MayDay: “Preparedness Protects Our Heritage”

Each year, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and its partners call on archivists – along with their colleagues at libraries, museums, historic sites, and historical societies – to spend some time on May 1 improving their ability to respond to an emergency such as a fire, flood, hurricane, or tornado. This year at the DRT Library, staff members have been encouraged to use MayDay as an opportunity to make sure they have up-to-date copies of emergency planning documents and to review the library’s “Disaster Preparedness Plan and Recovery Manual.”

Moreover, individuals and families can join archivists across the country in better preparing themselves for emergencies that could damage or destroy their personal collections of records. These materials include vital records such as birth and marriage certificates, diplomas, financial and tax records, deeds, driver licenses, and Social Security cards. These and other materials such as correspondence, photographs, artifacts, and video or audio recordings also document family history.

The Society of American Archivists provides an annotated list of MayDay resources, a comprehensive guide to resources about caring for collections. Here is a selection of excellent online guides geared toward general audiences, individuals and families:

Library of Congress, “Preparing, Protecting, Preserving Family Treasures”

National Archives and Records Administration, “Caring for Your Family Archive”

American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, “Caring for Your Treasures”

Northeast Document Conservation Center, “Resources for Private and Family Collections”

Also see David W. Carmicheal’s book Rescuing Family Records: A Disaster Planning Guide, available through the Council of State Archivists (CoSA).

MayDay 2009 logo from the website of the Society of American Archivists.

Battle of Flowers Parade, Participants and Floats

Mary Louise Price, Duchess of the Laurels, and Josephine Nix, attendant sprite, in the 1925 Battle of Flowers Parade.

Throughout the history of the Battle of Flowers Parade, participants have gone all out in elaborately adorning their vehicles – be they carriages, wagons, bicycles, horses, or cars – and floats with colorful flowers, both real and artificial. For example, in describing the first parade in 1891, the San Antonio Light noted that there were “over 100 carriages and other vehicles, all gaily decorated and many containing decorations of real artistic merit.” In the early years of the parade, many participants were individuals and groups of family and friends who rode in their own vehicles. Over the years, however, community groups and organizations increasingly comprised the majority of participants. Moreover, in 1909 John B. Carrington established the Order of the Alamo, which remains responsible for selecting each year’s queen, princess, and court of duchesses. Each chosen lady rides a float in the parade and wears an elegant gown with a lengthy train.

 Below are some photographs of participants in the Battle of Flowers Parade during the first decades of the twentieth century. With so many wonderful images in the archives, it was difficult to select just a handful for the blog!

A baby in a decorated carriage, 1905.

Two women in a decorated carriage, circa 1900-1910.

Two women with their drivers, circa 1900-1910.

An airplane float, 1917.

A car decorated with flowers, circa 1910-1920.

Dorothy McCampbell, Duchess of the Coreopsis, and Margaret Basse, attendant sprite, in the 1925 parade.

For information about the Order of the Alamo, see the five volume History of the Order of the Alamo, available at the DRT Library. These books list the officers, directors, and committee members for each year from the organization’s founding in 1909 to 1989. Also included is information about each court selected by the Order of the Alamo, including photographs of each queen, princess, and duchess in her dress.

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

Battle of Flowers Parade

Battle of Flowers Parade in Alamo Plaza, circa 1890s.

With Fiesta taking place, throughout this week we’ll be highlighting some treasures from our collections related to this San Antonio celebration. The DRT Library has many books, vertical files, photographs, and archival materials that document and explore the history of Fiesta and the Battle of Flowers Parade from their inception to the present day.

The Alamo decorated for the Battle of Flowers Parade, circa 1890s.

Chief among our archival collections is the Battle of Flowers Association Records, which contains the non-current records of the organization deemed to possess enduring historic value. This collection is one of the largest held by the library and contains minutes, rosters, yearbooks, reports, correspondence, financial documents, printed material, drawings, photographs, motion picture film, videotape, audio tape, and artifacts generated and gathered by elected officials and various committee chairmen in the Association. Researchers can find additional archival materials relating to the Battle of Flowers Parade and Fiesta in several other collections, including the Reynolds Andricks Papers, 1935-1977; DRT 3 Fiesta San Antonio Collection, 1904-2007; and the Order of the Alamo Records, 1909-1990.

 

C.M. McAmis, photographed in a studio, riding the bicycle he decorated for the 1893 parade. (SC13162)

For this entry, we’re focusing on materials from the early history of the Battle of Flowers Parade. The first parade was held in 1891 due to the convergence of several factors, namely the desire of some San Antonians to replicate the flower festivals they had observed in Mexico City and in Nice, France; the movement in the city to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21; and the interest in marking the two hundredth anniversary of the settling of San Antonio by several Native American tribes. According to historian Judith Berg Sobré, “in spite of these vague plans, however, no concrete arrangements were made until the announcement of the impending visit of President Benjamin Harrison.” This first “visit to San Antonio by a sitting U.S. chief executive…galvanized the flower-battle enthusiasts to organize their own procession” (155-157).

