2006 Southwestern Collection

2006 Southwestern Collection

[Erratum]

[Begin Page 112]

Editor's Note

Joseph Musso of Los Angeles, California, has written to the editors of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly to challenge arguments put forth in the article, "The Face behind the Knife: A Study of the James Bowie Portrait Purchased by the Texas Historical Commission and the State Preservation Board," by Don Arp Jr. and published in the January 2006 issue (vol. 109, no. 3). It is important to address the issues raised by Mr. Musso.

Mr. Arp intended to shed light and foster discussion on the identity of the painter who executed the portrait acquired by the State of Texas in 2001 and to explore the question of whether or not the subject was in reality James Bowie. He concluded that the portrait was "almost undeniably that of James Bowie," and argued that it was painted by William Edward West rather than the more famous artist G. P. A. Healy. As corroborating evidence, Arp discussed the identification of another portrait, purportedly of James Bowie by the noted artist Alfred Jacob Miller, and concluded that it (the second portrait) was likely painted by Miller from descriptions provided by friends and relatives after James Bowie's death.

Mr. Musso has challenged Mr. Arp's conclusions on two major points:

1. He disagrees with Arp that the painting of James Bowie purchased by the Texas Historical Commission and the State Preservation Board was painted by William Edward West, arguing instead that G. P. A. Healy did indeed execute the portrait in Boston in 1832 or 1833.
2. He disagrees with Arp's conclusion that the second portrait, which is currently owned by the Alexander Gallery in New York City, is of James Bowie and that it was painted by Alfred Jacob Miller. Mr. Musso provides documentation to support his claim that this portrait has been cataloged as an unsigned portrait of James Bowie's brother, "Colonel Rezin Pleasants Bowie," possibly also painted by G. P. A. Healy in Boston.

The manuscript submitted by Mr. Arp to the Quarterly passed through the standard peer review process, but Mr. Musso was not one of the reviewers. After additional consultation with art experts, the editors agree that Mr. Musso's arguments must be seriously considered. Mr. Arp recognizes that Mr. Musso may have evidence that he does not.

Readers should recognize that the Southwestern Historical Quarterly makes no claim of authenticating the identity of the sitter or the artist in either of these portraits. As is always the case, opinions and analyses expressed in Quarterly articles are the work of the authors. However, in this case, the editors think it necessary to make a special effort to call the attention of readers of the Quarterly to questions raised.

Kent Calder Leaves for Arizona

Kent Calder, our director of publications since November 2003, has accepted a position as director of the Scholarly Publishing Program at Arizona State University and will leave the TSHA this summer to move to Tempe, Arizona, in time to take up his new job this fall.

We introduced Kent to you, in our Winter 2003 Riding Line, with a few thoughts about "circling the wagons" and getting on with business after having been "through some rough country" with the retirement of George Ward and Evelyn Stehling's leaving shortly thereafter. We were, we told you, "thrilled now to announce that the terrain is smoothing out and a new spirit is felt on the hall."

Well, that spirit, as it turns out, was sometimes a demon, and there were still patches of rough country to come. But Kent has provided an excellent wagon to our circling and, perhaps precisely because of our transitional challenges, has made his three-year stay with us count as more like ten or fifteen. In an organization as old as this one is, there come times that can only be called watershed moments, and such moments seem to be by definition fully apprehendable only from the retrospective view. While reaching for the future, we constantly consult the past for orientation, to see how far we've come and to ascertain the line of our path. For, in the midst of change it is often easy to feel lost, but if we can look at where we've been and discern the continuity of a true line, we are reassured.

Kent's leaving provides us a looking-back point now, and we see in his part of the path with us an addition to our purpose, and a continuity that stretches back to George Garrison and our first Quarterly published in 1897. Under Kent's publication guidance, we have published eleven more Quarterlies, twelve more books, a dozen or so more Riding Lines. These are confirmations of our momentum, set going more than one hundred years ago. They are like well-worn shoes nailed firmly to the deck, holding one publications director after the next on course through the vicissitudes of publishing. They are big shoes to fill and have a proud lineage: Garrison, Eugene Barker, Walter Prescott Webb, Bailey Carroll, Joe Frantz, Tuffly Ellis, Jim Pohl, Ron Tyler, and George Ward. George was the first to head a separate publications department and the one to bring our books program to maturity. Kent has done his part in this long lineage.

