Unboxing History

Unboxing Lesser-Known Stories of Galveston County History

• Unboxing History | History Expert Jodi Wright-Gidley & Galveston Author Christine Hopkins • Season 2 • Episode 2

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In this episode of Unboxing History, Christine Hopkins and Jodi Wright Gidley, executive director of the Galveston County Museum, delve into fascinating artifacts from Galveston County's rich history. They uncover a Colombian mammoth bone and discuss the area's prehistoric fossils, explore the origins of the town of Algoa, and highlight the significance of early settlers bringing trees and crops to the region. Additionally, quirky historical facts are shared, such as deer swimming across Galveston Bay. The episode also promotes the newly released book 'Galveston County, Texas, A Narrative and Pictorial History,' offering a comprehensive view of the county’s development and interconnected communities.

Special thanks to the Galveston Chamber of Commerce for their ongoing support and Shawn Schoellkopf for creating and performing the theme music.

Thank you for listening to Unboxing History, presented by the Galveston County Museum.
For more information on the Museum, visit our website.

History of the Galveston County Museum
The Galveston County Museum was formed in 1976. It was located on Market Street for many years. After Hurricane Ike damaged the HVAC and electrical systems in 2008, the unharmed artifacts were moved. Now, the museum is located in the Galveston County courthouse building at 722 Moody/21st Street in Galveston.

​Galveston County Museum is a joint project of the Galveston County Commissioners Court and Galveston County History, Inc. The museum cares for a collection of 20,000 artifacts and archives. We also maintain the Historical Commission's library. If you are interested in research or donating an artifact related to Galveston County history, please call 409.766.2340.

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[00:00:00] 

[00:00:06] Christine Hopkins: Welcome to Unboxing History, where we unbox the fascinating artifacts that are part of the Galveston County Museum's collection. I'm Christine Hopkins, co-host of the podcast with my friend Jodi Wright Gidley, the executive director of the Galveston County Museum.

[00:00:22] Christine Hopkins: Today we're unboxing a couple of mysterious artifacts that connect us to Galveston County history. Along the way, we're gonna share four lesser known facts about the region, and this is all part of the newly released book, Galveston County, Texas, A Narrative and Pictorial History by the Galveston County Commission.

[00:00:44] Christine Hopkins: Before we begin, I have a little riddle for you. I'm big and gray with floppy ears. I haven't been seen in thousands of years. I had tests so long and a trunk so grand. Now I'm buried beneath the sand. Who [00:01:00] am I? So Jodi, let's start with this massive find that left researchers really stunned. 

[00:01:07] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Yes. So in 1916 in San Leon, a really strange skull was unearthed.

[00:01:14] Jodi Wright-Gidley: It was huge. It had 12 foot long tusks, and it was identified as being part of a Colombian mammoth. 

[00:01:23] Christine Hopkins: Wow. 

[00:01:24] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And so this is not from that skeleton, but it is one like it. So this is a Colombian mammoth bone from our collection. Wow. And we have a section of the museum that tells the story of Palentology in Galveston County.

[00:01:39] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And this is a part of that exhibit. But what it really also does, it just reminds us that, you know, before we were here, there were strange creatures all over Galveston County. When they built the Texas City Dike, they found bones that belonged to camels, bison, mammoths, sloths. A lot of these bones even had marks on [00:02:00] them, and that indicates that people had butchered them for food.

[00:02:03] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So, just gives us an idea of the pre-history of Galveston County, which is one of the subjects covered in the book. 

[00:02:09] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Well, I mean, there's your answer. So. The riddle leads you to the Colombian mammoth, which once roamed the area. It's still so hard to imagine them here in Galveston or in Galveston County, you know, but this is part of our history and it's amazing that these, they discovered this in, what'd you say, 1916.

[00:02:31] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Um, and so, um, this is, you know, one of the things that you can learn when you come to the Galveston County Museum is more about that as part of the exhibit. 

[00:02:38] Jodi Wright-Gidley: There are a lot of interesting cities in Galveston County all with their different history, all with a different name, sake. So let's talk about one that you featured in the book. 

[00:02:49] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Okay. So let's talk about Algoa. So in Western Galveston County, the Santa Fe Railroad ran through there and there were four communities established along the railroad.

[00:02:57] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Algoa was the fourth one, 

[00:02:59] Christine Hopkins: okay. 

[00:02:59] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Of [00:03:00] these four. And so at first it was a small little community. It had its own telephone office at one time in the 1880s, and they named that little station of the telephone office. They called it Hughes. Well, that name didn't stick. So in 1896. There was a British steamship docked in Galveston named Algoa.

[00:03:19] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And it was huge as cotton was loaded, as green was loaded, word spread around about how this was the biggest ship ever docked in Galveston. So people came to see it, they came to take their picture with it. And so it was, the story goes, there was a daughter of one of the gentlemen who was developing Western Galveston County, and she said, Algoa, it would be a great name for a town.

[00:03:41] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And that stuck. So the very next year they had a trainload of people from Galveston and Houston visit Algoa. They had a picnic, they sold town lots in an auction, and then a plat of the town was made filed at the county courthouse and it became the town of Algoa. More and more people moved in and [00:04:00] the rest is history.

