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your partner in legislative research
Legislative Reference Library of Texas
your partner in legislative research

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Now online! Congressional journals of the Republic of Texas, 1836-1845

Over the last year, the library has worked hard to scan House and Senate journals to make them available on our website. Part of this project included scanning congressional journals from the Republic of Texas. These journals date to the period between 1836 and 1845, just before Texas became a state. At that time, the Republic of Texas had formed as a separate nation after gaining independence from Mexico.

Reading through the journals of the First Congress gives you a sense of how much things have changed:

  • The Congress that year consisted of 14 senators and 29 representatives, as opposed to the 150 representatives and 31 senators that make up today's state legislative body.  
  • Since no capital had yet been established, the First Congress met in Columbia, TX (today's West Columbia in Brazoria County).
  •  In his State of the State address, ad interim President David C. Burnet told the members of Congress, "To you is committed the beginning of legislation, and as you shall lay the foundation, so will be reared the superstructure."  He stressed the importance of adopting a plan for "permanent and certain revenue," and for building up the military organization, whose "strength has been fluctuating on account of the frequent accession and discharges of volunteers under short enlistment."   

The journals include familiar names like Sam Houston, twice President of the Republic of Texas and later Governor of the State of Texas (1859-1861), and J. Pinckney Henderson, Attorney General and Secretary of State in the early years of the Republic, and later the State of Texas' first Governor (1846-47).

Journals for all nine congresses of the Republic of Texas are available online at:  http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/collections/journals/journals.cfm#republic

The library wishes to thank the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (University of Texas at Austin), the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission for generously lending us individual congressional journals not present in our own collection.

LRL Celebrates National Library Week - April 8-14, 2012

National Library Week LogoIn celebration of National Library Week, we invite you to a game of LRL Trivial Pursuit! Answers will be revealed later this week.
  1. TRUE or FALSE: It is illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas.
  2. What year was the first standardized test administered in Texas public schools and what was it called?
  3. Which former House member from Washington County cast his first presidential vote for Grover Cleveland, was invited to attend the inaugural ball for Governor James S. Hogg, and was a relative of one of the writers of the Texas State Flower Song, "Bluebonnets"?
  4. There are two busts in the artwork collection on display in the LRL. One is Sam Houston, who is the other?  [Hint: these two may require a field trip to Capitol Room 2N.3!]
  5. When was the last time a Governor's veto was overridden by the Legislature?
Watch for more activities during the week!

LRL Hosts Visitors from the Canadian Library of Parliament

 
 Last week, the Legislative Reference Library was pleased to host a group of interns participating in this year's internship program with the Library of Parliament of Canada.
 
 
The Texas visit focused on legislative research services, and included discussions of how the Texas Legislature works, the role of the library, the uses of social media, and how our resources and research assist members, committees, and agencies of the Texas legislative community.
 
 
Activities included meeting with the House and Senate Parliamentarians and with staff from the Texas Legislative Council, the State Preservation Board, the House Research Organization, the Senate Research Center, the Sunset Advisory Board, and the Legislative Budget Board.  
 
Participants also enjoyed a tour of the Capitol and dinner at the Broken Spoke.
 
We wish to thank all of the Texas legislative offices who participated in this event with our Canadian guests.

Drought, Blue Devils, and Public Schools: Explore Texas History with LAS

Texas Temporary Capitol buildingTexas was suffering from a severe drought. Transportation planning, taxes, and public school finance were topics of debate.  It sounds familiar – but this was the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first. 


In 1883, the 18th Legislature passed, and voters approved, a constitutional amendment providing for an ad valorem tax for the support of public schools, but additional legislation was needed. 
 
 
The San Antonio Light reports on fence cutting
Meanwhile, the drought exacerbated conflicts between landless cowboys and ranchers who had fenced their land – and occasionally neighboring public land – with barbed wire. Desperate to find water and grazing for their herds, organized bands of cowboys with names like Blue Devils and Javelinas took to cutting fences, causing millions of dollars of damage. 
 
 
The conflict between cattle ranchers and fence cutters was reaching the point of crisis; landowners demanded action, but there were no laws that would allow an adequate response.
 
 
In January of 1884, Governor Ireland called the Legislature into special session to address public school finance, fence cutting, and other issues. By the end of the special session, laws had been passed to make the willful cutting of fences a crime; to forbid landowners from fencing public lands; to alter the system of school finance; and to improve county roads.


Whether you are interested historical issues, like the fence-cutting wars, or in subjects of recurring interest, like school finance and transportation, the Legislative Archive System can help. With the Legislative Archive System, you can search for passed legislation back to 1883 by bill number, session law chapter, and caption. 


Additional search options and resources
are available for more recent sessions. For assistance using LAS, please contact the library.

Rep. Alma Allen appointed to Legislative Library Board

Alma Allen

 
Speaker of the House Joe Straus has appointed Representative Alma Allen to the Legislative Library Board
 
The six-member Legislative Library Board controls and administers the functions of the Legislative Reference Library, which is charged with maintaining a collection of materials for legislative use and providing any assistance requested by members of the legislature in researching and preparing bills and resolutions. 
 