Kent has that rare talent of spotting the gift in another and giving it its rein. He's been an excellent human being to work with on a daily basis. We envy the folks who will get him next, and we will remember him from the center of Texas with affection and gratitude.

New Fellows

A TSHA member who has demonstrated through published works a special aptitude for historical study relating to the state of Texas may be elected "Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association." In accordance with our bylaws, which allow for up to three new fellows annually, three fellows were elected this year, and announced at the annual meeting.

Thomas H. Kreneck, associate director for Special Collections and Archives and Graduate Lecturer in Public History at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, earned his Ph.D. in history from Bowling Green State University in 1981, and since then has authored an impressive number of books and articles. He is best known for his biography, Mexican American Odyssey: Felix Tijerina, Entrepreneur and Civil Leader, 1905–1965 (Texas A&M University Press, 2001). Kreneck has been at the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at TAMU-CC since 1990, and has transformed the collections there into a first-rate archival depository. The Héctor P. García Papers, which he curates, have provided the major source documents for several books published during the last few years, and numerous scholars have acknowledged Kreneck for his crucial assistance in their research in the Special Collections. Kreneck has also acted as consultant for numerous documentaries and has been prominent as a coordinator of historical exhibits and archival workshops. In addition to his scholarship and archival work, Kreneck has been a university classroom teacher for most of his career. He has volunteered his time for such community groups as the City of Corpus Christi Landmark Commission, the Nueces County Historical Society, and the Spanish American Genealogical Association.

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Richard B. McCaslin, associate professor in the Department of History at the University of North Texas, completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1988, spent several years as an editor for the Andrew Johnson Papers project at the University of Tennessee, and built a teaching career at High Point University before joining the faculty at UNT in 2004. Since completing his Ph.D. he has established an outstanding record as a publishing scholar. His most recent book, Lee in the Shadowof Washington (LSU Press, 2001), won several prizes and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. Among his other publications are a study of the Fort Fisher Campaign during the Civil War and two photographic histories in the Portraits of Conflict series, two histories of educational institutions, and several journal articles. He has five forthcoming publications, including a history of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi and a biography of John S. "Rip" Ford. Rick is also the author of our own forthcoming history of the TSHA, "At the Heart of Texas: The First One-Hundred Years of the Texas State Historical Association, 1897–1997," scheduled for publication this fall.

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F. Todd Smith, also an associate professor in the Department of History at UNT, received his Ph.D. in history from Tulane University in 1989. He is one of the most extensively published scholars in the field of Texas Indian history. He has published numerous journal articles; his 1991 article on the Kadohadacho Indians, published in the SHQ, won the Ray Allen Billington Award that year. Smith has written three books on Texas Indians. The first, The Caddos, the Wichitas, and the United States (TAMU Press) was named an "Outstanding Academic Book" by Choice and also won the Ottis Lock Award from the ETHA. The second, The Wichita Indians, was a runner-up for both the Tullis Award and the Friends of the Dallas Public Library book award. The most recent, From Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859 (Uni- versity of Nebraska Press), was a finalist this year for our Kate Brooks Bates Award. Todd is already at work on his next book, a sweeping multicentury history of the Texas-Louisiana borderlands.

We are honored to have these three distinguished scholars among our fellows and extend our congratulations to them. We would also like to thank our Fellows Committee members, Arnoldo De León (chair), Walter Buenger, Carolina Castillo Crimm, and Carl Moneyhon, for their work.

Board News

We have two new members on our Board of Directors, elected at our annual meeting in March. Light T. Cummins is the Guy M. Bryan Professor of American History at Austin College in Sherman, where he is also the director of the Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies. Cummins, a lifetime Fellow, has been a member of the TSHA since 1972. Lonn Taylor is retired from a long career as museum curator and historian. Since retiring and moving to Fort Davis in 2002, Taylor has served as a consultant on exhibits with the Texas Parks and Wildlife, the Alamo, and the cities of San Antonio and Grapevine. He was a staff member at the TSHA from 1968 to 1970, serving as an editorial assistant for the SHQ and for the supplementary volume of the Handbook. He has been an Honorary Life Member of the Association since 1970.

