Part One: Introduction

Spring, 2003

In May of 1981, I left the small town of Coulterville, Illinois - for good. I taught History and American Government at the local high school for two years. I coached basketball, worked on the school play, and occasionally hung out at the local VFW hall. It wasn't much of a town. Coal-mining, small-farms, light industry, welfare. The students were good. Most were respectful and tried hard. Their parents had brought them up right. But I was a young guy in my 20's from the big city (90,000) of Springfield, over 100 miles away. So Coulterville wasn't much to live in, or leave.

Fast forward twenty-five years. At the urging of my sister-in-law, my wife Kimberly and I began attending the football games at Somerset High School, in south Bexar County near San Antonio, a town about the same size as Coulterville. Our niece Jamie was a proud pom-pom girl. Football games were the focus of her dance training and efforts. In what was an otherwise older and modest community, the football field gleamed in every way - nice new scoreboard, thick green grass that got plenty of water, and a newly paved parking lot. Why, I thought, all the attention for football?

Somerset, I found out, was losing prospects and people. In 1909, the railroad passed the town by, going instead through Lytle, a ten-minute drive away. Most of the residents were of Mexican-American or mixed heritage. While many work in agriculture and small shops, the town has increasingly become a bedroom community for San Antonio, a short twenty-minute drive away.

My wife and I were not from Somerset, and not knowing many people there we felt out of place. Looking around, just soaking things in, I also felt like I was back in the Peace Corps, a stranger in town who couldn't speak the language. To us, the small-town of Somerset was a world away from our well-trimmed, suburban plot. And I was struck by the fact that, as an outsider in a world only minutes from my own home, I was ignorant about many people and places in my own back yard. I decided, with the help of my History students at Palo Alto College, to change that.

"Personally, when I think of a small town, I immediately picture the movie stereotype: one stop light town filled with hicks and pick-up trucks. Beyond that, I have always imagined the town to be filled with overly nice and selfless people ready to lend a helping hand at a moment's notice. Before having ever visited Bandera, I had my first impression of its citizens by becoming friends with two of my coworkers. Nice, friendly, and above all, Mormon. So on their suggestion alone, I decided to do Bandera as my project."

Dane Ball, Fall of 1998, Bandera, Tx
Mr. Ball researched the history of Bandera, Texas. All excerpts from subsequent studies will be identified by author, date of research, and the town's name.)

Part Two: Beginnings

Many of the students at Palo Alto College come from small towns a short drive from our south-side campus, and I've heard stories about life in these communities. I used to live in small towns, but where I came from there were few close kinship ties, no struggling schools or declining local economy. Missing were the boarded up main streets and empty churches. Missing, too, were the ghost stories, gossip, and dead-end thinking often unfairly associated with rural America. But as the years passed and I heard more and more of my students' stories, I became intrigued. Why not have my students research the history of one of these rural communities? City kids could use an introduction to a world apart from their own. Students from the smaller towns could tie what they grew up with to the larger world around them. And I would no doubt learn something, too. It would be a good way to teach not only the history of a local area, but more importantly to teach my students what historians do: research the primary sources, conduct interviews, then connect research to broader ideas and themes.

I sent them forth. Castroville, St. Hedwig, Fashing, Jourdanton, Poteet, countless others. At first, I didn't know what I was doing, so the students didn't either. I asked them to research the history of a small town of their choice, to seek out neither the bizarre nor the mundane, but the history and stories of value. Of course, at the time, I had no inkling as to what that meant. I also asked for photographs of "historically significant" buildings and artifacts, of cemeteries and landmarks, and of people, if they would agree. I knew that many towns have historical societies, museums, and local historians who know the area. The students job would be a lot easier when they found these folks and picked their brain for information and more sources. Many students found old newspapers, journals, maps, and diaries of "founding fathers." Some have family in the towns they researched. Russell Stavinoha interviewed his grandfather:

He has lived in Fashing simply all his 85 years. His father came over from Germany in 1891 when he was three and his parents were one of the first settlers to come from Gonzales to settle here in the early 1900's. To this day Alfred can still speak fluent German, English, and Spanish, and only has a third grade education. Farming is Alfred's love and life, a man with nine successful children and a loving wife, whom he has been married to for the past sixty-one years, He loves Fashing and would never fathom the idea of leaving these wonderful people, and breath-taking landscape. He loves raising cattle, and farming the land, growing maize, milo, corn, wheat, coastal and oats. He said, "If you took me away from the land, I wouldn't know what to do with myself."

Russell Stavinoha, Spring 2002, Fashing Tx
(The town is named after a can of tobacco. See the photograph here! Russell's grandfather died shortly after the interview was done.)

