News & Updates

Ronald (age about 3 or 4) at lower left in the old Sugar Land dairy and as a high school senior in 1951.

I'm very sorry to report the recent death of Ronald Miller (SLHS '51). Click here to read an obituary. My sincerest condolences to Trinka and his children. I'll repost something Ronald sent me in my next updates.

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Although I'm late with this, I wanted to tell everyone that Dr. Raymond Chong is giving an encore performance of his presentation on Chinese laborers, working on the Transcontinental Railroad. Click the image above to read details. His presentation begins at 11:00 on Saturday, June 2nd at the Sugar Land Heritage Museum & Visitor Center. Admission is free.

Dr. Chong's presentation is part of a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Houston-Austin Chapter. The exhibit is on display through next week.

More Historical Photos of Houston, the US, and the World

Click this link to view color photos of Houston in the 1950s and '60s. 

These next photos come from a Rice history blog that I follow. Look at the 2nd aerial, which gives a good view of the empty space between Houston and Stafford.

My thanks to the readers who sent me the following photo album. There are a few repeaters, but most are new (to me).

Click the image to view it.
 

 Construction of the Empire State Building, 1931.

Photos from The Great Depression

A couple of people recently sent me a link to a Google album containing images of the US during The Great Depression. The album provided no captions, but I think WPA photographers captured the images. 

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a depression-era agency whose purpose was to provide jobs for the unemployed. At its peak the WPA employed more than 3 million Americans. The agency's projects were widely varied. They included the arts as well as conventional commercial/business endeavors. The arts group produced murals, posters, plays, and photographs, among other products. A large number of the photographs are now recognized for their aesthetic, as well as historical value.

Click the image to view the photo album.

 

Migrant farming family.

More Photos from US and World History

I want to thank my aunt, Mayme Rachuig Hause, for emailing me these photos. Click the image below to view the photo album.
 

Willard Scott as the original Ronald McDonald.

White House Renovations 1950/51

The 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, moved into the White House in 1945. To his surprise and dismay, the house had serious problems. Not only was it drafty and creaky, it was downright unsafe. Chandeliers in the house were observed swaying for no apparent reason, and floors moved underneath people’s feet when stepped on.

All of the above resulted in a structural investigation of the building, revealing haphazard retrofitting, fire hazards, and a second floor that was on the verge of collapsing. What's more is that the White House's foundations were sinking, walls were peeling away and disused water and gas pipes were weighing down the building and making it unsustainable. 
 
The situation was so bad that, in June 1948, one of the legs of First Daughter Margaret Truman’s piano fell right through a floorboard of her second-floor sitting room.  This event, along with others, made the Presidential family and its aides realize that serious measures were required to save the historic building.

In 1949, Congress approved a $5.4 million project to gut the building in its entirety, replacing its interior while retaining its historic facade. Architects, engineers, and workers toiled for the next 22 months, trying to figure out how to remove unstable structural elements while somehow ensuring the exterior of the building remained intact. 
  

All of the construction equipment used on the site had to be carried inside in pieces, then re-assembled before being used in order to prevent exterior damage. The first and second floors were replaced, while several expansions and basement levels were added, including a bomb shelter that was capable of withstanding a nuclear attack. 

President Truman and his family returned to reside in the White House in 1952, with a small ceremony marking the occasion. The First Family received a gold key to its newly-refurbished residence.

Click the image below to view the photo album. (All images are copy written by the Library.)
  

 

Texas & Beyond

People have recently sent me a couple of items about topics beyond Sugar Land and Fort Bend County.  I thought I'd pass them on.

My aunt, Mayme Rachuig Hause, sent the first one to me.  It's about the lone surviving Republic of Texas boundary marker in East Texas, indicating the border between the US and the ROT.  How unique can you get?  Click here to read the article.

The second item came from John Frierson. It's a series of postcards, showing Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michgan in 1927, I think.

US & TexasHistory

Thank you Bettye Anhaiser for donating this historic newspaper to the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation. I've forgotten where she found it, but it's good item. Notice it comes from the final edition of The Houston Post published on December 8th, 1941. I'll post more from this paper when we get closer to the historic day.

The Houston Post, December 8, 1941

If any of you are Facebook users, I highly recommend the Traces of Texas Page. Lots of interesting things there; these two items for example.

