Doak Walker ended the speculation about his future in football by announcing on July 29, 1955 that he had agreed to play one more season with the Detroit Lions.

Grantland Rice, dean of American sportswriters, called him “the most authentic all-around player in football history.” Doak Walker could do everything – run, pass, catch, punt and kick – and did it with a modest grace that endeared him to fans who never had heard of Southern Methodist University.

The three-time consensus All-American led the Mustangs to back-to-back Southwest Conference championships in 1947 and 1948, while winning every individual honor college football had to offer. (He was the first underclassman awarded the Heisman Trophy.) The Cotton Bowl had to add an upper-deck to accommodate the record crowds the triple threat attracted and became known as “The House That Doak Built.”

Following an injury-plagued senior season at SMU, an East Coast coach the Texan met at the College All-Star Game urged him to skip the NFL. There was no way his 5-foot-11, 165-pound body could withstand the punishment of the brutal professional sport with its crazy rule that the ball carrier was fair game even when he was down.

But Doak could not resist the challenge nor the long-awaited reunion with high school teammate Bobby Layne. The coach of the Detroit Lions was none other than Bo McMillin, one of the earliest All-Americans from the Lone Star State, and it was his brilliant idea to bring the two old friends together again in the same backfield.

In addition to Walker and Layne, McMillin stocked the Lions with other native Texans, several of whom were stars in their own right. They included with position, hometown and college: Yale Lary (safety and punter, Fort Worth, Texas A&M), Harley Sewell (lineman, Saint Jo, U.T.), Cloyce Box (receiver, Hamilton, West Texas State) and Bob Smith (halfback, Ranger, Iowa).

In 1950 Doak proved beyond all doubt that talent trumped size. He led the league in scoring with five rushing touchdowns, six receiving TD’s, eight field goals and 38 PAT’s to come within 10 points of the single-season best. The guy who was too small for the National Football League was everybody’s choice for Rookie of the Year.

Under the guidance of Buddy Parker, another Texan who stepped in for the terminally ill McMillin, the Detroit Lions played in three straight NFL title games. Each time the opponent was the Cleveland Browns, and Walker, Layne & Company took two out of three.

Doak was instrumental in both victories. After missing much of the 1952 season with a bad hamstring, he put the game out of reach with a sensational 67-yard touchdown run. The next year, he accounted for 11 of the Lions’ 17 points, including the PAT that broke a 16-16 tie late in the fourth quarter.

Doak was never an athlete in denial and always knew deep down that someday he would have to give up the game he loved. Looking back decades later on his decision to retire at the age of 28, he said, “I didn’t want to be one of those guys who stayed a year too long. I didn’t want to leave burned out or crippled.”

Then he added on a more positive note, “I’d been on three division champions, two world champions. I’d been to five Pro Bowls. I’d been All-Pro four times. What else was there to do?”

No one on either side of the field, not the Detroit Lions or the Philadelphia Eagles, kidded themselves about the unusually large turnout for an exhibition game on a hot August night in Dallas. The forty thousand fans were not about to miss Doak’s final appearance in the Cotton Bowl.

In a halftime ceremony, Number 37’s many admirers showered him with praise and presents. The State Fair presented him with a solid gold, lifetime pass to the stadium he “built,” and not to be outdone, Matty Bell, his former coach, handed him a solid gold membership card to the Mustang Club. It was hard to top the showroom-new Cadillac from a group of anonymous donors, but Doak’s ex-teammates gave it the good old college try with a gag gift – a broken-down jalopy.

The guest of honor almost made it through his appreciation speech but choked up when he tried to thank his parents.

Three months later, 43,000 Detroit faithful braved sub-freezing weather to pay a final tribute to the little Texan they had learned to love. It certainly was not their team that made them risk pneumonia, for the Lions were about to finish a disappointing season with nine losses in 12 games.

The lieutenant governor of the state of Michigan set the tone for Doak Walker Day by saying, “I want you to know that personally and officially we all regret seeing you leave.” Then came all the gifts and testimonials.

Finally, it was Doak’s turn at the microphone. “Looks like Christmas comes early,” he drawled. “I just want to thank you for giving me a home in Detroit and from a Texan that’s really something.”

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After five days of ballot gridlock, Texas Democrats were no closer on July 22, 1878 to picking their candidate for governor than when they started.

With an undergraduate degree from a college in his native Georgia and a law diploma from Harvard, Richard Bennett Hubbard Jr. was the best educated governor of the 19th century.

Straining the scales at 300 pounds, he also was the heaviest man ever to hold the Lone Star State’s highest office, bigger even than the famously plump Jim Hogg.

It was no wonder that his friends called him “Jumbo” after the world renowned elephant of the same name. But Hubbard was good-natured to a fault and always laughed at the jokes at his expense.

In 1853, the year after his Ivy League graduation, Hubbard came to Texas with his parents. They settled first at Tyler, where the son hung out his shingle, and later on a plantation just up the road near the small community of Lindale.

Richard Jr. did not let his age–he was in his early 20s at the time–keep him from taking an active part in the politics of his adopted state. In 1855 he helped the Democratic Party fend off the Know-Nothings, led after a fashion by Sam Houston, and the next year stumped hard for standard bearer James Buchanan.

