WARBIRD HOME > AVG > CHENNAULT'S BIRTHPLACE?
Is this where Claire Chennault was born?
In 1893, we're told, John Stonewall Jackson Chennault was upset to find that a horse he'd bought for farm work was actually an unbroken mustang. That led to an argument, which led to a bullet being shot through the horse trader's hat. Mr Chennault thought it best to take himself and his pregnant wife Jessie "across the line" while the excitement died down. As a result, Claire Lee Chennault was born in Commerce, Texas, northeast of Dallas and 300 miles west of their home in Louisiana.
There's no documentary proof of this, but it's generally accepted. (His biographer Martha Byrd found the date -- September 6, 1893 -- in the family bible, and the general's son, Max Chennault, told me that he too had seen it there. To my sorrow, I neglected to ask them about the location.)
If the young family
did indeed live at 1501 Monroe Street in Commerce, the house must have
changed a bit in the century that followed. Today, the building strikes
me as the home of a doctor or lawyer, rather than a place where a Louisiana
cotton farmer might wait for a shooting episode to be forgotten. They
returned to Louisiana the following year and settled in the town of Gilbert,
in Franklin Parish (county) in the state's northeast.
In any event, the city of Commerce, the state of Texas, and the Chinese propagandist now regard it as settled that this house was where Claire Chennault came into the world. To make the point, it now boasts historical markers in English and Manadarin. What's more, on October 16, a life-sized statue of General Chennault was dedicated on Alamo Street, across from the Commerce city hall (photo on the left). A hundred Chinese donors were credited with paying for the statue. If you believe that, you'll probably also believe that they did so without a nudge from Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party -- and by a marvelous coincidence, just four weeks before Mr Xi came to the US to get a standing ovation from American business leaders at a $2000-a-plate dinner. (To sit at Mr Xi's table cost $40,000 a head. But what the hell -- it's tax deductible, right?)
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Updated May 2023
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