NEWS ITEMS
Mr. Charles Wilson Hackett will return to the University of California to study Southwestern History next year.
Professor E. D. Adams, of the History Department of Stanford University, is lecturing at Harvard University this summer.
Professor Eugene I. McCormac, of the History Department of the University of California, is lecturing in the Summer Session of the University of Illinois.
Professor C. H. Van Tyne, head of the Department of History in the University of Michigan, is lecturing in the Summer Session of the University of California.
Mr. John W. Curd, Principal of the High School at El Paso, will become a graduate student in Southwester History at the University of California next fall.
Miss Anne Hughes took her Master's degree in History at the University of California in May, was awarded a fellowship in History in the same University, for the following year, and hopes to return to continue her work.
Mr. William E. Dunn, B. A., the University of Texas, 1909; M. A., Stanford University, 1910, who held a fellowship in History at Columbia during the past year, will hold a similar position at the University of California next year. He is spending the summer in the Mexican archives at Saltillo and the City of Mexico.
Mr. Charles E. Chapman, teaching fellow in History in the University of California, was awarded the Traveling Fellowship founded by the Native Sons of the Golden West, and has sailed for Spain, where he will spend next year working in the historical archives.
At the June Commencement of the University of Texas, Messrs. William S. Brandenberger and Stuart H. Condron took the M. A. degree in History. Mr. Brandenberger's thesis was “The Administrative System of Texas, 1821-1835”; and Mr. Condron's was “The First Texas Agency in New Orleans in 1836”—a study of the assistance rendered by William Bryan and Edward Hall, of New Orleans, to the Texas Revolution.
Professor William R. Manning of the University of Texas expects to spend the latter part of the summer gathering material from the Mexican archives for the show lectures on diplomatic history which he will deliver next year at Johns Hopkins University.
A summer session of the School of American Archæology will be held this summer at Santa Fé and the ruins in El Rito de los Frijoles from August 1 to 30, inclusive. Lectures will be given and research conducted by the regular staff of the school on the distribution and culture of the peoples in the southwestern part of the United States and Northern Mexico in prehistoric times; on the development of design in ancient Pueblo art; on the Indian cultures of the Southwest; on the civilizations of ancient Mexico and Central America; on the native languages, and methods of recording and studying them; and upon the hieroglyphic writings of the Ancient Mayas. In connection with these courses there will be excursions to such important sites as Pecos and Puyé, and to neighboring Pueblos still occupied. Besides the regular staff of the school, lectures will be given by Dr. Harry Langford Wilson, of Johns Hopkins University, and Professor D. A. Cockerell, of the University of Colorado.
“Through the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Wroe, the William Barrett Travis Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic was presented on April 4th with a life-size portrait of James S. Lester. . . . Judge Lester represented the counties of Fayette and Bastrop in the Congress of [the Republic of] Texas. He gave to Fayette county its name; also named the town of La Grange; was one of the heroes of San Jacinto and was the first county judge of Fayette county. . . . He died in December, 1879.”—Austin Statesman, April 7, 1912.
“Dr. Ferdinand Herff, for more than two generations the leading physician in San Antonio, and famed both in Europe and America for his skill as a daring, yet successful surgeon, died [May 18, 1912] at the Herff homestead, 308 East Houston Street, which he built in 1853, and in which he resided ever since. Had he lived until November 29, Dr. Herff would have been 92 years old.”—San Antonio Express, May 19, 1912.
The Express gives in this issue more than three columns to a sketch of Dr. Herff's remarkable career, and editorially comments on his qualities as a citizen. An incident in the early life of Dr. Herff as a member of the “Communistic colony of Bettina” is narrated in The Quarterly, III, 33-40.
Captain M. B. Davis died at Waco on June 18. He was born in Virginia in 1844, was educated at the Virginia Military Institute, and served in a Virginia regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. In 1873 he entered the newspaper business in Waco. From 1875 to 1878 he served as a Texas ranger, but at the expiration of that time re-entered newspaper work. For a number of years before his death he was Texas representative of the National Audubon Society.—(From a sketch in The Dallas News, June 19, 1912.)
On June 21 Colonel Andrew J. Baker, of San Angelo, died while on a visit to Los Angeles, California. He was born in Grenada county, Mississippi, in 1842, was educated at the University of Mississippi, and served in a Mississippi regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. After the war he practiced law at Oxford, Mississippi, and was a member of the Legislature which closed the period of Reconstruction in that State. He moved to Texas in 1884, was a member of the Twenty-second Legislature, served as Commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas from 1894 to 1898.—(From a sketch in The Dallas News, June 22, 1912.)
How to cite:
"NEWS ITEMS", Volume 016, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 110 - 112. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v016/n1/back_9.html
[Accessed Sun Nov 23 12:29:13 CST 2008]
