I don't come over here much, but wanted to toss this subject out and see if anyone had any info.

My father in law has been talking about writing a book for years and hs enlisted me for some help. The subject is a criminal organization - a mafia - that he says operated out of Crockett starting as early as The Civil War and going through into the early 1970s.
He says they had a wide reach throughout Texas, into Mexico and Latin America, and were constantly consolidating a lot of gold coins that had been left / found by the Spanish and then the Mexicans in their retreats from Texas in the 1800s.

I love my FIL to death, but it is somewhat taxing to understand if this is a real thing or something he has invented. Either way it's probably going to be fun to write, but I would definitely appreciate any insight given on if this is based on real events; my minor stabs on Google have produced jack/squat.

TIA

Dixie Mafia maybe?

The Porkchop Express said:

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I don't come over here much, but wanted to toss this subject out and see if anyone had any info.

My father in law has been talking about writing a book for years and hs enlisted me for some help. The subject is a criminal organization - a mafia - that he says operated out of Crockett starting as early as The Civil War and going through into the early 1970s.
He says they had a wide reach throughout Texas, into Mexico and Latin America, and were constantly consolidating a lot of gold coins that had been left / found by the Spanish and then the Mexicans in their retreats from Texas in the 1800s.

I love my FIL to death, but it is somewhat taxing to understand if this is a real thing or something he has invented. Either way it's probably going to be fun to write, but I would definitely appreciate any insight given on if this is based on real events; my minor stabs on Google have produced jack/squat.

TIA

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I wish I could help. My great uncle was fairly prominent in Crockett during that time and my dad spent a lot of time in Crockett working for him. Unfortunately, neither is still with us.

My wife's family has been in the Crockett area since the 1870s. Her great great grandfather, RC Spinks, was a jeweler and big landowner in Houston County. All of his seven kids basically lived fully off of the money and land he acquired and never had any real jobs. They were big gamblers and I've heard they were quite notorious back in their heyday. I've heard similar rumblings of mafia like groups back in those days, as well. The story probably has some merit and probably includes some of the Spinks family in there. However, I've never heard anything about a gold coin trade.

Speaking of mafia in small town Texas... My former brother in laws family owned and operated farm land in the Brazos bottoms west of town for many years. He said that you could not fly crop dusters over Hearne without special permission from the Hearne mafia. I had heard this from other sources around Milam County ( directly across the Brazos from Hearne) , one being a crop duster owner whose niece I dated in high school.

Since the advent of the interweb and Google, I have found mention and conversations of it but have never found any hard evidence or reason for the Hearne mafia's existence....

Hearne, the home of John Randall, ( I played against his older brother Ervin, also an NFL lineman). The only place that Walmart has ever closed a store ( now the high school). All the kids that are able go to school Gause or Mumford.

My grandparents lived in Hearne from ~ 1950 - mid-80s. I never heard of the Hearne mafia, but it wouldn't surprise me. Hearne was especially nasty to blacks, for example refusing to pave the streets in the black part of town for decades.

My grandmother had a book entitled "Hearne on the Brazos" which I read out of boredom. It was shocking as a kid to discover a lot of Hearne's history. A lot of the big cotton planters expanded after the Civil War. They wanted to clear the Brazos bottoms so they turned to the prisons for cheap labor, paying the warden something like $0.25 or $.50 per day per prisoner. The warden kept the money for himself, naturally. According to the book, hundreds of prisoners died clearing those bottoms.

That's always colored my attitude toward Hearne. Although I have wonderful memories from my grandparents' place, I also think of Hearne as having been founded on evil and allowing evil to dominate it for decades and decades.

Isn't that the story in most small southern towns? They all had controlling families that were the movers and shakers that would stack the deck to make money and control opportunities and keep the underclass in their place.

Yep.

Rabid Cougar said:

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Speaking of mafia in small town Texas... My former brother in laws family owned and operated farm land in the Brazos bottoms west of town for many years. He said that you could not fly crop dusters over Hearne without special permission from the Hearne mafia. I had heard this from other sources around Milam County ( directly across the Brazos from Hearne) , one being a crop duster owner whose niece I dated in high school.

Since the advent of the interweb and Google, I have found mention and conversations of it but have never found any hard evidence or reason for the Hearne mafia's existence....

Hearne, the home of John Randall, ( I played against his older brother Ervin, also an NFL lineman). The only place that Walmart has ever closed a store ( now the high school). All the kids that are able go to school Gause or Mumford.

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ALSO location of WWII POW camp with 4,700 Italians and Germans from North Africa. There were also some Japanese POWS imprisoned there in 1945. One of the few camps with all three of the Axis countries.

That camp was right across the highway from my grandparents' place. Also, years later, my parents moved to Chattanooga and became good friends with a couple. The husband had been a guard at the camp during World War ii. He always told us that the TV show Hogan's Heroes was based on writings from a German POW at that camp, but with the nationalities reversed for the TV show.

The lawmen in East Texas have been running the drug trade since prohibition.

TommyGun said:

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My wife's family has been in the Crockett area since the 1870s. Her great great grandfather, RC Spinks, was a jeweler and big landowner in Houston County. All of his seven kids basically lived fully off of the money and land he acquired and never had any real jobs. They were big gamblers and I've heard they were quite notorious back in their heyday. I've heard similar rumblings of mafia like groups back in those days, as well. The story probably has some merit and probably includes some of the Spinks family in there. However, I've never heard anything about a gold coin trade.

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Appreciate it! I had no idea anyone had responded to my thread. My FIL claims he alone knows where some Spanish gold is buried in Crockett but the owners of the property won't let him dig it up. Many times I have offered to jump their fence but he refuses to acquiese.