"Schooner Flash, Captain Falwell"

When David Kokernot first moved his family to Texas from New Orleans in 1831 it was "a very pleasant trip" aboard the "Schooner Flash, Captain Falwell," he later wrote. That fact has been repeated so often that I was a little surprised to find that the Flash was not built until four years later. I wrote this off as simply another of Kokernot's many errors of fact. This one was clearly an honest mistake, not self-promoting like many of his errors. The Flash, I learned, had a busy and important fifteen month's life and David had probably spent time on its deck during the Texas Revolution. The Flash hauled Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar to Texas. It hauled the Twin Sisters canons to Houston's army. So, naturally, I had to blow off a couple of weeks writing all I could learn about the schooner. The East Texas Historical Journal published the story early this year. I've placed the first page here. Subscriptions or single copies are available from the East Texas Historical Association, or at a good university library.

Harry Daves

Harry Daves was a Texan of the old school. He was cranky and persistent, but modest and respectful. Nevertheless, the language heard in his living room could drop a Yankee's jaw. It did mine. He loved history, but his modest education, or maybe it was the cranky persistence, kept him at odds with the more formal historians of his section of Texas. So it seemed to this visitor from the north.

Harry contacted me the first time when he heard there was a Yankee poking around the local libraries, museums, and woods, trying to find the lost gravesite of his ancestor, Samuel Barber. Local historians advised me that Harry wouldn't have much to help my search, but they were wrong--Harry had more than all the others put together. He had long been interested in finding Samuel's grave but had not succeeded. He had interviewed everyone he could find who had seen it, none more recently than the 1960s. The site was deep in the woods of East Texas and any marker had long since disappeared. On a collection of paper scraps Harry had notes from each, describing what each knew. One knew on whose tract it lay. Another knew it was north of such and such fence, but south of another. It was in the woods but the prairie was visible. No piece of information alone was sufficient, but in aggregate they could narrow the possibilities to a radius of a few hundred feet. Harry also knew the hunters who knew the woods and who would join us in a sweep of the area and, better yet, guarantee we could find our way out.

We made multiple sweeps until we were convinced we found Samuel's gravesite. See the detailed description here.

Harry in his trademark red coveralls with Neale Rabensburg, Gayla Tilton, Mike Pomykal; 1994.

Thank you, Harry.

Thank you, Pappy!

I was born in Chicago and was raised in Alaska and Idaho. I'm a thorough Yankee. Not so my ancestors. Six generations of them lived in Texas, but I never set foot in the state until I was an adult. Since I became interested in family history I have visited often--twice a year, even. When I do, I exclaim "Thank you, Pappy!"

It was Pappy, my grandfather, who moved the family from the dustbowl of west Texas to Sandpoint, a lakeside logging town in the mountains of northern Idaho. I love Texans, I love my kin there, I love to walk the land my ancestors owned, but--no offense, please--it's too bad they're all in Texas. It's hot, humid, and flat; or dusty and flat; or mountainous (if you know where to look) and dry.

I'm sure Pappy received the same reaction I do at the mention of Idaho: "Huh? You like potatoes?" Or they confuse it with Iowa. Logging drew Pappy to Sandpoint, but the lake in the summer and the skiing in the winter drew me to the same town. We're a little isolated--six hours by car to Seattle, nine hours by air to Houston, and three hundred miles to the nearest potato patch--and that's how I like it.

Thank you Pappy!