Huntsville State Park Project

On October 8 our class is making a presentation at the Huntsville State Park over the Great Depression era (which is when the park was built). We are all chipping in to make the presentation as big of a success as we hope to. I am making a sort of exhibit over the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) showing the contributions in creating portions of the park including the dam that makes Lake Raven, and the group recreation hall. I am also part of the committee in charge of food for the event. I am hoping to get a donation from Wal-Mart to help finance the operation. Hopefully there will be about one hundred people that show up to our presentation, so any help we can get will be great. I also have to go to the store and see how much it all will cost for all of the stuff that we need for the food portion of the day. I am anticipating the turnout for the day, and also hoping that everything goes as smooth as I have invisioned during this planning process.

Huntsville State Park Initial Visit

From my visit to Huntsville State Park, I learned it is a 2000 acre plethora of forestry and history that opened in 1938. I had never been to the park before and it was quite a beautiful area with alot of cool stuff to see and fun activities to take part in. It has hiking, biking, camping, and horseback riding amongst other things to do for everyone that is looking for a little extra adventure during their visit. The thing that attracted me the most about the park is the ability to see all of this history and to take part in the activities I listed above. I also learned that the Civilain Conservation Corps built the dam at the park, as well as the recreation hall at the park. The park is an awesome sight, and I invite anyone who has not already seen it to go and take part in some great learning experiences and maybe even some extracuricular fun as well. I hope as our class project at the park draws closer, I will learn much more about this place.

Visit to the County Clerk

Looking for some cool information and having trouble finding it? There is one place I know of that's pretty valuable, and free of charge. Look no further than the County Clerks office in Huntsville Texas (or any city for that matter). I found out that they hold public and private records of basically everything that went on and is still going on in the city's history including deeds, wills, etc... I happened to stumble across some documents over Samuel Walker Houston which showed that he had two land sales during his lifetime. That may seem uninteresting to some people, but the sale of the land could have held some significance, so even the smallest bit of information could lead to some striking discoveries given some time and patience. I also looked up a will to J.L. Pritchett and found out that he left quite an estate to his widow. This kind of information is also helpful because early in a city's history a lot of people were connected in ways that we may not initially realize. It's just one big room full of paper trails that are waiting to be pieced together to discover some pretty cool stuff. A person can even track down their family history at the County Clerk's Office with some help of course from the experts that work there. I recommend this fine institution to anyone looking to find those hard to reach answers, it's closer than one might think.

Isaac's Storm, a Horrible Truth

I recently watched the video on Erik Larson's book "Isaac's Storm", and I was nothing short of amazed. What was even more intense about it was the fact that Isaac Cline was known for a very long time as a hero of Galveston, although he was everything but such. I'm going to give a review of the video to go into the details of the tragedy that occurred in Galveston in 1900, to which many people are unaware of. In 1900, Galveston was a booming city that claimed to be the next "New York of the coast of Texas" to many people. It is three miles wide, twenty-seven miles long, eight feet above sea level, and was connected to the mainland at that time by only three railroad tracks, and wagon bridge. A seawall had been discussed amongst city council members, but never put into place because one man (Isaac Cline) had thought the city was virtually untouchable. Isaac was an intelligent man, having mastered meteorology (primitive as it was) and sought his doctorate degree as well. His major downfall proved to be his arrogance, thinking he knew everything about meteorology when obviously he didn't. He put 37,789 lives at risk and after the storm was over over 6,000 (1/6 Galveston's population) had perished because he wouldn't let go of his beliefs. He said that anyone who thought a major storm could hit Galveston "was a victim of absurd delusion" ; even his brother's warnings couldn't convince him to change his mind about the storm. He dismissed his brother Joseph the night before the storm hit, and even on the day that the storm made landfall despite the many warning signs that he had ignored. Either by cowardice or lack of a soul, he lied about the event that took so many lives to the National Weather Bureau saying that he had given ample warning, raised the flag, and even ran along the beach screaming for people to take shelter (which nobody recalls ever having seen). Although Isaac turned out to be quite a scoundrel, he wasn't the only one at fault. Head of the National Weather Bureau Willis Moore made a significant contribution to this mass execution as well. He sent U.S. forecasters to Cuba (Cuban meteorology was far more equipped than us since they dealt with these storms on a more regular basis) and shut off all telegraphing from them because he was as arrogant as Cline was. He also was the one who labeled Cline a "hero" after tragedy struck, fearing that the Weather Bureau would catch the blame and be held accountable for what the ultimately caused. This book/video certainly shed some new light on me, and further pushed me away from believing just any information I am spoon fed by people with agendas. It was ultimately a painful lesson to learn, but tragedies like this one happen every day and it's important that we know the truth.

