminded me of the landscapes of Norway. Now, before anyone writes to explain the geological differences between the Texas Hill Country and the Norwegian fjords, believe me, I understand. They're very different landscapes. But I can't help wondering whether John saw something familiar in those cliffs and that river. Did they remind him of home? Did the landscape influence his decision to settle there? Or was the land simply available at a price he could afford? We don't know. And that's one of the difficulties of studying people who lived nearly two centuries ago. We can sometimes reconstruct what they did. Understanding why they did it is another matter entirely. Marriage, Children, and Loss On November 15, 1857, John Wilson married Merniza Humphries. I have a copy of their marriage license, issued in Travis County, Texas. The license was issued on November 11, 1857, and the marriage was performed four days later. The officiant identified himself as a justice of the peace in Hays County. And there's something interesting about that document. The groom is identified as John Wilson. Not John Carle Wilson, as he appears in some later genealogical entries. Just John Wilson. It's a small distinction, perhaps, but it's an important reminder that family trees and original documents don't always agree. Merniza was a widow. Her first husband, Robert Humphries, had died. Her maiden name appears in family records with different spellings, including Wansley and Wonsley. Her parents were Joseph and Martha Wonsley. John and Merniza had two children. Their daughter, Mary Missouri Wilson, was born around 1859. Their son, William Ollie Wilson, was born in December 1860. And William Ollie would eventually become one of my direct ancestors. But the family's life together was tragically brief. Merniza died around 1861. Her children were still very young. According to our family history, William Ollie was raised by Merniza's sister, Sally Thompson, in the Johnson City area. Mary Missouri appears in John's household in the 1870 census. And here we encounter something family trees don't always explain. A genealogical chart might show a husband, wife, and two children. But the lived reality was far more complicated. Children were sometimes raised by aunts, uncles, grandparents, or other relatives. A parent's death could divide a household. A second marriage could bring children from different families together. And those arrangements might shape the rest of their lives. That's why genealogy becomes much more interesting when we stop looking at names and dates and begin asking what actually happened to the people behind them. A Second Family and an Unanswered Question John Wilson eventually married again. His second wife was named Augusta. Together, they established another household and raised additional children. John died in August 1884, according to my father's research. Family tradition says he died after being kicked by a horse. His estate went through probate, and those records reportedly identify numerous heirs. But there's another mystery connected with the Wilson family. And it involves a man named Ole Olsen. In the 1850 census for Guadalupe County, Texas, a Norwegian-born saddler named Ole Olsen appears. He was approximately thirty-one years old and was living with a woman named Mary, also born in Norway. Now, Ole Olsen was hardly an unusual Norwegian name. But my father discovered that the name also appeared in records associated with the probate of Joseph Wonsley, John Wilson's father-in-law. Those proceedings took place in 1857 and 1858. ...

