The Crash at Crush

If you are traveling north on I-35 about fourteen miles beyond Waco, start watching on your right for a historical marker tucked against the barbed wire fence. Don’t bother to stop, because there is nothing to see unless you want to read the marker. Had you been there on

Texas Historical Marker tells the story of the Crash at Crush.

Texas Historical Marker tells the story of the Crash at Crush.

September 15, 1896, you would have seen plenty.

William Crush

William Crush

William George Crush, the general passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, conjured up a rip-roaring publicity stunt to generate revenue. Katy officials agreed that promoting a train wreck between two old locomotives would stir a lot of interest and bring in revenue through the sale of $2 round-trip tickets to the event.

Crush sent out circulars and bulletins throughout the summer advertising the “Monster Crash.” Newspapers all over Texas and the surrounding states ran daily crash progress reports. Katy workers laid four miles of special track, built a grandstand for “honored guests,” converted a borrowed Ringling Brothers circus tent into a restaurant, and laid out a broad carnival midway lined with medicine shows, refreshment stands, and game booths. They even built a depot with a 2,100 foot-long passenger platform and a sign on the end of building modestly announcing to visitors that they had arrived at Crush, Texas.

At daybreak, the first of thirty-three fully loaded excursions trains arrived, some so crowded that passengers rode on the roofs of the cars. Many others came by wagon and on horseback. They picnicked; listened to political speeches at the three speakers’ platforms; and surged around the bandstand and special platform for reporters.

By 5:00 P.M., before an estimated crowd of more than 40,000, old engine No. 999, painted bright green and No. 1001 painted a brilliant red, faced each other and then backed for 3.5 miles in opposite directions. William George Crush, mounted on a handsome white horse and wearing a white suit, removed his white hat, held it high above his head, and then whipped it down as the signal to start engines. The crowd screamed as trains––whistles blaring––began barreling down the steep inclines toward the valley below, picking up speed as they churned forward. Both engineers tied the throttles wide open and jumped to safety. The cars trailing each engine bore brilliantly colored advertisements and waving streamers.

When the locomotives met in a shuddering, grinding clash both boilers exploded sending lethal missiles of metal and wood flying in all directions. Two men and a woman were killed and at least six received injuries including Waco’s most prominent photographer who was blinded.

Photographer J.C. Deane shot this photo just before he was blinded by flying debris.


William George Crush lost his job that night. And Katy rehired him the following day because the publicity wasn’t as  bad as expected. The railroad paid damage claims with cash and lifetime rail passes. Souvenir hunters cleaned the site by carrying off pieces of the tragedy.

Ragtime composer Scott Joplin, who had performed in the area, probably witnessed the crash because he memorialized it in his march “Great Crush Collision.”

Now, you won’t need to stop to read the historical marker. Just slow down and imagine what it must have looked like in that field so many years ago.

Rachel Whitfield, Free Woman

Black women have received little attention for the critical role they have played in maintaining their families and contributing to their communities. After running across a brief reference to Rachel Whitfield (1814-1908) a “former slave who made it on her own as head of a household, subsistence farmer,” I began searching for more. How did an uneducated black woman survive after the Civil War? I found Rachel’s story, which was written by her granddaughter Lela Jackson, included in Women in Early Texas.

In 1852 Jim and Rachel Whitfield lived with their six children in Arkansas, Missouri. Their master, a man named Whitfield sold Jim to a slave owner, and the family never saw him again. Rachel and the children were placed together on the auction block. Washington McLaughlin purchased the family, and they began a months-long trip to Texas, sometimes on foot and others times in an oxcart. They settled on a site with deep, rich soil on the north bank of the San Gabriel River in Williamson County.

The slaves cut thick brush and a variety of trees to clear the land, built cabins, and prepared the soil for planting. Lela Jackson writes that McLaughlin “was not even-tempered and at times whipped the slaves.” At other times he gave them passes in compliance with the law that required slaves to carry a pass any time they left the owner’s property. If they were caught without a pass, they could be whipped for being out without permission.

Sometime during the Civil War, soldiers rode into the plantation, took supplies, and then headed south. One of the slaves heard McLaughlin read the “Proclamation of Freedom.” He said nothing until early one morning he gathered the slaves and angrily announced: “You are now free people. You are free as I am. You can go anywhere you want to. You can stay here if you wish, but I don’t need you. I can do without you.”


