The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968 Page: 149
686 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Notes
.4 Texas Pioneer. By August Santleben. Edited by I. D. Affleck. A Facsimile
Reproduction of the g91o Edition Published by The Neal Publishing
Company at New York and Washington. Waco (W. M. Morrison), 1967.
Pp. 321. Appendix. $1o.oo.
No other writer sketches in such vivid detail an account of staging and
freighting on the frontiers of Texas and northern Mexico. Santleben com-
bines a wealth of information concerning the encounters and vicissitudes
on the trail with a ready recollection of numerous individuals with whom
he came in contact.
August Santleben was born in Hanover, Germany in 1845, and emi-
grated with his parents that same year to the Republic of Texas. Their
destination was Henry Castro's colony on the Rio Medina where they
were assigned land in "Castro's Corner" eight miles above Castroville. It
was then remote and Indian depredations made times hard on those hardy
enough to stick them out. Santleben spent his boyhood in this environment
and thus acquired the sturdy virtues he would later employ in bold and
dangerous freighting ventures.
In 1859, at age fourteen, he became the youngest mail carrier in the
United States when he took over the route between Castroville and
Bandera. When the Civil War broke out, he freighted cotton for a time
between Columbus and Eagle Pass. Like many Texans, Santleben was a
Union man whose father had voted against secession. To avoid having to
serve in uniform for the Confederacy, he crossed into Mexico at Eagle
Pass where F. Groos 8c Company employed him for a time in their Piedras
Negras cotton yard. He joined a theatrical troupe and landed in Browns-
ville where in December, 1863, he enlisted in a scouting company attached
to Colonel E. J. Davis's First Texas Cavalry. Following the war, Santleben
secured a mail contract from San Antonio to Eagle Pass and Fort Clark.
The next year, in partnership with Captain Adolph Muenzenberger, he
established a stage line between San Antonio and Monterrey. From these
beginnings he launched a freighting operation in 1869 between San An-
tonio and Chihuahua City. Until the advent of the railroad eleven years
later, Santleben's wagons plied the Chihuahua Trail which was a sun
parched, circuitous, and Indian infested no man's land.
Until about twenty years ago, Santleben's A Texas Pioneer was relatively
obscure and largely ignored. Rare bookman and publisher William Mor-
rison is to be commended for making this classic available again.
Eagle Pass, Texas BEN E. PINGENOT
Robert E. Lee. By Jefferson Davis. Edited by Colonel Harold B. Simpson.
Hillsboro (Hill Junior College Press), 1966. Pp. xiii+81. Illustrations,
appendices, bibliography, index.
The twelve-page article which constitutes the essence of this book, first
appeared in the January 1890o issue of The North American Review. The
editor's purpose, he says, is to provide "the public" with this long "out of149
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968, periodical, 1968; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117145/m1/167/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.