Southwestern Collection

We would like to remind our readers of the Texas State Historical Association's 2013 Annual Meeting which will be held February 28-March 2, 2013, at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel located at 200 Main Street in downtown Fort Worth.

There will be forty-one sessions on various aspects of Texas history, including Texas Borderlands, women, African Americans, and the Civil War. Aside from the sessions, we will have the following guest speakers: Laura McLemore will present "Adele Looscan and the TSHA" during the Women in Texas History Luncheon, Thomas H. Kreneck and Gerald Saxon will present "Collecting Texas" at the Book Lovers' and Texana Collectors' Breakfast, and Char Miller will present on water conservation in Texas at the Fellows and Awards Luncheon. Other special events include the Graduate Student Mixer, the Presidential Reception, and the Live Auction Reception.

Accommodations at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel for a special rate of $172.11 are available through January 28, 2013. To make reservations, call (800) 433-5677 or book online at www.tshaonline.com and enter group code TSHTSHA. Meeting registration will open December 1, 2012. The Annual Meeting Program will be mailed by December 2012 and posted online. To see the latest updates visit our website at www.tshaonline. org. For more information, please contact the office at 940-369-5200.

Live Stock Exchange, Fort Worth, Texas. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

In Memoriam

The Texas State Historical Association and its members lost a true friend and supporter when Archie P. McDonald died on August 16, 2012, in Nacogdoches due to complications from cancer. He was seventy-six.

McDonald was a son of the "Golden Triangle," born in Beaumont on November 29, 1936. Archie stayed true to his Southeast Texas roots as he developed a love for gumbo, good fiddle music, and storytelling. Educated in Beaumont's public schools, McDonald received his B.A. in history from Lamar State College in 1958, his M.A. from Rice University in 1960, and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1965, where he studied under renowned Civil War historian Harry T. Williams. But as he would tell anyone who asked, the best and smartest thing he ever did during his college years was to propose to and marry Judy Barrett in 1957. They would raise two sons, Tucker Barrett and Christopher Lee, and remained devoted partners to each other through his passing.

His first teaching job was at Murray State University in Kentucky, but after one year in that unfamiliar land he came back to Texas to begin his nearly fifty-year career at what was then Stephen F. Austin State College (SFA) in Nacogdoches. He was hired to teach Civil War and southern history, the areas of his training at LSU, but upon his arrival his chair informed him that he would also be responsible for helping to teach the department's Texas history courses. He was apprehensive since the only real Texas history instruction he had ever received occurred while he was in the fourth and seventh grades, but like he did everything else in his life he attacked his assignment with passion and commitment. It did not take long before he had developed a "following" and became the department's primary Texas historian.

His academic life took another dramatic turn when SFA president Ralph Steen informed McDonald that he was to be the second executive director of the East Texas Historical Association (ETHA), replacing the retiring C. K. Chamberlain. He would hold that position, along with that of the editor of the ETHA's East Texas Historical Journal, for the next thirty-seven years. It would be during those years that he would become one of the most visible and accomplished Texas historians of his time.

Under his leadership the ETHA would grow to be the largest regional historical association in the nation, and the East Texas Historical Journal would take its place among the leading scholarly publications in the discipline. He made it a point to publish articles written by young, dynamic...