Sul Ross Death Verification - Please !

3,968 Views | 23 Replies | Last: 3 mo ago by jkag89
BeBopAg
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From "Tales of Texas" by Dr. Tommy Stringer, Executive Director of the Navarro College Foundation.

Titled: SUL ROSS: GOVERNOR AND COLLEGE LEADER (page 9-A, col. 3&4, 3rd para, line 27-36), Corsicana Daily Sun article, dated Feb 15, 2009.

"...The campus and the state were saddened when Ross died unexpectedly at his home in College Station. He had accidentally ingested some poison during a hunting trip when the camp cook mistook the poison for flour while preparing breakfast."...

Any Aggie historians out there ?
aalan94
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AG
Well if that's true, they need to alert Wikipedia. I'm always skeptical of Wiki, but the Sully article is well-sourced if nothing else. That being said, the key reference to cause of death is a book from Eakin Press, and that publisher's a mixed bag.
BeBopAg
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aalan...
Guess best bet for a serious researcher would be Cushing Library's archive.
BigJim49 AustinNowDallas
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AG
Believe his granddaughter wrote a book or thesis on Ross. I think I have it but don't know where.
BQ78
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AG
Judith Benner his biographer says it was pneumonia and general bad health and fatigue that did him in. Dr. Jack Welsh who has done a medical biography of every Civil War general in blue and gray says it was pneumonia from hunting in the Brazos bottoms. Both solid researchers, I’ll go with their story.

Bop haven't you floated this idea before on this board?
CanyonAg77
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AG
I will verify that General L.S. Ross is still dead.


(Yes, I used to watch SNL)
olarmy69
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from my days at A&M we were always told he had died from septus inflicted by shaving.
True or false.
Orlando Ayala Cant Read
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the accidentally ingested poison because he thought it was flour is an Aggie Joke waiting to be told. if that turns out to be true....we should go all out to cover that up and make sure that never goes public.
BeBopAg
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Wonder about Cushing Library research staff and their source material ?


[This message has been edited by BeBopAg (edited 4/27/2012 6:49p).]
jarheadag
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An older gentleman from Waco, from the Ross family line, and a serious student of all things Sully, says it was accidental injestion of rat poison. States it happened when Sully organized a deer hunt near Millican. The cook accidentally got rat poison in the flour.
Don't recall the man's name but heard his Sully presentation where the poison thing was mentioned. Hardly seems that a man health enough to organize and participate in a "deer outing" would die of "exposure" so easily.
Stive
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AG
quote:
An older gentleman from Waco, from the Ross family line, and a serious student of all things Sully, says it was accidental injestion of rat poison. States it happened when Sully organized a deer hunt near Millican. The cook accidentally got rat poison in the flour.
Don't recall the man's name but heard his Sully presentation where the poison thing was mentioned. Hardly seems that a man health enough to organize and participate in a "deer outing" would die of "exposure" so easily.

Without knowing ANYTHING about the history of this....would he have been the only one eating? If it was an "organized hunt" then it seems there would be more than one person consuming the food
BQ78
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Indian war wounds, exposure and illness during the Civil War (he spent the last quarter of 1864 almost unitl the end of the war in 1865 on leave due to illness) and he was not a healthy guy-- all of those things took their toll on his overall health.

Stive does bring up an excellent point, I don't think anybody but Sully died or even took ill on the hunting trip.

The hunt was conducted in freezing and wet conditions.
aalan94
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AG
Sully is not dead, he's just frozen in carbonite in front of the Academic building. We just need Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia to free him.
XpressAg09
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Paging Fossil Ag
EVA3
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AG
His grave is in Waco.
BigJim49 AustinNowDallas
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AG
Fossil is dead?
BQ78
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AG
Well you can't be a fossil and be alive now can you?
45-70Ag
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AG
Wait, fossil died? When?
Larry S Ross
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AG
Who is the Ross guy??
Traces of Texas
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The cause of Sully's death was listed as pneumonia when it was listed at all. Oddly, very few accounts of
Ross life mention the events leading to his death.

In 1929 the Houston Chronicle published a story that contradicted the accepted account of Sully's death.

The article was based on an interview with Clint Padgitt, a businessman in Ross's hometown of Waco. Clint Padgitt was also Sul Ross's nephew. His mother, Anna Ross Padgitt, was Sul Ross's sister. The article read in part ".. probably less than a dozen people in Texas know that Ross died from accidental poisoning, his death usually attributed to pneumonia." The story went on to say that the former governor was hunting with friends in the woods near the A&M campus when his death occurred. The party had brought along two barrels of flour, one of which contained rat poison to kill the rats that infested the area.

A servant who was along to do the cooking for the group presumably used flour from the wrong barrel in preparing an evening's meal. Ross, the first to eat that night, observed that the food tasted odd and warned the others not to take any. He immediately fell ill and died soon after.

Again, the story is uncorroborated, but the Houston Chronicle placed enough credence in it to print it. In my opinion, the poisoning story is probably more likely than the pneumonia story.
“I must say as to what I have seen of Texas, it is the garden spot of the world. The best land & best prospects for health I ever saw is here, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here.” —– David Crockett
Jabin
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Just saw your post on X and was going to come post it over here, but you beat me to it! Good job, Traces!
ABATTBQ87
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AG
The Battalion., January 15, 1898



Traces of Texas
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Here's a narrative about Sully's father, Shapley Ross, and Sully when he was a small boy. This is pretty incredible.

