9. How the Early Settlers Lived
DESPITE THE FACT that the tendency of a majority of early day rememberers has been to emphasize Indian fights, killings, and other sensational episodes, chronicles rich in the everyday manners and customs of the folk are plentiful. The classic of them all is Noah Smithwick's The Evolution of a State, listed below.
See also "Backwoods Life and Humor," "Pioneer Doctors," "Women Pioneers," "Fighting Texians."
BARKER, E. C. The Austin Papers. Four volumes of sources for any theme in social history connected with colonial Texans.
BATES, ED. F. History and Reminiscences of Denton County, Denton, Texas, 1918. A sample of much folk life found in county histories.
BELL, HORACE. On the Old West Coast, New York, 1930. Social history by anecdote. California. OP.
BRACHT, VIKTOR. Texas in 1848, translated from the German by C. F. Schmidt, San Antonio, 1931. Better on natural resources than on human inhabitants. OP.
CARL, PRINCE OF SOLMS-BRAUNFELS. Texas, 1844-1845. Translation, Houston, 1936. OP.
COX, C. C. "Reminiscences," in Vol. VI of Southwestern Historical Quarterly. One of the best of many pioneer recollections published by the Texas State Historical Association.
CROCKETT, DAVID. Anything about him.
DICK, EVERETT. The Sod House Frontier (1937) and Vanguards of the Frontier (1941). Both OP. Life on north-ern Plains into Rocky Mountains, but applicable to life southward.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. The Flavor of Texas, 1936. OP. Considerable social history.
FENLEY, FLORENCE. Oldtimers: Their Own Stories, Uvalde, Texas, 1939. OP. Faithful reporting of realistic detail. Southwest Texas, mostly ranch life.
FRANTZ, JOE B. Gail Borden, Dairyman to a Nation. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. This biography of a newspaperman and inventor brings out sides of pioneer life that emphasis on fighting, farming, and ranching generally overlooks.
GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. Wild Sports in the Far West, 1860. Dances are among the sports.
HARRIS, MRS. DILUE. "Reminiscences," edited by Mrs. A. B. Looscan, in Vols. IV and VII of Southwestern Historical Quarterly.
HART, JOHN A. History of Pioneer Days in Texas and Oklahoma; no date. Extended and republished under the title of Pioneer Days in the Southwest, 1909. Much on frontier ways of living.
HOFF, CAROL Johnny Texas, Wilcox and Follett, Chicago, 1950. Juvenile, historical fiction. Delightful in both text and illustrations.
HOGAN, WILLIAM R. The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History, University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Long on facts, short on intellectual activity; that is, on interpretations from the perspective of time and civilization.
HOLDEN, W. C. Alkali Trails, Dallas, 1930. Pioneer life in West Texas. OP.
HOLLEY, MARY AUSTIN. Texas... in a Series of Letters, Baltimore, 1833; reprinted under the title of Letters of an American Traveler, edited by Mattie Austin Hatcher, Dallas, 1933. First good book on Texas to be printed. OP.
Lamar Papers. Six volumes of scrappy source material on Texas history and life, issued by Texas State Library, Austin. OP.
LEWIS, WILLIE NEWBURY. Between Sun and Sod, Clarendon, Texas, 1938. OP. Again, want of perspective.
LUBBOCK, F. R. Six Decades in Texas, Austin, 1900.
MCCONNELL, H. H. Five Years a Cavalryman, Jacksboro, Texas, 1889. Bully.
McDANFIELD, H. F., and TAYLOR, NATHANIEL A. The Coming Empire, or 2000 Miles in Texas on Horseback, New York, 1878; privately reprinted, 1937. Delightful travel narrative. OP.
MCNEAL, T. A. When Kansas Was Young, New York, 1922. Episodes and characters of Plains country. OP.
OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. A Journey Through Texas, New York, 1857. Olmsted journeyed in order to see. He saw.
READ, OPIE. An Arkansas Planter, 1896. Pleasant fiction.
RICHARDSON, ALBERT D. Beyond the Mississippi, Hartford, 1867. What a traveling journalist saw.
RISTER, CARL C. Southern Plainsmen, University of Oklahoma Press, 1938. Though pedestrian in style, good social data. Bibliography.
ROEMER, DR. FERDINAND. Texas, translated from the German by Oswald Mueller, San Antonio, 1935. OP. Roemer, a geologist, rode through Texas in the forties and made acute observations on the land, its plants and animals, and the settlers.
SCHMITZ, JOSEPH WILLIAM. Thus They Lived, Naylor, San Antonio, 1935. This would have been a good social history of Texas had the writer devoted ten more years to the subject. Unsatisfactory bibliography.
SHIPMAN, DANIEL. Frontier Life, 58 Years in Texas, n.p., 1879. One of the pioneer reminiscences that should be reprinted.
SMITH, HENRY. "Reminiscences," in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. XIV. Telling details.
SMITHWICK, NOAH. The Evolution of a State, Austin, 1900. Reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1935. Best of all books dealing with life in early Texas. Bully reading.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, published since 1897 by Texas State Historical Association, Austin. A depository of all kinds of history; the first twenty-five or thirty volumes are the more interesting.
SWEET, ALEXANDER E., and KNOX, J. ARMOY. On a Mexican Mustang Through Texas, Hartford, 1883. Humorous satire, often penetrating and ruddy with actuality.
WALLIS, JONNIE LOCKHART. Sixty Years on the Brazos: The Life and Letters of Dr. John Washington Lockhart, privately printed, Los Angeles, 1930. In notebook style, but as rare in essence as it is among dealers in out-of-print books.
WAUGH, JULIA NOTT. Castroville and Henry Castro, San Antonio, 1934. OP. Best-written monograph dealing with any aspect of Texas history that I have read.
WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in Straight Texas, Texas Folklore Society Publication XIII, 1937.