The View from the Old Oak Tree: A Decade on the Texas Frontier (1854-1863)

Jones, Fredda Davis

Because of her passion for history, Fredda spent ten years teaching advanced American Literature and the history that must go with the subject. "I soon found that I could capture my students' attention by simply adding a third dimension: the effect that the happenings of yesterday (the things we call history today) must have had on the lives of the people who lived through them. It was while I was teaching that I confirmed what I had suspected.history can be fun when it is presented in a reader-friendly, chronological narrative. Almost from the time I first put pen to paper, I realized that just as I had taught my students years ago, literature is not created within a vacuum; neither is history." From a seedling idea of preserving the history of a single county, The View From the Old Oak Tree grew until it had recorded the story of a decade, a chronology of some of the most dynamic and interesting times on the Texas frontier, 1854-1863.