The Evolution of a State: Recollections of Old Texas Days

Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1900. First Edition. Octavo (20cm); publisher's blue cloth with black lettering and decoration; [x],9-354pp; 8 illus. including frontis, all present. Boards edgeworn with some staining, soiling, and spotting to cloth and bumping at spine ends. Hinges cracked, with pages falling open easily between a few gatherings, but binding is holding. Spotted staining to edges of textblock. Binding is sound and pages unmarked. Memoir of Noah Smithwick, dictated to his daughter while nearly blind during the last years of his life. Born in North Carolina, Smithwick moved to Texas in 1827 at 19 years old, became a blacksmith, and eventually joined the army, fighting in the Texas Revolution. Jenkins notes that "of all Texas memoirs, this is the most fun to read," adding "gives us anecdotes available nowhere else on men [Smithwick] knew such as James Bowie, Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, David G. Bernet, Gail Borden, Padre Michael Muldoon, R.M. Williamson, and others. He tells of smuggling, counterfeiting, gambling, drinking, and dancing with a frankness lacking in most other Texas autobiographies" [Basic Texas Books 189]. Howes also notes that Smithwick was "The blacksmith who forged the knife bearing Colonel Bowie's name" [Howes S726]. [Basic Texas Books 189; Graff 3872; Howes S726; Rader 2948, Sabin 85099].