James Hughes Callahan: A Forgotten Texan Hero

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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James Hughes Callahan: A Forgotten Texan Hero

In Texas history, Rangers, ranchers, and cowboys stand a little taller than their frontier peers. Many have filled volumes with tales of their outsized personalities and bold heroism, and some Texas heroes like Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Big Foot Wallace, and Charles Goodnight have become national heroes in their own right. But one such legend fell through the cracks of history — that is, until now!

As a volunteer in the Texas Revolution, Georgia-native James Hughes Callahan came to Texas in 1835, and miraculously survived the Goliad Massacre. Later, Callahan served as a Texas Ranger, pursuing Indian raiders in central Texas, and twice engaged Mexican invaders. And in 1855, he led a Texas Ranger expedition to punish Lipan Apaches raiding from Mexico, but failed miserably, and barely returned — the boondoggle was later renamed The Callahan Expedition.

Gone To Texas

The Texas fever has treated us worse than the Cholera! Our office is completely swept Journeymen and apprentices, men and boys, devils and angels, are all gone to Texas. If our readers get an empty sheet or no sheet at all, don’t blame us.

Macon Telegraph, November 26, 1835
An map depicting movements during the Texas revolt.
A map of the Texas revolt of 1835–36. Image sourced from The Odyssey of Texas Ranger James Callahan, courtesy of Texas State Historical Association.

This so-called Texas Fever came from the romance of new land on the frontier, and an irresistible call to arms to topple a despot. Texas colonists, also called Texians, wanted to bring their Anglo traditions (including slavery) into the Mexican state. Being so far from the Mexican capital meant difficulty in governing the legal colonizers. But when Mexico insisted, the Texians rebelled and declared independence. Word spread fast into the United States, luring thousands to Texas to join the war. Odes have been written of the Tennessee Volunteers (both Davy Crockett and Sam Houston held political office in Tennessee and left the Vol State for Texas), but neighboring Georgia sent soldiers to Texas too.

The Goliad Massacre

Goliad executions. Image sourced from The Odyssey of Texas Ranger James Callahan, courtesy of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Callahan’s leadership abilities were on full display, and he was quickly promoted to sergeant in the ragtag Texian Army. Col. James Fannin led his battalion to Goliad, preparing for the Mexican Army’s arrival at the old Spanish presidio. Following Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo on March 6, where all defenders were killed, Callahan and his fellow soldier braced for their moment of conflict. Eventually, Callahan and other Georgia Battalion member were captured and labored as prisoners in Victoria. On March 27, 1836, following the Battle of Coleto, the Mexican Army, under orders from General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, executed over 400 Texian soldiers in the town of Goliad. Well-known as a mechanic, James Callahan was spared, but he spent the rest of his life with an unrelenting hatred for Mexicans who had slaughtered his compatriots.

The Callahan Expedition

The Lipans were very strong at this time. It was said that they could put 500 warriors in the field any day. There had been rumors that this powerful tribe wanted to make peace with us, but we did not believe it. One day I looked from the door of my house and saw not less than a thousand mounted warriors not a mile away. They were mounted on gaily-caparisoned horses, and their bodies were painted as if ready for battle.

Native American Agent Robert S. Neighbors in 1848.
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In central Texas, Euro-American settlements grew throughout the 1840s and 50s. But as they pushed westward, conflicts with Native tribes increased. By 1855, Lipan Apache raids had become so bad that Texas Governor Pease empowered Callahan to form a company of Texas Rangers, and strike back at the Indians who were terrorizing the settlers. Callahan and his eighty-eight men set off for a disastrous tour, which included an illegal invasion of Mexico, and in Callahan’s burning of Piedras Negras. Callahan’s defense was simply a response a Mexican ambush. Was the Lipan Apache mission a ruse? Was Callahan enacting his own justice for his fallen friends at Goliad? Callahan never again ventured across the border, and continued to serve as a Ranger captain.

Callahan’s head stone. Image sourced from The Odyssey of Texas Ranger James Callahan, courtesy of the Texas State Cemetery, Austin.

Ironically, following twenty years of service to Texas, and after so many battles, James Hughes Callahan was assassinated by his next-door neighbor.

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The crazy injury that tripped up Indiana University baseball

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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The crazy injury that tripped up Indiana University baseball

Even now, more than half a century later, former Indiana University baseball coach Ernie Andres still wonders. He wonders if his star pitcher had shown better judgment—if things had gone just a bit differently, would the Hoosiers have made NCAA tourney noise in the spring of 1949? Would Indiana Baseball have changed forever?

