His friends called him “Cush.”

 A sketch by Navasota's forgotten muralist- poet & social commentator

His friends called him “Cush.” He had travelled all over the American West as a young man when he came to Navasota, determined to make a life for himself and his family. He was a combination of Confederate chivalry, entrepreneurial spirit and versatile gifts of communication, and had already made a name for himself as an artist. Greatly influenced by the pioneer pathfinder, Jesse Chisholm, his western landscapes and murals had already inspired many art lovers all over the country.  So in ’69 he arrived here ready to bring his talents to the fore and Navasota into an elevated plane.

Cush became a man about town, and his name and his works could be seen in many homes in the region. He wrote for local publications, and his thoughts were broadcast in every direction. He wrote for the local newspaper and his best friends were the local elected officials...

When he died in 1888, he was known as a popular, exceptionally gifted writer, poet, and artist.

A true pioneer hero, a trusted and respected friend of many of the "Who's- Who" of the American West, Major William Minor “Cush” Quesenbury (pronounced cushionberry) was hired by P. A. Smith as the first editor of the Navasota Tablet, in 1869. He only lasted nine months here, and returned to his beloved Arkansas. Who did you think I was talking about?

In 1976 my father Ralph B. Cushman, also often nick-named “Cush,” was hired to oversee the restoration of the old P. A. Smith Hotel, a joint project of the Navasota Historical Society and the State of Texas. At the time he was working on a manuscript about his childhood hero, Jesse Chisholm. The book was published sixteen years later, but little did he ever know that one of Chisholm’s good friends and associates had written the first editorials for the Tablet within the walls of the old press room, next door on Railroad Street, (then the property of the Navasota Examiner).

  And back then I was already working on the illustrations for that book, which helped launch my career as an historical illustrator and muralist. The cover illustration for the book hangs in Navasota City Hall. It is the scene of Chisholm chewing the fat with a Comanche chief, as Plains Indians put on a wild equestrian riding demonstration; something very similar to things Quesenbury saw with his own eyes.

 A sketch by William Quesenbury

Hang with me, this is a good one!

So you can only imagine my excitement when my readings, as they often do, cross- pollinated and I found a character in Kilpatrick’s history of Navasota whose name rang a BELL. A loud GONG went off, after having just read about a “Cush” Quesenbury in Hoig’s book on Chisholm ( Yes, my father’s arch-competition!)  A. R. Kilpatrick offered matter-of-factly that a Maj. William Quesenbury had come from Arkansas to help start the Tablet in 1869… How Dad missed this guy I will never know. Thankfully Stan Hoig found him, with bells on, and included him in his account of Jesse Chisholm’s life. He places him several times in Texas and often in the Brazos Valley, riding, camping or meeting up with Jess Chisholm.  Maj. Quesenbury was an American hero whose legacy could only be eclipsed by a giant like Chisholm.

THE MURALIST

Quesenbury was hired as a young man to illustrate the frontier and make murals to be rolled on giant scrolls back East, to the entertainment of armchair travelers, and he travelled all over the West from Texas to Oregon. Guided by Jesse Chisholm and other famous pathfinders, he met the wild Comanches and other tribes in their pristine existence, saw the towering landmarks that would later guide the wagon trains, and the mighty rivers that fed a continent, and the canyons they carved through the Rocky Mountains. He was one of the first privileged to see and sketch the massive Plains Indian villages, and to visit the California gold fields, and cover the whole expanse of the Continent to the Pacific Ocean…  In the midst of his adventures, he tried and excelled at soldiering. He became so embroiled in Texas events he signed up and fought in the Mexican war in 1846. He wrote a poem about it, of course.

Monument Hill near La Grange. According to Wilbarger, it  was Captain "Quisenberry" who brought the bones of 17 Texas heroes killed during the Mier Expedition to be buried there.

 

THE SOLDIER

 

According to the noted historian J. W. Wilbarger, Cush was assigned the proverbial "cush" job when fortune shined on young Captain "Quisenberry" and he was assigned the honor of escorting the long-lost bones of the Texans executed in the infamous "Drawing of the Black Bean" incident. These were the men who paid the ultimate price for the ill-fated Mier Expedition. This was just the kind of detail a man of his talent and character would have been assigned to, in this case by a victorious general and a future President of the United States. 

Found by Major Walter P. Lane of the Texas Rangers during the Mexican War at Salado, Mexico, the dusty bones were exhumed and delivered to the headquarters of Commanding General Zachery Taylor, and the captain was dispatched to lead a caravan of wagons from there to La Grange, Texas where the final remains of seventeen Texian martyrs were re-interred, and eventually a grand monuent was erected at what we know today as Monument Hill.

