By and By in Baby Head

Near the former town of Baby Head

In our research for this short road trip, Dave ran found Baby Head Mountain on Google Maps. Being the curious person that he is, he had to see what had been written about the area. He was a bit appalled to find that the information about Baby Head was just as grizzly as the name implied. And after what he’d read, Baby Head became a destination rather than an aside to our road trip.

Charting Cherokee

There is a lot of history in Texas involving Native Americans, but it doesn’t

White Church

pop up on historical markers nor is it referenced in information written about the towns we visited. So just for your information, Texas has had at least fourteen Indian Tribes living in the state at one time or another. The Apaches were in far West Texas, the Kiowas in the eastern part of the pan-handle, the Comanches in Central Texas, the Wichitas in North Texas, the Tawakoni and Kitsai tribes in East Texas, the Caddo and Tonkawa tribes in far East Texas, the Bidalis in the southeast part of the state, the Karankawa along the northern Gulf Coast, the Coahuiteco and Carrizo tribes along the southern Gulf Coast and across to the southern part of the Rio Grande, and the Jumano and Eastern Pueblos along the Rio Grande in West Texas. Their culture and traditions have been marginalized by the coming of the Anglos.

Seeking out San Saba

The first question Dave asked when we rolled into town was, ‘What does

Big horn sheep

San Saba mean?’ Of course I didn’t know (it’s not French or Italian – maybe Spanish?), so we asked the oracle (Google) and here’s what we got: First, there is no translation from Spanish to English for Saba, but San can mean saint. So going with our guess of Saint Saba, our second bit of information told us that Saint Sabas was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a ‘Christian Palestinian monk, champion of orthodoxy in the 5th-century controversies over the nature of Christ. He founded the monastery known as the Great Laura of Mar Saba, a renowned community of contemplative monks in the Judean desert near Jerusalem. This community became a prototype for the subsequent development of Eastern Orthodox monasticism.’ The Catholic Encyclopedia pretty much agrees, ‘Basilian monk, hermit, founded the monastery at Mar Saba near Jerusalem. Died 532.’ And if you were wondering, Mar Saba is ‘Old Man’ in Aramaic. There are at least five other saints named San Sabas.  So how did Texas get a river, a county, and a town named after a 5^th century monk? I haven’t uncovered that piece of information, yet!

Goldthwaite Gold

Before we venture out on road trips I try to do at least a bit of research

Abandoned house and well

about where we’re going beyond looking for places to eat and to stay. My task was made difficult because I didn’t pay attention to how the name of the town is spelled. That middle ‘th’ gave me all sorts of problems, but I was sure that there had to be something written about Goldthwaite, so I persevered. Eventually I got the spelling right and found a goodly amount of history concerning the seat of Mills County.