News at the Nesbitt, 2002 to 2005

Summer Reading Program Ends with Magic
Stein, Hahn, Williamson Complete 1880 Census Index
New Art Exhibited at Library
Fossil Put on Exhibit
Library Installs New Chairs
Old Bottle of Preserves Donated to Library
Fletcher Mesmerizes Large Crowd
Muggli Completes Census Index
Live Oaks and Dead Folks 2004
Flowers Presentation Packs Room
Library Gets New Furniture
Wal-Mart Donates Money to Library
Pictures from a Symposium
Texas Historians to Appear at Library
Dorothy Morrison Donates Books
Santiago Jiménez Jr. Appears at Library
Overflow Crowd Hears Campbell
Descendants of Austin's Old 300 Donate to Library
Elizabeth Schoellmann, Library Volunteer, Dies
Randolph B. Campbell to Appear at Library
Live Oaks & Dead Folks: A Tour of the Old Columbus City Cemetery
Wal-Mart Donates to Library
Tex Rogers, Library Board Member Dies
Six Hours of the Texas Rangers
Utley to Headline Texas Ranger Symposium
Library Acquires Old Letters
McColloch Completes Eagle Lake Index
Eagle Lake Newspapers Discovered
Hahn Completes Census Index
Two Dozen Hear Brune
Herman Brune to Appear at Library
McDonald Family Donates Civil War Diary to Archives
Doug Rau Presentation Packs Room
Priest Family Donates Material to Archives
Doug Rau to Appear at Library
Archives Gets More Items
Symposium Draws Good Crowd
Lee Quinn Nesbitt Symposium Set for June 15
Floyd Green Dies
Archives Acquires Unique Items
St. Anthony Students Present Quilt to Library
Descendants of Austin's Old Three Hundred Make Donation to Library
An Evening with Eric Taylor
Eric Taylor, Texas Musician, to Appear at Library
Barry A. Crouch, Eminent Texas Historian, Dies
Cameron Men Donate Material to Archives
Catherine Dumraese Trust Awards Grant to Library
Library Participates in Archaeological Expedition

Fifty-nine children and thirty-three adults attended the "Go Wild" magic and puppet show given by Julian Franklin at the library on August 2, marking the end of the 2005 Summer Reading Program. Franklin has closed the program, to great acclaim, the last four years. Eleven children were recognized for finishing the program: Araceli Gonzalez, Abraham Juarez, Sarahi Juarez, David Kovar, Molly Michalsky, Madalyn Moeller, Justin Sheek, Jenna Templeton, Isabel Theut, Alexa Zwahr, and Alyssa Zwahr. Many volunteers helped make the program a success, including this year's storytellers: Bonnie Meyer, Sharon Johnson, Rhanda Lattimore, Helen Jurries, Rosemary Creamer, Sherise Lefferd, Amber Hollywood, and Sandy Jones.

On July 20, 2005, the library posted a new index to and partial transcription of Schedule 1 of the Tenth Federal Census of the United States (1880) for Colorado County, Texas, to its website. The index and transcription was compiled by Bill Stein, David Hahn, and Regena Williamson, who worked for many weeks on the project. Hahn had previously done the 1930 census and Stein had done or worked on the 1850, 1860, and 1870 censuses.

On June 28, 2005, Darrell Reider placed his collection of lithographs, etchings, mezzotints, charcoals, and watercolors by WPA artists and French artists of the so-called Belle epoque on exhibit at the library. The collection includes pictures by Camille Pissaro, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, Albert Besnard, Marian Greenwood, James Tissot, Felix Buhot, and others. Reider has been collecting them for twenty-five years.

On June 7, 2005, the fossilized remains of part of an ice-age megabison were placed on exhibit at the library. The two-million year old fossils were donated to the library in November 2004 by Walter and LaJuan Braden. In January 2005, Tracey Wegenhoft, a member of the library board and a teacher at St. Anthony School, began working with her students to clean and reassemble the fossils.

On May 11, 2005, the library installed 27 new chairs in the Texas Room, in the children’s section, and at our public access Internet computers. In the last two years, with funds granted by the Catherine Dumraese Trust, the library has replaced all its chairs in public areas.

