In the 1840s an organization of German noblemen, the Mainzner Adelsverein, attempted to settle thousands of German emigrants on the Texas frontier. Nassau Plantation, located near modern-day Round Top, Texas, in northern Fayette County, was a significant part of this story. James C. Kearney has studied a wealth of original source material (much of it in German) to illuminate the history of the plantation and the larger goals and motivation of the Adelsverein. This new study highlights the problematic relationship of German emigrants to slavery. Few today realize that the society’s original colonization plan included ownership and operation of slave plantations. Ironically, the German settlements the society later established became hotbeds of anti-slavery and anti-secessionist sentiment. Several notable personalities graced the plantation, including Carl Prince of Solms-Braunfels, Johann Otto Freiherr von Meusebach, botanist F. Lindheimer, and the renowned naturalist Dr. Ferdinand Roemer. Dramatic events also occurred at the plantation, including a deadly shootout, a successful escape by two slaves (documented in an unprecedented way), and litigation over ownership that wound its way to both the Texas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Spartan Band (coined from a chaplain’s eulogistic poem) author Thomas Reid traces the Civil War history of the 13th Texas Cavalry, a unit drawn from eleven counties in East Texas. The cavalry regiment organized in the spring of 1862 but was ordered to dismount once in Arkansas. The regiment gradually evolved into a tough, well-trained unit during action at Lake Providence, Fort De Russy, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkins' Ferry, as part of Maj. Gen. John G. Walker's Texas division in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Reid researched letters, documents, and diaries gleaned from more than one hundred descendants of the soldiers, answering many questions relating to their experiences and final resting places. He also includes detailed information on battle casualty figures, equipment issued to each company, slave ownership, wealth of officers, deaths due to disease, and the effects of conscription on the regiment’s composition. “The hard-marching, hard-fighting soldiers of the 13th Texas Cavalry helped make Walker’s Greyhound Division famous, and their story comes to life through Thomas Reid’s exhaustive research and entertaining writing style. This book should serve as a model for Civil War regimental histories.”—Terry L. Jones, author of Lee’s Tigers

William & Rosalie is the gripping and heartfelt account of two young Jewish people from Poland who survive six different German slave and prison camps throughout the Holocaust. In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, cruel human medical experiments, eyewitness accounts of brutal murders of men, women, children, and even infants, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually explicit view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people. The lovers’ story begins in Krakow’s ancient neighborhood of Kazimierz, after the Germans occupy western Poland. A year later they marry in the ghetto; by 1942 deportations have wasted both families. After Rosalie is saved by Oskar Schindler, the husband and wife end up at the Plaszow work camp under Amon Goeth, the bestial commandant played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List. While Rosalie is on “heaven patrol” removing bodies from the camp, William is working in the factories. But when Rosalie is shipped by train to a different factory camp, William sneaks into a boxcar to …

Transcript of an interview with William R. Gill, agronomist and Army veteran (A Company, 389th Infantry Regiment, 98th Division), concerning his experiences in the Pacific Theater during World War II and his experiences and role in the Pacific War Crimes Tribunal in postwar Japan. Appendix includes five leaves from "The hunt for Tokyo Rose,' By Russell Warren Howe and four leaves from "Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific," by Masayo Duus.

The Sutton-Taylor Feud of DeWitt, Gonzales, Karnes, and surrounding counties began shortly after the Civil War ended. The blood feud continued into the 1890s when the final court case was settled with a governmental pardon. Of all the Texas feuds, the one between the Sutton and Taylor forces lasted longer and covered more ground than any other. William E. Sutton was the only Sutton involved, but he had many friends to wage warfare against the large Taylor family. The causes are still shrouded in mystery and legend, as both sides argued they were just and right. In April 1868 Charles Taylor and James Sharp were shot down in Bastrop County, alleged horse thieves attempting to escape. During this period many men were killed “while attempting to escape.” The killing on Christmas Eve 1868 of Buck Taylor and Dick Chisholm was perhaps the final spark that turned hard feelings into fighting with bullets and knives. William Sutton was involved in both killings. “Who sheds a Taylor's blood, by a Taylor's hand must fall” became a fact of life in South Texas. Violent acts between the two groups now followed. The military reacted against the killing of two of their soldiers in …

