Farmersville's Notorious Son: Tex Watson RoadyGoat

1945

Charles "Tex" Watson (born December 2, 1945) grew up in Farmersville, Texas, in Collin County, where he was an honor student, football captain, and newspaper editor at Farmersville High School before attending the University of North Texas in Denton. In 1967 he moved to California and fell in with the cult led by Charlie Manson, living with the group at the Spahn Ranch movie set. On August 8-9, 1969, acting on Manson's orders, Watson led the group that carried out the Tate-LaBianca murders -- killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others at a home on Cielo Drive, then Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the following night, seven victims in two nights. Watson fled to Texas but was extradited to California, and in 1971 he was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy. His death sentence was commuted to life in 1972. He later became a born-again Christian and ordained minister and remains incarcerated in California.

14.5 mi away

The Old Greenville Post Office

1942

Tradition says mail came from Jefferson in early days and was dropped at a saloon. Greenville Post Office was created in 1847, and occupied rented quarters until 1910, when this structure was built. Neo-classic in style, it became an important element in architectural development of the city. In 1930, it was enlarged. Audie Murphy joined the army in this building on June 20, 1942, his 18th birthday; later he became the most decorated soldier of World War II. The city of Greenville acquired the structure in 1973 for historic preservation. (1973)

Historical Marker →

Carlisle, Lallie P.

1902

(1866-1949) First woman in Texas to hold an elective public office. Upon death of her first husband, E. W. Briscoe, she was appointed, April 17, 1902, by the Commissioners' Court to complete his term as clerk of Hunt County. At that time women could not vote in Texas. A ruling by the Attorney General of Texas upheld the appointment. Mrs. Briscoe, mother of five, later married C. C. Carlisle.

Historical Marker →

Dranes, Arizona Juanita [Blind Arizona]

1894

Gospel singer Arizona Juanita "Blind Arizona" Dranes, of African-American and Mexican-American heritage, was born on April 4, 1894, in Greenville, Texas. Her mother was Cora Jones, and her father's surname was Dranes. She lost her sight in an influenza outbreak early in her childhood. She attended the Institute for Deaf, Dumb and Blind Colored Youths (later Texas Blind, Deaf, and Orphan School ) in Austin from 1896 until 1910, when she graduated. There she received her first music lessons. Some years after graduation, perhaps about 1920, she helped Ford Washington McGee, a singing preacher, establish a Church of God in Christ in Oklahoma City . She later lived in the musically rich Deep Ellum district of Dallas, where she learned piano and developed her own distinct "sanctified" style of playing, known as "gospel beat." It combined the ragtime and barrelhouse traditions to produce a rolling blues sound. Dranes's piano playing was accompanied by her penetrating singing, which derived from the emotional shout song of traditional gospel music . Eventually she became a regular pianist and singer for various traveling ministers of the Church of God in Christ, a national Black Pentecostal church that has since developed into the largest of its kind. Dranes spent much of this early period with COGIC traveling through Texas and Oklahoma and aiding in the "planting" of new churches. In the mid-1920s she settled back in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and was soon spotted by OKeh Record Company scout Richard M. Jones. The company took Dranes to Chicago for recording sessions in 1926 and again held sessions in Dallas in 1928. During her contract with OKeh she recorded more than thirty tracks, including such gospel standouts as "I Shall Wear a Crown" and "My Soul Is a Witness for the Lord." Though she was a top gospel star for the OKeh label, correspondence between Dranes and the record executives indicate that she was often underpaid. With the onset of the Great Depression , Blind Arizona Dranes fell into obscurity. She continued her performances in church services and may have lived in Memphis and possibly Oklahoma City in the 1930s. Her last known public concert was held in Cincinnati in 1947. In 1948 she moved to Los Angeles, where she lived until her death on July 27, 1963. Her death certificate listed her profession as a missionary and that she was buried at the Paradise Memorial Park in Santa Fe Springs, California. She was one of the most influential and innovative gospel pianists of the twentieth century.

Tsha Handbook →

Hart, Martin D.

1861

Martin D. Hart, state senator and Unionist, the son of Capt. John Hart, was probably born in Indiana in 1821. The family moved to Texas around 1833 and settled first at Jonesboro and later in Warren. When John Hart organized the company known as Hart's Mounted Men in 1836, his fifteen-year-old son, Martin, joined. They served in the Army of the Republic of Texas for three months, from July 20 to October 20, 1836. On March 10, 1842, Martin Hart married Mary Ann Green in Fannin County. The couple eventually had five children. In 1849 Martin and his brother Hardin moved to Hunt County, where they operated a successful law office. By 1860, according to the Hunt County tax rolls, Hart, with more than 5,000 acres valued for tax purposes at $20,542, was the second richest man in the county. He was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, where he served from 1857 to 1859. He was then elected state senator. During the election of 1860 he supported John Bell, presidential candidate of the Constitutional Union party . After the election, as the thirst for secession swept through Texas, Hart publicly opposed the movement in a series of speeches he made in the county courthouse. When Governor Sam Houston called the Texas legislature into special session in January 1861, Hart traveled to Austin. There he signed the Unionist "Address to the People of the State," which attempted to counter the secessionist argument. After Texas secession in February 1861, he resigned his Senate seat and returned to Hunt County. He resumed his law practice and, in July of 1861, organized and was elected captain of the Greenville Guards, a company of mounted volunteers. He wrote Governor Edward Clark , pledging the company's services "in defense of Texas whenever she is invaded or threatened with invasion." In the summer of 1862 he received a Confederate commission with permission to raise a company and operate in northwest Arkansas. Using his commission to travel through Confederate lines, he and his followers marched to southwest Missouri, where they apparently received Union army papers. Hart returned to Arkansas, led a series of rear-guard actions against Confederate forces, and is alleged to have murdered at least two prominent secessionists. He and some of his followers were captured by Confederate troops on January 18, 1863, and taken to Fort Smith, where he and his first lieutenant, J. W. Hays of Illinois, were court-martialed and hanged, on January 23, 1863. They were buried in unmarked graves under the tree where they were hanged. In 1864, when the federals took Fort Smith, Hart's body was exhumed and reinterred in the national cemetery there. Contributions from Unionists and federal soldiers purchased a headstone.