THE JOURNALIST

Then Cush threw himself into something that might pay the bills, using his talent; journalism. When he returned to Arkansas he became the founding editor of the South-West Independent , a popular, often quoted periodical in the 1850’s. Quesenbury wrote about amazingly diverse subjects, such as his observations on Native Americans. He wrote about fishing in Arkansas rivers.  He wrote poetry about his native state. “GOD LOVES NOT HIM THAT LOVES NOT ARKANSAS.”

He served once again in the service of his country, in the Confederacy, rising to the rank of Major, using his extensive connections with the "Civilized Tribes" to serve as a Confederate Indian Agent. After the war he returned to civilian brilliance as editor of several newspapers in Arkansas, until he was hired to come to the edge of the frontier and start a newspaper… in Navasota, Texas.

Stabbed like a lance by the railroad, into the heart of Texas at the fork of the Brazos and the Navasota Rivers, the beleaguered village was a plethora of news, tradegies, outrages and scandals. But it was a short-lived adventure.

Navasota had just suffered two cataclysmic downtown fires in '65 and '68, which destroyed most of the town, and the charred crossroads village was still recoiling after a devastating Yellow Fever epidemic, which had killed or frightened away much of the decent folk. During all the chaos, there had been deadly race wars in the bottoms. The local planters had organized the Ku Klux Klan and lawlessness was the order of the day. Reporting factually on daily events would have been hazardous to your health.

By the Darwinian process we call "the survival of the fittest" Navasota had emerged from the Civil War as ribald frontier town, teaming with men "rough, passionate and full of wickedness," as their neighbor A. R. Kilpatrick, a local doctor described them. Gamblers, brawlers, hide traders, cut-throats and angry freedmen were invading the town and the streets were not safe at any hour of the day. It was a template for the western TV shows, like Deadwood, where hatred and guns were the law. Navasota was no place for a man of Quesenbury's  caliber or status, especially to bring his family. In nine months, Quesenbury figured out what it took others a lifetime to figure out. He wisely returned to civilization.

Regrettably, most of Cush Quesenbury’s murals were lost-  burned or destroyed, and only a few fairly mundane drawings survived, and were recently discovered in an old trunk and have been compiled in a book.  Without his epic story to provide context, and his colorful murals, he became a dusty footnote in history.  While researching him, I found a book review that heartily trashed him as a contemptable drunk and racist, and it ticked me off. Then I found a fair and decent biography about him, and lo, his own words inspired me…

“Be not affronted by a jest: if a man throws salt at thee, it will not hurt thee unless thou hast sore places.”

Sure I was sore…  irresponsible rants and character assassination send a chill down my spine... The same writer would probably idolize and make heroes of Comanche warriors (also famous drunks and racists!) who relentlessly murdered defenseless groups or women and children...

And yet Quesenbury's quips were like a salve... amazing how words can enrage, or touch… ring so true, between individuals who never met, yet know each other, as if cohabitating some kind of time/share machine.

Quesenbury’s good friend, the famed Southern leader, Albert Pike, no novice at writing, said this of him:

“I do not know where he got his command of language. No man ever wrote me such letters, so quaint and forcible, so full of acute remarks and bold expressions of opinion, of exuberant mirthfulness and queer fancies and grave reflections and sagacious axioms, expressed in incomparable language.”

As these facts unfolded in front of me… first from Dr Kilpatrick who by the way was a local doctor and writer, and (coincidentally, distant kin of mine,  and who took "Cush’s"  place as editor at the Navasota Tablet!)  then from Hoig, the writer of the “competition” Chisholm book which caused us great consternation back in the ‘90’s… (another story in itself) and then Wilbarger's Indian Depredations in Texas, and from the wonderful Internet which, with some diligence peeled back the layers of the onion and revealed such a fantastic historic jewel, I could not conceive all the coincidences and parallels  that had just happened, in the blink of an eye. Almost scary!

One of Quesenbury's curious sketches...

Just a little nugget from God, saying, “there’s more where that came from…”

Twin Towers, Twin Destinies, hopefully different outcomes...

Go along with me, and you'll find this... interesting at least, if not uncanny. Like the Kennedy assasination, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on "9-11." I've shared this story before, but it bares repeating.

I was working up on scaffolding on the biggest painting I will ever do... 140 feet of murals at Washington on the Brazos. And in the middle of designing a faithful recreation of Texas' Capital City in 1845, when the planes hit the World Trade Center. As far as I know, no one had ever tried to portray the whole town of "Old Washington" before, three dimensionally, and it was a real challenge that took a lot of research and planning. This was a great honor and I will always cherish this project... and the things that came to me during its creation.

