Texas Almanac, 1992-1993 Page: 49
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CENTRAL TEXAS HISTORY 49
Belle of Austin steamboat or the Ben Hur, a three-
decked sidewheel steamer.
Austin was turned on its ear by the arrival in 1892 of
59-year-old German-born sculptress Elisabet Ney. A for-
mer confidante of European nobility, she and her hus-
band, Dr. Edmund Montgomery, had lived near
Hempstead since 1873. Contrary to the traditions of the
day, Ney retained her maiden name. Texans' eyebrows
were raised by such eccentricities as her wearing
bloomer-type slacks and, when one of her children died,
cremating his remains in her fireplace. In her limestone
studio and home in Austin, she created statues of noted
Texas figures. Her marble statues of Stephen F. Austin
and Sam Houston stand in the Texas Capitol; duplicates
were placed in Statuary Hall in the national capitol in
Washington, D.C.
An innovative street-lighting system was installed in
Austin in 1894-1895. Each of the 31 towers held a cluster
of arc lights atop a triangular cast-and wrought-iron
tower with a framework 150 feet high on a 15-foot iron
base supported by heavy steel-cable guy wires. The
tower lights were designed to produce a circle of light
bright enough that the time could be read on the aver-
age watch on the darkest night. First lighted May 6,
1895, the "moonlight towers" required a city employee
to ascend each tower each night to turn them on. A
switch was installed at the base of each tower in 1936,
and in 1942, the controls were centralized.
San Antonio
Until about 1890, Military Plaza in San Antonio was
perhaps the most colorful spot in Central Texas. It was
part open-air supermarket, part short-order cafe, part
flea market - and all floor show. The "chili queens"
cooked all night over charcoal braziers on the plaza's
south side and served their spicy wares during the day.
Fresh vegetables, eggs and poultry were sold on the
east side. And on the west were vendors of hay, wool,
hides, songbirds and other commodities - an al fresco
variety store. After the new city hall was built in the
middle of the plaza, although some vendors remained,
the chili queens moved to Alamo Plaza.
William Gebhardt, a German-born New Braunfels
restauranteur, sold the first commercial chili powder in
1894. Before that, chili was a seasonal dish, served only
when fresh chili peppers were available. By 1896, there
was enough demand for the eye-watering spice that
Gebhardt established a factory in San Antonio. Geb-
hardt added the nation's first canned chili con carnme
and canned tamales to his offerings in 1911.
Recruiting troops for the First Volunteer Cavalry
for the Spanish-American War brought Teddy Roose-
velt to San Antonio in 1898. Called the Rough Riders, it
was an elite group, chiefly from Arizona, New Mexico,
Texas and Indian Territory. Legend says that Roosevelt
did much of his Texas recruiting in the bar of the Meng-
er Hotel. The recruits' civilian occupations ranged from
dancer to football player, from gourmet to oarsman,
plus policeman, cowboy, "down-and-outer," musician
and "bad man." There were several full-blooded Indi-
ans and one ex-marshal of Dodge City, as well as a
sprinkling of "swells" from Harvard and Yale. Despite
the disparity in their origins, however, the Rough Rid-
ers became, as one writer said, "one homogeneous
mass of patriotism and pluck." Col. Leonard Wood, an
army surgeon, was the group's commander, chosen for
the post by Roosevelt became of his superior military
experience. So popular were the Rough Riders with San
Antonio's residents that guards had to be posted to keep
the civilians from overrunning the fairgrounds where
the troops were drilling. On May 29, more than 1,000 of
"Teddy's Terrors" left for Florida. Less than a month
later, they were in Cuba. Because of supply and trans-
portation snags, however, their horses remained in
Florida. The Rough Riders fought valiantly, but many
were killed or wounded. The survivors were mustered
out at Long Island after barely three months' service. In
all, Texas contributed about 10,000 recruits to the Span-
ish-American War effort.
Waco
Waco was a lively place in the last 15 years of the
century. The popular soft drink, Dr Pepper, was first
served at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco in 1885 by
druggist Charles C. Alderton. The formula was
acquired from Alderton by druggist Wade B. Morrison,
who named the drink after a friend, Dr. Charles K. Pep-
per of Rural Retreat, Va. Morrison and Robert S. La-zenby, a Waco beverage chemist who was already
bottling and distributing his own brand of ginger ale,
organized the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling
Company in 1891 to manufacture and market Dr Pep-
per. The headquarters moved to Dallas in 1922.
