Monthly Archives: January 2017

Clifton Steamboat Museum: A Grand Re-Opening

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It’s been a long time since I visited the Clifton Steamboat Museum. In fact, May 2013 was the last time I set foot onto the complex (story here). Unfortunately, work, research, and other endeavors have not let me branch out and revisit as many places as I would like, but I hope to change this in 2017!

In the past, the Clifton Steamboat Museum has been open by appointment only, but that all changed last Thursday when the museum held its grand re-opening to the delight of all who attended. Some of the exhibits have changed a bit, but the changes make this gem an even more wonderful experience for all the family to enjoy.

As I said, in the past, there was a plethora of eye-catching mementos of both Southeast Texas, and our nation’s history. The 24,000-square-foot museum is packed with items from top to bottom, beginning with the grain elevator built between 1895 and 1898 and used at the port of Port Arthur until it was saved from demolition by the museum’s founder David Hearn Jr. and brought to the complex. You also can say the same for Hercules, the tugboat outside that was saved in 1991.

Throughout the museum, you’ll find ship models created by Robert V. Haas, a collection of work by sculptor Matchett Herring Coe, and many exhibits dedicated to each of the nation’s war campaigns. I found this most intriguing since my 1940’s scrapbook regenerated my interest in World War II this past year.

Other highlights include an art gallery, a massive Boy Scout collection, and an SETX riverboat exhibit on the second floor.

Museum hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. or by appointment at (409) 842-3162.

For more information, you can go to their website www.cliftonsteamboatmuseum.com

Promoting SETX

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When I started this blog/website, my intention was to promote our local SETX (Southeast Texas) history, and by local, I mean all of SETX. You can also add a little bit of SWLA (Southwest Louisiana) as well, since we share most of the same history. I will also add that the caretakers of my favorite lighthouse are there.

I hope we’ve done our part in the last four-and-a-half years to shed light on our rich history, and to promote a positive image of this area. In the beginning, I wanted to devote time to promoting our museums, places of interest, and other historic sites so that visitors could have an educational experience. Here in SETX we have a plethora of great places and unique histories that I think should be known to everyone (especially to our own Southeast Texans). In our first few years, we visited many hidden gems that do a wonderful job of bringing SETX’s history to life (links to the stories of our jaunts are located at the end of this article), and I want to expand this scope in 2017.

So, as of now, I am requesting suggestions from you for places of interest, museums, etc., for us to visit in 2017. I am particularly interested in branching out into the northern counties this year, because in the past, I wasn’t able to explore most of these counties since I could not take time off from my other job.

Another project that I have been wanting to do is add a “Places to Visit” page to the website. I would like to provide a list all our museums, with working links and completely up-to-date information, such as what days and times they are open to the public. I can only accomplish this if those of you in the know send me the information. I hope this page will be yet another tool for promoting our history.

Finally, if you have anything that you think should be of interest to Southeast Texans please don’t hesitate to email me at rediscoveringsetx@gmail.com, or if you prefer, send letters and/or other info to:

Rediscoveringsetx Press

P.O. Box 2078

Nederland, Texas  77627

Heritage House (Orange)

Museum of Hardin County (Kountze)

Bertha Terry Cornwell Museum (Sour Lake)

Beaumont Police Department Museum

Vuylsteke House (Port Arthur)

Pompeiian Villa  (Port Arthur)

White Haven (Port Arthur)

Chambers House Museum (Beaumont)

Neches River Adventures Tour

Clifton Steamboat Museum

La Maison Beausoleil Museum (Port Neches)

T.J. Chambers House & Chambers County Historical Commission Museum (Anahuac)

 

 

Willie Chapman Cooper Hobby

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Throughout my research of Florence Stratton, I have been down many rabbit holes, so to speak. She certainly led an interesting life, which involved many people. And yes, I have files on just about all of them. One person who I can say influenced Florence’s life more than the rest was Willie Cooper Hobby. Their friendship lasted many years, and I’m sure they had many tales that were never told nor graced the pages of any periodicals, but in Willie’s life of fifty-three years, she definitely had a social advantage over most.

