Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History Podcast.

If you're hearing this, you are one of over 13,000 people who downloaded this podcast and I'm very pleased and hope everyone is enjoying the show and learning some of the wonderful history of the great state of Texas.

Today we're going to discuss an event that occurred back in 1837 that was typical of the fighting spirit and the sense of honor of the early Texans.

The event involves two men who were absolutely dedicated to Texas.

So let's go back to 1837 and meet these guys and get wise about Texas.

The first person we're going to get to know is Albert Sidney Johnston.

He was born in Washington, Kentucky on February 2, 1803,

and he had a very strict religious upbringing in the Presbyterian Church.

In fact, his grandfather once resigned as

postmaster because the job started requiring him to open mail on Sundays which he

could not do in good conscience. Johnston himself used to tell people a story about his own childhood

and that he was renowned as the best marble player in the area. At one point he had won a whole jar full of

marbles.

He made the decision then and there that he would proceed to win all the marbles in

Kentucky and then the whole wide world.

So he buried his jar of marbles keeping just enough to get started in his conquest. He then got in a game with a boy who must have been rich he thought because he never ran out of marbles no matter how much young Johnston was winning.

After Johnston had finally won all of the kids' marbles,

he went back to bury him in the same place

and discovered that the other boy had actually seen him bury the first jar

and he had dug it up and used the

marbles to play against Johnston. So Johnston learned that his greed and vanity

had led to his winning back his own marbles, at least in his mind.

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