A Precise Name With an Uncertain Origin RoadyGoat

You're in Meridian, Texas, so here's the meridian tangent behind the name: Meridian was likely named through Meridian Creek and Meridian Knobs, believed to lie near the ninety-eighth meridian, but the exact naming chain remains partly uncertain and may involve imperfect nineteenth-century geography. A meridian is an imaginary north-south line of longitude connecting the poles. Parallels of latitude remain parallel; meridians converge. The town-name irony is excellent: Meridian sounds mathematically exact while its own origin may preserve an approximate or mistaken location. Surveying has always combined measurement with the limits of instruments, maps, terrain, and human recordkeeping.

The Clock That Solved Longitude RoadyGoat

You're in Meridian, Texas, so here's the meridian tangent behind the name: latitude can be estimated from the height of the sun or stars, but longitude at sea requires comparing local time with time at a known reference meridian. Earth rotates fifteen degrees per hour, so the time difference reveals angular separation. The hard part was building a clock accurate through ship motion, humidity, and temperature changes. John Harrison's marine timekeepers became famous solutions. Local solar noon still occurs when the sun crosses a location's meridian, which rarely matches twelve o'clock exactly because civil time zones, seasonal clock changes, longitude within a zone, and Earth's orbit all intervene.

Why Greenwich Is Zero RoadyGoat

You're in Meridian, Texas, so here's the meridian tangent behind the name: the Prime Meridian at Greenwich became the internationally adopted zero for longitude in eighteen eighty four, largely because many nautical charts already used it. It was a political and practical standard, not a natural line etched into Earth. Longitude measures angle east or west from that reference. The International Date Line lies roughly opposite but zigzags so countries and island groups are not casually split between calendar days. Time zones zigzag for the same reason: governments and commerce prefer shared clock time within political regions over perfectly straight slices of longitude.

English

1568

The first English in Texas, according to an early written account, were not settlers, but three seamen set ashore by John Hawkins in Mexico in the sixteenth century near Tampico, after a battle with the Spanish at Veracruz on Hawkins' third expedition to the Indies. The three seamen, David Ingram, Richard Twide, and Richard Browne, allegedly walked across lower Texas on their way north in 1568, and Ingram's brief account was included by the younger Richard Hakluyt in his publication in 1589 of The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (though Hakluyt's doubts about the authenticity of the story caused its omission from subsequent editions). Scattered English farmers and businessmen may have settled in Texas by 1800. At least six Englishmen were awarded empresario contracts in the 1820s, though none was successful in bringing in families; in the 1830s attempts at colonization began on a much larger scale, though again with limited success. Beales's Rio Grande colony included a few English families, and the contract granted by the Republic of Texas to the Peters colony in 1841 eventually resulted in the scattered settlement of large areas in North Texas, covering parts of twenty-six future counties. William Kennedy failed to fulfill a contract to bring 600 families to Texas, but he did attract a good deal of attention with his book, Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic of Texas (1841); William Bollaert , who published some of his own accounts of traveling in Texas in English magazines, was attracted to the new republic by Kennedy's book. A later colonization attempt was made in Bosque County in 1850 ( see COLONY OF KENT ). Ranching and land-investment interests in the Panhandle undoubtedly reflected the greatest intercourse between England and Texas, especially in the boom years of 1880–87. By the end of 1886 the English had invested about $25 million in western ranches and directly controlled more than twenty million acres of Panhandle land. The largest investor, the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company , showed nominal capital of £1,532,226 in 1885. Concerned that Texas lands were becoming monopolized by foreign control, many Texans sought protection from the large corporations. In 1891 Governor James S. Hogg approved the Alien Land Law , which prohibited aliens from holding lands unless they became United States citizens. Even though the law was later changed and did not prohibit land ownership by alien corporations, British investments declined in the following decades. The benefits that British investors and managers conferred upon the land and economy of Texas are not easily measured. They helped to introduce barbed wire , steel windmills, deep wells, and better breeds of cattle into the northwest part of the state, and they also made attempts to attract more settlers. The considerable English influence upon the diplomacy and laws of Texas during its years as a republic resulted in several treaties and mediations ( see ANGLO-TEXAN CONVENTION OF 1840 , DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS , and LAW ). English culture in Texas through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mostly mediated by the settlement of Anglo-Americans, became so pervasive that it is difficult to isolate various contributions. In the twentieth century the largest influx of English into the country occurred when soldiers returning home after World War II were accompanied by their English brides. In 1953 the Anglo-Texan Society was formed in London to foster the establishment of closer cultural ties; Graham Greene, the British novelist, served as the first president. In the latter part of the twentieth century, Renaissance festivals and the Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio celebrated English culture. The 1990 census listed 2,024,001 persons of English descent in the state of Texas.

