AFFAIRS OF THE ASSOCIATION
In the January number The Quarterly will begin the publication of the letters of William Kennedy and Captain Charles Elliot to the British government concerning Texas during 1842-1845. Kennedy came to Texas in January, 1842, as a semi-official agent of Lord Aberdeen, and claimed to have been instrumental in inducing the Texan senate to ratify the slave-trade treaty with England. He returned later to be British consul at Galveston. Captain Elliot arrived in the summer of 1842 as chargé d'affaires of Great Britain, and remained until Texas accepted annexation to the United States in 1845. Both were keen observers, and their letters are most important sources for phases of the foreign relations of Texas. The letters will form a valuable supplement to Professor Garrison's three volumes of The Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas, just issued by the American Historical Association. The letters are being copied from the British Public Record Office by the instruction of Professor Ephraim D. Adams, of Leland Stanford University, who will edit them for The Quarterly.
The Association has received as a gift from Mr. Harvey T. D. Wilson, of Houston, an interesting pamphlet of twelve pages printed in Houston in 1855. It is a memorial of Robert Wilson, father of the donor, to the Legislature in 1855 asking damages for the destruction of valuable property at Harrisburg when Santa Anna burned that town in 1836. The property is described as consisting of “an extensive steam saw-mill, gristmill, a store, dwelling houses, blacksmith, carpenter, turning and woodshops, and houses for the workmen. . . . The mill was of the best and most substantial character—able to cut, easily from 5 to 7m. feet per day, and grind 100 or more bushels of corn in the same time. . . . [This establishment] furnished lumber to the colonists, and to the Mexican coast-ports as well: it supplied very many with bread: by means of its workshops of various kinds, it extended facilities to the colonists to be had nowhere else in the country. It was looked to as the great evidence of the prosperity, growth, and stability of Austin's colony.”
How to cite:
"AFFAIRS OF THE ASSOCIATION", Volume 015, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page not available. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v015/n2/back_6.html
[Accessed Sun Nov 23 13:49:50 CST 2008]
