Texas History - A Specialty Worth Looking Into

If you walk through the streets of any town in Texas, you will no doubt feel the pride of the citizens electrifying the air. Texans are some of the proudest people you will ever meet, especially when it comes to their home state.

There are so many things that make Texas an interesting place, especially from an historical standpoint; more and more history students looking into graduate school and beyond are eyeing Texas history as an area of specialization. Here are a few reasons why the next generation of historians is looking to Texas for more information.

Settlement

The story of the settlement of Texas reads almost like the Pilgrims coming to the US to colonize. Learn more about Stephen F. Austin and his “Old 300,” among other things when you dig deeper into the primary source material.

Wars

Texas has seen its fair share of warfare on a variety of different fronts. The Spanish fought with the Indians to take over Texas and claim it as part of their territory. Later, the Texans fought against the Mexican Army for independence at the Alamo, Goliad, and finally San Jacinto. There is a slew of information out there on these different wars and fronts where the Texans fought—and died—for their independence.

Cultures

Texas is one of the most culturally diverse states in the US. Just take a visit to the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures Museum in San Antonio, and you’ll see just how different and unique the settled areas of Texas were throughout its brief, but rich history. Once a slave state, African Americans were some of the first people brought in from the southern United States.

Of course, indigenous peoples lived in Texas; several Native American tribes still migrated through Texas due to weather throughout the year. Along the southeast coast of Texas, Cajuns, Germans, and Dutch people created settlements. Especially in central Texas, German was still spoken in some public schools into the twentieth century, when US federal funding required that classes be conducted in English.

Of course, there are many people throughout Texas of Hispanic origin, mainly from Spanish and Mexican mestizo descent. These different cultures have all helped make Texas the great state that it is today and are all great avenues of study for prospective Texas historians.

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of a History PhD. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24@gmail.com

A Truly Honest Biography –

Rare Texana and Americana Indeed!

Review of Unbridled Cowboy

by K.K. Searle

I enjoy an “honest autobiography” more than just about any other type of literature and of course I enjoy real Texana. Joseph B.Fussell gives us just such an autobiography in his memoirs entitled Unbridled Cowboy.

In his forward, Fussell describes most other autobiographies with exceptional accuracy, " In reading memoirs, I find, almost invariably, the writer seems to think he has accomplished something really worthwhile in his life and wants the reading public to know about it." Joseph Fussell does not become the owner of a great ranching syndicate or the president of a railroad company. But, He gives us an incredibly honest history of his life and some amazingly vivid snapshots of Texan and American cultures that existed at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that no longer exist.

He writes his memoir from the perspective of a young man working as a cowboy on the Texas and Mexico border. Later we find him working undercover for the Texas Rangers (in the era of the mythic Texas Rangers). Still later we find him working as a railroader switching cars and finally as a yardmaster in a railroad career spanning the southwestern and western United States in the heyday of steam. That someone at his level in our society in that day would commit to paper such accurate observations is very unique.

Along the way, he provides detailed descriptions that Mark Twain would have been proud of. In one example he describes a particular honky-tonk this way, "The orchestra was composed of a white man, a white woman, a Mexican, and a Negro. Usually, about two hours after the dancing began, some members of the orchestra would be drunker than a billed owl, but the dance went on even if all four were drunk, for someone was found who played a harmonica."

In another he describes the meals cooked for him by a Mrs. James, "Of all the meals I have ever eaten in any hotel dining room, restaurant, boardinghouse, or private home, I never had anything better than she put before her boarders. I think that lady had an insatiable desire to kill and cook all the chickens in the world. She could think of more ways to cook a chicken than a farmer can to whip a mule."

How honest is honest? A friend of Fussell's is brutally murdered by nine assailants in Mexico and Fussell barely escapes himself. Fussell then gives us the cold, calculated and graphic details of his revenge killings of the nine. Real eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth stuff.

With a Twain like wit, Unbridled Cowboy provides rare glimpses of a Texas and an America that we can now only see through the eyes of Joseph B. Fussell. Whether he thought so or not, Joseph B. Fussell "has accomplished something really worthwhile." Get it. Read it. Enjoy it for all its worth!

E.R. Fussell, Joseph's grandson, deserves some credit here as well. He has shared with us a great memoir that previously was only known to his family. Unbridled Cowboy is published by Truman State University Press, copyright 2008, and is available from Amazon.com.