  2. Oct 15

    Before There Was Texas: My Family and Austin’s First Settlers

    Episode 100 — The Hidden History of Texas Welcome to the Hidden History of Texas. I'm your host, Hank Wilson. Well, here we are. Episode number one hundred. When I first began this podcast, I wanted to tell stories about Texas that weren't always found in our history books. Not simply the famous battles, the politicians, or the larger-than-life personalities, but the ordinary people whose lives helped shape the place we call home. And over the course of ninety-nine episodes, we've traveled through centuries of history. We've explored Spanish Texas, Mexican Texas, the Republic, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the generations that followed. We've talked about the people who came here seeking opportunity, the people who were already here, and those who were brought here against their will. We've explored communities that flourished, communities that disappeared, and people whose contributions were sometimes forgotten. But for this hundredth episode, I thought we'd do something a little different. We're going to take a journey back to 1821. And this time, I have a personal connection to the story. Because while researching my family history, I discovered that some of my ancestors were among Stephen F. Austin's earliest colonists. Their names were William Gates and Samuel Gates. And their story is about more than one family. It's about migration, opportunity, uncertainty, and the complicated beginnings of Anglo-American settlement in Mexican Texas. It's also about something that I think has followed my family through the generations. A desire to discover what lies beyond the next hill. A Revolutionary Who Kept Moving West William Gates was born in North Carolina in 1759. Now, think about that date. When William was born, the United States didn't exist. The thirteen colonies were still under British rule. According to our family's genealogical records, William served during the American Revolutionary War, and our lineage has been recognized through the Daughters of the American Revolution. That means William lived through one of the most significant transformations in American history. He saw the colonies become an independent nation. He witnessed the creation of a new government. And he lived through the early decades of the United States as the country began expanding westward. But William apparently wasn't content to remain in one place. By the 1790s, the family had connections to Kentucky. According to our family research, William appeared in the 1820 federal census in Pike County, Mississippi. The family also spent time in Miller County, Arkansas Territory. And then, in 1821, William decided to head for Texas. Now, here's something I find particularly interesting. William was approximately sixty-two years old. He had already lived through a revolution, raised a family, and traveled hundreds of miles across the American frontier. And apparently, he still wasn't finished exploring. I sometimes wonder what motivated him. Was he looking for better land? Did he see opportunities for his children and grandchildren? Or was there simply something about the prospect of a new beginning that appealed to him? We can't know for certain. But whatever his reasons, William Gates was about to enter a territory undergoing another enormous political transformation. Mexico was becoming independent from Spain. And Texas was about to enter a new chapter of its history. The Texas They Entered Before we follow William Gates into Texas, we need to remember something important. Texas wasn't an empty wilderness waiting to be discovered. Indigenous peoples had lived in the region for thousands of years. The Caddo had established agricultural communities and extensive trading networks in East Texas. Karankawa communities lived along portions of the Gulf Coast. The Comanche were a major power across the plains. And numerous other Indigenous peoples maintained their own territories, communities, and traditions. Spanish settlements had existed for generations. San Antonio was already more than a century old. Nacogdoches was an established settlement and an important gateway into East Texas. And Tejano families had developed communities, ranches, businesses, and a distinctive culture. So when American settlers began entering Texas in larger numbers, they weren't creating a society where none had existed. They were entering a region with a long, complicated history. There had been trade, cooperation, competition, and conflict among the different peoples who lived there. And in 1821, the political situation was changing dramatically. Mexico achieved its independence from Spain that September. That meant the settlers arriving in Texas during the final months of 1821 were entering territory belonging to a newly independent nation. And the rules governing immigration, land ownership, and settlement were still evolving. Moses Austin's Dream The story of Austin's colony actually begins with Stephen F. Austin's father, Moses Austin. Moses was a businessman who had experienced serious financial difficulties. He believed Texas offered an opportunity to rebuild his fortunes. In 1820, he traveled to San Antonio seeking permission from Spanish authorities to bring three hundred families into Texas. His proposal received approval in early 1821. But Moses Austin died in June of that year, before he could carry out his plans. The responsibility fell to his son, Stephen F. Austin. And Stephen inherited quite a challenge. He had to recruit settlers, negotiate with government officials, arrange land grants, and establish communities in a territory where transportation and communication were difficult. And just as he was beginning, the Spanish government that had approved his father's proposal ceased to govern Texas. Mexico had become independent. Austin now had to navigate a new political system while trying to carry out a colonization agreement originally approved under Spanish authority. But he continued. And among the families willing to take the chance were William Gates, his son Samuel, and other members of their extended family. December 27, 1821 According to our family's historical records, the Gates family arrived in Nacogdoches on December 27, 1821. Just four days after Christmas. William was approximately sixty-two years old. His son Samuel, born in 1794, was twenty-seven. They had traveled through territory where roads were primitive, transportation was difficult, and the comforts of home were often few and far between. Nacogdoches was an important stopping point. It was an established community that had served as a crossroads during the Spanish period. And it remained a gateway for people entering East Texas. According to the family account, it was there that the Gates family connected with Stephen F. Austin and made arrangements to participate in his colonization project. Afterward, they continued west toward the Brazos River. Their destination was the region that would eventually become Washington County, near the future town of Washington-on-the-Brazos. And there's something remarkable about this journey. William Gates had already lived through the American Revolution. He had watched the United States emerge from British colonial rule. And now, in his sixties, he was entering territory belonging to another newly independent nation. He couldn't have known that within fifteen years, Texas itself would declare independence from Mexico. Or that the land where his family settled would eventually become part of the United States. But those transformations would take place during the lives of his children and grandchildren. Families, Friendships, and the Old Three Hundred One of the things I've found fascinating while researching these early settlers is how closely their families were connected. The Gates family wasn't moving through history in isolation. They were connected to other families through marriages, friendships, business relationships, and shared experiences. Among those connections were the Kuykendalls. William's daughter Sarah Gates married Abner Kuykendall, another early Texas settler. The Kuykendall family also traveled into Texas during this period. And the historical accounts of their journey provide an interesting example of the challenges researchers face. Some recollections describe the Kuykendalls crossing the Brazos River in November 1821. Other accounts describe related families reaching the Brazos at the end of December. The differences may reflect separate traveling parties, imperfect memories, or later historians combining different events. That's one reason I try to be careful when researching family history. A date repeated in several publications isn't necessarily correct simply because it's been repeated. Sometimes we have to go back to the original accounts, examine the geography, and ask whether the story actually makes sense. But what we do know is that these families were part of the earliest wave of Anglo-American settlement associated with Stephen F. Austin's colony. The settlers who received land grants in Austin's first colony became known as the Old Three Hundred. The name came from the original authorization to settle three hundred families, although the actual process of issuing land titles was more complicated. These settlers came from different places and backgrounds. Some were farmers. Others raised livestock. Some were merchants or craftsmen. And many were people hoping to establish a better future for their families. But we need to remember that they were entering Mexican territory. Their land grants were issued under a system recognized by Mexic

  3. Sep 25

    Before the Old Three Hundred: Who Would Move to Texas?