On April 13, 2005, while Bill Stein was working with a patron in the Texas Room, a small sheet of paper fell from one of the family files. That paper contained a brief typewritten story about a bottle of preserves. According to the story, Frances Seifert, a good and regular patron of the Nesbitt Memorial Library and a long-time resident of Weimar who died in 2000, had owned a bottle of preserves that had been given to one of her ancestors in about 1868. As the story was related, Mary Coates and her daughter, Alma Coates Hester, did not speak to each other or have any direct interaction with each other because, on January 1, 1868, Alma had married without her parents' approval. Sometime after the wedding, Mary Coates wanted to give her daughter a bottle of preserves. She took it to her friend, Fannie Arnold Mahon, and asked her to give it to Alma. The daughter however refused the preserves, and the mother would not take them back either. So Fannie Mahon kept them, never eating them because they did not belong to her. The preserves remained in the family, passing down to Frances Seifert, who was Fannie Mahon's granddaughter. Two days after the note fell from the file, Frances Seifert's two daughters, Julie Hoegemeyer and Frances Helen Kintzele, brought the bottle of preserves into the library, asking Bill Stein what he knew about it. Armed with the knowledge he had accidentally acquired only two days earlier, he was able to relate the story. Julie and Frances Helen shortly agreed to donate the bottle of preserves to the library, contingent upon the library's agreement to transfer it to a city museum, should one ever be created. The fairly-ornate bottle stands about one foot high and is well sealed with a lead cap covered in melted wax. The preserves are sugared over and probably inedible. It cannot be determined what kind of preserves are in the bottle.

The performance by classical guitarist Peter Fletcher on April 11, 2005 packed the library's meeting room. Fletcher played pieces that were written for the lute hundreds of years ago as well as modern guitar pieces. He regularly retuned his instrument to accommodate the diversity of the pieces. After the performance, and three encores, Fletcher and much of the crowd remained in the library for more than an hour, discussing music. 

After more than a year of work, Jennie Sue Muggli recently completed an index to the 1900 federal census of Colorado County. Library staff began the project three years ago. At a church picnic in Weimar, Muggli casually asked library-director Bill Stein if the library had a project she could do. Stein asked her if she would finish the 1900 census index, which was about one quarter completed, and Muggli quickly agreed. The next week, she picked up the necessary files at the library and began slogging through the many remaining pages. Muggli ended up transcribing about 17,000 of the 22,000 names on the census. The index was posted to the library's website on December 17, 2004.

The spirits were out at the Odd Fellows Rest Cemetery in Columbus on November 6 and 7 for the library's second annual Live Oaks and Dead Folks cemetery tour. This year's tour was even more successful than last's: more people bought tickets and considerably more income was generated. Sixteen actors made presentations at fourteen gravesites. The tour featured artists, writers, and historians, killers and police officers, a cattleman and a diplomat, a soft drink manufacturer, and a parrot.

On October 5, 2004, approximately 40 people attended a presentation on cut-flower design by floriculturist Henry Flowers at the library. Flowers brought a variety of flowers and grasses from the gardens at Festival Hill and demonstrated six unique arrangements. He used a variety of containers and arrangement methods for them, each of which was beautiful and unusual. Flowers received his degree in floriculture from Texas A & M University. He managed the Antique Rose Emporium for several years before becoming director of the gardens at Festival Hill.  He and his wife reside in Chapel Hill.

Thanks to grants from the Catherine Dumraese Foundation, the Nesbitt Memorial Trust, and Copano Processing, in September 2004, the library acquired new tables and chairs for the main reading room. The new, upholstered, solid wood chairs replaced the chrome and plastic chairs which had been in use in the library since it opened in 1979. The new tables, solid wood with inlaid veneer tops, replaced the old metal and veneered particle board tables.

In September 2004, the Columbus Wal-Mart continued its exemplary support of the Nesbitt Memorial Library by facilitating a donation of $1000 to the library from the Wal-Mart Foundation of Bentonville, Arkansas. Every year, Wal-Mart donates funds to local institutions like the library, in recognition of their value to the community.

	Left: Sara Massey displays the original pamphlets. Right: Doug Kubicek, Henry Wolff, Charles Spurlin, and Jim Smallwood, captured on a break.
	Left: Patrons line up for Phyllis McKenzie's book. Right: Allan Kownslar addresses the attentive audience.

