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Thursday, January 24, 2013

More from the 1960 Sugar Land Junior High Log


The featured class this time is the Dulles Class of '66, who were 6th graders in 1960.  Notice this is just the Sugar Land contingent.  Sixth-graders in the old Missouri City School District attended Missouri City Elementary School.  I assume the reason was lack of space at the Sugar Land campus.




The following photos show the Junior High band.  They are wearing old Sugar Land High uniforms (green & white).  I wonder if they marched on the field?



   

More Info on SLHF's Next Chataqua Talk


Here's a link to further information on Sugar Land Heritage Foundation's next Chataqua Talk: Transition from a Company Town to an Incorporated City by William A. 'Bill' Little, second Mayor of Sugar Land.

It's a free event in the old Auditorium on Tuesday, February 12th.
   

Main Street Looking North From 2nd Street In The '20s


I can see the old Methodist Church on the corner of Main and 4th Street.  I counted back to determine the camera is on 2nd Street.  

Notice the houses that appear to be located at the end of Main Street in the deep background.  Actually, Main Street didn't run its current course (into Burney Road) in those days.  At its present-day intersection with 7th Street, Main Street veered at a 45-degree angle toward the northeast.  The road was known as North Prairie Farm Road. 

There is good reason to believe North Prairie Farm Road led to the Terry and Kyle plantations, which were located in the vicinity of the Covington Woods subdivision.

   

More Photos From the 1966 Sugarland Industries Awards Banquet


Mrs. Cheany ran the beauty parlor.  I thought Mrs. Hastings ran a children's day care, right?




  

More From The Buehring Family Scrapbook


I should have asked Walt Buehring for help in identifying people in these photos, but I'll take a stab at it.  Many thanks to Walt for posting these photos on Flickr and letting me link to them. 

In this first photo Lawrence Elkins is presenting a diploma to Walt at his graduation from Dulles Junior High.  Louis Hans in the background on the right. I can see Herb Shelton and Kenneth Landin in the far background.  If my calculation is correct, this photo was taken in the spring of '68.

(Update) Walt sent me a note saying Mr. Elkins is giving him a science award at the junior high graduation ceremony.
 
G.1960s-111

Walt, Cindy, and Bunnye appear with Dulles exchange student, Niglun Serdaroglu, who lived with the Buehrings in the 1969/70 school year.
   
G.1960s-143


I assume Bunnye is getting a birthday spanking from her friends.

G.1960s-142

This final photo shows Gary Buis with Ann Marie Sciba in the fall of '69, I think.

(Update) Bad guess.  Cindy says this couple is Danny Lewis and Nancy Albright.  Oops.
 
G.1960s-139
 

Houston Guide and Handbook, 1968 (continued)


I posted the restaurant section of the 1968 Houston Guide and Handbook last week. Here's the section covering Market Square in downtown Houston. Unfortunately, the publisher didn't include page gutters, so the map goes into the page fold.

 It may be hard to read, but I noticed a few things.  First, the Alley Theater appears on the map.  I checked reliable sources, which say it opened in November 1968I had no idea it was built that long ago.  (I knew Jones Hall was completed in 1966; it appears on the map, too.)

You can see The Cellar on the west side of Market Square.  La Carafe is located on the north side and is denoted as #16 on the map. The Carafe, constructed in 1860, is the oldest remaining commercial building in Houston.  (Residences built before 1860 still exist, but no commercial buildings.)  It started out as a bakery.  It was once a Pony Express Office.  Today it's a wine bar.  Here's a history of the building if you're interested.

Last, the Spaghetti Warehouse building is listed as Warehouse No. 1, I think.  I'm not sure when it became a restaurant, but I know first-hand it was quite a while ago.

FYI: Market Square was the location of Houston's City Hall prior to construction of the current building on Smith Street in the 1930s.

Thank you, Terry Bates, for letting me scan this guide. 

   

Monday, January 14, 2013

Sugar Land High School's Class of '48


I want to thank my aunt for letting me scan this picture of the Class of '48.  (She appears as Mayme Rachuig in the photo.)  It's a remarkably small class.