The Traces of Texas quote of the day comes from legendary rancher Charles Goodnight:

"When the Indians robbed houses they invariably took all the books they could find, using the paper to pack their shields. They knew, as well as we did, the resistance paper has against bullets. Paper offered more resistance to a bullet than anything to be had upon the frontier, unless it was cotton. The Indians knew this and stole all the books and paper they could find ...

Their shield was made by forming a circular bow of wood two or three feet across, over each side of which was drawn untanned buffalo hide from the neck of the buffalo, the toughest and thickest they cold get. They filled between the hide with paper. In times of action, the Indian had this on his elbow and always aimed to keep it at an angle between you and him. Very few of the old fashioned rifles would penetrate these shields. The rifle I carried then [1861], and still have, would knock a hole right through them at any angle. I once shot an Indian down on the Quitaque. I did not kill him, but he dropped his shield. Between the folds of hide was a complete history of Rome, and the boys had considerable fun passing the sheets around and reading them.

----- Charles Goodnight, as quoted in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review, 1928

The next item is rather long, but worth the effort. It's an interview published in 1902 of a woman who was 104-years old at the time. Her name was 'Grandma Ziff' Dockery.  What a character.

 'Grandma Ziff' Dockery (photo from Traces of Texas)

 

 Shady Grove Cemetery, Pattonville, Texas (photo from Traces of Texas)

Click this link to read her 1901 newspaper article. 

Miscellaneous

Here are some odds & ends I found since my last posting.  The first is a video clip from a 1956 episode of the old I've Got A Secret game show.  I think it's amazing.  I've read that the man died just a couple of months after appearing on the show.

A fellow named Jim Lange posted this photo of Foley's department store his father took in 1938.  This store preceded the one most of us remember, which was built in 1947 on the corner of Main and Lamar.  This store was 400 Main Street several blocks north of Main and Lamar.

Foley's at 400 Main in 1938.

Miscellany

My brother Bruce found a reference to the 'weather eye' that sat at atop the Texas National Bank Building in downtown Houston.  I assume the building had a Main St. address, but it was located next to the First Methodist Church.  Info says the weather eye began operation in 1957.  I found two photos to refresh your memories.

  

The weather eye (ball at the top of the sign) provided a simple, highly visible forecast of Houston's weather, as explained in the lyrics of an ad the bank ran on local radio stations:

Red light warmer weather
Blue light cooler weather
Green light no change in view
Blinking light, rain is due.

I may be dreaming, but I think they may have run a television ad with the same jingle.  Regardless, I remember seeing it when we drove up Main St. to shop at Foleys.

I found the following map showing the empresario land grants authorized by the Mexican government when Texas was still part of Mexico.  We tend to focus on Austin's colony, but you'll see that many other empresarios colonized Texas.  Click on the image to view other maps.

I want to thank my aunt (Mayme Rachuig Hause) for sending a link to this short film from the 1920s, entitled "Oil Field Dodge." It shows a Dodge automobile plowing through rough terrain to reach an drilling site out in the boondocks.  

Of course, the purpose of the film was to show the robust nature of Dodge vehicles, but it's important to note that roads were pretty bad back in the 1920s.  Prior to 1927 when it was paved and renamed Highway 90A, the road from Houston to Rosenberg and points west could become so muddy that teams of mules were needed to get cars out of boggy areas.

Click here for the short video "Oil Field Dodge."

Miscellany

 

I want to thank everyone who has sent me albums of historic photos.  I've received some extraordinarily good ones in the past month or so.  Here are three -- click the images to view the albums.
 

US Red Cross personnel landing at a Normandy Beach in June 1944.

 

Earliest known image of Abraham Lincoln.

 

Bat Masterson in the 1920s when he was a sportswriter for a NYC newspaper.

Historic Photos of the US

I want to thank several readers who sent me this album of very high quality photographs scenes in the US more than 100-years ago.  I'm not an expert on the history of photographic technology, but I think these photos are astoundingly crisp because photographers in those days used large box camera, which employed very large negatives.  Essentially, there was a lot of space on the negative to store a lot of pixels, to use modern vernacular.

I also want to point out that whoever collected these photos took some from Shorpy's a very, very good Web site for old photos.  I recommend it highly if you are interested in this kind of stuff.  Click here to go to the Shorpy Web site.

Click on the image below to see the album. Just a lot about Google Photos.  I put captions on the photos giving their dates and locations.  Just click on the 'i' icon to display them.

