November 10 – Peer Review I

From the peer review I learned how to critically analyze sentences, to try and make them as fluid and to the point as possible. Reading someone elses paper is a good way for them to make constructive changes, since it is an outside opinion from someone who has not seen it at all. I also learned more about the citations in Chicago Style. A few run on sentences were brought to my attention, as well as gramatical errors.

November 5 – Computer Lab: Photoshop

The biggest problem I have encountered while trying to make a website is Dreamweaver and getting familiar with it. I had trouble making the banner on the top and creating the separate tabs for different pages. I have not really been working on the project as much as I should, so I really haven't been able to learn how to use Dreamweaver. :(

November 3 – Library Research Day

I do have a solid thesis statement, and so far it reads: [Robert A. Josey's] gift the Robert A. Josey Boy Scout Lodge, gave the Boy Scouts of Walker County and surrounding areas, a place to hold their meetings and practice camping, cooking, construciton and other scouting skills. To this day, 75 years later, the Josey Lodge remains a Huntsville landmark, continuing to serve as a cherished meeting house for the Boy Scouts of Walker County.
The biggest research question I had was what New Deal Program contributed to the construction and finance of the building. I had a number of mixed stories when it came to this, and I couldn't seem to find any documentation. So I went to the Thomason Room and asked them. They didn't seem to now either, but they led me to the archives, and from there I was given access to a book filled with Huntsville Item papers from 1933 and 1934. From there I learned that it was the CWA, an early and short lived New Deal organization, not the CCC or the WPA.

October 29 – Computer Lab: Photoshop

One image that I took of the big wooden sign that faces Sam Houston Ave., I think is a good one to use as the homepage for my site. I like it because everyone who has been on Sam Houston Ave has probably seen it, and plus it's a good picture. Another I am trying to work with is a photo of an old newspaper clipping with a picture of all the Scout troops taken in 1930, inside a frame that is on the wall of the inside of the lodge. This one is going to need to be fixed on photoshop if possible, but I think it would be a good picture. Plus I have some other photos of the interior of the lodge.

October 27 - Roundtable: Current Progress Report

On the warm summer afternoon of June 17, 1934, thousands gathered at a beautiful, newly built, rustic log lodge, “nestled in a little ravine in the pine woods just south of the city”, to dedicate this great gift given to the citizens of Huntsville, Texas, by Robert A. Josey, a local self made millionaire and generous philanthropist. His gift, the Robert A. Josey Boy Scout Lodge, was given to the Boy Scouts of Huntsville. Thanks to his contributions this local landmark has served this organization for 75 years.
Mr. Josey was said to be “too modest” as all of Huntsville showed their appreciation for this lodge given by him to the local Boy Scouts of America. Marcellus E. Foster, founder of the Houston Chronicle, who grew up here in Huntsville, showed up to give tribute to Mr. Josey, despite a broken vertebra and the hot summer weather.
“Now you may suffer from the heat but my friend, Tony, (and he pointed to R. A. Josey, with whom he played on the site as a boy) my friend, Tony, is suffering from embarrassment. He doesn’t like this. He’s too modest… I wish there were more R. A. Joseys in the world. I wish there were more good boys to know their duty to their God, to their country, to their community, for these boys of today will be the R. A. Joseys of the future.”
Robert A. Josey’s Scout Lodge is a gift that is still cherished to this day by the Boy Scouts of Walker County. To Mr. Josey, who was a very smart businessman, he was making an investment in the wellbeing of his community. M. Harrison of Longview, President of The East Texas Chamber of Commerce said this at the dedication ceremony, “This lodge is an investment in human character that will pay eternal dividends. It is dedicated to those principle of righteousness, thrift, reverence and loyalty that have made America great.”
Robert Anthony Josey was born in Huntsville on March 28, 1870. He was the son of Evander Theophilus Josey and Mellissa Jane Cotton. Evander’s father, Theophilus Josey moved to Huntsville from South Carolina with his wife Mary Wilson, when Evander was a child. In Huntsville, Theophilus bought a house known as the “Raven” from Gen. Sam Houston. E.T. Josey became a teacher in Huntsville and ran a boarding home, until 1861 when he volunteered to serve in the Confederate Army, serving in Company K, Brown’s Regiment for four years, earning many decorations. After the war, he returned to Huntsville and married Mellissa Jane Cotton and together they had seven children. E. T. Josey served as a Walker County Tax Collector and was a deacon for the First Baptist Church in Huntsville for almost 60 years.
Robert A. Josey grew up in Huntsville and attended primary school there and after that he attended Sam Houston Teachers College, graduating in 1890. He also got a degree at Texas A&M University. In 1901 he began his career in the wild oil drilling campaigns of Spindletop field in Beaumont, Texas, where he is said to have drilled the second oil well there. He amassed a sizeable fortune and founded more wells in Oklahoma, where he was a leading figure in the emerging oil business there. After he sold his holding to the Texas Company for a reported $10 million in 1930, he moved to Houston. Mr. Josey acquired extensive holdings in the East Texas oil fields and held those until his death in 1954.
Even though Mr. Josey moved to Houston, he never forgot about his hometown of Huntsville. He performed many services and gave much to the town through his philanthropic work. In 1933, he donated $2500 for the creation of a new loanable fund to Sam Houston Teachers College to aid students who were trying to acquire a higher education, but lacked the funding necessary, especially during the era of the Great Depression. The fund was named “The E.T. and Melissa Josey Loan Fund”, in honor of his mother and father. Mr. Josey was quoted as saying:
“People have been forced by the happenings of the recent past few years to curtail their allowable expenditures for educational purposes. I believe that the maintenance of our civilization and the continued enjoyment of its benefits require educational training It is more than an individual question; it is a social question. I desire some part in encouraging the continued attendance of young people upon our schools and colleges. That the opportunity exists in Huntsville affords me much pleasure.”
In 1933, a local group headed by Tom Ball, (a thrice former Huntsville mayor, prominent local banker, and former U.S. congressman, for whom the city of Tomball was named) , asked Mr. Josey to help in the project to construct a building for the Boy Scouts. He happily agreed to help and sent Mr. Ball a letter giving him and the committee $10,000 for purchase of the land and construction of the lodge. The material for the construction was donated by J. P. Gibbs of Gibbs Brothers and Co. and included logs and stones from local forests and quarries. Lewis. E. Meekins of Austin was hired as contractor to build the log cabin style lodge designed by architect Mike Mebane and based on a scale model made by the Scouts themselves. The structure was built in 75 days as a Civil Works Administration project with a construction team of about 50 local men* and finished in 1934. The CWA provided additional funds for construction of the building, $8,000 for labor costs and $2,000 for materials.* The CWA was headed in Huntsville by

