The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, July 1949 - April, 1950 Page: 180
538 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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ANotes ald Documetts
Journal of ifecm's raVe/s il Zexas, 18351
Edited by A. L. BRADFORD and T. N. CAMPBELL
INTRODUCTION
GIDEON LINCECUM2 was born in Hancock County, Georgia,
in 1793, and grew up on the Georgia frontier. He was
largely self-educated, receiving only five months of for-
mal schooling when he was fourteen years old. He served in the
War of 1812, later taught school briefly in Georgia, and in 1818
moved to the Tombigbee River country in eastern Mississippi,
where he became an Indian trader among the Choctaw and
Chickasaw. Over a long period of years Lincecum had studied
medicine privately, and in 1830 he began practice at Columbus,
Mississippi. In 1835 he accompanied a small party to Texas for
the purpose of searching out lands for future settlement. On
this trip he kept the journal which is reproduced below. In 1848
Lincecum moved to Texas, settling at Long Point, Washington
County. Here he began the studies which made him widely
known as a frontier naturalist. He continued to live at Long
Point until the death of his wife and bitterness over Reconstruc-
tion led him to leave the United States. In 1868, at the age of
seventy-five, he emigrated to Mexico, joining a group of Southern
expatriates near Tuxpan in the state of Vera Cruz. He lived there
until his death in 1874.
iThis journal, which is now in the University of Texas Library Archives, was
kept in a small leather-bound account book. The first few pages of this book show
accounts dated 1821-1824, but most of the remaining pages are taken up by the
journal entries, which are written in pencil in a clear hand. The manuscript is
entitled: "Journal of the travels of Gideon Lincecum from Monroe County,
Mississippi."
2Most of what is known about the life of Lincecum is contained in the "Auto-
biography of Gideon Lincecum," Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society,
VIII (1904), 443-519; and in a biographical essay by S. W. Geiser, Naturalists of
the Frontier (Dallas, 1948), 199-214. It is evident from these sources that Lincecum
was a gifted individual who was handicapped but certainly not repressed by the
frontier conditions under which most of his life was spent. He had a good mind
and showed an astonishing diversity of interests. He was also a man of strong and
colorful personality.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, July 1949 - April, 1950, periodical, 1950; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101126/m1/228/?rotate=0: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.