Janice Williams Loves Austin

November 27, 2011

My Wright Family

Filed under: Cemeteries,Genealogy — Janice @ 8:44 pm

I have had a string of good luck and amazing finds when it comes to genealogy. I will try not to bog it down TOO much with the detail, but I found a whole family that I had never found before.

I know tons and tons about my Cunningham family, but I am always finding more. But I delved into some in-laws to the Cunningham family. I knew my great-great-grandmother Cunningham was a Wright and she and her sister each married Cunningham family members. I knew the names of her brothers and sisters, but didn’t know anything about them except that I had a couple of pictures of “Uncle Jack Wright” that I assumed was her brother Jack Wright. I knew her parents names, but their information was very sketchy and had question marks by everything.

Last week I started Googling anything and everything. And search on all the genealogy sites to find more info. I am not really sure how the breakthroughs came through, but I did discover that Jack Wright was quite well know in Comanche County and owned the Jack Wright Saloon on the square. That was the spot where the infamous desperado John Wesley Hardin shot down the Deputy Sheriff of Brown County one night, leading to a manhunt and lots of frightened people in the community. I found where Jack Wright had died in New Mexico (which leads me on to find his son that was living in New Mexico at that time).

I also found one of my aunts from that family even though she was listed by her nickname “Polly” on her wedding license. A newspaper article called her by her married name and said she died in the home of her brother Capt. Jack Wright. That led me to find her real name and more.

But the most fun find was finding the grave of the mother of these children. I knew a year and knew that she might have died in Red River County or in Bell County. Luck finally led me to her grave online, but no picture, but I had a location.

On our return from a wonderful Thanksgiving, Mark got me to Belton and found the South Belton Cemetery, the oldest in the city, before it got dark. I knew it had about 400 graves, so I didn’t have high hopes of being able to find her grave and wasn’t even sure it was marked. I really didn’t want to be out there walking through graves for a long time when it was as windy and as cold as it was. But we got there and found a nice big map and legend of all the graves in this historic cemetery…alphabetized. I quickly found her name and then where the grave was. We did have to do some searching, but we at least knew we were in the right area. Then I spotted it. A nice big gray granite monument.

Mrs. E. Lina Wheeler Wright

This adds dates I didn’t have and also firms up the detail that she died young and my great-great-grandmother was only 10 when her mother died and the younger sister only 5. So I still need to find out who took care of them after she died.

I surmised pretty quickly that this stone was not as old as her grave. Graves in 1855 usually weren’t marked like this. I was still puzzling this out when Mark figured out what the last line of the inscription really said. We could read, “She died as she lived, a christian mother.” But then it was odd… We laughed that it said “Put up with her son.” I tried to make it more of the Christian sentiment about “the Son.” But Mark realized, when he was editing the pictures, that it said, “Put up by her son.” I realized the TCW means Thomas Cooper Wright. He was only 14 when she died, so he obviously put this up much later.

I did some research on him and found out that he owned a livery stable in Temple and then went on to turn it into an undertaking business. Lots of access to the monument makers, he created a monument to his mother long after her death. I’m so glad he did!

Her husband preceded her in death in about 1850 and I do not know where he was buried. His name was John Wright and that is so common it makes it difficult to find. This cemetery didn’t begin internments until 1851 so I assume he was not buried here. He may have died in Red River County and then the family moved to Bell County. I don’t know. More research to be done.

S. Belton Cemetery 8

I am freezing as he took this picture, but very happy and warm to have discovered this grave and more of my Texas roots.

November 18, 2011

The Break-In

Filed under: At home,Family — Janice @ 10:24 pm

I guess I need to write about the attempted break-in at our house last Friday night. It has certainly been at the top of our minds for the whole week (and I have a feeling it isn’t going way any time soon).

I was out of town Friday, celebrating my nephew’s birthday on 11-11-11. Mark had planned to go, but got waylaid by work and stayed home. On Friday night he went to see a band play a set late at night. When he was returning home, the alarm company called to tell him our alarm was going off. He told them to call the police immediately. He was not far from home, so he arrived before the police did.

Mark quickly went into “protect and defend” mode and broke open the gate on the side of the house to get to the backyard. He was surprised the gate wasn’t already broken, but that wasn’t how the wanna-be burglars had gotten in, it was still locked. He had his flashlight and could see no one was still at the house so he quickly checked the sides of the house and all the dark bushes and could find no one. He came back to the front of the house as the police arrived.

They quizzed Mark about what they would find in the house, where there were guns, loaded and unloaded, and Mark unlocked the door for them and they went through the house to make sure it was empty. It was, so they had Mark come in and turn off the sirens of the alarm. Mark then went in search of the cats and found them cowering in the garage, scared out of their minds!

On the back porch Mark and the police could see where someone slit the screen to unlock the screen door. There were hand smudges on a bedroom window like they had tried it first and found it locked. Then they went to work on the back door, first just trying to push it in with all their might and then going after it with a crowbar. Mark had taken some extra security measures recently and that had a lot do to with why they weren’t able to get in. But they did manage to bend the dead bolt and mess up the whole darn door. When the alarm was tripped, they dropped their crowbar and were gone.

The next day Mark found cinder blocks piled up like stair steps along the dark side of the house. They hopped the fence easily from their little stairway.

We didn’t lose any property, the cats are safe, we are safe. We are shelling out money for a lot more security on the house. What we had served us very well and I’m glad we had it. There’s no doubt it saved us a lot of grief and trouble this time. Mark might have even walked in on a burglary in progress if we didn’t have it and that might have turned out very badly. Tomorrow a new door is being installed, too. Mark has made all the arrangements and taken care of fixing everything. If I had been living here alone through all of this I would probably have just boarded up the back door, locked the front door, and moved home or something!