October 22: Computer Lab (Dreamweaver)

After two classes periods of working with Dreamweaver, my major concern with creating a website with the program is that I don't really know how to use it. I guess I understand the basics like creating rows and columns and creating links, but I seem to get confused in the spacing of the stuff I want to put on it. I seem to just get lost with all the buttons and precise measurements stuff. Nevertheless, I do enjoy trying to learn it and I think working with it is pretty interesting. Creating the site will be a good way for me to break my paper down into specific parts by creating the different links or pages.

October 20: Rountable Discussion

Title of Project: The Josey Boy Scout Lodge

Summary: My paper will be about the donation to the Walker County Boy Scouts of the lodge and surrounding area by Robert A. Josey. Main points in the paper will be how the lodge has served the Boy Scout organization in Huntsville, the principles the organization teaches to the Scouts, and the service the Scouts provide the city with. So far I have a lot of basic information about the lodge and the Boy Scouts from when I did the park project. I have a lot of newspaper clippings, obituaries, and a handout given at the dedication ceremony that is word for word Josey's speech he gave at the ceremony. I also have a lot of photos from the National Park project. I have met a Scoutmaster from one of the local troops, Mr. Smith, who will let me take a look at a scrapbook that the Scouts have at the lodge, but I yet to hear back from him. He has also told me about a book called Sam Houston Scouts: A History of Scouting in the Sam Houston Area Council. Also, I might go to see Mac Woodward to see what kind of information he might have on the lodge. I have a big newspaper clipping from the day after the lodge was dedicated that has a lot of good information and quotes to use in the paper. I think this will prove to be a valuable resource in writing this paper.

My thesis statement will be as follows: "His gift, the Robert A. Josey Boy Scout Lodge , gave the Boy Scouts of Walker County and surrounding areas, a place to hold their meetings and practice Scout skills. To this day, 75 years later, the Josey Lodge remains a Huntsville landmark, continuing to serve as a cherished meeting house for the Boy Scouts of Walker County.

Sources Examined:
1. McCormick, Harry" Robert A. Josey's Beautiful Gift to the Boy Scouts." The Houston Press, June 18, 1934

2. "Huntsville is Grateful To Houstonian for Its Fine Boy Scout Lodge" Houston Post, December 21, 1935.

3.Walker County Geneaogical Society and Walker County Historical Commission, Walker County Texas: A History

4. "Spindletop's R.A. Josey Dies at 83", The Houston Post, February 1,1954.


Outline:

I. Introduction
II. Body
A. The Background, Planning, and Construction of the Builiding.
of the Building.
B. Robert A. Josey's contributions and family history.
C. Detail of the structure and activities held there.
D. History of Scouts in the Huntsville area.
E. How the Scouts serve Huntsville.
F. Prominent local scouts.
III. Conclusion: How this simple investment has paid back the community. Robert Josey's service to Huntsville.