Part Three: From My Project to Theirs

Since they were not historians and few were history majors, not many students knew the details of researching primary source documents. None of them had conducted an oral history interview. In addition, I am not a rural historian. I am not from any of these towns, nor do I plan to live in any of them. All of these things considered, I figured our collective ignorance on the subject was the perfect reason to proceed.

Of all the research projects I completed as an undergraduate, the only one I can remember was a paper in a Canadian Geography class. I don't remember why I took the class, but it probably fit my schedule. The instructor assigned the class something different. Each student was to select a twenty square-mile area of Canada to research. Part of the assignment included the selection of a map, available at the library, for us to hang up on the wall at home, and refer to in our research. There were small towns, businesses, airports, ski lodges, roads, and of course, history. To get the information, we wrote Chambers of Commerce, historical commissions, governmental agencies. Mr. Signet required a research paper with an annotated bibliography, and documentation of sources: letters, pamphlets, official government documents, anything we could get. Although I did not feel any particular connection to my research of the Jasper area in the province of Alberta, Canada, it still was a valuable and memorable assignment. The problem was that it was long-distance - no museums or archives, no phone calls or interviews, and no internet.

My own students complete a 6-10 page, typed paper, an annotated bibliography with at least 10 sources, one being a taped interview with a person or persons familiar with the town and its' history. I discourage the use of internet sources unless students are able to find something truly valuable, and I required students to bring in photographs. All the requirements necessitate personal research, and sometimes the work helps connect the town's history to broader course themes. Best of all, I hope students can find some primary sources: letters, diaries, deeds of sale, photographs of family members, pictures of buildings long gone. These sources hold the stories; and the stories are the most interesting.

Part Four: Student Interest

Although I did not feel any personal connection to my research of the Jasper area in the province of Alberta, Canada, it was a formative assignment for me AS A TEACHER. Even though the research was long-distance, it taught me the importance of personal contact, personal involvement with the real sources. Some of my students, however, have a more direct connection to their research. Jesus Reyes, a single father of two children and a Coahuitecan Indian living in San Antonio, chose to do his research on the community of Thelma (named after school teacher Thelma Watson). This is a community south of San Antonio in the area now referred to as the Applewhite region. Jesus looked beyond the present-day debate surrounding water shortages and land development, preferring to see the land in a mystic, religious sense:

As I open my eyes and as my mind starts to record the beginning of a new day, I hear the songs of a beautiful morning, just as I awaken in the bosom of mother earth. Last night, this place played the songs and the drum, and all of my relatives were singing...Los Coyotes, El Tecolote, y las Rana. And like last night, this morning the other of my relatives are speaking to me...Small Wrens, Ravens, Hawks, and Roosters. That night, as guardians of a ceremony and of our peoples, we were able to receive of the ceremonial prayers as well. As part of this ceremony and sitting at this location of Applewhite, I can't help but think of the rich history of my people and of the changes we have taken to keep our families going. We continue as a strong people with a great respect toward our families even under our current label as Hispanics. But little by little, this seems to changing us in today's society.
Jesus Reyes, Fall 2000, Applewhite area south of San Antonio, Texas

(Jesus remains involved in efforts to unearth, literally, evidence of his tribe's connections to the Applewhite area. He has participated in archeological digs in South Texas and is pursuing a career in archeology.

Once the students have begun their research and writing, I bring them into a computer lab. For a few students, this remains tricky. Our students are of course savvy computer users, but making their own web page is new to most. So we practice how to customize a page, style script, change fonts, place images, create links - lots of things. Some need help scanning photographs. Students help each other a lot. We are careful to save on USB's. Beginning with some of the older projects from 1998, we have been posting student work on the internet ever since. The quality runs from first rate to passable, and from passable to regrettable. Despite fears and misgivings, most of the students get something out of it.

Yes, these projects have generated interest, from both inside the classroom and out. A few years ago, I was introducing my course with the small-town project requirement to a group of students on the first day of class. One student pointedly asked, "Why are you having us to this research?" For some reason I still can't explain, I replied, "So we can take your research and teach you how to put it on the internet." I don't remember why I said that. I had no idea how to make a web page, and I'm sure most of my students didn't either. But I do remember that student's reaction. Saying nothing else, she packed up her things, and left the room. I haven't seen her since, but I heard she signed up for a telecourse. What a bold statement from me before I knew any HTML, before I taught courses on the internet, before librarian Colby Glass put me on the road to HTML literacy. However, a student work-study, Lana Roderique, was hired to come to my classes and teach all of us some basic HTML web page code. It was confusing at first, but the students and I eventually got the hang of it. Most importantly, we produced a template that conveniently lays out all of the required components for the research: the towns' origins, founding fathers, historically significant stories, landmarks, connection to course themes, and bibliography.

