Each month, we post an update to notify our readers about the latest archival collections to be processed and some highlights of our print material acquisitions. These resources are primed for research and are just a sampling of the many resources to be found at The Texas Collection!Continue Reading
Cowboys
Research Ready: December 2017
Each month, we post an update to notify our readers about the latest archival collections to be processed and some highlights of our print material acquisitions. These resources are primed for research and are just a sampling of the many resources to be found at The Texas Collection!
December’s finding aids
By Paul Fisher, Processing Archivist
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Letter from Charles Wellborn, student at Baylor and future evangelist and pastor, to the Armed Services Representative for Baylor University. In the letter, Wellborn describes drilling for the past week, after enlisting in the United States Army in July 1943. - BU Records: Armed Services Representatives, 1942-1945, undated (#BU/12): Collection contains correspondence sent by former students, parents, and government officials to Merle Mears McClellan, Baylor University’s Armed Services Representative during World War II. Baylor President Pat Neff appointed McClellan as the acting liason between the university and the military, in conjunction with Baylor University becoming a training site for Army officers prior to World War II.
December’s print materials
By Amie Oliver, Librarian and Curator of Print Materials
![Cunningham, Eugene. Famous in the West. El Paso, TX: Hicks-Hayward Co., [1926]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4737/27679186229_438e5ec3a1_o.jpg)
![College, Belton: For Women. [Belton, TX?]: [publisher not identified], [between 1925 and 1929?]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4735/38748265324_f4cffd98a7_o.jpg)
![Waco 52 Playing Cards. [Waco, TX]: [publisher not identified], [2017]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4646/39426131812_df48b1b35b_o.jpg)
Research Ready: September 2017
Each month, we post an update to notify our readers about the latest archival collections to be processed and some highlights of our print material acquisitions. These resources are primed for research and are just a sampling of the many resources to be found at The Texas Collection!
September’s finding aids
By Paul Fisher, Processing Archivist
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- Horton Foote Screenplay collection, 1954-1988 (#4006): Includes five scripts and screenplays composed by Texas-born playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote.
Two historical markers now commemorate Long Branch Cemetery: one recounting the history of the cemetery and the other honoring a former slave named Sylvia King who is buried there. Long Branch is one of the oldest cemeteries in central Texas. You’ll find these items in the Long Branch Cemetery collection, 2009-2016, undated (#4020), box 1 OVZ, folder 4, at The Texas Collection, Baylor University. - Joe Lett Ward, Jr. papers, 1953-1972, undated (#4029): Materials about Waco civic organizations that Ward was a member of through the years.
- Long Branch Cemetery collection, 2009-2016, undated (#4020): Collection contains materials about the dedication for two Texas state historical markers in Long Branch Cemetery, a historically African American cemetery in Falls County, Texas.
- BU records: Office of the President, Chancellor, and President Emeritus (William Richardson White), 1936-1977, undated (#BU/142): Contains correspondence, literary productions, photographs, clippings, and other materials related to White’s personal life and his role as Baylor University president and chancellor 1948-1963.
- September’s print materials
By Amie Oliver, Librarian and Curator of Print Materials![Ellis, Edward Sylvester. Lightning Jo: The Terror of the Santa Fe Trail. New York: Beadle and Adams, [1874]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4490/37343412066_4a2746c1b7_o.jpg)
Research Ready: July 2017
Each month, we post an update to notify our readers about the latest archival collections to be processed and some highlights of our print material acquisitions. These resources are primed for research and are just a sampling of the many resources to be found at The Texas Collection!
July’s finding aids
By Paul Fisher, Processing Archivist
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- James Lee Barrett Screenplay collection, 1967 (#4001): Contains one screenplay entitled Bandolero!, written by James Lee Barrett in 1967. The resulting film starred James Stewart and Dean Martin, and centered around a bank robbery in Texas and subsequent chase into Mexican, “bandolero”-held territory.
- F.P. Leavenworth Confederate ordnance book, 1862-1865 (#4025): Collection consists of one order book written by F.P. Leavenworth during his command of the Confederate arsenal in Shreveport, Louisiana, and ordnance depot in Jefferson, Texas.
- BU records: Baylor/Paul Baker Controversy, 1961-1963 (#BU/394): Includes materials about the production of Eugene O’Neill’s play “Long Day’s Journey into Night” at Baylor University by director Paul Baker, and the university’s subsequent cancellation of the play. The collection contains thousands of letters in response to the controversy, among other files.
