Aurora’s 1897 UFO Crash — A Texas Tale That Won’t Stay Buried

  by Tom Goodman

These days, stories about strange objects in the sky are no longer confined to the fringes. Military pilots testify before Congress. Intelligence officials brief lawmakers behind closed doors. The Pentagon has an office devoted to tracking what it now calls unidentified anomalous phenomena. Whatever these things are—or aren’t—the claims are being explored with new soberness.

Which makes this a fine moment to revisit one of Texas’s oldest sky stories.

On the morning of April 19, 1897, readers of the Dallas Morning News woke to a small headline: “A Windmill Demolishes It.” The article claimed that an unknown “airship” had drifted low over Aurora, Texas, a small town about 45 miles northwest of Fort Worth. The airship struck "Judge Proctor’s windmill," and exploded in a shower of debris. The lone occupant, described as the pilot, was said to be “not an inhabitant of this world.”

Local color filled out the account. A U.S. Signal Service officer opined that the pilot hailed from Mars. Papers found on the body were written in undecipherable symbols. The wreckage, fashioned from a strange silvery metal, defied identification. The pilot, mangled beyond recognition, received a Christian burial in the Aurora Cemetery.

At the time, few took it seriously. Newspapers of the era trafficked freely in hoaxes and high imagination, and the Aurora story was only one of hundreds of airship sightings reported across the country during 1896 and 1897. 

The story went quiet for nearly seventy years.

It resurfaced in the 1960s and roared back to life in the 1970s, when reporters and UFO enthusiasts descended on Aurora. Metal detectors swept the alleged crash site. Investigators fixated on a grave beneath a large oak tree, marked by a curious symbol said to resemble a flying craft. A handful of odd metal fragments fueled headlines. When talk turned to exhuming the supposed alien pilot, local residents and cemetery trustees drew a firm line. A court injunction ended the digging, and the mystery retreated underground once more.

Later embellishments followed, as they always do. One version had the alien surviving the crash, blending into town life, developing an enthusiasm for whiskey and gambling, and eventually meeting an untimely end at the hands of Texas Rangers.

With official eyes trained skyward again, Aurora’s airship still hovers mysteriously over the imagination.

Answers to Prayers that Inspired a Nation

 

For the month of January, our church is having 21 days of fasting and prayer. I became curious about some of the historical calls to prayer and fasting. In my research, I found many since the first settlers came to this continent. But we are not always told what the answers were in history books. Let me share a few significant answers to those calls to prayer and fasting.

Powerful answer to prayer in 1746

During the French and Indian War, prayer stopped the advance of the enemy. France desperately wanted Novia Scotia and other parts of Canada back from Britain. They also wanted to damage the colonies on the east coast of America.

French Admiral Jean-Pierre Louis Frederic de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, Duc d'Anville took  command of a fleet of 70 ships and 13,000 troops to fulfilled that desire. He arrogantly proclaimed he would take back Louisburg, Nova Scotia, and wreak havoc along America's east coast all the way to Georgia. Burning Boston was on his agenda.

A Day of Prayer and Fasting was called by Massachusetts Governor William Shirley on October 16, 1746, after hearing the plan for the French invasion. 

Here's a snippet about the prayer meeting.

 Reverend Thomas Prince, standing in the Old South Meeting House, prayed: "Send Thy tempest, Lord, upon the water… scatter the ships of our tormentors!"

According to Historian Catherine Drinker Bowen, as he finished his prayer the sky darkened, wind shrieked and church bells rang "a wild uneven sound… though no man was in the steeple."

Wrought with calamity

Admiral D'Anville's mission was slow to start. For reasons not explained, the fitting of the ship was slow and difficult. It didn't sail until June 22, 1746. Their journey took three months rather than the average six to eight weeks.

At the beginning of the journey, adverse winds slowed the fleet

Typhus and scurvy broke out onboard.

In the Azores, the fleet was trapped in a long dead calm. When the wind finally picked up, it became a vicious storm. Lightning struck several vessels. One ship's magazine, struck by lightning, ignited into a fire, caught the ammunition on fire and exploded, killing or wounding thirty men.

By August 24^th they had been at sea for two months but were still 1,400 km (870 miles) away from Nova Scotia.

September 10^th. The flag ship and a few others had arrived at Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. A violent gale scattered the fleet three days later. The damaged ships were forced to return to France.

By the time the expedition arrived in Nova Scotia in late September, hundreds of soldiers and sailors had died from typhus, scurvy and typhoid, and hundreds more were gravely ill.

