Texas in 1837
Texas in 1837

Author: Andrew Forest Muir

Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM

Published: 2011-05-18

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0292733984

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The earliest known eyewitness account of the first year of the Republic of Texas. Written anonymously in 1838–39 by a “Citizen of Ohio,” Texas in 1837 is the earliest known account of the first year of the Texas republic. Providing information nowhere else available, the still-unknown author describes a land rich in potential but at the time “a more suitable arena for those who have everything to make and nothing to lose than [for] the man of capital or family.” The author arrived at Galveston Island on March 22, 1837, before the city of Galveston was founded, and spent the next six months in the republic. His travels took him to Houston, then little more than a camp made up of brush shelters and jerry-built houses, and as far west as San Antonio. He observed and was generally unimpressed by governmental and social structures just beginning to take shape. He attended the first anniversary celebration of the Battle of San Jacinto and has left a memorable account of Texas’ first Independence Day. His inquiring mind and objective, acute observations of early Texas give us a way of returning to the past, and revisiting landmarks that have vanished forever.

Recollections of Early Texas
Recollections of Early Texas

Author: John Holmes Jenkins

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-07-05

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0292788606

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“[A] firsthand account by one who measured up to the demands of danger and hardships and lived to write about it . . . Invaluable . . . Well documented.” —Library Journal As a teenager in the 1950s, John Holmes Jenkins set to work on collecting and editing his great-great-grandfather’s writings about his experiences on the Texas frontier. John Holland Jenkins joined General Sam Houston’s army at age thirteen after losing his stepfather at the Alamo. In addition to fighting the Mexicans, he faced peril from Indian warriors as well as the everyday difficulties of pioneer life. His reports on the events of the time were included in newspapers with very small readerships—and, his descendant would discover, were sometimes used word-for-word in respected history textbooks without any credit given to the source. This volume includes these memoirs of the Texas Republic and early statehood, along with illustrations, notes, biographical sketches, a bibliography, and an index. “Fascinating . . . A commendable job.” —The New York Times “[These reminiscences] light up for whoever will read the earliest days of early English-speaking Texas.” —J. Frank Dobie, from the foreword