The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 69, July 1965 - April, 1966 Page: 135

Book Reviews

was ordered to Brownsville and remained in the Lower Rio
Grande Valley on garrison duty at Fort Brown and Ringgold
Barracks until the fall of 1863. Thereafter the battery was a part
of Confederate coastal garrisons from Galveston to Sabine Pass
prior to disbanding at Houston on May 22, 1865. The battery
was actively engaged only once, at the Battle of Calcasieu Pass
on May 6, 1864. The unit was among the Southern forces from
Texas that entered Louisiana to attack and capture two Union
gunboats, which were feared to be the forerunners of a Federal
invasion force attempting to flank Sabine Pass.
Boethel, who had already written three volumes on local Texas
history, based The Big Guns of Fayette primarily on battery rec-
ords preserved by Welhausen's family. The volume is a solid con-
tribution to the history of the Civil War in Texas and the Trans-
Mississippi for two principal reasons: it is the only book length
history of life in a Confederate artillery unit of that area, and it
provides the most detailed account yet written of the battle at
Calcasieu Pass. ALWYN BARR
Ozona Country. By Allan R. Bosworth. New York (Harper &-
Row), 1964. Pp. 238. Photographs, bibliography. $4.95.
Few writers have stirred as much enthusiasm or provoked more
expressions of pride among West Texans than has Allen Bosworth.
Entitled Ozona Country, his latest work focuses on the Crockett
county seat but generalizes on much of the surrounding country.
The narrative begins with the arrival of the Bosworth family in a
sparsely settled part of West Texas and dramatizes the dogged
determination and innate courage of the earliest settlers who
braved parching droughts, piercing northers, and biting dust
storms to establish a remote and lucrative ranching and oil empire
in an area which nature endowed sparingly.
Much of the information is drawn from the author's memory
of his childhood days, particularly for the years 1907-1922. For the
period thereafter, Bosworth, who left Ozona for a successful Navy
career, was obliged to lean heavily on personal interviews with
surviving early settlers and on the files of several newspapers, in-
cluding the Ozona Kicker and the Ozona Optimist. Told in chron-
ological order, the story of Ozona includes many pithy and humor-

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