The Texas Collection – Page 43 – Treasures old and new…

The Paper Republic: The Struggle for Money, Credit, and Independence in the Republic of Texas

Posted on October 6, 2011

On Thursday, October 20th at 6:30 p.m. in Bennett Auditorium, James P. Bevill will tell the little-known story of financing the Texas Revolution and the sovereign nation of Texas (1835-1845). A gifted storyteller, Bevill’s powerful 50 minute visual presentation relays the history of Texas from an economic point of view rather than a political one. In the forward to The Paper Republic, Dr. Richard Bruce Winders, Historian and Curator at the Alamo poses the following questions: “How did a credit system based on a man’s word operate? Where did the funds come from to finance the Texas Revolution? What role did Texas’ lack of solvency play in her ultimate annexation to the United States?” Bevill expertly answers these questions and many others as he presents the history of money and finance in Texas—a history that is in some ways eerily similar to the current U.S. debt crisis.

James Bevill’s book, The Paper Republic, was named the 2009 winner of the Summerfield G. Roberts Literary Award by the Sons of the Republic of Texas, and the Best Specialized Book on U.S. Paper Money by the Numismatic Literary Guild at the ANA’s World’s Fair of Money in Boston, August 2010.

Come hear James Bevill tell the captivating tale of economic struggle in the Texas Revolution; ask questions at the end of his talk. Meet the author at a book signing and reception at The Texas Collection following the lecture. This program is free and open to the public.

For more information about James Bevill and The Paper Republic, click here.

Texas Trailers

Posted on September 19, 2011

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!

Dear Lera…

Posted on September 8, 2011

Dear Lera—How are you these hot days? Electric light man is here and will study by new lights tonight. Everything is in a tumble. Every one is well. Baby has three teeth now. How do you like this card? Miss H. didn’t say a word it was me will tell you later. May go to Dallas tomorrow after a hat. Will write soon. Perle B.

Like the artist’s sketch dashed off to capture a moment, a few words and a picture on a postcard can open a much larger world to the imagination. Mailed in 1911 to Miss Lera Brown at Baylor, this postcard shows a young man envisioning a beautiful woman in his cigarette smoke. Along with her face and hair there is a ring—perhaps an engagement ring—signaling that he imagines his beloved, or a yet-unmet future wife. The couple’s red lips and eyes mirror each other, and the shape and angle of the ring echo the man’s collar. It’s a dreamy picture that creates a fantasy for the viewer, that of the dashing young man who longs for love and marriage.

The note on the back is also full of revealing details conveyed with great economy. The card was mailed in October but it’s still hot in Texas! And “everything is in a tumble” as the new electric lights are installed. How delightful it will be to study tonight by the light of this relatively recent home improvement.

We read about the baby who is growing, and a possible trip to the big city to shop for a new hat. We sense that Perle B. found this postcard interesting or fitting, as she wonders, “How do you like this card?” There is a hint of mystery and a need for discretion regarding a Miss H. (“will tell you later”), and like Lera, we can’t wait to hear all the details.

But by this time, there is no more space for writing, so the postcard ends with the promise we all hope to hear when we are away from home: “Will write soon.” I like to imagine that Perle kept her promise and sent other cards and letters to Baylor that year, knowing, as John Donne did that “more than kisses, letters mingle souls, for thus friends absent speak.”

The journey to your future: Baylor University Hand-Book of Information, 1900

Posted on September 8, 2011

In the fall of 1900, Baylor University had been in Waco for only fourteen years. Our copy of the Hand-Book of Information from that year is a small, unassuming volume with a faded green cover, a few slightly damaged pages, and some handwritten notes inside. It certainly doesn’t look like much when you first pick it up, but you know what they say about judging books….

Interestingly, it is the railroads that open and close this Baylor handbook. While we rely on highways for most of our transportation today, railways were essential for the vitality of Texas cities and institutions at this time. The lack of rail transportation in Independence, the University’s original location, contributed to Baylor’s move to Waco. The Hand-Book begins:

Waco is the central city of the coming Empire State of Texas and is the point of intersection of five important railways. It is the chief convention city of the State. Every year brings people here from far and near to meetings of political, educational, religious, scientific and industrial character.

Of course, along with all those people coming for meetings, the railroads brought students to Baylor which was “located in the southern part of the city, commanding a magnificent view of the valley of the Brazos and the outlying hills.”

Throughout its 24 pages, the Hand-Book of Information tries to persuade new students to come to Baylor. The young University boasts, “The property of the institution is worth about $250,000….The main building is three stories high and contains twenty lecture rooms, four libraries, laboratories, museum, art rooms, society halls, president’s and registrar’s offices, and the chapel.” One section of the handbook notes the reasons for Baylor’s strong appeal, including the standard of scholarship; its Christian tone; a democratic nature which allows every student to stand on his own merit, not on what his family has or has not done; the purity, wholesomeness and vigor of its student life; and the many opportunities to hear fine speakers and guest lecturers.

The Baylor campus was full of activity at the turn of the century. The Philomathesian, Erisophian, Adelphia, R.C.B. and Calliopean student societies are praised as “vigorous and helpful associations for the general culture of their members….The questions debated are usually those uppermost in the public mind.” Some Societies also maintained libraries which were open to all students.

Early twentieth-century parents were doubtless concerned about the company their children would keep while away from home. Under the heading “General Control” we read:

The students of Baylor University are animated by a fine spirit of “Loyalty, Democracy and Christianity.” Cases of discipline involving serious breaches of public order or morality are rare. The relations between the members of the faculty and students are usually cordially friendly and mutually considerate. Students who are unable to “get along” on this basis usually withdraw or are sent home.

After all the discussions of degrees and expenses, living arrangements, dining and athletic facilities, the railroads reappear at the end of the handbook. Having carried students to Baylor at the beginning of this volume, the railroads close the pamphlet by advertising all the places you can go when you leave Waco: Chicago, New Orleans, Mexico, California, San Antonio, Houston, Galveston. The wide world awaits, and the railroads are ready to facilitate both a young person’s travel and their larger journey. All that is needed is to ride the M.K. & T.–“The Katy Flyer ” or the Cotton Belt Route (St. Louis Southwestern Railway); take the S.A. & A.P Ry. (San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway), The Texas Central Railroad, the H. & T. C. R.R. or the Southern Pacific Sunset Route. Travel in comfort and style in through sleepers, and day cars, reclining chair cars, and Pullman Standards with “Parlor Buffet Service.” An educated man or woman has many choices—just pack your bags and begin the adventure! As they say on the Cotton Belt Route, “All Inquiries Cheerfully Answered by Mail or Otherwise.”

The sweet taste of Texas cookbooks

Posted on July 18, 2011

Elizabeth Borst White knows cookbooks! Twenty-five years ago, recognizing the unique window into cultural history that they provide, Ms. White began a collection that now contains nearly 1,600 volumes. Recently retired after nearly 40 years as a librarian for the Houston Academy of Medicine–Texas Medical Center Library, White understands the value of her Texas cookbook collection as a historical resource and has pledged to donate her materials to The Texas Collection, significantly enriching our already wide assortment of resources in this area. In addition, Elizabeth White has generously established the Biscuits and Gravy Endowed Fund–a permanent endowment that provides funding for future purchases and preservation of the cookbook collection.

White says that her favorite types of cookbooks are “community cookbooks with lots of advertisements for local businesses” because they “give the reader a good picture of the community at that time. We just do not see advertisements for rifles and ammunition, or corsets and ladies’ hats in cookbooks today.”

Here’s a small taste of the delights you can find in the Elizabeth Borst White Texas Culinary Collection:

“Treasure Pots,” The Austin Woman’s Club, 1940 which includes recipes for Salmagundi Dressing, Admiration Pie, and ‘Possum and Sweet Taters.
What’s Cooking in Our Swedish-American Kitchens, Central Methodist Church, Austin, c.1951, with Wienerbrod (Coffee Bread), Kroppkakor (Potato Dumplings with Pork), and Brysseikax (Iced Box Cookies). Also Tuna Noodles and Tamale Pie.
Portrait of A. Fillmore, author of one of the first cook books by an African-American chef, The Lone Star Cook Book and Meat Special (From the Slaughter Pen to the Dining Room Table), Hotel Lubbock, 1929.

Advertisement for Kitchen Queen’s Baking Powder (“Healthful and efficient.”) and J.E. Grant Fine Wall Papers (“Don’t paper your house like everybody’s house.”) from the Waxahachie Cook Book, 1902 .

Advertisements for Miss Julia A. Hillyer, Teacher of Piano, and Kauffman Vehicles (“Would be pleased to figure with you if in need of a good Vehicle.”) also from the Waxahachie Cook Book, 1902.

The Texas Culinary Collection is a fascinating look into the kitchens of the past. These cookbooks help us understand the history of the organizations that authored them, and the daily lives of the chefs and homemakers whose recipes they contain. They remind us of businesses and products no longer available, and of trendy foods no longer in fashion. Come in and sample the collection for some great reading and great cooking!

–AO & AWC

Before the Decepticons: early projected images from the Victor Animatograph Company

Posted on July 11, 2011

In the days before Decepticons and Autobots, Viopticons, Stereopticons, and the other members of the Magic Lantern family thrilled audiences in darkened rooms. While perhaps difficult for us to imagine from our movie-savy perspective, for many years before the advent of cinema people went out to the “picture show” to look at slides. Theatergoers were captivated by the magical effect of these projected images. Eventually, enterprising showmen added musicians and sound effects to enhance the show–even animating the images by various mechanical techniques. During the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, phantasmagoria shows left audiences shivering with terror for fear that ghosts and demons had been set upon them.

The Texas Collection recently uncovered two boxes of glass slides manufactured by the Victor Animatograph Co. of Davenport, Iowa. These slides were 2 x 2.25 inches and were shown on the Viopticon, the first truly portable stereopticon. The Vioptican projected images using a brilliant carbon arc lamp. Sets of Viopticon slides were available for purchase or rent as illustrated lectures. Our two sets of slides were used by Baylor history professor Francis Gevrier Guittard in the early 1900s. One set contains hand-tinted photographs of Yellowstone National Park, and the other set depicts important events from the life of George Washington during the American Revolution. While these slides were not part of a spectacular Magic Lantern theater experience, they represent an early example of educational technology as manufacturers began to promote the use of projectors in the classroom.