The 15th president rewarded the energetic campaign worker with a plum appointment – U.S. district attorney for the western half of Texas. Hubbard held the post for three years before resigning in 1859 to run for the state House of Representatives.

In the last session of the legislature before the Civil War, Hubbard favored secession maybe not as zealously as the firebrands, but without reservation nonetheless. Once the ties that bound Texas to the Union were broken, he sought a seat in the Confederate Congress. Losing a close election, he spent the war in uniform as the combat commander of an infantry regiment.

After Appomattox and the collapse of the Confederacy, Hubbard farmed until granted a pardon for participating in the southern “rebellion.” Barred from political life like nearly all ex-Rebs and Democrats, he returned to practicing law.

By 1872 most Democrats had regained the franchise. In coalition with conservative Republicans, they took control of the legislature away from the Radical wing of the GOP. It only remained to remove the hated Reconstruction governor, Edmund Davis.

Hubbard joined Richard Coke on the Democratic ticket that beat the Radical Republicans better than two-to-one in the historic election of Dec. 2, 1873. Davis was more than ready to resort to violence to stay in office, but President Grant’s refusal to send him troops sealed his fate. As Davis reluctantly left the capitol, legend has it that future governor John Ireland of Seguin gave him a parting kick in the seat of the pants.

The Coke-Hubbard administration inherited a chaotic mess from the Radicals. The state government teetered on the brink of bankruptcy with an empty treasury and few reliable sources of revenue. Western tribes had rolled back the frontier forcing frightened settlers to abandon their farms and seek safety in the east, where they were greeted by lawlessness on an unprecedented scale.

Less than a year into his second term, Gov. Coke turned the thankless task over to his lieutenant governor and went to Washington to serve in the U.S. Senate for the next 18 years.

Working without a legislature, which did not meet during his entire two years in office, Hubbard was hard-pressed to put much of a dent in the state’s overwhelming problems.

Even when he succeeded, “Jumbo” rarely received the credit. His get-tough policy toward notorious outlaws brought big names like Bill Longley, John Wesley Hardin and Sam Bass to justice and helped to end the Sutton-Taylor feud. But it was the Texas Rangers and not the embattled governor, who took a bow for these accomplishments.

Still, all things considered, Hubbard and his supporters believed he was entitled to a full four-year term to get it right. While it was true that he faced strong opposition from James W. Throckmorton, the respected ex-governor removed by the Yankee occupation, and Grange leader William W. Lang at the Democratic convention in July 1878, he was confident of nomination.

After his spellbinding keynote address, the “Demosthenes of Texas” felt even better about his chances. With the two-thirds requirement in effect, he did not expect a first-ballot victory. Hubbard was, however, encouraged by the votes of more than half of the delegates and willing to wait patiently for his total to rise to the magic number needed for nomination.

But to Richard Hubbard’s surprise and disappointment, it never happened. After five days of ballot gridlock, the convention passed the buck to a select committee that chose the venerable Oran Roberts to top the Democratic ticket that fall.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

California Democrats allowed David Smith Terry, chief justice of the state supreme court, to address their convention on July 18, 1859 after he promised to behave himself.

Nothing was more important to the transplanted Texan than his good name, and he never backed down from a fight. While other 13-year-old boys stayed home with their mothers, he risked his life for Lone Star independence. When Texans fought a second war with Mexico, the young lieutenant won the respect of fellow Rangers twice his age.

Bitten by the gold bug in 1849, David Terry joined the army of fortune hunters that invaded California. He soon realized, however, that prospecting was a losing proposition and returned to practicing law.

As a Know-Nothing candidate in 1855, Terry was elected to the highest court of the 31st state. In two short years, he was promoted to the post of chief justice.

With his term due to expire at the end of 1859 and the Know-Nothings no longer an influential force, Judge Terry tried to get back in the Democrats’ good graces. But his old allies held a grudge and refused to reward the defector with a reelection nomination.

Given the opportunity to address the state convention, Terry turned what was supposed to be a swan song into in a double-barreled blast at Sen. David C. Broderick, leader of the party’s anti-slavery faction. The Tammany Hall product was a Douglas Democrat, the Texan slyly conceded, but his hero was black abolitionist Frederick Douglas, not presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas.

A few days later over breakfast with a good friend of his accuser, Broderick responded to the charge. Calling Judge Terry “a miserable wretch,” the senator snarled, “I have spoken of him as the only honest man on the bench in a corrupt Supreme Court, but now I find I was mistaken. He is just as bad as the others.”

Broderick had impugned his integrity, and Terry would not stand for it. Believing a jurist should not break the law by dueling, he waited until the fall elections to submit his resignation and to seek satisfaction as a private citizen.

Terry wanted to be fair, which meant allowing Broderick to retract his rash remark. But Broderick was not about to apologize, and preparations proceeded for the one-on-one combat.

Hoping to avert senseless bloodshed, a mutual acquaintance knocked on the senator’s door the night before the duel. A cocky crony refused entrance to the peacemaker explaining, “It’s no use. You are too late. The fight has got to come, and this is the best time for it. Broderick never had a better chance. He can hit the size of a ten-cent piece at this distance every time.”

