A Texas Ranger - Softcover

N. A. Jennings (author), J. Frank Dobie (Foreword By) & Stephen L. Hardin (Introduction By)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806129034 ISBN 13: 9780806129037

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997

Synopsis

In 1935, Texas was preparing for its biggest celebration to date: a world’s fair to commemorate the centennial of its independence from Mexico. Centennial officials eager to publicize the event needed an abundance of photographic images that would put the state in the best possible light. They hired a young photographer, Polly Smith, who had recently returned from studying in New York, to travel the length and width of the state. Her mission was to capture the people and places that made Texas unique.The result of Smith’s journey is a remarkable collection of images that range from the missions of San Antonio to dockworkers in Houston and on to the cotton fields of East Texas. Only twenty-eight when she began the project, Smith traveled alone across the state in a Ford pickup that she converted into a portable darkroom.Since the centennial, the Dallas Historical Society has preserved many of her photographs, and several have been on permanent display in the Hall of State in Fair Park. A Texas Journey: The Centennial Photographs of Polly Smith is the first book-length examination of Smith’s life and work. The images presented here offer a revealing portrait of the Lone Star State in 1935.

About this title

About the Author

N.A. Jennings (1856-1919) was serving as a journalist in Philadelphia when he recorded and published this first personal account of his experiences with the Texas Rangers.

J. Frank Dobie, who wrote the foreword, is a well-known storyteller of Western and Texas history.

Stephen L. Hardin teaches history at The Victoria College in Texas and is the author of The Texas Rangers and Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution.

From the Back Cover

Eighteen-year-old Napoleon Augustus Jennings came to Texas in 1874 and joined a special force of Texas Rangers charged with border patrol under the command of L. H. McNelly. At this time the South Texas region was home to hundreds of outlaws and riffraff, and some three thousand Mexican guerrillas under Juan Cortina and others were raiding settlers on both sides of the Rio Grande. McNelly's Rangers stormed into this lawless area for two reasons, according to Jennings: "To have fun, and to carry out a set policy of terrorizing the Mexicans at every opportunity", which would gain them the reputation as "fire-eating, quarrelsome daredevils" and make their job of subduing the guerrillas an easier prospect. Within a short time the Rangers had arrested more than eleven hundred men and reputedly killed many more. Jennings records many a fight with the Mexican guerrillas, including the time when McNelly defied the United States government, crossed the Rio Grande, and fought Cortina and his raiders at Las Cuevas. Jennings also gives accounts of scrapes with King Fisher's outlaw band, John Wesley Hardin, and the families involved in the Taylor-Sutton feud. Originally published in 1899, A Texas Ranger was reprinted in 1930 with a foreword by J. Frank Dobie, who defends the veracity of the account despite the fact that Jennings was not, as his story claims, a member of the company in its earliest years. In a new introduction to this edition, Stephen L. Hardin explores the authenticity of Jennings's account and imparts the story of the feud that erupted between Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb over the publication of A Texas Ranger.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806129034
• ISBN 13: 9780806129037
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 158