Jerry D. Thompson

Publications
A Wild and Vivid Land: An Illustrated History of the South Texas Border
With more than 150 images, many never before published, historian Jerry Thompson tells the story of what Pulitzer Prize-winning historian William H. Goetzmann has called a "wild and vivid land." From the Coahuiltecan Indians and the Spanish colonizers who clustered along the banks of the Rio Grande, to the cattlemen and oil wildcatters who conquered the brush country, Thompson details six centuries of exciting and entertaining history in a thoroughly researched and comprehensive text, lavishly illustrated by the work of artists Lino Sanchez y Tapia, Theodore Gentilz, and Frederic Remington, photographers Robert Runyon, E. O. Goldbeck, and Russell Lee, and many others.It was on the South Texas border that the Mexican War began and the Civil War ended. Over the centuries the border area has been the setting for extraordinary endeavors and events, many of them related in A Wild and Vivid Land: José de Escandon's gallant band of colonizers, the grandiose dreamers who struggled to shape the 1840 Republic of the Rio Grande, the ill-fated Mier expedition, and the soldiers who fought at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma in 1846. The dramatic historical events and the strong personalities that influenced the region's growth and development are skillfully presented in words and pictures. Readers will see the steamboat commerce on the Rio Grande, where Richard King of King Ranch fame began to amass his fortune; the Civil War cotton trade; the sheep and cattle industries; the coming of the railroads in the 1880s; and the citrus and oil and gas industries of the twentieth century. Thompson also recounts Juan Cortina's brazen raid on Brownsville; the Union occupation of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in December 1863 and the Confederacy's legendary defense of Laredo in 1864; Catarino Garza's run from the Texas Rangers in the chaparral in the 1890s; and the ordinary men and women who, throughout, survived floods and depressions, bandits, revolutions, and drought.The exciting history presented here is distinguished by scrupulous scholarship and by the author's clear enthusiasm and love for South Texas. This book of remarkable pictures and stories is the kind of book one returns to again and again, that causes one to muse and dream on the past. The South Texas border becomes vivid in the mind--a singular and an unforgettable encounter.Contents: The Land Coahuiltecans Spanish Exploration José de Escandón Camargo, Reynosa, Revilla, and Mier Dolores Laredo San Patricio, Corpus Christi, and Dolores Revolutions Republic of the Rio Grande Second Texas-Mexico War Mier Expedition Mexican War Steamboats on the Rio Grande Brownsville Cortina War Secession and Civil War Guerrilla Warfare in the Nueces Strip Reconstruction Catarino Garza Gregorio Cortez Mexican Revolution Railroads Sheep and Cattle Industry Jovita and Nicasio Idar Citrus Oil and Gas Falcon Dam and Reservoir
Civil War and Revolution on the Rio Grande Frontier: A Narrative and Photographic History
Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman's Journal of Texas and the Cortina War
Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891
The Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854-1876: From the Texas Frontier to the Civil War and Back Again
The "Reminiscences" of Maj. Gen. Zenas R. Bliss are a remarkably detailed account of his army service in Texas before and after the Civil War. Many scholars consider Bliss's recollections to be one of the best from a soldier of the "Old Army." It has become a staple primary resource for Texas frontier research for the last three decades.Bliss's memoirs serve as a rare and important window into Texas' military, political, cultural, and geographical history. The memoirs cover Bliss's graduation at West Point in 1854, his antebellum service at Fort Duncan, Camp Hudson, and Fort Davis, as well as his return to the Texas frontier in 1870, and end with his duties at Fort Davis in 1876. Details also describe his capture by Texas Confederate forces in 1861, his tribulations as a prisoner of war, and his subsequent Civil War experiences as a Union regimental commander at Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, and Petersburg, where he was at the battle of the Crater. For gallantry at Fredericksburg, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor.While commanding buffalo soldiers at Fort Duncan in 1870, Bliss conceived the idea of enlisting Seminole-Negro Indians from Mexico as army scouts. After successfully lobbying the departmental commander and the War Department for approval, Bliss formed the first band of Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts in August of 1870. The unit served the army with extraordinary devotion and distinction until 1912.Bliss served in Texas longer than any other army officer (twenty-three years) and rose in rank from second lieutenant to departmental commander. Possessing a keen sense of humor, an eye for detail, and a boisterous social nature, his lively account of the people and places of the antebellum and post-Civil War Texas frontier is among the very best of Texas history.
TSHA Awards
TSHA Positions
- President (2001–2002)