My history writing buddy, Marvin Gorley, has never understood my dislike of this county being named for Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, even though our most famous artist alumnus, William Henry Huddle, and his cousin, F.J. Fisher, painted both the former Republic of Texas president and his brother, Lucius Cincinnatus Lamar.
But, there are many negatives with the personality and actions of the president, not to mention Parisians and even those from his home area of Richmond, Texas, have never been able to decide upon just how to pronounce his name. It was with great relief when the shopping center moguls in East Paris decided to take his name off the signs. New announcers at local radio stations will never have to go through the pain of trying to say My-ree-bo, Mear-a-bo, or even the worst, Mare-a-boo.
Cherokees wlecome back troubled Raven
Bartee Haile / History columnist
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During the first week of April 1829, Sam Houston sent his teenaged bride home to mother, decided to resign as governor of Tennessee and prepared for a self-imposed exile among his boyhood friends, the Cherokees.
Twenty years earlier, the 16-year-old had rebelled against his older brothers’ plans for his future, which included clerking in a general store, by running away. He found refuge among the neighboring Cherokees, who welcomed the headstrong youth with open arms and named him “The Raven.”
Chief Ooleteka, called John Jolly by the whites, filled the painful void created three years earlier by the death of Houston’s father. At Ooleteka’s knee the white boy learned the language, customs and values of the Cherokees while developing what one historian would describe as “a deep sympathy for the Indian character.”