Nacogdoches Texas USA: The Nacogdoches Opera House 329 E Main St (1889)

Sunday, November 7, 2021

The Nacogdoches Opera House 329 E Main St (1889)

The Nacogdoches Opera House ca. 1900

NACOGDOCHES - The oldest town in Texas has always been a culturally sophisticated place

The locals, after all, built a downtown opera house in 1889. Jere Jackson, a historian at Stephen F. Austin State University and the author of a fine book about early Nacogdoches, says that the two-story structure was built to induce theatrical companies to stop over between engagements in Shreveport and Houston. A ticket office and businesses occupied the ground floor; a wide staircase led to the theater on the second floor. On the front of the building was an open gallery over the sidewalk, where theatergoers would congregate during intermissions.

So, the year is 1907, and you're part of a full house gathered on a Saturday afternoon to hear a New York musical troupe called the Four Nightingales. Your little town by this time is on the southern vaudeville circuit, so you're accustomed to seeing plays, melodrama, magic shows and musical acts. Some folks you know - not you, of course - have even taken in the occasional burlesque show at the opera house.

On this particular afternoon, the curtain opens onto a cramped stage, and four young men wearing sailor suits, white straw hats, clip-on bow ties and paper lapel roses break into a popular song. Accompanying themselves on guitar, mandolin and violin, they offer up a few more numbers in four-part harmony, a dramatic reading or two and then - uh-oh, you find yourself stifling a yawn. The boys are fine. You've heard better, but in Nacogdoches you've heard worse, as well.

What you may not know as you listen is that three of the young men are brothers, and they're a long way from home. Sons of impoverished German Jewish immigrants in a family of five kids, they've grown up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Their mom, Minnie Marx, is their manager. Their names are Julius (soon to be known to the world as Groucho), Milton (Gummo) and Adolph (Harpo), along with their friend Lon Levy.

They're doing well on the circuit, much better than when young Julius had to drop out of school at 14 and find work to help support the large family. Still, Minnie is pinching pennies as they travel around the country. Here's how Groucho recalled her parsimony years later in a biography: "Because we were a kid act, we traveled at half-fare, despite the fact that we were all around 20. Minnie insisted we were 13. 'That kid of yours is in the dining car smoking a cigar,' the conductor told her. 'And another one is in the washroom shaving.' Minnie shook her head sadly. 'They grow so fast.'"

The Marx Brothers were performing when a man rushed up the stairs and burst through the theater doors. "MULE'S LOOSE!," he shouted, or words to that effect. Members of the audience leaped from their seats and hurried to the second-floor gallery, where they pushed and shoved and craned their necks to see what was causing the commotion on the street below. Others spilled down the staircase and out the front doors as if the building were on fire.

Maybe it was one mule that kicked a cart to pieces and was dragging it down the street or maybe it was a team of mules pulling a wagon - no one knows for sure - but there was mayhem on Main Street on a Saturday afternoon, and for the moment the matinee crowd found it more interesting than the musical offerings of the young Marx brothers. On the small stage, the befuddled boys saw their audience disappear in mid-tune. They had been upstaged by a raucous mule. Or mules.

Once the skittish animal regained his stolid mulish composure, audience members, no doubt still buzzing about the excitement, drifted back in and took their seats. The Marx brothers were miffed, particularly Julius. He began scurrying about the stage like a frenzied mule himself, pausing every few steps to pepper the audience with ad-hoc insults. "Nacogdoches is full of roaches!" he shouted. ("Roaches" was all he could think of that rhymed with Nacogdoches.) "The jackass is the finest flower of Tex-ass!"

Milton and Adolph, and presumably the non-Marx member of the group, got caught up in the frenzy of absurd insults and slapstick craziness that possessed young Julius. The jokes and Texas jibes kept coming.

Groucho's son Arthur wrote decades later that the boys fully expected to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, but that's not what happened. The audience loved it, and at that moment - or so the story goes - the Marx brothers realized they were much better comedians than they were musicians. A star, indeed a comedic constellation, was born.

The brothers were still in Nacogdoches the next day, staying at the Rutland Hotel across the street from the opera house. Groucho was on the front porch with a group of guys playing a card game called euchre, when the local constabulary showed up and arrested them for playing cards on Sunday. Groucho didn't seem to mind. "The way I played it, they shouldn't have allowed it on Saturday either," he said years later.

Maybe, also, he'd already begun to realize that something big had happened the night before. In the next few days other Texas theater managers got word of the young upstarts, and when they moved on to Denison, they got a raise to $75 a week.

Photo by CJ McLaughlin

The Nacogdoches Opera House, complete with historical marker, is still on the corner of East Main and Church Street, although the building is now an art gallery. The little Texas town that changed his life seemed to stick with Groucho too. Now and then on his quiz show, "You Bet Your Life," something would remind him of Nacogdoches - and roaches.

