| Memoirs of a Texan |
| The saga of Jim Cobb, a sensitive young man, caught up in the Civil War. He serves as aide A P Hill and goes on to build a fortune in postwar Texas. |
| War Regimental 2nd Lieutenant to Chief of Staff, ANV 3rd Corps in four unforgettable years. |
| Redemption Massive cattle drive and good cotton harvests provide wealth as Texas rejoins the Union |
| Empire Jim builds a major oil company while battling corrupt politics. |
| Book 1: War Jim Cobb understands what many do not. The South is severely overmatched in the coming struggle with the North. Nevertheless, when his home state, North Carolina, secedes, Jim enlists and is elected 2nd Lieutenant in the Catawba County Militia. With a solid work ethic and quick grasp of battlefield tactics, Jim rises as a staff aide in the Army of Northern Virginia. First as aide to his new regimental commander, Dorsey Pender, who himself is promoted to command a brigade in the Light Division commanded by General Lee's gamecock, Ambrose Powell (A P) Hill. In distinguishing himself at the brigade level, Jim is passed on to A P Hill and Division staff. Almost killed at Sharpsburg, Jim survives and escapes a Union hospital to rejoin the Light Division. After a gun fight with a Union patrol, Jim is wounded and takes shelter with the Blaylock family whose middle son, Andy, is home recuperating from wounds received in defending the Gosport Shipyard. As they prepare to return to service with the Army of Northern Virginia, Andy's father, John Blaylock, receives a surprise visit from Major John Mosby who is building an army behind Union lines. John Blaylock enlists as Faquier County spy master; Jim and Andy as Rangers. A stunning victory at Chancellorsville is followed by a crippling defeat at Gettysburg. Jim sees a drop off in A P Hill's effectiveness. During a period when Jubal Early commands Third Corps, Jim applies for line command, receives the newly formed 78th North Carolina, and brings Andy along as Regimental First Sergeant. Bloody battles in The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg follow with a final battle at Peebles' Farm where the 78th North Carolina is captured and sent north to prison. Jim, Andy, and a third of the 78th North Carolina are incarcerated in the overcrowded Fort Delaware Prison where food, clothing, and hope are scarce. The low point is Christmas 1864 when Jim learns his college roommate, Pete Morgan, has come to join him. Jim had hoped to become part of the Morgan family in marrying Pete's sister, Sissy, until she broke their engagement before Gettysburg. Jim is saddened to learn that the younger sister, Missy, had been brutally raped by Yankee bummers. The war effectively ends April 12, 1865 when General Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia. Jim survives a cholera epidemic that takes Pete Morgan and many others. He leaves Fort Delaware with Andy and five soldiers of the 78th. Jim is delirious during most of the trip. A beloved Negro servant, Scipio, is hanged and mutilated by a scalawag farmer who also seizes their wagon and supplies. Andy takes charge and they arrive at the Blaylock Farm where Jim recuperates. Their future is set when John Blaylock mentions that the Yankees still carry payroll along a route Jim and Andy planned and carried out a robbery as Mosby Rangers. They decide to engage a group of former Rangers as a diversion. The robbery comes off perfectly. Jim, Andy, and accomplices are pleased with the take. Joy turns to concern when they learn the leader of the Ranger diversion is talking with Provost marshals. After settling with the scalawag who hanged Scipio, the traveling party moves on to Jim's home in Newton, North Carolina by way of the Morgan Plantation in the Shenandoah Valley. Jim wants to drop off Pete's effects and bring Scipio's wife to the Cobb Farm. He is stunned to learn that the awkward, precocious teenage girl he remembered from cadet days is now an attractive young woman who loves him and needs to leave the Shenandoah Valley. After a brief courtship, where Andy counsels both, Jim and Missy marry. Hoping to settle on the Cobb Farm, the traveling party learns, from Jim's mother, Anne Cobb, that a Provost office circular letter lists Jim and Andy as suspects in a payroll robbery. She recommends they move on to her brother's sprawling, underdeveloped estate near Beaumont, Texas to build a new life and escape Union Provost marshals. They finally reach Texas after a betrayal in Mississippi and near capture and shoot out in Louisiana. Book 2: Redemption Many come to post-war Texas. Carpetbaggers to profit from the misery of a defeated South. Renegades to escape capture and arrest in more civilized areas of the newly restored United States. Some, like Missy Cobb, to flee from shame back home. Many, like Jim Cobb and Andy Blaylock, to slip the long arm of Federal marshals. Speculators and scratch farmers to seek what Texas had in abundance - land. All come to reinvent themselves and start a new life in the raw frontier state. From broken antebellum Planters to the humblest