    Imagine somebody knocks on your door. They've got an interesting proposition. Pack up your family. Sell what you can't carry. Leave your home. Travel hundreds of miles into a country you've probably never seen. The roads aren't really roads. There aren't many towns. There are no hospitals. No grocery stores. No police department. And once you arrive, you're pretty much on your own. But... There's land. A lot of land. And you can have some. There's just one other little detail. You're leaving the United States. You're immigrating to Mexico. Interested? Apparently, quite a few people were. This is the Hidden History of Texas. And today we're going to meet the people who looked at that proposition... and said yes. Hello, I’m Hank Wilson and Welcome to Episode 99 of the Hidden History of Texas We've talked before about Stephen F. Austin. We've talked about the Old Three Hundred. And if you grew up in Texas, you probably heard at least some version of the story. Moses Austin received permission to bring three hundred families into Texas. Moses died. His son Stephen took over. The settlers came. And eventually they became known as the Old Three Hundred. That's all true. But it makes the whole thing sound remarkably organized. It wasn't. In fact, when this began, nobody could have been completely certain which government was going to be in charge by the time everybody arrived. The story really begins with Moses Austin. Austin had been involved in lead mining and banking in Missouri, and like a lot of Americans, he was hit hard by the Panic of 1819. He needed another opportunity. Texas looked like one. But Texas wasn't American territory. It belonged to Spain. So in 1820, Moses Austin traveled to San Antonio and asked Spanish authorities for permission to bring families from the United States into Texas. Initially, the answer wasn't particularly encouraging. But Austin had previously lived in Spanish territory and had become a Spanish citizen. Eventually his proposal was accepted. In January 1821, Spanish authorities approved a plan allowing Austin to bring three hundred families into Texas. They wanted families who were hardworking, respectable, and Catholic. From the Spanish government's perspective, this wasn't charity. Texas was enormous. It was sparsely populated by Spanish and Mexican settlers. And Spain wanted people living there who could farm the land, create communities, strengthen the economy, and help secure the frontier. Moses Austin headed home to begin organizing the venture. He never got the chance. He became ill and died in June 1821. The Texas project passed to his son. Stephen F. Austin. And almost immediately, the ground shifted underneath him. Mexico became independent from Spain. Think about that. The government that had authorized the colony no longer existed. Austin had settlers preparing to move to Texas under an agreement made with Spain... and Texas wasn't Spanish anymore. It was Mexican. Stephen Austin went to San Antonio and persuaded Governor Antonio María Martínez to recognize him as his father's successor. Austin and Martínez worked out terms for distributing land. A head of household could receive 640 acres. There could be additional acreage for a wife and children. Even additional acreage for enslaved people brought into the colony. Austin returned east and began advertising. And people responded. Why wouldn't they? America was still recovering from the Panic of 1819. People had lost farms. Banks had failed. Credit had collapsed. Land in the United States was becoming more expensive and, in some places, harder to obtain on favorable terms. Then somebody tells you that enormous amounts of fertile land are available in Texas. Cheap. Very cheap. For a farmer with little money and several children, that wasn't simply an investment opportunity. It was a chance to start over. The first colonists began arriving late in 1821. Some traveled overland. Others came by sea. And their experiences tell us something about what moving to Texas actually meant. One group sailed from New Orleans aboard a small schooner named the Lively. They were supposed to meet Austin at the mouth of the Colorado River. Instead, bad weather blew them off course. After weeks at sea they reached the Texas coast... and mistook the Brazos River for the Colorado. That was frontier GPS in 1821. Eventually they made their way upriver. Their food supplies dwindled. They planted corn. They waited. They couldn't find Austin. And most of them eventually became discouraged and went back to the United States. That's something worth remembering. Not everybody who came to Texas stayed. And not everybody who tried succeeded. Those who did stay discovered that the advertisements couldn't possibly describe everything they were getting themselves into. The land could be magnificent. Rich bottomland stretched along the Brazos and Colorado rivers. There was timber. Grassland. Wildlife. And enough acreage to make somebody who had struggled to acquire a small farm back east feel unimaginably wealthy. But acreage isn't the same thing as prosperity. First you've got to survive long enough to do something with it. You need shelter. You need food. You need tools. You need seed. You need livestock. You need neighbors. And when something breaks, there isn't a hardware store fifteen minutes away. If somebody gets seriously injured, there's no ambulance coming. If your crop fails, there isn't necessarily another source of food. If the river floods, you're dealing with it. If disease arrives, you're dealing with that too. And then there were the people already living here. This is another place where the traditional Texas story can become misleading. Texas wasn't empty. It wasn't simply unused land waiting for American farmers. Indigenous peoples had lived, hunted, traded, traveled, and fought across this country for generations. The Karankawa lived along portions of the Gulf Coast. Tonkawa groups occupied and traveled through areas farther inland. Wichita peoples lived and hunted farther north. And beyond the settlements were Comanche-controlled regions whose political and military power could not simply be ignored. When Austin's colonists arrived, they weren't moving into empty wilderness. They were moving into an already occupied human landscape. And conflict followed. Austin organized militia forces. Settlers and Indigenous groups raided one another. There were killings on both sides. Austin ordered and participated in military expeditions against Indigenous communities. There were also negotiations, trade, agreements, and periods of cooperation. The frontier was never as simple as the old movies made it. Meanwhile, Stephen Austin had another problem. Paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. Because Mexico still had to decide whether the agreement originally made under Spanish rule was valid. Austin traveled all the way to Mexico City. And then waited. And negotiated. And waited some more. Mexico itself was undergoing enormous political change. There had been a war for independence. Then an empire. Then the empire collapsed. Then a republic. Imagine trying to get a subdivision approved while the entire national government keeps changing. Eventually Austin succeeded. In 1823, the Mexican government confirmed his authority to establish the colony and introduce three hundred families. The arrangement became the foundation of what we remember as the Old Three Hundred. But the people receiving those grants were not Americans establishing American territory. Legally, they were colonists in Mexico. And Mexico had expectations. Religion was one of them. The colonists were expected to be Catholic. For some immigrants that wasn't a problem. For others... Let's just say enforcement could be flexible. Many settlers coming from the United States were Protestants. Austin understood that. Mexican officials understood it too. What mattered in practice was often less straightforward than what appeared in the law. But the requirement existed. And there was another issue that would become far more serious. Slavery. Many immigrants came from the American South. Some brought enslaved men, women, and children with them. Slavery therefore became embedded in the economic development of Austin's colony, particularly in the cotton-growing regions. But Mexico's relationship with slavery was changing. Mexican law increasingly restricted it. Texas colonists repeatedly sought ways around those restrictions. Austin himself worked to protect slavery within the colony because he believed attracting settlers from the southern United States—and developing the cotton economy—depended upon it. That conflict didn't disappear. It became one of several increasingly serious differences between many Anglo settlers in Texas and the Mexican government. But in the early 1820s, those later conflicts weren't predetermined. The people arriving weren't marching toward a Texas Revolution they knew was coming. They were trying to build farms. And Mexico was offering them an extraordinary incentive. Land. Under the evolving Mexican colonization system, settlers engaged in farming or ranching could receive grants measured not in dozens of acres... but hundreds or thousands. Later colonization laws could provide a ranching family with a league of land. That's more than 4,400 acres. ...