The inventor of the Viopticon, Alexander Victor, lived a fascinating life. Born in Sweden in 1878, his first career was as a magician and showman working with the renowned Stephanio. Victor had obtained an early Lumiere Cinematograph and added projected pictures to Stephanio’s show, much to audience delight. After Stephanio’s death, Victor continued touring with his own troupe, but a warehouse fire in Ohio destroyed his entire collection of magical props and his career as a performer ended.

Despite this setback, the astonishingly creative Victor began again, and went on to invent the first electric washing machine for the White Lily Company. In keeping with his interest in projected images, and recognizing that there could be a larger market for motion pictures than as entertainment, Victor next invented what may be the first amateur 16mm movie camera and projector. In 1915, realizing that the danger created from highly flammable nitrate film stock would limit market growth in schools, businesses, and churches, Victor began pushing the film industry to adopt new safety standards and move to cellulose acetate “safety film.”

You can see a slideshow of these Viopticon images and imagine yourself in an early 20^th century classroom by visiting our flickr page. For the Yellowstone slides click here, and for George Washington, click here.

A bit of postal history: advertising covers from the Burleson Collection

Posted on June 14, 2011

The internet is constantly delighting me with Interesting Things I Didn’t Know. The other day a colleague handed me a stack of 19^th century envelopes. Now, I had never considered a world without “store bought” envelopes, but it turns out that, prior to the 1840s, that was exactly the way the world worked: you had to cut and fold your own. It wasn’t until 1840 that George Wilson patented a process of tiling envelope patterns on a large sheet of paper, and not until 1845 that Edwin Hill and Warren De la Rue obtained a patent for a steam-driven machine that not only cut out the envelope shapes but creased and folded them. Hill and De la Rue displayed their machine at the Crystal Palace in the Great Exhibition of 1851–along with the Koh-i-Noor, the world’s largest known diamond at the time, Samuel Colt’s prototype for the Colt Navy revolver, and one of the world’s earliest voting machines. Who would have thought that making envelopes could be so interesting as to merit a spot in the Crystal Palace?

But as I learned, the fascinating history of envelopes, or covers, as they are known, continues. During the Civil War paper was extremely scarce, so hand-made envelopes were created out of wrapping paper, tax receipts, wallpaper, flyleaves torn from books, maps, music sheets, or other available materials. These handmade envelopes are referred to as “adversity covers” and they are considered quite collectible. People at this time also used envelopes for propaganda purposes, printing or drawing cartoons, emblems, pictures and messages that expressed their political sentiments. Collectors call these bits of postal history “patriotic covers.”

In the latter part of the 1800s, businesses began to create printed envelopes. These advertising covers could be printed with anything from a simple corner card (picture and return address) to elaborate decorations and ad copy covering much of the envelope. Early advertising covers eventually led to both the cacheted first day cover and modern junk mail.

At The Texas Collection, we have a group of 19^th century advertising covers from the Rufus Burleson Collection which you can see displayed on our flickr page. These envelopes are from all over Texas and come from a range of businesses and colleges. They’re stamped on the front with a postmark from the sending post office and on the back with the receiving post office. We hope you’ll enjoy this glimpse into life in the late 1800s.

Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West and Great Far East

Posted on May 24, 2011

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.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: a collection of characters from the Adams-Blakley Collection

Posted on March 22, 2011

If you love real-life stories of the cowboys and outlaws, lawmen and showmen of the American West, now is the time for you to visit The Texas Collection. Currently on display are some choice titles from the Adams-Blakley Collection–an amazing group of books assembled by Ramon F. Adams, the Western bibliographer, lexicographer, and author, for William A. Blakley, a U.S. Senator from Texas. The collection, which was given to Baylor University in 1971 by William Blakley, contains books capturing the excitement and the struggle of Westward Expansion and telling the story of the larger-than-life characters who made it happen. The collection includes close to 3000 works of history, biography, fiction, ranching and branding, promotional literature, poetry, art and folksong, and works on hunting, trapping, and roping. Many of these are rare titles and first editions, often beautifully bound, and signed by their authors. Stop by the Texas Collection to enjoy this exhibit which runs through June 30, 2011.

Click here to listen to a field recording of cowboy songs and poetry from the Adams-Blakley Collection.

Special thanks to Chuck “Drag” Treadwell for sharing his musical and interpretive talents and to Ian Campbell for production assistance. As always, thanks to Lance Grigsby for his support and enthusiasm for new ventures.

The Texas Collection gets social

Posted on March 15, 2011

The Texas Collection is now on Facebook! Be sure to visit our page to find fun facts, links, and pictures, along with the latest news and information about the collection. You can connect with us at www.facebook.com/texascollection or by clicking on the blue facebook icon in the sidebar to the right. We look forward to seeing you there!