The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945 Page: 401
617 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Texas Collection
alleges, and as I sincerely believe. While we may specialize, geographically
or functionally, in our collecting activities, the better to build useful re-
search facilities, I feel that we must surmount localism in our educational
work, and teach history as a tool for everyday living-which means not
just town history, Vermont or New England history, but also American,
and indeed in some respects world history.
The following M. A. theses have recently been accepted at
San Marcos State College:
Kathryn Byrd, Barbed Wire: Its Origin and Effects.
L. M. Carmichael, A History of Uvalde County.
Irene Havekosh, History of Temple Junior College.
C. W. Sanborn, The Story of Riverside (The San Marcos State College
bathing resort).
Ed Wildman, Concrete College and its Founder.
Professor S. W. Geiser, Southern Methodist University, Dallas
5, Texas, sends to this department an excellent recommendation
for the use of probate records, together with proof of the his-
torical value of such usage.
NOTE ON THE USE OF PROBATE-INVENTORIES AS A SOURCE OF SOCIAL HISTORY
Chance discovery and perusal of Professor J. F. McDermott's ten-year-
old article "Scientific Books in the Early West"' reminds me again of the
wealth of historical information concealed in unsuspected places. Specifical-
ly, in many cases the probate-inventories of early Texas counties--Gal-
veston, Harrison, Matagorda, Brazoria, Harris, and others--contain in-
formation on the reading habits and personal libraries of the early pioneers
of Texas. One can hardly hope in the case of Texans, I think, to have
library-inventories equalling the riches found by McDermott in the estates
of citizens of St. Louis in its first forty years, but one never can tell. New-
ton and Gambrell2 have given an interesting sidelight on S. F. Austin's
library; they are probably correct in their appraisal of the early Texans
as not having been a reading people. The 1850 Census shows a total of
only 4,230 books in 12 libraries (other than private), distributed among
154,034 white population. Of these books, 2,100 were accounted for in three
unincorporated public libraries (at Galveston, Marshall, and Matagorda),
and 100 by a college library in Fayette County (Rutersville College). The
1860 Census showed (for 421,294 white population) 86,538 volumes in 147
non-private libraries (with 74,563 volumes in 132 public libraries, and
7,300 volumes in 6 college libraries), in Texas.
My own incomplete records of private libraries come chiefly from the
probate-records of Harris County during the days of the Republic. Here
1John Francis McDermott, School and Society, XL (1934), 812-813.
2L. W. Newton and H. P. Gambrell, A Social and Political History of
Texas (1932), 113-114.401
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945, periodical, 1945; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146055/m1/445/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.