We Must Carry On!

by Anna Redhair, Graduate Student

“While our Baylor men are across the sea for the safety of democracy and womanhood, we Baylor women have before us a very definite work, and we must ‘Carry On!’” Thus ended an article on July 11, 1918, one of several Lariat articles aimed directly at Baylor University female students encouraging them to assist in the war effort during the United States’ involvement in World War I. As the male student population at colleges across the country dwindled due to the declaration of war and subsequent draft, women stepped up in a variety of ways to maintain the status quo on campus. Baylor women participated in both traditional and non-traditional methods of supporting the war effort and fostered a relationship with the soldiers stationed at nearby Camp MacArthur and Rich Field.

In April 1917, one week after the United States officially entered WWI, Baylor co-eds petitioned the university to offer a course in first aid skills. Female-only organizations such as the Calliopeans, Rufus C. Burleson Society, and the Young Women’s Christian Association hosted speakers who lectured on the importance of food conservation, the realities of war facing American soldiers “over there,” and the role of women in the war effort. Upon the creation of the Red Cross Auxiliary on campus, 225 co-eds answered the call to join on the first day, eager to volunteer their time and money. The Red Cross set up a workroom in Georgia Burleson Hall where women could sign up for shifts to make triangular bandages, knit sweaters, or assemble comfort kits. In just two months, Baylor co-eds contributed 310 bandages and 120 comfort kits towards the regionally assigned quotas in addition to donating $500 to the war drive. Even more directly, two former Baylor students, Gladys Cavitt and Roxie Henderson, served overseas as nurses in France and Great Britain, respectively. Young women at Baylor clearly lacked little in patriotic spirit and fervor.

Baylor’s female students raise funds for the Red Cross on campus during WWI.

Baylor co-eds also participated in the war effort in less traditional capacities as a result of the absence of a significant portion of the male students. In 1917 and 1918, the Lariat was run by a female editor and mostly female staff. Both the editor and associate editor of the 1918 Round-Up were also women. Female students took positions at the Baylor Press, which was vacated by several of the men and represented the “first women in this vicinity to take the places of men in industrial occupations because of their going to war.” A group of young women organized the “Kampus Police Force” in an effort to keep the campus clean, a job typically reserved for the male students. They carried trash baskets, hauled leaves, swept the grandstands before games, and kept the campus clean of scraps of paper and rubbish for twenty cents an hour, the same wages men would have received. The women used the wages they earned to purchase War Savings Stamps, or donated them to the Red Cross. Although most of these jobs returned to men at the end of war, the demands of the conflict provided unusual opportunities for Baylor co-eds to serve their country.

Pictured here is the staff of the 1918 Round Up. Notice how the majority of the staff, including the editor, are women.

During the war, Baylor’s female students interacted with the soldiers housed at Camp MacArthur and Rich Field. Georgia Burleson Hall hosted soldiers from the camp for dinners and the administration allowed soldiers to attend the university’s social functions. Women from the Red Cross Auxiliary performed in conjunction with the band from Rich Field on May 3, 1918 at a benefit to raise funds for the organization.

From nursing soldiers overseas to rolling bandages and entertaining soldiers, the women of Baylor University demonstrated their patriotism and diligently contributed their “very definite work” to the war effort.

Demise of the Cursed New Birmingham, Texas

by Anna Redhair, Graduate Student

Map of New Birmingham, Texas
Map of the proposed layout for the town of New Birmingham. The streets were named after major U.S. cities, Texas towns, and a few of the major investors in the project.

In the early 1880s, Alabama native and sewing machine salesman Alexander B. Blevins envisioned a town in East Texas that would rival the iron production of Birmingham in his home state. While traveling through the eastern part of Texas, he encountered significant iron ore deposits and identified a potential town site two miles east of Rusk, between Palestine and Nacogdoches. Blevins secured financial backing for “The Iron Queen of the Southwest” from his brother-in-law Gen. W. H. Hammon, a prominent Calvert lawyer, and several other wealthy investors from New York. The town, called New Birmingham, sold its first lot in 1888 and by 1891 it boasted around 2,000 residents, two working furnaces, a train depot, electric light station, carriage shop, ice manufacturer, pipe and bottling works, brick yard, and the largest hotel outside of Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Galveston. Most of these buildings were built with brick, demonstrating the founders’ intention for the town’s permanence.

The Texas Collection recently discovered two pieces of promotional material associated with New Birmingham: a map of the proposed layout of the town along with existing homes and buildings as of August 1891 and a promotional booklet with details about the town’s benefits and business opportunities, which can be accessed here: here and here. Yet, by 1893, New Birmingham was deserted and the Cherokee County Banner, a local newspaper, declared that the “Iron Queen was dead.” All the town’s residents left except for a single caretaker and his wife who lived in the Southern Hotel, but even that structure burned to the ground in 1926. Most scholars point to a lack of initial capital for the venture compounded by the Panic of 1893, an explosion that ruined one of the furnaces, and the unfavorable Alien Land Act passed by Texas governor James Hogg as likely causes of the city’s quick demise. A legend survives, however, that tells a significantly different and more dramatic reason for the total destruction of New Birmingham, Texas.

