Barker Texas History Center

This is the story of Letty, a delicate girl who is forced to move from lush Virginia to desolate West Texas. The numbing blizzards, the howling sand storms, and the loneliness of the prairie all combine to undo her nerves. But it is the wind itself, a demon personified, that eventually drives her over the brink of madness.

This colorful memoir brings the Texas frontier to life, from smuggling adventures to fighting in the Texas Revolution and serving as a Texas Ranger. Having left Kentucky at nineteen, Noah Smithwick arrived in Texas in 1827 to seek his fortune in a "lazy man's paradise." He left in 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. Looking back at that time, blind and nearing ninety, Smithwick recounted the story to his daughter, and so came to be this invaluable memoir of "old Texas days." A blacksmith and a tobacco smuggler, Smithwick made weapons for, and fought in, the Battle of Concepción. With Hensley's company, he chased the Mexican army south of the Rio Grande after the Battle of San Jacinto. Twice he served with the Texas Rangers. In quieter times, he was a postmaster and justice of the peace in little Webber's Prairie. Eyewitness to so much Texas history, Smithwick recounts his life and adventures in a simple, straightforward style, with a wry sense of humor. His keen memory for detail, what people wore and ate, how they worked and played, vividly evokes life on the frontier.

This colorful memoir brings the Texas frontier to life, from smuggling adventures to fighting in the Texas Revolution and serving as a Texas Ranger. Having left Kentucky at nineteen, Noah Smithwick arrived in Texas in 1827 to seek his fortune in a "lazy man's paradise." He left in 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. Looking back at that time, blind and nearing ninety, Smithwick recounted the story to his daughter, and so came to be this invaluable memoir of "old Texas days." A blacksmith and a tobacco smuggler, Smithwick made weapons for, and fought in, the Battle of Concepción. With Hensley's company, he chased the Mexican army south of the Rio Grande after the Battle of San Jacinto. Twice he served with the Texas Rangers. In quieter times, he was a postmaster and justice of the peace in little Webber's Prairie. Eyewitness to so much Texas history, Smithwick recounts his life and adventures in a simple, straightforward style, with a wry sense of humor. His keen memory for detail, what people wore and ate, how they worked and played, vividly evokes life on the frontier.

Written in 1930, Coronado's Children was one of J. Frank Dobie's first books, and the one that helped gain him national prominence as a folklorist. In it, he recounts the tales and legends of those hardy souls who searched for buried treasure in the Southwest following in the footsteps of that earlier gold seeker, the Spaniard Coronado. "These people," Dobie writes in his introduction, "no matter what language they speak, are truly Coronado's inheritors...I have called them Coronado's children. They follow Spanish trails, buffalo trails, cow trails, they dig where there are no trails, but oftener than they dig or prospect they just sit and tell stories of lost mines, of buried bullion by the jack load..." This is the tale-spinning Dobie at his best, dealing with subjects as irresistible as ghost stories and haunted houses.

This is the story of Letty, a delicate girl who is forced to move from lush Virginia to desolate West Texas. The numbing blizzards, the howling sand storms, and the loneliness of the prairie all combine to undo her nerves. But it is the wind itself, a demon personified, that eventually drives her over the brink of madness.