Juan Seguin - Robert Hollmann

Juan Seguin.

By Robert Hollmann.

Durban House, 2007. Frontier Legends Series. Paperback, 112 pages. ISBN 1-9300754-95-7 www.durbanhouse.com

This Hollmann, http://www.lonestarlegends.org/., volume follows his Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Seguin was indeed one of the essential people in his time. Unlike his previous time-trunk and friendly dog companion, Hollmann uses a more direct device – a life-long friend of Seguin to provide the framework of the biography. And as a childish extra, Hollmannn injects the juvenile competitiveness for racing as a recurring option. The reader is introduced to Seguin’s family, long established in Texas, and within pages finds Seguin meeting Stephen Austin and a line of colonial notables important to the Texas Revolution.

Seguin and his associates are concerned about Santa Anna’s aggressive manner and throw in with the developing stronger democratic tradition of the times, unlike the Seguin family’s support of the counter-revolution against Las Casas in 1811. Bowie becomes one of the favorites because of his ties to San Antonio and his marriage into the Veramendi family. Seguin commands the scouts looking for Santa Anna’s arrival.

Eventually, his men become a part of the Alamo garrison, but he is detailed specifically as messenger to Sam Houston and is ultimately spared from the Alamo soldiery’s bloodbath. But Seguin continues on to become an officer at the Battle of San Jacinto after convincing Houston that his Tejano troops have earned the right to battle. After the battle, Houston asks Seguin to superintend the burial of the Alamo defenders.

The volume ends there without reference to his government service thereafter or the later tragedy of Seguin’s demise partly due to prejudice. Seguin died in 1890.

Texas War of Independence - Alan Huffines

The Texas War of Independence, 1835-1836:

From Outbreak to the Alamo to San Jacinto.

By Alan C. Huffines. Oxford, England and New York: Osprey Publishing / Random House, 2005. Maps, photos and illus, bibliog., index.
Paperback; 96 pages; ISBN: 9781841765228, US Price: $14.95, UK Price: £9.99, Canadian Price: $21.00
http://www.alanchuffines.com/ http://www.ospreypublishing.com/ http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/

Huffines has studied, served in the military, written Blood of Noble Men: The Alamo Siege and Battle and articles, and consulted on the recent Alamo movie, the one with Dennis and Billy Bob. Here he provides a summary of the Revolution. The volume is loaded with graphics. Huffines begins with Hidalgo Revolution of 1810 but places the 1836 revolt in context: Texas was never really Spanish, only claimed and sparsely settled; it was still the northern Protestants against the southern Catholics; it’s England and Spain. But leaving all that behind he continues noting the troubled Mexican stability and nascent democratic principles until Santa Anna effects his dictatorship. The author makes a readable narrative of the usual story, but two things also stand out. One is the inserted chapter on Col. Juan Almonte, son of revolutionary Morelos, the 1834 inspector, and Santa Anna’s Chief of Staff; it’s good to drop into a bit of relative depth on the Mexican side. The other is the abundance and quality of illustrations, often large and in color; and they may take up half the space, leaving the remaining 50 pages a brisk read. The summary could also serve as supplementary reading for 7th graders.

Jim Bowie - Robert E. Hollmann

Jim Bowie.

By Robert E. Hollmann.

Dallas: Durban House Publishing, 2006. Frontier Legends Series. 115 pp. pbk ISBN 1-930754-81-7 $9.95 http://www.durbanhouse.com/
Odessan Hollmann, http://www.lonestarlegends.org/bio.aspx, follows up his Davy Crockett with this very readable biography of equally famous Texas adventures of Jim Bowie.

The device to introduce the young reader to Bowie is Bowie’s own dog, Gator, named so for a gator fight. Years after Bowie has died at the Alamo, Gator reminiscences for his young pups about his life with the frontiersman. The text moves right along, from a dog’s point of view. Hollmann again brings his young readers to a personal level of the subject, this time Bowie, by Gator’s inclusion of personal matters including Bowie’s first meeting with and the later loss of his wife, Ursula Veramendi, daughter of the former governor of Coahuila y Tejas. From the origin of the keen edged Bowie knife on to the fall of the Alamo, Gator and Bowie, the narrative clips along with little underbrush to slow down the young reader. There are glancing encounters with Austin, Houston, Milam, Travis, Neill, and others as.