The Southern Hotel
The most impressive structure in New Birmingham was the Southern Hotel. It housed such distinguished guests as Texas Governor James Hogg, railroad magnate Jay Gould, and former President Grover Cleveland.

According to the legend, Gen. W. H. Hammon and his wife Ella lived in the Southern Hotel. Ella had bright red hair and was considered the most beautiful woman in the town. In 1890, grocer S. T. Cooney and his wife, who was also very beautiful, moved to the town. Mrs. Hammon supposedly became incredibly jealous and she and her husband began spreading rumors around the town about Mrs. Cooney’s conduct. S. T. Cooney filed a slander suit against Gen. Hammon, but instead of waiting for the court to handle the conflict, he took matters into his own hands and shot Hammon to death in the middle of the street on July 14, 1890. Mrs. Hammon witnessed her husband’s death and called on the townspeople to lynch Cooney, but public sentiment about the incident was divided. After unsuccessfully attempting to convince the defense attorney to drop Cooney as a client, she ran through the streets of New Birmingham with her red hair flowing and cursed the town, calling on God to “leave no stick or stone standing in this mushroom town.”

Ruins of the Town
This photo shows a single brick wall from the high school, the only structure remaining from the town of New Birmingham. The rest of the site has been overgrown by the surrounding East Texas forest.

Although the dramatic details of the legend cannot be proven, the slander suit and murder were reported in several Texas newspapers. The Galveston Daily News closely followed the trial and Cooney was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary on July 11, 1891. When the furnace exploded and the financial crisis hit New Birmingham in 1893, many townspeople recalled the curse of Mrs. Hammon and believed it to be a bad omen. Unlike other ghost towns in Texas, nothing remains to mark the place where this magnificent boomtown once stood. Most of the bricks from the businesses and homes were carted away during World War I or used to erect structures in the nearby town of Rusk. In a sense, Mrs. Hammon’s curse came true after all.

Bibliography

“Gen. Hammon Killed.” Dallas Morning News. July 15, 1890. America’s Historical Newspapers, Readex. accessed June 14, 2017.

Long, Christopher. “New Birmingham, Texas” A New Handbook of Texas. Vol. 4. Austin, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 1996.

“Made It Manslaughter.” The Galveston Daily. July 11, 1891. Newspapers.com accessed June 14, 2017.

“New Birmingham.” Cherokee County History. John Allen Templeton, ed.  Jacksonville, TX: Cherokee County Historical Commission, 1986.

New Birmingham Iron and Improvement Co. of Texas. New Birmingham, Cherokee County, Texas. Chicago: Rand, McNally, and Co., 1891.

New Birmingham, Texas. Chicago: Rand, McNally, and Co., 1891.

New Birmingham, Texas [Vertical File] The Texas Collection, Baylor University.

Roach, Hattie Joplin. A History of Cherokee County. Dallas, TX: Southwest Press, 1934.

Wedding Etiquette in the 1950s

by Anna Redhair, Graduate Student

As the calendar turns to June, we enter into the height of wedding season. The families of the soon to be bride and groom engage in a flurry of activity to ensure all the preparations are ready for the big day. Some of the cookbooks housed at The Texas Collection include recipes and menus specifically designed with weddings in mind. One of the most detailed descriptions of these preparations comes from a quirky cookbook published in the 1950s by the Charles W. Cook Auxiliary at Christ Episcopal Church in Laredo, Texas called Warm Welcome.

The cover page of Warm Welcome

The section entitled “Wedding Meals and Receptions” covered the expectations and etiquette for weddings, which provides an interesting glimpse into the norms for wedding receptions in the 1950s in Texas. The cookbook stressed the importance of the tasteful arrangement of delicious food and drink as the key to a successful wedding reception. Detailed rules existed regarding the order of the receiving line for a formal wedding: first the bride’s mother, then the groom’s mother, the bride, the groom, the maid of honor, and then the bridesmaids. Interestingly, the bride’s father did not stand in the receiving line but “greeted special guests and escorted old friends to the refreshment table.”

The rest of the section preceding the recipes explained the traditional food and beverages served at wedding receptions. No matter what time of day the reception was held, champagne remained the standard beverage served. Etiquette did allow for a fruit juice or gingerale punch as suitable substitutes, though. Every reception also featured a bride’s cake covered in beautiful white icing which could be topped with the same flowers used in the bridal bouquet.

A recipe for the traditional wedding cake, a dark fruit cake.