What I Have Developed To Contribute To The Park Project

Since the visit to the park, I have helped with the geocache project. Stefan and I made a trip to the park and roughly mapped out the places where we want to put the geocache boxes. I have also done some work on my project about the R.A. Josey Scout Lodge. I have found several sources on the internet, the archives in the Newton Gresham Library, and the Thomason room. I have also talked to Mac Woodward who knows a lot about Boy Scouts here in Huntsville, being an Eagle Scout himself. He gave me the number to the scout master of local Troop 114, Larry Fusaro. I am planning on attending a Boy Scout meeting and taking pictures of the lodge and the meeting itself.

First Class Trip to The Huntsville State Park

This was not the first time I've been to the park, but it's been a while and it was nice to go back. First, I had no idea how nice the view of the lake was from the back of the lodge. I didn't even know that the lodge was there, which is a very beautiful place to hold any event. I had never done geocacheing, and that was a lot of fun. It's fun to go hiking on the trails looking for something hidden, even if its hidden 45 feet out in the thick brush....kind of! Also, I learned how to use a GPS unit, which was pretty interesting. I learned not to pick the pretty purple berries, called American Beauty berries, because their poisonous and it's against the law to take anything from a state park. I also didn't know that you could rent canoes out there. It was a fun class and I'm glad I was able to visit the park again, it had been about a year since the last time I went.

Courthouse Deed Room: James Gillespie

When our class met in the Deeds Room in the Walker County Courthouse, I was given a person to look up in the probate records. That person was James Gillespie, who wrote his will on October 18, 1861, presumably before he went off to fight for the Confederate Army in the the American Civil War. The will was probated on December 31, 1867. In it he willed his estate to his wife Susan Gillespie, giving her full authority to sell any tract of land, town land and slave if need be. She is the executor of the will.

Constitution Day Lecture

The U.S. Constitution Day is on September 17, and this year I was able to attend a lecture by Dr. John Domino, a professor of political science here at Sam Houston State University. The topic of his lecture was civil rights and liberties how since about the 1960's the Supreme Court of the United States has acted as a tribunal in cultural issues. One example he used was the issue of the 2nd amendment and gun control laws, this issue is an example of a "culture war" as he put it, pitting conservatives against liberals, democrats against republicans, and the urban population against rural. This issue can't be solved in the political sphere, therefore it is up to the Supreme Court to make rulings, forcing it to pick sides, either one way or another. But the S.C. does not like to do this, and he explains the idea of "split the difference" decisions, where the court tries not to please one side or the other. One example he uses of this is that it was ruled unconstitutional to meet racial quotas in public schools, but on the other hand was ruled okay to let race be a factor when applying for colleges. Other issues that he considered to be cultural divides are religion in public, religion in policy, non-assimilation, homosexuality, affirmative action, and hate speech as part of a 1st amendment right. His lecture was very interesting and gave me a new perspective on how the Supreme Court effects our lives as citizens of this country.

The Great Storm of 1900

A Review: AMan, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

On September 8, 1900 an unanticipated, category 4 hurricane hit the shores of Galveston Island, and was and still is to this date the deadliest natural disaster in the history of The United States, with a death toll at about 8,000. The storm devastated the emerging city, which at the time was a bustling city of 42,000 and one of the fastest growing ports in the South with a bright and promising future. A lack of technology, little understanding of how storms worked, the climate and geography of Galveston Island at the time, in part with the inflated hubris of The United States Weather Bureau, who refused to accept any foreign meteorological intelligence, all were major reasons of the significant death toll and devastation of the 1900 storm.
The film tells the story of Isaac Cline, the chief meteorologist at the Galveston U.S. Weather Bureau office from 1889-1901, who was an integral figure in the storm of 1900. Cline was born 1861 in Tennessee, and had a passion for nature and the emerging science and technologies of the time. He excelled in college and was well versed in a variety of topics and held two degrees and a doctorate. After that, he joined the newly formed U.S. Weather Bureau, and rose in the ranks through hard work and diligent observations. Later he was assigned to head the U.S. Weather Bureau office in Galveston. He believed that Galveston was impervious to any storm, and stood firm in this belief, even building his home near the beach. This belief would be his downfall in preparing for the Great Storm of 1900.
The technology of predicting storms at the time was not very precise, and the predictions of the Weather Bureau were notoriously wrong. Cline had no idea what was causing the peculiar weather prior to the storm, but seemed to just brush it off. Also the refusal to accept any intelligence from the experienced Cuban observers during the middle of hurricane season was a grave mistake for the Bureau. Little concern was placed on the tropical storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Weather Bureau predicted it to make a turn northward. The Cuban observers thought otherwise, predicting that it would slam into the Texas coast, and sadly they were proved right. The extremely warm waters of the gulf facilitated the increasing power of the storm. Galveston being a barrier island was only 8.5 ft. above sea level at the highest point of the town. There was no kind of wall or barrier to the sea at the time of the storm. Since the storm was building in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, they had no idea of the ferocity of the rising storm since there was no technology for communication from ship to land.
When the storm made landfall, the townspeople were very unprepared, mostly due to the delayed reaction of Cline and the Weather Bureau office. Evacuation was impossible due to the bridge being inoperable at the time of the storm. Ironically, many townspeople gathered at Cline’s house, thinking it was a safe place since he was a weatherman. They were completely wrong, his house was devastated by the storm surge which drown the whole city and took the house off it’s foundation. In the aftermath of the storm, a moving picture camera surveyed the devastation, while workers searched through the wreckage to find survivors, while nothing was able to record the stench of death reported to be smelt from miles away. Cline claimed to have rode along the beach, like Paul Revere, warning of the approaching storm. This is assumed to be false, but maybe it was his way of trying to cope with the fact that he lost his wife and many fellow citizens due to his failure to warn of the hurricane. Galveston would never fully recover to the vigor it once had prior to the storm.
Since then, Galveston has built a sea wall and raised the whole island higher above sea level, but will never forget the devastation of the Great Storm of 1900. A combination of factors made this storm the worst in American history, and many lessons are to be learned from it. Even now, though we have better technologies to monitor and prepare for storms, we are still at the mercy of Mother Nature.

