Ross Sterling, Texan

Ross Sterling, Texan PDF Author: Ross S. Sterling
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773471
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Born on a farm near Anahuac, Texas, in 1875 and possessed of only a fourth-grade education, Ross Sterling was one of the most successful Texans of his generation. Driven by a relentless work ethic, he become a wealthy oilman, banker, newspaper publisher, and, from 1931 to 1933, one-term governor of Texas. Sterling was the principal founder of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, which eventually became the largest division of the ExxonMobil Corporation, as well as the owner of the Houston Post. Eager to "preserve a narrative record of his life and deeds," Ross Sterling hired Ed Kilman, an old friend and editorial page editor of the Houston Post, to write his biography. Though the book was nearly finished before Sterling's death in 1949, it never found a publisher due to Kilman's florid writing style and overly hagiographic portrayal of Sterling. In this volume, by contrast, editor Don Carleton uses the original oral history dictated by Ross Sterling to Ed Kilman to present the former governor's life story in his own words. Sterling vividly describes his formative years, early business ventures, and active role in developing the Texas oil industry. He also recalls his political career, from his appointment to the Texas Highway Commission to his term as governor, ending with his controversial defeat for reelection by "Ma" Ferguson. Sterling's reminiscences constitute an important primary source not only on the life of a Texan who deserves to be more widely remembered, but also on the history of Houston and the growth of the American oil industry.

Ross Sterling, Texan

Ross Sterling, Texan PDF Author: Ross S. Sterling
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773471
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
Born on a farm near Anahuac, Texas, in 1875 and possessed of only a fourth-grade education, Ross Sterling was one of the most successful Texans of his generation. Driven by a relentless work ethic, he become a wealthy oilman, banker, newspaper publisher, and, from 1931 to 1933, one-term governor of Texas. Sterling was the principal founder of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, which eventually became the largest division of the ExxonMobil Corporation, as well as the owner of the Houston Post. Eager to "preserve a narrative record of his life and deeds," Ross Sterling hired Ed Kilman, an old friend and editorial page editor of the Houston Post, to write his biography. Though the book was nearly finished before Sterling's death in 1949, it never found a publisher due to Kilman's florid writing style and overly hagiographic portrayal of Sterling. In this volume, by contrast, editor Don Carleton uses the original oral history dictated by Ross Sterling to Ed Kilman to present the former governor's life story in his own words. Sterling vividly describes his formative years, early business ventures, and active role in developing the Texas oil industry. He also recalls his political career, from his appointment to the Texas Highway Commission to his term as governor, ending with his controversial defeat for reelection by "Ma" Ferguson. Sterling's reminiscences constitute an important primary source not only on the life of a Texan who deserves to be more widely remembered, but also on the history of Houston and the growth of the American oil industry.

The Red River Bridge War

The Red River Bridge War PDF Author: Rusty Williams
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623494060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Winner, 2017 Oklahoma Book Award, sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book Winner, 2016 Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History, sponsored by the Oklahoma Historical Society At the beginning of America’s Great Depression, Texas and Oklahoma armed up and went to war over a 75-cent toll bridge that connected their states across the Red River. It was a two-week affair marked by the presence of National Guardsmen with field artillery, Texas Rangers with itchy trigger fingers, angry mobs, Model T blockade runners, and even a costumed Native American peace delegation. Traffic backed up for miles, cutting off travel between the states. This conflict entertained newspaper readers nationwide during the summer of 1931, but the Red River Bridge War was a deadly serious affair for many rural Americans at a time when free bridges and passable roads could mean the difference between survival and starvation. The confrontation had national consequences, too: it marked an end to public acceptance of the privately owned ferries, toll bridges, and turnpikes that threatened to strangle American transportation in the automobile age. The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle documents the day-to-day skirmishes of this unlikely conflict between two sovereign states, each struggling to help citizens get goods to market at a time of reduced tax revenue and little federal assistance. It also serves as a cautionary tale, providing historical context to the current trend of re-privatizing our nation’s highway infrastructure.

The Governor and the Colonel

The Governor and the Colonel PDF Author: Don Carleton
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1953480012
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1033

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Book Description
William P. “Will” Hobby Sr. and Oveta Culp Hobby were one of the most influential couples in Texas history. Both were major public figures, with Will serving as governor of Texas and Oveta as the first commander of the Women’s Army Corps and later as the second woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. Together, they built a pioneering media empire centered on the Houston Post and their broadcast properties, and they played a significant role in the transformation of Houston into the fourth largest city in the United States. Don Carleton’s dual biography details their personal and professional relationship—defined by a shared dedication to public service—and the important roles they each played in local, state, and national events throughout the twentieth century. This deeply researched book not only details this historically significant partnership, but also explores the close relationships between the Hobbys and key figures in twentieth-century history, from Texas legends such as LBJ, Sam Rayburn, and Jesse Jones, to national icons, including the Roosevelts, President Eisenhower, and the Rockefellers. Carleton's chronicle reveals the undeniable impact of the Hobbys on journalistic and political history in the United States.

Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys

Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys PDF Author: Norman D. Brown
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477319476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
“A fascinating tour of Texas state politics during the Great Depression” from the historian and author of Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug (Keith J. Volanto, author of Texas Voices). When the venerable historian Norman D. Brown published Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug in 1984, he earned national acclaim for revealing the audacious tactics at play in Texas politics during the Roaring Twenties, detailing the effects of the Ku Klux Klan, newly enfranchised women, and Prohibition. Shortly before his death in 2015, Brown completed Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys, which picks up just as the Democratic Party was poised for a bruising fight in the 1930 primary. Charting the governorships of Dan Moody, Ross Sterling, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson in her second term, and James V. Allred, this engrossing sequel takes its title from the notion that Texas politicians should give voters what they want (“When you cease to deliver the biscuits they will not be for you any longer,” said Jim “Pa” Ferguson) while remaining wary of federal assistance (the dole) in a state where the economy is fueled by oil pumpjacks (nodding donkeys). Taking readers to an era when a self-serving group of Texas politicians operated in a system that was closed to anyone outside the state’s white, wealthy echelons, Brown unearths a riveting, little-known history whose impact continues to ripple at the capitol. “Rich in personal detail, and general audiences and aficionados of Texana will enjoy the colorful portraits of James and Miriam Ferguson, Ross Sterling, Tom Love, John Nance Garner, and others.” —History: Reviews of New Books

The Texas Rangers in Transition

The Texas Rangers in Transition PDF Author: Charles H. Harris
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806163658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
Official Texas Ranger Bicentennial™ Publication Newly rich in oil money, and all the trouble it could buy, Texas in the years following World War I underwent momentous changes—and those changes propelled the transformation of the state’s storied Rangers. Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler explore this important but relatively neglected period in the Texas Rangers’ history in this book, a sequel to their award-winning The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910–1920. In a Texas awash in booze and oil in the Prohibition years, the Rangers found themselves riding herd on gamblers and bootleggers, but also tasked with everything from catching murderers to preventing circus performances on Sunday. The Texas Rangers in Transition takes up the Rangers’ story at a time of political turmoil, as the largely rural state was rapidly becoming urban. At the same time, law enforcement was facing an epidemic of bank robberies, an increase in organized crime, the growth of the Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition enforcement—new challenges that the Rangers met by transitioning from gunfighters to criminal investigators. Steeped in tradition, reluctant to change, the agency was reduced to its nadir in the depths of the Depression, the victim of slashed appropriations, an antagonistic governor, and mediocre personnel. Harris and Sadler document the further and final change that followed when, in 1935, the Texas Rangers were moved from the governor’s control to the newly created Department of Public Safety. This proved a watershed in the Rangers’ history, marking their transformation into a modern law enforcement agency, the elite investigative force that they remain to this day.

Texas Ranger Captain William L. Wright

Texas Ranger Captain William L. Wright PDF Author: Richard McCaslin
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574418556
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
William L. Wright (1868-1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla. His need for a better salary led him to leave the Rangers and become a sheriff. He stayed in that office longer than any of his predecessors in Wilson County, keeping the peace during the so-called Bandit Wars, investigating numerous violent crimes, and surviving being stabbed on the gallows by the man he was hanging. When demands for Ranger reform peaked, he was appointed as a captain and served for most of the next twenty years, retiring in 1939 after commanding dozens of Rangers. Wright emerged unscathed from the Canales investigation, enforced Prohibition in South Texas, and policed oil towns in West Texas, as well as tackling many other legal problems. When he retired, he was the only Ranger in service who had worked under seven governors. Wright has also been honored as an inductee into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Waco.

Time of the Rangers

Time of the Rangers PDF Author: Mike Cox
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780765318152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
A history of the famed law enforcement agency, the Texas Rangers, in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

Around La Porte

Around La Porte PDF Author: Ann Uloth Malone
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738584904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The history of the city of La Porte and its neighboring communities is laden with important events and personalities. Pioneers began settling the area 10 years before Texas won its independence from Mexico; the land that was to become the cities of Morgan's Point, Shoreacres, Lomax, and La Porte was home to such Texas luminaries as Gen. Sidney Sherman, Gov. Ross Sterling, Andrew Jackson Houston, and James Morgan. The beauty of the area attracted legions of summer visitors, including Sam Houston and Dr. Ashbel Smith. Years later, Texas oil pioneers looked to the shores of La Porte's Galveston Bay to build summer places. La Porte was legally organized January 1, 1892, and in over a century of ups and downs has remained steadfast in preserving the natural beauty that is its legacy, the friendliness that is its nature, and the educational excellence to which the city's founders aspired. Today, La Porte is a unique mix of quaint small-town living with big-city amenities.

Texas

Texas PDF Author: Rupert N. Richardson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315509792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Written in a narrative style, this comprehensive yet accessible survey of Texas history offers a balanced, scholarly presentation of all time periods and topics.From the beginning sections on geography and prehistoric people, to the concluding discussions on the start of the twenty-first century, this text successfully considers each era equally in terms of space and emphasis.

Texas Loud, Proud, and Brash

Texas Loud, Proud, and Brash PDF Author: Rusty Williams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493064401
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
The history of New Texas, the Texas we know today—oil-rich, insufferably loud, and unbearably proud of itself—begins in the late 1920s, when a horned frog wakes from its thirty-one-year nap in a courthouse cornerstone and flabbergasts the nation. In slightly over two decades ten individuals—their words, actions, and accomplishments—come to define the New Texas of the twenty-first century. While the history of Old Texas rests on oft-told legends of Houston, Austin, Travis, Crockett, Rusk, Lamar, and Seguin, today’s New Texas—proud, loud, self-promotional, sports-crazy, and too rich for its own good—is the Texas that percolates throughout the nation’s popular culture. In Texas Loud, Proud, and Brash: How Ten Mavericks Created the Twentieth-Century Lone Star State, author Rusty Williams profiles ten largely unsung men and women responsible for the Texas you love, hate, and (secretly) envy today.