    On Saturday, June 26, 2004, the general editor and three of the five authors of the new series of books on the cultural and ethnic groups which strongly influenced Texas history will discuss their work at the Fourth Annual Lee Quinn Nesbitt Symposium on Texas History and Culture at the Nesbitt Memorial Library in Columbus.
    The symposium will open with a presentation by the general editor of the series, Sara R. Massey, at 9:30. She will be followed by Phyllis McKenzie at 10:45, Allan O. Kownslar at 1:30, and James M. Smallwood at 2:45. All four will make presentations on their work, answer questions from the audience, and sign books.
    When the Institute of Texan Cultures opened in 1968, it featured exhibits depicting the various cultural groups that settled early Texas. The research for the exhibits led to a series of small, well-illustrated, very popular pamphlets, among them The Afro-American Texans, The German Texans and The Czech Texans.
    Recently, with most of the pamphlets more than thirty years old, the Institute decided to redesign and update them. The new versions, a set of five books, The African Texans, The European Texans, The Indian Texans, The Asian Texans, and The Mexican Texans, were issued in March, and take the stories of the various ethnic groups up to the present day.
    James M. Smallwood, the author of The Indian Texans, is a Tsalagi/Cherokee Indian. He recently retired from his position as a professor of history at Oklahoma State University and moved to Gainesville, Texas. He is one of the important group of historians who reexamined the Reconstruction period in Texas, both in his award-winning book from 1981, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans during Reconstruction, and in the book he co-authored with Barry A. Crouch and Larry Peacock, Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas, which appeared in 2003.
     He has also worked extensively in local history, publishing considerable material about Cooke County, Texas and the two-volume The History of Smith County, Texas. He edited for publication some of the papers of Will Rogers and issued a book about Oklahoma schoolteachers, and is presently writing a book on the history of dolphins.
    Allan Kownslar, who wrote The European Texans, is a professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio. An expert in the social studies curriculum, Kownslar has authored or co-authored many textbooks and teaching guides. His other work includes Texas Iconoclast: Maury Maverick Jr., a collection of material written by Maverick for the San Antonio Express-News, which Kownslar selected and edited.
    Phyllis McKenzie is a research specialist for and designer of exhibits at the Institute for Texan Cultures in San Antonio. She is the curator of the five-part Tejano exhibit at the Institute. The research she did for that project, over the course of twelve years, was the foundation of The Mexican Texans, her first book.
    Sara R. Massey, who designed the series and chose and worked with its authors, was an education specialist at the Institute for Texan Cultures until her recent retirement. Her other work includes the landmark photography book, Turn of the Century Photographs from San Diego, Texas, which she co-authored with Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm and which sold out its first printing in less than a month. She also was the editor of Black Cowboys of Texas, an anthology of articles about black cowboys which won the Texas State Historical Association’s T. R. Fehrenbach Award in 2000. She is presently preparing a book on female trail drivers from Texas, which is to be entitled Texas Cattle Queens.
    The five books in the new series, and other books by Smallwood, Kownslar, and Massey, will be for sale at the symposium, all at prices considerably lower than retail. Admission is seven dollars, but every admission ticket is good for five dollars off the purchase price of any one book.

In May 2004, Dorothy Morrison, a third degree Wiccan high priestess of the Georgian tradition and an award winning author, donated copies of ten of her books to the library. The books, which Morrison donated in memory of her parents, Ed and Laura Belle Potter, were: Magical Needlework: 35 Original Projects and Patterns (1998); Everyday Magic: Spells and Rituals for Modern Living (1998); In Praise of the Crone: A Celebration of Feminine Maturity (1999); Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth (2000); Bud, Blossom & Leaf: The Magical Herb Gardener’s Handbook (2001); The Craft: A Witch’s Book of Shadows (2001); The Craft Companion: A Witch’s Journal (2001); Enchantments of the Heart: A Magical Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life (2002); Everyday Tarot Magic: Meditation and Spells (2002); Everyday Moon Magic: Spells and Rituals for Abundant Living (2003). Morrison, a 1973 graduate of Columbus High School, is a two-time winner of a Coalition of Visionary Resources book award. Her book, In Praise of the Crone, was voted one of the ten best books of 1999 by Amazon.com. Editions of her books have been published in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Czech.

Distinguished Texas conjunto musician Santiago Jiménez Jr. discussed his career, influences, and musical style, and played some fifteen to twenty songs, at the library on May 11, 2004. Jiménez, whose appearance was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts, and facilitated by Texas Folklife Resources, also played several numbers with local musicians, among them Jim Kearney on guitar, Sioux Sanders on several hand-held rhythm instruments, and Marion Henkhaus (pictured at right with Jiménez) on piano accordion.

More than sixty persons crowded into the library's meeting room on April 26, 2004 to hear Randolph B. Campbell discuss Texas history. Campbell, author of the recently issued Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, of the classic An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas 1821-1865, and many other works, outlined his view of Texas as a southern rather than a western state and fielded several questions from the audience.