The Good Roads Movement & Highway 90 (the Old Spanish Trail)

I received a notice this week from the Old Spanish Trail Centennial Celebration Association announcing the first of a series of events commemorating the highway's big anniversary.  Some of you may not know this, but Highway 90 (and Highway 90A which is the alternate route that runs through Sugar Land) was originally known as the Old Spanish Trail. Commercial and governmental interests launched this highway project with an organizational meeting in Mobile, Alabama in 1915.  

Some of you may recall this undated photo I posted showing Highway 90A on the west side of Sugar Land long before it became a major route through the southern tier of the United States.  As you can see from the caption, it's described as a 'new' shell road. 

I can tell this photo was taken after 1903 because I can see the train depot and the refinery in the distance.  The camera is pointed eastward from a spot roughly where Nalco is today. In 1927, this road would become a paved 2-lane road with the designation, Highway 90A.  
 

(east of Sugar Land, I think)

Actually, Highway 90 grew out of the Good Roads movement which began in the late 19th century.  Click here to read a Wikipedia article on the movement's history.  Economic necessity and military preparedness spurred the association to launch the Old Spanish Trail project in Mobile 100-years ago. (Identical interests launched the interstate highway system during the Eisenhower administration 40-years later.)

As I mentioned above, our segment of Highway 90A didn't come to life until 1927.  I have documentation on that effort, which I'll post in the future.  Here are links to further information about the Old Spanish Trail's history, if you're interested:

Old Spanish Trail Centennial Celebration Association

Link to the home page of Association's Web site.

Link to a photo gallery on the OST Centennial Celebration Association's Web site.

Drive The Old Spanish Trail Highway

Link to the history of the OST.

Link to page on the Texas section of the OST.

Link to more old Texas highways.

Vintage Color Photos of the US

  
I want to thank Donna Christopher Baker (DHS '63) for sending me the link to these vintage color photos.  Like most people, I think of the distant past in black and white, so it's fascinating to see these color images.

They hadn't perfected the technology.  As they text explains, Kodachrome was a few years away, so the colors seem a little bit drab.  However, I'm not complaining.  (Click on image to view album.)
 

Unusual Photos from the Past

I think my nephew sent me this album of random historic photos.  Each photo is interesting in its own way.

Click on the image below to view the album.
 

Old Auto Trivia

I want to thank Donna Christopher Baker (DHS '62) for sending me this auto trivia test.  I can't guarantee the answers.  They are correct as far as I know.  You'll see the questions in the photo captions.  I've put the answer to each in comments.

Click on the image below to try the test.
 

Random Photographs From The Past

Several people have sent me links to collections of old photos. Many thanks, I've enjoyed seeing them.

I've made a random selection from various eras.  Click on the image below to view them.
 

The First Air Force One - Eisenhower's Constellation

My aunt, Mayme Rachuig Hause (SLHS '48) sent me this clip, which I thought was fascinating.  It's a brief video on the first designated AF One and the current attempt to preserve it.

Click here to see the clip.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Some of you may have watched the recent Ken Burns documentary, The Roosevelts.  I haven't seen the first episode dealing with TR's early life, but I've seen the others.   Even if you missed the documentary, you may know that the Democratic Party held it's 1928 presidential nominating convention in Houston.

Jesse Jones built a temporary, wooden convention hall on the site where the Sam Houston Coliseum and Music Hall stood for many years.  (The temporary hall was demolished in 1936.  The Coliseum and Music Hall opened in 1937.)  This site is now the location of The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

The Democratic Party nominee was Alfred E. Smith of New York.  His running mate was Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas.  FDR gave Smith's nominating speech.

Click the link below to view silent footage of the 1928 convention.  You'll get a glimpse of FDR giving his speech toward the end.  (For those of you who saw the Burns documentary, Louis Howe is the tubercular looking fellow shown briefly about midway in the film.)

Link to the convention video.

The Burns documentary included a couple of excerpts of FDR's memorable Fireside Chats.  Click the link below to hear his first chat on the Banking Crisis, which he delivered early in his first term (March 12, 1933).  It's not long and worth hearing.

Link to audio of FDR's first Fireside Chat.

If you want to try another, click here to hear his seventh chat, whose topic was the Works Relief Program and Social Security Act (April 28, 1935).