The Library's legal authority is Government Code, Section 324.004.

State Budget Timeline

The library has just released an interactive Texas state budget timeline. Using information from the drafting of the 2012-2013 biennial budget, this comprehensive guide presents a month-by-month overview of the budget process. The timeline begins in May 2010 with the Legislative Budget Board's instructions for agency appropriations requests and ends in December 2011 with the state comptroller's Annual Cash Report. Budget bills and related documents are mentioned within the timeline and are linked as they are released. The library will update the timeline when the 2013-2014 budget process gets underway, so be sure to check back.

LRL Director Named Chair of Legislative Librarians Group

We're pleased to announce that Mary Camp, director of the Texas Legislative Reference Library, was recently elected chair of the Research Librarians Section of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

Composed primarily of librarians and information specialists in legislative agencies nationwide, the group provides a forum for the exchange of ideas relating to legislative research and library management. The section sponsors an extensive schedule of programs at the NCSL Legislative Summit each year as well as an annual professional development seminar.  Both focus on current developments in information management, technology and legislative information. In addition, the group each year presents Notable Documents awards to recognize excellence in publications that explore topics of interest to legislators and staff and that use innovative techniques in formatting and presentation.  The Texas Legislative Reference Library was
recently honored with two Notable Document awards for its Texas Water Law Timeline and Texas Legislators: Past & Present database.

Mary replaces Shelley Day of the
Utah Legislative Research Library.  The new chair-elect is Eddie Weeks of the Tennessee Legislative Library and the new secretary is Sabah Eltareb of the California Research Bureau.  Congratulations to all.

Interim Projects in the Library

We often get asked if we work when the Legislature is not in session. The answer is: yes. During the interim our staff is busy offering the same services we do during session, including our daily news clipping service, research assistance for legislative staff, state agencies and members of the public, current awareness services such as our weekly Current Articles list, Twitter feed and blog, and our work assembling original bill files. We also spend time enhancing existing library resources and creating new ones. In past interims, we've developed systems to put legislative interim reports, constitutional amendments and governor documents online in searchable databases. Some of our long-term projects, such as our Texas Legislators database, have been ongoing for several years.

A project that we began developing in 2002 and that is also ongoing today is our
Legislative Archive System, a project in cooperation with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to scan and organize original legislative bill files and make them available online. Since its inception, over 100,000 bill files have been scanned and cataloged in the system.  That's all bills from the 76th Legislature (1999) back to the 50th Legislature (1947). We're now scanning bills from the 49th Legislature (1945), and the materials are more fragile and have special handling requirements. Most of the bills, for example, have been for decades folded into thirds. To scan these, it is necessary to first humidify and flatten them. Here are pictures of the equipment we use to do this.

Unfolded bill   Trash cans with bills inside  Bills in between boards

While it may be surprising that we use rubber trash cans, bricks and wooden boards to treat these materials, this is a standard procedure used by many libraries and archives.

In addition to our ongoing projects, we're excited to release soon a new resource containing scanned
committee minutes from past sessions. Until now, these have been available in hard copy only, so this should be a great help to researchers. Stay tuned for more information about this and other future resources.

Library Resources Win NCSL Awards

The Texas Legislative Reference Library has been recognized with two Notable Documents Awards by the National Conference of State Legislatures, Legislative Research Librarians staff section. 38 documents from 11 states were submitted for the award, with 13 receiving the honor. The awards will be presented at the 37th NCSL Legislative Summit in San Antonio, Texas, on Thursday, August 11.
 
Texas Legislators: Past & Present, recipient of the "Model Historical Database" award, contains biographical information, terms of service, and committee service of members of the Legislature back to the 15th Legislature (1876). The database can be searched by name, session, gender, chamber, party, leadership roles, committee membership, and home city and county.
 
 
Texas Water Law Timeline, one of two recipients of the "History of Legislation" award, presents a chronology of significant Texas water legislation, court decisions, and state water plans. You can click and drag on the timeline to view it horizontally, or choose a text version. It also includes a discussion of funding water infrastructure needs in Texas.
 

Art in the Legislative Reference Library

The Legislative Reference Library features a number of historically significant paintings and sculptures.  Some depict famous Texans, while others highlight less-well known people and incidents from Texas history.   Below, we describe works illustrating Texas history during the period of Mexican rule and the Republic of Texas.