On April 17, 2004, the Descendants of Austin's Old 300, a group composed of descendants of Stephen F. Austin's original 300 colonists, made a donation to the Nesbitt Memorial Library in Columbus. The donation was in recognition of the library's continuing attempts to collect, preserve, and promote the history of Austin's Colony. Pictured from left to right are Bettie Utter, Shirley Stedman, Carolyn Marble, Bill Stein, Kay Anderson, Harry Howell, and Barbara Warnock. Stein accepted the donation on behalf of the library; the others are directors of the Old 300 group

     On April 17, 2004, Elizabeth Schoellmann, who worked at the library as a volunteer faithfully every Friday for years, was found dead in her Waco home. Elizabeth Cecelia Leopold was born January 3, 1917 at Nada, Texas, in far southern Colorado County. She married Henry "Ted" Schoellmann on her twenty-third birthday.
    The couple had four children, though the first was stillborn and the fourth, Thomas, was born with severe mental and physical problems. Doctors gave Thomas only two years to live, but he lived to celebrate his eighteenth birthday. His care occupied much of his mother's attention and energy from 1951 until his death in 1970.
     In 1978, Elizabeth Schoellmann took a job as the librarian at St. Mary's School in Nada. That job led her to become active in the local history field. Two years later, she was named to the committee to produce a 100th anniversary book for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Nada, and she taught herself how to do research at  courthouses and in archives. The book came out in 1982 and sold out.
     Her husband died in 1989. When, shortly thereafter, Bill Stein, then archivist at this library, issued a call for volunteers to work on historical projects at a meeting of the Colorado County Historical Commission, she was the only person who responded. She was not then a member of the commission, and had been induced to attend the meeting as a prospective member. For the next seven years, she diligently worked on projects for the library, helping to locate and catalogue cemeteries, arranging for and helping to effect the microfilming of the records of Nada's Catholic church, pouring through countless old newspapers and extracting obituary information, and many other things. She was certainly the most faithful and effective volunteer the library had during the 1990s.
     She had to abandon her volunteer activities when her kidneys failed and she went on dialysis in early 1997. A few months later, she moved to Waco, where one of her daughters lived and where she could undergo her treatments more comfortably. In Waco, she produced two books. She was principal compiler of Christian Leopold: "Der Swithe Boob", a book of family history which was published in 2000. In 2002, she completed an autobiography, My Life.

     Randolph B. Campbell, author of the new history of Texas, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, will speak at the library about his work on Monday, April 26, 2004, at 7:30 p. m. After his presentation, he will take questions from the audience and autograph copies of his books. Copies of Gone to Texas will be available for purchase at the event.
     Campbell, whose work has won many awards, is perhaps the preeminent living Texas historian. His other works include An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865, Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880 (which contains a long chapter on Colorado County), Sam Houston and the American Southwest, and A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850-1880.

On October 28 and November 1, 2003, the library will sponsor and conduct tours of the old Columbus City Cemetery. At some fifteen sites, actors, illuminated by torches and lanterns and in period costume, will tell the stories of persons buried in the cemetery.      Entitled "Live Oaks & Dead Folks," the tour will feature William B. Dewees, the founder of Columbus, Dilue Rose Harris, whose reminiscences made her well-known, and many other early Columbus characters.      Tours begin at 7 p. m. each evening and embark every twenty minutes. The last tour will leave at 9 p. m. As groups move from gravestone to gravestone, guides will amplify the stories and relate other information about the cemetery.      Tickets may be purchased in advance at the library. No more than ten advance tickets per tour will be sold. Adult tickets cost $5. Children under twelve will be admitted for $3. Individuals may purchase all ten advance tickets for one tour for $40.

On September 5, 2003, Columbus Wal-Mart associates presented the Nesbitt Memorial Library with a $500 grant. The donation was made by Wal-Mart associates as part of the company’s Bonus Grant program. The Bonus Grant is part of the company’s Community Matching Grant Program and is funded by the Wal-Mart Foundation.    The grant is to be used to help support the library’s summer reading program. This year, 204 children registered for the program, and more than 100 people attended the closing event, a reading-oriented magic show.    “Our associates were excited to make this donation to such a worthwhile cause,” said Danny Olds, manager of the Columbus Wal-Mart. “This is just a small part of Wal-Mart’s ongoing commitment to the communities in which we operate.”    Bill Stein, director of the library, said “Of course, we are delighted to get this grant. With it, we can make next year’s summer reading program even better than this year’s was. The entire community should be grateful to Wal-Mart for supporting the library.”

Pictured are Mike Rasbury, assistant manager of the Columbus Wal-Mart, Bill Stein, and Danny Olds, Wal-Mart manager.

Maynard Livingston "Tex" Rogers, a member of the library advisory board since April 1, 2000, and former secretary and vice chairman of the board, died in the early morning hours of June 30, 2003. Rogers, born December 7, 1942, was sixty years old. He was admitted to the local hospital with a severe case of pneumonia on March 17, had a seizure there two days later, and remained in a coma until he died. He was the founder of the library's Community Celebrity Series and was active in many other library projects. He loved all things Scottish. He is pictured at left, in his days as editor of the Colorado County Citizen.

Speakers at the Third Annual Lee Quinn Nesbitt Symposium on Texas History and Culture, May 3, 2003, clockwise from above left: Robert M. Utley, Paul N. Spellman, Harold J. Weiss, James C. Kearney, Chuck Parsons, Allen G. Hatley.

The Third Annual Lee Quinn Nesbitt Symposium on Texas History and Culture, set for May 3, 2003, will be the biggest ever such event at the library. It will feature six speakers, and all six presentations will deal with the Texas Rangers.
    Robert M. Utley, the distinguished historian of the American West whose most recent book is Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, will make the symposium's closing presentation, "Images of the Texas Rangers." Utley, whose many books include The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin, and Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, is scheduled to begin his presentation at 3 o'clock.
    Paul N. Spellman, whose new book Captain John H. Rogers, Texas Ranger was published in January, will talk about Rogers at 2 o'clock. Spellman is also the author of Forgotten Texas Leader: Hugh McLeod and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition.

    The symposium will begin at 9:30 that morning with "The Rangers and Violence in Texas, 1870-1890" by Allen G. Hatley. He will be followed by Chuck Parsons, who will make a presentation on Leander H. McNelly at 10:30. Hatley is the author of several books, including his recent Bringing the Law to Texas: Crime and Violence in Nineteenth Century Texas. Parsons too has published many books. His most recent book was the biography Captain L. H. McNelly—Texas Ranger: The Life and Times of a Fighting Man.
    After a break for lunch, the symposium will resume at one o'clock with James C. Kearney's presentation "Everett Ewing Townsend, Father of the Big Bend." At 1:30, Harold J. Weiss, Jr. will speak on "Captain Bill McDonald in Fact and Fiction."
    Books by Utley, Spellman, Hatley, and Parsons will be available for purchase, and each author will be available to sign their books after their presentations. Tickets to the symposium will cost $7, but each person who buys a ticket will be given a coupon good for $5 off the purchase of any book.

On February 28, 2003, the library acquired eight letters written by David C. Neer to his relatives in Virginia between 1857 and 1861. Neer, with a partner, Thomas H. James, established a store in the fledgling Colorado County town now known as Oakland, but then called Prairie Point, in early 1857. The letters refer to the opening of the store and describe business practices and living conditions in Prairie Point/Oakland, as well as other community activities and developments. One of the letters had three dried leaves, sent sent from Oakland in 1857, folded into it.

Willie Ann McColloch of Fort Bend County, surely one of the most dedicated and productive history and genealogy oriented volunteers in Texas, has completed a surname index to the book, A History of Eagle Lake Texas. Her index will surely make that 591 page volume, which appeared in 1987 without an index of any kind, far more useful and accessible. McColloch's index is 87 pages long. McColloch earlier compiled a similar index for the 1973 book Weimar, Texas First 100 Years 1873-1973.

When the back issues of the Eagle Lake Headlight, a newspaper which will celebrate its 100th year of operation in 2003, were microfilmed about 25 years ago, the issues from 1937 and 1947 were not included. Until recently, the issues from both years were thought to have been lost. Now, both have been found.
    Earlier this year, thanks to the persistence of Leslie Carey, the issues from 1947 were discovered in an unlikely place in the archival vault at the Nesbitt Memorial Library. This summer, those issues were turned over to a document imaging company, which provided the library with images of the old papers on microfilm and CD. 
    Now the 1937 issues have emerged. On November 18, William H. Harrison of Eagle Lake donated a number of old newspapers to the library. Among them was the bound volume of the Eagle Lake Headlight from 1937. Before the back issues were put on microfilm, Harrison had systematically borrowed them from the newspaper's office for his work on the book A History of Eagle Lake Texas. He believed he had returned them all, but, when cleaning out his office at his home, he discovered the 1937 newspapers.