  4. Sep 15

    The Freedmen’s Bureau: The Promise and the Reality

    Hello, and welcome to Political Realignment. I'm Hank Wilson. In our last episode, we stood with America at the end of the Civil War and asked a deceptively simple question: How do you rebuild a nation after it has been divided against itself? But there was another question—one that was perhaps even more difficult. Nearly four million people who had once been enslaved were now free. But what did freedom actually mean? It is easy, looking backward, to think of emancipation as an ending. Slavery had been abolished. The enslaved were free. But for the people actually living through 1865, emancipation wasn't simply an ending. It was a beginning. People who had previously been considered property were suddenly expected to participate in an economic and political system that had spent generations excluding them. Many had little formal education. Most owned no land. Many had no money. Families had been separated. And throughout much of the South, the people who had controlled the land, the economy, and local government before the war were still there. Freedom had arrived. But almost none of the institutions necessary to make that freedom meaningful had arrived with it. Congress attempted to address that problem through an organization commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau. Its formal name was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Created in March of 1865, the Bureau was given an extraordinary assignment. It provided food, clothing, and medical assistance. It helped establish schools. It supervised labor agreements. It assisted families separated during slavery and the war. It became involved in disputes involving freedpeople and attempted to provide some measure of legal protection. Those were ambitious goals. And they were, in many respects, admirable ones. But there was an enormous difference between declaring what an agency should accomplish... and giving that agency the ability to accomplish it. To understand that difference, let's leave Washington for a moment. Let's go to Virginia. Thomas P. Jackson Thomas P. Jackson was an English immigrant working as an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia. And Jackson's reports provide us with something extraordinarily valuable. They allow us to watch Reconstruction happening on the ground. Not through the speeches of presidents. Not through debates in Congress. But through the reports of a man trying to make the new system actually work. Consider something as basic as medical care. A local physician, Dr. S. C. Harris, had been providing medical services to freedpeople in Jackson's area. But medicine costs money. Doctors have to make a living. And good intentions don't pay for medical supplies. In May of 1867, Jackson wrote to his superior asking the government to provide money so Harris could continue his work. The amount he requested? Twenty-five dollars a month. Jackson wrote that there were people suffering from illnesses, including typhoid fever, and asked for the appropriation on their behalf. Twenty-five dollars. One month later, Jackson wrote again. Dr. Harris could no longer afford to continue providing both his services and medicine without sufficient compensation. Think about what that tells us. The federal government had created an agency charged, among other things, with assisting the medical needs of a population emerging from slavery and war. An agent found a doctor willing to do the work. And the system still struggled to provide enough resources to keep him doing it. Medical care wasn't the only problem. Freedom and Work For generations, the Southern agricultural economy had depended upon enslaved labor. Now that labor had to become something entirely different. Free labor. Employers and workers would negotiate. Contracts would be created. Workers would be paid. At least, that was the idea. Once again, Jackson's reports show us what happened when the idea encountered reality. In September of 1867, he reported that many employers were not treating their workers fairly. The problem became particularly obvious when the agricultural season ended and it was time to settle accounts. Workers who believed they were owed wages discovered that the agreements they thought protected them didn't necessarily provide much protection at all. Some received goods or credit rather than the money their agreements called for. Jackson asked one of the obvious questions. Why accept goods when the contract said you were supposed to receive money? The answer tells us more about the economic reality of Reconstruction than almost any government report could. The workers told him, essentially: We couldn't get the money, and our families had to eat and be clothed. There is an important distinction here. These people were free. But freedom and economic independence are not the same thing. If you own no land... have little money... possess limited education... and the person employing you controls much of the local economy... your bargaining position isn't particularly strong. You may have the legal right to say no. But when your children need food, the practical ability to say no can be something entirely different. And this was one of the fundamental problems Reconstruction faced. The government could abolish slavery by law. It could not instantly create economic independence. The Return of Political Power There was another force at work. The people who had controlled Southern society before the war had not simply disappeared. Landowners wanted their property restored. Former political leaders wanted influence restored. Communities wanted control over their own institutions restored. And as Reconstruction continued, political organization increasingly became part of the struggle. Jackson observed efforts by conservative political leaders to influence newly enfranchised Black voters. In January 1868, however, he reported that those efforts had made little impression on the mass of Black voters. In Jackson's assessment, they understood that the political rights they had recently acquired could disappear if the old political order returned. That observation is important. Because we're beginning to see that Reconstruction was no longer simply about rebuilding roads, farms, and courthouses. It was about power. Who would vote? Who would govern? Who would control labor? Who would interpret the law? And ultimately... who would determine what freedom meant? Resentment and Resistance There was also another population struggling with the postwar economy. Poor white Southerners. They hadn't necessarily owned plantations. Many had never owned slaves. And after the war, many were struggling economically themselves. Now they found themselves competing for scarce employment and resources with millions of newly freed people. That economic competition existed alongside generations of racial prejudice. It was an extraordinarily combustible combination. Jackson watched the situation deteriorate. In November 1867, he reported several pistol attacks by white men against freedpeople. By March of the following year, he blamed conservative political leaders and newspapers for encouraging hostility among whites who already viewed freedpeople with contempt. Jackson believed inflammatory political language was helping create an atmosphere in which violence became easier to justify. And in one particularly revealing incident, he reported a local justice making an openly racist statement suggesting Black residents should be driven from the county. Remember what we're seeing here. The Freedmen's Bureau was trying to provide medical assistance. It was trying to supervise labor contracts. It was trying to establish schools. It was trying to protect legal rights. It was trying to alleviate poverty. And at the same time, its agents were operating inside communities experiencing enormous economic hardship, political upheaval, racial resentment, and sometimes outright violence. Perhaps the more interesting question isn't why the Bureau failed to accomplish everything expected of it. Perhaps the question is: How could anyone reasonably have expected one temporary federal agency to accomplish all of this? Success or Failure? It would be unfair to say the Freedmen's Bureau accomplished nothing. It did. Its educational work alone would leave an important legacy. It provided food and medical assistance. It helped establish schools. It assisted families. It supervised labor agreements. Individual agents such as Thomas Jackson genuinely attempted to protect the people placed under their care. Those accomplishments matter. But so do the limitations. The Bureau was attempting something far larger than administering a government program. It was attempting to help transform an entire social and economic system. And it was doing so without unlimited money... without unlimited manpower... without consistent local cooperation... and, most importantly, without any guarantee that the federal government would maintain the political will necessary to sustain the effort. That brings us back to our original question. What did freedom actually mean? Was freedom simply the legal declaration that one human being could no longer own another? Or did freedom require something more? Did it include the right to enter into an enforceable contract? The right to receive equal treatment in court? The right to own property? The right to participate in government? The right to receive equal protection from the state in which you lived? ...