I'd like to collect images of all the class pictures and yearbooks produced at Sugar Land High.  I've got quite a few, but I don't have all of them.

Class pictures like this one used to hang in the school auditorium.  At some point in the 1970s, the school district gave away or dumped all its memorabilia.  I happen to have the class pictures of 1942 and 1949, the year's my parents graduated.

 

More from the 1960 Sugar Land Junior High Log


The following pages come from the 1960 Sugar Land Junior High annual, known as The Log.  They feature many of the students who made up the Class of '65 at Dulles High School.  I've also included pictures of the school's basketball teams.








 

Christmas Gifts, 1958


I was in the 2nd grade when this footage was taken.  Bruce was in kindergarten.  My mother shot most of it because my father appears with us.

You'll be glad to know Bruce eventually learned how to cast a fishing line.  I'm almost certain that's a Zebco reel he's using.  Our grandparents gave us those fishing rigs; they were our first.

  

Dulles Junior High 7th Grade Girls Basketball Team


I want to thank Walt Buehring for letting me use this picture which he uploaded to Flickr.  Some of you may be new to Flickr, so click on the picture, and you'll go directly to the photo on the Flickr site.  Click the magnification icon on the upper right of the photo.  Flickr will redisplay the image.  Select the image size you want on the upper right of the redisplayed image.

I noticed that Joyce Binford Hensarling was their coach.

G.1960s-188
 

Houston Guide And Handbook, 1968


My thanks go to Terry Bates for letting me scan pages from his copy of this 1968 guidebook to Houston.  There some interesting items in it; we'll start with the restaurants.

I recognize many of them and remember the locations of some I never patronized.  I noticed Bud Bigalow's is listed.  It was a pretty good steak house.

The printer didn't leave enough gutter space, so some info is obscured by the page fold.  Nevertheless, you can read most of it.


 
 

Sugarland Industries Awards Banquet, 1966


I wanted to post these pictures because they show some real old timers who worked for Sugarland Industries.  As you'll see from an annotation, the date of the photos is February 17, 1966.  They appeared in The Fort Bend Mirror.



 

Sugar Land Residents Have Their Picture Taken Circa 1917


The quality of old photographs is amazing.  The picture below is a section of a panoramic picture taken during WWI, or possibly the early 1920s.  The subjects are standing on the gallery of the old Imperial Offices.  The Char House would be built in 1925 and stand in the background next to the Imperial Offices.

Be sure to click on the picture so it's magnified.  Note the girls sitting on the front bumper of a car on the far right and the fancy hats the women on the left are wearing.  I assume word spread through town they were going to take pictures, so everyone dressed up for the occasion.

 

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

More from the 1960 Sugar Land Junior High Log


Here are a few more pictures from Sugar Land Junior High's 1960 yearbook known as The Log.  This was the first year of consolidation, which produced Fort Bend ISD from Sugar Land's and Missouri City's school districts.  Most of these 8th graders graduated from Dulles High School in 1964.









 

A Couple of Stories from the Texas Commercial News, December 6, 1924


We've been researching the Sugar Land Railway recently.  I remembered the following article about W. T. Eldridge, Sr.'s purchase of gas railroad cars in late 1924.

These are narrow-gauge cars intended for light haulage.  Brill was the manufacturer, and they are still in business, I think.   One car was destined for Asherton which is located south of San Antonio near Carrizo Springs.  Eldridge owned a narrow-gauge railroad out there.

Eldridge bought another car for use on the Sugar Land Railway.  Since it was a narrow-gauge car, it would have run on the line that ran west from Sugar Land through the prison farm to Foster Farms near the Brazos River.  When local planters stopped growing sugar cane in the late 1920s, this line became unprofitable.  Eldridge abandoned it in the early 1930s.  A few traces of the railway remain hidden in cow pastures and patches of scruffy undergrowth.


