John C. C. Hill
SHORTLY BEFORE HIS FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY, John Christopher Columbus Hill left home with his father and older brother to join the ill-fated 1842 Texas expedition to Mier, Tamaulipas, Mexico to end any questions over ownership of Texas. The story of John Hill's capture and subsequent adoption by President Antonio López de Santa Anna is one of the most fascinating and curious to come out of this extraordinary episode in Texas history. Particularly, interesting is John Hill's relation to George Alfred Hill, Jr., one of the major contributors to the San Jacinto Monument.
This session of the History Under the Star lecture series will run from 5:00 to 6:00 and will be followed by a time for questions and answers, and a reception.
Cost: $5 per person/$3 for Museum members; students are free. Purchase your ticket today.
M. M. McAllen, historian, author, and Director of Humanities at the Witte Museum, was raised on the San Juanito, also known as McAllen Ranch. An original Spanish Land Grant awarded by the Crown in 1790, it the oldest ranch owned continuously by one family in Texas.
Her four previous books include award-winning titles: James Ferdinand McCan: Painting a Historical Portrait of Texas, 1895 - 1925 (2022); Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico, (2014, optioned for a television series in 2019); A Brave Boy and a Good Soldier: John C. C. Hill and the Texas Expedition to Mier (2006); and the best-selling I Would Rather Sleep in Texas (2004). She has also contributed to numerous anthologies including an upcoming book on historic preservation in Texas.
McAllen is a past-president of the Texas State Historical Association and a new inductee into the Texas Institute of Letters. She has appeared on the PBS series History Detectives and contributed to Henry Louis Gate’s Faces of America. After earning her M.A. in history, she taught as a professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The History Under the Stars lecture series is made possible by a generous grant from the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation.