Working on the preface for my Texas history book: Preface In mid-year 1999 my Mother and I decided to spend some quality time together doing genealogy. What started as an interest, quickly turned into an obsession. We would hit the road early and off to Navarro, Bell, Travis or any other number of counties that our family had lived in since the late 1820’s when Texas was a state of the United States of Mexico, bound for a courthouse to dig in or a cemetery to walk. From that beginning, I sought to explore family lore; to bring to life the many stories my Grandfather Smith instilled in my youthful mind from an early age. “Who was I,” “Why the particular interest I have,” “Just exactly what role did my family play in building the foundation upon which Texas was born” and much more. What I discovered was far more than I could have ever imagined. On Mother’s side, my 5th and 4th great grandfathers, John Marshall, Joseph Tyler Marshall and David Wilson Campbell who fought at The Battle of San Jacinto. On my Father’s side I finally met the man that my Grandfather Smith and told me countless stories about, George Whitfield Terrell. It is of this antecedent that I spent the next 13 years in the Texas State Archives, researching card catalogues, cross referencing and combing through countless books to digest everything about him and his role in building the foundation upon which Texas sits. As I started collecting letters that Terrell had written or that had been written to him; Discovering events in Texas history that he had been directly involved in and the men among who he traveled and I discovered that Terrell was part of an East Texas aristocracy that formed a who’s who of Texas Patriots. Men such as Sam Houston, Thomas Rusk, J. Pickney Henderson, George Hockley, James Morgan, Aldophus Sterne and many other men who would pledge their fortunes and peril their lives to build a country among strangers. In discovering my roots, I was reminded of a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh who said it best: “If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.” This book started as a project simply to leave my children so they might know who they are, where it is they come from and gain a sense of pride in their Texas heritage. However, that project soon turned into book that I wanted to share with Texas and Texans in general. Shortly after I had the foundation written, I contacted James Haley, a noted Texas author who had recently written the most complete biography on Sam Houston. In part, due to information I had learned that I had not seen written in any other account of Sam Houston. His response was one of encouragement when he advised me to finish this project and pursue getting it published as it would “blow the dust off the bookshelves of Texas history.”
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 18:19:39 +0000