The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 54, July 1950 - April, 1951 Page: 265
544 p. : ill., ports., maps. (some col.) ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Steward A. Miller and the Snively Expedition
ticulars of the expedition should be almost unknown in Ameri-
can annals may at first seem surprising.
It was not prejudice, maliciousness, or a lack of scholarship
which caused the Snively Expedition to be neglected, but only
that the material was not available to those who might have put
the incident in its rightful place a century ago. The aphorism,
"No document, no history," could not be more true than in
connection with the Snively Expedition. The Texan Santa Fe
Expedition of 1841 had George Wilkins Kendall; the Mier Ex-
pedition had Thomas Jefferson Green; the Snively Expedition,
too had its historian, but his work has been in private hands for
more than a century.
One of the persons who responded to Snively's call for men
to participate in the partisan expedition was Steward Alexander
Miller. A native of Virginia, he had come to Texas in 1839 and
settled in Crockett, Houston County, where he established a
business and began the study of law. He was thirty-seven years
old at the time he set out to join the expedition.'
Although apparently it was not his habit to keep a diary,
Miller did take with him on the trip a little account book and a
stack of unused ballots on which he recorded each day's progress
and events. The journal which he kept is the torch which illu-
minates the Snively Expedition and makes it possible to bring
the incident from comparative obscurity to light. This unques-
tionably was its purpose, for on the site of present Gainesville,
Texas, Miller wrote:
I am now sitting on the naked Bank of the greatest river for
navigation in the Republic, acting in the double, yea, tribble
capacity of a fisherman, a soldier, and a noter of events and
materials for some future historian.
Here were high purposes and a definite sense of history, and
Steward A. Miller is entitled, after the lapse of more than a
century, to be known as the historian of the Snively Expedition.
It has been said that "the preservers of history are as worth-
while as the makers." Miller was both a maker and a preserver
of history; he did not attempt to complete his task alone, but
TA. A. Aldrich, The History of Houston County, Texas (San Antonio, 1943),
175-176.265
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 54, July 1950 - April, 1951, periodical, 1951; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101133/m1/373/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.