The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968 Page: 144

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

county history is no easy task, especially when the chronicler is a
resident of the county and an acquaintance of some of the characters
in his book.
Of significance to the corpus of Texas county histories is the fact
that this book provides a most excellent and evidently quite thorough
source of information on characters of regional and occasionally wider
import. Cases in point are: the accounts of Colonel Joshua Foster
Johnson, one of the eight delegates to the Texas Secession Convention
in 1861 who voted against that cause, and of Louis Moses Rose, the
only defender of the Alamo who reportedly accepted Travis' invitation
to leave.
Tyler Junior College ROBERT K. PETERS
Bygones I Cannot Help Recalling: The Memoirs of a Mobile Scholar.
By J. Fred Rippy. Austin (Steck-Vaughn Co.), 1966. Pp. ix+ x 95.
Photographs, index. $5.95.
Memoirs ordinarily are written by the great, the influential, and
the successful, not by the average or the humble. But these lowly ones
comprise the majority of the population, says historian J. Fred Rippy,
who himself had an intimate knowledge of poverty and hardship, and
that is why he has set forth in this volume his recollections and reflec-
tions of life. Everyone who has passed sixty, he contends, is entitled
to record his memoirs, although he concedes that most of the accounts
will not attract much attention unless written by the famous or the
scandalous. Thus, while this volume may not receive great nation-wide
consideration, it nevertheless will be welcomed by the historical pro-
fession, particularly by all who have known Rippy as a teacher, author,
and friend, and by those who recall the broad grin, the friendly man-
ner, the soft drawl, and the Southern humor.
A log cabin in middle Tennessee was Rippy's birthplace and his first
home. But when the family moved into a frame cottage and at the
same time tore down the cabin, it destroyed the material evidence,
he says, of his availability for the presidency of the United States. He
describes his schooling, his fright during the revivalist church services,
his family and relatives, and the country folk who lived nearby. Their
virtues, he says, would have made Thomas Jefferson proud. Then
comes a move to Texas, college days at Southwestern University at
Georgetown, a decision to follow a teaching career rather than the

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