And then there's "Duck Soup," with Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly, leader of Freedonia ("Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave and free!"). Did Groucho know about the real Fredonia? In 1820, Texans in and around Nacogdoches rebelled against Mexico and for six weeks were citizens of their own free state. They called it the Republic of Fredonia.

I wouldn't bet my life that Groucho got the name from Nacogdoches, but it's a fact that Fredonia Street intersects Main Street. It's just a few blocks from the opera house where he and his brothers found their real show-business calling.

Excerpts taken from article in the Houston Chronicle: Marx Brothers' road to stardom began in Nacogdoches

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The Flag of the Kingdom of Spain 1519 to 1821

The Spanish Flag of Castile and Leon flew over Texas for three hundred years. Spanish involvement in Texas began with Alonzo Alverez de Pineda's mapping of the Texas coast in 1519. Then, in 1542 Luis de Moscoso came to Nacogdoches and East Texas with the remnants of the Hernando de Soto expedition that had begun four years earlier in Florida. Spain's claim to Texas went back to the DeSoto-Moscoso Expedition, which claimed all of southeastern United States as Spanish Florida. Spain's occupation of Texas began in 1690 with the founding of Mission San Francisco de los Tejas on the Neches River. It continued in 1716 with the founding of six missions from the Neches River to Los Adaes in Western Louisiana, and 1721 with the founding of Presidio Nuestra Señora de Pilar de los Adaes----near present day Robeline, Louisiana. Los Adaes was the first capital of the Province of Texas. Texas was under the Spanish flag until Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821. Interestingly, the first flag used by the Spanish to claim Texas was not the familiar flag of Castile and Leon; it was a banner that had the Virgin of Guadalupe on one side and the crucified Christ on the other.

The Flag of the Kingdom of France 1685 to 1689

France's claim to a part of Texas went back to 1682, when Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, explored the Mississippi and claimed all the land in its drainage for France. For some mapmakers and politicians, this included Texas. He named this land Louisiana. La Salle came to Texas in 1685, after he accidentally sailed past his destination at the mouth of the Mississippi. He established Fort St. Louis and a French settlement on Garcitas Creek off Matagorda Bay. The settlement was ill fated from its beginning. LaSalle was murdered by his own men near Navasota in 1687, and the settlers and soldiers who remained at Fort St. Louis were killed or captured by the Indians in 1689. The Spanish found Fort St. Louis and burned it to the ground in 1690. This French intrusion into Spanish territory caused the Spanish to begin the occupation and settlement of East Texas to prevent further French invasions.

The Flag of the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition 1812 to 1813

Bernardo Gutiérrez and Lieutenant Augustus Magee flew their green flag of the new Republic of Texas over the Stone Fort in Nacogdoches in August of 1812. The Republican Army of the North, as these filibusters called themselves, had come from Natchitoches to Nacogdoches to recruit and train troops with the help of Samuel Davenport. They stayed for two months, drilled an army of over five hundred men, and then marched on to capture Goliad and San Antonio. Magee died at Goliad, and his place was taken by Samuel Kemper. Kemper and Gutiérrez captured San Antonio and issued a Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Texas on April 6, 1813. This brief time of Texas Independence was over when the Spanish general Joaquín de Arredondo destroyed the remains of the Republican army at the Battle of Medina on August 18, 1813. Augustus Magee and Samuel Davenport, who were in charge of the militia in Nacogdoches, were both Irishmen. That might have governed their choice of the Emerald Green flag as the Republican army's standard.

The Flag of the Dr. James Long Expedition 1819 and 1821

Some Americans believed that Texas was part of Louisiana as claimed by LaSalle in 1682 and should have been included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. One of those was Dr. James Long of Natchez, Mississippi, who came to Nacogdoches in June of 1819. Dr. Long proclaimed himself the president of his newly declared Republic of Texas. Dr. Long's red-striped Lone Star flag flew but briefly over the Stone Fort and his Republic of Texas. The Spanish caught Long when he went to Galveston, where he was seeking the assistance of pirate Jean Lafitte. There they defeated him and his meager army and chased him back to Louisiana. Dr. Long returned to Texas with a small army in 1821 and quickly captured the poorly manned garrison at Goliad. However, he was soon under siege by Spanish troops from San Antonio, who recaptured Goliad and took him captive. Dr. James Long was taken to Mexico City, jailed, then freed, and then murdered under mysterious circumstances by a Mexican soldier.