Notice the last sentence about duck hunting.  The same issue of the News contained the following article about Sugar Land's Game Preserve Club.  I presume this was a group allowed to hunt game birds on Sugarland Industries land.  I've seen Cow Lake on old maps, but I can't recall its precise location except it was/is west of Sugar Land.

  

An Essay By Ruby E. Johnson, December 6, 1924



The Texas Commercial News, published in Sugar Land on December 6, 1924, included the following short essay written by Ruby E. Johnson, a 7th or 8th grade student at M. R. Wood School in Mayfield Park.  (It would be named M. R. Wood School a few years later.)

 

Local History News Items


A Call For Volunteers to Replant Bastrop State Park

Greetings All;

This message has nothing directly to do with either archeology or history but is somehow connected to both.  We all know about the devastating wild fires in the Bastrop area just over a year ago.  Many of us know someone who lost a home or business there. 

Our beautiful Bastrop Lost Pines State Park was virtually wiped out.  Only through heroic efforts of a few brave souls were the historic structures within the park saved.  The total loss of underbrush exposed dozens of heretofore unknown archeological sites.

We, the people of Texas, have an opportunity to volunteer in the replanting of several hundred thousand pine seedlings in the park and other areas near Bastrop.  If you wish to participate in this important activity by helping to plant seedlings or, if you cannot participate in person, wish to donate to this worthy cause, you may follow these links to sign up:

Organizer for the TxPWD Sign-up page:  http://www.arborday.org/takeaction/disasters/lost-pines.cfm

Sunday December 2 (8am-noon): http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1244910.jsp  
Thursday, December 13 (8am-noon): http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1244918.jsp 
Saturday, December 29 (8am-noon): http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1244923.jsp
Sunday December 30 (8am-noon): http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1244928.jsp  

Thursday, January 10 (8am-noon): http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1244931.jsp  
Saturday January 12 (8am-noon): http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp1244937.jsp


Let’s help replant the lost pines!  The number of volunteers for any given day is limited.  Sign-up soon.

Steve Davis
Support Texas Archeology & History Research
eMail: steve.davis@STAHR.us
www.STAHR.us

"Preserve, Protect & Promote our Precious Texas Heritage"
  
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Friends of the Texas Historical Commission

 

The Friends of the Texas Historical Commission is excited to announce the launch of our new website at www.thcfriends.org.

Your support of the Texas Historical Commission is key to saving the real places telling the real stories of Texas.

 Visit the new Friends site to learn more about current projects such as the Fulton Mansion restoration project and the Texas in the Cold War initiative.

Visit www.thcfriends.org and make a gift today!

 

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 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Galveston!

Hello history buffs!
 
Professor, author, and historian William Davis, from Virginia Tech, will be the keynote speaker at the Battle of Galveston 150th Anniversary Celebration to be held January 11th through 13th, 2013.
 
The event is hosted by Galveston Historical Foundation.  I have been on the planning committee and I can tell you - this is going to be an awesome event! 
 
Through a Humanities Texas grant all lectures will be free and open to the public.  And we have some incredible speakers on tap.  Only the exhibit at the Texas Seaport Museum, a few tours, and the Southern Banquet will have fees.  Most exhibits, the lectures, and the living history events are free.
 
Lectures include:
“The Sinking of the USS Hatteras by CSS Alabama”
“The Monstrous Regiment of Women – Women Soldiers in the Civil War” (by Dr. William Davis)
“Warrior Women, Lady Spies in the Civil War”
“The British Opinion of the American Civil War”
 
At the Southern Banquet (Jan 12th, Garten Verein, $50/person) Dr. Davis will speak on:
“The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray”
 
Go to http://galvestonhistory.org/Battle_of_Galveston.asp for a schedule of events and to sign up/buy tickets.
 
Also, they are looking for volunteers for ticket-taking and other easy tasks.  If you want to get involved, call Jami Durham at 409 765 3409.
 
Please share this with your friends.
 
Helen
 
Helen D. Mooty
Director, Galveston County Museum
123 Rosenberg, Suite 4157
Galveston, TX 77550