For weddings with larger budgets, the cookbook described another traditional element of the reception. Each guest received a piece of dark fruit cake in a small white box wrapped in a white satin ribbon. This cake was the designated wedding cake, as opposed to the white bride’s cake that we think of today. The mother of the bride saved a piece of the fruit cake for the bride and groom to eat on their first anniversary. Protocol allowed for the two cakes (bride’s cake and wedding cake) to be combined into a single cake with white cake making up the first two tiers and a layer of dark fruit cake at the top.

Sample menus for receptions at various times of day and levels of formality.

After the explanation of some of the etiquette and traditions surrounding wedding receptions, the cookbook provided specific menus for the various times of day a wedding reception might be held. With menus for early morning breakfast, stand-up breakfast, sit-down breakfast, buffet breakfast, breakfast served at high noon, luncheon, or supper, any bride and her family could plan the perfect reception. As you can see, cookbooks provided much more than simply recipes to the women who owned them, and helped them plan some of the most important events in the lives of their families.

Bibliography:

Charles W. Cook Auxiliary Christ Episcopal Church. Warm Welcome. Laredo, TX: 1950s?

A Distinguished Visitor: Thomas W. Streeter at The Texas Collection

by Anna Redhair, Graduate Student

In late November 1941, the most respected authority on materials relating to Texas visited Baylor University’s Texas Collection as part of his duties as a member of the McGregor Fund Committee. Thomas W. Streeter applauded The Texas Collection’s holdings in a letter to Guy B. Harrison and generously donated several items from his personal collection to the library.

Thomas Streeter was a successful businessman from the Northeast who harbored an interest in the collecting of rare materials relating to American history. His business ventures took him to Texas, which he utilized as an opportunity to add maps, broadsides, and various other items to his collection. By the end of his life, Streeter had assembled the largest known private collection of Texana.

Streeter meticulously compiled and published his Bibliography of Texas 1795-1845 in three volumes between 1955 and 1960. The work contained more than 1,600 entries including maps, novels, and musical scores along with pamphlets and government documents. His bibliography is widely considered the foremost authority on early Texas imprints and The Texas Collection owns many of the items he included.

Five of these items came from Streeter personally in 1941 after his visit to The Texas Collection. He came to Waco as a representative of the McGregor Plan, a program Baylor University participated in throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s. The program, founded by philanthropist and bibliophile Tracy W. McGregor, assisted libraries not located near major institutions to purchase rare books they would otherwise not be able to access. The school paid $500 each year and the McGregor Plan matched their funds and acted as the go-between for the schools and rare book dealers. Streeter served as a member of the committee which administrated the program after McGregor’s death in 1936.

Photo of: A new map of Texas, with the contiguous American & Mexican states (1836)
A new map of Texas, with the contiguous American & Mexican states (1836)

The Texas Collection acquired significant rare Texas materials through the library’s participation in the McGregor Plan. After his visit, Streeter sent several items he felt would fill in the gaps he perceived in The Texas Collection’s holdings. He donated an 1836 map of Texas entitled “New Map of Texas with the Contiguous American and Mexican States.” The map, published by S. Mitchell, included boxes of text containing information on the general state of Texas, its land grants, and rivers.

Photo of the title page of Title page of Nuttall's Journal of Travels...
Title page of Nuttall’s Journal of Travels… (1821)

Streeter also donated a pamphlet from the Secretary of the Treasury of the Republic of Texas to President Houston and a Mexican imprint detailing financial transactions after the war with Texas. Streeter included a pamphlet, “Lecture on the Subject of Re-annexing Texas to the United States,” delivered in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1845. This item gives a well-reasoned argument in favor of annexation from a northern perspective and is unique because most northerners opposed the annexation of Texas as a slave state into the Union. The Baylor Lariat identified the last item, Thomas Nuttall’s Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory, as the most valuable in the donation. Even though the work did not directly mention Texas, Streeter still felt it was worthwhile in its description of the territory now adjoining Texas.

Although Streeter did not publish his famed Bibliography of Texas for several more years, his visit to Waco and personal donation remain an important part of the story of The Texas Collection. The library continues to purchase Streeter items today and hopes to enlarge its holdings of these rare items in the years ahead.

Bibliography:

“Documents Given Texas Collection.” The Daily Lariat, December 11, 1941. Accessed January 24, 2017. http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lariat/id/32823

McGregor Plan Records, Accession #171, Box 1, Folder 9, The Texas Collection, Baylor University. (unpublished collection, in processing)

Streeter, Ruth Cheney. “Streeter, Thomas Winthrop.” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed January 26, 2017, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fst73.

Streeter, Thomas W. Bibliography of Texas 1795-1845. Portland, ME: Anthoensen Press, 1955. Reprinted, revised and enlarged by Archibald Hanna with a guide to the microfilm collection Texas as Province and Republic: 1795-1845. Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, Inc., 1983.