November 17, 2011

An Austin Legend

Filed under: Austin,Radio stuff,Spasmodic Dysphonia — Janice @ 10:30 pm

Joe Gracey passed away today. I did not know him personally, but I had a keen interest in his life. Joe was a disc jockey in Austin in the era that I so desperately wanted to be a part of all things Austin – the 70s. That was the era I discovered Willie Nelson and Texas Monthly and read voraciously about the Armadillo and all the fun things, and wild things, people were doing in Austin. I didn’t know about radio and wasn’t thinking about going into it at the time, I just wanted to be a part of this fun musical community.

I did end up getting to play the music of Austin on a station in Amarillo called KBUY-Texas Country. It played Jerry Jeff and Willie alongside Dolly and Conway and even alongside Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was patterned after KOKE in Austin where Joe Gracey was making a name for himself.

I heard of him after I was in Austin radio, but didn’t know much about him. But after I had the diagnosis of spasmodic dysphonia and was finding it more and more difficult each day to do a radio show, to talk on the phone, or to even order through a drive-in fast food microphone, I read an article about Joe. He had cancer of the tongue and lost his tongue and parts of his mouth and his larynx as they tried to get the cancer. They did get the cancer, but removed his beautiful voice, his livelihood, and his ability to communicate.

I read how had would buy a stack of the Magic Slates like we all had as kids (where you can write on it and then lift the top page and the writing goes away). He would just those to scribble words and communicate. Having already been scribbling and using sign language or clapping my hands to get someone’s attention, I could only imagine how hard that would be to know that was your fate forever. Joe was voiceless for over a dozen years before the Internet came along and email became commonplace. He wrote that that opened up whole new worlds for him and finally gave him a way to communicate with friends at a distance. Since email came along, it is certainly my favorite mode of communication and I can imagine how joyful it would be to have it open those long silent lines.

My voice, fortunately, got better and I don’t think about it on a daily basis, just occasionally when I have “bad days” that affect it. But I still remember the fear of how it would be to be a disc jockey that can’t do an air shift anymore–not because of being laid off or quitting or the known fears of the world, but from losing a voice and having no control over the situation. I greatly admired Joe Gracey for finding a way through his career changes and life changes. I read today that more recently he was somehow given his voice back with a larynx implant that gave him a voice he didn’t like and didn’t recognize. In a very small way I could relate to that, too. My voice is not the same as it was 10 years ago and I miss the voice I once had. It isn’t noticeable to anyone but me, but it is different.

Joe’s cancer came back in the form of esophageal cancer in recent years. I had not really kept up with his story and didn’t know he was sick again, so it was shock to know that he had died. I want to revisit his story and his blog and see where he was these last few years as he again battled through whatever challenges he faced. It’s quite a story and another amazing, interesting Austinite is gone.

November 10, 2011

Yes, Time Flies!

Filed under: At home — Janice @ 11:55 pm

Wow, over a week since the great Guy Clark show and I haven’t written all the wonderful details for you. Sorry about that. As my body is prone to do with too much excitement, too much fun, and too little sleep, I got sick about as soon as that night ended. Thursday was rough, Friday was torture, and then I laid in bed for all of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I’m back at it and actually felt closer to normal today than I have in a while.

But it is still large doses of Nyquil and early bedtime for me and that is where I’m heading.

November 3, 2011

Slow Blogging

Filed under: Austin,Music,Writing — Janice @ 7:34 am

There is a new trend in blogging called “slow blogging.” The term is a variation of “slow food” that was invented to combat the proliferation of fast food. Slow blogging aims to write thoughtfully and with information and facts rather than a quick link and first impressions and then moving on to another topic.

I try to be a slow blogger. Often too slow. But I need to write this morning my first impressions and thoughts about last night’s wonderful concert at the Long Center to honor Guy Clark. I was given wonderful tickets by fabulous dear people that couldn’t use their tickets. My best friend Denise facilitated it and made it all happen. Mark would have been my first choice to be my date for this concert and I considered not going when I found out that he couldn’t make it. But he encouraged me to go anyway and I invited my nephew Brandt to come down from Waco and go with me. Perfect in every way is only hyperbole when I think about how my feet hurt a bit from the boots I wore last night. Everything from the setting, the before and after parties, the singers, and – of course – the songs made it a night to remember.

My slow blogging urge wants me to first explain how much Guy Clark means to me now and how much he has meant to me since before 1977. I want to tell about the first time I met him and the subsequent time and the interview and the concerts and Mark giving him a “Randall” knife (I say it in quotes because it was a Hays knife and it stunned Guy speechless). That can all wait for another day.

I would not be able to say which was  my favorite performer or my favorite song of the night. To hear songwriters that have written these songs with Guy – Rodney Crowell and Verlon Thompson – or those that would not be here in my world today without the influence of Guy – Lyle Lovett and James McMurtry – and voices I hadn’t heard before, but loved – the Trishas and J.T. Van Zandt. One good song after another. I wanted to lean over to Brandt and give him a full story about every single one and what it meant to me.

When we got home, Mark was home so he was able to tell Brandt about how much Guy’s songs had meant to him all these years. He pulled out the CDs and I pulled out the vinyl I’ve had for 30+ years. Mark started naming off songs to see if they were performed. One no after another… So many great songs were performed (I’ll have to count!) and yet they never even got to Texas Cookin’ or Rita Ballou or Comfort and Crazy and Coat from the Cold…. On and on.

I wish I had pictures and recordings of every moment of it all. I have them in my head and in my mind’s eye. And I will have Guy’s songs forever.

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