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The Hidden History of Texas

The Hidden History of Texas

By: Hank Wilson
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Here is were you will find The Hidden History Of Texas podcast. The episodes cover Texas history from the earliest days of Indigenous peoples to Spanish exploration, control by Mexico, the Anglo’s take over, Texas becomes part of the U.S., the confederates move in, and back to the U.S. The audio files are accurate and try to tell the story as best as they can from all sides of the issues. The hidden history of Texas is a history replete with heroes and villains of all sorts. There were good and bad people throughout Texas history, just as there were throughout world history.© 2020-2026 ARCTexas Education Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Episode 86 – Ma Ferguson the first woman governor of Texas

    Episode 86 – Ma Ferguson the first woman governor of Texas
    Mar 21 2026
    Episode 86 - Ma Ferguson the first woman governor of Texas Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Hidden History of Texas. I’m Hank Wilson and this is Episode 86 – were I continue telling y’all about some of the “notorious” governors we’ve had. This episode is devoted to Miriam Amanda (Ma) Ferguson, the first woman governor of Texas. Born in Bell County on June13, 1875, to Joseph L. and Eliza (Garrison) Wallace, she attended Salado College and Baylor Female College at Belton. In 1899 at the age of 24 she married James Edward Ferguson in a ceremony in Bell County. She served as the first lady of Texas during the gubernatorial terms of her husband, who managed to get himself impeached during his second administration. I talked about his administration in a previous episode, which I’m sure is still available. Even though he had been impeached and forced out of office in 1924 Old Pa Ferguson tried to once again run for Governor. Now even in Texas we sometimes draw line as to who or what we want in the governor’s office, and the court’s said he was not eligible. In order to keep power in the family Miriam or Ma as she was known entered the race for the Texas governorship. Why was she called Ma? Prior to this entrance into politics, she had devoted her energies almost exclusively to her husband and two daughters and because of this and the combination of her first and middle initials, her supporters called her "Ma" Ferguson. While, in theory it was her campaign, she made it clear that if she were elected, she would follow the advice of her husband. This meant then, as she proudly said, that Texas thus would gain "two governors for the price of one." One goal of her campaign was to have her husband’s name vindicated. She promised to make extensive cuts in state appropriations. She condemned the Ku Klux Klan, and opposed passing new liquor legislation, (this was during the years leading up to prohibition). Initially, in the primary, she trailed the Klan-supported prohibitionist candidate, Felix D. Robertson; however, she was able to easily defeat him in an August run-off to become the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. Then in November of 1924 she handily defeated the Republican nominee, George C. Butte, a former dean of the University of Texas law school. Many folks are unaware that in those days, the Republicans where the more liberal of the parties and the democrats were in favor of segregation and generally supported the Klan. She was inaugurated fifteen days after Wyoming's Nellie Ross, thus becoming the second woman governor in United States history. Her first administration is remember by historians as being dominated by political strife and controversy. What did she do or didn’t do? She did fulfilled a campaign promise to secure an antimask law against the Ku Klux Klan, (for those who are truly unaware of the KKK, they, much like today when people wear masks or hoods to cover their faces, the Klan wore hoods because they don’t want people to know who they are) however the courts overturned it. In her administration a series of events took place that many current voters can recognize due to how they seem to occur in today’s politics. For example, she had pledged to reduce state expenditures and the budget by $15 million, but in fact they increased. She and her husband, remember Pa, were accused of irregularities both in the granting of pardons and paroles and in the letting of road contracts by the state highway department. It seems that Ma Ferguson pardoned an average of 100 convicts a month, and she and "Pa" both were accused by critics of accepting bribes of land and cash payments. An attempt to impeach Ma failed, but in 1926 those controversies helped Attorney General Daniel James Moody defeat her and win the governorship. Two years later, in 1928, she decided not to run for office, but in 1930 the Texas Supreme Court once again rejected her husband's petition to place his name on the ballot for governor, so she decided to run. In the May primary she led Ross Sterling, but then Sterling defeated her in an August runoff. This loss turned out to be fairly good for her reputation because Sterling was blamed by the voters when Texans began to feel the full impact of the Great Depression. In February 1932 she again ran for governor under a platform of lowering taxes and once again reducing state expenditures. In what many see as ironic, she also condemned alleged waste, graft, and political favoritism by the Sterling-controlled highway commission. Because of the effect of the depression on Texans, she easily beat Sterling in the May primary by over 100,000 votes, she then narrowly won in the August runoff to secure the democratic nomination. Defeating Orville Bullington, the Republican nominee thus securing her second term as governor. This time her administration did not generate nearly as much controversy as the first. The fiscally conservative governor held the ...
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    8 mins
  • Notorious Governors of Texas – James “PA” Ferguson

