Science on the Texas Frontier

Science on the Texas Frontier PDF

Author: Gideon Lincecum

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780890967904

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Contains selections from the letters and scientific writings of Dr. Gideon Lincecum about the things he observed while he was studying nature in Texas.

True Tales of the Texas Frontier

True Tales of the Texas Frontier PDF

Author: C. Herndon Williams

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1625841671

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

For eight centuries, the Texas frontier has seen conquest, exploration, immigration, revolution and innovation, leaving to history a cast of fascinating characters and captivating tales. Its historic period began in 1519 with Spanish exploration, but there was a prehistory long before, nearly fifteen thousand years earlier, with the arrival of people to Texas. Each story pulls a new perspective from this long history by examining nearly all angles--from archaeology to ethnography, astronomy, agriculture and more. These true stories prove to be unexpected, sometimes contrarian and occasionally funny but always fascinating. Join author and historian C. Herndon Williams as he recounts his exploration of nearly a millennium of the Texas frontier.

The Other Texas Frontier

The Other Texas Frontier PDF

Author: Harry Huntt Ransom

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 1477306307

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“One is tempted to say that wherever there was a frontier in America there was a counterfrontier and that the main purpose of this counterfrontier was not only to help man grow or dig or catch or kill his livng but also to put this man in communication with the traditions of his kind and thereby secure to his descendants the benefits of the free mind.” —Harry Huntt Ransom The reflections of Harry Huntt Ransom (1908–1976) in The Other Texas Frontier present an alternative to the stereotypical picture of the brash, blustery heroes of the Texas frontier. Here, in six highly readable essays, Ransom posits a thesis of the counterfrontier: a quiet settling of the land by thoughtful, undramatic citizens who, he says, were the other Texans—the Texans without guns. Three of the essays are profiles of gifted men from Texas’ nineteenth century: Ashbel Smith, physician, diplomat, and first president of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas; Sherman Goodwin, physician, horticulturalist, bibliophile (and Ransom’s own grandfather); and Swante Palm, Swedish immigrant, bibliographer, and generous patron of the University of Texas libraries. Harry Huntt Ransom, one of Texas’ most accomplished men of letters and for forty-one years an integral part of the University of Texas System as professor, dean, president, and chancellor, leaves an extraordinary legacy to Texas for both his educational and literary service. Though educated out of state, he returned to his native Texas after completion of his PhD at Yale to teach, research, and write in the fields of copyright law, literary history, and bibliography. As founder of the Humanities Research Center, he was squarely in the tradition of the men he was writing about. Compiled and edited after Ransom’s death by his wife, Hazel H. Ransom, the literary sketches of The Other Texas Frontier form a book that Ransom himself had outlined but had not completed.

Geology and Politics in Frontier Texas, 1845–1909

Geology and Politics in Frontier Texas, 1845–1909 PDF

Author: Walter Keene Ferguson

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-11-07

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1477300805

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Conservation and development of natural resources are issues of critical importance throughout the world. These issues have been matters of public concern in Texas since legislators first adopted the state-sponsored geological survey as a means of extending government funds to private citizens who would help develop and advertise the mineral and agricultural wealth of Texas. Walter Keene Ferguson examines the relation of politics to geological exploration during a critical period in Texas history—the first half-century of statehood. Although Texas shared its frontier experience with many other areas, it could not rely on federal aid in the form of land grants because the state government controlled the destiny of the public domain at all times. Acrimonious debate between farmers and urbanites of East Texas and pioneer ranchers of arid West Texas rendered the disposition of public lands even more difficult. As tools for developing and advertising resources, the geological and agricultural surveys of 1858 and 1867 fulfilled the demands of expectant capitalism made by politicians, speculators, and railroad entrepreneurs. Reconnaissance geologists publicized the wealth of Texas. Drought in 1886 and popular agitation against squandering of state land caused the emergence of a new concept of the geological survey as an instrument of land reform and public assistance. Lobbying by reformers and scientific organizations led to the formation of the Dumble Survey in 1888 and the University of Texas Mineral Survey in 1901. Stratigraphic analysis of the “individualities” of Texas geology helped the state realize its full economic potential and led to legislation to protect public mineral land from exploitation. The youthful oil industry finally removed geological exploration from the political arena. As part of the University, a permanent Bureau of Economic Geology was established in 1909 to extend the benefits of scientific research to private citizens and state organizations on a nonpartisan basis. Ferguson’s analysis of geological surveys in Texas contributes to an understanding not only of the geology and history of the state but of the urgent problem of evaluating the natural resources of underdeveloped regions.

