The Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days (Barker Texas History Center Series, No. 5)

Rating:
Summary: A good read, but use with caution
Review: Dictated to one of his daughters when he was well past eighty, Noah Smithwick witnessed the panorama of Texas History. From the early days of Austin's Colony to the the aftermath of the Civil War, the text is lively with a dry sense of humor. But the reader is urged to use this book with caution. Some facts don't match up with other documents that were written at the time, instead of years later. (Noah had been banished from Texas in a round-about way. He had made a rifle and loaned it to another settler, who promptly used it to commit a murder.) Smithwick seemed to posess a fair education, which on the Texas frontier was something of an accomplishment. Blacksmith, carpenter, tobacco smuggler, gunsmith, racontour par excellance and even somewhat of a romantic, Smithwick's book is well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: A Rare Personal Account of Early Texas
Review: Noah Smithwick was an old man, blind and near his ninetieth year, when his daughter recorded these words. After his death in 1899, she polished the manuscript and had it published in 1900. He had stayed on in "paradise" Texas from 1827 to 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. This book is his story of these "old Texas days." If his memory for facts sometimes fails him, his stories never do.

Rating:
Summary: Eyewitness Account of Early Texas
Review: Noah Smithwick's recollections bring to life the early era of Anglo-Texas history. This book is filled with colorful characters and anecdotes, almost a who's who of people behind the place names of modern Texas. No other account matches this densely-packed narrative as a color commentary of days before - and after - the Alamo. Against the backdrop of history, this book details many personalities and incidents that are unrecorded elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: First hand account
Review: Read about what happened from someone who was really there for the early days of Texas.