News

AUSTIN – Governor Greg Abbott today announced the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) is providing more than $305.5 million in emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits for the month of August. The allotments are expected to help about 1.5 million Texas households.

The presence of the invasive emerald ash borer (EAB) has been confirmed in two additional Texas counties this month – Morris and Rusk. EAB is now confirmed in 11 Texas counties, five of those added just this year.

The Patterson’s were always an industrious family, but maybe none more so than this generation who were instrumental in the formation of Bloomburg, Texas. James Wesley Patterson, son of James Marvin and Lucinda, was their third and tallest child. Known as Big Jim Patterson, he would grow to be an astounding 8’ 4” tall before joining the Sells Brothers Circus in the 1870’s and performing as their sideshow’s “World’s Tallest Man.” George Washington “GW” Patterson was the sixth of nine children parented by the Reverend and Lucinda Patterson, their second child born in Cass County in 1853. GW met and married his wife Elizabeth “Lizzy” Eleonore Bankston in 1875 Brightstar, Arkansas. GW and Lizzy would have eleven children together over the next twenty years. George’s brother Samuel Patterson married Mary Emma Stuckey, daughter of John Mallard Stuckey who co-chartered the Brightstar Mason Lodge with Reverend James Marvin Patterson.