Six days later, September 27^th, Admiral d'Anville died from a stroke.

His replacement Admiral Constantin-Louis d'Estourmel became overwhelmed and attempted suicide before resigning.

And the commander who took over, the Marquis de la Jonquiere, had planned to go ahead with the attack even with sick soldiers. Even after reinforcements arrived, Jonquiere changed his mind. He ordered his fleet back to France and told the Indian and French reinforcements to go home.

A poem immortalized the event.

The prayer was so powerful and the event so startling that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his Ballad of the French Fleet retelling the tale.  Click here to read.

In 1774

On May 24, 1774, in response to the British Blockade of the Boston Harbor, Thomas Jeffereson drafted a resolution in the Virgina House of Burgesses declaring a day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer "to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatened destruction of our civil rights."

Virginia's Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, considered the prayer resolution as a protest against King George. He dissolved the House of Burgesses. The legislatures moved their meeting to the loyal tavern and began planning the Continental Congress.

How exciting to know the response to a prayer pushed the founding fathers to press on.

Another powerful answer to prayer

1814

James Madison declared a Day of Prayer during the War of 1812. (1812-1815)

America was struggling to win the war. Britain was in a vengeful mood over the burning and looting of York in northern Canada. Madison requested the Day of prayer and fasting knowing the British were headed their way. Madison and the legislature had already fled Washington City (present day D.C.) They'd remove important documents.

On August 25, 1814, British soldier set fire to the White House, the Capital and a few other government buildings. We learned in school that the British only occupied D.C. for 26 hours. But it is rarely mentioned in history textbooks the why behind it. Dark clouds rolled in and a tornado touched down, sending debris flying. The British were bombarded with sections of roofs and chimneys. Horses and their riders pelted to the ground. Two cannons flew up in the air and landed yards away. It is said more British soldiers were killed by nature than from all the weapons of the Americans. Rain followed the tornado, extinguishing the fires. Americans saw it as Providence intervening. 

 

National Days of Prayer

Over the centuries, presidents have called for national days of prayer. I wonder what miracles were performed by God because of those prayers. In this new year, perhaps our prayers will turn the tide of unrest in a way that can only be attributed to God.

Cindy Ervin Huff, is a multi-published award-winning author in Historical and Contemporary Romance.  She’s a 2018 Selah Finalist. Cindy has a passion to encourage other writers on their journey. When she isn’t writing, she feeds her addiction to reading and enjoys her retirement with her husband of 50 plus years, Charles. Visit her at www.cindyervinhuff.com.

 

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COST OF PERSERVERANCE (Part III)

 

By Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

         Born dirt poor, in a one-room cabin in the primitive backwoods of Kentucky, with little formal education, his business enterprises often failing, his love life often wanting, and his political career in shambles, Abraham Lincoln persevered toward his God-ordained destiny.

        

He never apologized for his humble beginnings and once told a person, “I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat – just what might happen to any poor man’s son. “

         But now, Abe had hit a brick wall. He spent hours contemplating his life choices during the weary weeks in the saddle riding the circuit, serving the remote towns and villages.  

On one depressing day, which happened to be a Sunday, he decided to listen to Reverand James F. Jacques preach about the new birth. Moved by what he heard, Lincoln sought Jacques a few days later. They spent hours talking, and then they prayed together.

         Jacques later said, "I have seen hundreds brought to Christ, and if ever a person was converted, Abraham Lincoln was converted that night in my house. "

Lincoln read his Bible in earnest now. He was ready to toss politics out with his new conversion. He humbly had said, “Though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”

 But his wife felt God was calling him to help their countrymen. She encouraged him not to give up, and so he ran for president in 1860—and won!

The South threatened secession, the abolitionists wanted the slaves' freedom. Lincoln diligently read and studied his Bible. His daily readings encouraged Lincoln to remain hopeful. After all, there were Christians in the South as well as the North. God loved all equally. His Divine Providence would conquer Satan’s deviousness. All would work out right for his countrymen, northerners, and southerners alike.

I display these thoughts in the passages I quote in Swept into Destiny on Lincoln’s inauguration address to the public.  “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Lincoln made it clear, he would do God’s bidding and keep these United States united, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn oath to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.”