- Texas Navy records, circa 1970’s-1980 (#2201): The Texas Navy records consist of a brief history of The Texas Navy as well as various artistic prints produced in the 1970’s and 1980s.
- Betty Wilke Cox papers, 1896-2007, undated (#3860): Cox was a writer, editor, and publisher based out of Austin, Texas. Her collection includes manuscripts, correspondence, personal journals, research material, photographs, and biographical information.
- National Railway Historical Society, Central Texas Chapter records, 1887-1983, undated (#2519): Contains books, articles, photographs, maps, and other materials collected and produced by the Central Texas Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. This research was used for a self-published book, The San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway: The Story of the Famous “SAP” Railway of Texas (1983).
- Richard D. Donner and Ronald L. Buck Screenplay collection, 1967 (#3998): Includes a single screenplay written by Richard D. Donner and Ronald L. Buck in 1967. Entitled Deaf Smith, the work chronicles the life of a frontiersman in Texas.
- “Where the Heart Is” Screenplay collection, 1999 (#3384): Collection consists of a screenplay for the film Where the Heart Is. The finished product contains scenes shot on Baylor University’s campus.
- San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway Company collection, 1891-1983 (#2448): Contains photocopies of annual reports and timetables produced by the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway Company from the 1890’s to the 1930s.
- Rose Franken Screenplay collection, 1936-1946 (#3967): Consists of four scripts and screenplays written by Rose Franken. Franken was a novelist and playwright best known for her “Claudia” stories and for their stage and film adaptations.
- Gerald Drayton Adams Screenplay collection, 1953 (#4000): Includes the “Shooting Final” screenplay, written by Gerald Drayson Adams in 1953, and related materials. Titled Three Young Texans, the story is set in the 1870s and centered around a train robbery in Texas.
July’s print materials
By Amie Oliver, Librarian and Curator of Print Materials
![Sullivan, John H., Jr. "Gun-play" by the World's Fastest Revolver Shot "Texas Jack.” [United States]: [publisher not identified], [between 1932 and 1937]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4323/35483069393_446e44e273_o.jpg)
Sullivan, John H., Jr.[United States]: [publisher not identified], [between 1932 and 1937]. Print.
Click here to view in BearCat.
![West-Texas: Das "Land der Gelegenheiten.” [Dallas, Texas?]: [publisher not identified], [1906?]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4313/35483069453_4623250a2f_o.jpg)
![Texas Prohibition Songs. Waco, Texas: Published and for sale by B. H. Simpson, [between 1900 and 1935?]. Print.](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4326/36155260131_fd4d95bb10_o.jpg)
Texas Trailers
The Texas Collection staff decided to have a bit of fun over the summer and created video trailers to introduce you to some of our favorite collections. Our Texas Trailers are up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. We’ve put together short movies about western pulp fiction, panoramic photographs, promotional literature, the Adams-Blakley collection, and Jules Bledsoe archival materials. We hope you’ll enjoy this look into the stacks and vaults here at Carroll Library. Leave your comments below!
Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West and Great Far East
The stories we tell ourselves about our past become as much a part of our identity as the truth of our history. The mythological American West–the Wild West–with its stories of rugged individualism, resourcefulness, and courage, began to take hold in the public imagination decades before the Civil War. Prior to the turn of the century, some people began to think that the settling of the frontier had formed our national character; that what is essentially American about the United States can be found in western frontier, not eastern culture.
The idea that “All Americans are Cowboys at heart” has great worldwide appeal. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, romanticized tales of cowboys and Indians, outlaws and lawmen could be found in dime novels and popular music, but it was the Wild West Show that brought the drama of the Old West right to your home town. Popular before the advent of radio or movies with sound, the Wild West Show was part circus, part vaudeville, part rodeo, and all spectacle–under the guise of historical accuracy. Wild West Shows celebrated a vanishing culture while allowing easterners and Europeans to experience the excitement of the legendary frontier.
