Rolling Stones Page: 218

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218

Rolling Stonres

your voice, and time turns backward for you, for the a t-
mosphere which you breathe is cold with the exudations
of buried generations.
The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the
walls are immensely thick; it is cool in the summer and
warm in the winter; it is isolated and sombre; standing
apart from the other state buildings, sullen and decaying,
brooding on the past.
Twenty years ago it was much the same as now; twenty
years from now the garish new-ness will Ie worn off and it
will return to its appearance of gloomy decadence.
People living in other states can form no conception of
the vastness and importance of the work performed and
the significance of the millions of records and papers conm-
posing the archives of this office.
The title deeds, patents, transfers and legal documents
connected with every foot of land owned in the state of
Texas are filed here.
Volumes could be filled with accounts of the knavery,
the double-dealing, the cross purposes, the perjury, the
lies, the bribery, the alteration and erasing, the suppress-
ing and destroying of papers, the various schemes and
plots that for the sake of the almighty dollar have left
their stains upon the records of the General Land Office.
No reference is made to the employees. No more
faithful, competent and efficient force of men exists in the
clerical portions of any government, but there is - or
was, for their day is now over - a. class of land speculators
commonly called land sharks, unscrupulous and greedy,

I ~- - .

- -- ~as ---p--sl ~--ca~%~ ~d

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Bexar Scrip 2692 (Legal Document)

Bexar Scrip 2692

Copy of a land Grant file for land issued to the Houston & Texas Central Railway Company in the Bexar Land District. Includes a folder jacket with table of contents and notes about the land grant (filed July 12, 1928); field notes by M.J. Doyle, Deputy Surveyor, Bexar Land District for Section 21 Block 20 (January 13, 1873); the affidavit of ownership of S.N. Allen (July 12, 1928); and a note by Land Commissioner J.H. Walker indicating that the file has no relation to the O. Henry story of the same name (December 4, 1933). O. Henry’s story tells the tale of a Railroad baron taking a poor homesteader’s land by stealing this file. Walker notes that although the file was missing for a period, due to office procedures the land fraud could not have occurred.

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Henry, O., 1862-1910. Rolling Stones, book, 1912; Garden City, New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth139359/m1/264/ocr/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

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