The overconfidence in the senator’s camp went all the way to the top. “Don’t you fear,” Broderick assured a worried supporter, “I can shoot twice to Terry’s once.”

In sharp contrast to the devil-may-care attitude of his adversary, Judge Terry kept to himself, preferring to let his pistol do the talking. His reply to the “good luck” encouragement of a friend revealed grim determination mixed with compassion. “I will hit him, but I do not want to kill him.”

The combatants waited for an hour and a half on the morning of Sep. 13, 1859 for their seconds to work out the details. Terry lost the coin toss and had to face the rising sun.

Six San Francisco newspapers covered the confrontation, the most famous in California history. Their eyewitness accounts told the riveting story.

“Mr. Broderick lost all presence of mind and trembled,” reported the Eco del Pacific. “Meanwhile, his antagonist remained as immovable as a statue.” That was how the correspondent for The Phare saw it too. “Judge Terry was as cold as a marble statue. Not a muscle of his body moved. Broderick was less collected. His cheeks were flushed.”

The Alta described the fateful exchange. “Mr. Broderick partly raised his arm, when his pistol went off prematurely. Mr. Terry raised his weapon deliberately, covered the breast of his opponent and fired.”

Sen. Broderick collapsed with a mortal wound. He lingered at death’s door for three days before finally passing through.

Overnight the slain senator became the martyr of the northern cause. Suitable last words were put in his mouth: “They have killed me because I was opposed to a corrupt administration and the extension of slavery.”

Since saints do not lose their nerve and fire wildly into the ground, a diabolical plot had to be invented. Broderick was handed a pistol with an unusually sensitive trigger fiendishly designed to go off at the slightest touch. The senator’s two seconds, who examined the weapon, disputed the ridiculous claim in sworn testimony.

In spite of the inquest verdict and his murder trial acquittal, David Smith Terry still stands accused of killing Sen. David Broderick in something less than a fair fight. As recently as 1997, a cable-television documentary on dueling presented the hair-trigger fantasy as fact.

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On July 12, 1839, Sam Houston wrote his favorite pen pal, who was young enough to be his daughter, to say how much he missed her and his beloved Texas.

The three sides of the best known romantic triangle in Lone Star history first laid eyes on each other in 1833. Fourteen-year-old Anna Raguet had settled recently in Nacogdoches with her father Henry. Dr. Robert Irion, 15 years the beauty’s senior, had buried his wife the previous year, and Sam Houston was, at 40, only four years removed from the scandalously short marriage to a teenaged debutante that led to his resignation as governor of Tennessee.

The night before Houston left to assume command of the rebel forces in January 1836, he was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the Raguets. Hearing the dashing hero grumble that he lacked a belt for his sword, Anna fashioned one from red cloth and presented it to him at his dawn departure the next day.

As soon as the Texans’ crushing victory was secure, the victorious general sent a sprig of laurel by special messenger to his young admirer. An enclosed note made clear the thought behind the gift: “These are the laurels I send you from the battlefield at San Jacinto. Thine, Sam Houston.”

Like most educated men of his day, Houston was a prolific letter writer and corresponded on a regular basis with dozens of individuals. But he seemed to take special pleasure in the steady stream of mail from the blond maiden. In October 1836, an astonished aide watched him plant a score of kisses on the latest letter from Miss Anna.

Up until then, Houston had shown little interest in severing the legal tie which still bound him to Eliza Allen back in Tennessee. But divorce suddenly became a pressing priority, and in April 1837 the republic he served as president issued the necessary decree.

Houston’s infatuation was such common knowledge that friends, and those keen on currying his favor, kept him well informed on Anna’s hectic social life. While admitting the parlor of “the brightest and loveliest star of Texas” was the busiest place in Nacogdoches, an accomplished flatterer gave the many suitors no chance against “the Conqueror who gave our banner to the breeze.”

Houston often wondered why Anna did not wed this or that young man and went so far as to review the qualifications of each candidate. His sincerity was clearly suspect since the real question may have been whether she considered him husband material.

He once came right out and asked the junior miss why she did not marry their personal postman, the good doctor Irion. Was sly Sam unaware of their mutual affection or giving her the opportunity to deny the rumored romance?

Nowhere in the extensive correspondence, which has survived the wear and tear of a century and a half, did Houston ask Anna to be his wife. But a letter penned in June 1838 implied that he had proposed marriage because it contained his pledge never to raise the subject again.

By contemporary standards, Houston was acting the fool, and an old fool at that. He was 45 in the summer of 1838 – three years older than Anna’s father – and she was still in her teens. Even though the union of middle-aged men with females young enough to be their daughters was more widely accepted in those days, Houston’s conduct made him a laughingstock in some quarters.

Houston was between presidencies in 1839 and treated himself to an extended vacation. Passing through Alabama, he was introduced to Margaret Lea, a southern belle the same age as Anna with matching blue eyes.

