Texas Originals

Miriam Amanda Wallace wasn't considering a career in politics when she enrolled at Baylor Female College in the 1890s. She married James Ferguson in 1899 and settled down to raise a family. But instead of enjoying a quiet life at home, Miriam became the first woman governor of Texas.

William Sydney Porter—better known by his pen name, O. Henry—was born in North Carolina and died in New York. But his sixteen years in Texas, from 1882 to 1898, made a lasting mark on his life and work. Later in life, when he began writing fiction under an assumed name, it was his early stories about Texas that helped launch his career.

As a girl, Oveta Culp Hobby was fascinated by the world of government. As a woman, she took a leading role in that world. Her truly inspiring record of civic service includes organizing the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II and serving as the first head of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Every culture, Alan Lomax believed, has a "right . . . to equal time on the air and equal time in classrooms." As director of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song and a radio and television host, Lomax introduced folksong from around the globe to popular audiences and promoted it among students and scholars.

William Barret Travis was only twenty-six years old when he died defending the Alamo. He came from Alabama just five years before, in 1831, leaving behind a failed career and marriage. Texas, a land he came to love, gave Travis a new life—and an early death.

On a cold March dawn in 1836, Mexican officers escorted a shaken young woman and her infant daughter past the heaps of dead in the Alamo courtyard to Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The woman, Susanna Dickinson, was the wife of Alamo defender Almaron Dickinson. She and her baby were hiding in the Alamo's chapel when Mexican troops bayoneted her husband and took the mission.

"Remember the Alamo" was the rallying cry at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto. However by 1903, the neglected Alamo was nearly torn down and replaced by a hotel. At that point, twenty-two-year-old Clara Driscoll stepped forward with her own money to protect the sacred site. For her generosity, Driscoll is known as the "Savior of the Alamo."

"I have learned patience in the hard School of an Empresario," Stephen F. Austin wrote to his secretary in 1827. Austin had brought his first settlers to Texas six years earlier, and devoted the rest of his life to colonizing the land. Without Austin's seemingly endless patience and long years of sacrifice, Texas as we know it today would not exist.

Sam Houston arrived in Texas in 1832. The former congressman and governor of Tennessee's new cause was Texas independence. He led the army that defeated Mexican General Santa Anna at San Jacinto—an achievement that secured his place in Texas history.

Born in Galveston in 1878, Jack Johnson went on to become the greatest boxer in the world and one of America's most famous—and notorious—celebrities.