Women in Civil War Texas is the first book dedicated to the unique experiences of Texas women during this time. It connects Texas women’s lives to southern women’s history and shares the diversity of experiences of women in Texas during the Civil War. Contributors explore Texas women and their vocal support for secession, coping with their husbands’ wartime absences, the importance of letter-writing, and how pro-Union sentiment caused serious difficulties for women. They also analyze the effects of ethnicity, focusing on African American, German, and Tejana women’s experiences. Finally, two essays examine the problem of refugee women in east Texas and the dangers facing western frontier women. The contents include: "Everyone has the war fever" / Vicki Betts -- Caroline Sedberry, politician's wife / Dorothy Ewing -- He said, she said / Beverly Rowe -- Finding joy through hard times / Brittany Bounds -- Black Texas women and the freedom war / Bruce A. Glasrud -- Black women and Supreme Court decisions during the Civil War era / Linda S. Hudson -- Mexican-Texan women in the Civil War / Jerry Thompson and Elizabeth Mata -- Courage on a Texas frontier / Judith Dykes-Hoffman -- "In favor of our fathers' country …

From book jacket: "Submissiveness is not my role, but certain platitudes on certain occasions are among the innocent deceits of the sex." A strong character with a fervent belief in woman's changing place, Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832-1899) was not content to live the life of a typical nineteenth-century Southern belle. Wife of Francis Wilkinson Pickens, the secessionist governor of South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War, Lucy was determined to make her mark in the world. She married "the right man," feeling that "a woman with wealth or prestige garnered from her husband's position could attain great power." She urged Pickens to accept a diplomatic mission to the court of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, and in St. Petersburg Lucy captivated the Tsar and his retinue with her beauty and charm. Upon returning to the states, she became First Lady of South Carolina just in time to encourage a Confederate unit named in her honor (The Holcombe Legion) off to war. She was the only woman to have her image engraved on Confederacy paper currency, the uncrowned "Queen of the Confederacy."

U.S. Marine George Burlage was part of the largest surrender in American history at Bataan and Corregidor in the spring of 1942, where the Japanese captured more than 85,000 troops. More than forty percent would not survive World War II. His prisoner-of-war ordeal began at Cabanatuan near Manila, where the death rate in the early months of World War II was fifty men a day. Sensing that Cabanatuan was a death trap, he managed to get transferred to the isolated island of Palawan to help build an airfield for his captors. Malaria and other tropical diseases caused him to be sent to Manila for treatment in 1943 (a year later, 139 of his fellow POWs were massacred on Palawan). After another year of building airfields, Burlage survived a 38-day voyage in the hull of a Japanese hell ship and ended the war as a miner for Mitsubishi in northern Japan. By sheer luck, strength, and a bit of sabotage, he survived and was freed in September 1945 after the Japanese surrendered. He had endured starvation and torture and lost half of his prewar weight, but no one had killed him. After the war Burlage became a journalist and wrote about …

Following the Civil War, the United States was fully engaged in a bloody conflict with ex-Confederates, conservative Democrats, and members of organized terrorist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, for control of the southern states. Texas became one of the earliest battleground states in the War of Reconstruction. Throughout this era, white Texans claimed that Radical Republicans in Congress were attempting to dominate their state through “Negro-Carpetbag-Scalawag rule.” In response to these perceived threats, whites initiated a violent guerilla war that was designed to limit support for the Republican Party. They targeted loyal Unionists throughout the South, especially African Americans who represented the largest block of Republican voters in the region. Was the Reconstruction era in the Lone Star State simply a continuation of the Civil War? Evidence presented by sixteen contributors in this new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, argues that this indeed was the case. Topics include the role of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the occupying army, focusing on both sides of the violence. Several contributors analyze the origins of the Ku Klux Klan and its operations in Texas, how the Texas State Police attempted to quell the violence, and Tejano adjustment to Reconstruction. Other chapters …