immigrants, poverty is the common denominator for nearly all post-war Texans. But not, Jim, Andy, and Robert Savage who become wealthy and powerful in the loose, free for all Texas economy. Robert Savage rode on cattle drives and remembers a nice spread between Texas and Missouri cattle prices. They decide to convert the tainted payroll currency in purchasing Mexican cattle and driving them to Kansas. Jim and Robert will go on the massive cattle drive while Andy works with the Gerlach Estate. Robert and Jim survive the 120 day, undermanned massive drive from Brownsville, Texas to Kansas City, Missouri and are richly rewarded - $5 Mexican cattle are sold for $30 in Kansas City - and in clean, non-traceable money. After the first cattle drive, Jim drops out to become an investor and cotton broker and pursue other business opportunities. The Savage brothers, Robert and Charles, continue cattle drives, with Jim and Andy as investors, until the profit plays out in the late 1870s. The fortunes of the Cobbs, Blaylocks, and Savages grow with each drive. Andy works as overseer of the Gerlach Estate and dedicates 1,000 acres to the new long strand cotton seed they purchased in Georgia on the journey to Texas. Cotton is also in short supply after the war and prices very good. They form a consortium; send four shiploads of baled cotton to Massachusetts where Sissy's husband, Union Colonel Jonathan Curtis, owns a textile mill. They purchase a cotton gin for the consortium and continue production until cotton prices fall. Jim agrees to help fund the shipping company his brother, Tom, started and is pleased when Jonathan Curtis invests with him. Jim also agrees to fund a new wood processing company and renews his love of milling gained on the Cobb Farm. Missy delivers their first child, Meg, shortly after Jim's return from the cattle drive. In developing the cotton consortium, Jim comes on an attractive young widow, Martha Ballard, with a small farm and introduces her to Missy. Under Miss's tutelage, Andy courts and marries Martha and becomes an instant father to her son, Toby. Carpetbaggers and scalawags conspire, with help from a corrupt judicial system, to steal farms, ranches, and businesses throughout Texas. They find a willing dupe in Rene Gerlach, Uncle Gus's and Aunt Pansy's worthless son. When his father loses mental capacity, Rene foolishly defaults on a small bank loan and back taxes and then conspires with the group working to steal the Gerlach Estate. Jim and Andy intercede, murder the front man, and earn the hate of the evil cabal and their attorney, Otis Wilson. The past comes back to Jim Cobb as he and Missy visit her sister, Sissy, and brother-in-law, Jonathan Curtis, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Jim is spat upon by a distraught widow and insulted by a Harvard student. At the same time, Jim is treated to a New England lunch by a tavern owner who served with the Union Army at Cold Harbor. He remembered Jim sending out orderlies under white flag to relieve Union wounded after the massacre and Jim bringing letters from dead Union soldiers to Union lines. One of the letters was written by Ken Johnson, a favored VMI roommate. Jean LeBlanc, Secret Service Agent, who took over investigation of the payroll robbery, knows the crime was committed by Cobb, Blaylock, Savage, and accomplices. He lacks proof. When stolen currency shows up from Matamoros, Mexico, LeBlanc travels to Brownsville, Texas to find witnesses who saw Major Cobb with the tainted currency. He is frustrated first by Ramon Alaniz and then other Mexicans who cannot identify one gringo from another. Throughout, Jim battles populists who dominate Texas politics and the bulldog Federal Secret Service agent who takes over the payroll robbery case when the Washington Provost Office is closed. Missy dies and Jim takes a long trip back home, Virginia, and New York to ease his grief. Book 3: Empire Reluctantly, Jim remarries to provide a mother for his children. The new wife brings a young son to the marriage who cannot compete with his stepbrother and chooses another course for his life. Jim sponsors his stepson and intercedes to get him an assignment with the volunteer Rough Riders for the Spanish-American War. Finally, Jean LeBlanc finds the perfect witness to convict Jim Cobb and the other conspirators - John Jeffers, the Union Lieutenant who led the patrol that accompanied the payroll wagon. After giving depositions to the Marshals, Jeffers went back to acting and disappeared in Europe before reappearing in New York where LeBlanc finds him. However, Jeffers' testimony at the trial is compromised. The newly formed Texas Fine Arts Council headed by the wives of the defendants offers Jeffers directorship provided his testimony does not convict their husbands. In an ongoing quest to bring good government to Texas, Jim makes a compromise and backs a populist he suspects may place public over self interest. He is surprised when James Hogg becomes Texas' best governor and is succeeded by a capable replacement, Charles Culbertson, a