I’m well into writing
the manuscript for my new novel, which is about Texas in the 1854-1855—pre-Civil
War. For a guy who has lived his whole
life in Texas, I’m learning a lot about how things were right around where we
live, but way back then-- over 120 years ago.
Life was hard in 1855
for almost everyone compared to our lives today. There were few safety nets to
protect people from the unexpected, or the “expected, but dreaded.” Things like
the sudden deaths of infants and toddlers and the deaths of women during
childbirth, debilitating work injuries to men, a worn-down wife’s unwanted
pregnancy resulting in a tenth child to feed, a bad harvest, and on the forward
fringe of American civilization-- burned homes and stolen horses during Indian
raids. Hard became harsh very quickly, or simply skipped harsh, and went right to tragic, like tortured, murdered settlers
and women raped, then taken away by marauding Indians.
I just bought a book
first published in 1857 that is giving me a fresh period view of early Texas
from someone who was “on the outside looking in.”
The book is My
Journeys In Texas, a travelogue written by Frederick Law Olmsted, who
was a correspondent for a New York City magazine. Olmsted and his brother
traveled for months through Texas by horseback in 1855. Olmsted was also a well-known successful
landscape architect who designed New York City’s Central Park and the Boston
Commons.
Here’s a photo of
Frederick Law Olmsted.
Olmsted frankly
didn’t like Texas, or Texans, very much, except for the German immigrants who
settled New Braunfels, a town between Austin and San Antonio in what is now Central Texas. He approved of their industriousness, their sense of
order, their manner of building sturdy rock and timber homes, the neatly painted and decorated interiors of their small houses, and probably, their beer.
Conversely, Olmsted
found the Anglo-settlers of East Texas to be lazy, poor, and almost universally
uncurious and non-intellectual. He related story after story of stopping at
isolated cabins along the roads through East Texas and being aghast at the
poverty, laziness, and lack of concern of the folks from whom his party bought food.
His view of the
Mexican residents of San Antonio is similar, with cultural differences acknowledged.
He did comment, though, that he liked tamales and tortillas, and enjoyed the
international flavor of San Antonio itself.
Olmsted wrote at
length about slavery as he encountered white slave owners and black slaves in
his travels. He was a staunch New England abolitionist, who was vocal in his
moral opposition to slavery, as well as having a growing practical opposition.
He
observed that a paid laborer in the north did four times the work of a slave in
the south. He wrote that the economics
of the south revolved around some 8,000 large plantations whose owners
dominated everything. He opined that slavery robbed needed jobs from white
laborers, who consequently were bereft of any economic well-being, relegated to
a fragile existence in dire poverty on unproductive small farms.
He also noted that
every man he met in Texas carried Colt revolvers, as he also did. And he made the
point that most men with whom he visited during the evenings in hotels and
taverns had come to Texas fleeing some personal troubles left behind them in
other southern states, troubles that were usually legal.
Yes, he was pretty
darned critical. But Olmsted sure had a turn of phrase. In fact, I’m testing a
new title for my book, using one of Frederick Olmsted’s descriptions of Texas, as he found our Lone Star state in 1855: A Different Country Entirely.
And, Yes, I've already written Olmsted into my book's plot. He is just too interesting a guy to leave out, and the timing of his travels through Texas coincide with my story-line perfectly.
Finally, here’s a
modern photo of a young friend of mine with his two daughters in front of the Alamo.
He’s a reenactor wearing 1830’s clothing, and even if he is portraying a
militiaman twenty years earlier than my story, I think he projects a fine
impression of a rough-and-tumble Anglo Texas settler. And his two girls are
cutey-pies.
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