Settlers of the Texas Frontier were undeniably an eclectic bunch, and the founders of Waco were no exception. One of the main organizers of the new city was a Jewish, Jamaican-born Spaniard named Jacob de Cordova. De Cordova was not only instrumental in the founding of Waco, but he would soon be the largest landholder in the fledgling state of Texas. In his life he explored more territory than famous voyager Cabeza de Vaca and brought more settlers to Texas than Stephen F. Austin.
Jacob Raphael de Cordova was born to Judith and Raphael de Cordova in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on June 6, 1808. Judith died during childbirth, and Raphael resented the infant Jacob for her death, so he sent Jacob to be raised by an aunt in England. Though far from family, Jacob received an incredible education in Europe and was proficient in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. These would all come in handy when recruiting and dealing with settlers from around the globe. Fortunately, he eventually moved back to Jamaica to live with his family, and he and his father grew very close.
De Cordova was just a boy when he first set his eyes on the land that would become his passion and his home. In 1819, Jacob traveled to the United States with his father, and they made a side trip to the Spanish territory of Texas. Though only eleven years old, de Cordova was captivated by the area and vowed that he would return.
By the mid-1820s, de Cordova had decided to move to the United States for good, yet he first sought a colder climate, as he thought the heat and humidity of Jamaica contributed to his poor health. He set off for Philadelphia, where he married the daughter of a pioneer family, Rebecca Sterling, and settled for a few years. Rebecca identified as Baptist, but her Christian faith and Jacob’s Jewish faith never appeared to cause any discord in the marriage. The couple had five children during this period: William, Henry, Joshua, Jenney, and Elizabeth. But the cold did not bring the rejuvenation de Cordova had hoped for, and after a massive blizzard in 1836, the couple moved south to New Orleans. De Cordova thrived in New Orleans and set up a successful import/export business. But he really had his eyes on Texas, what he later called “the brightest star in the constellation of the American Union.” After getting his feet wet in the business world, he decided to move his family to Galveston, where his life as a true Texan began.
De Cordova quickly became a naturalized citizen of the Republic of Texas. He moved from the small, swampy town of Galveston to Houston, where his business expanded greatly. With his new citizenship, he also found new ways to serve the Houston community. He helped found the Houston Chamber of Commerce, became an alderman in 1844, and was elected representative to the Second Texas Legislature in 1848. Additionally, he took it upon himself to found an Odd Fellows Lodge, a chapter of one of the oldest fraternal organizations dedicated to service and helping those in need. He served previously as Grand Master of a lodge in Louisiana, and he went on to found three additional Texas lodges. Jacob de Cordova had fully invested himself in the betterment of the community.
In 1845, de Cordova dove into his biggest venture yet. Alongside his half-brother Phineas, Jacob founded what would become the largest land agency in the state of Texas. The two brothers were well suited to run a business together, as Phineas did the office work and Jacob went out and surveyed, bought, and sold land. It was Jacob’s expertise in this area that led him to Waco as well. A man named Jonas Butler hired Jacob in 1848 to lay out a town on some land he owned on the Brazos River. After making the city layout, de Cordova hired George Erath to survey plots for settlement. De Cordova also received one-fifth of the interest of the land, and he held full power of attorney for the land transactions. De Cordova and Erath agreed to sell the plots for five dollars apiece in town, and three dollars outside the city. Mrs. Sophia St. John then hired him to sell her land on the other side of the Brazos, what was called the La Vega land grant. Rebecca de Cordova insisted the new town be named Lamartine, but Erath vehemently protested. Instead, the town was named Waco after the local Native American population, the Waco, or Wi-iko, tribe. Jacob de Cordova and George Erath later fought to make Waco the county seat of McLennan Country when it was formed in 1850, and, of course, won. Interestingly, de Cordova never lived in Waco. He settled with his family on an estate farther north on the Brazos at Kimball’s Bend. He named the settlement Wanderer’s Retreat, the same name as his previous estate in Guadalupe County, and lived there until his death.
De Cordova’s career soon extended far beyond agent work in Waco, and his agency eventually owned more than one million acres of Texas property. From his extensive knowledge of the state, he created the first accurate map of the state of Texas, which his agency sold for twenty dollars. The map proved to be much needed, and he continued to update it throughout his life. Having such a great love for Texas and such a large stake in its settlement, de Cordova set off on an advertising campaign to recruit settlers. He delivered lectures on Texas in New York, Philadelphia, and even Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. To reach all the places he could not travel, he wrote two treatises on Texas—The Texas Immigrant and Traveler’s Guidebook and Texas: Her Resources and Her Public Men. He also ran two newspapers, De Cordova’s Herald and Immigrant’s Guide and the Southwestern American.