Jane Clements Monday, who has been on the Board since 2004, was re-elected. Monday is an author and former teacher and mayor of Huntsville. Frances B. Vick, retired director and cofounder of UNT Press and founder and president of E-Heart Press, was elected second vice president. Vick taught English at Baylor and at Stephen F. Austin before beginning her publishing career, and is active in many historical organizations and educational councils.

For more detailed information on our new Board members, see our Spring 2006 Riding Line.

TSHA Awards

Our various award winners were announced at the annual meeting.

Mary Jo O'Rear won the H. Bailey Carroll Award for the best article to appear in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, for her "Silver-lined Storm: The Impact of the 1919 Hurricane on the Port of Corpus Christi," which appeared in the January 2005 issue.

Andrés Reséndez's book, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (Cambridge University Press), won our Coral Horton Tullis Award for the best book on Texas published during the calendar year. Finalists for this prize were: Anthony Quiroz, Claiming Citizenship: Mexican Americans in Victoria, Texas (A&M University Press); and Keith Volanto, Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal (A&M University Press).

The Kate Brooks Bates Award, given for historical research dealing with any phase of Texas history prior to 1900, went to Elliott Young, Catarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border (American Encounters, Global Interactions) (Duke University). Finalists were: Gary Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (University of Oklahoma Press); and, F. Todd Smith, From Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859 (University of Nebraska Press).

Darlene H. Unrue won the Liz Carpenter Award, given for the best book published in the calendar year on the research in the history of women, for Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist (University of Mississippi Press). Finalists were: Charles H. Russell, Undaunted: A Norwegian Woman in Frontier Texas (A&M University Press); and Jean A. Stuntz, Hers, His, and Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain and Early Texas (Texas Tech University Press).

The John H. Jenkins Research Fellowship, given for the best research proposal having to do with Texas history, was awarded to John Weber for his work on labor history in South Texas.

The Fred White Jr. Research Fellowship, awarded for the best research proposal for a book manuscript having to do with Texas history, went to Mary L. Kelley for her work on women who shaped modern Texas.

Kenneth Hafertepe won the Cecilia Steinfeldt Fellowship, for research in the arts and material culture, for his work on the material culture of German Texans.

The Mary M. Hughes Research Fellowship, for the best research proposal on Texas history, went to Robert Trevino for his work on religion and the Chicano movement in Texas.

Richard B. McCaslin won the Lawrence T. Jones III Research Fellowship in Civil War Texas History, for his work on Rip Ford.

The Mary Jon and J. P. Bryan Leadership in Education Award went to Sandra Neal, seventh-grade Texas history teacher at Jackson Technology Center in Garland (and whose students also compete in our state History Day program).

We'd like to extend our congratulations to all of our winners. And, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who served on our various awards committees this year.

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The Texas State Historical Association's One Hundred and Eleventh Annual Meeting will be held March 8–10, 2007, at the Crown Plaza Hotel on the San Antonio Riverwalk. The Program Committee, chaired by Ty Cashion, met in May to finalize the program, which will include, as usual, a wide array of sessions on Texas history topics, as well as some new programs for K–12 educators. The Association wishes to thank the Program Committee for its good work. The committee consists of the following members: Karen T. Wiggins, David Blanke, Emilio Zamora, Marise McDermott, T. Lindsay Baker, Mike Parrish, Paul Spellman, Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Light T. Cummins, Yvonne D. Frear, and Gene Preuss. Please make plans to join us for a great meeting in San Antonio.

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As many of you may have discovered by now, we have a new online gallery, Texas Lighthouses, featuring images and historical information about the lighthouses along the Texas Gulf Coast, from Sabine Pass to Point Isabel. The gallery also presents special features on the design and construction of lighthouses and on the men and women who tended them.