In a letter to Dr. Irion soon after the chance encounter, Houston wrote, “You have basked this summer in the sunshine of Miss Anna’s countenance and must be very happy. She is a great woman! Who will marry her? If she were out of the way, I would be better off in my feelings.”

Eight months later, Anna was no longer on the market thanks to Robert Irion. They eloped over the objections of her father, who had a rich Philadelphia businessman all picked out, and exchanged vows on March 30, 1840.

While it is true that Houston did not exactly marry Margaret Lea on the rebound, the fact remains he tied the knot for the last time six weeks after Anna ceased to be available.

The two couples maintained a close and treasured friendship despite any lingering emotions from the three-sided relationship. The Irions honored the odd man out by naming their first son Sam Houston.

Anna Raguet Irion outlived her husband, who died on Houston’s birthday in 1861, by 22 years. She never mentioned, much less discussed, the carefully preserved private papers discovered after her death.

So if Miss Anna never loved Sam Houston, how come she held onto his letters for nearly half a century?

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And come on by HYPERLINK www.twith.com for a visit!

The shocking events of June 30, 1903 may have left most Texans at a loss for words, but not an East Texas editor who wrote, “The tragedy is the first of its kind in the history of the state and is the most appalling in the annals of the South.”

Col. Robert Marshall Love was chewing the fat with a preacher from Bonham on that fateful morning, when an ex-employee burst into his capitol office. The unflappable official reacted to the rude interruption with a smile, a handshake and an invitation to sit a spell.

The cordial reception from his former boss startled W.G. Hill, who acknowledged the gracious greeting with a stiff nod and plopped down in an empty chair. Repeated attempts to include him in the conversation were rebuffed with hostile stares or one-word replies.

Made uncomfortable by the tension in the room, the minister bid both gentlemen good-bye and rose to take his leave. He was barely out of the door, when Hill jumped to his feet and handed Love a two-page letter that he insisted the colonel read right then and there.

The state comptroller decided to humor the high-strung intruder and spun around in swivel chair to concentrate on the tedious task. As he suspected, the document was the canned clerk’s denunciation of his presumably unfair firing.

“The practice of bartering department clerkships for private gain is a disgrace to the public service and in the nefarious traffic you are a ‘record breaker,’” the out-of-work civil servant had scrawled. “Although I can not help myself, before laying life’s burden down, I shall strike a blow – feeble though it may be – for the good of my deserving fellow man.”

Hill did not wait for his victim to finish the letter he had spent hours writing. He reached in a coat pocket, pulled out the .38-caliber revolver on loan from his son and shot the comptroller in the small of the back.

The ear-splitting roar brought bookkeeper J.W. Stephens on the run from an adjoining office. But the would-be rescuer arrived too late to stop Hill from putting a second slug in the bleeding colonel, who had turned to face his attacker. The bullet pierced the Civil War veteran’s barrel chest, ricocheted off a rib and tore through his lower torso.

Hill heard Stephens coming and whirled to welcome him with the business end of the smoking revolver. The broad-shouldered bookkeeper flattened him with a flying tackle that knocked the six-shooter out of his hand and sent it skidding across the freshly polished wood floor.

The reverend reentered the room to see the two men locked in a life-and-death struggle for the weapon. Transfixed by the savage scene, he watched helplessly as an anonymous hand grabbed the gun and ended the wrestling match a split-second later with a third and final shot.

For several suspenseful moments, the preacher could not identify the winner of the desperate battle. Finally, to his immense relief, the burly bookkeeper rose to his feet and stood over the motionless murderer.

Hill was soon an island in an ocean of his own blood. He rolled over on his back revealing the source of the crimson sea – a bullet wound in the stomach.

Retrieving a tiny bottle of poison from his vest pocket, the groaning gunman begged the bookkeeper not to interfere. “Let me take this and die easy,” he whimpered. The pitiful plea fell on deaf ears, and Stephens pried the vial from his cold fingers sentencing the assassin to a slow death.

Chaos reigned in the capitol as word spread of the shooting. To accommodate the concerned and curious at the crowded crime scene, Hill was carried to the far side of the rotunda and left alone to wait his turn for medical attention.

The state health director examined the conscious comptroller and confirmed his wounds were fatal. Realizing he had only minutes to live, Love called for a stenographer and calmly dictated a deathbed statement. “I have no idea why he shot me. May the Lord bless him and forgive him. I can say no more.”

The inevitable happened at five minutes past 11 with his loved ones and Gov. S.W.T. Lanham at his side. “After one unsuccessful effort to give to the world and those around him a last parting word,” the Austin American-Statesman reported in the flowery prose of the day, “the soul of R.M. Love plumed its snowy pinions and sailed away to the pearly portals of Paradise.”

Homicidal Hill died four hours later with his motive still a mystery. The vague reason he gave for the first and last killing in the capitol was, “He didn’t treat me right.”

Lax security was initially blamed for the incredible crime, but turn-of-the-century Texans later came to grips with the disturbing fact of life later faced by their modern-day descendants. There is no bulletproof safeguard against a madman on a mission.

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In a letter to Stephen F. Austin on June 28, 1832, the legendary frontiersman Strap Buckner acknowledged the impending arrival of a priest to make honest men and women of his neighbors.