  5. Sep 10

    Pecos: West of the River

    There are rivers that divide a landscape. And there are rivers that divide the imagination. In Texas, the Pecos managed to do both. For generations, the words West of the Pecos meant something. They meant you were leaving one world and entering another. A harder world. A drier world. A place where towns were separated by miles and miles of country that seemed determined to remind human beings that they were not necessarily in charge. Today, we can drive across that country in an air-conditioned automobile. We carry water in plastic bottles. We have GPS. Gas stations. Cell phones. And even then, there are stretches of West Texas where you can look out the window and think: Who in the world decided to live here? Now imagine making that decision in 1881. This is the Hidden History of Texas. And today we're headed west. To Pecos. Before there was a town called Pecos, there was the river. The Pecos begins in the mountains of northern New Mexico and runs south and southeast across an increasingly dry landscape before eventually joining the Rio Grande. The Spanish knew portions of it as the Río Puerco—the dirty river. And depending upon where you encountered it, the Pecos could be a source of life, an obstacle, a landmark, or a warning. For Indigenous peoples, the river and the country surrounding it had been part of a much larger landscape of travel, hunting, trade, and settlement long before Europeans arrived. And that is worth remembering because we have a tendency to tell the history of West Texas as though the country sat empty until ranchers, soldiers, and railroad men arrived. It didn't. People had been crossing and using this landscape for thousands of years. But the environment determined the rules. Water determined where you could travel. Water determined where animals could survive. Water determined where people could stay. And if you didn't understand the country, the country could kill you. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were beginning to move through the region in greater numbers. Soldiers. Surveyors. Freighters. Cattlemen. Travelers heading farther west. The Pecos became one of those psychological markers on the map. Cross the river and you were entering country that seemed even more remote. This was the world in which military posts such as Fort Stockton and Fort Davis became so important. They protected roads. They guarded travelers. They supported military campaigns. And slowly they helped open West Texas to increased settlement. But opening a country and actually convincing people to live there are two very different things. The first Anglo settlements along the Texas portion of the Pecos were sparse. And there was a very good reason. Living there was hard. Not Hollywood hard. Not gunfight-at-high-noon hard. Everyday hard. Finding dependable water. Building shelter. Keeping livestock alive. Surviving summer heat. Surviving winter cold. Getting supplies. Dealing with isolation. Repairing something when the nearest replacement might be days away. Having a child when there wasn't a doctor down the street. Getting sick when there wasn't a hospital. Losing livestock and knowing that your livelihood had just disappeared with them. That kind of hard. The sort of toughness that rarely makes it into Western movies. Then, in 1881, everything changed. The railroad arrived. The Texas and Pacific Railway was pushing westward across Texas toward El Paso. And when those rails reached the Pecos River country, they did something railroads did all across the American West. They created a reason for a town to exist. Pecos began as a cattle camp east of the river, but the developing community shifted westward as the railroad established its depot. For a while it was Pecos Station. Then Pecos City. Eventually simply Pecos. But the railroad was more than transportation. It changed distance. Before the railroad, getting cattle, supplies, equipment, mail, or people across West Texas required time—and a considerable amount of luck. The railroad connected Pecos to markets hundreds of miles away. Suddenly cattle raised in West Texas could reach distant buyers. Supplies could arrive regularly. People could come. Businesses could survive. A settlement became a town. And by the middle of the 1880s, Pecos had about 150 residents. That doesn't sound like much today. But put 150 people in that country in 1885 and you've got yourself a community. And those people needed water. Not simply drinking water. If Pecos was going to become more than a railroad stop and cattle-shipping point, somebody had to figure out how to make the desert produce something. So they turned again to the river. Irrigation wasn't new to the Southwest. Indigenous peoples had understood irrigation agriculture centuries before Europeans arrived. Spanish and Mexican communities used irrigation systems throughout the region. But late nineteenth-century developers began trying to transform irrigation into something larger. An economic engine. Canals were constructed. Land was promoted. Settlers were encouraged to believe that with enough water, West Texas could bloom. And sometimes it did. Nearby communities produced grapes. Peaches. Pears. Melons. And Pecos itself eventually became famous for cantaloupes. Imagine arriving from somewhere green, looking across that dry West Texas country and hearing someone say: We're going to grow melons here. You might have questioned their judgment. But they did it. Water made the difference. Which meant controlling water became increasingly important. And that story—who gets the water, how much they get, and what happens upstream—is one that would follow the Pecos River well into the twentieth century. But cattle remained king. And cattle brought cowboys. Which brings us to one of Pecos's favorite stories. The world's first rodeo. According to Pecos tradition, on July 4, 1883, cowboys from several ranches gathered to settle an argument. Who was the best roper? Who was the best rider? There was only one reasonable way to find out. Get everybody together and make them prove it. The contest held at Pecos became one of the earliest documented rodeos in American history and apparently the first known rodeo to award prizes. And Pecos has proudly advertised itself as the home of the world's first rodeo ever since. Now... You know me. Whenever somebody says something was unquestionably the first anything in history, I start checking. And Pecos has competition. Deer Trail, Colorado, records a bronco-busting contest in 1869. Buffalo Bill Cody staged an exhibition of cowboy skills at North Platte, Nebraska, in 1882. Prescott, Arizona, held an organized rodeo in 1888 and became one of the earliest to charge admission. So was Pecos really the first rodeo? That depends partly on what you mean by rodeo. And that is usually how these historical arguments work. But Pecos's 1883 contest absolutely belongs among the earliest events in the development of what became modern rodeo. And perhaps the argument over who was first is less interesting than what the contest tells us. Cowboys were turning the skills of everyday ranch work into competition. Roping. Riding. Handling livestock. These weren't originally sports. They were jobs. Hard jobs. And somewhere along the way, somebody said: I can do that better than you. And rodeo was born. That may be the most Texas origin story imaginable. But there is another Pecos story that deserves mentioning. Because the railroad didn't merely reach Pecos. Railroads had to conquer the Pecos River itself. Farther downstream, railroad engineers encountered the enormous canyons near the river's junction with the Rio Grande. The first rail crossing required steep grades, tunnels, trestles, and tracks blasted along canyon walls. It was expensive. Dangerous. And inefficient. So engineers eventually decided to do something audacious. Instead of taking the railroad down into the canyon, they would carry it across the top. The Pecos Viaduct was completed in 1892. More than 320 feet high, it was then the highest railroad bridge in the United States and one of the highest bridges in the world. Think about that. In a region where earlier travelers worried about finding enough water to survive, engineers were now building a steel railroad bridge more than three hundred feet above the river. In barely a generation, the relationship between people and the Pecos had changed dramatically. The river was still an obstacle. But increasingly, people believed obstacles could be engineered away. And maybe that's what makes Pecos such a good place to stop after our last visit to La Junta. At La Junta, generations of Indigenous communities had learned how to live within the limits of the desert. They understood where water was. They farmed the floodplain. They hunted. They traded. They adapted themselves to the country. By the late nineteenth century, newcomers increasingly approached West Texas with a different idea. Instead of adapting themselves to the landscape, they would try to adapt the landscape to them. Build a railroad. Dig a canal. Dam the water. Drill a well. Build a bridge. Plant crops in the desert. Bring cattle by the thousands. Build a town. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. And sometimes the consequences didn't become apparent until much later. But you have to admire the audacity. I've been to Pecos. ...

