The post office at Thurber closed for good on Oct. 28, 1936.  The once thriving mining town hardly had a pulse, and neighboring Mingus was on the critical list. Separated by two miles and the Erath-Palo Pinto county line, the two shared a common prosperity during the boom times of the coal-burning l...

Clutching a suitcase in one hand and a satchel full of cash in the other on Oct. 15, 1878, Mifflin Kenedy caught the train for Dodge City where his son Spike was charged with the murder of a popular female entertainer. As the owner of the Laureles Ranch near Corpus Christi, the Pennsylvania Quaker a...

The Dallas Texans, first pro football team in the Southwest, proved their season opening defeat was no fluke by losing 37-14 to the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 5, 1952. Seventy-two years ago, the National Football League did not remotely resemble the sports spectacle of today. No Monday Night Footba...

The month long court-martial at Fort Sam Houston ended on the evening of Sep. 30, 1954.  The fate of the lowly corporal accused of collaborating with his communist captors was in the hands of eight high ranking officers. Six years earlier at the tender age of 16, Claude Batchelor left his Kermit, Te...

THISWEEK IN TEXAS HISTORY Col. Billy Mitchell departed San Antonio on Sep. 21, 1925, never to return in uniform to the flight training center. The outspoken advocate of air power realized the odds were against him but relished the opportunity to butt heads with the brass. As commander of American fl...

The “Tough ’Ombres” of the Ninetieth Infantry Division saw action for the first time on the bloody battlefields of France on Sep. 12, 1918. The Great War (no one imagined there could be a second) has all but faded from the national memory.  Ask most Americans what they know about World War I, and th...

A Houston judge learned on Sep. 8, 1939 that his daughter not only had survived the U-boat sinking of the British passenger ship Athenia but also had been hailed as a heroine by the American ambassador. In her last letter before leaving Europe, Helen Hannay asked her parents not to worry.  “There ma...

Under the assumed name of George Washington Arrington, an Alabama fugitive enlisted in the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers on Sep. 1, 1875. John C. Orrick, Jr. grew up fast going off to war at 16 and fighting at both battles of Manassas or Bull Run, Harpers Ferry, Antietam and Gettysburg.  H...

Two Confederate generals sat down with Emperor Maximilian on Aug. 24, 1865 and presented their bold plan for keeping the Austrian puppet on the Mexican throne. The battle-scarred cavalrymen of the famed Iron Brigade spent the last weeks of the Civil War guarding Little Rock against an attack that ne...

Paralyzed and partially blind, Temple Lea Houston spent his forty-fifth birthday on Aug. 12, 1905 waiting for death to put an end to his suffering. Sam Houston was 67 years old and fighting a losing battle to keep Texas in the Union, when his eighth and last child (and the first born in the governor...