IU’s baseball squad has a long and exciting history, even if that history is sometimes lost in the campus excitement for basketball and football. But there have also been long stretches of futility. One of the bright spots, before the team’s current renaissance, came right after World War II.

It was April of 1949 and Andres was a rookie head coach with a veteran team—as in war veteran. Five players had served in World War II and, because of the G.I. Bill, could afford college. That they also could play baseball was a bonus Andres exploited. Much of that was necessity—he hadn’t done any recruiting. 

That year, the Hoosiers won their first seven games and nine of their first 10. They won seven of their last eight games, including an 8-5 win over Purdue that clinched their first conference crown since 1938. 

The 1949 IU baseball team.

This was the second year of the NCAA baseball tourney competition and Indiana was invited to the District 4 playoffs, set for Western Michigan and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Purdue and Notre Dame also received invitations along with the host Broncos. 

At least the trip wasn’t expensive. The total cost was $230.05. That included $11.50 for the team to see a movie. 

The problem came when Andres had to select the pitcher to start against Western Michigan in IU’s first NCAA tourney appearance. On paper, the Hoosiers had two great options: Bill Tosheff and Jim McGee. McGee was the team’s true ace thanks to his curve ball—“the best of any pitcher I ever had,” Andres said. “It dropped right off the cliff.” 

But Tosheff wasn’t available. In a sign of college sports’ lower status in this era, Tosheff, according to Andres, had already “left for Alaska and a summer job.”

McGee was still on campus, but he wasn’t himself. He had suffered a mysterious injury that had sapped his famous curve of its power. “He hurt his back in the shower,” Andres said of McGee. “He was probably horsing around. I don’t know. I never did know.” 

Without the curve, McGee was just a fastball pitcher and Andres didn’t think that was enough. With no Tosheff, the coach chose Don Colnitis, whose 4-1 record and steady pitching made him the logical choice. But logic couldn’t overcome bad defense. Five errors helped put IU in a 6-2 hole it couldn’t overcome. IU lost 8-3. 

And McGee? Well, he pitched the final three innings of the game. And even with no curveball, he didn’t allow a run. 

The Ghost of the Whitehall Bed-and-Breakfast

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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The Ghost of the Whitehall Bed-and-Breakfast

Did ghosts haunt this beautiful B&B in historic Madison?  

Longtime residents can rattle off plenty of ghosts of Southern Indiana, just like longtime residents can anywhere else. But how many ghosts are smart enough to stay at a Yelp-approved B&B? 

During the years it was open, the Whitehall Bed-and-Breakfast provided a stunning draw in historic Madison—world-class antiques, high-ceiling rooms, tall poster beds, and a sumptuous breakfast served in the formal dining room at precisely 9:00 a.m

But this location offered other alleged attractions—the way children’s laughter echoed at various times through the hallways when no children were in the house, or the way visitors sometimes caught glimpses of elderly people dressed in the style of the 1860s. 

The history of the house that housed the B&B may explain this. It was built in 1827–28, likely by Judge David B. Cummins, but sadly he passed away soon after its completion. 

During the Civil War, one of the Union’s largest military hospitals sat directly to the west of the house. The thirty-seven-acre complex of the Madison General Hospital was opened in 1863. Surgeon General Gabriel Grant, the director of the hospital, lived in the home. Some say that surgeries took place inside the house, but it seems unlikely when so many other buildings were available for those procedures. 

In any case, it’s clear that the immense suffering occurred in these hospitals and left behind the energy from those emotions and sudden deaths. After the war, a town sprang up in the old buildings, lived in mostly by laborers employed in occupations associated with the river trades. 

An image of the Madison ferry landing.
One hundred years ago, this area was the site of the Madison ferry landing, a scene of much shipping activity at the base of Ferry Street on the Ohio River. Image sourced from Ghosts of Madison, Indiana.


Later, the buildings were disassembled or moved intact to various streets throughout town. You can see many of the shotguns along West Main Street that are believed to have been part of the hospital compound. Madison had sent more troops to the war effort than any other town in Indiana and also suffered the greatest number of soldiers lost. 

In 1890, the house became the West Madison Public School, the name lasting for the next twenty-five years. Initials of the children still remain on the walls. 

During the Great Depression, the house was partitioned off into apartments. By the time the bed and breakfast proprietors purchased the property in 1991, it had nearly fallen into a state of collapse. At the start of their renovations, they had to climb a ladder to get to the second floor—the stairs had to be entirely rebuilt. 