Thanks to the efforts of David Hahn (pictured at right in the library's Texas Room), Colorado County historians and genealogists now have a powerful new tool. In October 2002, Hahn, a native of Columbus who lives in Fort Bend County, completed an index of the recently-released 1930 United States census of Colorado County. Hahn transcribed the names and some relevant information about each of the 19,129 people who lived in the county in 1930. Hahn sent the index to the library. There, staff examined it for mistakes and omissions, and added names and other information Hahn could not read. The library posted the audited index on its website on November 4.     At first, Hahn worked only from copies printed from a microfilm version of the census. As he proceeded, the Nesbitt Memorial Library Foundation, Inc., paid to get the census put onto a CD and posted on the Internet. Now, with both Hahn’s index and the manuscript version of the census on the Internet, researchers can easily locate an individual and view the page on which he appears, and they never have to leave their homes

Two Dozen Hear Brune	Return to Top of Page
	Two dozen people came to the library to hear Herman Brune discuss his career as a wilderness guide in the northwestern United States, Mexico, and elsewhere. Brune described the psychological, emotional, and physical benefits of time in the wilderness, and showed photographs of campsites and hunting trophies. After his presentation, he answered numerous questions from the audience.
Herman Brune to Appear at Library	Return to Top of Page

Wilderness guide and award-winning outdoor writer Herman Brune will appear at the library at 7 p.m. Monday, October 21, 2002. Brune, a Columbus native, is best known locally for his outdoor column in  Colorado County Citizen, and his Saturday morning radio show "News from the Camphouse" on KULM radio. His stories and photos have also appeared in Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine as well as several national hunting and outdoor publications. A professional guide since 1990, Brune escorts hunters and photographers into wilderness areas throughout the Rocky Mountains, spending considerable time in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. He has used his time outdoors to become an accomplished action cameraman, filming several episodes for the television series "Hunting the World," hosted by Larry Weishuhn, another Columbus native.

Beginning on February 12, 1862, James T. Pettus recorded the events of his military career as a sergeant in Terry's Texas Rangers, a unit of the army of the Confederate States of America, in a small pocket diary. On October 1, 2002, Julia Ann McDonald, on behalf of her family, which has owned the diary seemingly since the war, donated it to the library.      When Pettus filled up the diary, on June 27, 1862, he switched to another. Two months later, on August 29, 1862, he was killed in action. His current diary was probably in his pocket, and may have been buried with him or taken from his body by unknown parties. His first diary, however, was returned to Texas. Probably, he had placed it on the pack train, where it was found when he was killed.      Before the war, Pettus had lived in Colorado County in the same household as another member of his company, Oliver E. Herbert. Herbert probably returned the diary to Texas. Julia Ann McDonald, who is seen holding the diary at left, is a descendant of Herbert's brother.

The library's meeting room was packed on August 15 to hear Doug Rau's presentation on his baseball career. Rau told of his years on the sandlots and in the organized youth leagues of Columbus, went through his years at Columbus High School and Texas A & M University, and through his professional career in the minor leagues and as a regular starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The audience also got to see Rau pitching for the Dodgers, on a videotape of a game from 1976. After his presentation, Rau answered a few questions and signed numerous autographs.

On August 13, 2002, Helen Priest donated the scorebooks and other material kept by her husband, Henry O. "Hop" Priest during his career as baseball coach at Columbus High School. The series of scorebooks detail the team's seasons from 1953 through 1968. Because of sporadic coverage by local newspapers, the scorebooks provide the only record of many games. Priest, shown at left in a photograph from 1967, coached the Columbus Cardinals to numerous championships, and was instrumental in the development of what were arguably the town's two greatest pitchers, Kenneth Pate and Doug Rau.

Doug Rau, who pitched in the major leagues for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the California Angels from 1972-1981, will appear at the library to discuss his career at 7 p. m. on August 15, 2002. Rau, who was born in Columbus, was a star lefthanded pitcher for both the Columbus High School Cardinals and the  Texas A&M Aggies before his major league career. In the major leagues he won 81 games and lost 60 while compiling an earned run average of 3.35. He spent five full seasons as a member of the Dodgers' starting rotation and pitched in three World Series games. A shoulder injury curtailed his career with the Dodgers in 1979 when he was only 31 years old. He attempted a comeback with the Angels in 1981, but retired after starting just three games.

The archives received four more significant donations recently. On May 29, 2002, John O'Leary, former Columbus High School baseball coach, donated two large boxes of material regarding the CHS baseball program and other local athletic programs from 1968-1985. On June 20, Jon Loessin donated a letter written by an officer of the Stafford Bank and concerning bank business in 1907. The same day, Ernie and Willie Mae Smahlik and family donated a map. made about 1920, which shows details of land ownership and oil activity in the north half of Colorado County at the time. The map was printed on linen and so has remained in very good condition throughout the years. It is the second major donation made to the library by the Smahliks this year. On June 21, Laura Ann Rau gave a small collection of documents relating to the Brandon family, including several documents from the first decade of the 20th century relating to the Stafford Bank and to the Simpson Bank.
 

