I had browsed Abernathy's "Legendary Ladies of Texas" at a bookstore but did not purchase because it was not up to the quality of McLeRoy. I suspect that Abernathy did borrow some of her data from McLeRoy.

I can't think of Sophia without the following passage popping into my head. It is from Tom Brown's article "The First Settlement: Bird's Fort" in Darwin Payne, Ed., "Sketches of A Growing Town: Episodes and People of Dallas." Dallas: Southern Methodist University (1991)

. . . . . "The lake itself, shaped somewhat like a full brassiere, was first called Lake Sophia after Holland Coffee's wife because, as one soldier said, It too was a heavenly body."

Now I would describe the lake, which is essentialy unchanged 170 years later and now known as Calloway Lake, as an oxbow, but I can't get the earlier image out of my mind.

M C