The text accompanying the images is adapted from T. Lindsay Baker's The Lighthouses of Texas, published by Texas A&M University Press, and includes hyperlinks to relevant articles in the Handbook of Texas Online. This online project could not have been accomplished without the assistance and generosity of Charles Backus, director of Texas A&M University Press; T. Lindsay Baker; Donna Coates, photo editor; Bob Gray, who graciously shared his postcard collection; Art Leatherwood, former Handbook of Texas volunteer; Charlene Zvolenek, Web designer at the University of Texas at Austin; and Richard Brown, UT student worker. Go to http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/ gallery/texas_lighthouses.html,

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Texas History Day 2006 was held for the first time at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum on April 28–29. Students representing twenty-two regions from across the state presented their projects in the hopes of advancing to National History Day in College Park, Maryland, on June 11–15. For a full list of state and national results, please see our Web site at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/education/thd/index.html. We wish to express our thanks to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum for their generosity in allowing the students to present their exhibits in the museum's temporary gallery and for serving as headquarters for the event. Presentations were also made in the nearby University of Texas buildings for the first time in over a decade. The event was concluded with the presentation of awards by TSHA president Larry McNeill and TSHA interim director J. C. Martin, along with a variety of special guests including commissioner of the General Land Office, Jerry Patterson, who recognized the winners of the inaugural Texas Quiz Show.

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We have heard from Lonn Taylor regarding the following statement in the January Southwestern Collection (p. 398): "Emily West has been termed by twentieth-century writers the Yellow Rose of Texas, and the speculation is that she is the one about whom the song The Yellow Rose of Texas was written."

Lonn writes: "I have no quarrel with the story that she [Emily] may have been in Santa Anna's tent—only with the pernicious tale that her actions there, whatever they may have been, inspired the song." Lonn sent along two columns he wrote last year (for the Marfa Big Bend Sentinel) addressing this subject, columns inspired by a paper Ab Abernethy gave at our annual meeting several years ago, recounting the provenance of this tale.

In his first column (Nov. 23, 2005) Lonn traces the origin of the erroneous conjecture linking Emily with the song. "The legend of Emily Morgan and 'The Yellow Rose of Texas,'" Lonn wrote, "was made from a scrap of paper and a ribald after-dinner speech." The scrap of paper was the diary entry of William Bollaert's we quoted in our January piece, which claimed that a veteran of the Revolution told Bollaert that Emily was in the tent with Santa Anna when the Texans charged at San Jacinto. The after-dinner speech was one given on occasion in the 1960s by Henderson Shuffler, a "fine historian and delightful raconteur" and the director of the Texana program at the University of Texas. "A mildly Rabelaisian talk," according to Lonn, it connected the song with the Bollaert statement that Emily was in Santa Anna's tent. "Now Shuffler was just having fun, weaving two Texas themes together for the amusement of male audiences," Lonn wrote, "And as long as his fun stayed out of print, everything was fine." But, Lonn goes on to describe, ultimately someone took Shuffler's after-dinner talk as fact, and the story about the song found its way into print and spread.

Lonn's second column (Dec. 1, 2005) tells of the search for documents that would confirm or disprove Bollaert's story about Emily being in Santa Anna's tent at San Jacinto. The story as Lonn pieces it together is told too well for us to give it away with a summary here. We'll just reveal that it lends credible possibility to Emily's having been in that tent; it has something to say, too, about who that "veteran of the Revolution" was who told Bollaert the story in the first place.

Lonn's columns are entertaining as well as edifying, and we recommend them in their own right and as a definitive way to remove any respectability that may still be lingering in the historical record regarding the supposed link between Emily and the song, The Yellow Rose of Texas.

Lonn will be happy to e-mail these two columns to anyone who is interested. His e-mail address is taylor@overland.net.

In Memoriam

At the annual meeting this year several people were honored with resolutions. As we did last year, we will share a few of these with you in each issue of this year's volume.

Norman Black was born on September 24, 1926, in Valley Mills, Texas. At age 10 he moved to Longview, Texas, where he lived for the rest of his life. Dr. Black attended Longview High School, received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University, and a DDS degree from the Baylor College of Dentistry. He practiced dentistry in Longview from 1952 until his retirement in 2005. Dr. Black also had a passion for Texas history and the history of Longview. He was a member the Texas Historical Commission, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Texas Archeological Society. He joined the Gregg County Historical Commission in 1962 and became its chairman in 1988, continuing in that position until his death. He served as chair of the Longview Centennial Committee, president of the Friends of the Nicholson Memorial library, and two terms as a member of the board of the East Texas Development Corporation. Norman Black died on December 11, 2005. He is survived by two children, Beverly Jean Black and Brian David Black.