Lincoln, with his son, Willie, beside him, looked out at the crowd compassionately, yet with a heavy heart. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

    The South remained determined to succeed. They started to print their own money in March of 1861. They fired upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m. The battle clouds of war swirled like a hurricane above Washington, D.C. The Founding Fathers had hoped these United States of America would be a City set upon a Hill and emulate to the world that a nation under God, of the people, by the people and for the people could prosper and endure—but that idea was now a dream gone awry. On July 13, 1861, Congress passed an Act authorizing President Lincoln to declare a state of insurrection. And the bloody Civil War began that would separate brothers from fathers, sons from mothers, and young men from their true loves.

Two years later, Tad and Willie fell ill with typhoid fever. Tad recovered, but Willie died. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home,” Lincoln moaned. Willie was only eleven years old. William (Willie) Wallace Lincoln died on February 20, 1862. Sorrow trodden on the footsteps of Lincoln. Still, through the hardships of losing two sons (he had lost Eddie when he died of consumption at the young age of three years old, in 1850, and sadly, unknown to Abe at the time, he would lose Tad when he turned eighteen years old) Lincoln's faith remained unwavering. The Lincoln family continued to attend the Presbyterian Church on New York Avenue in Washington, DC.

With the Civil War in full fury, the hours of Lincoln's day were too fleeting to fulfill everyone's needs. Acquiring an interview with him was extremely difficult. One gentleman arrived fifteen minutes early for his 5:00 a.m. appointment. Waiting outside of Lincoln's office, he heard muttering, and he asked the secretary who it could be. Is someone in there with the president?

         "No, he (President Lincoln) is reading the Bible and praying."

         "Is that his habit so early in the morning?"

         "Yes, sir, he spends each morning from four to five reading the Scriptures and praying."

        

Throughout President Lincoln's remaining years, he sought guidance from the Bible and often quoted Mark 3:25: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand,' and I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free."

         God’s Word, the Bible, was Lincoln’s constant companion. He never shied from asking for help from his fellow Christians. Twice, Lincoln called for a day of humility, asking God's direction by fasting and prayer, in 1861, and again in 1863.

On his knees, he pleaded his case before the Almighty God. His concern was that it was God's judgment on the United States due to exploiting the slaves. He called for prayer, for "malice towards none and charity to all."

         That ‘charity’ was needed more than ever when Lincoln was called to the bloodied fields of Gettysburg.

         Don’t miss next month’s spine-chilling conclusion.

DESTINY’S WHIRLWIND (book 2 of the Destiny Series) A deathbed promise, a dashing Rough Rider, the parable of the Sower, take on unimaginable consequences. A disgruntled in-law and a vindictive lawyer place the McConnell clan in the clutches of life’s tangled web of deception and greed. As Collina fights to keep her promise, the words of Esther 8:6 ring in her thoughts. “How can I endure to see the evil that will come to my people?”

Destiny’s Whirlwind by Catherine Brakefield is a beautiful inspirational love story that will reel you in and win your heart…The story is beautifully written and filled with triumph and heartbreak. I couldn’t put it down…” LS 

Catherine is the award-winning author of Wilted Dandelions, Swept into Destiny, Destiny’s Whirlwind, Destiny of Heart, Waltz with Destiny and Love's Final Sunrise. She has written two pictorial history books, The Lapeer Area and Eastern Lapeer, and short stories for Guideposts Books, CrossRiver Media Group, Revell Books, Bethany House Publishers. Catherine and her husband of fifty-three years live on a ranch in Michigan and have two adult children, five grandchildren, four Arabian horses, three dogs, two cats, one bunny, and six chickens. See CatherineUlrichBrakefield.com for more information.

References:

https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/lincoln-quotes/?sort=1a&pg=44&sz=10&q=

https://lightmagazine.ca/abraham-lincolns-freeing-encounter-with-christ/

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-20/republican-party-founded

https://www.history.com/articles/abrham-lincoln-family

Swept into Destiny, copyright 2017 Catherine Ulrich Brakefield Pgs. 173,174

Charles Goodnight and the School Teacher

by Sherry Shindelar

Mary Ann (Molly) Dyer met Charles Goodnight in 1864 at Fort Belknap, Texas. The Civil War, in its last year, had taken a toll on the Texas frontier. Charles, a former scout and ex-Texas Ranger, was part of the Frontier Regiment, a Texas militia assigned to protecting the frontier from Indian attacks. On his way to becoming one of the founders of the Texas cattle drives, Charles kept a herd of cattle on the side within riding distance of the fort.

The petite school teacher caught the eye of the rough and tumble soldier/scout/cattleman.