The Diary of John Felix Kelly

I found a copy of John Felix Kelly at the Newton Gresham Library, and this will be a great source for my project on the town of Cincinnati. He was born in Ireland 1845 on August 31(the same as me!) and immigrated to The United States at age 19. He arrived in New York in 1865 and traveled throughout New England for a while and then found himself in Galveston. From there he made his way into the interior of the state and set up a shop in Cincinnati. Cincinnati was a prosperous and growing town at the time with a post office, numerous saloons, bowling alley, hotel, Masonic Lodge, ferry, tanyard, blacksmith, school and church, saddle shop, and a woodyard where the steamboats could refuel. In his diary he talks about the weather a lot, and with that the fluctuating water levels of the river that affect trade in the area. He keeps record of the different steamships that come up the Trinity River for various goods including cotton and cord wood. He was a devout Catholic and thinks of his church as infallible. Throughout his diary he talked of his longing for a wife and the character of the women in the town, but he kept a place in his heart for his future wife, Miss Kate. He told of the work ethic of the people in the town, and complains of their slowness in paying back credit. He survived the yellow fever epidemic that hit the town in the Fall of 1853, and went on to operate a lumber company. His diary keeps records from January to late April. This gives me good insight into what life was like in the town of Cincinnati.

Public History: What is it?

In Prof. Jordanova's essay on public history, she explains the differences between public and academic history. She also brings to light some of the political, moral, and cultural dilemmas that are brought up when displaying exhibits to the public. Public history, is a type of history that is intended to bring "popular" history to a mass audience, usually with a specific purpose and a specific target audience. That purpose may be political, to promote a corporation or to promote a sense of unity and fellowship among the audience. Public history exhibits, which include museums, monuments, memorials, cultural heritage sites, etc., are major cultural forces, help shape opinions and communicate events of the past to the public . But one must keep in mind the invisible forces and ulterior motives behind the exhibits. These invisible forces include who is funding the exhibit, the selective nature of choosing items to display, and the moralizing tones of heroes and villains or winners and losers in historical events of the past. It's good to keep in mind that public history exhibits show only a specific vantage point on the subject on display, but it's only natural for this to occur and good to keep these invisible forces in mind when viewing them.

The Alamo Exhibit

When I visited the Alamo exhibit at the Walker Education Center, I learned several things about the Alamo that I didn't know before. One of the most fascinating parts of the exhibit was the information about Juan N. Seguin. I had never heard much about him, and I thought it was tragic that he was a supporter of the Texas Revolution, but he was later exiled from Texas as a traitor and forced to flee back to Mexico as a "man without a country." I thought this was sad, because he fought f0r Texas independence and was a real Texas hero, but did not get the recognition he deserved. I also found it interesting that as legend has it no one survived the siege on the Alamo. But this turns out to be false, an Anglo-Texan women and her child as well as several other Tejano women and one man who pretended to be a prisoner, and also that Travis' slave Joe was set free by the Mexicans because they opposed slavery. The Alamo has come to represent more than a small battle in the Texas Revolution, it has been glorified as a stand against tyranny and a brave act of defiance by the defenders. The Alamo has even been considered as important of a battle as Thermopolye.