Front of an invitation to the reception for President Benjamin Harrison.

Inside of the invitation.

The parade organizers – largely a group of well-to-do women who were active community volunteers – decided that the event would begin at 5:00 pm on April 20, not April 21, in honor of the president’s visit. This “would be long after the president’s departure,” writes Sobré, “but his schedule was too tight at any rate to permit him to witness such an entertainment.” Despite his absence, “the planners were counting on many visitors flocking to San Antonio that day and staying around to shop, so that the parade would have a large audience when the stores closed” (157). Furthermore, the planners decided that the parade would “form just off Alamo Plaza, pass through the plaza to Commerce Street, circle Main Plaza, and then return to Alamo Plaza. There, the [parade] marshals would divide the carriages into two columns, which would circle the plaza in opposite directions so that their occupants could throw flowers at each other” (158-159). The first parade was postponed due to rain and took place on April 24.

Two pages from the Official Program for the Battle of Flowers Parade, held April 21 and 22, 1899, showing the events on each day.

While initially the Battle of Flowers Parade was unique in that no larger festival occurred in conjunction with it, within a couple of years this changed as local organizations began hosting events associated with the event. Today, the Battle of Flowers Parade is the largest parade in Fiesta and is second only to the Tournament of Roses parade as the largest parade in the country. Additionally, the Battle of Flowers Association has been exclusively female group for most of its history, and the parade is the only parade in the country that is planned and directed completely by women.

Battle of Flowers pin, 1895.

References and Further Reading

Judith Berg Sobré, “Battle of Flowers Parade: ‘Fun with Flora,’” in San Antonio on Parade: Six Historic Festivals, by Judith Berg Sobre (2003).

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

Historic Texas Taxes

This receipt shows that Thomas W. Grayson owed $16.25 in state and county taxes for 1852. Grayson's taxable property included 660 acres on Salado Creek in Bexar County, two "negros," thirty-five head of cattle, one wagon, and one carriage.

While filling out tax forms can at times be tedious and frustrating work, future scholars may very well find information in these records that will help them examine and understand everyday life in early twenty-first century America. Indeed, historians and genealogists find that preserved tax records such as receipts and rolls – along with other financial records like ledgers and account books – can be gold mines of information about people living in the past. Tax records can help family historians locate an ancestor who cannot be found in other sources. Moreover, tax records often include additional information besides the amount of tax owed by the taxpayer; such details can be used to determine, for example, birth, marriage, and death dates; conditions of servitude; parentage; and the migration of individuals and families from place to place. Tax records sometimes even fill in for other primary sources that were never created or that have not survived to the present day. For example, no census exists for the Republic of Texas for 1840; however, using tax rolls and other archival documents, Gifford White was able to compile a substitute list of citizens for that year. (This source is available at the DRT Library.)

 

Confederate tax receipts for James Lincoln showing money due in 1862 and 1863. The taxes had to be paid in Confederate treasury notes; their value collapsed during the course of the Civil War, and at the end of the conflict they became worthless.

Many archival collections at the DRT Library contain tax records. This is particularly true of collections created by individuals and members of families, as many of these collections contain nineteenth-century receipts for state, county, school, and poll taxes paid. Some collections include receipts for taxes paid to the Confederate States of America during the Civil War (1861-1865). Additionally, the DRT 9 Documents Collection contains tax records dating back to the seventeenth century. In addition to the documents shown below, DRT 9 includes a 1677 letter in which Spanish viceroy (the royal official who governed New Spain in the name of and as representative of the monarch) Enriquez de Rivera acknowledges a judicial appointment and an investigation of tax rolls; a 1713 letter in which viceroy Lencastre Norona y Silva transmits a royal decree regarding the collection of taxes; and an 1803 broadside published in Mexico City concerning the payment of taxes imposed to finance Spain’s war with England.

The first page of a decree - published in Mexico City on March 29, 1759 - demanding an accounting of the taxation of Indian women.

A receipt dated Mexico City, January 30, 1796, showing that Jose de Espinosa paid the required taxes for street improvements.

 Finally, materials in the library’s collections reveal that frustration about taxes is nothing new. Sentiments of dissatisfaction, disagreement, and apprehension are most succinctly and directly summarized in the title of Byron C. Utecht’s 1949 book, “The State of Texas or the State of Taxes?” The below cartoon by Hal Coffman, which originally appeared in the Fort Worth ­Star-Telegram, was included in the front of this work to visually depict Utecht’s argument about the predicament of Texas taxpayers.