Tsha Handbook →

Audie Murphy Birthplace

1925

Audie Leon Murphy, born near Kingston in Hunt County, became the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II and later a Hollywood actor.

Historical Marker →

Alexander, Franklin Pierce

1885

Franklin Pierce Alexander, writer, journalist, and state legislator, son of Elijah E. and Vinetta (Norton) Alexander, was born at Pickens, South Carolina, on September 1, 1853. Elijah and Vinetta had five other children; James Harrison (1847–1847), William Norton (1849–1876), Elizabeth Hannah (1851–1863), Rosa Ann Schroder (1855–1919) and Thomas Elijah (1861–1922). Before seventeen-year-old Alexander departed from Wagener, South Carolina, to Jefferson, Texas, in 1870, he was involved in the printing business, but little is known of his activities prior to his move. In Jefferson, Alexander became a part of the Jefferson Democrat staff and became acquainted with his future father-in-law, Col. John C. C. Bayne, editor of the Gate City News in Texarkana at the time. After spending time in Galveston and Fort Worth, Alexander joined Bayne in the production of the Weekly Independent (also referred to as the Greenville Independent ) in 1875 in Greenville, Texas. At some point around this time he married Bayne’s daughter Georgia. Five children were born to that union. By 1876 Alexander was listed as “Editor and Proprietor” of the Weekly Independent , according to an issue dated September 2, 1876. Around 1878 he bought the Greenville Herald from W. H. (Dick) Ragsdale, with the help of F. V. Edne, who essentially served as a shadow or a “silent” partner for Alexander. In 1883 Alexander sold the Herald to famed Texas judge and orator James H. (“Cyclone”) Davis . Alexander made an unsuccessful bid for state representative in 1882, but he was elected for his first term in the Nineteenth Texas Legislature in 1884 under a strong anti-monopoly platform. He represented District 25 (Hunt County) as a Democrat. During Alexander’s first term in the Texas legislature, he served as chair of the Insurance and Statistics Committee and was on the committees for Internal Improvement and State Affairs. In that initial term, Alexander proposed a bill that called for the formation of a state commission to fix and maintain railroad freight rates. The measure was defeated, but Texas managed to pass a bill that created a railroad commission in 1891 after Alexander served his last term. During Alexander's second term (1887–89), he took on additional positions in the legislature, including service on the Finance; New Capitol, Governor’s Message (as chair); Public Printing; Insurance, Statistics and History (as chair); and Internal Improvement committees. Alexander served as the thirtieth speaker of the House during his third and last term (1889–91), when the legislature passed an antitrust law (1889) directed primarily against railroad rate-fixing associations. Only four weeks earlier, the Kansas legislature had passed a similar antitrust law; Texas became the second state in the United States to enact an antitrust statute. Such laws created the framework for the federal Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. In 1893, two years after Alexander’s term in the legislature had ended, he and his family moved from Greenville to Alva in the Oklahoma Territory during the opening of the Cherokee Strip Land Run. He served as a registrar of the land. In the 1900 census Alexander was living in Alva and was listed as a lawyer. The Alexander family moved again in 1901 to Lawton, Oklahoma Territory, and Alexander became the owner and editor of the Frederick Leader . Later, he bought the Star-Gazette in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. About eight months before Alexander’s death, he sold the Star-Gazette and bought the Wapanucka Press in Wapanucka, Oklahoma. Franklin P. Alexander died on August 25, 1913, in Wapanuka, Oklahoma, about two weeks after the death of his father-in-law who was also residing in Oklahoma as a newspaper editor. Pastor A. Jeff Davis of the Baptist Church conducted the service, and Alexander was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Wapanuka.

Tsha Handbook →

Greenville, Texas

Music in Greenville

Songs About Greenville

Artists From Greenville

Rivers & Roads in Song near Greenville

History of Greenville

Farmersville's Notorious Son: Tex Watson RoadyGoat

The Old Greenville Post Office

Carlisle, Lallie P.

Dranes, Arizona Juanita [Blind Arizona]

Hart, Martin D.

Audie Murphy Birthplace

Alexander, Franklin Pierce

Everything Near Greenville