A few years ago I wrote a column about how Houstonians would be living in Charlottesville if Sam Houston had gotten his way. As the story goes, the hero of San Jacinto graciously told Charlotte Allen at a dinner party one night that she, and not her more famous brothers, was the reason the settlement on Buffalo Bayou even existed. The town should be called Charlottesville, he maintained.
Allen, astute businesswoman that she was, told ol' Sam that he was the one everybody knew; his name would put the city on the map.
Charlotte Allen comes to mind because of last week’s column about Bettina, the short-lived commune in the Hill Country named for German writer, composer and early-day feminist, Bettina von Arnim. As writer/rancher Jim Kearney of Weimar reminded me, Bettina is one of the few Texas towns or cities named after a woman.
Kearney’s observation prompted me to explore what we have. So far, I’ve found less than 30 towns, out of close to 4,000. I’m probably overlooking some, but not many.
Three hours east of El Paso is a little town allegedly named for a character in Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” The wife of the chief engineer for Southern Pacific was reading the novel and was taken with a servant in the Karamazov household. When the railroad reached a watering spot that needed a name, she suggested the servant, a woman named Marfa. (The late Lonn Taylor, author of “Marfa for the Perplexed,” believed it’s more likely that the town was named after a popular character in a Jules Verne novel, “Michael Strogoff, Courier of the Czar.”)
East of Marfa on Highway 90 is another town named for a woman who had nothing to do with the town itself. Langtry, home to the curmudgeonly Judge Roy Bean (“the Law West of the Pecos”), bears the name of English actress Lillie Langtry, with whom Bean was smitten, although he never met her. She paid a brief visit to Langtry in 1904, but the old judge had by then passed on to a higher court.
An hour or so northeast of Langtry is Iraan, a combination name in honor of Ira and Ann Yates. On Oct. 28, 1926, the ranching couple became instant millionaires when four oil gushers burst from beneath the parched and rocky ground of their spread.
Heading eastward toward Abilene, we come to Bronte, a settlement that sprang up on a branch of the Chisholm Trail in 1887. It’s named for the English writer Charlotte Bronte and is near Tennyson, named for the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Turning north into the Panhandle - this trip is going to take a few days, you understand - we get to another amalgamation, Floydada. “The Pumpkin Capital of Texas” is named, perhaps, for Floyd and Ada Price, parents of Caroline Price, who with her husband James, donated land for the town in 1890.
Northeast of Floydada is Estelline, county seat of Hall County. Established in 1892, it’s named for Estelle de Shields, daughter of an early settler. Be careful in the tiny town, population 145. According to Wikipedia, Estelline has had a reputation for being one of the most notorious speed traps in Texas.
Heading southeast out of Estelline, slowly, we get to “The Pump Jack Capital of Texas,” Electra, a few miles west of Wichita Falls. The town is named for the late Electra Waggoner, a sculptor and heiress to the famed Waggoner Ranch. Although the family sold the ranch not long ago, it remains one of the largest in the world. Electra Waggoner also bequeathed her name to the Buick Electra.
East of Wichita Falls is Henrietta. No one knows who Henrietta was.
Now, we’re headed southward. Near Waxahachie is “A Pearl in the Heart of North Texas.” Maypearl, population about 900, is the amalgamated name of two daughters of a railroad construction engineer. (The railroad also named two nearby towns, Penelope and Venus, for local girls.)
Continuing down Interstate 35, we get to Buda, until a few years ago a village south of Austin, now a booming bedroom community. Pronounced BEW-da, the name is likely a corruption of the Spanish word, “viuda,” or “widow.” The name may refer to a pair of widows who cooked at the popular Carrington Hotel in the 1880s, when the town was known as Du Pre.
Below San Antonio, we come to Charlotte, named for the daughter of Dr. Charles Simmons, a town founder. Two other Atascosa County towns are named for his daughters, Christine and Imogene.
Continued southward through the Brush Country, we get to Alice. The ranching community west of Corpus Christi was first called “Bandana,” then “Kleberg” and finally “Alice,” after Alice Gertrudis King Kleberg, daughter of King Ranch founder Richard King.
Southward into the Rio Grande Valley, we come to Donna, named for Donna Hooks Fletcher, daughter of an early Valley rancher and postmistress for the town that bears her name.
East of Donna is Mercedes, first called “Diaz,” in honor of Porfirio Diaz, then president of Mexico. It was renamed “Mercedes Diaz,” and then “Mercedes” in honor of the president’s wife, although neither of his two wives were named Mercedes.
Headed northward out of the Valley, we pass Victoria - named for Gen. Guadalupe Victoria, first president of independent Mexico -- and come to Inez. The little town was named in 1892 for a daughter of Italian Count Joseph Telfener, president of the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway between Rosenberg and Victoria. Another daughter bequeathed her name to the Jackson County seat, Edna. Nearby Louise is named for the count’s sister-in-law.
Also in Jackson County is Lolita, named in 1909 for the granddaughter of Charles Keller Reese, a San Jacinto veteran. Nearly a half century after the town’s naming, Russian-born novelist Vladimir Nabokov published “Lolita,” a critically acclaimed novel about a grown man’s romantic obsession with a teenage girl. Baptist deacon R.T. Walker may or may not have read the best-seller, but he was outraged about the title, insisting it besmirched his hometown. He circulated a petition asking the U.S. Postal Service to change the name. Sixty years later, it’s still Lolita.
Also in Jackson County is Francitas, named by a small colony of French families in the late 1890s. Francitas the person is a mystery.
Since we’re near the coast, we might as well meander over to Olivia, on a peninsula east of Port Lavaca. Olivia was established in 1892 by a Swedish Lutheran colony led by C.J.E. Haterious of Galesburg, Ill. He named the settlement after his wife.
A long drive eastward gets us to Evadale, northeast of Beaumont. The town was called Ford’s Bluff until 1893, when Houston timber magnate John Henry Kirby renamed it for Eva Dale, a teacher at Southeast Texas Male and Female College in Jasper.
Headed back west on Interstate 10, at Schulenberg we drop down to Hallettsville, county seat of Lavaca. The small town halfway between Houston and San Antonio is named for an early settler, Margaret Leatherbury Hallett.
I intended to close the column with Hallett, but there’s too much to say about this remarkable woman, so look for her next week. Margaret Hallett symbolizes all we don’t know, and should, about the women who built Texas, even if no one named a town after them.
Twitter: holleynews
The Link LonkJanuary 04, 2021 at 03:53AM
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/columnists/native-texan/article/Women-are-hard-to-find-on-a-Texas-map-15843048.php
Women are hard to find on a Texas map - Houston Chronicle
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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