The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981 Page: 197
502 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Notes and Documents
Mirabeau B. Lamar's Texas Journal
Edited by NANCY BOOTHE PARKER*
THERE ARE DOUBTLESS FEW TEXAS READERS WHO DO NOT KNOW
Mirabeau B. Lamar as a hero of San Jacinto and as the second
elected president of the Republic of Texas. Those acquainted with
biographies of Lamar may also know that he paid a visit to Texas in the
summer of 1835, reaching Nacogdoches in late July. Lamar recorded
this journey in a sixty-eight page holograph diary now in the possession
of his great granddaughter, Kate Calder Pauls of Galveston; this diary
has been cited by several historians.' But almost unknown is a longer
journal, also in Lamar's hand, documenting his entire 1835 trip, begin-
ning in Columbus, Georgia, on June 15 and ending in Brazoria, Texas,
the following October. This journal, owned by the Fondren Library
of Rice University since 1952, consists of 194 pages in a fading, leather-
bound account book which measures 73/4 by 9~4". The Texas portion
of the latter journal is published here.
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, born in 1798 to a Huguenot-descend-
ed family in Georgia, was gently reared, eclectically read, but only
sporadically "educated" in a formal sense. A stint as aide to Georgia
governor George M. Troup expanded young Lamar's political aware-
ness and spurred the development of his social graces; in the governor's
household, he learned states' rights and the composition of romantic
poetry. Two years after his 1826 marriage to Tabitha Jordan, Lamar
*Nancy Boothe Parker is director of the Woodson Research Center at the Fondren
Library, Rice University, Houston.
lMirabeau B. Lamar, "Journal of My Travels" (manuscript; hereafter cited as Lamar,
"Journal" [short diary]); Philip Graham, "Mirabeau B. Lamar's First Trip to Texas, from
the 'Journal of My Travels'," Southwest Review, XXI (July, 1936), 370; Philip Graham,
The Life and Poems of Mirabeau B. Lamar (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1938), 31, 33, 317; Mira-
beau B. Lamar, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, ed. Charles A. Gulick, Jr.,
et al. (7 vols.; reprint ed., Austin, 1968), I, [viii]; [Ernest W. Winkler (ed.)], "The Lamar
Papers" (typescript, accession file for Lamar Papers; Archives Division, Texas State Li-
brary, Austin), [iv].
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981, periodical, 1980/1981; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101225/m1/233/?rotate=270: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.