* * *

Henry John Hauschild Jr. was born on April 4, 1915, in Victoria, Texas. Mr. Hauschild graduated from the University of Texas, class of 1938, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During the Second World War he served in the Army Air Corps. He was extremely active in historical preservation activities and in the work of the Victoria County Historical Commission. He was author of several local historical works including The Runge Chronicles. He also served as chairman of the Victoria County Sesquicentennial Committee and participated in numerous other civic groups in Victoria. He was a longtime member of the Texas State Historical Association. He was an avid collector of more than nine thousand books, photographs, and other historical materials, which he maintained in a large personal library. Henry John Hauschild Jr. died on July 8, 2005. He is survived by his son, Henry John Hauschild III.

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Charles J. Long was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 6, 1914. He began his career on the staff of the Museum of Natural History in New York City. He served in World War II as a member of the Army Air Corps. He moved to San Antonio in 1947 when he became assistant director of the Witte Memorial Museum, a position he held until 1969. In that year, he became the curator of the Alamo, a position he held for twenty-three years until his retirement, when he was named curator emeritus. Long was interested in the history of photography and the graphic arts. One of his early projects involved conserving color photographs from the Eastman Kodak Company. He had a distinguished career as a museum consultant and received many awards for his accomplishments, including being made an Hidalgo de San Antonio de Bexar. Charles J. Long died in San Antonio on March 10, 2005. He is survived by two daughters.

Meetings

The Texas Archeological Society will hold its seventy-seventh annual meeting in San Angelo, October 20–22, 2006. Meetings, symposia, posters, and talks will inform the gathering about the latest in archeology. The Friday evening public forum will feature Matthew Bogdanus, author of Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures (Bloomsbury USA, 2005). The Saturday night banquet speaker will be Elmer Kelton. Papers, posters, and symposium titles may be submitted to papers@txarch.org (e-mail). Additional information may be found at http://www.txarch.org (Web site), or by calling 800/377-7240.

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The East Texas Historical Association will hold its annual fall meeting on September 21–23, 2006, at the Fredonia Inn and Conference Center in Nacogdoches. Approximately twenty paper sessions will feature the work of professional and amateur historians. To kick off the meeting on Thursday evening, September 21, Jeff Guinn will deliver the ninth annual Max and Georgiana Lale Lecture at 7:30 in the Grand Ballroom of the University Center on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. Guinn is the former books editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and an award-winning author of books, including Our Land Before We Die: The Proud History of the Seminole Negro.

At the Saturday luncheon, the ETHA will present the C. K. Chamberlain Award for Best Article published in the East Texas Historical Journal in 2005, the Bob and Doris Bowman Best of East Texas Award, and Ottis Lock Endowment Awards for achievements in research, publishing, and teaching. For more information or to register, visit the East Texas Historical Association web site at http://www.easttexashistorical.org.

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The Teaching of History Conference (TCON) will take place at Wooten Hall at the University of North Texas on September 16, 2006. The primary goal of TCON is to provide teachers of history and social studies with up-to-date information on the conference theme, which for 2006 is "Nineteenth-Century Leaders." The speakers are nationally known experts in Texas, United States, and World history. There will be three sessions on Texas (Gregg Cantrell on Stephen F. Austin, Carl Moneyhon on E. J. Davis, and Mike Campbell on Sam Houston), three on the U.S. (Joseph G. Dawson on Winfield Scott, Amilcar Shabazz on Frederick Douglass, and Kathi Kern on Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and three on the world (Andrés Reséndez on Benito Juárez, R. Keith Schoppa on Cixi, Empress Dowager of China, and Alfred C. Mierzejewski on Otto Von Bismarck). The objective of each session is to provide attendees with facts, teaching techniques, and bibliographical materials on their respective topics, thus expanding the knowledge and enhancing the teaching skills of the attendees. Registration is $25 until September 4, 2006. After September 4, 2006, the fee is $35. The price includes lunch, as the sessions are scheduled to run from 8:30 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Kathi Kern of the University of Kentucky will deliver the keynote address at the luncheon; her topic will be "The Political Relationship of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony." For further information, contact Rick McCaslin at mccaslin@unt.edu.