  6. Aug 25

    Episode 97: La Junta de los Ríos, Before There Was a Border

    La Junta de los Ríos, Before There Was a Border (Partial Transcript....) If you stand near Presidio, Texas, and look across the Rio Grande toward Ojinaga, Mexico, you're looking at a border. At least that's what the maps tell us. There is Texas on one side, Chihuahua on the other. The United States here. Mexico there. But if you could stand in that same place five hundred years ago, none of those things existed. There wasn't a Texas. There wasn't a United States. There wasn't even a border. What you would have seen instead was one of the most important human crossroads in this part of North America. A place where two rivers came together. And where people had already been coming together for centuries. This is the Hidden History of Texas. And today we're going to La Junta de los Ríos. The meeting of the rivers. The geography explains why people came here. We're in the Chihuahuan Desert, a country where water determines almost everything. But near present-day Presidio and Ojinaga, the Río Conchos flows northward out of Mexico and joins the Rio Grande. Around that junction lies a broad ribbon of fertile floodplain surrounded by desert and mountains. It's an oasis. And people recognized its value a very long time before Europeans arrived. Archaeologists have found evidence of human occupation in the region stretching back thousands of years. By around the year 1200, if not earlier, people were living in established villages along the rivers. They farmed. They hunted. They gathered wild plants. They made pottery. And they traded. La Junta wasn't some isolated little settlement sitting alone in the desert. It was connected to a much larger world. Trade and cultural influences linked the people here with communities toward Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, the Pueblo world farther north and west, the buffalo plains to the northeast, and eventually communities extending deep into what we now call Texas. Archaeologists have even found pieces of East Texas Caddoan pottery at La Junta. Think about that distance for a moment. Long before highways, railroads, or maps showing Texas as a political entity, goods, and presumably the people carrying them, were moving across enormous distances. La Junta was part of that network. And this is where we meet one of the most interesting—and frustrating—people in early Texas history. The Jumano. Except there's a problem. We're not entirely sure exactly who the Jumano were. That's not because nobody wrote about them. The Spanish certainly did. The problem is that Spanish explorers, missionaries, and officials used names for Indigenous peoples according to their own understanding. Sometimes a name described how people looked. Sometimes where they lived. Sometimes what another Indigenous group called them. Sometimes the Spanish apparently invented the name themselves. And sometimes the same name seems to have been applied to different groups. That makes the word “Jumano” considerably more complicated than it first appears. The earliest known Spanish use of the name dates to the late sixteenth century. Over the following century, Spaniards described people they called Jumanos across a huge geographical area—from northern Mexico and the Rio Grande into West Texas, the Pecos country, the Southern Plains, and as far east as the Caddo communities. These people were widely known as traders and travelers. Some Spanish observers called them rayados, the striped people, because of distinctive lines or markings on their faces. They hunted buffalo. They carried goods between communities separated by hundreds of miles. And they became important intermediaries between very different Indigenous worlds. But were the farmers living permanently at La Junta also Jumano? For a long time, many historians said yes. Partial Transcript......

