SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY最新文献

• Southwestern Collection

The ruins of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas stand about a mile from Menard, Texas, on the northern bank of the San Saba River. A mixture of Spanish-period remains and the vestiges of a Great-Depression-era reconstruction effort, the site is open to visitors under the management of Menard County. Courtesy of THC Collection, Portal of Texas History, University of North Texas.

The 128^th Annual Meeting of the TSHA, held at the Texas A&M Conference Center in College Station February 28 to March 2, 2024, was a tremendous success! Attendance for the meeting and gala totaled 639! We hosted thirty scholarly sessions, ten receptions and banquets, and one offsite tour for our guests, who came from all over Texas, several other states, and outside the United States. Country star Clay Walker performed a great show, and bidding in the various auctions was lively (and prosperous!) We welcomed two new Fellows, Watson C. Arnold and Laurie Jasinski, and handed out an impressive list of other awards for excellence in education and research:

Mary Jon and J. P. Bryan Leadership in Education Award
K–12—Caitlin Baumgarten
College Level—Dr. Kendra DeHart

John W. Crain Texas History Education Award
Patricia Ritchie

Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History
Wesley Phelps—Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement

Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research [Book]
Ron Tyler—Texas Lithographs: A Century of History in Images

Al Lowman Memorial Prize [Book]
James Barrera—“We Want Better Education!”: The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Education Reform in South Texas

H. Bailey Carroll Award for Best Article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Frank de la Teja—“Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821,” Vol. 126, No. 3, January 2023

Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell Award for Best Article in the New Handbook of Texas
1st Jesús “Frank” de la Teja—Becerra, María Josefa Agustina
2nd Benjamin V. Allison—Glauben, Max

Lynna Kay Shuffield Memorial Award in Texas Jewish History
Gabrielle Lyle—“Hebrew in Harlingen: An Examination of Jewish Community Development in the Rio Grande Valley,” The Journal of South Texas, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2024 [End Page 452]

The TSHA also continued to support ongoing educational and research efforts through the granting of competitive fellowships:

Cecilia Steinfeldt Fellowship for Research in the Arts and Material Culture Alana Coates—Fi

Reviewed by:

• Cattle, Cotton, Corn: A History of Central Texas Middle-Class Ranches, 1880–1930by Watson C. Arnold
• Richard B. McCaslin

Watson C. Arnold was a medic in Vietnam and then became a prominent physician in Fort Worth, in his native state of Texas. Approaching retirement, he took courses in history at TCU and wrote a dissertation about his family members who operated farms and ranches in Central Texas. That study became this book, which should become an essential building block for broader studies of agriculture in the Lone Star State.

Arnold discovered that some of his relatives had kept the daily business records of their operations, as well as those of their fathers and grandfathers. Others were eager to talk, adding their personal stories to bring the dry records to life. He quickly amassed a “mother lode” (p. xi) of information on the Caufields, Cavitts, Footes, and Youngs, but this is not a family history. Instead, it is a case study of how these families coped with economic and social change in a state [End Page 465]and region shifting its primary financial focus from agriculture to technology. Arnold’s ancestors mostly began as subsistence farmers, then became ranchers, cotton farmers, grain producers, and finally livestock raisers again. Different family members raised sheep, cattle, pigs, cotton, corn, wheat, milo, and maize. Many of these choices marked changes in epochs as the railroad came, markets fluctuated, and technology advanced. The shift from cotton to grain after World War II, of course, was also greatly influenced by negative factors such as boll weevils, cotton root rot, and droughts.

The story begins when, as part of a broader migration of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians across the South, Arnold’s ancestors began arriving in Texas about 1834, with other relatives joining them over the next two decades. Some did well, investing in land, slaves, and cotton, as well as sheep, cattle, pigs, and horses. Others focused more on livestock, either cattle or sheep, and subsistence crops, representing the other end of the southern antebellum economic spectrum. After the Civil War, during which most of them stayed in Texas, cattle provided the means for economic recovery. Arrival of the railroads, with the building of new towns such as McGregor in McLennan and Coryell counties, led to the installation of barbed wire fences and windmills as beef production changed. It also led many more to plant cotton. Meanwhile, some of Arnold’s ancestors continued to raise sheep, aided by connections with textile mills

• New Light on Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas [San Sabá]
• Allan J. Kuethe (bio) and José Manuel Serrano Álvarez (bio)

Location of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas based on the map produced by Nicolas de Laffora, August 12, 1767. Courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias [Mapas y Planos, Mexico 05]

With the collapse of the Second Family Compact during the reign of Ferdinand VI (1746–1759), Spain’s frontier policy in its North American empire acquired an aggressive, militarized character, especially where French interests were involved. An important manifestation of this new orientation appeared in the Governorship of Texas with the establishment of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas on the remote San Saba River in 1757. Designed to counter supposed French adventurism, this post represented an ambitious, perhaps misguided, thrust into the far northwest, which would continue into the early years of Charles III (1759–1788). Taking a view with a broader strategic perspective, the present authors believe that Presidio San Luis, often popularly referred to as Presidio San Sabá, was far more significant than many historians have generally supposed. Indeed, during its apogee from 1758–1763, San Luis ranked as the most important presidio in Texas in terms of size, garrison, and costs, all of which far exceeded those of other strongpoints.¹ Although abandoned during the far-reaching reorganization [End Page 393] of the northern frontier that the Marqués de Rubí initiated in 1766, and then largely forgotten, the origins of Presidio San Luis, its purpose, and its fate reveal much about royal priorities in Texas during the years before, during, and immediately after Spain’s entry into the Seven Years’ War.

The story of Captain Felipe de Rábago y Terán, who commanded Presidio San Luis, is inseparable from its history. Events that occurred during his early years, particularly when he commanded San Luis’s predecessor at San Xavier, have earned Rábago the universal disdain of historians ranging from Fray Juan Agustín Morfi in the eighteenth century to Robert S. Weddle, Donald E. Chipman, and Luis López Elizondo in recent times.² Rábago certainly ranks as one of the most puzzling officials who served in Bourbon Texas. Yet, new information and a fresh assessment of the evidence against him raise questions that place Rábago in a new light. An uncommonly prominent appointee for remote Texas, the captain enjoyed powerful connections in both Spain and Mexico, but his destiny closely reflected the ups and downs of that influence in the torturous politics that pervaded Madrid and Mexico City. There was far