The Hamilton House

I decided to stay at a bed and breakfast that my recruiter found. It is this yellow Pollyanna house called the Hamilton House. It is pretty cool.

Welcome to Mexia

Mexia is a small central Texas town with a lot of Wild West history. Back in the day it was in the middle of rolling hills roaming with buffalo nomadic native Comanche bands that had hunted in the area for centuries. Whites came to settle the area in the early 1800s. Because of tension between the whites and the aggressive Comanches in the area, a fort was established near where the town is currently.

Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by a Comanche raiding party when she was 9, shortly after she came to the area with her family. By the time she was found almost 30 years later she had forgotten the majority of English she spoke as a child and had completely assimilated into the Comanche culture. She was married to the Comanche war chief Nacona and they had 3 children (one of whom was Quannah Parker, the last free Comanche war chief before the Comanche finally submitted to the reservations in Oklahoma. As a tribute to his wife, Nacona never took additional wives even though it was tradition for the war chief to do so. When Cynthia Ann (renamed Naduah "someone found" by her captors) was reclaimed by Sul Ross and his men, Nacona never fully recovered from losing his beloved. Naduah never fully recovered either from being separated from the people and culture that had become her own.

Mexia is named for a man who in the days prior to the Texas revolution was a federalist who became disillusioned at Santa Anna's turn from federalist to centralist. José Antonio Mexia was a mexican senator who participated in an uprising against Santa Anna in 1834 and exiled from Mexico (including Texas at the time). In 1839 he joined with General Urrea in a rebellion against Santa Anna and was captured in Veracruz and executed. His estate was located near present day Groesbeck and Mexia, and when Mexia became a town they decided to honor a local champion of freedom from days gone by. 

People frequently mispronounce the name of the little community (Muh-hey-uh). The town's motto is "A great place, no matter how you pronounce it.” Mexia is famous for three things: the state school, that nobody knows where Mexia is until it is written down, and Anna Nicole Smith.