  7. Aug 15

    A Nation Rebuilt

    A Nation Rebuilt The war ended, but the constitutional questions had just begun. Hello, and welcome to Political Realignment. I'm Hank Wilson. I'd like to begin with a simple question. How do you rebuild a nation after it has been divided against itself? It's a question every generation hopes it will never have to answer. Yet in the spring of 1865, Americans found themselves facing exactly that challenge. After four long years of conflict, the fighting had ended. The Union had been preserved, slavery had been abolished, and millions of Americans looked toward the future with hope. But peace did not erase the problems that war had created. In many ways, the nation's hardest work was only beginning. The Southern states had suffered tremendous destruction. Railroads, bridges, farms, businesses, and entire communities had been devastated. Families on both sides of the conflict mourned loved ones who would never return home. At the same time, nearly four million formerly enslaved men, women, and children were now legally free, beginning lives unlike anything they or the nation had experienced before. One enormous question stood before the country. What should the United States become now? Should the former Confederate states simply return to the Union as if nothing had happened? Should they be required to meet certain conditions before regaining full representation in Congress? What rights should formerly enslaved Americans possess? Who should protect those rights? And perhaps the largest constitutional question of all... Should individual states decide these issues for themselves, or should the federal government establish national standards? These weren't simply political disagreements. They were constitutional questions that would shape American government for generations. President Abraham Lincoln had begun considering these questions before the war ended. His hope was to restore the Union as quickly as possible while encouraging reconciliation between North and South. Tragically, only five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, President Lincoln was assassinated. Vice President Andrew Johnson suddenly found himself responsible for leading a wounded nation through one of the most difficult periods in American history. No one had ever attempted to reunite a nation after a civil war. There was no instruction manual. Congress and the President often disagreed about the best path forward. Some believed the Southern states should regain self-government quickly. Others feared that moving too fast would allow many of the same political leaders and systems that had existed before the war to return to power. Meanwhile, millions of newly freed Americans were asking a fundamental question. What did freedom actually mean? Was it simply the absence of slavery? Or did freedom also include citizenship... voting... education... equal treatment under the law... and the opportunity to participate fully in American society? Those questions would become the heart of one of the most ambitious periods of constitutional change in our nation's history. Over the next twelve years, Congress would pass new constitutional amendments, reorganize Southern governments, station federal troops throughout much of the South, and attempt to redefine the relationship between the federal government, the states, and individual citizens. The period became known as Reconstruction......

  8. Aug 3

    From Frontier Forts to Frontier Towns: Fort Davis and Fort Stockton

    Hello friends, and welcome back to Hidden History of Texas. Last time, we visited Alpine, a mountain community that showed us how people learned not simply to travel through West Texas, but to build permanent lives there. Today, we're visiting two communities whose very names remind us of their beginnings. Fort Davis. Fort Stockton. When we hear those names, it's natural to think about soldiers, cavalry patrols, and frontier forts. And certainly, those stories are important. But today I'd like to look beyond the parade grounds. Because I've discovered that the most interesting stories often begin after the soldiers leave. How does a military outpost become a hometown? How does a place built for defense become a place where families raise children, merchants open businesses, churches ring their bells, and neighbors know one another by name? That's the story of Fort Davis and Fort Stockton.

  9. Jul 22

    Episode 95 – Alpine: Where the Mountains Became Home

    Episode 95 – Alpine: Where the Mountains Became Home Alpine is often described as the gateway to Big Bend, but its story is far richer than that. In this episode of Hidden History of Texas, we explore a different question: Why did Alpine succeed where so many frontier settlements disappeared? Rather than focusing on dates and famous names, we trace the forces that shaped this remarkable mountain community. We examine how the geography of the Davis Mountains created a more hospitable environment than much of the surrounding desert, why dependable water and grasslands attracted ranchers, and how the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad transformed an isolated settlement into a regional center of commerce. The story doesn't end with cattle and railroads. Alpine found a lasting identity through education with the establishment of Sul Ross State University, bringing students, teachers, and new opportunities to one of the most remote parts of Texas. Later, the creation of Big Bend National Park added another chapter, making Alpine a welcoming base for travelers drawn to the beauty and history of the Trans-Pecos. More than the story of a single town, this episode explores how permanent communities take root. Frontier forts made travel possible, but places like Alpine demonstrated what it took to stay. Geography, transportation, ranching, education, and determination all came together to create a community that continues to thrive more than a century later. Join us as we discover why Alpine is not simply a stop on the way to somewhere else—it is one of the places that helps explain how West Texas became home.

