News from the DeGolyer Library April 2022

“Send Me a Postcard! Women on the Road across 19th-20th Century America” highlights women’s voices and their stories across America’s roadways. Though travel has generally been associated with men, and the male prerogative of exploration, investment, and research, women have always been on the move. Women traveled for a variety of reasons including education and knowledge, general ambition, a sense of adventure, a new freedom and mobility to move outside of their traditional sphere. This exhibition examines the experiences of women travelers. From a group of college students on a summer road trip, to an anthropologist documenting the American Southwest, from trips to National Parks to visits to zoos, diners to dives, encounters with hitchhikers, bikers and natives, these manuscripts and narratives are full of memories and adventures and represent a variety of perspectives.

Included in the exhibit are trailblazers such as Blanche Stuart Scott, the first person to inaugurate a transcontinental motor trip for the purpose of interesting women in the value of motor car driving; Alice Huyler Ramsey, the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States from coast to coast in 1909; and Harriet White Fisher Andrew, the first woman to circle the globe in a Locomobile. Also highlighted are everyday ladies on family vacations and girl’s trips. Elizabeth Dalrymple, who motored with her friends from Pennsylvania to Colorado in 1940, said of travel: “never worry about getting lost out here in the great open spaces, as every road eventually leads to somewhere, no matter how lonely or how long.” Documents such as these provide invaluable insight into women’s experiences traveling and what life was like for women on the road. While no two experiences are alike, together these narratives weave together women’s shared experiences with life on the road, demonstrating in fact “women can handle an automobile just as well as men.”

“Send Me a Postcard” features materials from the DeGolyer Library’s holdings of rare books, pamphlets, ephemera, and manuscripts, including the Archives of Women of the Southwest.

April 28 – August 31

Hillcrest Exhibit Hall, Fondren Library Gray

8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m., M- F

DeGolyer Library shared images with Texas Monthly for an article on the Texas League published this month. The article focuses on players who integrated Texas League teams, including Joe Durham, Willie McCovey, Lorenzo “Piper” Davis, and Dave Hoskins (pictured here) who pitched for the Dallas Eagles.

Robert F. Weitbrec was a railroad and mining businessman in Denver, Colorado. This collection contains letters and photographs from Weitbrec to his wife Celia while he was in Mexico constructing the Mexican National Railway in 1883; and gold mining business records for Colorado companies Breece Mining Company, Gilpin County Mining Company, and Williams Mining Company.

Sylvan Rupert Wood was a railroad scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His papers include correspondence, American locomotive rosters, locomotive drawings, and railroad ephemera.

Recently Accessioned

A2022.0006c – A dialogue between Pasquin & Morforio : manuscript

A2022.0007c – Safety first on your trip to California : album

A2022.0008c – Personal reminiscences of Charles Dickens

A2022.0009c – Sands Measurement Corporation records

A2022.0010c – Letter to Zeno P. Clough from his sister Helen

A2022.0011c – Collection of WFAA radio addresses

April showers bring May flowers…probably wasn’t a principle John Walker touched on in his 1788 lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh. But the famed natural historian and cofounder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh did discuss meteorology, in addition to hydrography, geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology. Pictured here is a handwritten transcribed manuscript of his 1788 lectures, which contains material not found in printed compilations of the lectures. The manuscript, bound in vellum across three volumes, has marbled edges and includes the armorial bookplate of John Thomas Stanley (1766-1850) of Alderby, and a proof of an engraved portrait of John Walker. Stanley was a member of the House of Commons, member of the Royal Society, and a keen natural history student while at Edinburgh.

The DeGolyer Library has received a large donation of tens of thousands of photographs, negatives and slides by Sheldon “Shelly” Katz (1942-2017). A photojournalist, Katz worked for Life, Time, Newsweek, Look and People magazines, among other national publications. He covered every U.S. Presidential campaign from 1959 through 2000, inaugurations, Super Bowls, turmoil in the Middle East, wars, riots, natural disasters, motion picture stars, Texas politics, and more over his long career. About his work, Katz said, “I work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and I LOVE it.” The Katz documentary photography collection is a great addition to the Prints & Photographs Division and will be useful to a wide variety of future DeGolyer Library researchers over time.

35 images from the Andy Hanson photographs collection were added to the digital library last month. The images, taken between 1960 and 2004, include negatives and images taken at events like the opening night of Willie Nelson’s Whiskey River, and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960 trip to Dallas. You can also view several of the photographer’s striking self portraits, like the image featured here.