They slipped along the San Gabriel River, finding places to hide, unsure of their safety, listening for any strange noise. Rachel’s oldest son Allen married that spring and helped Rachel and the younger children settle in a log cabin next to a creek. They foraged for wild plums and berries, ate pecans and black walnuts. The owner of a stray cow gave the family permission to keep the milk in exchange for raising the calf for its owner. They kept milk, butter, and cream fresh by storing it in a bucket lowered into a well. With the change of seasons, they moved about, picking cotton and vegetables for landowners. They gathered prairie chicken eggs and trapped birds, squirrels, and possums. They ironed clothing for white people using flat irons heated on a fire log in the yard. Rachel made quilts and asked men to save their ten-cent Bull Durham tobacco sacks, which she ripped open, bleached, and used for the lining.

The high point in their lives came on “pastoral days,” the Sundays when a preacher held worship services. People came from miles around, and for those who could not read, the leader “lined” out the words. They enjoyed baptizings in the creek, sing-songs, camp meetings, and dances. When someone died, Rachel and her daughter Demmie prepared the body and laid it out on a board or a door that was balanced on chairs. Coffins were made from the plentiful local cedar and stained dark brown.

Lela Jackson writes that her grandmother, who lived until she was ninety-three and all her children held the respect of both their black and white Williamson County neighbors.

The Train to Crystal City

A book written by Jan Jarboe Russell and published in 2015 by Scribner relates a chapter in Texas history that I have just discovered. I believe it deserves special attention at this time when our country is again roiling in fear of immigrants. The arrest and internment of Japanese

The Train to Crystal City, Jan Jarboe Russell

The Train to Crystal City, Jan Jarboe Russell

Ten-foot tall barbed-wire fence with guardhouse and horse patrols.


Americans during World War II has been well-documented, but nothing until now has been published about the program to arrest and repatriate to their country of origin German, Japanese, and Italian families.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the arrest and incarceration of Japanese, Germans, and Italians who were declared “enemy aliens.” Our country also orchestrated and financed the removal of thousands of these same families from thirteen Latin American countries. They were brought to the internment camp in Texas.

In her book, The Train To Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II, Jan Russell documents the lives, the fierce patriotism, and the resilience of some of the 6,000 civilians held in the Crystal City Enemy Detention Facility. The vast majority were loyal to America. They were forced out of their homes, lost their businesses, and were never charged with any crime. The men were allowed to have their families join them in prison if they agreed to take part in a repatriation program with Germany and Japan. Although their children were born in this country, they were exchanged for other Americans––soldiers, diplomats, businessmen, missionaries, and physicians––who were being detained behind enemy lines in Germany and Japan.

The wives and children, wearing family ID tags around their necks, were shipped on trains with the curtains drawn to Crystal City, to rejoin their husbands and fathers in the dusty South Texas town that boasted the friendly moniker, “Spinach

Spinach Capital of the World

Spinach Capital of the World

Capital of the World.”

The 290-acre camp was enclosed by a ten-foot high barbed-wire fence, anchored by six towers manned by guards with long rifles. Men on horseback patrolled the perimeter, and the night searchlights were visible thirty miles away across the border in Mexico.

Fear of the foreigners, many of whom were in the process of becoming American citizens, resulted in mob attacks on businesses of Japanese on the West Coast and Germans on the East Coast. Newspaper columnists argued for American’s safety over civil rights. Politicians and military officials pressured FDR to act against these civilians. Finally, in 1944 the Supreme Court in a six to three ruling legalized the detention. Justice Hugo Black wrote for the majority that the need to protect against espionage outweighed individual rights.

Russell conducted interviews with over fifty survivors, used private diaries and journals, obtained access to FBI files and camp administration records to paint a picture of a place where most of the internees did not understand why they were

School with barbed-wire fence in foreground

School with barbed-wire fence in foreground

being held but continued to maintain hope for their release. The camp was organized into ethnic communities with two-family cottages. They could choose to send their children to Japanese, German, or the federal (American) school where the students would learn English. The inmates were allowed to run their own communities, organize churches, a library, a hospital, barber shops and beauty parlors. In the summer of 1943 German internees dredged an existing reservoir to build a combination swimming pool and reservoir for irrigating the camp’s vegetable gardens. Despite the semblance of freedom, each morning they had to line up for roll call and their mail was censored. Even though they were not charged with a crime, the length of their internment was indefinite.

Large swimming pool and reservoir for camp vegetable gardens

Large swimming pool and reservoir for camp vegetable gardens

Russell chronicles the story of two teenage girls––a German and a Japanese––whose families were finally exchanged, sent back to the devastation of Germany right after the Battle of the Bulge and to Japan after the bombing of Hiroshima. She relates the story of their determination to survive and to eventually return to the United States.

Today, all five hundred buildings are gone. The site belongs to the local school district and is noted by a memorial on the foundation of one of the cottages and a nearby Texas Historical Marker.

