Publicly Historians

Feuds by C. L. Sonnichsen illuminated to me a more local version of a much broader history of violence between vigilante and criminal groups that clashed during the 19th century. This was not an uncommon occurrence, but in the case of the Regulators and the Moderators, who were based in central Texas, it reached new extremes. The violence became so appalling that a group of counter-vigilantes arose to combat the extreme actions of the Regulators.

The article encompasses a great span of this history, from the 1830’s to the 1880’s. Special attention is paid to the era directly before and after the Civil War, during which there the intensity of these conflicts were fanned into flame to a greater extent than at other times. Of particular interest to me was the way in which the author, Sonnichsen, juxtaposed to motivations of the earlier feuds to those of the later periods. The article granted me a better look at the often romanticized lawlessness of the old west.

Handbook of Texas Online, C. L. Sonnichsen, “FEUDS,” accessed September 08, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jgf01.

“Of this gentleman, I may in truth write that he has a character alert, lively, eager and restless, curious of every kind of novelty, unsuited to the common manner and behavior of mankind, but striving after new untried or extraordinary ways; moreover he has much more in his head than he allows to be expressed or perceived… melancholy though luminous thoughts, a bent toward alchemy, magic and enchantment, community with spirits, scorn and indifference towards human ordinances and conventions and to all religions, making everything proposed by God or man to be suspected and despised… Likewise he will be unmerciful, without brotherly or nuptial affection, caring for noone, devoted only to himself and his desires, severe upon those placed under him, avid, covetous, deceitful, inequitable in his dealings, usually silent, often violent… not to be browbeaten.”

• – Johannes Kepler

Few individuals in history have lived lives of such internal conflict as Albrecht von Wallenstein, who was born on September 14, 1583 in Heřmanice, Bohemia. Wallenstein was born into a family of relatively humble means, but achieved power and prestige through a combination of military genius, opportunism and devotion to his own interests at the expense of all others’.

By trampling upon the fortunes of his rivals, he rose to a position of power that he only dared dream of before. Wallenstein would serve as the de facto Defender of the Faith for the Catholic world despite the ridicule and undermining efforts of his compatriots and superiors. I believe there is no greater story about one individual’s ambition and the deterioration of spirit and morality one must undertake in the pursuit of absolute power and personal delights.

Wallenstein’s early life saw him develop a lust for wealth, power and beauty. A proper education in the then peerless schools of Altdorf and Padua in philosophy and the arts led him to towards the baroque, not just in the arts but in life. Like the baroque period of art and architecture, Wallenstein would begin a relentless pursuit to incorporate the most extravagant and ornate of luxuries and privileges that title could grant him. In 1606, Wallenstein converted to Catholicism. Given his conduct during his entire life, I would  consider this a political rather than religious move to please the Habsburg dynasty who he served. Three years later he would marry an elderly Czech widow who possessed a great number of lands and titles. This marriage was organized and ordained by the Jesuits as a holy union under God. To Wallenstein, it was a power play. He sought to inherit the Earth, starting with his widow’s vast lands in Bohemia.

Wallenstein’s fortunes became quickly attached to those of the Habsburgs. Through inequitable dealings with other landholders, and abuse of his powerful as governor of Bohemia, Wallenstein came to personally own his own large piece of the nation. He used his powers as governor to debase the Czech currency even further than it had been already, and purchased more and more lands for pennies on the dollar. In fact, Wallenstein was incorporated into the Estates of Princes of the [Holy Roman] Empire. Legally, he was his own sovereign under the rules of the Empire. Wallenstein’s star rose with the fortunes of the Habsburg empire from this point onward, so it was only prudent, and more importantly to Wallenstein, profitable,  that he lend his services to the Holy Roman Emperor.

The Thirty Years War would give him such an opportunity for service, and to truly lead him on a path towards power.

San Antonio Female Academy

This week as I was searching for a public history resource, I came upon the Portal to Texas History.  This digital public history resource was created and maintained by the University of North Texas Libraries. As I was searching through the Portal, I came upon a photo that I was intrigued by and wanted to learn more about. The photo was a postcard from the San Antonio Female Academy which was also known as San Antonio Female College from 1894 until 1918. While the history of this college is interesting what interested me most was that this college was built in the Westside of San Antonio and yet seemingly had disappeared.

The first thought I had was that this must be the present day location of a current university but I could find nothing to tie the story together except for a generalized location of the Westside of San Antonio. I knew that it hadn’t been a part of St. Mary’s University ,  Our Lady of the Lake University or the University of the Incarnate Word, other local universities in San Antonio.  After a little more digging with the Texas State Historical Association online, I learned that the San Antonio Female Academy changed names in 1918 and became known as Westmoorland College and then subsequently the University of San Antonio in 1937.

