The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 188

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Unfortunately, he also
consulted the script-writers for John Wayne's movie, "The Ala-
mo," and other highly questionable "authorities." His lack of
discrimination in selection of materials resulted in a potpourri of
fact and fiction.
This flagrant fault is compounded with writing and editing
of rather poor quality. Curtis writes with the hortatory zeal of an
orator at the Old Settler's Reunion. His sentences, like the Brazos
River, are interminable, meandering and far from clear.
A classic example of his circumlocution and his aversion to
the use of that restful punctuation mark, the period, is this
sentence-paragraph:
When John Purdy Reynolds left Tennessee he went with another
resident of his Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, William McDowell,
who also became one of Davy Crockett's Mounted Tennessee Volun-
teers, according to Catherine McDowell, Assistant Alamo Research
Librarian, a collateral descendant of Alamo hero William McDowell,
who revealed that William McDowell had written to 'The Honor-
able Mirabeau B. Lamar, Vice President or Hon. P. W. Grayson,
Atty. Genl. of the Republic of Texas, on October 9th, 1837, from
'Newberry, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, stating that he was Wil-
liam McDowell's heir, and that his brother, William, the Alamo
hero, was from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, as is recorded in the
fabulous Lamar Papers, a handsomely annotated six volume edition,
precious Texana, edited by Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., of the Texas
State Library and ably assisted by Texas State Library archivist
Katherine Elliott, Winnie Allen and Harriet Smither, copies of
which should be in every library in the United States, for their
valuable documented contribution to the fabulous Texas story.
Add to such sins of syntax an almost complete lack of editing
or proofreading, and the result is truly remarkable. Few publi-
cations have managed to refer to "David Dwight Eisenhower"
and "John Fitzgeralt Kennedy" on the same page. Few have so
consistently refused to close quotation marks, or to be concerned
with the fundamentals of spelling. One of the most delightful
fluffs in this epic, deals with one "Hannah Armstrong, of Nor-
folk, Virginia, who had served under General Washington at
Valley Forge."
The booklet was intended, according to its introduction, as "a
documented tribute to the best men Texas ever had." Its declared

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