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The Texas Women's History Network (TWHN) will hold its first annual symposium, at Rice University in Houston on April 21, 2007. Elizabeth Hayes Turner, associate professor at the University of North Texas and author of Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880–1920 will give the keynote address. In addition to paper sessions, there will be a forum to discuss future goals and projects. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit a one-page abstract and curriculum vitae to TWHN at texaswomenshistorynet@yahoo.com by December 15, 2006. Topics should address some aspect of women in Texas history, although tangential subjects will be considered. Graduate students and junior scholars are particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Student papers will be considered for the Billie Jean Williams Stuntz prize for best paper, which carries a $100 award. Please indicate your eligibility for the student-paper prize upon submission. Selected participants will be notified by January 31, 2007, and must submit papers of 12 to 15 pages by March 30, 2007. We encourage anyone who is interested in historical scholarship on the topic of women in the Texas region or in promoting women's issues within the profession to attend this symposium. For registration informaton, please visit http.www.ruf.rice.edu/~twhn07.

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At the West Texas Historical Association's annual meeting this past spring in Lubbock, Cheryl Lewis of Hamlin was elected president, and several members were honored for their writing, scholarship, and contributions to the preservation of West Texas history. Sandy Hoover, a Texas Tech University graduate student in history, received the organization's marquee honor, the Mrs. Percy Jones Award for the best article published in the Year Book, for "Searching for Meaning in the 'Llano Estacado'." Patrick Dearen received the R. C. Crane Award for the best work of fiction on West Texas, for When the Sky Rained Dust. Thomas Alexander received the Rupert Richardson Award for the best West Texas history book, for The One and Only Rattlesnake Bomber Base: Pyote Army Airfield in World War II. Longtime member Elmer Kelton was given an Honorary Life Membership, and a preconference gathering celebrated his eightieth birthday.

The WTHA will meet next year in Abilene, March 30–31, and invites you to submit proposals for papers. Topics should cover historical subjects pertaining to West Texas. For individual proposals include the name of the presenter, the title of the paper, and a one-paragraph overview. Proposals for complete sessions are encouraged. For session proposals include the name of a moderator, the name of three presenters, the title of each paper, and a one-paragraph overview of each paper. Presentations must be no longer than eighteen minutes. The deadline for submission is November 1, 2006. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by December 14, 2006.

Send proposals to: Tai Kreidler, West Texas Historical Association, Texas Tech University, P.O. 41041, Lubbock, Texas 79409; or via e-mail to wthayb@ttu.edu. Telephone inquiries can be made to 806/742-9076.

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The Ninth Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference will be held in conjunction with the Western History Association on October 11–14, 2006, at the Hyatt Regency at Union Station in St. Louis. The Recovery Project will be represented by more than fifty presenters from the United States and abroad. For more information, please visit http://www.artepublicopress.com; or, http//www.unm.edu/~wha/.

Clippings

TSHA Fellow and Board member Light T. Cummins has been named a 2006 Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation.

Cummins, the Guy M. Bryan Professor of American History at Austin College, has served as a member of the history faculty there since 1978. He is the author or editor of seven books dealing with the Spanish Borderlands, especially Texas and Louisiana during the eighteenth century. He has also authored several dozen articles and numerous book reviews on these topics.

A native of San Antonio, Cummins was educated in the schools of that city. He received his B.A. and M.A. from what is now Texas State University and his Ph.D. in history from Tulane University.

Cummins was a Fulbright Scholar to Spain, serves as an Associate of the Danforth Foundation, is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Historical Association, and a former chair of the Grayson County Historical Commission. He served two terms as a member of the Board of Directors of the Texas Council for the Humanities, now known as Humanities Texas.

Organized in 1950, the Piper Foundation supports charitable, scientific or educational activities by providing financial assistance to students and contributing to community organizations and other nonprofit organizations throughout Texas. The Foundation gives fifteen annual awards of $5,000 each to professors for superior teaching at the college level. Selection is made on the basis of nominations submitted by each college or university in the State of Texas. Begun in 1958, with eight awards, the roster of Piper Professors includes outstanding professors from two and four-year colleges and universities, public and private.

Austin College, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), is an independent, liberal arts college located sixty miles north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas. Chartered in November 1849, it is the oldest college in Texas under original charter and name as recognized by the State Historical Survey Committee. U.S. News & World Report ranked Austin College among the top 100 colleges in the category of "Best Liberal Arts Colleges" for 2006. Austin College also ranked among the "Best 361 Colleges" in the 2006 Princeton Review, was included in Loren Pope's Colleges That Change Lives, and was profiled in the 2005 edition of Kaplan's Insiders Guide to the 331 Most Interesting Colleges.