    Notorious Governors of Texas – James “PA” Ferguson
    Mar 1 2026
    Welcome to episode 85 of the Hidden History of Texas, today I'm talking about one of the most Notorious Governors of Texas - James "PA" Ferguson. James Edward (Pa) Ferguson, Texas governor, was born in 1871 near Salado, which is in Bell County and is fairly close to where I am, to James Edward and Fannie (Fitzpatrick) Ferguson. Sadly, his father passed away when Pa was only four, and his mother, being a true strong Texas woman stayed on working the farm and he began working in the fields as a young boy. When he was 12, he entered Salado College, which was a local preparatory school, but in a sign of things to come, was expelled for disobedience. At age 16 he left home for a life on the road and wandered throughout the Western states, where he did any type of job he could find. Eventually he returned home to Bell County, where he tried farming and working on a railroad-bridge gang. He did use this time to begin to study law and in 1897 he was admitted to the bar. He opened up a practice in Belton and then in 1899 he married Miriam A. Wallace. The couple had two children and since in those days lawyers weren’t as busy as they are today, he expanded his personal interests to real estate and insurance. He then turned his attention to banking and for several years was not only a member of the Texas Bankers Association but also associated with the Farmers State Bank of Belton. In 1907 he moved his family to the larger town of Temple where he joined in the formation and establishment of the Temple State Bank. Needless to say, it was during this time period when he was involved with banking that he also took an active interest in county and local politics. In spite of the fact that he never held a local office he was very aware of how local politics worked. He was a staunch opponent of prohibition and had fought against allowing what was known as the local-option out of Bell County. He served as a campaign manager for Robert V. Davidson in 1910 and worked with Oscar B. Colquitt in his successful gubernatorial campaign in 1912. Prohibition had been a major issue in the 1914 campaign, and there were candidates for the governor’s race on both sides of the issue. The prohibitionists held an elimination convention and pledged their support to Thomas H. Ball of Houston. The anti-prohibitionists tried to have their own convention, but Ferguson, even though he had been identified as an anti-prohibitionist, refused to publicly support it. As a result, the leaders at the convention was not able to eliminate him from receiving their endorsement and while they did not endorse him the other anti-prohibition candidates withdrew from the race. Due to his popularity Ferguson easily won the nomination by a majority of about 40,000 votes. Ferguson proved to be one of the more captivating speakers and had a native ability to persuade people. He was a masterful public speaker. His most popular and talked about proposition was a law that would actually limit how much rent a landlord could charge. For the folks who were known as “tenant farmers” this proved to be very popular. It was not popular among landowners, and he tried to assure landowners that the law would prove to be beneficial to everyone. After his election he was successful in getting the law passed, but it was soon declared unconstitutional. During his term the state began to provide aid to rural schools and there was enacted a relatively minor law that required compulsory school attendance. He was in favor of helping schools, and colleges were permitted to begin building programs. In order to pay for everything, educational appropriation bills were more generous than usual. Needless to say, these changes increased the ad valorem tax rate for state purposes advanced from 12½ to 30 cents. The prison system increased its landownership and since Texas had many ‘prison farms’ the system benefited from the rising price of farm commodities. During World War I the system became self-sustaining and profitable. In 1916 Ferguson's reelection seemed almost a certainty. The prohibitionists decided to support a relatively unknown Charles H. Morris of Winnsboro. The major issues of the campaign were prohibition, the tax rate, and certain rumors concerning the Ferguson administration. Regardless of the rumors, Ferguson was reelected by a majority of about 60,000 votes, but there was enough opposition to show that many Texans were not completely pleased with his administration. His second administration did little of consequence, except pass enough appropriation bills to force the tax rate to rise to the constitutional maximum of 35 cents. This is when old Pa made a serious mistake. He got involved in a quarrel with the University of Texas. Turns out the board of regents refused to fire some faculty members that the governor didn’t like. Well, he threw a Texas sized temper tantrum and vetoed almost the entire appropriation for the university. Needless to say, ...
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    12 mins
  • Episode 84 – Notorious Governors of Texas, Up First Edmund J. Davis