Identified with Texas is the first published biography of Texas Governor Elisha Marshall Pease (1812-1883), presented by historian Elizabeth Whitlow as a dual biography of Pease and his wife, Lucadia Niles Pease (1813-1905). Pease volunteered to fight in the first battle of the Revolution at Gonzales, and he served with the Texan Army at the Siege of Bexar. Pease served in the first three state legislatures after Texas joined the Union in 1845, was elected governor in 1853 and re-elected in 1855, and returned to the governorship as an interim appointee from 1867 to 1869 during Reconstruction. His achievements in all these positions were substantial. Lucadia Niles Pease was known as the Governor’s “Lady.” Moreover, her early, independent travel and her stated position as a “woman’s rights woman” in the 1850s, as well as her support for sending a daughter away to college in the 1870s to earn a degree, all serve as markers of her intelligence and the strength of her convictions. To tell their story, Whitlow mined thousands of letters and papers saved by the Pease family and housed in the Austin History Center of the Austin Public Library, as well as in the Governor’s Papers at the …

A History of Fort Worth in Black & White fills a long-empty niche on the Fort Worth bookshelf: a scholarly history of the city's black community that starts at the beginning with Ripley Arnold and the early settlers, and comes down to today with our current battles over education, housing, and representation in city affairs. The book's sidebars on some noted and some not-so-noted African Americans make it appealing as a school text as well as a book for the general reader. Using a wealth of primary sources, Richard Selcer dispels several enduring myths, for instance the mistaken belief that Camp Bowie trained only white soldiers, and the spurious claim that Fort Worth managed to avoid the racial violence that plagued other American cities in the twentieth century. Selcer arrives at some surprisingly frank conclusions that will challenge current politically correct notions. "Selcer does a great job of exploring little-known history about the military, education, sports and even some social life and organizations."--Bob Ray Sanders, author of Calvin Littlejohn: Portrait of a Community in Black and White.

Interview with Curtis J. Smith, a airline industry worker and community organizer from Longview, Texas. Smith discusses his family history, his education, working for his father, moving to Dallas, service in the Navy during WWII, getting married, working for Braniff International and American Airlines, living in Hamilton Park, his children, church activities, work with the Interorganizational Council and the Civic League, and development of the neighborhood.

Interview with Curtis Smith, an airline employee and community leader, concerning his experiences as a resident of Hamilton Park, Texas from 1956 to 1990. Smith discusses his early life in East Texas, his employment in Dallas, his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, job promotions with Braniff, African-American housing in Dallas, his decision to purchase a home in Hamilton Park in 1956, flooding problems, shopping in the community, traffic and access problems, social activities, church activities, Civic League, Hamiltonians, Interorganizational Council, political activities, zoning controversies, Willowdell Park, and the "Buy Out."

On February 1, 1861, delegates at the Texas Secession Convention elected to leave the Union. The people of Texas supported the actions of the convention in a statewide referendum, paving the way for the state to secede and to officially become the seventh state in the Confederacy. Soon the Texans found themselves engaged in a bloody and prolonged civil war against their northern brethren. During the course of this war, the lives of thousands of Texans, both young and old, were changed forever. This new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, incorporates the latest scholarly research on how Texans experienced the war. Eighteen contributors take us from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields, and from the halls of the governor’s mansion to the halls of the county commissioner’s court in Colorado County. Also explored are well-known battles that took place in or near Texas, such as the Battle of Galveston, the Battle of Nueces, the Battle of Sabine Pass, and the Red River Campaign. Finally, the social and …