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At its banquet on December 6, 2005, the Nueces County Historical Society presented its second annual Daniel E. Kilgore Local History Awards and announced the winners of its Keith Guthrie Memorial Award for Nueces County history. The recipients of the Kilgore Awards are: Anita Eisenhauer, Geraldine D. McGloin, Sally Robeau, Barbara M. Stever, Rex H. "Jim" Stever, Bill Walraven, and Marjorie K. Walraven. The Guthrie Award winners are: Mary Jo O'Rear for "Silver-lined Storm:The Impact of the 1919 Hurricane on the Port of Corpus Christi," published in the January 2005 issue of the SHQ; and, William J. Chriss for "The Greeks of Corpus Christi, 1880–1945," published in the Spring 2005 issue of the Journal of South Texas.

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The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma is seeking applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program. The purpose of the program is to assist researchers by providing financial awards for on-campus work in the Center's archives. Awards are normally from $500 to $1,000 to defray the cost of travel and lodging.

The Center's holdings include the papers of fifty-three former members of Congress as well as information on government agriculture programs, flood control activities, water and soil conservation projects, federal-Native American relations, drought relief, and rural development. The various collections are described at http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/. Applications are accepted at any time. For further infomation about the application process, contact Archivist, Carl Albert Center, 630 Parrington Oval, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019; telephone 405/325-5835; fax 405/325-6419; e-mail channeman@ou.edu.

Acquisitions

We have news from the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University regarding several recent acquisitions in their collections.

The Collections' College Baseball Hall of Fame has secured the complete print archive of the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper (CBN), becoming its official archive of record. The editor of the newspaper, Lou Pavlovich Jr., will further assist the Hall of Fame in locating key individuals to help tell the history of the sport. The CBN, known as the "Voice of Amateur Baseball," has published for the past forty-eight years from its offices in Tucson, Arizona. The publication was begun by Pavlovich's father, Lou Pavlovich Sr., who was a sports writer for the local newspaper. The major baseball publication of the day, The Sporting News, was not interested in covering college baseball, and "as a matter of fact," says Pavlovich Jr., "they were pretty rude about it. So my father started doing this in his spare time on the kitchen table." Two years ago the Special Collections Library at Texas Tech began a partnership with the College Baseball Hall of Fame, allowing the Hall of Fame to archive the written record of college baseball. With the archiving of the written record now underway, says Hall of Fame chairman John Askins, "we're taking the next step and are soliciting the actual hardware and memorabilia that fans of the game will want to see." The Special Collections Library is one of the preeminent sports archives in the country, having among its collections the records of the now defunct Southwest Athletic Conference and the recently acquired Big 8 Athletic Conference Records. The manuscript holdings, oral history files, photographs, and film and video collections are housed in a 79,000-square-foot building, staffed by thirteen archivists and librarians.

The Southwest Collection has also acquired the papers of Theodore "Ted" Fujita, creator of the Fujita Scale, which classifies tornadoes by intensity. He defined and assigned wind speeds to six wind categories from F1 to F5, with F5 being the most destructive. The gift of his papers, made by his son Kaz Fujita, "has established the university as the single largest repository of wind-related documents in the world," according to Chad Morris, associate director for Texas Tech's Wind Science and Engineering Research Center.

Another recent acquisition of the Special Collections Library are the papers of Jaye Skaggs Design, Inc., of Fort Worth, an interior design company that worked with such noteworthy clients as T. Cullen Davis and Martina Navratilova. During her forty years in business Jaye Skaggs and her company helped set the standard for Texas-style interiors and established worldwide credibility for "Texas chic." Skaggs is a native of Odessa and a graduate of Texas Christian University.

Last fall the Special Collections Library received an extensive oral history interview collection from Kathleen Hudson and the Texas Heritage Music Foundation of Kerrville. The collection is made up of sixty-nine reels of tape and ninety-seven cassettes of interviews conducted with singer-songwriters, musicians, and club owners. Hudson established the foundation in 1987 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the history of Texas music. This collection was added to the Library's Crossroads of Texas Music Project, started in 2002.