I remember getting pretty choked up at times. I thought of another great city, leveled to the ground by its own corruption and its enemies. When Jesus looked down on his beloved Holy City of God, he cried, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have gathered you up as a hen gathers her chicks..." But Jerusalem would have nothing of him.

Most interestingly, I was learning of ominous parallels between the city I was studying, and the one being attacked in New York. In fact there were a significant number of New Yorkers in early Texas. A street in Anderson was called "New York Row," because of its similarity in style and demographics to the great Northern City. New York money and people helped to found the new republic, and even before I had ever really been acquainted with the Twin Towers of New York, I knew of the twin "towers" at Washington on the Brazos. [Seen in the far upper right of the mural above]

Yes, towering over the fledgling Capital of Texas, a veritable empire in the making, were two handsome, three story brick buildings, side by side in downtown Washington. Built of inferior brick however, they proved that Washington County probably did not have the natural resources ready at a hand to build a great city, one that would someday rival Galveston or New Orleans, or even New York. The bricks were made of local clay, and could only be graded as useful for poor earthenware, and not suitable for structures. This spelled the end of progress for the tiny would-be metropolis.

Today, the only thing left of this once optimistic Capital of the Lone Star State is a single water cistern, a humble flat-topped dome made out of that same old dark orange brick. I think it served a boarding house off of the main drag, and was designed to catch rain water, something we could stand to learn from today. In less than fifty years, the town of "Old Washington" as it came to be known, was almost a ghost town. In my research, I found a gigantic magnolia tree on the plots where my own ancestor invested in the town. I'd like to think he planted it.

The towers? The two hotels who stood proudly during Texas' finest hour? They were demolished and the bricks salvaged and taken across the river to help build the town who welcomed the railroad and all it brought with it. Recycled bricks from Old Washington can still be found in walls of Victorian buildings in downtown Navasota, where many of the disillusioned Washingtonians moved after Washington County schemes failed.

As I painted these magnificent "towers" long gone and forgotten, and resurrected this forgotten center of Texas commerce, the ironies began to sink in. Surely those Texians of old never dreamed that all that they had done there would end up for naught, in fact in a scrap heap. They never imagined that another culture, one they considered outlaw and almost detested, would someday buy their various parts and repurpose them in Grimes County.

Buildings go up and they go down. Cities rise and fall. Nations rise and fall. Texas only existed as a Nation for 9 years. Cultures rise and fall. And usually, those who live and work in these places never could imagine... destruction or even nonexistence.

As each day the televison replayed the horrors of the World Trade Center being reduced to ashes, and reported unimaginable horrors and fatalities, I could only find comfort in knowing at least that Washington on the Brazos suffered an economic disaster, with no loss of life. But the end was more final. I wondered if this was not just the beginning of a just as unimaginable dismantling of my beloved Country. Would they keep coming at us just like the Mexicans did here, until finally, as in the Mexican War, we took the battle to their soil, and shut them up for good?

Uh,yeah.

But Washington on the Brazos never recovered. Today the graveyard of these intrepid pioneers is overgrown and neglected and speaks of empty visons and the shame of failure. I wondered if this great attack on our American economic center was not a warning. Sure it was a statement of intolerance and hatred from the Saudis who executed the attack, but our God allowed it, He looked the other way as they did the deed. He let Satan's messengers have their say, and He let us ponder our vulnerablity, and our standing with Him.

When Washington on the Brazos was humbled, it was the kind of place where gamblers, whores and con-men ran the town, and preachers were tormented and harrassed until they fled. Texas Rangers, the deadly arms of the law, hung out all night at the pool hall and staggered around drunk in the day. The President was a famous drunkard and hell-raiser. Many of the founding fathers of Texas were men with dubious reputations, and some were known cutthroats and brawlers. They built their town on the sands of lust and greed. They refused to acknowledge real threats to their very existence. Today there is very little there to remind us they were there, were it not for Texas Parks & Wildlife who constructed such nice facilites to celebrate the Godless town that hardly ever was. It had precious few distinctions: It was in Texas, where her Declaration of Independence was signed, and Sam Houston had slept there. In fact it had been the Capital City of a failing government who could not pay its bills, or protect its borders or its people.

You all know (I hope) that I am a proud sixth generation Texan, a descendant of some of those wonderful founding renegades, and yet I have to call a spade a spade. And I keep one of those worthless soft bricks around, just to remind me, of what can happen to an arrogant, corrupt and irreverent people. Hopefully, America is learning her lesson as well. And learning it in time.