Park Cities Stamps - Texas Philatelic Association

Excerpt from a letter written by John W. Chalk to his wife Mary. The letter was written at the time Lubbock
was being founded and is dated February 17, 1891. It begins with these three sentences “We have
arrived all OK. The men we are after are in the neighborhood. And we will get them by morning.”
hid from the Mexicans. The captured Texans
numbered 176 and were being marched to
Mexico City. While on the way, a number of
Texans tried to escape. As punishment, General
Lopez de Santa Ana ordered that they all
be executed. The governor of Coahuila refused.
A compromise was reached: every tenth man
would be executed. To determine who would
live and who would die, each Texan would
draw a bean. A black bean meant death, so
17 Texans were executed.
For being a part of the expedition, Whitfield
Chalk received an award of land from
the Republic of Texas. He later fought in the
Mexican-American War. In 1870, Chalk was
also awarded a special pension from the state
government of Texas.
Whitfield Chalk’s brother, John Wesley
Chalk, was a Methodist Episcopal preacher
who came to Texas in 1851 from Tennessee.
He was the first minister preacher in
Fort Worth when it was a fort. A tablet in
his memory was laid at the First Methodist
Episcopal Church of Fort Worth.
What we know about John Wesley Clark
ON THIS MONTH’S COVER
This month’s front cover depicts Lubbock’s
first courthouse, built in 1891 at about the
time John W. Chalk was writing a letter to his
wife about his arrival there. (Photo courtesy
of Southwest Collection/Special Collections
Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas,
Lubbock Pictorial Collection, SWCPC 143.)
The Texas PhilaTelisT July-August 2007 9