It wasn’t long after work on the building began when, one evening, while wrapped in a sleeping bag up on the second floor, one owner awoke to horrendous crashing and banging on the floors below. Thinking that vandals had broken in, he rushed down the ladder, shovel in hand, ready to defend his property. But when he got to the location of all the noises, no one was there and nothing was out of place. It was the first of many such episodes. 

Many spirits object quite vigorously when the buildings they inhabit are changed through construction. It’s one of the most frequently reported triggers for paranormal activity. Maybe old Judge Cummins thought that someone was modifying his original house plans. 

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I tried many times to reserve a stay at the Whitehall Bed-and-Breakfast, but to my disappointment, it was always booked. Finally, I called for reservations early enough in the year to snag a suite at the inn. When we arrived, I happily admired the beauty of the Green Room suite, named for the brilliant color of its walls. 

On the first of our two-night stay, I was getting ready to go to bed and had turned off all the lights. Only the moonlight coming through the windows lit my way to the bed. 

When passing by the sitting room, I very clearly began to hear what sounded like booted footsteps on the wooden floors. They sounded loud and heavy. Knowing that no living person was in that room, I struggled to fall asleep that night, waiting and listening for more noises in the next room. 

The next morning, I cautiously looked where I had heard the footsteps coming from and was shocked to see carpeted flooring! 

At breakfast, I asked the owners if there were ever any reports of unusual happenings. They asked what kind of “happenings.” 

I told them the story of the footsteps, and Mr. Murphy said, “Oh, that’s nothing. That happens all the time.” 

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Cookbook History & The West

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Cookbook History & The West

Texan Dishes and Texan Appetites

In a fascinating, annotated facsimile of Austin’s first book of “receipts” (recipes), we’re going to take a tour through Lone Star history that’s sure to rouse your appetite. Lets dig into some cookbook history!

Texas is not just a state, but also an intersection of cultures and attitudes. Once a Spanish colony, and later a Mexican state, Texas has Hispanic recipes in her DNA. Can you imagine the Lone Star State without the exalted taco? Us neither. Once Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas, got permission from Mexico to encourage Anglo settlers onto the the western frontier, new dishes, tastes, and smells came tumbling out of kitchens everywhere. In the 1850s, Germans and Bohemians brought their cooking and brewing traditions directly from Europe. You can still taste these contributions in the beers and delicacies that took hold in Austin and Central Texas. And by reading cookbooks like history books, you can glimpse some interesting history.

A palatable and easily digested meal is a sine qua non to peace at home… We toss into the lap of the inquiring house-wife, a feast of good things which is warranted to dispel the incubus hanging over an expected meal, a family dining, or a more ceremonious lunch.

Introduction to Our Home Cookbook

What’s for Dinner? Cookbook History!

Austin’s first cookbook was Our Home Cookbook, printed by Eugene Von Boeckmann in 1891 as a fundraiser for the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Paul F. Thornton and Mrs. I.V. Davis gathered more than three hundred recipes contributed by eighty-nine women. Included therein were recipes for Dixie Biscuits, Oyster Stew, Irish Potato Salad, and Dandy Pudding. The cookbook is also noteworthy for its two sections on Mexican recipes. Mexican culture was integral to Austin and all of Texas, and Austinites enjoyed dishes like Tamale de Cusuela, Chili y Huevos con Carne, Chili Reyenes, Quesode Almendra, Copas Mexicanas and Huevos Reales. The term Tex-Mex was still decades away.

An image of the front cover of Our Home Cookbook.
The front cover of Our Home Cookbook. Image sourced from Austin’s First Cookbook: Our Home Recipes, Remedies and Rules of Thumb.

Another early Austin cookbook was The Capitol Cook Book: A Selection of Tested Recipes, by the Ladies of Albert Sydney Johnston Chapter, Daughters of the Confederacy. Louise Holland Meyers compiled hundreds of recipes for the volume. In the early twentieth century, Austin witnessed an increase in cookbooks with eighteen new titles, thirteen of which were thanks to the University of Texas’s Domestic Economy Department. Nearly forty cookbooks came out of Austin from 1900 through the 1950s.

A depiction of the Bon-Ton Bakery in Texas.
Bon-Ton Bakery, from flyer. Image sourced from Austin’s First Cookbook: Our Home Recipes, Remedies and Rules of Thumb.

Local food companies got in on the action with de facto marketing pieces. Driskill Hotel’s pastry chef and baker Adolph Kohn opened his Bon-Ton Bakery in 1902, and became known throughout Texas for his Pan Dandy brand of bread until it closed in 1953. The Bon-Ton Bakery produced a small pamphlet, “Bread: The Most Important of All Foods,” which included recipes for its popular breads. Local business–produced recipe books like the Bon-Ton’s and fundraisers for local groups dominated the Austin cookbook market. For example, the local Red Cross Canteen Corps used its book to raise fun for their , where they provided disaster assistance and fed troops at their Austin “canteens.”