Molly wasn’t born to the hard life of the frontier. However, in 1854, a pledge her father made to Sam Houston led to her leaving the tranquil, civilized life of a prominent lawyer’s daughter in Tennessee and immigrating to Texas with her family. Settlers were just beginning to trickle into the lands surrounding Fort Belknap in the mid 1850’s, and Comanche raids were a constant threat.

Molly’s parents passed away a few years later, and she was left to support her three youngest brothers. She could have fled back to Tennessee. Instead, she stuck to the frontier and became a school teacher. As the Civil War tore the country apart, the Texas frontier rolled back a hundred miles in some places due to Indian raids. Fort Belknap hovered at the edge of what remained.

Molly was an intelligent, determined woman with a heart for others. Her strength and courage were as enduring as the prairie sun. Charles was a fighter, and a natural born frontiersman, who didn’t know the word “quit.” The spark of attraction between them that sprang to life in 1864 flourished into an acquaintance and courtship that endured Charles’s months or even year-long cattle drives as he mapped out the Goodnight-Loving Trail and started making a name for himself and worked to build an empire.

By 1868 and 1869, Molly was teaching in Weatherford, Texas, the supply hub for Charles’s cattle drives. She’d had enough of the extended courtship. This was the man she wanted to spend her life with, and he needed to make a decision. Eventually, she gave him an ultimatum1. They married in 1870.

According to Molly’s biographer, Jane Little Botkin, “Research reveals a life-long love story between a prickly, illiterate, and foul-mouthed trail driver and a fun-loving but refined, petite school teacher who respected each other’s differences and short-comings.”

The refined school teacher traveled west with the rancher to the rough country near Pueblo, Colorado. They settled down on Charles’s ranch, but eventually, they found their true home in the Palo Duro Canyon, a 800 foot deep, ten to twenty mile wide canyon that stretched for one hundred and twenty miles.

Charles partnered with an Irish aristocrat, John Adair, to establish the first ranch in the Texas Panhandle. Adair furnished the money, and Charles built the ranch and the herd with Molly by his side. By the mid-1880’s, the ranch encompassed over 1,365,000 acres and supported more than 100,000 cattle.

Molly and Charles’s love endured long stretches of time apart, with cattle drives keeping him away for several seasons at a time. With only one female neighbor in the vast area of the canyon, Molly befriended the cowboys at the ranch and the occasional Indian that traveled through.

She would often go six months or a year without seeing anyone while the men were away on cattle drives. The beautiful walls of Palo Duro, colored like red Spanish skirts, must have felt like the end of the earth at times. But Molly thrived. She ran the ranch in her husband’s absence and was a friend to all in need, including the buffalo. Her heart ached for the baby bison orphaned by the wholesale slaughter of the herds from the late 1860’s through the 1880’s. She rescued and cared for the calves, eventually creating the Goodnight buffalo herd. Today, herds in several parks and zoos, including Yellowstone, are descendants of Molly’s herd.

Throughout the Goodnight’s fifty-six year marriage, Charles was a man who enjoyed the thrill of adventure and the unknown, willing to take great risks, gaining and losing land and wealth in the process. Molly was his foundation, the North Star of his compass.1 For his sake, she endured the loneliness of an entire canyon, but instead of being defeated, she thrived in his world and made a name for herself alongside his. She was described as a bubbly person, full of energy and heart. She also had a sense of humor, once covering Charles’s hat in pink chiffon.1 The spark of attraction ignited in 1864 between the school teacher and the cattleman blazed into an enduring flame that neither distance, time, hardship, or differences could snuff out. After her death, Charles lost himself because he’d lost the keeper of his heart.

The epitaph inscribed on Molly’s gravestone reads, “One who spent her life in the service of others.”

Sources:
1. Botkin, Jane Little. “I Accepted a Challenge: Researching and Writing Mary Ann Goodnight’s Story.” janelittlebotkin.com/2024/03/i-accepted-a-challenge-researching-and-writing-mary-ann-goodnights-story/. 11 March 2024

2. Roach, Joyce Gibson. “Mary Ann (Molly) Goodnight: The Mother of the Panhandle. Texas State Historical Association. tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/goodnight-mary-ann-dyer-molly. 21 June 2016.

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. A romantic at heart, she is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. Sherry is a multi-award-winning writer. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of forty-one years.

Connect with Sherry: website, newsletter, Amazon, FB, Goodreads

Can love blossom between a woman haunted by her family’s past and a man with a war-scarred heart?