Texas Historical Marker at the former site of the Internment Camp

Texas Historical Marker at the former site of the Internment Camp

From Indian Captive to Texas Leader

Rebecca Jane Gilleland was seven when Comanches swooped down on her family, killed both parents, and took as captives Rebecca and her six-year-old brother William. Born in Philadelphia in 1831, Rebecca had settled with her family near present Refugio about 1837. When Rebecca recounted her experiences to the Galveston Daily News in 1913, she said it was late afternoon when the Comanches surprised the family as they walked not far from their home. Rebecca remembered that as the Indians bore down on them, her mother grabbed their arms and prayed loudly that they would be saved when they “were baptized in her blood.” Rebecca’s father was struck down as he ran to the house for his gun.

The chief’s wife scooped Rebecca onto her horse and at first threatened to cut off their hands and feet if she and William didn’t stop crying. However, Rebecca believed the woman kept the other Indians from harming her and soon began to stroke Rebecca’s blonde hair.

The following morning, they had stopped to rest when a company of Texas Rangers led by Albert Sidney Johnston surprised the Indians. In the hand-to-hand combat, William’s body was pierced with a lance and Rebecca took a sharp blow to her temple. The Rangers chased after the Indians, leaving the terrified children behind. Rebecca said William roused from unconsciousness as she carried him to hide in the nearby brush. It was only after the Rangers returned, and Rebecca heard them calling her name that she and William emerged from their hiding place.

After being raised by an aunt in Galveston, Rebecca attended Rutersville, a Methodist school between La Grange and Round Top. In 1848, she married Orceneth Fisher, a minister almost thirty years her senior, who was an editor of the Texas Wesleyan Banner.

Dr. Orceneth Fisher

Dr. Orceneth Fisher

Rebecca and Dr. Fisher served several churches before eventually settling in Oregon where he organized the Methodist Episcopal Church South. On the eve of the Civil War, a mob of 300 stormed a camp meeting and threatened to hang Dr. Fisher, apparently for his perceived southern sympathies. Rebecca said of the experience that she “grabbed the leader by the collar and held him fast. He looked into my eyes and turned away without speaking. I will never forget the vicious expression of his countenance.” She also claimed that her husband quieted the mob with his calm demeanor and assurances that he came with a message of peace and love. During those tumultuous years, while the Fishers raised their six children and expanded the work of Methodism, Rebecca became know as the “woman who quelled the mob.”

The Fishers returned to Texas in 1870 and settled in Austin where Dr. Fisher served two terms as chaplain for the Texas legislature before his death in 1880. Rebecca’s brother William was a highly regarded poet whose work appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers before his death in 1894.

Rebecca Fisher; Courtesy State Preservation Board, Photographed by: Eric Beggs

Rebecca Fisher; Courtesy State Preservation Board, Photographed by Eric Beggs

Rebecca Fisher was the only woman elected to the Texas Veterans Association. After its members, who had served from the time of the Texas Revolution, all passed away, the work of the organization was taken over by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) of which Rebecca Fisher was a charter member. She worked with Clara Driscoll and others to save the Alamo from destruction, and for several years she offered the opening prayer for the Texas legislature. Her portrait was the first of a woman to be hung in the Senate chamber at the Texas capitol. At her death in 1926 at the age of ninety-four, the body of the woman known by many as “the Mother of Texas” lay in state in the Senate chamber, the locale of her funeral service.

The First Grand Mansion on the Texas Coast

Today Fulton Mansion would be called the empty-nest home of George W. Fulton and Harriet Gillette Smith since at the time of its construction the Fulton’s six children were already grown. In 1877 when the 3 ½-story, nineteen-room Second Empire style mansion rose along

Fulton Mansion

Fulton Mansion

the shore of Aransas Bay, it was the grandest house on the Texas coast, and the Fultons, with the help of seven servants, entertained lavishly in their elegant new home.

Fulton, like his cousin Robert Fulton of steamboat fame, was a brilliant engineer and used his skills to design a house with features that were rare for that time—hot and cold running water, gas lights, a refrigeration system, central heat, and flush toilets. Despite sitting only yards from Aransas Bay, the Fulton Mansion withstood massive storms, including the 1919 hurricane and ten-foot tidal wave that destroyed most structures in the area. Fulton designed a shellcrete (a form of concrete made from the plentiful local shell) foundation. Walls, both inside and out, were made of one-by-ten-inch pine boards stacked side-by-side to form a solid ten-inch-thick frame. Shellcrete filled in between every fourth or fifth board in the floors creating a structure as stable as a grain elevator.

