Tales from The Brazos

12 cities vied for seat of Texas government
Some comments by Dr. W.G. Alexander concerning the Texas Declaration of Independence were part of a column he wrote for The Facts on Texas Independence Day in 1984.
March 22, 2010

Donations provided land for courthouse
A typed page of notes in the “Miscellaneous” file of my historical information collection deals with property acquired by Brazoria County about 1897.
March 15, 2010

Old ads shine light on life in the 1800s
What was happening in Texas in April and May of 1831? Probably a lot of things, but those mentioned in my “Miscellaneous Brazoria County” file include some advertisements that, while of less importance to the public as a whole, were of supreme interest to a few.
March 08, 2010

1970s April Fool’s stunt draws few laughs
My “Miscellaneous County History” files contain a hodgepodge of clippings and notes culled from newspapers, magazines, books, letters, journals and even scratchy scraps of paper with information gleaned from telephone calls.
March 01, 2010

Bottled message hints at Cyclops mystery
If a message in a bottle found at San Luis Pass was authentic, it could solve the mystery of what befell the U.S.S. Cyclops in 1918. But the note’s authenticity is questionable.
February 22, 2010

Many settlers paid heavy price getting here
Just getting to Texas was a big deal for the county’s early settlers, whether they made the trip by land or by sea.
February 15, 2010

Sniffing out a rare book, dirty history
My “Brazoria County History-Miscellaneous” file includes all manner of tidbits, including a column called “Keeping Up with the Joneses” that I wrote for The Facts more than 40 years ago about my daily life and young family.
February 08, 2010

Rancher, farmer conflict swept through county
Fence-cutting is the subject of one of the many newspaper clippings in my “Miscellaneous Brazoria County” file
February 01, 2010

Early efforts to form new county failed
G.W. Durant, an Alvin resident, stated in 1887 that Brazoria County residents who opposed the movement to form a new county were simply misinformed.
January 25, 2010

County’s farmland gets sweet reputation
Alfred E. Menn wrote several columns called “The Brazoria County Story” containing tidbits of information he found in records at the Texas Land Office in Austin.
January 18, 2010

Dairies, farm markets once area staples
H. Bascom Simpson, a longtime teacher at Freeport, wrote a column in The Facts in the 1960s that offered tidbits of Brazoria County’s past as he remembered it.
January 11, 2010

Mining more nuggets from the history file
Bits and pieces of information from what amounts to my “Miscellaneous County History” file run the gamut from scrawled notes about an incident that might make a column to copies of a couple of newspapers’ special editions.
January 04, 2010

Cleaning history file yields tidbits
Lots of people collect stamps or rare books, antiques or any of a thousand other things. I collect information about Brazoria County’s past — people, places and events — the starting point for most of these columns.
December 28, 2009

Rain, floods cause many to evacuate
Alvin was not the only city in Brazoria County to be struck hard by flooding in July 1979.
December 21, 2009

Families endure great rains of ’79
When a record-breaking rainfall hit Brazoria County in July of 1979, the Alvin area was the hardest hit. Twenty-six inches fell there, flooding scores of homes and businesses.
December 14, 2009