Walker’s Austex Chili. C05843, Russell Chalberg Photo Collection, AHC.

Austin’s Mexican population was acknowledged in William Walker’s Aus-Tex Chili Co.’s pamphlet “Rare Recipes ‘From Mexico,’” which featured its foods. In 1900, Walker and his brother manufactured and canned Mexican spices and foods along with the grocery business. Walker’s produced Mexene Red Devil Chili Powder, chili con carne, tamales, enchiladas, beef stew, and spaghetti with meatballs. In 1911, Walker’s installed the first automated tamale-making machine.

1970s and 1980s

Austin cookbooks exploded the 1970s with over sixty published. Reprints of historic cookbooks became trendy with “The Capitol Cookbook,” “Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping,” and “The First Texas Cookbook.” The largest number of Austin cookbooks came out of the 1980s with over one hundred, no doubt due to the celebration of Texas’ 150th anniversary in 1986. This time, new cookbooks were tied to local restaurants like the historic Green Pastures restaurant, and “Dining with Diane,” with profiles of twenty-one Austin spots.

Austin Today


Recently, Austin’s African American culture and cuisine was spotlighted in Angela Shelf Medearis’ series of books related to African American cooking. And Austin chef and restaurateur Matt Martinez Jr., whose grandfather opened the first Mexican restaurant in Austin, El Original, in 1925, wrote 3 books of his family’s recipes. While Austin is known today as a mecca for hip, Texas history continues to be relevant, and looms large in its vibrant dining community.

Indiana’s Christmas Guide for Wine Lovers

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Indiana’s Christmas Guide for Wine Lovers

Patrick Baude was a beloved professor at Indiana University until his death in 2011. But he was also a wonderful writer, a wine columnist whose columns ended up covering far more than grapes and drinks.

He was funny and learned and humane, and Yesterday’s America is honored to reprint one of his final columns below, titled “Books about Wine Make Nice Gifts.”

One benefit of having a reputation as a wine lover is that you almost never get a necktie for Christmas. Still, we all have friends who simply refuse to believe that one can never have too much wine. These friends should at least be thinking of books about wine, which have the added benefit that they can be sent through the United States mail without sharing the proceeds with a mandatory state-licensed wholesaler.

There are two well-known favorites for those lucky enough not to have read them already. Don and Petie Kladstrup’s 2001 Wine & War (Broadway Books) tells the inside story of French wine under Nazi occupation. Allied intelligence, for example, had advance notice of Rommel’s campaign in Egypt because French producers secretly reported the destinations to which the Nazis shipped Champagne in anticipatory celebration. And Chateau Margaux successfully hid a Jewish family for most of the war.

An image of Patrick Baude's wine library.
A small sampling of Pat Baude’s wine library. Image sourced from The Wit and Wisdom of Patrick Baude: Exploring the Good Life in Bloomington.

Many of the exploits of the French resistance centered on the Burgundy house of Joseph Drouhin. Someone could be very happy to get a gift of the Kladstrups’ book and a bottle of one of Drouhin’s wines from Sahara Mart.

Kermit Lynch, one of the visionary wine importers who changed the scene for Americans, tells how that happened in his 1988 book, Adventures on the Wine Route (North Point Press). Give a friend this book and a bottle of wine imported by Lynch—and watch, you’ll see.

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American wine has some tales too. The Norton grape, for example, first developed in Virginia during Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, was the most planted wine grape in the eastern United States back when Missouri was what Napa is now. In 1873, at a famous tasting in Vienna, the Missouri Norton was judged one of the world’s great wines. It almost completely disappeared by the 1920s and is now showing up in small quantities in Virginia and the Midwest. Todd Kliman’s 2010 book, The Wild Vine (Clarkson Potter), recounts this story, which should charm anyone interested in wines from eastern America, especially if it is accompanied by a bottle of actual Norton from a visit to the French Lick Winery.

So far as American history itself goes, the big drinking story is of course Prohibition. Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (Scribner) is a readable explanation that Prohibition was about feminism, religion, labor, immigration and taxation as much as alcohol. It should be required reading for any serious drinker, except that it is so readable that there’s no reason to require it. Pair it with a bottle of Indiana’s one artisanal gin, fittingly called Prohibition Gin, from Heartland Distillers.

