News from the DeGolyer Library
Southern Methodist University
October 2021
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Engaged with Books:
Photographs Over Time
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September 9 through November 12, 2021
Hillcrest Foundation Exhibit Hall,
Fondren Library
For our first exhibition since January 2020, we chose to celebrate reading and the written word by showcasing photographs of people holding books and other reading material. The images, ca. 1845 to the 1950s, highlight the importance of books as studio props in the nineteenth century and later in casual snapshots taken in the home and outside.
For questions, contact Anne E. Peterson, Curator of Photographs, DeGolyer Library, email: apeterso@smu.edu
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An Eye for Elegance, Carrie Marcus Neiman and the Early Women Who Shaped
Neiman Marcus
This December, DeGolyer Library will premiere a new exhibit, An Eye for Elegance. The exhibit explores the life and legacy of Carrie Marcus Neiman, who with her brother Herbert Marcus, Sr. and her husband Al Neiman, founded the iconic luxury department store Neiman Marcus. The trio opened the high end, ready-to-wear store in 1907. At the time, luxury clothing was purchased custom from New York and Paris, Dallas was still a mid-sized regional hub, and oil wealth hadn’t yet transformed Texas. An Eye for Elegance will explore how Carrie, along with buyer Moira Cullen, first fashion promotions director Kay Kerr, interior designer Eleanor LeMaire and food director Helen Corbitt shaped the fashions and tastes of their clients and society.
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In her latest post, Archives of Women of the Southwest curator Samantha Dodd looks at the growth of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Costa Rica, which was first run in 1998, 15 years after the race was launched in Dallas. Click here to read Carrera Por La Vida and learn more about the race.
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For the past two years, Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) has been in the process of building TARO 2.0, its brand new website:
The project is nearing completion, and feedback from all types of researchers is highly appreciated. Click here to let the site developers know what you think about TARO’s new home!
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New Finding Aids and Collections
Jane M. McClelland (1920-1991) was a teacher and educational consultant in the area of language development, reading, and spelling. A student of Anna Gillingham and Sally B. Childs, Jane McClelland’s papers include tests, student records, subject and case files, books, flash cards and other instructional materials related to teaching, dyslexic students, phonetics, spelling, and penmanship.
Noted Dallas teacher and trainer Aylett Royall Cox developed a teaching method that helped dyslexic students learn to read. She began the alphabetic phonics program at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital and authored numerous texts on her language therapy techniques. She helped establish the Academic Language Therapy Association (ATLA) and the Neuhaus Education Center in Houston. Her papers comprise teaching materials, correspondence, books, articles, journals, awards, and other education related materials used during her career.
Recently Accessioned
A2021.0030c – Memorandum de los sucesos acaecidos al suscrito, en el tiempo que ha andado de revolucionario en contra del llamado Gobierno Constitucionalista, presidido por el arbitrario Venustiano Carranza, circa 1920
A2021.0031c – Robert W. Lull letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1926
A2021.0033 – A.B. Flanary collection of Booth Tarkington materials, 1903-1929
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Collection Highlight
We recently pulled this handwritten memoir by Captain Francis Rawdon Chesney for a class visit. Chesney (1789 – 1872) was appointed to the Royal Artillery in 1805, where he rose to the rank of General in 1868. He’s remembered for his travels in Constantinople, Egypt, Syria, and the Euphrates Valley, and for submitting a feasibility report on the creation of a Suez canal, which received no attention by the British Government, but was reportedly credited by Ferdinand de Lesseps. Chesney also proposed an alternative route from Constantinople to India via the Euphrates. In 1835 he was tasked with an exploratory expedition via two steamer ships, one of which was lost in a storm, the other of which was stranded in the Tigris river.
The handwritten memoir found in our collection details in longhand the 1831 preliminary Euphrates River Valley expedition that predated the 1835 official expedition. Included is a description of his travels, and hand drawn maps of the region. C lick here for more information.
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Recent Accessions
DeGolyer Library recently acquired the Reba Bess Taylor photograph album for our Prints and Photographs collection. The album consists of 320 personal photographs, ca. 1920s, retained by Taylor, a graduate of Wiley College, an HBCU in Marshall, Texas. The album includes photographs of Wiley College, and documents Taylor’s time as a teacher in DeKalb, as well as life along the Gulf Coast of Texas.
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Newly Digitized Items
Last month, the Norwick Center for Digital Solutions uploaded 29 photographs, ca. 1860-1918, from the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photograph Collection to the digital library. The collection includes an image of African American Agua Negra students and faculty outside the schoolhouse, photographed in 1913. Agua Negra school was located in the former town of Ditto, located 30 miles south of San Antonio. The school was established sometime prior to 1884, and by 1904 a census recorded 13 students attending the segregated school in 1914, a year after this photo was taken. This was a decline from 33 students in 1904, and the population decline continued until the late 1930s, when Ditto area students were transferred to nearby Poteet.
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