Willie Chapman Cooper was born in Woodville, Texas, on June 19, 1876, to Sam Bronson Cooper and Phebe Young. There is little information about her life as a youth, other than that she grew up in Woodville. I do know she attended Kidd-Key College in Sherman, Texas; yet I don’t know the year nor if it was, at the time, a women’s high school or a genuine college. And looking into her father’s endeavors, with the few available records that I have, I can see little information about her until she resided in Washington D.C. in March of 1893, when her father was a congressman. So, let’s delve into his history a bit.

Sam B. Cooper served as the prosecuting attorney of Tyler County for four years (1876–1880), then as a Texas state senator for the next four years (1880–1884). I assume that this is where the friendship of the Stratton and Cooper families began. Florence’s father, Asa Evan Stratton Jr., was a Texas senator from January 1883 to May 1884. In 1885, he was named collector of internal revenue at Galveston. Sam would hold this position until 1888. After an unsuccessful run for district judge in 1889, his next stint in politics came in 1892 as a congressman in the United States House of Representatives. He would serve six consecutive terms for the Second Texas District, before losing to Moses Broocks in 1904. Sam served for one more term, from 1906 to 1908, after defeating Broocks in the next election. So, knowing the political path her father took, it seems obvious to me that Willie would take on the role of a socialite, especially living in Washington and later New York, where her father was appointed to the Board of General Appraisers of New York by President William Howard Taft in 1910.

Throughout her years in Washington, Willie was indeed popular around the social circles and was even invited to the White House a time or two. I know this from a few newspaper clippings and her invitation, which, as I stated in the last article, are in her scrapbook at the Briscoe Center for American History in Austin. As friends do, Florence also tagged along and got to mingle with the elite, or should I say, the world’s hubs, which capitals can be, especially in a thriving country.

On May 15, 1915, Willie married her childhood sweetheart and, at the time, the lieutenant governor of Texas, William Pettus Hobby. Her early years in Washington would play an important part in her life due to her social duties as the lieutenant governor’s wife.

In August of 1917, W. P. Hobby became governor of Texas after the sitting governor, James E. Ferguson, was impeached. Hobby held the Democratic ticket and eventually won the governorship in 1918 after Ferguson ran against him in the primary. Willie shone as first lady of Texas and won the praises of many in her years in Austin. She was highly popular and entertained much, except during World War I, because she felt it inappropriate, according to Dining at the Governor’s Mansion by Carl McQueary. She also wanted to follow government guidelines for food conservation during wartime. In addition, Willie was responsible for making needed repairs and additions to the 60-year-old mansion, such as installing steam heating and adding a bath to one of the bedrooms.

While living in New York, Willie became interested in the women’s suffrage movement, which was a cause most dear to her. I found much evidence of this in my Briscoe Center research and in newspapers from her days as first lady of Texas. In fact, much of her scrapbook dwells on this topic. I also found an ample number of newspaper clippings from this era that show that both Florence and Willie did their part to promote women’s right to vote.

Throughout her life, Willie was always gracious and charming and treated everyone the same, whether servant or dignitary. In her memorial book, there are many references to how she was loved by those who knew and conversed with her. As I wrote at the beginning of this article, Willie was Florence’s best friend, and many years were spent together enjoying social events. From a visit to the White House 1909 to attending the inauguration of Mexican president Álvaro Obregón in 1920, both always seemed to be in good company. In fact, one of Florence’s books, Favorite Recipes of Famous Women (1925), is a compilation of Willie’s recipes when she was first lady from such visiting dignitaries as authors, actresses, and wives of past presidents or foreign leaders.

Willie died in her sleep at her Houston residence on the morning of January 14, 1929, to the shock of most. During the following days, there were many heartfelt condolences sent to her husband, W. P. Hobby, from all across the world. Many of these condolences can be found in a memorial book entitled Tributes in Memory of Willie Cooper Hobby, which was privately published by (I would assume) her husband. Here are a few excerpts:

 

 

I cannot longer wait to tell you how distressed and grieved I am over Willie’s death. Words fail to express the love and sympathy which has gone out from my heart to you all. I just cannot reconcile myself to the fact so grand and useful a woman should be taken.

