In the Texas Hill Country, feelings about the draft were especially bitter. Firstly, most of the Germans were Unionists and abhorred slavery. Secondly, a prime motivation for emigrating from Germany in the first place had been the existence of conscription there. To be forced to fight in the defense of an institution they despised, and for a political body whose very existence they had opposed was an insult past bearing. And finally, Gillespie County was very much still a part of the frontier.…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 27, 2009 at 4:30pm —
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More new settlers than just the Germans had been making their way into Texas, in the decades before the Civil War. Once that the coastal lowlands below the Balcones Escarpment could be fairly said to be settled, Texas attracted more than just the land-hungry and restless. It drew ambitious and more prosperous settlers from across the south, settlers and entrepreneurs who brought their slaves with them. These men farmed sugar and rice and built fine plantation houses, gracefully adorned with…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 26, 2009 at 4:30pm —
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When I was first beginning to write about the the bitter days of the Civil War in Gillespie County, for the second volume of "Adeslverein", I was initially stymied. There was actually not much available in print or on line: just barely enough to give tantalizing hints at what happened during those years. It’s a skeleton upon which to drape a story of split loyalties, of bewildering events and sudden hatreds, seemingly sprung fully-armored out of the ground, like dragons-teeth, much to the…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 25, 2009 at 4:30pm —
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The execution of approximately a hundred and twenty men, women, and yes, children also - of the Fancher-Baker wagon-train party stands out particularly among revolting accounts of massacres in the old West, and not just for the number of victims. The most notorious 19th century massacres usually involved Indians and either settlers or soldiers in some combination, overrunning a settlement or encampment, or ambushing a military unit or a wagon-train and slaughtering all in or after a brief and…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 23, 2009 at 10:30pm —
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Considering all those cinematic or literary occasions in which an emigrant wagon train on the California/Oregon trail was pictured being attacked by a war-party of Indians, it actually happened as represented on very few occasions. That is, a defensive circle of wagons, with the pioneers being well-dug in while the Indians ride around on horseback, whooping and shouting to beat the band, and firing volleys of arrows at them. Very likely, more emigrants died in accidents with firearms than were…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 22, 2009 at 4:44pm —
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Among the books in my tall stack to read to provide background for the "Adelsverein Trilogy" was one with the very dry title of “Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture”… which has actually proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together… which is good, especially since I need to write a description of building such a thing as a log building. Little details like how many days it would take…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 21, 2009 at 7:36am —
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I never have quite understood the appeal of the cowboy, when it came to the whole western-frontier-nostalgia-gestalt. How on earth did that particular frontier archetype sweep all others before it, when it came to dime novels, movies and television shows, given that the classic "cowboy" functioned only in a very specific time period; say for about twenty years after the Civil War. Admittedly, the Western cattle industry seemed to be co-located with spectacular bits of scenery, and the final…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 20, 2009 at 6:20pm —
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There is a single photograph of the interior of a covered wagon in one of my reference books; but from the jumble of items within, I would guess it to be an emigrant wagon from a period rather later than the 1840ies. It seems to contain rather a jumble of furniture: an upholstered wing chair, a spinning wheel, a very elaborate trunk fitted out with a number of smaller drawers for silverware: the trunk is open, displaying a fine mid-Victorian assembly of knives and silverware. There are a couple…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 11, 2009 at 9:00am —
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The average western movie or television series only very rarely gives a true idea of what it must have been like to take to the emigrant trail in the 1840ies and 50ies. Most westerns are set in a time-period from the end of the Civil war to about 1885, an overwhelming proportion have a cattle-ranch setting, sometimes a setting in the wild and woolly mining camps. The popular culture vision of the "old west" tends to warp our imagining of the 19th century in general, in that it puts in place…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 9, 2009 at 9:00am —
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That was a treat – Saturday at Fredericksburg’s Pioneer Museum. I had a talk and a discussion for an hour, with a group of interested historians and readers, and then sat behind a small table the visitor center, between a shelf of scented candles, cowboy postcards and other souvenirs, and a large rack of maps and information about Fredericksburg and the Hill Country and signed copies of the Adelsverein Trilogy for two hours. All in all, exhausted, happy and talked hoarse. Richard Bristol, the…
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Added by Celia Hayes on January 8, 2009 at 8:06am —
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