The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941 Page: 14
546 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Major Fulton found Mr. Claude Hardwicke, a bedridden
invalid, in Independence, Missouri. And who was he? The
grand-nephew of Gregg. Did he have these papers? He did.
When Claude Hardwicke was a boy, he used to climb up to
the attic of his family's home in Independence and take from
an old trunk some little bound books and there he would read
in fascination about life on the Western prairies, in the words
of the man who has best of all described it.
How did these papers reach the Hardwicke family? John
Gregg, the brother of Josiah, gave them to his brother-in-law,
and they had remained in the family ever since.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Claude Hardwicke placed the highest
historical value on the papers, and American history is their
debtor for so carefully keeping them. They permitted Major
Fulton to examine the papers, and there, sure enough, was
part of Commerce of the Prairies in the immediate, vivid, on-
the-spot entries of the diaries. And there, too, polished, orderly,
corrected, was the series of little bound books entitled MSS.
2, 3, 4, and 5, to which John Gregg evidently gave the title
Rovings Abroad. It is a completed full-length book, and it
carries Gregg from September 1846 to August 1849, and de-
scribes what he did and saw and learned about the Republics
of Mexico and Texas. In his own words, he said of this MS.
that "he expected to publish within a year."
Claude Hardwicke died shortly after Major Fulton first met
him. Mrs. Hardwicke then moved to Arizona and saw the
manuscripts. True to the charge she inherited, she kept the
papers safely and with quiet persistence worked toward the
day when they might be competently put before the world.
In the meantime, Major Fulton went ahead and followed every
other trail of Gregg material that he could find, and unearthed
letters and articles from old newspaper files in Louisville, Van
Buren, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Liberty, St. Louis, and
Columbia, Missouri.
Major Fulton then asked Mrs. Hardwicke to permit the
Gregg material to be published. Through several years the
work of copying the manuscripts has gone on, and Mrs. Hard-
wicke has cooperated generously, and always with the idea
foremost that more important than pecuniary return or per-
sonal profit, the integrity of that unassuming man who
wrote history one hundred years ago be safeguarded, and14
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941, periodical, 1941; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146052/m1/18/?rotate=90: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.