[00:04:01] Christine Hopkins: So what do we have? 

[00:04:01] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So we have a picture of the ship. And we have a picture of the, Algoa general store that was there. 

[00:04:10] Jodi Wright-Gidley: That's the store that came shortly after the town was created. And there's the big ship . The ship, um, you know, is no longer around. It's lost to history, but the name of Algoa with the town is still there. 

[00:04:21] Christine Hopkins: Well, thanks Jodi. Who knew? 

[00:04:24] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Well, we've talked about bones, we've talked about a namesake for a city. Now let's talk about something that still exists even today that's living. 

[00:04:32] Okay. So if you were moving to the area, you were gonna start a new life, build a family home, and so what would you bring with you? You, you know, most people would bring certainly clothes and food and tools, maybe building materials.

[00:04:47] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Well, some people also brought saplings with them. They knew Galveston County wasn't really well known for trees and shade, but they wanted that. And so a lot of the settlers that came to Galveston County in the 1800s brought pecan [00:05:00] trees, all kinds of, uh, live oak trees. And they plant them because they wanted 'em as a windbreak or a shade for their homestead.

[00:05:06] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And then over the years, as more and more people came and settled here, citrus. Trees were planted. And really, Galveston County was known for citrus, vegetables, all kinds of produce. And they would sell that it was a, you know, cash crop for them. And so, this is a picture of some gentlemen on one of those western railroad towns. And you can see in the picture you've got businessmen and maybe men who are the farmers. But what they're doing is they're getting ready to ship everything on the railroad to Houston or Galveston to sell. And one of the crops that was a really big cat. Crop was figs and Galveston had its own fig, um, fig company. And so this was Galveston figs. And um, so that's one of the things, one of the stories from the book too. 

[00:05:54] Christine Hopkins: And that's a beautiful label. I mean, pull it out again if you don't mind. I mean, my gosh, the [00:06:00] colors are so vibrant and, um, it's just really, I mean, I would love that on a poster. Yeah, it's fine. I mean, it says Galveston, Texas figs.

[00:06:10] Christine Hopkins: Well, there you go. Well, thanks so much. I think that's pretty interesting and I, and what's fun is that we still see these plants all over. Mm-hmm. If they've made it through our weather, our hurricanes, and all of that, I'm sure some of them still exist. 

[00:06:22] Christine Hopkins: The figs and the plants and the fruit, that's such an, an interesting way to connect to our past. Well, now we have something that I think is a surprising wildlife fact. 

[00:06:32] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Yeah. 

[00:06:32] Christine Hopkins: So let's talk about our last little fun fact that we've, we pulled from the book.

[00:06:36] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So Deer used to swim across Galveston Bay and they would do this as a part of their regular migration. They were searching for food and safety and they had little uninhabited islands they could stop on and have a snack and as they swam around. 

[00:06:52] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So we don't really see deer swimming in the bay today, but historical records shows that people saw this well into the 20th century. 

[00:06:59] Jodi Wright-Gidley: [00:07:00] And so the unboxed item that I have to kind of represent that story is a deer bone. So this one was found in Texas city and it has been identified as a deer bone. And it just another show of how there are animals that were just everywhere around here. And deer were swimming in the bay. 

[00:07:18] Christine Hopkins: Well, and that's a pretty long swim. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's not a short swim. What was the whole idea behind the book? 

[00:07:26] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Yeah, so the Historical Commission has been working with the goal of having a comprehensive county history book for years. It's taken, taken about five years for this book to be, uh, drafted and edited and made. It was the work of several historical commission members.

[00:07:42] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And so what's great about it is, you know, there've been books written on county, um, on Galveston history, but not really on county history. Each community. Had its own story, but this is the very first book that puts it all together. So it has the history of every community in Galveston County. Some don't even exist anymore, but they're [00:08:00] in the book to tell their story, and it really does a good job of showing how the communities developed and how, and some of times they depended on each other, you know?

[00:08:10] Jodi Wright-Gidley: You really get the sense of how all of the communities developed and they worked together, provided goods maybe one community didn't have and none of it could have developed without each other working together.

[00:08:21] Christine Hopkins: I think that's gonna be interesting for people to see that through the past. And, um, I would imagine most all of the photos that are included in the book are, are included in part of the collection. 

[00:08:30] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Yes. So a lot of the photos from the book are from the collection of Galveston County Museum, as well as other small community museums around the county.

[00:08:39] Jodi Wright-Gidley: We all contributed to the book and it is. Like I said, it is a comprehensive history of the county that you won't find any in any other book. So the book is available for a donation of $50. You can buy get it here at the museum, but it's also available at some other museums in the area, like the Texas City Museum, the Longhorn Museum in Kemah.

[00:08:59] Jodi Wright-Gidley: As well as the League [00:09:00] City Historical Society. And we can also sell it to you online and ship it to you. So if y'all are interested in the book, just give us a call or email and look at our website. We've got some information on there too. It's www.galvestoncountyhistory.org. 

[00:09:14] Christine Hopkins: And that wraps up this episode of Unboxing History. We encourage you to stop by and visit the Galveston County Museum. Put it on your list of things to do, and please subscribe to the Unboxing History podcast hosted by the Galveston County Museum. Thanks for watching, and stop by.