The University of San Antonio?

Finding out that San Antonio established a university in 1937 was a surprise to me. I know that I had never heard of the University of San Antonio and that the University of Texas at San Antonio wasn’t established until 1969. As I started digging further, I started looking through books on old San Antonio. One such book had the answer I was looking for and explained that Protestant colleges in Texas were starting to have serious competition among themselves and were better off merging rather than competing. (City in the Sun, Peyton, 228-231) This University of San Antonio became what is now Trinity University. I was happy for a moment, but then confused. Trinity isn’t anywhere in the Westside of San Antonio so what happened? Reading through Trinity University’s website, I saw that the Woodlawn Campus was the location until 1952 when Trinity University moved to it’s present location.

1952-2000-Making historical assumptions

My next step in this university mystery was to find out what happened next. While searching for vintage photos of Trinity University, I came upon this local article online that gave me the photos and answers that I needed.  One of the photo captions the dorm at Trinity that was eventually sold to Assumption Seminary.  To verify I went to the Assumption Seminary website and read about their history. Bingo! Assumption Seminary became the site of the former San Antonio Female Academy, the former University of San Antonio, the former location of Trinity University. Case closed, or so I thought.

incorporating history in our future

I figured surely there would be a historical marker or some way to recognize this history?  I kept digging and came across this history column by Express News writer Paula Allen. The column explains the detailed history that the Assumption Seminary used the former residence hall and then re purposed for the Mexican American Catholic College until they moved their functions to a new building in 2000.  At that point it became too expensive for the Archdiocese to maintain and after a mediation with preservationists they agreed to incorporate some details of the exterior into any new building or spaces on the property. While this story didn’t end with a plaque or historical marker, it is a good story to think about when reflecting on how we can lose our own history if we aren’t careful. How can we make sure to incorporate history in our future as we grow and progress as a city and a community?

Every artist’s palette is quite different — some use just the basics: the primary colors, ivory black and titanium white. Others prefer a wider array — burnt umber, phthalo green, cadmium orange… These days the most varied and brilliant of pigments can be emulated artificially, though it hasn’t always been this way. Paints were once made up of precious stones, minerals, animal products, and really anything with any sort of color to it. Many artists STILL use their bodily fluids as pigment in their work, though its effectiveness in pigmentation is questionable. However, of the ancient paint ingredients, there is one whose usage is most harrowing… and horrifying! This pigment is Mummy Brown. Just as the name would suggest, this particular pigment was made from the finely ground remains of ancient Egyptians.

Before the Art

As one may surmise, the journey to using human remains as art materials did not begin with a long-dead painter shouting ‘Eureka!’ and calling their local archaeologist. Rather, people falsely believed that mummies were embalmed using bitumen, or asphalt, as we more commonly call it. Bitumen was believed to have medicinal properties, though scarcity of supply led 12th century Europeans to use ground mummies to cure anything from a stomach ache to chicken pox. In addition to allegedly containing bitumen, many believed that mummies had magical preservation properties, and helped to spread the belief that ‘life energy’ can be consumed from the flesh of animals or other human beings.

The mummy trade proved to be quite lucrative, though just like bitumen, Egyptian mummies were in limited supply. This led to freshly dead corpses being mummified and ground for use in medicine, some even being specifically prescribed. To think that we were cannibalizing each other as recently as the 1800s!

The Leap to Paint

Just as many other medicines became paint pigments, mummy brown quickly followed suit. The ground flesh produced a rust-like translucent color that many artists revered (though some reported it as cracking or fading easily). One mummy could produce a fair amount of paint, lasting one merchant twenty years of sales. Though, it is difficult for historians to discern just how popular mummy brown was, as testing paint samples has proven futile, due to the large array of recipes that passed for ‘mummy brown’. There was a large amount of discourse about the pigment as its use entered the 1900s, expressed through journals and fiction. It is also apparent that the origin of mummy brown was lost over time, some artists appalled when discovering that mummy brown was comprised of real mummy (namely Edward Burne-Jones) going so far as to bury tubes of the pigment in mourning.

After four centuries of regular use, mummy brown no longer circulated, not only because the public was becoming aware of the historical value of mummies, but because there simply weren’t any left to transform into paint. The last tube was sold in 1964, surprisingly recent by most standards. An artist today wouldn’t have much luck finding a real tube of Mummy, though I’m sure there are tubes waiting patiently on the black market.