    On Saturday, June 15, Texas authors Robert Flynn (above left), James L. Haley (center), and Jean Flynn (right) addressed audiences of between 25 and 40 people at the library. All three ended their sessions by signing copies of their books.
    Jean Flynn, noted for her biographies for young adults, opened the symposium with an excellent presentation on the craft of writing for a young audience. She described some of the less agreeable circumstances of the lives of William B. Travis, James W. Fannin, Annie Oakley, and others she has written about, and then described how she presented those circumstances in her books.
    Haley followed with a presentation on Sam Houston, the subject of his latest book. He detailed his searches through archives and libraries for new material, and explained why he thought another biography of Houston was warranted.
    Robert Flynn then got the audience laughing, with remarks about his Baptist upbringing, and passages from his latest novel, Tie-Fast Country. Flynn related how he mixed fact and fiction to create his humorous books with serious points.
 

The Second Annual Lee Quinn Nesbitt Symposium on Texas History and Culture has been set for June 15, 2002. This year's symposium will feature the top Texas novelist Robert Flynn, the historian and novelist James L. Haley, and the author of biographies aimed at young adults, Jean Flynn.
    Robert Flynn, the symposium's keynote speaker, is the author of seven novels, including North to Yesterday, Wanderer Springs, and the recently-published Tie-Fast Country. Flynn has won the Texas Institute of Letters' Distinguished Achievement Award and many other awards. He also has published numerous short stories and essays, an oral history, and a nonfiction book about the Vietnam War, and has written a television documentary. His talk, entitled "Is It Fiction or Nonfiction? Truth or Fact? Prejudice or Considered Opinion?" will deal with the relationship of fiction to history, and will close the symposium. Flynn is widely known for his sense of humor, and for his entertaining presentations. He also appeared at the library in 1997.
    James L. Haley, who will deliver his address "Sam Houston: The New Discoveries" in the early afternoon, is the author of the just-released new biography Sam Houston, as well as four other books of Texas history (Apaches: A History and Cultural Portrait, The Buffalo War, Texas: An Album of History, and Texas from Spindletop to World War II), and three novels. Haley, who has been praised for the grace and accessibility of his writing style, worked on the biography of Houston for eleven years.
    Jean Flynn will open the symposium with a paper entitled "Why NOT Tell All." Flynn is the author of nine biographies for young adults, eight of which deal with Texas subjects, including Stephen F. Austin, William B. Travis, James B. Bonham, Jim Bowie, and Lady Bird Johnson, and of a series of biographical sketches published in 1999 as Texas Women Who Dared to be First. Her paper will deal with the craft of writing books for young audiences.
    All three authors will answer questions from the audience and autograph books. Copies of some of their books will be available for purchase. Persons interested in attending should contact the library for more details.
    The symposium will open at 10 a. m., with the presentation by Jean Flynn. James L. Haley will take the podium at 1 p. m., and Robert Flynn will follow him at 2:30.
 

Floyd L. Green of Columbus died on May 18, 2002 at the age of 81. He was an enthusiastic early supporter of the Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, and its first paid subscriber. He was interested in Colorado County history in part because one of his ancestors was Rowan Green, an important figure in the county in the late nineteenth century.
 

    On April 25, 2002, the library received the only-known extant copy of any issue of the Columbus Plaindealer, a newspaper published in Columbus in 1879 and 1880. The newspaper was purchased for the library by the Nesbitt Memorial Library Foundation, Inc. It was acquired through the agency of City Manager David Stall, who learned that it existed and that it would soon be auctioned.  Backed by the foundation, on April 10, Stall entered the winning bid of $103.50. The price was unusually high because the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University had also been determined to acquire the newspaper. The newspaper was published on January 6, 1880.
    A day earlier, Ernie and Willie Mae Smahlik and family donated a copy of the 1914 Columbus telephone directory to the archives. It is the oldest local telephone book known to exist, and like the copy of the Plaindealer, is almost certainly the only copy left in the world. Willie Mae Smahlik found the telephone book among her father’s papers in Atascosa County. It was first owned by George Becker, her grandfather, who lived at Mentz and moved to Atascosa County in 1915.
 