The most famous of the Wild West shows was, of course, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West which ran from 1883 to 1913. However, an enterprising Oklahoman, Gordon W. Lillie, “Pawnee Bill,” was also quite famous in his day. Pawnee Bill was an astute businessman whose traveling shows (Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West and Great Far East) thrilled audiences with demonstrations of horsemanship and marksmanship, including that of his wife, May Manning Lillie, “Champion Girl Horseback Shot of the West.” His exhibitions featured reenactments of historical events, showing stagecoach attacks, daring rescues, and battles with Indians. The Great Far East show included the “spectacle of the war between the Russians and the Japanese” which enlisted “the services of over five hundred people and horses.” Among his ever-changing troupe were Arab jugglers, Mexican cowboys, Cossacks, Japanese, and Pawnee. And, while celebrating the astonishing equestrian accomplishments of the world’s peoples, Pawnee Bill always championed the American Cowboy–“the perfect embodiment of natural chivalry.” A program from the show describes cowboys as
the most daring, most skillful, most graceful, and most useful horsemen in the world. They fulfill the metaphor of the fabled centaur, believed to have been a demi-god, half horse, half man, only that the cowboy excels the centaur in being an independent man who controlled the best points of the quadruped and made “man’s best friend” subservient to his needs, his pleasures and his pastimes. Without the cowboy, civilization would have been hemmed in, and the fair States and Territories of the glorious West would have remained a howling wilderness to date.
Show business has always been an up-and-down experience financially. In 1908, Gordon Lillie invested in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, which was deeply in debt. The “Two Bills” show was successful for a time, especially during its run as Buffalo Bill’s farewell tour, but eventually the enterprise failed when Cody’s creditors foreclosed in 1913.
After that, Pawnee Bill and May Lillie settled down on their buffalo ranch on Blue Hawk Peak, near Pawnee, OK. Lillie continued as a businessman and invested in banking, oil, and real estate. Still interested in the entertainment industry, but looking to the future, he started a movie production company on his ranch. In 1935, May died as a result of injuries suffered in a car accident. Pawnee Bill died in his sleep in 1942.
If you ever find yourself looking for excitement, you can learn more about Pawnee Bill and the American West right here at The Texas Collection. The Adams-Blakley Collection contains several souvenir items from The Historic Wild West and Great Far East Shows, and The Texas Collection has a significant number of Dime Novels. Don’t expect it all to be true, but it is great fun.
(Click on the center of any image in the slideshow to see it full-sized.)
Many thanks to Michael Toon for assistance with Dime novels at The Texas Collection.
Catch ‘Em Alive Jack
One of my fellow librarians at The Texas Collection tells me that if I get through a day without learning something new, I’m not doing my job. Well, yesterday I learned about a larger-than-life Texas cowboy: John “Catch-Em Alive Jack” Abernathy.
I was cataloging some items from the Adams-Blakley Collection–a fabulous group of books assembled by Ramon F. Adams, the Western bibliographer, lexicographer, and author, for William A. Blakley, a U.S. Senator from Texas. In that collection I came upon A Son of the Frontier by John Abernathy, and I saw a picture of Abernathy, a wolf, and Theodore Roosevelt. I had to find out more, and here’s the story.
Jack Abernathy was born in 1876, in Bosque County, Texas not too far from Waco. He worked as a cowboy, a farmer, and a piano and organ salesman, but became famous for catching over a thousand wolves alive with his bare hands. It seems that Abernathy once accidentally discovered that by thrusting his hand into an attacking wolf’s mouth and holding the lower jaw to keep it from closing, he could capture the animal without losing the hand. Teddy Roosevelt heard about his unique skill, and arranged to join Abernathy in Oklahoma for six days of wolf-coursing. They say that the president wanted to try Abernathy’s technique himself, but the Secret Service talked him out of it. A wise decision, for in his book Abernathy notes,
“Men whom I have tried to teach the art of wolf catching have failed to accomplish the feat. I have tried to teach a large number, but when the savage animal would clamp down on the hand, the student would become frightened and quit. Consequently, the wolf would ruin the hand.” (p.20)
Roosevelt was quite taken with “Catch “˜Em Alive Jack” and appointed him the youngest U.S. Marshal in history. As U.S. Marshal for Oklahoma, Abernathy “captured hundreds of outlaws single-handed and alone, and placed seven hundred and eighty-two men in the penitentiary.” (p.1)
One final note: Abernathy’s sons Louie (Bud) and Temple became famous in their own right. In 1910, at the age of 10 and 6, they rode alone on horseback from their home in Frederick, Oklahoma to New York City to greet President Roosevelt upon his return from a trip to Europe and Africa. Several years later they set out for further adventures on an Indian motorcycle. Temple tells about their journeys in Bud and Me: the True Adventures of the Abernathy Boys.
Jack Abernathy’s story is only one of the many great titles that make up the Adams-Blakley Collection. There are outlaws and lawmen, pioneers and entrepreneurs. Someday, we’ll have to sit a spell and I’ll tell you more.
