Saving Austin’s History

Last year I had the pleasure of working with the staff from PBS's History Detectives for the upcoming History Detectives Special Investigations: Texas Servant Girl Murders.  The cast and crew came to Austin last summer; they did a number of…

Unidentified albumen print. One morning before dawn in the summer of 1883, a strange persistent cry echoed through a west Austin neighborhood and caught the attention of two women, Sophia Phillips and Sallie Mack, both of whom lived nearby. They…

The Hancock Inquest is a fascinating document filled with peculiar details, opinions and suspicions about the murder of Susan Hancock that were never published.  I thought it would be worthwhile to transcribe the handwritten document in full in order to…

The residence of Valentine O. Weed (300 E. 4th Street), location of the murder of Mary Ramey. Earliest photo circa 1900, later re-modeled in the colonial revival style circa 1940, and finally demolished, as a parking lot 1997. PICH 00103…

The sixth Annual Save Texas History Symposium will take a look at the history of Austin in a whole new light. In the Shadow of the Dome: Austin by Day & Night will examine diverse aspects of Austin’s history, including…

In spite of already knowing the story, I was nevertheless turning the pages as fast as I could to find out what happened.