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Rock Springs, TX (Bosque County)

1878

Rock Springs, also known as the Colony, is located on Farm Road 1637 in south central Bosque County near the McLennancounty line. It was founded by James B. Sadler, a former slave from Tennessee who was brought to Bosque County shortly after the Civil War . A self-educated teacher and preacher, he founded a church, a school, and a lodge on part of the 545 acres he purchased in 1878. The church, erected in 1890, was the focal point of one of the first free African-American communities in the state. The church was originally a one-room structure, thirty by twenty-one feet, overlooking a spring which runs through the Sadler property. It had a steeple with a huge bell that could be heard throughout the area. In the late 1980s the church still stood in its original form, except that it had lost its steeple, and a choir room had been added. A cemetery located near the church contained the graves of many of the founding pioneers of the Rock Springs settlement. An annual homecoming, organized in 1950, was celebrated on each first Sunday in November. At this celebration, funds were provided for the continual upkeep of the church property and cemetery. The church was the only structure in the community listed on maps in the late 1980s. The Colony was the only African-American community in Bosque County.

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Nelson, General Alison

1850

(1822-1862) Soldier, statesman and Indian fighter. In his native Georgia, a legislator and mayor of city of Atlanta. General in Cuban liberation forces, 1850. On reaching Texas 1856, joined state troops fighting Indians. Elected 1859 to State Legislature; served as delegate to 1861 Texas Secession Convention. In the Civil War raised, trained and led 10th Regiment Texas Infantry. Sent into defense of Arkansas, repulsed Federal assault on Devall's Bluff, June 1862. Died of illness in camp near Austin, Ark., October 7, 1862. (1964)

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Nelson, Allison

1862

Allison Nelson, legislator and Confederate army officer, was born on March 11, 1822, in Fulton County, Georgia. During the Mexican War he recruited and led a volunteer company. He was trained as a lawyer and elected in 1848 to the Georgia legislature, where he served one term. He also served as mayor of Atlanta in 1855. During the Cuban war for independence Nelson served as a brigadier general under Gen. Narciso López. Nelson was in Kansas during the "border troubles" but moved to Meridian, Texas, in 1856. He also owned a house in Waco. For the next four years he was engaged in Indian affairs. He served under Lawrence S. Ross as an agent but also distinguished himself as an Indian fighter with a captain's commission from Governor Hardin R. Runnels . Nelson was elected to the state legislature in 1859 and to the Secession Convention in 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised and was elected to command the Tenth Texas Infantry regiment, which saw early service in Arkansas under Gen. Thomas C. Hindman. On the recommendation of Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes Nelson was promoted to brigadier general, to rank from September 12, 1862, and was assigned to the command of the Second Division of Holmes's army in Arkansas, which consisted of his own and George M. Flournoy 's brigades. Nelson fell ill of typhoid, or "camp fever," on September 27, however, and died near Austin, Arkansas, on October 7, 1862. "He is an irreplaceable loss to me," wrote General Holmes. Nelson was buried in Little Rock. Camp Nelson, near Austin, Arkansas, was named in his honor. He was survived by a widow and three children.

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Bosque County

1841

Named for the Bosque (Spanish for "woods") River. The territory now part of this county was traversed in 1841 by the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition. Maj. George B. Erath, noted surveyor and soldier, explored the region prior to its settlement. The first colonists established homes in 1850-51. Among the national groups who immigrated here were the English (at Kent), Norwegians (at Norse and elsewhere), and the Germans (in eastern part of county). Formally created and organized in 1854, Bosque county has traditionally had farming-ranching economy. The Chisholm cattle trail crossed the area in the 1870s. Erected by the State of Texas - 1973

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Lomax, John A.

Only a log kitchen now marks the homesite of John Lomax, one of the foremost collectors of American folksongs. Here, on part of the Chisholm Trail, young Lomax heard cowboys crooning and yodeling to restless herds; Negro servants taught him jig tunes, chants, work songs, and calls; and on winter nights his family sang songs and swapped stories around a blazing fire. Lomax began to write down this music while still a boy; and when he left Bosque County at age 20, he carried with him a roll of cowboy ballads -- the nucleus of his lifelong work. (1970)

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Meridian, Texas

Music in Meridian

Songs About Meridian

Artists From Meridian

Rivers & Roads in Song near Meridian

History of Meridian

A Precise Name With an Uncertain Origin RoadyGoat

The Clock That Solved Longitude RoadyGoat

Why Greenwich Is Zero RoadyGoat

English

Rock Springs, TX (Bosque County)

Nelson, General Alison

Nelson, Allison

Bosque County

Lomax, John A.

Things to Do in Meridian

Everything Near Meridian