Preface

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

*note: this text originates in The New Handbook of Texas print editon. (1996)

With this new edition, the Texas State Historical Association fulfills the first part of its goal of remaking the Handbook of Texas into a reference work that will provide concise and accurate information about Texas history for generations to come. Our objective in compiling the New Handbook of Texas has not changed from that described in 1952 by Walter Prescott Webb and H. Bailey Carroll, the editors of the original Handbook: "to assemble into one usable, practical, ready-reference work the most significant information about the widest possible range of Texas topics." We have cast a much larger loop than those historical pioneers and have had far more help in rounding up our material, but their brilliant accomplishment constantly illuminated our path, its shadow a daily reminder of the high level of professionalism and scholarship to which we would be held.

This new edition, prepared with the assistance of more than 3,000 volunteer authors and a cumulative Handbook staff of 130 individuals over a fourteen-year period, incorporates all the information that you have come to expect of the Handbook--biographies of notable individuals, histories of important events, counties, cities, and towns, descriptions of physical features, thematic histories--into a new format with essay-length articles on historical periods, regions, and topics and carefully selected illustrations that enhance the appearance of the book as well as our understanding of the past. We have also told the story of the events that have occurred during the more than four decades since the original Handbook was published. Significant changes occurred during those years, changes that frequently are at odds with the traditional image of the state, especially the development of "Texas chic" in the last two decades. The Texas Medical Center in Houston, for example, is now recognized as the largest and one of the most sophisticated medical complexes in the world. The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston seemed almost out of place when it was built (1961-63), but now appears to lag behind the rest of the high-tech industry that motivates much of the state's economy. And Texans, used to thinking of themselves as rural in origin, now must adjust to the notion that Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are among the ten most populous cities in the nation, that there are twenty-five other metropolitan centers among the state's population of 18.4 million, and that the sets of twin cities along the border with Mexico--El Paso-Ciudad Juárez, Del Rio-Ciudad Acuña, Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras, McAllen-Reynosa, and Brownsville-Matamoros--all have developed into significant urban centers.

Texans have also continued to recognize the significant role that women and minorities have played in the state's history, a recognition evident in the Handbook Supplement of 1976 and strongly reflected in the New Handbook by essay-length articles, biographies, topical entries, and illustrations. We have benefited from four symposia that we organized and a virtual explosion of historical studies on women and on Mexican Americans, African Americans, and other ethnic groups. Nevertheless, much of the material found here is based on original research that the Handbook staff carried out because no other sources were available. In this, we are reminded again of Webb's goal that the Handbook contain "pertinent facts on a multitude of subjects, many of which, prior to this publication, could be found only in definitive works, great libraries, rare or unique books and documents, [or] highly specialized collections" in archives around the world.

Although accuracy has been uppermost in our minds, we know that this book contains errors and omissions, just as the original one did. We can only hope that we got it right as often as they did.

That the Texas State Historical Association should publish a comprehensive history of the state, an idea almost as old as the organization itself, dates from one of its early meetings in 1897. The suggestion surfaced again as various commemorative anniversaries, such as the state's centennial in 1936, came and went. Not until July 1939 did Walter Prescott Webb, the new director of the association, embrace the idea and define it more clearly. Webb named the project the Handbook of Texas and said that it would be patterned after Frederick W. Hodge's remarkable Handbook of American Indians, which had won universal plaudits. "Such a work" on the Lone Star State "would be indispensable to every editor, reporter, library, scholar, and teacher in Texas," Webb believed. "It would set the standard for spelling...and furnish the starting point for every investigation of things pertaining to Texas history." In time, Webb turned the Handbook project over to H. Bailey Carroll, and the first two volumes appeared under their joint editorship in 1952.

Eldon Stephen Branda updated and revised the Handbook in the supplementary volume that appeared in 1976. Carroll had recognized errors in some of the 15,896 entries in the first two volumes and knew that other articles were rapidly becoming outdated. He consequently directed his staff to begin a file for corrections and additions. But Branda carried the changes further. "There was an article on Poetry, Texas, but none on poetry in Texas," he noted in explaining that the Supplement contained not only an article on the Poetry Society of Texas but a much longer survey of Literature in Texas. Branda also added articles on many of the ethnic groups of Texas, art and music, women, and many other subjects. By 1982, however, the Handbook had celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, and it was apparent that it needed further revision and updating to maintain its usefulness. Branda remarked that a complete revision was in order. Association director L. Tuffly Ellis, supported primarily by Ambassador Edward A. Clark, Fred H. Moore, J. Conrad Dunagan, and A. Frank Smith, all presidents or honorary presidents of the association and members of its Executive Council, initiated the revision project and began the fund-raising necessary to finance the effort. The University of Texas at Austin has provided constant assistance through the Center for Studies in Texas History, and Ellis organized a consortium of academic and educational organizations (see Acknowledgments) to assist in the work. Fourteen years later, the New Handbook of Texas is the result of that effort.

We have been chided frequently during the intervening years about how such a large work could be called a "handbook," which, as Branda observed, "sounded like something you could roll up and stuff in your pocket." We realize that we have compounded the problem by expanding the work to six volumes. We even thought of changing the name--perhaps to something noble-sounding such as The Historical Encyclopedia and Biographical Dictionary of Texas--but reconsidered when we reflected that "the Handbook" is a shorthand term that lovers of Texas history instantly recognize. Upon its publication, the original work quickly won a reputation as the place to look for historical information about the state, as the reference librarian in any local history section would tell you. A symposium on state and local history, convened at Yale University in the latter 1960s, underscored the Handbook's contribution by considering how other states might duplicate the Texas accomplishment, and Walter Muir Whitehill, the formidable director of the Boston Athenæum, writing in the Times Literary Supplement (November 13, 1970), called it "the best systematic work of reference on any of the fifty United States." As Branda concluded, "you just don't give up a name with that kind of integrity." We were therefore greatly relieved when our indefatigable editor, Roy Barkley, pointed out that in Germany a Handbuch can be a compendium of information of almost any size, published serially or all at once; as the New Handbook went to press, the Handbuch der Physik (Handbook of Physics), for instance, was at fifty-four volumes and counting.

We are also mindful of another of Branda's admonitions, that "everything changes," a truth that directly affects the implementation of the second part of our goal: keeping the Handbook up to date and available. We frequently wonder how Webb and Carroll and their assistants and students ever managed to compile and publish such a comprehensive and complex work as the Handbook without the use of computers. Nor did Branda employ a computer in the compilation of the Supplement (which the University of Texas Printing Division set in Linotype). Now computers are commonly used in every phase of historical research and writing, and the New Handbook would have been even more labor-intensive without them. The computer also makes change easier. When we began the revision project in 1982, we surveyed Texas librarians and historians and book collectors as to what the format of the New Handbook should be. They replied overwhelmingly that it should be published as a book. No other format--microfilm, microfiche, CD-ROM, on-line electronic version--attracted as much as one percent of our total response. We repeated the survey in 1987 with the same result, although by then computers had become so widely used that people had started to inquire about an electronic version. Recognizing the potential of the computer, the Executive Council of the association agreed, in undertaking this revision, that the Handbook of Texas project is now a permanent part of the Texas State Historical Association program. The New Handbook will be continually updated and improved on disk so that massive revision will not be required in the future. The format of subsequent editions will depend upon the needs of our members and users.

Ron Tyler
March 1996