An image of Patrick Baude's wine cellar.
The floor of Pat Baude’s wine cellar, which held wine bottles that no longer fit on the packed shelves. Image sourced from The Wit and Wisdom of Patrick Baude: Exploring the Good Life in Bloomington.

And there are two new books exploring contemporary controversies in the world of wine appreciation. Matt Kramer, the gold standard for wine columnists, has a new collection of essays, Matt Kramer on Wine (Sterling Epicure). His work always shows, in his own words, that “wine writing can be more than a string of fruit-and-flower taste descriptors culminating in a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am score.” And Terry Theise, a wine importer so charmingly erudite that his catalogues are sometimes resold after they expire, has published a spiritual inquiry into wine’s mystical power, Reading Between the Wines (University of California Press). Maybe you’ll love it. Maybe you will react as he reports one reader did to a catalogue: this is “pretentious new-age bullshit.” But reading it with one of Theise’s imported Mosels might enhance the life force.

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The Indiana Influenza Pandemic of 1918.

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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The Indiana Influenza Pandemic of 1918.

More than 14,000 state residents died that year as a result of the Indiana influenza epidemic.

In the annals of Indiana Disasters, the Indiana influenza pandemic of 1918 stands out. The first official cases of flu were reported in Evansville on September 20, 1918. By September 25, cases were appearing in the state’s largest city, Indianapolis—and the capital city was hit harder than anywhere else in the Hoosier state.

Spread of the disease was perhaps made worse by the reaction in some quarters to preventing its spread. Public health officials were seemingly split over the value of both quarantines for people exposed to the virus and the prohibition of large public gatherings (including school, work and church). There was even disagreement about the value of cloth face masks that were distributed en masse by the Red Cross and many other community organizations. 

Headline from the Indianapolis Star about the Indiana Influenza Pandemic of 1918
A headline from the Indianapolis Star in 1918.

On October 7, 1918, the Indianapolis Star carried the news that “Indianapolis schools, churches, theaters and moving picture houses were ordered closed and a ban was placed on all public gatherings yesterday by the city health board. The order is effective this morning and will be in effect for an indefinite period.” 

The health board’s ban, coming as about two hundred flu cases had emerged in the city, ran into the very real problem of how to enforce it. There were many who remained skeptical about the seriousness of the flu or the methods to prevent it. Interestingly, the Star’s front-page story about the public health order ran far below ongoing coverage of World War I from across the sea. 

A variety of other actions followed, including placing placards in the front yards of families who had members sick with the flu. And there was, of course, the continued rise in deaths as dozens and eventually hundreds of people fell ill and died. Mortuaries across the city were overrun and struggled to provide adequate caskets and burial rites for the departed. 

In November, with the flu still raging in Indianapolis and across the nation, the city’s board of health announced that it would continue to enforce a face mask order for residents. This came after the board heard from local physicians about the emergence of more than 130 new cases in one day in the city. 

Schools were also ordered to remain closed despite continued questions about the board’s authority to do so. Rebellious acts continued to be reported—in one, a South Bend, Indiana priest was arrested after he refused to call off Sunday Mass for his parishioners. Local school officials were also among those who were opposed to the strict efforts undertaken. 

The same newspapers that carried questions about the actual risk of the flu also carried stories that indicated that of the more than 3,200 deaths statewide in less than two months, more than half of the affected were between the ages of twenty and forty, resulting in more than 3,000 Indiana children being made orphans.

Regardless, the pressure on health board members continued, and just a day before Thanksgiving, newspapers carried the news that the board had reversed itself and lifted the face mask order. Local schools, however, were to remain closed.

Before the Indiana influenza pandemic was over, more than 150,000 Indiana residents were infected with influenza between September 8, 1918, and March 15, 1919. Statewide, 14,120 Hoosiers died, 1,632 of them in Indianapolis during that period. The Indianapolis mortality rate of 4.6 deaths per 1,000 citizens was double that of the overall statewide rates and higher than the mortality rate for the much larger city of Chicago.

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WICKED INDIANAPOLIS

These are not the aspects of Indianapolis history you’ll see flaunted in visitors’ brochures. These are the abhorrent, the grim, the can’t-look-away misdeeds and miscreants of this city’s past, when bicycle messenger boys peddled through the night to link prostitutes with johns and when the bigoted masses tightened their grip on the city behind mayor and Klansman John Duvall. From the unseemly to the deviant to the disastrous, Hoosier Andrew E. Stoner brings you lives as out of control as the worst wreck at the Indy 500 with a history as regrettable as it is riveting.

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