Catholicism was the state religion of Mexico, and conversion to the official faith was a condition of citizenship for all immigrants. This religious requirement rankled the vast majority of Anglo-American settlers, who had been brought up as Protestants, but they had to swear allegiance to Rome or lose their land grants.

The awkward arrangement made hypocrites out of the colonists, whose convenient Catholicism was a sham, as well as the authorities who pretended not to notice the charade.

The one troubling catch was that Mexican law recognized only those marriages performed by a priest, which meant that with each passing year more and more couples were living in sin and raising their offspring out of wedlock.

By 1830 the Austin colonists grudgingly accepted the need for a padre to sanctify the ties that bound them and to sprinkle their children. But he had to be an understanding cleric, who would respect their peculiar relationship with the mother church and not try to cram Catholic dogma down their throats.

Early the next year on a visit to Saltillo, Stephen F. Austin found the perfect pastor for his finicky flock. His excitement leaped off the page as he described his discovery as “a very intelligent and gentlemanly man quite liberal in his ideas.”

Father Michael Muldoon was a middle-aged Irishman, who had been forced by the repressive British occupation of his homeland to go abroad to study for the priesthood. As a member of the Dominican order, he was sent to Mexico on the eve of independence with an ill-fated traveling companion – the last Spanish viceroy.

After ten years in the interior, Muldoon was ready for the change and challenge Texas offered. To Austin’s delight, he eagerly agreed to serve as spiritual shepherd and started making the rounds of the scattered settlements in April 1831.

Before long the good-natured friar learned there was no pleasing his many critics so zealously certain he had been sent by Satan to subvert their souls. They complained he overcharged for his services, while taking little interest in their salvation.

But those that gave Father Muldoon half a chance invariably wound up liking him. And as momentous events soon showed, they never had a better friend.

Gen. Manuel de Mier y Teran, military commander of the northern district of Mexico, came to Texas in November 1831 to check out reports of seditious activity. Muldoon accompanied his old friend on the inspection tour and filled his head with praise for the salt-of-the-earth newcomers. At the same time, the clever priest, who must have been a spy in a previous life, kept Austin posted on the investigation.

If Muldoon had done nothing more than leak vital information to the colonists, he would have been worth his weight in gold. But the fearless father was not content with working quietly behind the scenes and gladly stuck his neck out for his adopted congregation.

When push finally came to shove at Anahuac in June 1832, Muldoon was Johnny on the spot. He volunteered to trade places with the Texans taken prisoner by government troops, but the officer in charge wanted no part of a swap that left him holding a holy man hostage.

Muldoon returned to Mexico two months later and published a spirited defense of the much maligned colonists. Strong suggestions from secular and ecclesiastical sources that he stop dabbling in politics only served to strengthen his resolve to aid the Protestant pioneers.

Muldoon was living in Mexico City in 1834, when Austin was detained in the capital on the vague and unfounded suspicion of plotting rebellion. During the three months the frail empressario was held incommunicado, the courageous clergyman was his sole contact with the outside world. He even persuaded an American businessman to post bond for the prisoner, but Santa Anna insisted on keeping Austin under lock and key.

Muldoon’s most audacious act of Christian charity occurred in Matamoros in the spring of 1837, when he engineered the escape of William H. Wharton. The Republic of Texas diplomat, who had been thrown in jail after a high-seas kidnapping, walked right past the guards disguised as a priest in a robe secretly supplied by the daring Irishman.

Father Muldoon’s last recorded visit to independent Texas took place in 1842. Secretary of State Anson Jones presented him with a testimonial tribute which read in part: “The people of Texas will not cease to have an abiding recollection of the great friendship you evinced and the valuable service you rendered our distinguished Fellow Citizen, Gen. S.F. Austin, while detained a prisoner in Mexico.”

And with that Michael Muldoon vanished leaving no trace of his later adventures or the date and place of his earthly departure.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

The case against Monroe Edwards, con artist and fugitive from Lone Star justice, went to a New York jury on June 17, 1842.

The cunning Kentuckian never earned an honest dollar in his life. Already incorrigible when he came to Texas in 1827 at the age of 19, Edwards made a fast and fabulous fortune smuggling slaves from Cuba. He invested most of his ill-gotten gains in prime real estate, which became the Brazoria County plantation Chenango.

Edwards took on an equally unscrupulous partner named Christopher Dart and remained active in the illicit slave trade right up until the independence insurrection. Although he dodged the dangers of the historic conflict by leaving the province, his cowardly conduct did not keep him from masquerading as a hero of the Texas Revolution.

Deciding to dump Dart, Edwards devised a fiendishly clever way to dissolve their partnership without sharing the proceeds of the joint venture. He chemically erased the text of a letter from his associate and above his signature wrote a phony bill of sale for the patsy’s portion of the plantation.

Dart retaliated with a lawsuit, which was tried at Brazoria in March 1840. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff awarding him substantial damages and freezing the assets of the dismayed defendant.

