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  Texas : Features : Columns : All Things Historical :

History All Over

by Archie P. McDonald
Archie McDonald Ph.D.
Residency has led me to write much about Nacogdoches, Texas, where I have taught history at SFA since Steve himself was a student. But I like other East Texas towns, too, both because of their history and some of the historians who live there. Here are a few of them.

We will begin with Lufkin, home of my writing colleague Bob Bowman, and also where paper making in Texas began in the 1940s when the Kurth family encouraged the immigration of Canadian papermakers to East Texas so they could inaugurate a new industry to utilize our abundance of yellow pine.

Down the road in Beaumont, the Spindletop gusher blew its subterranean brew high over Anthony Lucas' wooden drilling rig on January 10, 1901, providing enough of the stuff to stimulate other new industries such as automobiles and everything connected with them. Beaumont is also where my first mentor, Dr. Ralph Wooster, taught history at Lamar University for 50 years. Among friends and colleagues who live with and upon the history of Jefferson County are Naaman Woodland, Jo Ann Stiles, John Storey, Mary Kelley, and Ron Ellison.

The discovery of oil near Kilgore on October 3, 1930, by Columbus M. "Dad" Joiner, also changed that community and Gregg County. Among other things, it provided a place for my former student and good friend Joe White to teach at Kilgore College and also run the best oil museum in the world. Meanwhile, LeTourneau College in Longview has given our friend Ken Durham steady work for a long time.

Tyler and Smith County share a remarkable history that is nurtured with diligence and skill by Ann Lawrence, Robert Glover, Jeffrey Owens, Rob Jones, and that sweet little Linda Cross, an old-fashioned girl and one of the best and brightest of those who suffered through my notorious historiography seminar.

Upshur County is the home of our Gilmer Mirror publisher friend Sarah Greene, and where sister Mary Kirby, tends the fires of local history and sweet potato Yamborees.

In Huntsville, home of Sam Houston State University and headquarters of our state's criminal justice program, Ty Cashion, Carolyn Crimm, and James Olson write about football, log cabins, and John Wayne—to name but a few subjects.

Ted Lawe runs the A.C. McMillan African American Museum in Emory, in Raines County, Bill O'Neal writes about cowboys and lawmen from Carthage, James Smallwood remains the historical oracle of Gainesville, and Betty and John Oglesbee and especially Willie Earl Tindall, have the last word about the history of San Augustine.

Historians, like undertakers, get everything and everyone in the end.
© Archie P. McDonald
All Things Historical
June 30, 2008 column
A syndicated column in over 70 East Texas newspapers
(The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Archie P. McDonald is director of the Association and author of more than 20 books on Texas.)

Books by Archie P. McDonald - Order Here

Texas
Primary Source Accounts of the Civil War
William Barrett Travis
 
 
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