As I write my thoughts run over the twenty-five or thirty years. Dear Mrs. Cooper and her family are vividly before me. So well do I remember the party I had and Willie, a beautiful young girl there and received the prize. In the years which followed the Cooper family figured in my life. You know how I loved Mrs. Cooper and Willie. Although of late years I saw so little of her I knew she was nearby. She it was who suggested to me to change the name of the Woman’s Reading Club to the Woman’s Club. Some hesitate to mention it to me thinking I would feel hurt but soon as I heard of it I made a motion to make the change.

Beaumont                                                                                                                    Sally Greer

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To me Willie was the embodiment of all the word, “friend,” implies; her charity of thought… the kindliness of her heart and the deep solicitude for her friends… qualities the make one so worthy of admiration and love and for which I feel my life has been enriched for having known her.

Houston                                                                                                                       Edwina Wiess

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We the members of the Woman’s Club of Beaumont, wish to extend to you our deepest sympathy. Mrs. Hobby has been loyal and faithful to our club and our hearts too are full of sorrow. We shall miss Mrs. Hobby but we shall ever hold her in memory and we shall strive to reach the goal of high ideals which she held before us.

Beaumont                                                                                                                     Woman’s Club

Collecting History: 2016 The year of the Scrapbook

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Estate sales can be a treasure trove for resellers, but for me, they are places where I can sometimes find something of historical value. And by historical value, I do not mean monetary. It is very rare that I show up on the first weekend of the estate sale, much less on the first day. So you can rest assured that I won’t be the guy knocking on the front door 15 minutes early, dressed in shorts and flip flops with a latte in hand, griping on about how you haven’t opened the doors yet. (Sigh. I’ve actually seen someone do this at my one and only first-day estate sale visit.) At estate sales, I look for items such as old scrapbooks, regional books, and newspapers. These items don’t just have historical significance; they also have a human element that people like me find valuable. I find it sad that these items are most often passed up and discarded at the end of the sale because of disinterest.

In the past few years, I have acquired a few treasures to add to my library, along with some great photographs and postcards. I have also purchased a few items that, in all honesty, likely would have been trashed: newspapers printed around the time of the Kennedy assassination, and a few others detailing the events of some of our local hurricanes. I think my biggest purchase (from a historical perspective) was a scrapbook that I bought in 2015. At first glance, it seemed to be mostly newspaper clippings from World War II, which I could not pass up. With my new acquisition, I returned to my office to do a quick look through, but I didn’t really start going through it until later in the year.

In November 2015, on the day I toured Greenlawn Cemetery, I began revisiting an old interest I have in World War II. At the cemetery, I discovered a memorial for Cpl. Hugo J. DeBretagne, who was killed and buried at sea at Tarawa. During the next few months, I searched through a few newspaper archives for information on the DeBretagne family. I found bits and pieces of information about their lives but little on the sacrifice Hugo made. I also began listening to several audiobooks though Audible about the Pacific Theatre: Utmost Savagery by J. H. Alexander, Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie, Code Talker by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila, The Conquering Tide by Ian Toll, and With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. All of these I highly recommend.

It wasn’t until June 2016 that I really began to look through the scrapbook I purchased. In it, I found an amazing assortment of newspaper clippings from before and during America’s engagement in the war. Of course, there were full-page headlines of the attack on Pearl Harbor, as well as the attacks that followed. Even the full text of Roosevelt’s address from December 8, 1941, was nestled in the stack of 74-year-old periodicals. The content seemed endless, especially when I made the decision to scan and copy most of the clippings for preservation, but the labor was well worth it.

I know little about the person who affectionately collected these bits of history from 1941 to 1944. I have found out the name of the collector, but out of respect for the family, I will refrain from divulging any personal information. I will say that the collector was female and definitely had a knack for historical preservation. In fact, she kept the multi-page clippings together by sewing them to one another so they wouldn’t become mixed up with the others.

