The Bygone Brown Podcast

How material progress and immigration led to the proliferation of temperance leagues and prohibition, and the story of one downtown Brownwood saloon owner’s encounter with The Salvation Army. 

Following Reconstruction, local bankers and businessmen persuaded the big railroad companies to extend their lines to Brownwood, ushering in an era  of rapid growth. 

As more settlers moved onto the open plains, the interests of the big cattle barons came into conflict with those of small farmers over the use of barbed wire. 

The gunslinger John Wesley Hardin’s lawless career came to an end when he gunned down a deputy sheriff from Brownwood. 

After the Civil War, the rapidly expanding United States faced a civilizational conflict as its final impediment to westward expansion. 

How the occupation of Texas by Union troops after the Civil War made defiance an essential element of the state’s character. 

Once the outcome of the Civil War became clear, Confederate General Jo Shelby crossed the Rio Grande with a company of soldiers and politicians hoping to restore their antebellum lives in Mexico.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the hunt for his killer ends with an unlikely connection to Brown County. 

After Lincoln’s election to the presidency, secession fever swept the South and led to a clash between secessionists like the son of the man Brown County is named after and then Gov. Sam Houston. 

When Brown County was literally the edge of civilization, the early settlers lived under constant threat of Indian attacks.