On April 8, 2002, the fifth grade class of St. Anthony School presented the Nesbitt Memorial Library with a handmade, patchwork quilt which includes depictions of various tribes of Texas Indians. Each student picked a Texas Indian tribe and painted a scene which showed the mode of dress and other aspects of the daily lives of the Indians. The scenes were then sewn into a quilt. The students completed the quilt by knotting it with beads and buttons, and adding beaded fringe-work. The new quilt will hang at the edge of the children’s section of the library, adjacent to another Texas history quilt honoring the settlement of Colorado County which was made by St. Anthony School eighth graders and donated to the library on May 21, 1997.
 

On April 6, 2002, the officers of the Descendants of Austin's Old Three Hundred met in the library, and presented the library with a donation of $500. The money, like earlier donations made to the library by the same organization, was made in recognition of and to further the Nesbitt Memorial Library's continuing efforts to preserve and document the history of Austin's Colony. The organization's officers frequently meet in the library.

On April 4, Eric Taylor appeared at the library to discuss his musical career, and tell the stories which inspired some of his critically-acclaimed songs. Taylor told the crowd about the bar-shooting which inspired "All the Way to Heaven" (the victim wore alligator shoes), the musical instrument which inspired "Blue Piano," and the debate over the nature of an albino child which inspired "White Bones." All three songs are on his new CD, Scuffletown. His 1998 release, Resurrect, was recently named one of the top 100 Texas records of all-time by Buddy Magazine. That album contained the song "Strong Enough for Two," which Taylor wrote for a documentary film about a critically-ill Mexican child. Taylor's appearance was the first in a planned series of appearances by local celebrities.

Eric Taylor, acclaimed singer-songwriter, will appear at the library at 7 p. m. on Thursday, April 4, 2002, to discuss his music and career. Taylor, who lives in Columbus, has been featured on the television programs Austin City Limits and Late Night with David Letterman, at the Newport Folk Festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival, and on National Public Radio, and has performed in venues around the world. His fourth album, Scuffletown, was released to great acclaim in 2001. Admission is free, but copies of Scuffletown and his 1998 release, Resurrect, will be available for purchase. Taylor will not perform at the appearance.
 

Barry A. Crouch, eminent Texas historian, professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, D. C., and good friend and benefactor of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, died in his Washington-area home, March 13, 2002. In addition to his more substantial work, Dr. Crouch wrote three long articles for the Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, donated the Colorado County material he had collected from the records of the Freedmen's Bureau to the library, and appeared at the library as a speaker. He was the author of many books and articles, notably The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), and, with co-author Donaly E. Brice, Cullen Montgomery Baker: Reconstruction Desperado (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997). He had nearly completed three other books, all of which likely will be published soon. At least one of the three, "The Governor's Hounds": The Texas State Police, a new book on the Reconstruction-era State Police Force co-authored with Brice, promises to be a landmark work. He was one of a handful of  historians who revolutionized the way Texas Reconstruction history is approached, pointing out the laudable goals of both the Freedmen's Bureau and the state police and the struggles they had to endure in attempting to achieve them, and stripping away the romanticism from often-celebrated killers like Baker. His death at the early age of 61 is a great loss to Texas.
 

On March 5, 2002, Mark Elmore and Clyde Huff of Cameron, Texas, donated a nineteenth-century school register and other documents to the archives. Elmore discovered the documents in the attic of a house, now torn down, five or six years earlier. The school register details the activities at a school in Glidden in 1886. The photograph at left shows Elmore and Huff in Elmore's home on the day they donated the papers to the library.

On March 4, 2002, the library received a grant for $4408 from the Catherine Dumraese Trust to purchase two new computers and the software needed to manage this web page, and to institute a collection of films on DVD. With the funds, the library was able to purchase 63 DVDs. The new format supplements the library's large collection of videotapes. The grant was the third received by the library from the Dumraese Trust. Ms. Dumraese, a Colorado County resident, had earlier directly benefited the library. Her sizable bequest allowed the library to amass its excellent collection of Texas history material.
 

On February 2, 2002, Gregg Dimmick, Joe Hudgins (this area's state-appointed archeological steward), and Terry Kiefer conducted an archeological survey of a ranch south of Columbus in hopes of finding artifacts left behind by the Mexican army in 1836. Though documents firmly establish that the Mexican army crossed the Colorado River at a site on or very near the ranch, no artifacts were found. Library staff helped set up and participated in the expedition. The photograph above shows Kiefer, Hudgins, Dimmick and other expedition members studying a map before proceeding to the supposed Mexican army campsite.