Cora Scott is determined to hold onto her family's Texas ranch and provide a stable home for her young half brother, Charlie, despite the mounting challenges of post-Civil War frontier life. But when a scheming creditor threatens to seize their land, she must accept help from Ben McKenzie, a former Yankee soldier sent by her late brother. Though Ben's generosity and strength draw her, the man's private struggle she stumbles upon—too reminiscent of her father's alcoholism—makes her question whether she can trust her heart to him.

Ben McKenzie arrives in Texas intent on fulfilling his promise to his dying friend to protect Cora and Charlie. While using his inheritance to save their ranch, he battles not only the loss of their cattle but also his dependency on laudanum—a medicine that turned into a curse after his imprisonment at Andersonville. As his feelings for Cora deepen, he must choose between his promise to his father to take over their Philadelphia newspaper and his growing dream of a life with Cora in Texas.

🌹 The Wars of the Roses: England’s Turbulent Battle for a Crown

Few periods in English history capture the imagination like the War of the Roses—a dynastic struggle marked by political intrigue, shifting loyalties, and dramatic reversals of fortune. This was a series of civil wars fought between 1455 and 1487. Two rival branches of the royal Plantagenet family—the House of Lancaster and the House of York—were pitted against each other in a long and fierce battle for the English throne. 

Why were they called the Wars of the Roses? The name came well after the wars ended but are said to be named for the badges of the rivalry parties—the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster. The symbols were not as common back in the day of the Wars of the Roses as one might think due to how we connect them today to the era's conflict.

Henry VI

The conflicts roots went back to the reign of King Henry VI, a king who struggled with mental illness, placed England in a politically vulnerable position. His poor decisions due to his mental instability opened the door for Richard the Duke of York to step forward and lay his claim to the throne through descent from another son, Edward III. Both houses, York and Lancaster, believed that their bloodline gave them the stronger right to claim the throne. It wasn't long before their rivalry spiraled into full out conflict.  

Richard Duke of York

The sudden shifts of power and dramatic battles unfolded over three decades.   The First Battle of St. Albans in 1455 ignited the conflict, giving the House of York an early advantage. But the struggle was far from straightforward.

One of the bloodiest encounters, the Battle of Towton in 1461, resulted in a decisive York victory and placed Edward IV, son of the Duke of York, on the throne. But even then, Edward’s reign was strown with upheaval. Henry VI briefly regained power in 1470 before Edward reclaimed the crown the following year.

King Edward IV

The Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where Richard III, the last House of York king, was defeated by Henry Tudor, a House of Lancaster claimant was the last significant conflict between the two rival houses. Henry’s victory ended the Plantagenet line and ushered in the Tudor dynasty, beginning with his coronation as Henry VII.

Victorian depiction of Henry VI (right) sitting while the Dukes of York (left)
and Somerset (center) have an argument

Henry VII’s marriage to Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, symbolically united the warring houses and brought a long‑awaited peace to England. This union blended the red and white roses into the now‑famous Tudor Rose, a lasting emblem of reconciliation.

Elizabeth I

Under the Tudors, England entered a period of relative stability, setting the stage for the cultural and political transformations of the Renaissance and the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

The Wars of the Roses were more than a medieval power struggle—they reshaped the English monarchy, altered the course of European politics, and left a cultural imprint that we can see today. What began as a feud between cousins ended in a national saga of loss, resilience, and renewal.

If you’re intrigued by dynastic conflicts and medieval political intrigue, take a peek at my Winds of Change Series where there’s a whole world of history and romance waiting to be explored. 

Sword of Forgiveness: After the death of her cruel father, Brithwin is determined never again to live under the harsh rule of any man. Independent and resourceful, she longs to be left alone to manage her father's estate. But she soon discovers a woman has few choices when the king decrees she is to marry Royce, the Lord of Rosencraig. As if the unwelcome marriage isn't enough, her new husband accuses her of murdering his family, and she is faced with a challenge of either proving her innocence or facing possible execution.

Royce Warwick returns home after setting down a rebellion to find his family brutally murdered. When all fingers point to his betrothed and attempts are made on his life, Royce must wade through murky waters to uncover the truth. Yet Brithwin's wise and kind nature begins to break down the walls of his heart, and he soon finds himself in a race to discover who is behind the evil plot before Brithwin is the next victim. Purchase here.

NOW AVAILABLE IN AUDIO HERE!