The Public History Perspective

Had past generations realized the value of intact mummies, perhaps they would not have eaten or painted with them, just as today we would not consume the artifacts that populate our museums. Had the public of the time been educated in the true value of their medicines and paints, a tube would have sold for more than three euros, a laughable trade for the fruits of three millennia. The recency of Mummy Brown’s discontinuation is also a testament to how recently our value for history has come into vogue. It is my hope that the people of today avoid another Mummy Brown, and put thought into what they consume and trade. Though, in some ways, the ancient Egyptians lost to this fad have been immortalized in galleries all over the world.

The line between history and historical fiction

As our class explores the intersections of public history and the digital humanities, I am noticing the dividing line between history and historical fiction. This week I listened  to historian Edward O’Donnell’s podcast In the Past Lane, episode 89.  It was a fascinating podcast interviewing Dr. James. E Lewis Jr. , Professor of history at Kalamazoo College about a book he wrote titled The Burr Conspiracy Uncovering the Story of An Early American Crisis. At first sight, it appears that this could be historical fiction but the book and the podcast were about the actual crisis in early America surrounding what early Americans believed about Aaron Burr.

In the podcast, Dr Lewis makes the distinction between what the facts of history show and compares and contrasts it to what citizens of the early American republic believed about Aaron Burr.  As we search to tell stories of the past, many times we will find gaps. When we find these gaps it is tempting to fill them in, but what is the appropriate way to deal with these?  I see three distinct ways that I have observed friends dealing with these historical gaps. The first way which I believe is most common recently is to fill in the gap with speculation and creative license. This is the realm of historical fiction and can be fun and entertaining but not history. The second way is to cover the gap up, as to pretend that there is no gap. This is a simplistic way to deal with history and something that I think is common as well. A third option is to continue researching and challenging what we think we know.

How does history relate to present day? 

My interest in history tugs between the tactics of guesswork and storytelling and the research and discovery of new perspectives that challenge what we can know about the past and appreciating what we can’t know. As I have been discussing the study of history with friends, often topics that are currently in the news come up.  One such topic is the Alamo and the recent Citizen Committee Approval for the Alamo Plaza Redesign. I believe that this is such a contentious issue because the way we collectively ‘Remember the Alamo’ is different.  If we are to be honest with ourselves about our relationship with history it is probably best to say that it is a complicated situation. This is especially true with the story of the San Antonio de Valero Mission, better know as ‘The Alamo‘.

The Alamo is very often at the center of how we tell the history of Texas but the story of Texas doesn’t begin with the Battle of the Alamo. While we know many details about the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, there is still much to be learned about Texas history and the mission San Antonio de Valero that became an important battlefield that defines how we tell the story of the great state of Texas. While I know not everyone is happy with the Alamo Plaza Redesign, I am excited that we are having an open discussion about Texas history and believe that this is a learning opportunity for every interested party who wants to learn more.  The best thing we can do is to continue researching and trying to do a better job of filling in those gaps of knowledge so we can tell the best and most informative story of the Alamo to future generations of Texans and visitors alike.

Listening to the podcast “The BackStory: Fit to Print- A history of Fake News,” talk about the lies and deceit that in some ways the American people wanted is an astonishing phenomenon. The Sun Newspaper is a good example of this when the reporters deliberately printed untrue articles about the celestial planets and aliens. These articles are so outlandish yet internalizing it if I was in the citizen’s shoes at the first publication this idea could have been very confusing. In your mind, you may know it is not true, but before this, you have always trusted what is in the newspaper. This is where people at the time received most of their factual information.

The hosts of The BackStory also explain at this time of the beginning of the Penny Press and false publications within, P.T. Barnum began to emerge as a household name. This man made his entire empire on the base of lies and deceit. The people of the United States wanted to be fooled and if you could then they loved you for it. This may play into the idea of American culture as being deceitful and Americans wanting to be fooled.

Looking deeper into this idea of American culture and American history riddled with deceit you can see how this may be detrimental. The podcast goes on to talk about Slavery and this idea of deceit for entertainment. A man with a medical condition of Vitiligo is being sold off as an African American man who is turning white. This idea puts fear into many that this was even remotely possible and with this fear grew curiosity. Many people had come to examine this man and in the end, finances his life.

This story raises questions about what will happen if African Americans rise up just like the Americans did to the British. The British were not slaveholders of the Americans, unlike the Africans. The injustice and animalistic ownership of slaves puts an idea in America’s mind that if slaves had the chance they will hurt everyone. Now, that this line of black and white can be crossed it may be very hard to enforce superior identity.