Not too long ago, I received an email message from a Japanese-American woman in California. Her note concerned a page on Crystal City, a town bout sixty miles southwest of San Antonio. A portion of her email read as follows:

"My family was among those "repatriated" in January 1945 in the "exchange program." In my case, and the case of hundreds of U.S. born children holding full citizenship rights, that amounted to being traded as ransom to the Third Reich for the release of other U.S. citizens (among them POW's) who were given their freedom and returned to the U.S. Yet we were not allwed to return until 1955. Such irony!
Ensi Bennett

 

Before Megan Estrada and Kyle Hellstyn prepared the web page for Crystal City , I knew nothing of the World War II internment camp here in South Texas, but I learned with the students about the part Crystal City played during World War II:

The most memorable event in the history of Crystal City was the period during WW II when many people were held in the internment camp located just outside their town. Crystal City was chosen because the government had previously purchased land on the outskirts of the city during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The internment camp at Crystal City would become the largest camp administered by the INS and the Department of Justice. The first people arrived at the camp in December 1942, and at the peak the camp held 2,000 people of Japanese, Indonesian, German, and Italian descent. The camp was a big boost for the economy of Crystal City, as it employed many teachers, doctors, dentists, cooks, and others that the camp required. The camp area was surrounded by a woven wire fence with a single guarded entrance and had four schools, six furnished dormitories, and spacious lawns with paved sidewalks. Every floor of the dormitories held laundry and wash room facilities. Each dormitory also had a stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, and four-person tables with china and cloth napkins. Token money, which could be used at the internment camp grocery store, was issued according to the size of the family. Many of the workers at the stores, - either the General Store or the Japanese Union Store - were the people held in the camp and were paid ten cents an hour. The camp of Crystal City was described as both a "college campus" and a "small bustling town."
Megan Estrada & Kyle Hellystn, Fall 2000, Crystal City, TX

The two students didn't know that the people in this camp were held as hostages to be used for prisoner-of-war exchange. They had been captured in Central and South America as well as the U.S. and sent to Crystal City so the United States would have Germans to exchange for Americans captured. Most of the internees were born in the Americas and had no contact with their ancestral lands. (from Arthur D. Jacobs, former internee at Crystal City Texas, Major, USAF retired.

Recently, Palo Alto College received an email from Patrice Liedecke in France who was researching her family history and found our web page on Elmendorf, Texas. She wanted to find students Elsa Hernandez and Sandra Christian, authors of the web page, for information about their information sources. Ms. Liedecke wrote: "I would like to contact them because I am deeply interested in a paper that they have cited in the bibliography of this study." It took a while, but I tracked former student Sandra Christian through her mother who forwarded the note to her. I never found out what the woman in France was looking for, but I like this story because it suggests that others might be finding our web page useful. As colleague Peter Myers put it, people come to these pages "looking for themselves." The students and I have made numerous connections to family history and to the communities we live in and near. Most of all we have viewed the picture of American history through a small lens.

Part Seven: Exigencies of Race

This being South Texas, one important theme running through student research is race. I did not cue them on this aspect, and I wasn't sure how much of an issue it would be. Some of its manifestations are more predictable than others: the existence of the so-called "Latin" schools in most towns kept separate from anglo schools; separate cemeteries for anglos and hispanics. In Sanderson, Texas, for example, there are two cemeteries in the town, Cedar Grove for the anglos and Santa Rita for the Hispanics. There are the cemeteries for black folk, long neglected and forgotten, it would seem. Slow are the inexorable demographic changes going on in most of these towns: Mexican-Americans are moving in and Anglos are either dying off or leaving. Students found different ways to illustrate the changes in the communities the researched. Some took photographs of cemeteries separated along racial lines. Others talked to relatives about racial discrimination and unfairness experienced years ago. Valorie Miller, researching the history of Helena, Texas, uncovered a long-forgotten, but important event:

In 1857, the Cart Wars ensued in and around Helena. These wars had both national and international repercussions. The underlying causes were believed to have been ethnic and racial prejudices of Texans against Mexican-Americans. The Mexicans' sympathy for the black slaves along with the Mexicans prosperous business of hauling food and merchandise from the port of Indianola to San Antonio accelerated the Texans' envy and harsh treatment toward the Mexicans. The Mexicans hauled their freight cheaper and quicker than the Texans. The Texans destroyed the Mexicans' carts, stole their freight, and wounded and killed a number of them. Law enforcement did nothing to stop or punish the criminals and a war ensued. The dramatic increase in violence caused many to fear that a "campaign of death" against the Mexicans was under way. Some viewed Mexicans as intolerable nuisances, while others worried the war would increase prices. One prevalent fear was that the war was against a weak race and if allowed to continue, it was feared that the German-Texans would be next finally "a war between the poor and the rich." The Texas governor, Elisha M. Pease, was pressured by other politicians to end the violence. On orders from the governor, the Texas Rangers ended The Cart Wars in December, 1857.
Valorie Miller, Fall, 2001, Helena, TX

Some students are uncomfortable asking questions about race, while others believe the problem no longer exists. Still others think it is not pertinent to their research. I have long felt that larger, national debates related to race are hard to work through and too often ignored, but until the questions are dealt with - even on a small scale of South Texas small towns - the problem will persist.

