The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 36

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

down from the State Normal School at Milwaukee to fill in for ailing
Professor Lester G. Bugbee. Had Jameson simply looked at the instruc-
tion catalogue of the University of Texas, he would hardly have hit
upon young Bolton as the man for the job at hand. At Texas in those
days Bolton was the medieval and early modern European history man,
although as far back as 1902 a new course had appeared in the De-
partment of History offerings, "History 8-European Expansion."
Being "low man on the totem pole" in 9go1, Bolton found himself,
by circumstances, in European courses: that was where the opening
was-it may be a mite consoling to young professors of today to recog-
nize that their first assignments in -a new department, which often
take them oceans or continents away from their field of preparation,
are not meanly contrived; life has been ever thus. In a sense, Bolton
was not too badly miscast, for work -at the University of Wisconsin
under Charles Homer Haskins and more at the University of Penn-
sylvania under Edward Potts Cheyney certainly gave him fine ground-
ing for the medieval-early modern era. But Bolton was by interest, and
hoped to be by practice, an American historian.
At Wisconsin he had done his first graduate work with Frederick
Jackson Turner and then had gone on, with a Harrison Fellowship,
to complete his doctoral program with John Bach McMaster, at
Pennsylvania. "The Free Negro in the South before the Civil War"
had been the subject of his doctoral dissertation. At Milwaukee Nor-
mal, 1889-1901, he had not had much opportunity to teach American
history, doing more in Civics and Economics. When he got to the
University of Texas, the American field was pretty well preempted by
the veteran George P. Garrison, who was also head of the department.
Actually, the thousand and not many more students of Texas in 1901
did not need a battery of American history professors; sometimes Gar-
rison was more than adequate.
A bit chagrined at first, the young newcomer (he was thirty-one)
soon found a wisp of hope. Being at Texas and finding himself as edi-
torial assistant to Garrison for the Quarterly of the Texas State Histori-
cal Association, he was being exposed to some American history, albeit
not exactly of the brand of Turner or McMaster and the more con-
ventional varieties. Next, early in 1902, as he reported to his
brother Frederick, he found himself down for a course "that will
bring me into American history--'European Expansion, commercial