Jayhawkers

I also learned today that Texans in this area dodged the Confederate
army's draft during the Civil War by hiding in the dense woods. Since
the folks here were mostly agricultural laborers, not plantation
owners, they didn't own slaves, and so regarded the Confederate cause
as a rich man's interest. I asked the shop owner at Honey Island,
Texas where that town's name came from. I had guessed that the name
meant they raise either honey bees or beautiful young women there, but
the shop owner told me that the name dates back to the Jayhawkers
(those hiding from the Confederate draft). There was a hollow old tree
in the town that friends and family of the Jayhawkers filled with food
each night, so that the Jayhawkers could survive their extended
hide-out in the Big Thicket. By day the Confederate army would burn
parts of the forest to route out draft dodgers, but the woods were too
vast, and the Jayhawkers held out till the war's end, finding
sustenance at Honey Island. Understandibly, the shop owner is very
proud of his ancestors' standing up for what they thought was right.
That's some American history that I had never known.