RSS 2.0 NEWS FEEDSTreasure Hunting
Posted 05.05.06 at 11:33 AMThe recent passing excitement concerning the covered water well on the new CVS site, formerly the Salvation Army Thrift Store at 530 Lamar in Paris, brings up the subject of treasure hunting. The well was covered with a concrete slab that reads “Here Lies $1,000,000,” scratched into it by the late Ted Brown and by Gene Rader over twenty years ago. It apparently dates from the late 1800s, and there has long been the hope that at the bottom might be a treasure in gold coins of the type which would have been pitched into such a place. Evidently, the old well is still capped; if it was excavated during the CVS construction, I did not hear about it.
Then I found two similar stories in The Paris News. On August 6, 1948, it was reported that workers tearing down the Texas Company service station at 201 South Main uncovered a safe when they dug up the foundation. Since the Wells-Fargo Express office was located on the same site at the time of the 1916 fire, the safe was believed to have been “left behind” in the haste to escape the rapidly spreading flames.
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Posted 04.21.06 at 10:00 AMDid you know that Belle Starr, one of the most famous female bandits, was once held in the jail in Paris? The story has always intrigued me. I once had a good Quarter Horse mare named Belle; she was gentle and sweet, unlike, I suspect, the real Belle Starr, but about as luckless. She was standing beside a light pole when a bolt of lightning hit the transformer on it, bounced off, and struck her dead. Maybe if I hadn’t named her “Belle” . . .
According to historian Spencer Jones, in a 1972 news clipping, a Paris paper reported that Sam J. Parker, a resident of Collin County before his death in 1940, had become a Texas Ranger after the Civil War. He arrested Belle (then Belle Reed) in present day Delta County in the late 1860s. He took her to Paris and turned her over to the sheriff, and she stayed a few days in the old jail on S. Main St. but was released for lack of evidence.
She started out in life as plain Myra Belle Shirley, and when she wed the outlaw, Sam Starr, in 1880, the famous Belle Starr was born. Her first husband had been none other than Cole Younger, who was shot in a Minnesota bank robbery while a member of the James Gang. However, she didn’t have long to live it up in the outlaw world because she was shot in the back by an unknown assassin in 1889. Sam had got it himself a few years earlier at a dance in 1886. Never one to lead the single life long, she married Jim July and made him change his name to “Starr.”
Comments: 3 | Article Continues ... Continue Reading & Comment »Cemeteries
Posted 04.19.06 at 1:12 PMKudos to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who have been working, as a church project, in Mel Haven Cemetery, adjacent to Sulphur Springs City Cemetery, which dates back to the late 1880s. Many slaves were buried in this cemetery, according to June Tuck, a prominent Hopkins County cemetery researcher.
Many graves are unmarked, or “marked” but have no informative tombstones. Tuck believes some of the graves date as far back as the 1850s. The current generation does not care for the old cemetery, and Mel Haven has no perpetual funds for groundskeeping. What a wonderful project for these 38 church members.
Comments: 1 | Article Continues ... Continue Reading & Comment »Steamboat
Posted 04.17.06 at 1:16 PMI’ve followed the steamboat excavation near Fort Towson with interest for several years. On March 31, 2006, I found an interesting article and update in the Dallas Morning News. Oklahoma historians and Texas A&M researchers are trying to bring up what they can of the 140-ft. long Heroine, which sank in the Red River in 1838. It will be the oldest steamboat ever recovered in this country. The article contains an excellent diagram of the ship, including a list of her cargo.
It was bound for Fort Towson with a year’s supplies, but like many a victim of the Red River, it struck a submerged log and sank near its destination According to the article, “A Race Against Time and the Red,” by Arnold Hamilton, five years later a flood rerouted the channel, leaving the big boat buried in someone’s pasture. In 1990, another flood rerouted the channel and exposed part of the wreckage, which was spotted by a local landowner. Imagine going about your daily chores and making such a discovery.
Recovered wreckage is on display in the Oklahoma History Center near Oklahoma City, but plans are underway to create a 2000-sq. ft. visitors center and museum near the River and Fort Towson to celebrate Oklahoma’s 2007 centennial.
What’s in a Name?
Posted 04.11.06 at 9:08 AMWhat’s in a name? Do you ever wonder? In the Texas National Dispatch of Feb. 1984, Gordon A. Hyatt printed a “menu” of Texas Post Office names:
For breakfast, we might have Melon (Frio Co.) 1909-DPO (meaning dead or closed), Oatmeal (Burnet) 1853-DPO, Cream (Parker) 1879-80; Pancake (Coryell) 1884-1908, Bacon (Panola) 1903-05, Ham (Henderson) 1901-12, Blackberry Plains (Fannin) 1871-73, Plum (Fayette) 1880 and still operating in 1984, and to wash it all down, Coffeeville (Upshur) 1852-1915.
For lunch, among other items on the menu, we could call on Bean Creek (Hunt) 1853-55, and we could have such specialties as Gourdneck (Rusk) 1880-81 and Crawfish (Floyd) 1892-93. (Notice that these three had “short runs” as menu items.)
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