Texas Originals

Texarkana's Scott Joplin is one the most popular songwriters in American history. At the turn of the twentieth century, ... Read more

A self-described "student and jealous lover of Texas history," Adina De Zavala is best known for barricading herself for... Read more

Born to a sharecropping family in northeast Texas in 1892, Bessie Coleman became the world’s first female African Americ... Read more

Plácido Benavides is called the "Paul Revere of Texas" for his role in the Texas Revolution, as he was dispatched to Gol... Read more

Born in Yucatan in 1788, Lorenzo de Zavala dedicated much of his life to creating a Federalist Mexico, with a strong con... Read more

People come from around the world to view the American art in Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum. Carter didn’t live to see... Read more

After receiving a land grant from the Spanish government, Moses Austin planned to establish the first American colony in... Read more

Tomás Rivera's career as a writer and educator was shaped by the struggles of his family, who spent much of their lives ... Read more

San Marcos native Cleto Rodríguez was born in 1923. By the age of nine, he had lost both his parents and was raised in S... Read more

Poet and educator Melvin B. Tolson began teaching at the historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, in 1924. A... Read more

Librarian and historian Nettie Lee Benson rose from a bookish South Texas childhood to assemble one of the world’s leadi... Read more

Journalist, playwright, and raconteur Larry L. King spent most of his life in Washington, DC, but the vivid language and... Read more

Karle Wilson Baker was Texas's most celebrated poet in the first half of the twentieth century. Originally born in Arkan... Read more

James Fannin led the Texas rebels massacred at Goliad in 1836. His defeat inspired the victory that secured Texas indepe... Read more

Lawyer and federal judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes is best known for administering the oath of office to Lyndon Johnson aboa... Read more

In 1932, when John Nance Garner became the nation's thirty-second vice president, Texans were just beginning to exert in... Read more

Folklorist and oral history pioneer Mody Boatright was no stranger to the tall tale. Raised in a West Texas ranching fam... Read more

Born in 1844, Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis was one of the most important Texas writers of the nineteenth century. Her novel... Read more

Once described as the "Gertrude Stein of San Antonio," Marion Koogler McNay created the first museum of modern art in Te... Read more

Among the most important Anglo settlements in Spanish Texas was DeWitt's Colony, founded in 1825 by Green DeWitt and Jam... Read more