The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, July 1972 - April, 1973 Page: 75
539 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Notes and Documents
and served as a colonel in the Mexican War. He was dependent en-
tirely upon private libraries and collections of personal papers for
his sources. However, this was not the handicap we may imagine it
to be; to the people of those days Texas history began with the
colonization movement inaugurated by Austin in 1820.
An effort was made in the fifties to organize a historical society. A
second effort was made in the early seventies, about the time the
Texas Veterans Association was founded. The only remains of these
historical societies are some reminiscences, and a few collections of
documents in the Rosenberg Library at Galveston.
The Texas Veterans Association was not primarily an historical
society. [The veterans] had participated in the revolution that
achieved the independence of Texas. During that dismal period known
as reconstruction, these survivors of that glorious period of Texas
history banded themselves together to keep fresh the memories of
better days. The organization was a small one but it endured some
twenty-five years. It brought forth annual proceedings, formed a small
collection of papers in the hands of its secretary, and encouraged
the other agencies that took an interest in the history of the Republic
of Texas. Its archives passed to the University of Texas.
The first active agency to accomplish something in the way of
making a historical collection is the State Library. Nominally it dates
from the days of the Republic of Texas, but for forty years it had
no librarian and was without financial support. Such books and
public documents as it may have accumulated were destroyed when
the Capitol was burned in 1881. For ten years after that date, its
main service was to bind the current files of four or five Texas news-
papers. In 1891 one of those political appointments was made that
unexpectedly turned out to be very good.
Judge Cadwell Walton Raines, a Georgian, had spent two years at
Princeton before the Civil War; he was with Morgan's Cavalry during
the war; and, after editing a newspaper for several years in East Texas,
he became county judge. How he became interested in the history of
Texas, I do not know, but he recognized that something must be
done to collect the source material for such a history. He had librari-
anship thrust upon him. He travelled over the State and gathered
books, pamphlets, newspapers, maps, collections of letters, in fact,
anything and everything he could acquire for the State Library that
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, July 1972 - April, 1973, periodical, 1973; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101202/m1/93/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.