Tales from the Gainesville Daily Hesperian - (American Chronicles) by Ron Melugin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

After legendary sheriff Pat Ware was thrown from his horse on a very muddy Commerce Street, the Gainesville Daily Hesperian observed that he "had enough mud sticking to his wardrobe to start a land boom in the Panhandle." The Hesperian had an eye for detail, down to the autumn leaf pen wiper Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott received as a wedding present and the raid on Fount Duston's watermelon patch. Ron Melugin has pored over thousands of articles from the newspaper's frontier era, piecing together advertisements for Botanic Blood Balm and a county clerk's train robbing spree. It is an account of bygone Gainesville so vivid that modern readers can almost see, hear and even (in the case of the 1894 privy ordinance) smell it.

Review Quotes

"The husband who had been absent for some days during which time the faithless wife went with the handsomer man, returned and went to his rival neighbor and asked for the return of his lawful 'rib.' The demand so roused Wilson's indignation, that he brought forth his shot gun and made the other fellow cut dirt back from whence he came." -Gainesville Daily Hesperian, September 19, 1889

About the Author

Ron Melugin is professor emeritus at North Central Texas College in Gainesville, where he taught from 1965 through 2016. He holds a master of arts degree in history with a minor in government from Texas A&M University-Commerce. He is a member and former chairman of the Cooke County Historical Commission, a division of the Texas Historical Commission. His research has resulted in fifteen Official Texas Historical Markers. His previously published work is Heroes, Scoundrels and Angels: Fairview Cemetery of Gainesville, Texas (The History Press, 2010).