Hal Coffman's 1949 illustration, "Just One Thing After Another."

For more information about using tax records in historical or genealogical research, check out these online resources:

“Taxes: One of Life’s Certainties” from Archival Chronicle (March 2009), available online through the Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University. This article includes a list of common types of auditor’s records and a tax glossary.

“Income Tax Records of the Civil War Years” by Cynthia G. Fox, published in the National Archives and Records Administration’s Prologue Magazine (Winter 1986). This article debunks a common belief that the sixteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1913, resulted in Americans paying income tax for the first time.

“Tax Records” from For the Record (May/June 1995), available through Ancestry.com.

“The Tax Man Cometh…and He Leaveth Records!” from The Ancestry Daily News (April 12, 2001), available through Ancestry.com

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

DRT Library Hosts the Texas Map Society

Members of the Texas Map Society examining some of the materials on display.

Last Friday, April 3, the Alamo and the DRT Library hosted members of the Texas Map Society as part of the organization’s three-day spring meeting in San Antonio. Attendees viewed some of the historic maps of Texas in the library’s collections, including:

Abraham Ortelius, Hispaniae Novae, 1579: Hispaniae Novae sivae magnae recens et vera descriptio is from an edition of Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum. This work is generally considered to be the first modern atlas because it was the first standardized compilation of printed maps to show contemporary, rather than classical, information.

Abraham Ortelius's 1579 map, Hispaniae Novae.

John Senex, A Map of Louisiana and of the River Mississipi, from A New General Atlas, Containing a Geographical & Historical Account of All the Empires, Kingdoms, and Other Dominions of the World, 1719: John Senex published this copy of an important map prepared in 1718 by the French cartographer Guillaume Delisle, one of a number of versions of Delisle’s works issued. The Delisle map, reflected in this Senex copy of it, was the earliest to show the beginnings of the shape of Texas as we know it and to use a variation of the name Texas, in identifying Mission de los Tiejas in east Texas on the Trinity River.

John Senex's A Map of Louisiana and of the River Mississipi, 1719.

Mapa de los Estados Unidos Mejicanos, 1837: Published in Paris by a man known only as Rosa, this map is an exceptionally rare European version of what is considered to be one of the most significant maps of nineteenth-century Mexico, Texas, and the southwestern United States. The document played a role in the convoluted development of John Disturnell’s treaty map showing the final boundary between the United States and Mexico after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

Stephen F. Austin, A Map of Austin’s Colony & Adjacent Country in Texas Drawn Principally from Actual Survey by Stephen F. Austin, 1820s: This is an early example of Austin’s Texas maps based on Mexican cartographic efforts and information provided by surveyors and residents.

Manuscript map drawn by Stephen F. Austin.

Attendees also enjoyed a light dinner on the Alamo grounds and a self-guided audio tour of the complex. The evening concluded with a presentation by Dr. Bruce Winders, Alamo historian and curator. He spoke about his personal collection of nineteenth-century school atlases and what these materials reveal about Americans’ perceptions of Texas at that time.

Dr. Bruce Winders during his talk, "The Power of School Atlases to Decode the Past."

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

DRT Library Receives Battle of Flowers Parade Slides

 

From left to right, Sister Michael Brandt, OSB, Executive Director of Benedictine Ministries; Leslie Stapleton, DRT Library Director; Sister Bernadine Reyes, OSB, Prioress; Caitlin Donnelly, DRT Library Archivist.

On March 23, Library Director Leslie Stapleton and Archivist Caitlin Donnelly were pleased to receive a donation of 122 slides showing various Battle of Flowers parades between approximately 1945 and 1970. These materials were donated by Sister Michael Brandt, OSB, of the Benedictine Sisters in Boerne, Texas, in memory of her late uncle, Mr. Aurelius C. Lenert. The slides need to be processed and housed in appropriate acid-free containers before they can be made accessible to researchers interested in learning more about the history of the Battle of Flowers Parade.

 

One of the Battle of Flowers Parade slides donated.

The DRT Library is the repository of the non-current records of the Battle of Flowers Association. This sizable collection contains minutes, rosters, yearbooks, reports, correspondence, financial documents, printed material, drawings, photographs, motion picture film, videotape, audio tape, and artifacts generated and gathered by elected officials and various committee chairmen in the Association. Moreover, additional materials relating to the Battle of Flowers Parade and Fiesta can be found in the library’s Reynolds Andricks Papers, 1935-1977; DRT 3 Fiesta San Antonio Collection, 1904-2007; Order of the Alamo Records, 1909-1990; and various other archival collections. The slides donated by Sister Michael complement these materials and help preserve the history of an important San Antonio event.

Thank you, Sister Michael, for your generous donation to the DRT Library!

The images in this post were provided by Mary Anne Oehler, Director of Development, Congregation of Benedictine Sisters.