A possible clue if we can consider that Richardson's Galveston News and Cave's Houston Telegraph may have shared news items from a single correspondant. From Sam Acheson's 1938, 35,000 Days in Texas,A History of the Dallas News and It's Forebears. " The staff of The News grew in the latter part of the war. L.K.Preston did more work as correspondant then as traveling agent,and W.P.Doran served as war correspondant on the Texas fronts,particularly along the southwestern coast,where the Federals had been able to lodge themselves in footholds at Indianola,Corpus Christi and in the border section around Brownsville."

Of course both papers were in Houston at this time. Of further interest is a telegraph line strung in 1863 between Houston and Beaumont and in 1864-Houston to Shreveport. No doubt the newspaper correspondants of the time would have burned those wires up with any interesting news flashes.