Remembering early days in Texas.

Written "to set the record straight," these veterans' stories provide colorful accounts of the bloody battles of Valverde, Glorieta, and Peralta, as well as details fo the soldier's tragic and painful retreat back to Texas in the summer of 1862.

This colorful memoir brings the Texas frontier to life, from smuggling adventures to fighting in the Texas Revolution and serving as a Texas Ranger. Having left Kentucky at nineteen, Noah Smithwick arrived in Texas in 1827 to seek his fortune in a “lazy man’s paradise.” He left in 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. Looking back at that time, blind and nearing ninety, Smithwick recounted the story to his daughter—and so came to be this invaluable memoir of “old Texas days.” A blacksmith and a tobacco smuggler, Smithwick made weapons for—and fought in—the Battle of Concepción. With Hensley's company, he chased the Mexican army south of the Rio Grande after the Battle of San Jacinto. Twice he served with the Texas Rangers. In quieter times, he was a postmaster and justice of the peace in little Webber's Prairie. Eyewitness to so much Texas history, Smithwick recounts his life and adventures in a simple, straightforward style, with a wry sense of humor. His keen memory for detail—what people wore and ate; how they worked and played— vividly evokes life on the frontier.

This history that concentrates on key events and people contains over 200 photographs.

“[A] firsthand account by one who measured up to the demands of danger and hardships and lived to write about it . . . Invaluable . . . Well documented.” —Library Journal As a teenager in the 1950s, John Holmes Jenkins set to work on collecting and editing his great-great-grandfather’s writings about his experiences on the Texas frontier. John Holland Jenkins joined General Sam Houston’s army at age thirteen after losing his stepfather at the Alamo. In addition to fighting the Mexicans, he faced peril from Indian warriors as well as the everyday difficulties of pioneer life. His reports on the events of the time were included in newspapers with very small readerships—and, his descendant would discover, were sometimes used word-for-word in respected history textbooks without any credit given to the source. This volume includes these memoirs of the Texas Republic and early statehood, along with illustrations, notes, biographical sketches, a bibliography, and an index. “Fascinating . . . A commendable job.” —The New York Times “[These reminiscences] light up for whoever will read the earliest days of early English-speaking Texas.” —J. Frank Dobie, from the foreword

A smartly written pioneer chronicle of early Texas that deserves a place in any well-curated Texana library. Smithwick tells of his handling of the Gonzales "Come and Take It" cannon and flag, settling up the Hill Country, repairing Jim Bowie's knife, and being a Texas Ranger.