Hollmann does introduce youngsters to Bowie’s part in the Battle of Nacogdoches in 1832, but the story line thereafter is mainly the Revolution. Bowie’s relationship with Crockett is emphasized.
OHOT: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/BB/fbo45.html

Secret War for Texas - Stuart Reid

The Secret War for Texas.

By Stuart Reid. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. 235 pp. Acknowledgements, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-58544-565-3 (1-58544-565-7) cloth Elma Dill Russell Spencer Series in the West and Southwest http://www.tamu.edu/upress/

What if the Texas Revolution were not quite the straightforward contest between embattled American farmers and Mexican oppressors that has come down to us in myth?
What if the British plotted for a dozen years to keep Texas out of U.S. hands?
What if a Scottish doctor by the name of James Grant, an elusive figure in the Texas Revolution, had really been a British agent (perhaps one of several) in Mexico to thwart U.S. dreams of building a nation from sea to sea?
What if Grant’s expedition to Matamoros had stopped Santa Anna’s drive into Texas?
What if Grant’s aim in leading the Texan fighters to Matamoros was to turn the revolution away from dependence on the U.S. and toward a greater dependence on the Federalists of northern Mexico.
What if the democratic-minded Mexican Federalists (and others) had formed a Confederacy of the Northern Mexican States & Texas (or the Republic of Greater Texas, or whatever) that covered the whole of what eventually would become the southwestern U.S. as well as northern Mexico?
What if that confederacy happened to encompass most of Mexico’s rich silver mining districts (where Grant happened to own large properties)—not to mention a major port at the mouth of the Rio Grande?
Stuart Reid has masterfully fleshed out the surprising answers to these questions in The Secret War for Texas, a well-documented, well-written book that reads like an espionage thriller. As Grant’s great-great-great grandson, he had access to family papers. As a Scot, he drew on Colonial and Foreign office references in the UK National Archives--plus many Texas and U.S. sources. Reid is a historical consultant to the National Trust for Scotland for the Culloden Moor Memorial Project.
The Secret War for Texas places the Texas Revolution into the context of the “great game,” as Reid puts it, being played out in the first half of the nineteenth century between Washington and London over mastery of the North American continent.
Reid will be a speaker at the San Jacinto Symposium, “Expanding the Horizons of Texas History,” on Saturday, April 19, 2008. The day-long meeting will be held at the University of Houston’s Hilton Hotel & Conference Center. More information is available at www.friendsofsanjacinto.org
Review by Barbara Eaves, an avocational historian on the San Jacinto Symposium planning committee, serves on the Harris County Historical Commission. She also is a director of Houston History magazine.

Tejano Roots - Dan Arellano

Tejano Roots: A Family Legend.

By Dan Arellano. Austin: the author (POB 43012, zip 78704), 2005. Paperback with colored cover, 1 map, photos, bibliography and index, 8 ½ x 11, 194 pages ISBN 0-615-12994-3 $22.95
http://www.tejanoroots.org/ darellano@austin.rr.com

Arellano, a native of San Antonio, used Tejano legends as fuel to study history and to open another part of the American adventure for you - stories often unknown to modern Texans. It is presented in two parts.
Part I covers the “First Texas Revolution” that was sparked by Father Hidalgo’s 1810 Mexican Revolution. The 1811 San Antonio Las Casas overthrow of the Spanish monarchy spread to many sections of the land and held sway for a brief time. The Gutierrez – Magee Expedition followed, being described by Arellano’s accounts of the Battle of Alazan, the establishment of a Republic, and its folding after the August 13, 1813 Battle of Medina, near San Antonio and still without a major historical marker at the site.

Part II begins with covering the “The Pecking Order or The Caste System” of the time – the Conquistador Spaniard, the peninsulares, the criollos, the mestizos, the indios, and the negroes. The subsequent chapters cover life for the Coahuiltecan Indians and the Tlaxcallan Indians (who often are simply counted of Spanish descendent) and the famous 15 Canary Islander (Los Islenos) immigrant families usually considered San Antonio’s 1730s founders, despite folks (mostly mestizos and soldiers) already having been there.