Despite his dedication to settling Texas, things did not go as planned for de Cordova. The land agency fell on hard times, and Jacob found himself in a massive amount of debt. He had invested in Confederate war bonds, and then during the war the Union blockade had stopped immigration to Texas. On top of that, he refused to foreclose on any current settlers when they could not pay their debts. This combination quickly spelled trouble, and de Cordova found himself in the middle of several lawsuits when his creditors came collecting.
But he was not out of ideas just yet. Jacob started purchasing equipment and making plans to harness the Brazos River’s water power. This project would power textile mills and boost manufacturing along the river from the Gulf of Mexico to Waco and beyond. But this dream did not become a reality, as de Cordova died in 1868 before all the machinery arrived. He was originally buried near the Brazos in Bosque County, but he and his wife’s bodies were later moved to the state cemetery in Austin.
After his death, de Cordova’s substantial land holdings—spread across forty-eight Texas counties—were divided up to pay his debts. This was no simple task, and it took over sixteen years for lawyers to untangle his agency’s assets and distribute its holdings. Much of the land was sold for as little as twenty-five cents an acre, and settlers often remarked it was “rich man’s land for a poor man’s price.” So, though de Cordova did not reap the benefits of all his lands, he still did indirectly help populate the state he so loved. Yet his greatest legacy remains the city of Waco. Jacob was right when he said of Waco, “She will be my daughter, and a beautiful daughter she will be.”
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]]>During its decade of service, George Barnard’s branch of the Torrey Trading Posts served as one of the first commercial ventures in the Waco area. Transactions between white settlers and native Indians conducted at Torrey Trading Posts served as a vital part of Sam Houston’s peace policy in the mid-nineteenth century. Brothers John, David, and Thomas Torrey opened the first Torrey Trading Houses establishment in Houston in 1838. Over the next decade, the firm established trading houses in Austin, San Antonio, New Braunfels, and along the Brazos River.
In 1844, the firm opened a trading post on a small tributary of Tehuacana Creek, about eight miles below Waco Indian Village. George Barnard, a twenty-six-year-old native of Connecticut, was the proprietor of this post. After serving as a clerk for the Torrey firm in Houston for several years, Barnard became a partner in 1843. George and his brother Charles moved to Tehuacana Creek in 1844 to operate the new post, becoming the first white settlers in the Waco region.
Located on a high hill overlooking the Brazos Valley, the post was well-known by the Indians of the region since the site had served as a council ground for several years. Game was abundant in this area, and the trading post developed a large fur trade. Between 1844 and 1853, Barnard handled seventy-five thousand deer hides. Buffalo hides were also plentiful. Black bears were likewise abundant, and there were even numerous beavers in this community, though of a smaller variety than the northern beaver and with poorer fur. Here, workers sorted hides, packed them into bales, and freighted them to Houston by ox wagon. Barnard's principal freighter, L. H. Williams, charged two dollars per hundred pounds of fur.
Barnard's stock of trade goods consisted of almost anything the post’s Indian customers might desire, including heavy supplies of gunpowder, lead, bullet molds, and hatchets, as well as colored beads, blankets, cloth, dress combs, and refined bear's oil. Tobacco was in heavy demand, and Barnard's sales record also showed the occasional sale of a gallon of whiskey. In 1848, Barnard bought out the Torrey brothers' interest in the post for $9,500, which was about one half of the inventory valuation of the stock.
George B. Erath and Jacob De Cordova began to lay out the first plots of Waco Village in 1849. As the Indians began to move further away from growing white settlements, George and Charles relocated the trading post to the Brazos River in order to remain close to their primary base of customers. The removal of the Indians from the Waco area dealt a blow to business at Barnard’s Trading Post, and it is likely that the depot was controversial among white settlers due to its provision of arms and liquor to the Indians.
By 1851, Barnard bought a lot in Waco Village and moved his stock from the Tehuacana River. He sold the business to Fox and Jacobs, Waco’s first Jewish merchants, in 1857. The buildings of the original trading post stood for many years afterwards, the last being destroyed by a fire in 1929. The original location of this celebrated frontier establishment, which served as a point of peaceful interaction between white settlers and native Wacoans, was marked with a historical marker by the Texas Centennial Commission in 1936.
