Davy Crockett spent Christmas Day 1835 at Nacogdoches waiting for Ben McCulloch, but when the younger Tennessean was a no-show, his hero went on without him to San Antonio. The pressing family problems that delayed McCulloch’s departure for Texas spared his life.  Had the 25-year-old frontiersman ke...

Two weeks after  the amputation of most of his right leg, Monty Stratton was released from the hospital on Dec. 13, 1938. Even though the lanky farmboy from Celeste had been blessed with a blazing fast ball, he never dreamed someone would pay him a man’s wages for playing a boy’s sport.  As much as ...

The National Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City admitted its first black member on Dec. 10, 1971, but the honor came 39 years too late for legendary Bill Pickett. Pickett’s father was born into bondage in 1854 on the trail from South Carolina to Texas.  After the Civil War and their emancipa...

On Nov. 24, 1923, a Fort Worth jury came back with a verdict in the federal fraud trial of disgraced explorer, Dr. Frederick Albert Cook. A decade and a half earlier, scientists and the public alike were forced to choose between the competing claims of Dr. Cook, who insisted he was the first to reac...

As the Texas Ranger lieutenant prepared to fight 150 or more Indians with only 18 men on Nov. 10, 1837, he must have questioned the wisdom of his reckless decision to part company with his captain, William Mosby Eastland. Born in Kentucky and raised in Tennessee, Eastland was 28 in 1834, when he mov...

As the presidential special sped him back to Washington on Oct. 26, 1909, William Howard Taft dared to dream of carrying the Lone Star State in 1912. Six months after taking office in March 1909, the new chief executive embarked on a grueling 12,000-mile cross-country tour.  Fence-mending was the or...

Bob Wills was inducted on Oct. 18, 1968 into the Country Music Hall of Fame, an ironic honor since the King of Western Swing never thought there was anything “country” about his sound. The first of John and Emmaline Wills’ ten children was born in 1905 near Kosse in the Central Texas county of Limes...

After Joe Horner’s battle with the buffalo soldiers on Oct. 11, 1874, the wild young outlaw seemed headed for an early grave.  Who could have imagined that half a century later he would be the guest of honor at a state funeral in Oklahoma? Looking to put the post-Civil War strife behind them, the Ho...

Harley Sadler, a household name throughout West Texas, made his last personal appearance at a benefit for the Boy Scouts on Oct. 9, 1954, but this time there would be no curtain call for the much loved king of the tent shows. Born in Arkansas, Harley came to Texas just as soon as he could.  The rest...

By Bartee Haile Two weeks after breaking the Texas League home run record that had stood for 32 years, Ken Guettler hit his sixtieth round-tripper of the season on Aug. 26, 1956. Still alive and kicking in Fort Worth, Clarence “Big Boy” Kraft had no comment on the day his best known achievement was ...