The collection took about four months for me to scan and copy into three full binders. The content is a wide range of who, what, when, and where the world was during the early 1940s. One insight I found particularly intriguing was how the articles exemplified the American mindset at the time. Many people were trying to grasp the reality of what to expect in 1942. The fear and anger in the early days gave way into a unified machine that scrapped, saved, and manufactured its way to victory on the home front in the following years. This was a feat that could only have been pulled off by the “Greatest Generation.”

Although my scrapbook purchase was a major highlight of 2016, it wasn’t my first endeavor into in-depth research. Earlier this year, I went on two excursions as part of my ongoing research on Florence Stratton. In January I visited the Briscoe Center for American History in Austin to look through a couple of boxes pertaining to W. P. Hobby. Hobby was the governor of Texas from 1917 to 1921, and he owned both the Beaumont Enterprise and the Beaumont Journal for a time. My subject, however, wasn’t the former governor but rather his first wife, Willie Cooper, and her scrapbook that’s located at the Briscoe Center. I will be touching on this more in next week’s article, but for today, I will say that to hold in my hands an invitation for a party at the White House from 1908 is an incredible feeling that I can’t put into words.

My next excursion was in February. I contacted the Brazoria County Historical Museum to inquire about the Stratton plantation. The Stratton plantation was a sugarcane plantation owned by Florence’s grandfather in the 1800s. My original phone call was to ask about the location of the old plantation, but things took an interesting turn. Since I hadn’t contacted the museum in the previous two years, my research wasn’t really known to them, other than the fact that they hand found a few documents pertaining to Florence’s father for me in 2013. As I explained who I was and what I was researching, a funny thing happened. The conversation went a little like this:

“You said the last name is Stratton?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s interesting because I have a scrapbook that someone just donated to the museum from a Stratton that’s sitting on my desk.”

“Oh really?” I paused. “What’s the name?”

“Emily.”

Emily was Florence’s older sister, and sure enough, the scrapbook was Emily’s. She’d made it somewhere between 1880 and 1900. I learned that someone found the scrapbook at an estate sale in North Houston (possibly Conroe, if I remember correctly). Since much of the scrapbook pertained to Brazoria County, the person who bought it thought it would be best suited in the hands of the Brazoria County Historical Museum. And I agree!

Not much in the scrapbook has to do with Florence herself, but the fact that it was there and had the potential to give me a few crumbs to savor made me end my hesitation and actually visit her birthplace. Truth be told, I did find a decent number of interesting nuggets within the pages of the scrapbook; I’ll share these sometime in the next few months.

In closing, I’ll just say that 2016 was a good year on the research front and a good year for a few collective finds. Hopefully, 2017’s journey will be the same, and if you frequent estate sales, I may just see you there. Just remember that I won’t be roaming the house with a latte in hand, checking eBay on my phone to see what I can get for that Beanie Baby. Instead, I’ll be the guy who’s interested in that Time Life 28-book collection on World War II!

The Uninvited Guests: The Funeral of Wong Shu

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Doing research for the Magnolia Cemetery tour for the last three years has taught me a few things. For starters, it’s taught me that you never know what you’ll find when you start researching the past. Some stories can be poignant, and others, not so much. What skeletons lurk in someone’s history? There could be many or none, so we take the good with the bad here at rediscoveringsetx.com and try to preserve our findings correctly for all to see. I write this because recently, we’ve stumbled on one of the oddest stories to date. I want to give you a little backstory before I go on.

When I first walked the hallowed grounds of Magnolia Cemetery, I noticed a Chinese headstone close to the line of trees near Brakes Bayou. We’ve had it partially translated for our yearly tour, but unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to do a rubbing so that we could get a more complete translation of the inscription. So, this stone still presents a mystery, and we’re not certain who is buried beneath it. When a fellow researcher found an article in the Beaumont Enterprise about a Chinese sailor who drowned in the Neches River, I began wondering if our mystery could soon be solved. As sad as the sailor’s death was, the aftermath was a fascinating oddity that could not easily be explained.