]]>Society in the South evolved ensuing the emancipation of slaves after the Civil War. The Reconstruction of the South ended in 1877 and only added to the bad racial tensions in the region. Whites instituted laws that held blacks back from education, jobs, and participating in many forms of government. Lynching of blacks became rather prevalent and reached fever pitch in the 1890s all across the United States, but mostly in the South. Lynching escalated during the 1920s and Texas ranked third among states between the years 1885 and 1942 with approximately 468, including 339 blacks. The only states that had more lynching incidents were Mississippi and Georgia.
In May 1916, Jesse Washington, a seventeen year old black teenager, was arrested for the killing of Lucy Fryer, a fifty-three year old white woman. Washington would later confess to raping and killing Fryer. Wanting to avoid an attack on Washington while in custody in Waco, authorities in McLennan County sent Washington to a Dallas jail to await his trial. When his trial took place on May 15, 1916, Washington arrived back in Waco to a packed court room. Twelve white men formed his jury, and they found him guilty of murder after only four minutes of deliberation.
A mob had gathered around the courthouse prior to the trial and waited for their chance to capture Washington. After his conviction, the jailers took Washington down the back stairs of the courthouse, where the mob had been waiting. The mob of white citizens wrapped a chain around Washington’s neck and dragged him to city hall grounds, brutally stabbing and beating him as they went along.
A separate mob prepared a pile of dry-good boxes, which they ignited after they poured coal oil over Washington’s body. A crowd estimated to be between 15,000 to 20,000 people watched as the belligerents hung Washington from a tree and slowly lowered him up and down over the burning boxes.
After two hours of monstrously lynching Washington, the mob took his body and placed it in a bag and dragged it to Robinson, Texas, which was the hometown of Fryer and a large African-American population. The charred and mangled body of Washington hung from a utility pole in front of a blacksmith’s shop until a McLennan County Constable took his remains down and buried them. Washington’s unclaimed remains were later buried in a local potters field. The news of Jesse Washington’s lynching received national and international coverage. Horrific pictures capturing the violence and mob were taken by local photographer Fred Gildersleeve. He profited from selling these images as postcards and prints of the lynching were distributed globally.
Waco had seen another lynching previous to that of Washington. A mob had lynched an African American man by the name of Sank Majors in 1905. After a jury deliberated only three minutes in his trial, Majors was found guilty and two hundred men seized and dragged him to the town square, where they hung him from the Washington Street Bridge.
The lynchings took place during the time of the Jim Crow Laws in the South. These laws legally separated blacks and whites in numerous institutions such as schools, restrooms, and various types of transportation. “Separate but equal” had been affirmed by a 7-1 margin in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The aftermath of the “Waco Horror” included a push to end lynching around the country. People began to see lynching as a barbaric act and started condemning those who participated in them. The NAACP led the charge in getting anti-lynching laws passed in light of the Washington lynching, which led to the decline of lynching after the 1920s and into the early 1960s. Lynching also had an effect on the arts. Billie Holiday released her song "Strange Fruit," and in 1935, two art exhibitions were displayed in New York City, one of which the NAACP sponsored.
In 2001, the lynching of Jesse Washington became national and local news again when ABC News Nightline aired an eighty-fifth anniversary special. Four years later, Patricia Bernstein released her book, "The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP," and it inspired the Waco community to call for local governments to apologize for the lynching. The Community Race Relations Coalition framed a resolution of apology, read it on the McLennan County Courthouse steps, and encouraged both the McLennan County Commissioners and Waco City Council to pass the resolution. After much debate over the word "apology," and the word's eventual removal, the McLennan County Commissioners passed a resolution condemning the lynching culture and mob violence of the past on May 23, 2006. The Waco City Council passed a similar resolution a little over a month later. Neither resolution included Jesse Washington by name.
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]]>The establishment of Waco Village in the nineteenth century laid the foundation for what would evolve into the vibrant commercial city that is Waco. The humble beginnings of this town were developed upon the site of the Wi-iko, or Waco Indians’ agricultural village. Attacks from Cherokee and pressure from white settlers and the US government drove this subtribe of the Wichita from their land in the 1830s, and out of Texas by 1859.
A company of Texas Rangers established Fort Fisher near the deserted Indian village in 1837, but abandoned it just a few months later because of its remote location. In 1844, George Barnard opened a branch of Torrey’s Trading Post just south of the former Ranger site. Known throughout Texas, this chain of trading posts played a vital role in Sam Houston’s peace policy with the American Indians.