The Flag of the Mexican Federal Republic 1821 to 1836

Spanish Nacogdoches came under the Mexican flag in 1821, when Mexico finally won its independence from Spain. Mexico, in order to prove its ownership of Texas, began settling its eastern parts with the Anglos as early as December 1821. In that year Stephen F. Austin was allowed to bring the first of his Old Three Hundred Settlers into his grant on the Brazos. Thereafter, Americans poured through Nacogdoches, the Gateway to Texas, in search of cheap land. By the time of the Texas revolution in 1836, Anglos greatly outnumbered the Spanish-Mexican population. The Mexican flag that flew over Nacogdoches and still flies over Mexico was adopted in 1825. It has three vertical green, white, and red fields of equal width. In the center of the white field is the Mexican eagle sitting on a nopal cactus holding a snake in its beak. In Mexican legend, this was a sign to the Aztecs that they had reached the land that was to be their home.

The Flag of the Fredonia Rebellion 1826 to 1827

For a brief while, the flag that flew over Nacogdoches was the red-and-white banner of Haden Edward's thirty-seven-day Fredonia Rebellion. Edwards had obtained a grant from Mexico to settle eight hundred families in East Texas in the Nacogdoches area. Unfortunately for him, most of the land had already been settled---legally and illegally---by the early Spanish, by Indians, and by Anglo squatters. His intrusion caused such a disturbance that the Mexican government revoked his grant. Disappointed over the loss of his grant, on December 16, 1826, Haden and his brother Benjamin rode into Nacogdoches, planted their flag in front of the Stone Fort, and proclaimed the Republic of Fredonia. They had formed an uncertain alliance with the Cherokees, thus the reason for the red and white colors of the flag. The flag carried the words "Independence Freedom and Justice" and the Signatures of sixteen of the original Fredonians. The Fredonian army consisted of no more than thirty men, the Cherokees never joined them, and Stephen F. Austin raised a militia to put down the East Texas rebellion. The Fredonians gave up their cause on January 22, 1827, and retreated eastward across the Sabine.

The Flag of the Republic of Texas 1836 to 1846

Mexican Texas became the Republic of Texas after Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna on the plains of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. The first official flag was a white upside-down star on a blue background with T-E-X-A-S written between the points of the star. This flag never flew. The second flag of the Republic was adopted by the first Texas congress in December 1836. It bore a single, large gold star on a blue field. This flag was the same design as the "Bonnie blue flag that bears a single star" that was so popular among the Southern troops during the Civil War. The Lone Star flag that we now use was designed by Texas Senator William H. Wharton and was officially adopted by the Senate under President Mirabeau B. Lamar in 1839. The new flag kept the white star on the blue field, but now the blue field was a vertical stripe which occupied one-third of the flag, and it was balanced by horizontal white and red stripes, on the other two-thirds. This Texas flag has been prominently displayed for over 150 years.

The Flag of the Confederate States of America 1861 to 1865

For four years, the Stars and Bars flew over Nacogdoches and Texas. After years of conflicts of interest between the North and the South over states rights, slavery, and the right of secession, the Civil War began in March of 1861. Texas seceded and joined the Confederate States of America. It sent its Texas brigades into battle, and suffered for four years with the rest of the Confederacy before General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. The most enduring of the Confederate flags during the War was the Stars and Bars with the square of blue holding a circle of the seven original seceding states. Texas was the seventh star. Because the Confederate Stars and Bars and the Union Stars and Stripes were easily confused in the heat of battle, General P. G. T. Beauregard introduced a Confederate battle flag. This was a square red flag with a white-bordered blue cross running diagonally from corners to corners. The cross contained thirteen stars representing the eleven Confederate states plus Kentucky and Missouri. This battle flag became the flag most closely identified with the Southern cause. The Confederate Stars and Bars came down in Texas after April 1863 and Appomattox, and the United States Stars and Stripes have been flying over this State ever since.

The Flag of the United States of America since 1846

On February 19, 1846, the Lone Star flag was lowered over the Texas state capitol in Austin, and the Stars and Stripes was raised. The Republic of Texas had become the State of Texas. From the beginning of the Republic in 1836, the majority of the Texians, most of whom had come directly from the States, had wanted Texas to join the Union. But many in the Union did not want Texas in the United States. Some did not want one more Southern slave-holding state, and some were afraid of causing a war with Mexico. Nevertheless, on July 4, 1845, the Texas congress voted to accept the articles of annexation offered by United States President James K. Polk, and on December 29, 1845, the congressional resolution proclaiming Texas as a state in the Union was signed by President Polk. The Old Glory that was raised above the Texas state capitol on the following February 19, 1846, had twenty-eight stars in four rows of seven stars each. Except for the four years of the Civil War, 1861 to 1865, these Stars and Stripes have since 1846 flown over the State of Texas.

Nacogdoches Texas USA

Nacogoches

Sunday, November 7, 2021

The Nacogdoches Opera House 329 E Main St (1889)

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