But that was only the beginning of the con artist’s problems. He was arrested the very next day on a forgery charge and held without bond in Brazoria. Jailbird or not, Edwards was entitled to the special treatment accorded any gentleman. As a result, the sheriff allowed Kitty Clover, a mulatto slave disguised as a manservant, to join her master and lover in his cell.

Granted bail at a habeas corpus hearing in San Antonio, Edwards sent Kitty back to Brazoria to snoop around. She found out that fresh charges had been filed to ensure his pretrial detention and rushed to warn him. The couple quickly fled Texas with all the gold they could carry.

During a brief layover in New York, Edwards wrote a number of renowned Americans to obtain their autographs. Employing the same technique used in the failed attempt to cheat his business partner, he transformed polite replies from Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren and other prominent personalities into glowing letters of introduction.

Edwards then traveled to England, where the counterfeit credentials opened every door. Posing as a saintly abolitionist dedicated to freeing the slaves he had sold into bondage, the charlatan was warmly welcomed by the British elite and even presented to parliament.

The Lone Star minister was not nearly so gullible and dug up the dirt on the flashy fraud. James Hamilton put the impostor on notice in November 1840: “I beg to inform you that I have been apprised that you are a fugitive from the public justice of the Republic of Texas charged with the commission of an infamous crime.”

Threatened with exposure and possible imprisonment, Edwards caught the next boat back to New York. But he had one more trick up his silk sleeve.

With a few expert strokes of the pen, Edwards invented an impressive identity – John P. Caldwell, wealthy Arkansas planter. Putting up a thousand nonexistent bales of cotton as collateral, he applied for a $25,000 loan from a merchant bank in Manhattan. He cashed the check on Aug. 28, 1841 and vanished into thin air.

Edwards and his latest accomplice, Alexander Powell, hid out in Philadelphia waiting for the bamboozled bankers to lose interest in their whereabouts. But the five-figure reward offered for their apprehension only turned up the heat and persuaded the pair to split up.

The plan called for Powell to slip into Boston, where he would book passage for Europe, while Edwards headed south for New Orleans. To divert attention from his own departure by sicking the law on his confederate, Edwards mailed an anonymous tip on the date Powell was supposed to sail.

But the swindler outsmarted himself. Powell’s cruise was delayed three days enabling the police to grab him on the gangplank. He took one look at the unsigned letter responsible for his capture, recognized the handwriting and in a fit of temper unmasked “John P. Caldwell.”

Edwards still would have made a clean getaway if not for an uncharacteristic act of compassion. He stayed overnight in Philadelphia in order to provide for Kitty and their five-month-old child. Moments after opening an account in her name, he was collared by the cops.

Convicted in the cotton caper, Monroe Edwards was sent up the river to notorious Sing Sing prison. Abandoned by his beloved Kitty, he tried twice to escape. A severe flogging following his second attempt commuted the fugitive Texan’s long prison term to a death sentence in 1847.

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When the lukewarm trail of a horse thief led the Karnes County sheriff to the Cortez place on June 12, 1901, retired Texas Ranger Brack Morris and two of his deputies dropped by to ask a few questions.

Following a familiar pattern, the Cortez clan came over to the Texas side of the Rio Grande in 1887. Romaldo, and younger brother Gregorio, spent a decade hiring out as temporary hands until they saved enough money from their meager wages to buy a modest spread in Karnes County.

Few words passed between Sheriff Morris and the older Cortez before the lead began flying. As the Mexican fell, two bullets in swift succession struck Morris, who staggered several yards before collapsing. Gregorio pumped a third slug into the defenseless lawman, grabbed his gun and escaped with his wounded brother.

Abandoned by his panic-stricken deputies, who did not lift a finger during the brief battle, Brack Morris slowly bled to death. Meanwhile, Gregorio deposited Romaldo, who was in no shape to travel, with kinsmen in Kenedy and fled on foot.

Scores of riders combed the countryside and soon took Romaldo into custody. Figuring his straight-shooting sibling would make a beeline for the border, all routes west were closely watched.

But the fugitive did the unexpected by heading due north. He ate breakfast the next morning in his victim’s hometown and went on his way unnoticed by grieving residents paying their last respects to the slain sheriff.

At sundown the following day, Gregorio found shelter at Belmont, east of Seguin. A posse recklessly rushed the hideout in the early hours of June 15, and when the smoke cleared a second sheriff, Robert Glover of Gonzales County, lay dead.

Gregorio again eluded capture but not before plugging a civilian member of the posse. Ten miles away near the banks of the Guadalupe, he picked up a pistol and a fresh horse from a friend, whose generosity cost him two years in the penitentiary.

Scrapping his plan to seek sanctuary in North Texas, Gregorio lit out for Mexico cleverly weaving a zigzag course. Running two mounts to death, he dodged one posse after another as hundreds of volunteers joined the manhunt and heeded the advice of the San Antonio Express “to fill up every nook and corner and guard every avenue of escape.”

The tenth day of the chase, Gregorio came upon a deserted sheep camp 30 miles from the Rio Grande. He huddled inside a crude hut and calculated the date – June 22, his birthday. What a celebration there would be once he waded the river!