"My grandfather was Captain Shapley P. Ross. In 1849 he built a cabin on the bank of the Brazos river near Waco Spring. He and other of the older members of the family told me as a boy of the things the people did in the pioneer days.

My grandfather was in bed with the measles about the year 1850, as well as I recall, when one day a band of Comanche Indians was seen coming to the house. My grandfather told my grandmother that the Indians would probably kill him and take her and the two little boys captive, and if they did, for her to take a cloth with her and tear pieces of it off and drop them as they went along, and the settlers would find them and possibly find her. The chief came to the door and started in, but when he saw grandfather lying there in bed with the measles broken out on his face the Indian was afraid of him, and did not come in. He told grandmother that they wanted beef and watermelons, and to send the boys to show than where the beef and melons were. The boys want with the Indians, and their parents never expected to see them alive again, but they came back all right. The Indians took the meat and melons and went on without molesting the family any further. The Indians were superstitious about sick people and of course knew enough to know that what my grandfather had they might get and spread it through the tribe.

About twenty-five years later grandfather was at the Dallas Fair, and saw a band of Indians which were there on exhibition. When he came to them, one of them spoke to him and told him that he remembered him as the sick man, that it was his band which had come to grandfather's house that day. The Indian told him that they admired the boys very much for their bravery in going with the Indians to show them where the cows and melons were.

In the early Fifties my grandfather killed a Comanche Chief known as Bigfoot, who was one of the greatest chiefs of that tribe and the most powerful one at the time of his death. The story of the fight during which grandfather killed the chief is told in Wilbarger's 'Indian Depredations in Texas.' About two years after the fight one evening when Plaoedore, a former chief of the Tonkawa tribe, and who was a faithful friend of grandfathers, was sitting on the front porch, a Comanche came to the house and said he wished to see Captain Ross. Placedore told him to leave, that Captain Ross did not wish to see him. The Comanche than said, 'I am a brother of Bigfoot, who Captain Ross killed. My brother was a very great man, but Captain Ross killed him, and he is a greater man, then, than my brother. I wish to live with Captain Ross because he is a great man.' Plasedore again told him to leave, that they did not want him there.

Captain Ross came up then. Plaoedore said not to allow the Comanche to stay, that he meant treachery and would probably kill the Captain. The Comanche said he would prove that he would be faithful. He want to a mesquite tree growing in the yard and out a thorn three or four inches long. He took a fold of his flesh over his stomach and thrust the thorn through it, then with his knife out off the ends of the thorn. Placedore and grandfather knew then that the Comanche would be faithful, as that was the Indian way of proving loyalty. He was allowed to remain and stayed with grandfather ten years. I do not now remember the Comanche's name, This occurred about the year 1855.

My mother, Kate Ross, was supposed to be the first white girl born in Waco. It's thought that my uncle, Robert S. Ross, was the first white child born in McLennan county. He was born under a tree on what is now the Price Standifer farm, before the cabin my grandfather was building was completed. I remember my mother telling me that when she was a little girl, in the early 1850s, great herds of buffalo would came to Waco, which was then only a village of scattered houses among fields of earn and other crops. The buffalo came toward Waco from the north on their migration to the south, and would, if not turned, go right through the village and the fields and destroy all the crops. When the buffalo were seen coming the alarm would be given by shouting "Here come the buffalo," and ringing a bell. Then all the people would stop what they were doing and go north of the town in their wagons and make a line of the wagons around the town. They would take guns, dish pans and anything else they could make a noise with, and turn the buffalo around the town and the crops. Then for a day or two the men would shoot what buffalo they wanted for their winter supply of meat.

There was a flat-bottomed steamboat called the 'Katie Rose' after my mother, which ran up and down the Brazos from Waco carrying supplies to settlements along the river. This was about 1860. I don't remember who it was owned the steamboat. Along during the 1870s men who were float of foot would go from settlement to settlement and challenge anybody to a footrace, and those racers and the people of the settlements would bet on the races. One of these men was called Deerfoot, which was probably a nickname, as he was very fast and had beaten every man who ran against him. He and the men with him come to Waco and said they had $2500 in gold which they would bet that Deerfoot could beat any man in a race. The citizens made up a purse of $2500, to bet on a man they considered could beat Deerfoot. All this money, $5,000, was piled on a blanket. The Waco man way outran Deerfoot. After that the man from Waco ran other races and always won.

There used to be a racetrack in the seventies where Oakwood cemetery now stands. There are still in trees in and around the cemetery rings which were used for tying horses. Lots of people now wonder what those rings were for. In 1875 there was a man who wanted to make a record for the shortest time carrying mail twenty miles by riding around the racetrack. He wore out the horse he started with, then he used all his horses one after another, and then the people got so interested in seeing him make a record that they took horses from their wagons and buggies and also let him have their saddle horses o ride so he could break the record."

---- Waco native Clint Padgitt recalls stories of early Waco history as related to the U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1939. Note: Captain Shapley Ross was the father of Lawrence "Sul" Ross, future governor of Texas. Shapley had also been a Texas Ranger in his early days. Here's a photo of Captain Shapley Ross. A daguerreotype, it was taken in roughly 1860, making it one of the oldest photos I've ever posted.


“I must say as to what I have seen of Texas, it is the garden spot of the world. The best land & best prospects for health I ever saw is here, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here.” —– David Crockett
jkag89
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Just read this on the Traces of Texas X (twitter) and came over here to post it.
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