The Evolution of America's Supreme Court

I had the opportunity to sit in on Dr. John Domino's great lecture on the Supreme Court this past Thursday and picked up some good insight on the subject. Going into the lecture I really had never perceived the Supreme Court as an evolving body in itself. It had always been portrayed to me as a group of justices who had the final say in a court case, but Dr. Domino views the Supreme Court in a different light. He talked about the way there have been three major "evolution" periods that have taken place that deal with different aspects of America. The first period was in America's birth as a nation which dealt with mainly the supremacy of the constitution and state matters. The second period took a long time to get to, but in the 1920's-1930's we began to notice a shift in the content in which the Supreme Court dealt with. They started to regulate business, and deal with Civil Rights and Civil Liberties more. Their role in society started taking a new and larger shape. Finally the third stage (1937-present) really hones in on issues that we have never before dealt with. They are having to dissect the Bill of Rights and interpret what our forefathers (might have) meant when they put this government together. In addition they are more active than ever in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties cases, in an effort to make equality something that every American can enjoy. I was pretty shocked when I realized that our Justices have taken such a large responsibility when (I speak for myself here) life in America is taken for granted in the most extreme ways. Its good to know that someone is watching out for our well-being, so hats off to those awesome Supreme Court Justices, they have a tough job and they may have differing opinions from me at times but I have a new found respect for what they do.

Thomason, More Than Just a Room in the Library

The Thomason room at the Newton Gresham Library is a unique and amazing way to come across pearls in local history that would otherwise be sitting unused in the archives.Cheryl Spencer and Barbara Kievit-Mason were quite helpful and intuitive in answering all questions I had with my topic. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I'm writing up a project on Samuel Walker Houston. Ms. Spencer guided me in finding two articles over Samuel Walker Houston. Both of the documents came from The Huntsville Item (a local newspaper in Huntsville, Tx), one from 1919, and the other from 1945. The first of the documents (1919) talked about the state of the school that Samuel Walker Houston founded. It focused on the areas of improvement that the school needed such as dormitories, heating, and lack of funding for projects at the school. The latter of the two documents (1945) is more or less an obituary for Samuel Walker Houston, and it also lists his accomplishments during his lifetime. I have also been informed that there are additional letters from Samuel Walker Houston to Harry F. Estill (President of Sam Houston State during the time) that I look forward to glancing over. I'm very pleased in these findings and am counting on posting my future discoveries.

Newton Gresham Library, A Suprising Resource!

As we all continue our quest for new and creative (but still credible) information on the ever growing Internet, we should keep in mind a very local, accessible, and quite helpful resource in close proximity to us. The Newton Gresham Library catalogues and other search engines provide a great way to safely get accurate information that we may not have otherwise found. It's easy these days to just hop on google, type in a keyword, and take John Doe's word for whatever it is we are searching for. In Public History there is more finite research involved, which is why we have to pick through some of the nonsense we see on wikipedia. In my Digital Project over Samuel Walker Houston, I spent a significant amount of time searching for any rational evidence on the library search engines. The only two documents that I can describe on my blog are two photos of Samuel Walker Houston. The other books are physically in the library and I haven't had the opportunity to get my eyes on them just yet, but nonetheless a picture is still worth a thousand words. According to Walker County Treasures (the website that the library referred me to) the first photo (left) is Jeff Hamilton (former slave of Sam Houston), Samuel Walker Houston (former slave of Sam Houston) and unidentified man are gathered together at the Texas Centennial celebration event. During the time of this photo, Samuel Walker Houston had already founded Galilee Community School and was currently principle of Samuel Houston High School in Huntsville. The other photo (top right) is a photo of him at his brother's wedding with the rest of his family. It's interesting to see his transformation throughout the years and to see images of the man that I have read and heard so many stories of. I would definitely recommend using these helpful tools for anyone looking to do any kind of research.

