Huntsville, Texas and Sam Houston

First, I dropped the pounds and weighed 268.3 this morning.  I'm down; I'm up; I'm down....really like to be more down tomorrow.  We shall see.  I am eating the usual Subway and Denny's again today.

We had a great day yesterday even though it was gray and often raining lightly.  We carried our umbrellas when needed and went on about our business.

We started the morning in Huntsville by going to the Sam Houston Memorial Museum Complex on the campus of the Sam Houston State University.  This land was owned by the Houston family later in his life.  He built their cabin that he called Woodland on the land, and the cabin is still in the same spot.  It's a beautiful dog trot style home with four bedrooms.  Four of his eight children were born in that house.  Also on the grounds is the Steamboat House.  That was a house some other man built for his children, but they never lived in it.  After Houston returned from the U.S. Senate later in his life, he rented that home.  It was a few miles down the road at the time and eventually moved to the same land as the Woodland home.  He fell ill with pneumonia in the Steamboat home and died there.  His funeral was held in one of the upstairs rooms.  We also went through the entire museum and saw a lovely video about his life and the road to Texas independence and eventual statehood.

Despite the fact that he was an alcoholic for much of his life and married three times, he accomplished a lot in his 70 years.  He was a teacher, lawyer, store keeper, adopted into the Cherokee nation and made a citizen of the Cherokees, Congressman from Tennessee, the only man to have been Governor of two states (Tennessee and Texas), General in the Texas Revolutionary Army and victor at San Jacinto, signer of the Declaration of Independence from Mexico, a President of an independent nation (twice), a state representative for Texas, and a US Senator from Texas.  All 8 of his children grew to adulthood, so he has many descendants.  Quite a man!

Following that we drove about 50 miles or so to Washington-on-the-Brazos.  Here 59 men braved cold temperatures of only 33 degrees to meet in a building with no windows or doors, just openings, to sign the Declaration of Independence from Mexico.  The original building is gone, but on the site is a re-creation of the building.  There is also an excellent exhibit in the Visitor Center and a huge museum called The Star of the Republic.  We went through everything until they closed at 5 p.m. when we drove another 20 or miles to check in to the Comfort Suites in Brenham.

Today we are going to Goliad where hundreds of Texan prisoners were murdered at Santa Anna's command.  Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!  These things fired the Texan army under Sam Houston's command to win at San Jacinto.  We are doing the big battles backwards on this trip!

Here are some pictures from yesterday.

Key served as Houston's lawyer once.  When Houston was a Congressman from Tennessee, he became angry at a Congressman from Ohio for printing derogatory remarks about him in a newspaper.  He pistol-whipped the man.  Key defended him, although he was found guilty.  Due to his status, he was only reprimanded.

This diorama is based on a famous painting.  Houston, wounded in the ankle at San Jacinto, is laying on the ground talking to Santa Anna, in white.  Santa Anna tried to pass as a private so he wouldn't be shot, but his own men gave him away to Houston by their reactions to seeing him captured.  Houston spared his life.

OK, you just don't see this in every museum...Santa Anna's gold chamber pot.

The museum docent telling us about Houston's Stetson hat.

Houston's third wife, Margaret, who bore him 8 children.  She was 36 years younger than him.  He died of pneumonia at age 70.  She died only four years after him of yellow fever.  The first wife left him after only a few months, and to this day no one knows why.  The second wife was the niece of his adoptive Cherokee father.  He lived with the Cherokees and spoke their language fluently. They were married several years, no children.  Not sure what happened to that marriage.  This third marriage lasted 23 years, until he died.  She got him off alcohol, which was a good thing, and had him become a Baptist.

Houston Comic book!  How did Mark not have that one?

The Woodland home, a short walk from the big museum.

Four bedrooms, a parlor, and a small dining room.

Looking at the back of the house

Mark is looking into the kitchen

Houston, a lawyer, had a law office right outside his home.  Nice commute

Up the hill is the Steamboat House, where he died.  It was moved to this location from just a mile or two up the road.

Upstairs room as it was for his funeral

Downstairs parlor where he lay in bed with pneumonia and ultimately died.

The cemetery is just about two miles from the homes on the campus.

Huge marker was added in the early 1900s.

This Welcome Center is also a dog trot style house.  I really am coming to like this style.

We came to see this 70 foot statue of Sam Houston, made to be visible from the interstate.And I thought Mark was tall!

Then Washington on the Brazos

The State Parks lady talking to Mark about the exhibits.

I sometimes forget this. It was always Houston's dream to have Texas be in the USA.  As the Governor of Texas, he encouraged the citizens to vote against secession during the Civil War and was very saddened when the vote went the other way.  He was then asked to leave the Governorship because he would not swear allegiance to the Confederacy and went back to Huntsville.  Sadly, he did not live through the war and did not see the USA become one country again.

Walking the path up to Independence Hall.

Re-creation of the original building

59 men crammed in there to sign the Declaration.

We drove to the other parking lot for the big museum.  We were literally the only ones there.

Star of the Republic Museum

Painting of the 59 men in Independence Hall.  Houston is in the brown jacket in the left corner.

A great timeline leads you to the upstairs area.

