• Malcolm Weaver of Center told us of an old legend claiming that John Wilkes Booth wasn’t killed after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theater. Booth supposedly fled to Texas and died in Timpson, Texas. Malcolm said Booth was related to Zack Booth of Timpson, a former Shelby County sheriff.
  
   
• Michael Mullins of Winona said his grandfather always swore that Civil War guerilla leader William Clarke Quantrill didn’t die in Kentucky, as the history nooks claim, but fled to Texas and lived in Huntington under the name of Ed Robb and worked as a lawyer.
  
   
• Jesse James, according to another legend, didn’t die in Missouri when Bob Ford shot him, but lived and moved to Granbury in Hood County, where he lived to be more than 100 years old under an assumed name.
  
   
• Eight years ago in August, fire destroyed the Newton County courthouse at Newton. The fire began in the landmark building’s bell tower. What happened to the bell? It rests in Newton’s History Center, cracked from falling from the tower to the floor below.
  
   
• From the Galveston Daily News of March 6, 1893: Charles Cronea, who fought under Jean Lafitte and at the Battle of San Jacinto, died in Chambers County. He left 94 living descendants.
  
   
• Who was the nation’s most powerful presidential advisor. Dick Cheney?
  Nope, It was likely Colonel Edward M. House of Houston, who was the power behind President Woodrow Wilson. House’s grave is found across from Howard Hughes’ final resting spot in Houston’s Glenwood Cemetery.
  
   
• The most abused monument in East Texas is likely the Killough Monument, north of Jacksonville. It marks the burial sites of a family massacred by by Indians. The massacre led to the expulsion of the Cherokee Indians and shaped the land East Texans now call home. Vandals trash the site as quickly as it is cleaned up.

(Excerpted from Bob Bowman’s books)