Larry Callies says God gave him a vision in 2017 to open a Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg, Texas. But he had no idea why.
There was a time when the museum would have been a natural fit for the cowboy and country music singer. Callies had serenaded former President George H.W. Bush and a host of former Houston mayors, including Lee P. Brown, Kathy Whitmire, Bob Lanier and Sylvester Turner. He had even opened for Selena.
Then he lost his voice in 1990 when he was diagnosed with dysphonia, a disorder that impairs voice production.
“I said ‘God, I can’t even talk. Why do you want me to open up a cowboy museum?’” said Callies. “He said, ‘Step out on faith.’ When I stepped out on faith, the museum appeared.”
Within a matter of weeks, he went from borrowing space in the back of a feed store for his saddle shop to opening his own small museum located in a blue-and-pink-colored strip center in downtown Rosenberg. He’s packed it with antique artifacts that date back to the early 1800s. The collection includes vintage irons, sewing machines, black powder guns, and stoves, to saddles, rows of unique barbed wires, and a hall of fame room with photos of his long lineage of cowboys and other notable, trailblazing Black cowboys.