PART 3. HUNTSVILLE, HOME, PARDON, AND BEYOND Jesse spent the next two years in the infamous Walker Unit at Huntsville, Texas’ State Prison. This historic prison had been in operation since 1849. It had…a reputation. The following is Jesse’s official prison record, his “service record.” BY SEPTEMBER, 1939, AFTER 18 MONTHS, JESSE WAS HOME FOR HIS GOOD BEHAVIOR James family members never spoke of Jesse Gs’ time at the Walker Unit that I ever heard or that Mom or Dad ever shared. I knew from the general history of the Walker Unit, that it was, to be kind, a tough place. The only comments I ever heard about grandpa’s time there was from my mom, June Pike James, Jesse G’s Daughter-in-law. She told me that […]
TEXAS HISTORY for the 21st Century
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PART 2: late 1920s to 1942 THE GREAT DEPRESSION TAKES ITS TOLL Horse racing and chicken fighting didn’t pay all the bills in those years of the Great Depression, with a wife and three children, a “player” like Jess…did I tell you he had purchased a yellow sports car of some sort…at least that what one of his sisters-in-law told me. So you can start using your imagination on THAT one. During those Depression years, no one was safe from losing everything-crops, home. My dad said the government men had come to their farm in 1933 to dig a big long trench then killed every third cow they had and buried them in the big pasture out back. Dad said he cried and cried, since […]
AROUND SOMERSET Elm Creek, just a couple of miles north to northwest of Somerset, this often dry creek, has in the last century, given residents living near it’s banks floods that have wiped buildings, topsoil, crops, livestock, fences, bridges, and the lives of several people. Our other river-neighbor, the Medina, flooded in 1919 from a hurricane that unexpectedly came through Port Aransas (wiping it out), Rockport, and Corpus Christi. This Medina River flood wiped out our area’s Santissima Trinidad Catholic Church (established in the mid 1800s) and cemetery. A “DAD STORY” ABOUT HIS FIRST FLOOD Another regional river, the Frio River, flooded end of May-June 1935, nearly took this author’s Dad (Jesse Columbus James, aged 12 years old at the time) with is as it […]
In the late 1860s, Anderson rode the 100 miles from their “mavericking camp” on the Nueces River near Eagle Pass to Pleasanton" to get the doctor for his arrow shot boss.
