Sara Massey, Author at

Independent Historian

Sara Reid Massey was retired from the University of Texas, Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio, where she developed award-winning educational materials on Texas history. She was the editor of the Black Cowboys of Texas, winner of the 2000 T.R. Fehrenbach Award of the Texas Historical Commission, co-author of Turn of the Century Photographs: San Diego, and editor of Texas Women on the Cattle Trails, winner of the 2006 Liz Carpenter Award from the Texas State Historical Association. Her study, Never From from The Sea: The Vietnamese of the Texas Gulf Coast, received the Community History Award from the Texas Oral History Association. Sara Reid Massey died on her 75th birthday, August 17, 2013, in Comfort, Texas.

Johanna July (ca. 1857-ca. 1946)

Johanna July, a black Seminole, was born around 1857 in Nacimiento de Los Negros, the settlement established in northern Mexico following the emigration of Indian and black Seminoles from the Indian Territory in 1849. By 1870, the U.S. Army, desperate for translators and scouts familiar … Read MoreJohanna July (ca. 1857-ca. 1946)

Peyton Colony, Texas (1865- )

Peyton Colony was a freedmen’s community established in 1865 by Peyton Roberts (c.1820-1888), an ex-slave who migrated to Caldwell County, Texas. Roberts was born enslaved on the William Roberts Plantation in Virginia. Roberts and several families on the Roberts Plantation gained their freedom at the … Read MorePeyton Colony, Texas (1865- )

Edward “Sancho” Mozique (1849-1951)

Edward “Sancho” Mozique was born a slave June 10, 1849, in Columbia, South Carolina. The family, a mother and six siblings, lived as slaves in Spartanburg, South Carolina between 1851 and the end of the Civil War. Now free, they returned to Columbia. Mozique believed … Read MoreEdward “Sancho” Mozique (1849-1951)

Ben Kinchlow (1846?-1939?)

Ben Kinchlow began life as a free black in Texas, when most African Americans were slaves. After the Texas Revolution, the new Republic legalized slavery and free African Americans were at risk of being sold back into slavery. Ben’s mother, Lizaar Moore, a half-white slave … Read MoreBen Kinchlow (1846?-1939?)

James Kelly (ca. 1839-1912)

James “Jim” Kelly, born in Williamson County, Texas, was the son of manumitted slaves, “Uncle Amos” and “Aunt Phoebe” Kelly, who had belonged to the Olive clan, a family of powerful Texas cattlemen. After 1865 Kelly worked for Isom Prentice (Print) Olive, a former Confederate … Read MoreJames Kelly (ca. 1839-1912)

Cologne, Texas

In 1877 a small village blossomed that was home to freedpeople slaves from Victoria County, Texas. Ex-slaves, Joseph Smith and George Washington, both born in Virginia, opened a freight and passenger business hauling goods from the Gulf Coast to Victoria and neighboring towns. With their … Read MoreCologne, Texas