CUL Digital Collections Update: July 2017

In July 2017, SMU’s Central University Libraries uploaded 326 items into CUL Digital Collections.

Highlights include:

149 real photographic postcards, ca. 1900-1923, from the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas Image Collection, as part of the TexTreasures FY2017 grant program, sponsored by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Photographers include Marcus Black, Francis King Duncan and Margaret Louise Duncan, William W. Monteith, Roy Jernigan, Charles and Luisa Flanders, Earl Shipman, Zeva B. Edworthy, Albion Morgner Windhorst, Walter H. Horne, H.J. Brauning, Rufus Frank L. Wiseman, and others. Several photographs focus on military activities and former frontier forts. Among these are a view of the building Robert E. Lee occupied in Fort Ringgold before the Civil War, a street scene in Rio Grande City with a banner welcoming the 16th Cavalry, a view of the Kansas City, Mexico, the Orient railroad station in Fort Stockton, a scene of everyday life in Fort Davis, and a historic photograph of Fort Bliss.

Tarrant County is another focal point. Photographs show the city of Polytechnic before it was incorporated into Fort Worth, construction and flooding, and scenes of Lake Worth. Galveston and Fredericksburg are also represented. Photographs of Galveston feature the Hurricane of 1915, Texas Heroes Monument, the interior of the city’s Union Depot station, the sea wall, ships, beach-goers, and the city’s Electric Park, an amusement park located near the beach. One notable image of this park is Electric Park at Night. Galveston, which illustrates the magnificence of electricity, a relatively new invention at the time. Photography of Fredericksburg shows the historic Nimitz Hotel, scenes of city life and local buildings, a local band, an Independence Day parade, the Gillespie County Courthouse, and bird’s eye views of the town.

Businesses and industries depicted include the Lake Erie Power Plant in Handley (now incorporated into Fort Worth); workers in Grand Saline’s salt mining industry; a harvest of melons in Hempstead; cotton gins in Gonzales, Groesbeck, and Hearne; a storefront in Harrisburg; the Hot Well and Sanitarium in Hubbard; the Hico Roller Mills Elevator building during a flood; people gathered on the shore of the Rio Grande near a U.S. Customs House; and construction workers in Grand Prairie. Other noteworthy scenes include photographs of automobile races in Granger, a Fourth of July parade in Hidalgo, saloons in Hondo, the town of Hico covered in snow, and churches in Grand Prairie, Grandview, Hubbard, and Hearne. Still more photographs show street views, scenes of everyday life, and buildings in Forney, Friona, Frost, Fulshear, Gainesville, Garland, Gay Hill, Giddings, Glen Rose, Goliad, and Gonzales.

Three panoramas from the Giesecke Family Collection of Photographs and Panoramas of Mexico, taken by E.B. Downing and Kurt P. Giesecke. These images include mining operations in rural Mexico, featuring miners’ dwellings and industrial buildings. Also among the panoramas is a scene taken at the Columna de la Independencia in Mexico City during the Mexican Centennial celebrations.

18 items, created between 1833 and 1920, from the Hervey A. Priddy Collection of American Presidential and Political Memorabilia, including images of badges, buttons, tokens, and medals relating to several presidential campaigns and inaugurations. Of particular interest is Beef Takes the Presidential Chair, a medalet which satirizes the size and policies of President Grover Cleveland on the occasion of his first inauguration. The medalet features a bison, which references Buffalo, New York, where Grover Cleveland had been mayor, and a harpy meant to represent his opponent, James Blaine.

1 photograph of a French Military light railway train from World War 1 was added to Europe, Asia, and Australia- Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints.

3 photographs from the Mexican Revolution era were added to the American Border Troops and the Mexican Revolution series in the Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints collection, including a photograph of Santiago Pescador, which he dedicated to his cousins “with affection” in a handwritten note on the verso.

1 photograph of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Hockaday School, featuring Stanley Marcus, J. Erik Jonsson, and Robert L. Thornton, who was then the mayor of Dallas, was added to the Stanley Marcus Papers.

1 stereograph of a building in a field by Louis de Planque and 1 photograph of a street, possibly in El Paso, by Francis Parker were added to the Texas: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints collection.

2 stereographs by W. Henry Brown depicting Santa Fe, New Mexico and 2 stereographs by Alexander Gardner which show the areas near Union Pacific Railway lines in Kansas were added to the U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints collection.

28 postcards and photographs by Abel Briquet, Walter Horne, C.B. Waite, Sanchez Cruz, and Yanez y Guillen from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. These images depict scenes on the border during the Mexican Revolution, including photographs of Camp Stewart and U.S. forces in the area at the time. Also included are images from Abel Briquet’s Tipos Mexicanos series, which attempt to depict ordinary life in Mexico at the time the photographer was working there. Among these scenes are Indian water carriers and a huacalero, or a hen coop carrier.

117 photographs and postcards, ca. 1910-1924, from the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution, featuring images of the Convention of Aguascalientes and the Decena Tragica, a ten-day event during which President Francisco Madero and Vice President Jose Maria Pino Suarez were assassinated in a coup. The album was owned by General Agustin Maciel, who appears in several of the photographs. Noteworthy images include photographs of Francisco Madero and Jose Maria Pino Suarez taken a few days before their assassinations, as well as a number of images of Victoriano Huerta, who organized the coup against Madero and became president of Mexico following Madero’s death.