Part Eight: Adding the Resource of Oral History

I once asked my friend and colleague, Peter Myers, why he had his students collect oral histories. "Because when I was their age, I didn't talk to my grandparents about their lives. My teachers told me about James Garfield." James Garfield? Who cares? Exactly.

For years, Palo Alto College Associate Professor Peter Myers has had his students collect oral histories. Subjects the students cover range widely, including World War II, the Great Depression, immigration, and my favorite, vanishing occupations. It finally dawned on me a couple of years ago that since my students were already conducting personal interviews on their research, why not require an oral history component as part of these histories? It has turned out that of all the things the students collect for these projects, the oral histories are by far the most useful for future historians. Students have interviewed folks, most of them quite old, who are tickled that young people are taking the time to talk to them about the history of their families and communities. Not surprisingly, some of my students have personal stories to investigate about their towns. Clarissa Huizar, a student in the Spring semester of 2000, in conjunction with the history of Lucas/Verdi, researched her family history. She uncovered information on the founding of churches, the cotton gin in town, the original settlers, and other requirements for the project. But she found something else much more interesting:

Pedro Huiza, my great-great-great-great grandfather, was the first Huizar to come to Texas. He was commissioned by King Phillip V to come to San Jose Mission to execute the carvings for the Queen of the Missions. Upon arrival, he was asked to survey and draw plans for improvement of the defenses of the missions. While doing this, he began to design a window at the sacristy of Mission San Jose, in memory of his beautiful sweetheart, Rosa, who was lost at sea coming to America. The "Rose Window" is considered by many to be the finest single piece of Spanish Colonial ornamentation existing in America.
Clarissa Huizar, Spring, 2000, Lucas/Verdi TX

Her grandmother, Evalina Huizar, provided Clarissa with much of the information she needed; therefore, her study is filled with not only information about Lucas/Verdi, but also with references to her family's history there.

Part Nine: History As Today's Events

Sometimes, the history written about comes too close to home - as is the case of one of my favorite students in recent years, Ms. Jennifer Coker. In the fall of 1998, Jennifer and her family experienced first-hand the most destructive event in South Texas in many years. Ms. Coker and her family lived in a trailer just south of San Antonio off of I-37, near Salado Creek. On October of 1998, south Texas experienced some of the worst flooding in its history. Jennifer's family caught the brunt of it. She did not have to interview anyone. She lived through it:

I remember watching the flood coverage on television Saturday afternoon because my family and I needed to see what areas would be affected. Our neighbor called to say the city had advised us to stay in our homes because the Olmos Dam water would not affect the Salado Creek near our homes. Safe and dry in our living room, we stared in disbelief at the rising water all over the city and our hearts went out to those whose homes were going under.

We never realized that a few hours later we would be in waist-high water ourselves, trying to escape, and that our neighbors would be getting rescued off of their roofs and fence posts. Hours later, in the cold water myself, I struggled as the water rose and rushed past. I felt like I was watching a movie. Reality hit when our belongings started floating away with the swirling water. Later from down the street I could only watch as my 73-year-old grandfather stood looking at his home, vehicles, and property go under and float away. Even now I have flashbacks when I am at the property. It makes me cry. It may seem petty, but it is awfully hard to watch people go through and throw away their belongings. All those little things add up, and there are lots of things you can not replace such as family heirlooms, awards, pictures, and antiques. My experience is not unique; it is felt by hundreds of others all over Central Texas.
Jennifer Coker (Fall, 1998, Salado Creek)

This was cited by Jennifer in her study to illustrate the immediacy of the emergency faced by hundreds that day in October, 1998:

The sad thing is you never know what's gonna come up later on. Someone's missing and no one really knows it. The way the water ran in this countryside, big and wide, there still could be more out there.
(Deputy Sheriff Mark Hanna, after a teenager's body was recovered, still inside a Suburban)

Palo Alto College students are actively going to these towns. They are coming away with a totally different take on where history comes from. This is the heart of the Texas Small-Town Project. By seeking information this way they have gone beyond the ordinary mode of a student turning in a research paper at the end of a course. These students have traveled to the place being investigated, searched the primary sources, talked to the people, then organized and written the stories out for themselves. What else are these students, if not real historians?

--San Antonio, Texas

 

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