    Episode 84 – Notorious Governors of Texas, Up First Edmund J. Davis
    Feb 15 2026
    This is Episode 84 - Notorious Governors of Texas Edmund J. Davis and the first of our series of Notorious Governors of Texas. With all the politics in the news today, I’ve naturally been thinking about politics and politicians. One group that has always intrigued me are governors. Not presidents, or senators, or members of the house, but governors. They’re the ones who really give a state its identity, well at least in a way, because they’re most often the ‘face’ of the state. Here in Texas, our current governor seems to love making pronouncements about how his administration is going to fight this or that evil that might be encroaching on Texan’s freedoms. More often than not, it’s usually just a bunch of fluff that his advisors know will make his hard-core supporters emotional and get him on the evening news. After all he’s running for re-election and needs to make sure people don’t forget about him. Naturally this got me to thinking about Texas governors in the past, so I started researching what I thought of the most notorious governors in the history of the state. These governors often gained notoriety due to the turbulent, defining political eras in which they served, such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Progressive era scandals. So, today I’m going to start a series on these leaders from the past. First is Edmund J. Davis: Union Army Officer and Reconstruction Governor of Texas. Davis was governor in the reconstruction period 1870 and 1874. He was a Republican, (not the type of Republican we have today, these were the anti-slavery, pro-union republicans). Since he was a Republican during Reconstruction, needless to say he was very unpopular with a large percentage of white Texans. They thought of him as a tyrant, because he believed in using the state police and he was adamant in enforcing what many considered to be radical Republican policies. Who was he, and how did he become governor? As were many Texans at the time, he wasn’t originally from Texas. He was born at St. Augustine, Florida, on October 2, 1827, to William Godwin and Mary Ann (Channer) Davis. His lineage traced back to a Grandfather Godwin Davis, who had immigrated from England to Virginia and had fought and perished during the Revolutionary War. His father, who lived in South Carolina, was a land developer and attorney in St. Augustine. As a young man Davis was educated in Florida, and at age 19 moved, with the family to Galveston, Texas, in January 1848. In Galveston he started a career working in the post office while he undertook the study of law. In 1849 he relocated to Corpus Christi, where he worked in a store and continued to read and study law and in the fall of 1849, he was admitted to the bar. Between 1849 and 1853 he was an inspector and deputy collector of customs at Laredo. In 1853 he became district attorney of the Twelfth Judicial District at Brownsville. About 1856 Governor Elisha M. Pease named him judge of the same district, and Davis continued to serve as a state judge until 1861. As judge he accompanied the ranger unit of Capt. William G. Tobin, who was involved in the Cortina affair at Brownsville in 1859 On April 6, 1858, Davis married Elizabeth Anne Britton, daughter of Forbes Britton, a state senator and friend of Sam Houston. Now we have his personal story, but this is Texas and in Texas nothing is simple, particularly politics. Davis was a Whig until the mid-1850s. OK, who were the Whigs? They were a major political party that was very active from 1834 to 1854. They were originally formed in order to oppose President Andrew Jackson's policies and his desire to expand executive power. (see power hungry president’s isn’t exactly anything new in American history). They supported Henry Clay’s "American System," and they believed in modernization, industrialization, protective tariffs, and a national bank. The fell apart by infighting over the expansion of slavery into new territories. This caused Northern "Conscience" Whigs to join the Republican Party and Southern "Cotton" Whigs to join other factions, such as the fledgling democratic party and some joined the “Know-Nothing” party. In 1855 after the Whigs fell apart, Davis joined the Democratic party. In 1861 even though the Texas democratic party was a strong advocate for secession and were pro-slavery, Davis supported Sam Houston and opposed secession. He ran unsuccessfully to become a delegate to the Secession Convention. Once Texas voted to leave and announced it was seceding from the union, Davis refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, and the state vacated his judgeship on April 24. Unable to support the Confederacy in May of 1862 Davis fled Texas and travelled to New Orleans. From New Orleans along with John L. Haynes and William Alexander, he went to Washington. The men met with President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln recommended that the three would be given help so they could provide ...
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    11 mins
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