fellow VMI graduate. Instrumental in his work for both governors is Edward House, an advisor who goes on to national attention as right Wilson and populists continues. Jim's and Andy's granddaughter,nicknamed Sunshine, is caught in the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and changed for life. Shortly after, an unexpected, huge oil discovery near Beaumont forever changes the Texas economy. Jim is brought into an oil investment group and is appalled with the waste and greed predominant in the industry. With support from his brother-in-law, Jonathan Curtis, and reliable partners Andy Blaylock, Robert and Charles Savage, and others, Jim forms an integrated oil company that becomes one of the industry giants. Andy, with Jim's active backing, forms a partnership with Ramon Alaniz to develop the Rio Grande Valley for citrus production. Development of refrigerated shipping and opening of New York and New England markets for Texas pink grapefruit open. Again, Jim's partnership with Jonathan Curtis is instrumental in developing the new business. In a showdown, Jim Cobb pits wealth and influence against the corrupt Galveston based State Senator Otis Wilson. Jim's son, John Peter, is soundly defeated by incumbent State Senator Otis Wilson. Wilson uses his influence with the press to print lies and innuendo to not only defeat John Peter but discredit his father. A multi-family crisis occurs when Sunshine falls in love with Ramon Alaniz's grandson. Jim is torn between his Presbyterian belief and long time friendship with the Alaniz family and eventually develops a compromise that requires concessions from both sides. However, Sunshine and her husband remain estranged from their families. Despite surface traces of oil and gas and the wild claims of Patillo Higgins, no one in the federal and state geographic departments nor anyone of consequence in Beaumont believe the Texas Gulf Coast has significant oil deposits. January 10, 1901 a wildcat well on Spindletop Hill erupts and Texas changes forever. Every low-life and hustler with the price of a ticket floods to Beaumont. Jim joins an investment group headed by former Governor Hogg and is appalled with what he learns - waste, inefficiency, and corruption. He decides to emulate the hated Standard Oil company and build a Texas based integrated company and control the vital distribution segment. A difficult task, with state law favoring the free for all chaos of the early oil industry and set against Standard Oil and integrated companies. Jim and Andy's friendship with Edward House culminates in House's ascension to chief counsel to Woodrow Wilson. Jim is briefly involved in national politics and finds he is neither Progressive nor Conservative and falls back on his own independent thinking. Jim Cobb dies of stomach cancer at age 80 after hurriedly completing his memoirs. |
| Ashbell Smith Building, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas 1900 |
| Major General "Uncle" John Sedgwick, USA, Army of the Potomac. Killed by sharp- shooters while demon- strating to his troops they were out of range. |
| Lucas Well Gusher, Spindletop Hill, Beaumont, Texas 1900 |
| Patillo Higgins, Spin- dletop Hill Visionary, Beaumont, Texas 1900 |
| Gerlach Estate, Lum- berton, Texas 1874 |
| Charles Allen Culbert- son, Texas Governor 1895-90. Succeeded Hogg in continuation of good Texas government |
| Hurricane Damage, Galveston, Texas 1900 |
| Curtis & Cobb Screw Steam Sloop 1868 |
| Sketch of Assembled VMI Cadets, John Brown Hanging, Friday, December 2, 1859 |
| Cattle Drive 1966 |
| Lt General Jubal A Early, CSA, Army of Northern Virginia 1863. After losing Stonewall Jackson, General Lee's best field general. |
| Confederate troops defending Frederics- burg, Virginia 1863 |
| Major General William Dorsey Pender, CSA, Light Division, Army of Northern Virginia 1864. Considered by many to be the best officer in either army. |
| Democratic Party Con- vention, Baltimore, Maryland, June 25 - July 2, 1912. First and only national conven- tion Jim Cobb attended |
| Louis Moreau Gott- schalk, Creole Ameri- can pianist and com- poser. Meets Jim & Missy Cobb on a train ride. |
| Texas Cattle Drive Trails - Shawnee (East), Chisholm (Central), and Western (West) |
| William Marsh Rice, Founder Rice University, Houston, Texas 1912 - |
| Texas Oil Field 1910 |
| Ashbel Smith, Legen- dary Texas Statesman, Surgeon, Confederate officer, and University of Texas founder |
| Long Strand Cotton Harvest, Beaumont, Texas 1867 |
| James S Hogg, Texas Governor 1891 - 95. Populist turned Progessive, Texas' most effective governor. |
| Fort Delaware Prison, Pennsylvania 1865 |
| Light Division, Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, Maryland 1862 |
| Lt General Ambrose Powell Hill, CSA, Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia 1864. As a division comman- der, Lee's gamecock. |
| Mosby Raid, Faquier County, Virginia, 1863 |
| Major John Singleton Mosby, CSA, Army of Northern Virginia 1863. The Gray Ghost. |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |