Dear Hamilton Herald News, It was only a short decade ago that our family would escape from the busyness of the metroplex to our hunting ranch in Hamilton County. I would run into town to Brookshires and, of course, grab the local newspaper.

If you haven’t heard or missed the story on the front page, I’m the new guy here at the Herald-News. I started on Sept. 1 and it’s been a blur of activity helping get last week’s paper to the press and then delivered to readers right before the annual Dove Fest. However, meeting and getting to know the staff here has been a pleasure and I feel like I’m joining a team of folks who really care about their work and serving the community. My first impressions of Kim, Kate, Jaxon, Janice and Roger are overwhelmingly positive and I hope to add to their collective efforts in producing a quality community newspaper, that has been serving this area over 151 years. I certainly don’t take that lightly or for granted.

My father, David Lengefeld, sold the Lengefeld Insurance Agency in 2012 to Extraco Banks, giving he and my mother Saundra, who was on the tail end of a fulfilling career as a Hamilton ISD educator, a well-deserved opportunity to retire. I continued working with Extraco for a year-and-a-half, assisting with the transition before taking over as chief operating officer of Crawford Custom Homes.

As the sun rose over the southeastern corner of Texas on the morning of Sep. 8, 1863, four Yankee warships began the bombardment of the pitiful excuse for a fort at Sabine Pass. Union strategists resolved in the summer of 1863 to compensate for the embarrassing New Year’s Day loss of Galveston with a surprise attack of their own. Rebel spies were spoon-fed false intelligence hinting at an enemy offensive to be launched from Shreveport, Louisiana. While the southerners concentrated their forces far to the north, the northerners secretly assembled a quartet of warships and 23 troop transports for a landing in southeast Texas at Sabine Pass. With the Confederates effectively outflanked, the Union armada would deposit 20,000 soldiers at the narrow strait where the Sabine River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Beaumont, Houston and the hub of the state’s rail system would be under Yankee control by the end of the week. The Rebel commander realized too late that the invasion expected at Marshall, where he had massed 10,000 troops, was coming instead at Sabine Pass. Certain that resistance by the tiny detachment would be futile, he telegraphed the Davis Guards to blow up Fort Sabine and run for their lives.