The next chapters recount the author’s efforts to re-capture his legacy. Subsequent tables population figures and lists of Canary Islanders, the Compania Precidial de Bejar, the muster list of the Alamo de Parras Company, and the Arellano family tree.

Journey to San Jacinto by Melody Cuate

Journey to San Jacinto.

By Melodie A. Cuate. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. 04/2007. 160 pages. 1 photo, 21 b/w illustrations, 1 map ISBN 0896726029 $17.95 cloth (Mr. Barrington's Mysterious Trunk Series). http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/

For those who’ve already opened the trunk on Cuate’s Alamo, you’re in for another treat on San Jacinto. Mr. Barrington can’t come to teach so his substitute is his niece. It doesn’t take long before Miss Barrington and the youngsters Hannah, Nick, and Jackie find themselves time transported again back to 1836. Cuate employs a good plot twist as the girls land in hands of Sam Houston’s supporter Juan Seguin and Nick falls into the Mexican Army and is impressed into their forces. Their parallel stories along the roads to San Jacinto lure the readers onward to the final battle where Nick is almost killed by Deaf Smith before the boy can explain his Mexican uniform. Thereafter, it’s a hunt for the magical truck and pocket watch.

After a tricky re-entry to modern times, the crew finds that Miss Barrington’s 1836 Uncle David was pulled back with them. What’ll they do with Uncle David!

Journey to the Alamo - Melodie Cuate

Journey to the Alamo.

By Melodie A. Cuate. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. 144 pages, 5 x 7, 18 illustrations, ISBN 0896725928 $17.95 cloth. First in the new “Mr. Barrington's Mysterious Trunk Series.” http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/

Seventh-grader Hannah, her pesky brother Nick, and her best friend Jackie Montalvo are mysteriously transported from modern Austin, Texas to the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 for an “excellent adventure,” something Hannah needs. Melodie A. Cuate, a McAllen teacher of several years, tinkers with the tale telling device of Texas history teacher Mr. Barrington’s mysterious teaching trunk of artifacts and a clapping thunder storm to trip the trio through time to San Antonio. Hannah quickly finds herself under Susannah Dickinson’s care and fixing a ham sandwich for Colonel Travis, consoling the ailing Jim Bowie, and finding fascination with David Crockett (who looks like Mr. Barrington).

Hannah almost jumps the gun after she hears Travis famous speech before the legendary line in the dirt. The threesome do their part in maintaining the Defenders’ siege posture, dodging cannonballs, bickering a little among themselves, protecting one another, worrying about getting home, and finding their way back with Esparza’s and Bowie’s assistance. The kids’ souvenirs include a wooden cross for Hannah and a light bayonet scar for Nick. The youngsters are engaging, and the history is blessedly light but balanced and worthwhile. The brief Spanish glossary is a nice touch. Melodie Cuate’s story is readable and suspenseful.

The next in the series will be “Journey to San Jacinto.”

Lone Star Navy - Jonathan Jordan

Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American West.

By Jonathan W. Jordan. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005, 368 pp, ISBN 1-57488-512-X $28.00. http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/Features.aspx

The times were turbulent, as were the seas. Jordan, a lawyer by day in Atlanta, writes comprehensively and readably. This volume should remain a mainstay for a long time. He treats the revolutionary background and the privateers with their letters of marque and reprisal to avoid the label of pirate, as well as the establishment, disestablishment, re-establishment, and subsequent transferal of the Navy to the United States.

The story is filled with genuine, personal details as well as nautical lessons made easier by his clear, deliberate approach for landlubbers. It seems there were at the time personality clashes, insubordination, and greed, in addition to sacrifice, friendship, and loyalty in the name of patriotism and maritime reality. Throughout, the influences of Mexican, English, and French foreign powers, the marines, the enabling and disabling politics and court proceedings, and the occasional pirate highlight the depth of the Navy’s life.

The often effective navy’s role in securing Texas liberty is strategically and tactically addressed.
Thirty portraits, maps, and facsimiles add a visual component. Jordan’s extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources is a starting point for any future historian.

See also: A bibliography at http://www.texasnavy.com/biblio.htm , the author’s homepage at http://www.lonestarnavy.com/ , and a Handbook of Texas article at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/TT/qjt2.html