Baylor University, which had been chartered at
Independence, Washington County, by the Republic of
Texas in 1845, and Waco University, founded in 1861,
consolidated at Waco in 1886, retaining the Baylor
name. The female department of Baylor, named Baylor
Female College in 1866, moved to Belton in 1886. In 1934,
the name was changed to Mary Hardin-Baylor to honor
philanthropist Mrs. Mary Hardin.
The Slayden-Kerksey Woolen mill, which made fab-
ric for men's suits, was built in Waco in 1885. Historian
T. Lindsay Baker calls it the most successful Texas tex-
tile mill of all time.
The controversial journalist William Cowper Brann,
an Illinois native, lived for short periods in Galveston
and Houston from 1886 to 1891, when he moved to
Austin. There he founded and published The Iconoclast,
which soon failed. He became editor of the San Antonio
Express in 1892, then editor of the Waco Morning News
in 1894. Citing a desire to combat hypocrisy and intol-
erance, he revived the monthly Iconoclast, which in-
creased in circulation from 3,000 to 98,000 within three
years. His vitriolic attacks on the administrators of
Baylor University earned him many enemies. One
such enemy, T. E. Davis, met Brann on a Waco street
on April 1, 1898. The exchange of gunfire left both
Brann and Davis mortally wounded; they died the next
day.
Waco built the Cotton Palace in Padgitt Park in
1894 for holding fairs and expositions. The first fair was
held that year, but just before the second could be held
in 1895, the main building burned. The site remained
dormant until, in 1909, the Waco Young Men's Business
League rebuilt five exhibit buildings and the 10,000-
seat Coliseum, a replica of the Coliseum in Wash-
ington, D.C. The Cotton Palace was also the site of
grand opera performances and debutante balls. The
buildings were abandoned in 1932 because of the De-
pression, and they were sold or demolished.
The eyes of Central Texans, as well as others across
the state, were all on a point slightly south of the town
of West in McLennan County on Sept. 15, 1896. In a pub-
licity stunt billed as "The Crash at Crush," two trains
of the Katy line were deliberately crashed head-on.
The stunt had been tried successfully in Ohio several
months before. The elaborate preparations were su-
pervised by Katy Passenger Agent William G. Crush,
whose idea the event was and for whom the site was
named. The stunt attracted an estimated 30,000 specta-
tors brought in by dozens of special trains. Engines 999
and 1001, each pulling six cars, rolled toward each
other about 5 p.m. with whistles blowing repeatedly.
Each locomotive reached a speed of about 45 miles an
hour just before the crash, producing a collision force
equivalent to hitting a stationary, solid object at 90
miles per hour. Despite precautions, both boilers ex-
ploded on impact, hurling lagged pieces of iron and
steel into the crowd. Two were killed, and many were
injured. The railroad settled all claims with dispatch.
Lampasas was the site of the founding of the Texas
Bankers Association in 1885. The Park Hotel, the new-
est, most luxurious resort in Central Texas, was built
around one of the many mineral springs found near
Lampasas. The bankers were so pleased with their
first meeting in the highly-touted, glamorous resort
that they held their meeting there again the following
year.
The ethnic stew of Central Texas added another
ingredient in the 1880s as a wave of Italian immigrants
moved into the Brazos Valley, mostly from Bryan
northward. They were motivated to immigrate by
overpopulation, epidemics of malaria and cholera and
a series of earthquakes in their home country. In the
mid-1870s, after businessmen from the lower Brazos
Valley advertised in European newspapers for immi-
grants in an attempt to spur the local economy, a few
Italians responded, moving into the Bryan area. Most
farmed the fertile, though flood-prone, river bottoms
along the Brazos River between Hearne and Bryan. By
the 1890s, Brazos County had one of the largest concen-
trations of Italian farmers in the United States. Other
Italians worked on the railroads or in the coal mines at
Thurber, Erath County. By 1910, Burleson and Rob-
ertson counties also had significant numbers ofCENTRAL TEXAS HISTORY
49
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Kingston, Mike. Texas Almanac, 1992-1993, book, 1991; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth279642/m1/53/: accessed March 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.