Interview with Navy veteran Frank H. Bigelow, survivor of the siege of Corregidor. The interview includes Bigelow's personal experiences about being a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II, boyhood in North Dakota, various jobs during the Great Depression, and enlisting in the Navy. Additionally, Bigelow speaks about volunteering for duty in the Philippines and his assignment to the submarine tender USS Canopus, pre-war military life in the Philippines, the Japanese bombing of Cavite Navy Yard and the destruction of the Canopus, retreating to Bataan and to Corregidor, the fall of Corregidor, his confinement in the 92nd Garage area, the forced march down Dewey Boulevard in Manila and confinement at Cabanatuan, hell ship to Japan, coal mining for Mitsui Heavy Industries, the amputation of his leg by fellow prisoners after a mining accident, liberation, and the destruction in Nagasaki due to the atomic bomb. The interview includes an appendix with an article titled "A Soldier's Story."

James Abijah Brooks (1855-1944) was one of the four Great Captains in Texas Ranger history, others including Bill McDonald, John Hughes, and John Rogers. Over the years historians have referred to the captain as “John” Brooks, because he tended to sign with his initials, but also because W. W. Sterling’s classic Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger mistakenly named him as Captain John Brooks. Born and raised in Civil War-torn Kentucky, a reckless adventurer on the American and Texas frontier, and a quick-draw Texas Ranger captain who later turned in his six-shooter to serve as a county judge, Brooks’s life reflects the raucous era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American West. As a Texas Ranger, Brooks participated in the high profile events of his day, from the fence-cutting wars to the El Paso prizefight, from the Conner Fight–where he lost three fingers from his left hand–to the Temple rail strike, all with a resolute demeanor and a fast gun. A shoot-out in Indian Territory nearly cost him his life and then jeopardized his career, and a lifelong bout with old Kentucky bourbon did the same. With three other distinguished Ranger captains, Brooks witnessed and helped promote the …

A selection of letters written to the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper from 1870-1871 about steamboat travel on the Red River in 1838-1841. W. W. Withenbury was a famous river boat captain during the mid-1800s. In retirement, he wrote a series of letters for the Cincinnati Commercial, under the title "Red River Reminiscences." Jacques Bagur has selected and annotated 39 letters describing three steamboat voyages on the upper Red River from 1838 to 1842. Withenbury was a master of character and incident, and his profiles of persons, including three signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, reflect years of acquaintance. The beauty of his writing ranks this among the best of the reminiscences that were written as the steamboat era was declining. “Bagur is an expert on the Red River in the nineteenth century, and it shows in this work. Informative and entertaining.” —Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell, author of Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State “This will rank as a great assistance to researchers if anyone wants to attack history of the Red River again. Some of his in-depth research was fabulous.”—Skipper Steely, author of Red River Pioneers

Of the roughly 3,500 volunteer regiments and batteries organized by the Union army during the American Civil War, only a small fraction has been studied in any scholarly depth. Among those not yet examined by historians was one that typified the western armies commanded by the two greatest Federal generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. The Forty-fifth Illinois Volunteer Infantry was at Fort Donelson and Shiloh with Grant in 1862, with Grant and Sherman during the long Vicksburg campaign of 1862 and 1863, and with Sherman in the Meridian, Atlanta, Savannah, and Carolinas campaigns in the second half of the war. These Illinois men fought in several of the most important engagements in the western theater of the war and, in the spring of 1865, were present when the last important Confederate army in the east surrendered. The Forty-fifth was also well connected in western politics. Its unofficial name was the “Washburne Lead Mine Regiment,” in honor of U.S Representative Elihu B. Washburne, who used his contacts and influences to arm the regiment with the best weapons and equipment available early in the war. (The Lead Mine designation referred to the mining industry in northern Illinois.) In addition, …