But a fellow Mexican spoiled the party. Spotting the famous fugitive with the thousand-dollar price on his head, he flagged down a passing patrol of Rangers. Moments later, the most wanted man in the Lone Star State surrendered with a struggle.

Gregorio was jailed at San Antonio, as the competing counties argued over which would get first crack at him in court. Only then did the exhausted prisoner learn, to his amazement, that Mexicans on both sides of the river hailed him as a hero.

The editor of a Spanish-language newspaper in the Alamo City organized a legal defense fund for the destitute defendant and in no time at all was up to his ears in cash contributions. The money came in handy as Gregorio stood trial six times in three years on a long list of charges.

Three convictions were overturned on appeal, and an all-Anglo jury in Corpus Christi ruled the killing of Sheriff Morris a case of self-defense. But Gregorio would not go unpunished. A Columbus trial ended with a guilty verdict in the death of the Gonzales County peace officer and a sentence of life imprisonment.

Gregorio entered the state pen at Huntsville on New Year’s Day 1905. As the years dragged by, loyal supporters lobbied tirelessly for clemency and in 1913 finally found a receptive ear.

Gov. Oscar Colquitt had marked his 51st birthday the previous December by freeing 51 inmates. In spite of the fact that Gregorio stubbornly refused to express the slightest remorse for the murder, he was released after serving only eight and a half years.

Reactions to the pardon split along racial lines especially in The Valley. While most Mexicans applauded Colquitt’s controversial act of clemency, most Anglos agreed with the Beeville paper that blasted him as “a chicken-hearted governor” for turning loose “the state’s most heinous coward and murderer.”

Following a series of public appearances, Gregorio went to Nuevo Laredo and jumped feet-first into the Mexican Revolution. Shot up for his trouble, he retired to the West Texas town of Anson to lick his wounds.

After three short years of freedom, Gregorio Cortez died suddenly at the age of 41. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but his devoted fans suspected foul play. To this day, many believe the cop-killing folk hero was poisoned by South Texans seeking revenge for the murders of their two sheriffs.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!

The nation hardly noticed when Bobby Baker, the poster boy for political corruption, got out of prison on June 2, 1972.

The Washington insider the press nicknamed “Lyndon’s boy” did not hail from Texas, as many misinformed Americans presumed, but from South Carolina. Sent to Capitol Hill as a senate page at the impressionable age of 14, the ambitious errand boy cut his teeth on corruption.

When Lyndon Johnson moved up a congressional rung in 1949, Baker already was a smooth operator with seven years experience at satisfying senators’ every need. “Bobby was the man you called,” a contemporary remembered candidly. “He had the head count. He knew who was drunk, who was out of town and who was unreachable. He knew who was against a bill and why. Bobby was it.”

Hitching his star to LBJ’s, Baker rose to prominence right alongside the powerful Texan. The selection of Johnson in 1955 as majority leader by senate Democrats automatically landed the plum post of majority secretary for his subordinate.

After LBJ traded his senate seat for the vice-presidency six years later, Baker reported to his reclusive replacement. Unlike Johnson, who always kept the wheeler-dealer on a short leash and out of serious trouble, Sen. Mike Mansfield gave him free rein to do as he pleased.

For Baker that meant drinking his fill at the public trough. By the fall of 1963, he had his sticky fingers in a score of lucrative pies that included a law firm, travel agency, housing developments and a Maryland resort which catered to the Potomac power brokers.

Baker bought a townhouse for his mistress, who doubled as his secretary, and a $124,000 mansion for his wife and five children. Not bad for a government worker with a modest annual income of $19,612.

The bubble finally burst in October 1963. A disgruntled business partner sued the influence peddler for reneging on a promise to install thousands of vending machines in defense installations. Baker quickly resigned in the faint hope of staying out of the slammer.

But a squeaky clean senator insisted upon putting his crooked affairs under the microscope. A subsequent investigation complete with sensational disclosures coincided with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the elevation to the Oval Office of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

At a January 1964 press conference, LBJ admitted receiving a $600 stereo from Baker but characterized the gift as an innocent exchange of presents. Later that month, he emphatically denied the ex-aide was ever his “protégé” and added, “He was there before I came to the senate for ten years, doing substantially the same job. He was elected by all the senators.”

But past statements that hinted at a much closer relationship came back to haunt the president. “If I’d had a son, Bobby, I would want him to be just like you,” was undoubtedly the most damaging quotation dug up by reporters. A glowing tribute to Baker on the senate floor in August 1957, during which the Texan ranked him as “one of my most trusted, most loyal and most competent friends,” also proved embarrassing.

The Republican challenger tried hard to make a campaign issue out of the incumbent’s ties with Baker, but voters could not have cared less. Seventy-three percent interviewed for an April 1964 poll said the scandal had not tarnished their opinion of the president, and three percent even indicated they thought more highly of him.

LBJ rode out the storm and buried Barry Goldwater at the polls in November. For Baker, however, the worst was yet to come. A federal grand jury indicted him in January 1966 on nine felonies ranging from theft to income tax evasion.

A year later almost to the day, the balding boy wonder went on trial. Even though he faced a maximum punishment of 48 years behind bars and $47,000 in fines, he loved the limelight. When a stranger asked for directions to the highly publicized proceedings, Baker bubbled, “Right in there!”