(Note: I have two articles about the Chinese sailor, and both include different spellings of the ship’s name. In the original article, the steamship was named Sapanta. The second article called it Santanta in the heading and Satanta in the body. Since the ship was primarily used in Mexico, I’ll assume all three attempts at naming the vessel were wrong. Furthermore, because all three names seem to be a misspelling of Santana, I’ll be using this name throughout this article. If I discover a clearer document that indicates what the ship’s name was, I’ll update this article accordingly.)

Wong Shu was a Chinese sailor who sailed on the Standard Oil Company tanker Santana. The ship had been docked in Beaumont for some time, on hiatus because of the volatility of the Mexican oil trade. Tragedy struck, and Mr. Shu drowned in the Neches River, just off the Magnolia docks in Beaumont, in the evening on Saturday, August 6, 1921.

Mr. Shu was Cantonese and a Buddhist, as were approximately half of his fellow Chinese crewmates. Knowing this, the crew attempted to hold the traditional funeral rites for Mr. Shu, but a few problems arose. While many of the items needed for the ritual were purchased, such as rice, meat, and bread, organizers were unable to locate a band to provide music at such a late hour. Automobiles were provided to transport mourners to the cemetery, but when they arrived, they were met by a multitude of locals.1921-08-09-beaumont-enterprise-enhanced-edit

As the first article explains:

. . . there were fully 400 Beaumont men, women and children and some of these behaved themselves in a manner unbecoming to American citizens and believers in the Christian religion, according to some of the ship’s officers who were there.

The thirty-four Chinese mourners and British officers of the Santana who attended were distressed, to say the least. The locals were asked to step back so the mourners could finish the ritual, but the locals ignored the plea. Most of the mourners did not throw their offerings of rice, meat, and bread into the grave, as is custom, due to fear that the locals would take the food away.

Then each Chinaman passed around the grave and cast a handful of dirt on the casket. A titter rippled about the grave and the Chinamen were displeased, but decided to continue with the ceremony. Then each mourner cast into the grave his handkerchief, which had been bought new for the occasion. Again there was a titter and the Chinese mumbled something and expressed a wish to leave the cemetery to return at some other time to complete the ceremony without interruption.

Wong Shu was buried at Magnolia Cemetery, though the exact location of his grave is not known. The newspaper article stated that he was buried in the Chinese part of Magnolia Cemetery, but this is incorrect, as there is no “Chinese part” of the cemetery. Records show he was buried on public ground, but this information is largely unhelpful, as it means he could be buried nearly anywhere.

1921-08-14-beaumont-enterprise-enhanced-editOn August 14, another article about Mr. Shu’s death graced the pages of the Beaumont Enterprise. This one featured the “chief mourner,” second engineer Alexander Lawson Watson. He was chosen as chief mourner by the Chinese crew for his selfless actions of diving into the Neches River and attempting to save Wong Shu. Although the first part of the article is mostly an account of Mr. Watson’s war record, Mr. Watson had many things to say about the crew, and about the Chinese in general.

A Chinaman is not coldblooded and heartless, he says. They love, hate and sorrow as much and as genuinely as members of the Caucasian race but they show their love, their hatred and their sorrow in a different way. It is not the belief of the British officers of the Satanta that the people of Beaumont who attended the funeral last Monday of the Chinese sailor to be disrespectful but they failed to take into consideration that the odd things they saw were not intended to provoke levity. Some of those who were there deny anything was done by Beaumonters that was disrespectful of the dead. However, American manners were just as odd to the Chinese as the manners to Americans and on a less sad occasion the Orientals would not have taken offense at what they heard and what was done.

After reading both articles, I got the impression that the Beaumonters’ ignorance of cultural and religious differences was on full display. Yes, you can also say this about the Chinese crew, but you must admit they were surely in a vulnerable state at the time. To lay a loved one to rest is a solemn and poignant moment for family and friends. I think (or hope) most cultures would agree on this.

This wasn’t the first time that Southeast Texans were introduced to Asian culture. During the same period, a few Japanese rice farming families settled in SETX and went on to make a big impact on the industry. Although some residents were initially hesitant to welcome them, they eventually found them to be hospitable neighbors.