  10. Jul 16

    The Frontier Forts: Guarding West Texas

    Officers' row (ruins), looking west, before the National Park Service acquired Fort Davis National Historic Site. The Frontier Forts: Guarding West Texas Hello friends, and welcome back to Hidden History of Texas. Last time, we crossed the Pecos River and entered one of the most remarkable landscapes in our state, the Trans-Pecos. We discovered a Texas of mountains instead of rolling hills... deserts instead of forests... vast distances instead of crowded settlements. It is a beautiful country. But it could also be a dangerous one. Today, I'd like to answer a simple question. How did people safely travel through this immense wilderness? The answer lies in a network of frontier forts that stretched across West Texas. Their purpose wasn't to conquer the land. It was to connect it. When we hear the word fort, many of us picture thick stone walls, cannons, and soldiers preparing for battle. The reality on the Texas frontier was often much different. Most frontier forts weren't castles. They were working communities. Soldiers lived there. Families lived there. Blacksmiths, teamsters, doctors, cooks, laundresses, merchants, scouts, and civilians all played a role in keeping these isolated outposts alive. In many ways, a frontier fort was less like a military base and more like a very small town whose primary mission happened to be protecting the frontier. By the 1850s, more settlers, ranchers, and merchants were moving westward. Stagecoaches carried passengers and mail. Freight wagons hauled supplies. Ranches expanded into new country. Yet the farther west people traveled, the farther they moved from established communities. Water became scarce. Distances became immense. Travelers could spend days crossing country where there were few signs of civilization. For many, reaching the next fort meant safety. Among the most important of these posts was Fort Davis. Nestled in the cool elevations of the Davis Mountains, the fort occupied one of the most strategic locations in West Texas. It guarded the San Antonio–El Paso Road, one of the principal overland routes across the Southwest. If you've ever driven Interstate 10 across West Texas, you're following a path not terribly different from the one travelers depended upon more than 150 years ago. The landscape may look timeless. But for generations, this road represented connection. Mail. Commerce. Communication. Hope. Fort Davis also tells another important story. Following the Civil War, many of its soldiers belonged to the African American regiments that history remembers as the Buffalo Soldiers. These men escorted wagon trains... protected mail coaches... constructed roads... and patrolled enormous stretches of difficult country. Their assignments often took them across hundreds of miles of mountains and desert. The work was demanding. The conditions harsh. Yet their contributions became an essential part of opening West Texas to settlement and commerce. Today, Fort Davis remains one of the best-preserved frontier military posts in the nation, allowing visitors to walk through the very buildings where these soldiers lived and served. Farther east stood another important outpost. Fort Stockton. If Fort Davis owed its existence to mountain passes and transportation routes... Fort Stockton owed its existence to something even more valuable. Water. Specifically, Comanche Springs. Long before there was a military fort... long before Texas became a state... Native peoples knew these springs well. Spanish explorers depended upon them. Travelers crossing the desert planned their journeys around them. In the Trans-Pecos, water wasn't simply convenient. It was survival. The Army recognized the importance of Comanche Springs almost immediately. A fort built near reliable water could protect travelers while providing soldiers with the resources they needed to remain in one of the harshest environments in North America. Like Fort Davis, Fort Stockton became an important stopping point for stagecoaches, freight wagons, mail carriers, and settlers moving across West Texas. It represented more than military protection. It represented certainty. After days of dust, heat, and uncertainty, travelers knew there would be fresh water ahead. One thing I've come to appreciate while studying these frontier forts is that they weren't isolated places. They formed a network. Each supported the others. Each protected a different section of the transportation routes that connected San Antonio with El Paso and points beyond. Without that network, settlement across much of West Texas would have been far slower and far more dangerous. The forts helped make the frontier accessible. Not easy... but possible. Today, many visitors stop at Fort Davis or Fort Stockton because they enjoy history. Others simply happen to pass through on their way to Big Bend or El Paso. Yet these quiet places remind us of something important. The highways we drive today didn't simply appear. Long before there were interstates... before paved roads... before automobiles... there were wagon trails. Mail routes. Stagecoaches. Horse patrols. And frontier forts that made those journeys possible. As I travel through West Texas, I'm always struck by the silence. The distances remain enormous. The mountains still dominate the horizon. The desert still commands your respect. It's not difficult to imagine a soldier standing watch here 150 years ago, looking out across the same landscape and understanding that help was many miles away. Perhaps that's why these forts continue to capture our imagination. They remind us that courage isn't always found in dramatic battles. Sometimes courage is found in showing up each day... doing your duty... and standing watch in a place where few others were willing to go. Next time, we'll leave the forts behind and visit the communities that grew around them. We'll travel to Alpine, where the cool mountain air helped shape a ranching community that would become the gateway to the Big Bend. Until then, remember that history isn't only written in great cities or famous battlefields. Sometimes it's written beside a mountain pass... or around a spring in the desert... where ordinary people quietly made extraordinary journeys possible. I'm Hank Wilson, and this has been Hidden History of Texas. Until next time... keep asking questions... because history always has another story waiting just down the trail.

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Here is where you will find The Hidden History Of Texas podcast. The episodes cover Texas history from the earliest days of Indigenous peoples to Spanish exploration, control by Mexico, the Anglo’s take over, Texas becomes part of the U.S., the confederates move in, and back to the U.S. The audio files are accurate and try to tell the story as best as they can from all sides of the issues. The hidden history of Texas is a history replete with heroes and villains of all sorts. There were good and bad people throughout Texas history, just as there were throughout world history.

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