At the heart of the government’s case was a six-figure bribe the defendant solicited in 1962. California savings and loan executives owned up to the illegal $100,000 “contribution,” and Baker admitted taking the money. The question for the jury to decide was whether he pocketed the cash, as the prosecutor claimed, or delivered the bundle to Sen. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma.

The wealthy Sooner had since gone on to his reward, so it was Baker’s word against the reputation of a dead politician staunchly defended by family, friends and senate colleagues. To no one’s surprise, the verdict was a clean sweep for the prosecution.

In spite of his conviction on all counts, the judge gave the white-collar criminal the customary slap on the wrist. After serving 17 months of a three-year sentence, Bobby Baker faded into richly deserved obscurity where he remains today at the age of 81.

Nine “Best of This Week in Texas History” column collections to choose from at twith.com. Order on-line or by mail from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549.

The craggy face of Texas oil tycoon Clint Murchison graced the cover of the May 26, 1954 issue of Time magazine.

Absent from the layout but with his old friend in spirit was fellow Athenian Sid Richardson. Both were born in the last decade of the nineteenth century – Richardson in 1891 at Athens and Murchison four years later at Tyler. The Murchisons soon moved to the Henderson County seat, where the head of the family continued a career in banking and the eighth of nine children trapped raccoons and skunks to sell their pelts.

Clint Murchison gave Trinity University the good old college try but lasted less than a semester. Caught shooting craps, the defiant freshman dropped out rather than sign a no-gambling pledge. He toiled as a teller for his dad until the day a bank examiner demanded a strict accounting of his till.

A lay-off a few years before had put 16-year-old Sid Richardson on the road to riches. Losing a dollar-a-day job at the cotton compress, he wandered to Louisiana and found his true calling.

Richardson’s impersonation of a down-on-his-luck city slicker elicited so much sympathy from Pelican State farmers they practically gave him their prize calves. On the $3,500 profit from the sale of the charitable contributions, he was able to afford a year and a half of higher education.

Richardson sometimes pulled a stranger’s leg just for fun. Many years after his Louisiana escapade, a hot-shot magazine writer crashed a party planning to interview the “billionaire bachelor.” Introducing himself as his own chauffeur, he supplied the gullible journalist with a fictitious scoop on his reclusive boss.

While Lt. Murchison was winning the first World War, Richardson made his first killing in the Lone Star oilfields. He could not resist flaunting his new-found wealth by rolling into Athens behind the wheel of a shiny new Cadillac. As he recalled decades later with a big grin, “When I left, all those guys sitting on those benches around the square jumped up and followed me right out of town.”

Eager to show his boyhood buddy how it was done, Richardson whisked the skeptical veteran off to the Burkburnett field within days of his homecoming. When it took just 24 hours of buying and selling oil leases to quadruple their $50,000 grubstake, Murchison was hooked.

Each immediately launched his own drilling operation, and by the mid-1920’s the two wildcatters were filthy rich. Confident he could live comfortably on five million dollars, Murchison bowed out of the oil business at the tender age of 30. But he jumped back in the game in 1927 in order to take his mind off the tragic loss of his wife to jaundice.

The fabulous East Texas boom cut both ways for Richardson and most of his contemporaries. He made money hand over fist until the piney woods crude glutted the market in 1931 dropping the price to pennies a barrel.

“I had a monthly income of $25,000. Six months later, my income was $1,600 a month, and the bank was taking it all as payment on the $250,000 I owed. But by March 1932, the price of oil was up again. I had four ten-dollar bills and was ready to go.”

It was full-steam ahead for Richardson, who in 1935 opened the Keystone Field in Winkler County. He not only kept his head above water but became, according to an inside source at Chase Manhattan Bank, the first bona fide billionaire west of the Mississippi.

Murchison was never far behind, though exactly how far he would not say. Irritated by nosy questions about the size of his fabulous fortune, he once snapped, “After the first hundred million, what the hell!”

Murchison spread his risk after World War II by expanding his interests beyond the oil patch. He bought a New York publishing house in the belief that the baby boom was bound to increase the demand for textbooks. Foreseeing a work force with more leisure time, he purchased Field & Stream and a fishing-tackle manufacturer. By the mid-1950s, the Murchison empire encompassed 48 companies with 50,000 employees.

The key to his success was a keep-it-simple philosophy, which a subordinate learned on an errand to Mississippi. He called Murchison at his downtown Dallas office to suggest there may have been more to the purchase of an insurance company than originally met his eye. “There’s nothing complicated about it,” the tycoon snorted. “A hundred thousand shares at $105. That’s $10.5 million, just a simple business deal.”

Sid Richardson feared the loneliness of retirement and swore, “I’ll still be trading when they bury me.” True to his word, he passed away in his sleep in 1959 on his private island five miles off Rockport.

In contrast, Clint Murchison learned how to take it easy in his twilight years. Prior to his passing in 1968, he ran a country store in his hometown and studied the comings and goings of migratory birds.

Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And come on by www.twith.com for a visit!