Painting of the Fort at NacogdochesFort at Nacogdoches (CHA #1989.169) depicts the site of one of the first clashes between colonists and Mexican authorities once Texas was open to settlers in the early 1820s. The government gave a vast land tract near Nacogdoches to an empresario named Haden Edwards. Edwards brought approximately 800 families to this tract in October of 1825 and discovered many people already living within the boundaries of his grant. Although Edwards was required to recognize the rights of those settlers who held legal titles in the area, many of the early settlers did not have titles to their land. Edwards told the settlers to vacate the premises if title was not held, which angered those individuals whose ancestors had lived on the land for decades. These settlers, many whom were Cherokee Indians and Mexicans, wrote letters of protest to the. Mexican government. Political Chief Jose Antonio Saucedo sympathized with the settlers' plight and told Edwards that he could not charge them for new land titles. Edward's brother Benjamin thought this decision unfair and decided to declare the colony independent from Mexico. On December 16, 1826, Benjamin Edwards led a small group of settlers in the taking of the old stone Fort at Nacogdoches. They raised a red and white flag bearing the words "Independence, Liberty and Justice" and proclaimed the creation of the Republic of Fredonia. They received no assistance from Austin's colony or the United States. In late December, the Fredonia Revolt collapsed. A few of the Fredonians were captured, but many escaped across the Sabine River into the U. S. Those who were captured were later released. This incident planted the seeds of concern in the minds of Mexican officials that America was scheming to acquire Texas. This painting is visible in historical photographs of the library as early as ca. 1908–1909.


 

Portrait of Stephen F. Austin
Stephen Fuller Austin (CHA #1989.101), the founder of Anglo-American Texas, was born November 3, 1793, in Virginia. After schooling in Connecticut and Kentucky, he returned to his family in Missouri and prepared to work with his father, Moses, to settle 300 Anglo-American families in Texas. After the death of Moses Austin in 1821, however, the younger Austin was left to lead the colonists. During the next 15 years, Austin settled over 1,000 families, surveyed the various terrain and created many early maps of the area, and remained devoted to the development of the land now known as Texas. He wrote in July of 1836 that "The prosperity of Texas has been the object of my labors, the idol of my existence—it has assumed the character of a religion, for the guidance of my thoughts and actions, for fifteen years." He died five months later at the age of 43.  Artist Louis Eyth (1838–1889) of Galveston was commissioned in 1873 by Joint Resolution Number 86 to copy the Austin portrait in the Senate Chamber.  It was probably painted in 1836 in New Orleans where Austin had traveled as minister to the United States from the Republic of Texas; family records show that Austin had that portrait made for his sister, Emily Bryan Perry, whose grandson, Guy M. Bryan, Jr., later presented it to the State of Texas in 1919.   Louis Eyth. ca. 1873, Oil on canvas.



 

Portrait of Juan Nepomucena Seguin  
Juan Nepomucena Seguin (CHA #1989.96) was born in San Antonio on October 27, 1806. A friend of Anglo-Americans coming to Texas, he opposed Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and recruited volunteers against Mexico in the fall of 1835. He and his recruits met Stephen F. Austin in October, fought with James Bowie in the battle of Concepcion, and was active in the siege of Bexar in December. In January he became a captain in the cavalry with orders to report to William B. Travis in San Antonio. He escaped Travis' fate at the Alamo only because he was sent through the Mexican lines with a plea for reinforcements. He later fought in the Battle of San Jacinto with his men and was promoted to lieutenant colonel with orders to take over the military government of San Antonio until the civil government could be restored. He served in the Texas Senate in 1838 where he worked for friendly relations between Mexican-Texans and Anglo-Texans. He was elected mayor of San Antonio in January of 1841 but resigned in April of 1842 amidst allegations of being a traitor for Mexico. He fled to Mexico and was forced to choose between prison and serving in the Mexican Army under Santa Anna. After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Seguin was granted permission to return to Texas. He died in Nuevo Laredo in 1889.  Jeff Wright, ca. 1838, Oil on canvas.



 

photo of the Alamo Sculpture
The Alamo Sculpture (CHA #1994.25) depicts a woman with clasped hands kneeling over a fallen Texan soldier with the caption "Thermopylae had her messenger of death; the Alamo had none." This phrase undoubtedly was coined from either the first or second Alamo Monuments, which commemorate the fall of the great San Antonio mission in 1836. The earlier monument stood in the vestibule of the first Capitol located at Capitol square. It eventually was destroyed when the first Capitol burned in 1881. Made from stones from the Alamo, the quote on the first monument read "Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat—the Alamo had none." The inscription on the second monument, built in 1891 on the grounds of the present Capitol, was changed slightly to read "Thermopylae had her messenger of death; the Alamo had none."  General Thomas Jefferson Green, whose portrait hangs on the railing of the book stacks along the south wall of the Legislative Reference Library, was the author of the original inscription according to Col. Guy M. Bryan, nephew of Stephen F. Austin. According to Bryan, the authorship of the phrase was freely discussed at a banquet in Galveston during the years of the Texas Republic. At that time it was said that Gen. Green dictated the phrase to the artist responsible for the first Alamo Monument's creation.  Lee Malone, ca. 1898, Marble.


 
 

bust of Sam Houston
Sam Houston (CHA #1994.24) was an accomplished statesman even before stepping foot on Texas soil. A former United States Congressman and Tennessee Governor, he led the Texas army to victory at San Jacinto and became the first president of the Texas Republic, serving two non-sequential terms. Later as governor, Houston was opposed to the secession of Texas. On February 23, 1861, the Secession Convention declared the office of governor vacant and Lt. Governor Clark was made governor. Houston died in July of 1863. This bust appears in a ca. 1915 photograph of the library; it was placed in approximately the same location once the restoration of the library was complete.  J. O'Brien, 19th Century, Marble.

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