The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, July 1966 - April, 1967 Page: 518

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

to a graduate seminar that one book was worth a hundred dead
articles in journals; (2) and this, perhaps, is more praise than
criticism: since all three essayists were deeply devoted to their
subjects, each, with a historian's attempt at objectively leaned
backward in describing his subject.
Jacobs, Caughey and Frantz have done much in a few short
pages. It is hoped that they or their emulators will give us more
in the future about Webb and Bolton and Turner and others
who have told history so well. Surely research into lives such
as these must be as profitable as tracing the paths trod by
Moscoso, delving into the shenanigans of some demagogic politi-
cian, or even delineating the character and behavior of one
of the mistresses of Louis XIV. To Messrs. Jacobs, Caughey and
Frantz, we cry "Bravo" and "More."
Arlington State College E. C. BARKSDALE
Pioneer Surveyor, Frontier Lawyer: The Personal Narrative of
O. W. Williams, 1877-1902. Edited with annotations by S.
D. Myres; Introduction by C. L. Sonnichsen. El Paso (Texas
Western College Press), 1966. Pp. xii+35o. Photographs,
maps, appendices, index. $10o.oo.
In the course of its history many writers have visited the
American frontier, but only a few have remained to grow up
with the country, share in its development, and write about it
with deep sympathy and understanding. The name of Oscar
Waldo Williams merits a place on the short list of those who
came, stayed, studied the new land, loved it, cast their lot with
it, and left for posterity a body of literature about it that de-
serves to live.
Born in Kentucky, reared in Illinois, educated for the law at
Harvard, Williams came to Texas for health and adventure at the
age of twenty-four. It was in 1877, just as the Comanches were
quitting their claim to the Panhandle and adjacent territory,
that the versatile young lawyer introduced himself to the country
as a surveyor and land salesman. Soon he was in the Silver
City country of New Mexico, sojourning at times in Santa Fe.
He was seeking a fortune at mining, but about all that he ac-

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