Fulton could afford to construct the house, which cost about $l00,000, because of his wife’s inherited land and his own entrepreneurial spirit. Fulton, born in 1810, had worked in Indiana as a schoolteacher, watchmaker, and creator of mathematical instruments until he organized a company to fight in the Texas Revolution. He arrived too late for the action, but Fulton joined the Army of the Republic of Texas in 1837 and for his service received 1,280 acres. Fulton worked for the General Land Office, which introduced him to the legal maneuvering necessary to acquire land. In 1840 he married Harriet who was the daughter of Henry Smith, governor of Texas for a short time in 1835 before the war for independence from Mexico. After Smith failed to win the presidency of the new Republic of Texas, he continued to serve in several government positions, to purchase land along the coast, and to promote the development of his property.

Meantime, George Fulton and Harriet left Texas and spent the next twenty years in Ohio and in Baltimore where they raised and educated their children. After Harriet’s father died and the Fultons returned to Texas and cleared the titles on Smith’s coastal land. Using his knowledge of land titles, Fulton purchased acreage and combined with the land Harriet inherited from her father, Fulton owned 25,000 acres. After joining with partners in the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, the holdings peaked at 265,000 acres, creating one of the largest cattle companies in Texas. The lavish lifestyle that ensued from the business allowed the partners to live like cattle barons and the Fultons to build their grand mansion.

Much of the partners’ wealth came from the hide and tallow factories lining the shore of Aransas Bay near the Fulton’s home. Hundreds of thousands of cattle and mustangs were slaughtered and their carcasses reduced to tallow in great boilers. The hides were cured and shipped along with the tallow, bones, and horns on waiting steamers headed for the U.S. east coast.

Ever the inventor, Fulton received a U.S. patent for shipping beef using artificial cooling and for a steam engine modification. He introduced new livestock breeds that are still prevalent in Texas. Before barbed wire became available, the company used smooth wire to fence some of the ranges. A wooden plank fence enclosed one 2,000-acre pasture near present Rockport. Fulton gave land for the railroad, and towns—Sinton, Gregory, Portland, and Taft—were laid out on the company’s vast holdings.

Parlor, Fulton Mansion

Parlor, Fulton Mansion

The most elegant of Fulton’s achievements, which survives today, is the Fulton Mansion, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operated as a house museum by the Texas Historical Commission.

Millions in Mexican Silver Crossed Texas to the Port at Indianola


The Chihuahua Trail, The Big Bend: A History of the Last Texas Frontier, Ronnie C. Tyler


Indianola by Helmuth Holtz, Sept. 1860 Library of Congress Wikipedia

Indianola by Helmuth Holtz, Sept. 1860
Library of Congress



Mexican Carreta at Fort Leaton State Historic Site south of Presidio

Mexican Carreta at Fort Leaton State Historic Site south of Presidio


The Spanish, as early as 1567, had discovered northern Mexico’s mineral wealth—gold, copper, zinc, and lead—but silver proved the richest lode. By the time Mexico opened its commerce with the U.S. after the Mexican-American War, there were six mines in the area near Ciudad Chihuahua, the capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

General Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur) wrote The Silver Mines of Santa Eulalia, Chihuahua, Mexico, in which he claims that the raw outcroppings of Santa Eulalia, the richest of the mines, had been discovered in 1652, but persistent Indian troubles chased away the Spanish explorer who had found the site. Fifty years later, Wallace says that three men who were fugitives from the law, hide in a deep ravine tucked into Santa Eulalia’s steep hills. They stacked some boulders to create a fireplace, and as the flames grew hotter, the boulders began leaking a shiny white metal, which they recognized as silver. Knowing their fortune awaited, they sent word via a friendly Indian to the padre in the nearby mission community of Chihuahua, offering to pay for the grandest cathedral in New Spain if the padre would absolve their sins and pardon their crimes. It worked. The fugitives received absolution and pardon; they became fabulously wealthy; and the Church of the Holy Cross, Our Lady of Regla, became the finest example of colonial architecture in northern Mexico. Miners flocked to the Santa Eulalia and Ciudad Chihuahua grew into a large and wealthy city.


Bonnie Parker, Dead at Twenty-three







Bonnie Parker posing with cigar. Wikipedia

Bonnie Parker posing with cigar.


Bonnie and Clyde Wikipedia

Bonnie and Clyde








Bonnie closed the door on any possible claim for clemency a few days later when Clyde and another gang member killed a sixty-year-old Oklahoma constable and took the police chief as a hostage. Before they gave the chief a clean shirt and let him go, Bonnie asked him to spread the word that she did not smoke cigars, an image she had acquired after posing with a cigar in her mouth in the confiscated photos. She chain-smoked Camels. The arrest warrant named Clyde, a John Doe, and Bonnie as the killers of the constable.


Bullet-riddled car Wikipedia

Bullet-riddled car

