Texas Originals | Houston Public Media

MARTÍN DE LEÓN(1765–1834)   Empresario Martín De León founded the city of Victoria and played a key role in settling the Texas Coastal Bend. De León was born in 1765 to an aristocratic family in Burgos, Mexico. After serving as a soldier, De León married and planned to settle his new family in Texas. In 1801, the couple began building a ranch along the Nueces River near present-day San Patricio. When Mexico began issuing empresario.....

Gail Borden Jr. November 9, 1801–January 11, 1874 Gail Borden Jr. was undaunted by failure. In the 1840s he built a wagon meant to travel on land and water but did neither successfully. His nutritional biscuits made from dehydrated meat and flour were unpalatable. Yet Borden kept at it. In the 1850s, he developed a way to condense milk — and this time, succeeded on a grand scale.Born in New York in 1801, Borden moved to... Read More

  John G. Tower in His Washington Office, Photograph, November 19, 1988; digital image, University of North Texas Libraries, crediting Cherokee County Historical Commission, Rusk, Texas. JOHN GOODWIN TOWERSeptember 29, 1925–April 5, 1991   Texas became a two-party state in 1961, when conservative Republican John Tower was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was the first Republican senator from Texas since Reconstruction. Born in 1925, Tower grew up in East Texas, the son of a.....

Painting of James Stephen Hogg. Douglass, Neal. The Portal to Texas History. JAMES STEPHEN HOGGMarch 24, 1851–March 3, 1906   The governorship of James Stephen Hogg, from 1891 to 1895, has been a benchmark for Texas governors ever since. Hogg was born in 1851 and grew up near Rusk. As a young man, he worked as a typesetter in a newspaper office and later published newspapers in East Texas while studying for a law degree.... Read More

MARY AUSTIN HOLLEY October 30, 1784–August 2, 1846 Writer Mary Austin Holley introduced English-speaking readers of the 1830s and ‘40s to Texas, which she called a land of “surpassing beauty ... a splendid country.”A Connecticut native, Holley lived in Boston and Lexington, Kentucky, until the death of her husband in 1827.She wrote to her cousin Stephen F. Austin, inquiring about the colony he had founded in far-off Texas. Stephen replied enthusiastically, even promising her a tract of....

QUANAH PARKER CA. 1845–February 23, 1911 Born about 1845, Comanche leader Quanah Parker lived two vastly different lives: the first as a warrior among the Plains Indians of Texas, and the second as a pragmatic leader who sought a place for his people in a rapidly changing America.Parker's birth was a direct result of the conflict between Native Americans and white settlers. His mother, Cynthia Parker, was captured by the Comanche as a child and later... Read More

ANDY ADAMS May 3, 1859–September 26, 1935Born in Indiana in 1859, writer Andy Adams lived the cowboy life on the Texas plains. He later rendered those experiences in fiction to set Americans straight about life in the West.Adams arrived in South Texas in 1881 and began rounding up livestock to send to Kansas. Through his work, he became fascinated with cowboys—their speech, culture, and work habits.In the 1890s, Adams moved on to Colorado to pursue... Read More

ADINA EMILIA DE ZAVALA November 28, 1861–March 1, 1955The second defense of the Alamo took place in 1908, when Adina De Zavala barricaded herself for three days in the long barracks, or convento, to protest plans for its destruction. Forbidden food and water, she was determined to save the Alamo compound from what she called “business greed.”De Zavala was born in Harris County in 1861 to an Irish mother and Mexican father. Her grandfather, Lorenzo,... Read More

PLÁCIDO BENAVIDES(1810­–1837) Plácido Benavides is called the “Paul Revere of Texas” for his role in the Texas Revolution. Born in 1810 in Mexico, Benavides moved to Texas in 1828. He found work in Victoria with the family of empresario Martín De León. Benavides married De León’s daughter Agustina and became the city’s alcalde. By 1835, Benavides had joined the Texians in opposing Mexican dictator Santa Anna...

A closeup of Karle Wilson Baker from the SFA Faculty, Summer 1925, image below. [Image credit: Stephen F. Austin State Teacher College Faculty, 1925, East Texas Research Center, Photograph Collection, P20zz_4, http://library.sfasu.edu/etrc/]   KARLE WILSON BAKEROctober 13, 1878–November 9, 1960   Karle Wilson Baker was Texas’s most celebrated poet in the first half of the twentieth century...