Our Stories: Black Families in Early Dallas enlarges upon two pubLications by the late Dr. Mamie McKnight’s organization, Black Dallas Remembered—First African American Families of Dallas (1987) and African American Families and Settlements of Dallas (1990). Our Stories is the history of Black citizens of Dallas going about their lives in freedom, as described by the late Eva Partee McMillan: “The ex-slaves purchased land, built homes, raised their children, erected their educational and religious facilities, educated their children, and profited from their labor. “ Our Stories brings together memoirs from many of Dallas’s earliest Black families, as handed down over the generations to their twentieth-century descendants. The period covered begins in the 1850s and goes through the 1930s. Included are detailed descriptions of more than thirty early Dallas communities formed by free African Americans, along with the histories of fifty-seven early Black families, and brief biographies of many of the early leaders of these Black communities. The stories reveal hardships endured and struggles overcome, but the storytellers focus on the triumphs over adversity and the successes achieved against the odds. The histories include the founding of churches, schools, newspapers, hospitals, grocery stores, businesses, and other institutions established to nourish and …

According to Renaissance woman and Pepper Lady Jean Andrews, although food is eaten as a response to hunger, it is much more than filling one's stomach. It also provides emotional fulfillment. This is borne out by the joy many of us feel as a family when we get in the kitchen and cook together and then share in our labors at the dinner table. Food is comfort, yet it is also political and contested because we often are what we eat--meaning what is available and familiar and allowed. Texas is fortunate in having a bountiful supply of ethnic groups influencing its foodways, and Texas food is the perfect metaphor for the blending of diverse cultures and native resources. Food is a symbol of our success and our communion, and whenever possible, Texans tend to do food in a big way. This latest publication from the Texas Folklore Society contains stories and more than 120 recipes, from long ago and just yesterday, organized by the 10 vegetation regions of the state. Herein you'll find Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson's Family Cake, memories of beef jerky and sassafras tea from John Erickson of Hank the Cowdog fame, Sam Houston's barbecue sauce, and stories …

This thesis analyzes the political career of Oran M. Roberts during the critical period from 1850 to 1873. Through a reassessment of Roberts's extensive personal papers in the context of modern historical scholarship, the author explains how Roberts's political philosophy reflected the biases and prejudices typical of his era, as well as his own material interests and ambitions. Topic areas covered include Roberts's position on the Compromise of 1850, his constitutional philosophy, his involvement in the secession movement in Texas (including his service as president of the state secession convention), his military career during the Civil War, his participation in Presidential Reconstruction, his views on Congressional Reconstruction, and his role in the process of "redemption" in Texas.

Founded in 1845 as a steamboat port at the entryway to western markets from the Red River, Jefferson was a thriving center of trade until the steamboat traffic dried up in the 1870s. During its heyday, the town monopolized the shipping of cotton from all points west for 150 miles. Jefferson was the unofficial capital of East Texas, but it was also typical of boom towns in general. For this topical examination of a frontier town, Bagur draws from many government documents, but also from newspaper ads and plats. These sources provide intimate details of the lives of the early citizens of Jefferson, Texas. Their story is of interest to both local and state historians as well as to the many readers interested in capturing the flavor of life in old-time East Texas. “Astoundingly complete and a model for local history research, with appeal far beyond readers who have specific interests in Jefferson.”—Fred Tarpley, author of Jefferson: Riverport to the Southwest

Interview with Lloyd V. Willey, U.S. Marine Corps WWII veteran and survivor of the sinking of the USS Houston, concerning his experiences as as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II. Appendix includes poems written by the interviewee and photocopied picture of the interviewee.

Utilizing many sources new to publication, James L. Haley delivers a most readable and enjoyable narrative history of Texas, told through stories—the words and recollections of Texans who actually lived the state’s spectacular history. From Jim Bowie’s and Davy Crockett’s myth-enshrouded stand at the Alamo, to the Mexican-American War, and to Sam Houston’s heroic failed effort to keep Texas in the Union during the Civil War, the transitions in Texas history have often been as painful and tense as the “normal” periods in between. Here, in all of its epic grandeur, is the story of Texas as its own passionate nation.