Louisa of Woods' Crossing

Louisa of Woods' Crossing PDF

Author: James Kaye

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2007-05-15

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1469119978

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Louisa of Woods Crossing is about the Texas frontier just prior to the 1836 War of Texas Independence. The fourteen year-old heroine of the story lived during times of hardships and dangers including nightmarish depredations by hostile Indians inclined to barbarous acts. Nothing was more feared than raids on cabins and the terrifying abductions of teen-aged girls. The family homestead on the Lavaca River was that of the typical log cabin with fi elds, pastures, and the customary animals except for two red wolf watchdogs adopted as orphaned pups. The story is also an endearing one of close friendships with other pioneer girls.

Berlandier

Berlandier PDF

Author: James Kaye

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 142694053X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Berlandier: A French Naturalist on the Texas Frontier tells the history of Jean Louis Berlandier (1805-1851), remembered as one of the most enlightened naturalists of the American Southwest. He was one of the first to investigate the natural history of the Gulf Coastal Plain, the Rio Grande Valley, the Balcones Escarpment and the Edwards Plateau. Students of Texas biology have learned about Berlandier through such species as the Texas Green-Eyed Sunflower, Texas Windflower, Texas Tortoise, and the Rio Grande Leopard Frog. Between 1826 and 1828, Berlandier collected these species for the Academy of Natural Sciences, Geneva, and studied the Indians of Texas for the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, resulting in his scholarly treatise, The Indians of Texas, in 1830. Berlandier's plant collections are in twenty-seven world herbaria, and many hundreds of his insects, mollusks, reptiles, birds, and mammals are in prestigious institutions such as the Smithsonian and the United States National Museum. Most of the Indian material collected by Berlandier is in the Gilchrest Museum, and the wealth of his writing resides in the libraries of Yale, Harvard, Texas A&M, and the University of Texas. His diary, the most important of his writings, consists of more than 1,500 pages, currently housed in the Library of Congress; it serves as the basis of this history of his life and work.

Lone Star Planet

Lone Star Planet PDF

Author: H. Beam Piper

Publisher: Perennial Press

Published: 2018-02-24

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 1531262716

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

New Texas: its citizens figure that name about says it all. The Solar League ambassador to the Lone Star Planet has the unenviable task of convincing New Texans that a s'Srauff attack is imminent, and dangerous. Unfortunately it's common knowledge that the s'Srauff are evolved from canine ancestors -- and not a Texan alive is about to be scared of a talking dog! But unless he can get them to act, and fast, there won't be a Texan alive, scared or otherwise!

Frontiers of Science

Frontiers of Science PDF

Author: Cameron B. Strang

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1469640481

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Cameron Strang takes American scientific thought and discoveries away from the learned societies, museums, and teaching halls of the Northeast and puts the production of knowledge about the natural world in the context of competing empires and an expanding republic in the Gulf South. People often dismissed by starched northeasterners as nonintellectuals--Indian sages, African slaves, Spanish officials, Irishmen on the make, clearers of land and drivers of men--were also scientific observers, gatherers, organizers, and reporters. Skulls and stems, birds and bugs, rocks and maps, tall tales and fertile hypotheses came from them. They collected, described, and sent the objects that scientists gazed on and interpreted in polite Philadelphia. They made knowledge. Frontiers of Science offers a new framework for approaching American intellectual history, one that transcends political and cultural boundaries and reveals persistence across the colonial and national eras. The pursuit of knowledge in the United States did not cohere around democratic politics or the influence of liberty. It was, as in other empires, divided by multiple loyalties and identities, organized through contested hierarchies of ethnicity and place, and reliant on violence. By discovering the lost intellectual history of one region, Strang shows us how to recover a continent for science.

Victorian Lady on the Texas Frontier

Victorian Lady on the Texas Frontier PDF

Author: Ann Raney Coleman

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780806119809

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Such charmingly understated comments abound in Victorian Lady on the Texas Frontier, the journal of a spunky girl who left England with her mother and sister to come to Texas in 1832. Anne Raney Coleman had a knack for being in the center of the action: the early preparations for the Texas “strugel for independence,” the Runaway Scrape, and the Federal attack on the Texas Gulf Coast in the Civil War.