The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976 Page: 115

Book Reviews

in the office he shared with Charles W. Ramsdell, then the secretary-
treasurer of TSHA. The walls of that office were lined with Quarterlies.
I had no time for reading them then, and this book makes me feel that I
listened inattentively and read carelessly in later years when I had access
to every copy of the Quarterly and the Junior Historian. Of course I knew
the poem about building the bridge, but why did I miss Dr. Pat Nixon's
note that the author was a woman who taught -at Salado College? I'm sure
that I heard Stanley Banks's speech in 1947; now I am sent scurrying to
read every word of it.
Two of the Association directors, Barker and Webb, taught me to avoid
the use of adjectives in historical writing. I think they would forgive me
the use of two or three to say that the Winfrey history of the Association
is discriminating in choice of details and that it is both factual and scholarly,
but withal, so loving. Admittedly this book, slight in size but excellent in
design and format, is "made in Texas for Texans," but it should have value
for historians and historical organizations in general.
University of Texas at Austin LLERENA FRIEND
Papers Concerning Robertson's Colony in Texas. Compiled and edited by
Malcolm D. McLean. (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University
Press, 1974. Pp. vii+566. Index. $20.)
Robertson's Colony, a colonization project which eventually included all
or parts of thirty present Texas counties, was located to the north and
northwest of Stephen F. Austin's first colony. A Tennessee company, the
Texas Association of Nashville, petitioned the Mexican government for
the grant in 1822, and in 1825 company agent Robert Leftwich received
a contract in his own name to settle eight hundred families. The empresario
grant was huge, approximately 20,000 square miles, and the lands, some
of the most desirable in Texas, were filled with promise.
Unfortunately, the ten years remaining before the Texas Revolution
were filled with confusion and controversy for those involved in the Texas
Association Project. Leftwich transferred his rights to the company and a
new empresario was appointed. Boundaries were altered and the Texas
Association became the Nashville Company. Austin and Sterling C. Rob-
ertson, by then the agent for the Nashville Company, quarreled over con-
trol of the grant, carrying their conflict to the courts and to the Mexican
authorities. Although Robertson won a temporary victory and the grant
was named Robertson's Colony, control was returned to Austin and his

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