Jacob De Cordova, a Texas politician and colonizer, acquired a large amount of land in this area in 1846, and his surveyor George Erath convinced him to establish a town at the site of the old Waco Indian village. In 1849, Erath laid out plots of land for the first block of the new town, pricing them at five dollars apiece for the new village. Farming plots sold for two to three dollars each. The majority of the property owners desired to name the town “Lamartine” in order to honor a French poet, but Erath convinced them to name the village after the town’s predecessors.
In the following years, Waco Village grew rapidly. On January 22, 1850, the Texas State Legislature established McLennan County. In August, the county organized its structure of government. Waco Village was chosen as the county seat, or administrative center, of McLennan County primarily because of De Cordova’s efforts to develop government services for the public. He designated several plots of land to be donated to the city for the establishment of schools, churches, and other public buildings.
Waco Village continued to develop as other settlers arrived in the Waco area throughout the 1840s. These people became farmers, ranchers, and plantation owners, in addition to filling many other needed occupations on the frontier. Many chose to sell their goods to the Texas Rangers who remained in the area. Waco soon grew into a regional hub for trade of all kinds. In order to continue this growth, De Cordova invited several notable citizens to move to the village, such as Texas Ranger Shapley Prince Ross. Ross ran a ferry across the Brazos River as trade expanded the once small village. Ross also established Waco’s first hotel in the 1850s and served as the village’s postmaster for a time.
The development of the cotton industry sped the growth of Waco Village, and in 1856 the village was incorporated as a town. As a regional hub for trade, Waco Village served an important role in the early Central Texas community. Its rapid economic growth provided the base for Waco to develop as a strong industrial and agricultural center of the South.
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]]>Helen Marie Taylor is a native Wacoan who has dedicated her life to preserving history through her efforts in museums, organizations, and foundations. She worked on a council for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and served as president for both the James Monroe Memorial Foundation and the James Madison Museum. In an attempt to preserve the local history of her hometown, Taylor focused her efforts on opening a local history museum in Waco, Texas: The Helen Marie Taylor Museum of Waco History, also referred to as the Taylor Museum.
Many citizens of Waco showed interest in the idea of a local history museum centering on the need to connect to one’s past through the story of the community. Many believed this museum would help them better understand where they came from and how their community developed into what it is today. Helen Marie Taylor bought the old Barron Springs Elementary School in the 1980s and began restoring it in order to create her museum. Starting in 1991, she held a few public gatherings in the museum, and it officially opened in 1993.
The Taylor Museum focused on many different aspects of Waco history. For instance, one of the exhibits concerned the Waco Indians. The museum staff thought it was very important to give homage to the first people who lived in the Waco area, especially considering that the Taylor Museum is located on the land that held the homes of many of these Indians. This exhibit included artifacts, images of what the area might have looked like at the time, and even sounds of what it might have sounded like at the time.
Two exhibits portraying well-known aspects of Waco history reside on the second floor of this building. One room presents a detailed to-scale model of the Branch Davidian compound. Another portrays the Cotton Palace, which served as the center of Waco for several years, as cotton was the staple of Waco’s economy following the Civil War. The size of this exhibit, compared to the others in the Taylor Museum, reveals the Cotton Palace's importance in Waco history.
Perhaps the most well-known display in the Taylor Museum is the “We the People…” exhibit, which focuses on American history in the colonial period. Helen Marie Taylor had a love for early American history and used the museum to present this history to Waco through artifacts such as George Washington’s silk vest, a musket from the Revolutionary War, and a chair from the Constitutional Convention.
Though the museum shows many other aspects of Waco’s history than those described here, it passes over some important aspects such as the Chisholm Trail, the Waco Tornado, and the educational history of Waco. The Taylor Museum closed just five years after its opening due to problems with the board of directors and a lack of variation in exhibits, causing public disinterest.
However, the museum has not sat empty since its closure. Various organizations, including the Historic Waco Foundation, recently met with Helen Marie Taylor to discuss reopening the museum. These groups recognize the important role the Taylor Museum played in connecting individual histories through the community’s past. The discussions reflect the organizations’ desire to reopen the museum and diversify the exhibits in order to portray a true sense of the Waco community. Currently, groups of ten or more people are allowed to take self-guided tours of the museums and school groups may visit on field trips.
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