MARCH IS TEXAS HISTORY MONTH
(Please be aware this post was written in 2004 and published at that time in the Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas) newspaper. Some of the news in this post, therefore, may not be current. Current and future posts on this blog may revisit and update news on this and other posts on this blog. If you have questions and/or suggestions, please send Mic a note using the comment page -Don’t forget to use the orange “subscribe” button to receive new posts-Thanks, Mic)
In 2003 the 78th Texas legislature voted to designate the month of March Texas History Month. No better month could have been chosen.
March and April 1836 saw the birth of Texas as a republic and ultimately as a state. March the 2nd 1836 was the official beginning of the Republic of Texas. It was the day a group of men at a place called Washington on the Brazos signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, a document based on the American Declaration of Independence signed in Philadelphia some sixty year earlier.
As quickly as the signers affixed their names to the declaration and consequently put a price on their head a number of them headed home to retrieve their wives and families and join the already growing rush of Texas citizens toward the Sabine River for the safety of the United States. History has dubbed the massive panic stricken movement one step ahead of the Mexican army as the Runaway Scrape.
In the early days of March while the delegates met at Washington on the Brazos thousands of Mexican soldiers were besieging the Alamo in San Antonio, a garrison of some 200 brave Texians and Tejanos. Those extraordinary men of the Alamo chose to fight and die rather than surrender.
In Goliad under direct orders from Mexican General Santa Anna 342 unarmed and unsuspecting Texas prisoners of war were executed shortly after sunrise on Palm Sunday March 27th. Among others, those killed included men from Ward’s Georgia Battalion, Capt. Burr H. Duval’s company, The San Antonio Greys, the Mobile Greys, Ira J. Westover’s Regulars and Shackelford’s Red Rovers.
And so it was… on April 21 when General Sam Houston and his men surprised a resting Mexican army at place called San Jacinto that they yelled the battle cry Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!
Aside from the tales of the Texas Revolution Texas has a colorful history. There is an inexhaustible number of excellent websites where one may discover a whole lot more about Texas, her people and her history.
PUBLIC INVITED TO GENEALOGY AND FAMILY HISTORY FAIR
The Alexander Hodge Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution has extended a warm invitation to everyone to experience a free genealogy and family history fair. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday March 14 at the Sugar Land Community Center, 226 Matlage Way near the sugar mill in Sugar Land.
The fair will feature over 50 area genealogical, historical and lineage societies. In addition there will be talks by Marjorie Lowe who is affiliated with a number of Cherokee and Native American groups and Dr. Danny Sessums Curator of the Museum of Southern History in Sugar Land.
NGS DIGITIZATION PROJECT
The National Genealogical Society, NGS, has begun a family papers document digitization program. Genealogists are invited to bring family papers such as historic photos, Bible pages, family letters, baptismal certificates and other similar documents to be digitized. The digitized documents will be placed online and made available to researchers worldwide for a fee. Monies derived from the project will help support the program and make even more documents available to researchers.
While the NGS will not pay the owner of the documents for the privilege of copying documents they will in effect preserve them by scanning and digitizing them. They will also give the owner a free CD containing a digitized copy of any documents they scan.
Carla and Dennis Ridenour, digitizers for NGS, are initializing the program in Dallas and are currently operating out of the Dallas Public Library. They will be in Dallas until March 20. The Ridenours anticipate visiting cities across the nation as they build the program. For more information about the project visit http://johnwylie.com/dgsngsfpc.pdf .