Nacogdoches part two

We spent one night here, but we toured twice.  This morning we checked out of our motel and started the day by finding an Urgent Care center for Mark to get his stitches out.  There were only 2 stitches that he got 8 days ago at the dermatologist.  If Medicare doesn't cover it, it's $100 a stitch.  Ridiculous.  Anyway, he's glad that's over.

Then we made our way to the Welcome Center, which had some great exhibits and a video.  That was followed by a walking tour of four or five historical sites, lunch at Subway, and then the Old Stone Fort Museum on the campus of Steve Austin State University.  Once we did all that, we had a pleasant two hour drive to Huntsville, partially through the Davy Crockett National Forest.

This morning we will be going to the Sam Houston museum and then driving to Washington, Texas for the Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park before heading to our motel in Brenham tonight.

I tried a new dinner at Denny's last night, the salmon skillet.  Mark and I both had it, and it was great. Unfortunately, I went back to the motel and finished off the box of ginger snaps.  My calories were about 2,000 yesterday, a normal day for most people who aren't trying to lose weight.  We also did a fair amount to walking on the tour in old Nacogdoches.  Still, I'm up three pounds this morning, back to 271.1.  Maybe yesterday's 268.3 was wrong.  My scale is not that accurate anyway.

We are still having fun!  Here are pictures from yesterday.

Heading in to get those two stitches out.

The old downtown Nacogdoches street on the way to the Welcome Center

Looking at the many exhibits in the Welcome Center.

Statue outside the Welcome Center

This area, near the Sterne-Hoya house was a bivouac area for hundreds of soldiers recruited by Sterne from the US and brought to Texas to fight in the war for independence from Mexico.  They camped by his house and had a big feast before going to places like the Alamo and Goliad where most all of them died.

The Sterne-Hoya house, only those two families ever lived in this house.  Davy Crockett and Sam Houston were frequent visitors and lived in the house sometimes with the Sterne family.

Adolphus Sterne 

According to some historians, Sam Houston converted to Catholicism, as all citizens of Mexico had to do then to own land.  He had his baptism in the parlor of Adolphus Sterne.  Sterne's wife served as his sponsor and Godmother.  He had asked his good friend Adolphus, but he said no because it was Yom Kippur.  Sterne's father was Jewish and his mother was Lutheran, but he identified himself as a Jew, even though later he had converted to Catholicism at his wife's insistence; however, he didn't always practice it.  Legal conversions for land ownership and secretly retaining one's old religion was not uncommon in old Mexico.

A few blocks up from the house is the cemetery

Thomas Jefferson Rusk's grave

Adolphus Sterne and his wife

As we walked, we saw this sign on a business.  These two names, Nacogdoches and Natchitoches, are the names of two twin brothers from the Caddo Indian tribe.  According to their legend, Nacogdoches was sent a three days march west and founded the town named for him.  The other brother waked three days east and founded his namesake town in what is now Louisiana.  The two brothers remained friends and established a road and trade between the two villages.

The Old Stone Fort is now on the campus of Austin State University.  It looks rural, but a parking garage is right behind me here.  This is now a museum of the founding of Nacogdoches and the Camino Real.  This is a re-creation, although some original stones were used in the rebuild.

Nacogdoches

First, I had an excellent day with food yesterday, and this morning I am 268.3.  Awesome.  That's 1/2 pound down from  where I was when we left last Tuesday.  Weight loss is so weird and unpredictable! I should have another great day today and really for the rest of the week.  We have no plans to eat anywhere other than Subway and Denny's until next Monday's lunch when we are in Austin.

Sadly, my stomach is feeling very unhappy this morning.  I brought cherries with me from home and ate about a cup of them last night.  I threw the rest out this morning because they may have been past their prime.  I got sick for two days a few weeks ago from eating cherries like that.  These seemed fine, but I guess they weren't.  I hope it doesn't slow me down.

Also today we are going to go to an Urgent Care place to have Mark's stitches removed.  It's eight days since the skin surgery.  Today there is plenty of time to go to a place like that and three right nearby to choose from.

We drove about three hours north to Nacogdoches yesterday.  It was a pretty easy drive.  We went straight to Millard's Crossing, a village of restored buildings moved to one location and filled with antiques from one lady, Lela Millard Thomas, who collected them for a lifetime. She actually became a U.S. Representative from Texas after her husband passed away.  She filled out his term and was the first woman Congressperson from Texas. There were 11 buildings including a store, a caboose, two log cabins, several Victorian era homes, a school house, a corn crib full of tools, a Methodist church, and a parsonage.  The church, parsonage, and one of the homes can be rented for weddings or parties.  Everything was very interesting, and we took a self-guided walking tour for about two hours.

Today we will spend the rest of the day in Nacogdoches as well and then drive to Huntsville.  I will write about those things tomorrow morning, meanwhile, here are yesterday's photos.

Sam Houston's chair

Thinking about cooking on an old stove

Gas anyone?

Dog trot house....we were reading about this typical old Texas style in our Michener book.  This one is being restored right now, so there wasn't anything to see inside yet.

Trying to write with a quill pen in the old schoolhouse.  Not so easy.

Lela Millard Thomas, US Congresswoman and antique collector who put together this group of buildings.

My personal cowboy heading into his log home.