Censorship and Truth from the Smithsonian

On June 28, 1995 The Enola Gay made its debut as an exhibit in one of Americas finest museums, The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. There was a whirlwind of controversy surround the exhibit years prior to the inauguration of the plane that vastly aided in the end of World War II. Martin Harwit, of the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) had made an attempt to revise several previous versions of the exhibit that was seen by many people to suggest that America was the aggressor in the atomic bombing of Japan. Among these people who lashed out toward the exhibit were General Merrill A. McPeak of the U.S. Air Force, and even Paul Tibbets who was the pilot of the plane. Their argument was that previous versions of the exhibit showed an immense amount death and destruction in Japan, yet didn't show enough of America's destruction of Pearl Harbor. They also suggested that it seemed almost tasteless in nature toward Japan to put all of these things in the exhibit for the public to view. The Secretary of the Smithsonian at the time when the exhibit made its initiation, Michael Heyman, decided to put up a simple version of the exhibit on display which left out most of the facts about the day the bomb was dropped on Japan. This was nothing like the previous version the former Secretary Robert McCormick Adams and Martin Harwit of the NASM had fought so hard to attain. They believed that the presentation should accurately portray what the Enola Gay brought upon Japan, and show the aftermath. In my opinion I think that the historians were correct in their original plan. Yes they could have made some revisions to make America seem like she was only retaliating to the devastation at Pearl Harbor, but the overall story of the Enola Gay WAS about bringing the end to the war. Everyone knows that there is casualties in war, and showing those who perished in Japan would not be a sign of America flexing their muscles at other countries saying "look what we can do to you", but rather it is a reminder of the devastation that war brings all countries. That in itself would be a reason to stay peaceful. It seems wrong to change history books and exhibits to censor out things that we might feel uncomfortable with, but the truth of the matter is that they did happen how they happened. It seems like the military felt guilty about the situation and were trying to save face about something that happened 50 years ago, when there is nothing we can do to change it now. I hope in the future we can learn that the truth will sooner or later come out, and history can teach us all how to live the right way.

Public Museums... Fact or Fiction?

One of the most difficult questions that humans ask is "Where do we come from?". Of course it can be simple, but at the same time it can be very complex to answer. Museums offer evidence to help search for questions that we have about our past. They provide clues, backgrounds, and stories of mankinds' puzzling timeline that assist us in bridging the gap between then and now. These organizations may seem harmless and helpful, but are we getting the entire truthful story of our past? In Professor Jordanova's essay "Public History", museums are called into question on the issue of whether they are instructing people accurately about history, or if the museums are just setting up an array of bells and whistles that appeal to the masses. Bearing that in mind museums have become "major cultural forces" in showing the populace items of the past, and aren't really aimed at professional historians. Another thing to think about when gathering information from museums is the way they get funding. Museums can recieve goverment funding, and ultimately that means it will be the government (or whomever is funding the establishment) that will have the final say in what is being displayed within the confines of these exhibits we have all come to know and love. When visiting these places, it's important for people not to form opinions based only on the colloquialisms, generalizations, and idioms of heroes and villains. People should go in with an open mind, collect data, and filter through it by researching more about topics before drawing any conclusions. Everyone needs to approach the museum ticket counter with a "buyer beware" sense, so we are not forgetting and leaving out parts of history that may dissapear before future generations are able to analyze them for themselves.

An Untold History of The Alamo

Most Texans recognize The Alamo as a symbolic landmark of bravery and relentless heroism. The lay public thinks back to the story they were told of a handful of bold Texans fighting against all odds. I thought it very interesting to discover the history of The Alamo prior to that fateful February day in 1836 that would forever transform the image of the site. The Alamo Exhibit showed a somewhat intimate past of the location contrary to what it symbolizes today. The Alamo was once home to missionaries and their families, a wharehouse for supplies, and even a store open to the general public. I would have never guessed that there was actual peace for a given amount of time prior to the Texas Revolution, although the appearance of the place today seems everything but intimidating. It's easy to miss the backstory of The Alamo though, since we Texans only get half of the information in our Texas History classes in most cases. It is made out that the heroic Texans stormed in, seized, and conquered the Mexican Army but were eventually defeated. I was not aware that the Mexicans had been there for so long before the battle had taken place, and it's interesting to look back on this scene in a different light.