Salado It's (sic) History and People by Felda Davis Shanklin

The author must have been about 80 years old when this book was published.  Her foreword to the book is dated 1960 from Bellaire, Texas.  Judging from her high school graduation date of 1898, I’m figuring she was born in 1880 or thereabouts.  The book is about 130 pages and the type looks like old Corona typewriter font.   There are some nice, dusty black and white photos included at the end of the book.  Felda Davis Shanklin writes with obvious affection about her hometown of Salado and she has nicely documented her place in history with this book. 

This book does have some good history in it, but it’s more of a personal memoir that gives insight into life in Central Texas around the turn of the century.  Mrs. Shanklin reminisces about her many neighbors, her school days, her teaching career and her marriage to John Shanklin who worked for Ingenio Sugar Company in Mexico where they lived until 1905.  With complete objectivity she recounts that, in 1925, her husband was kidnapped by “bandits” while working for the Potrero Sugar Company in Vera Cruz, Mexico.  Ransom was paid and “John was released.”  That’s what she writes! Quite the life.  

She praises Salado as a center of transportation, education and good living.  She writes fondly about The Stage Coach Inn which dates back to 1852 and was host to the likes of Generals Sam Houston and Robert E. Lee. (The Inn sits there still today, having been recently renovated.)  

As for education, Salado College was founded in 1860 with fanfare: “Vistors came from as far away as Waco and Austin and hospitable Salado citizens served a barbecue...families soon moved to Salado to educate their children..there were over 300 [students], including the primary grades.”  The college (which is more of a general term for school past the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic) eventually closed somewhere around 1890 but was followed by the Thomas Arnold High School from which our author graduated in 1898!  The author lists by first and last name the graduating classes from the year 1893 to 1907, average class size about 10 students.   

The living is good in Salado because of the natural beauty of the area and because of the solid citizens like Felda Shanklin who lived there.  She dates Salado’s economic decline to the 1920’s but writes confidently that Salado “still has good public school (sic) and its wide-awake churches, …service stations, grocery stores, post office and its museum.”   That was 1960.  What about Salado today? 

Salado lies about 17 miles to the south of Harker Heights, the town where we live in Texas, and has a population of roughly 3,000.  When we moved here in 2015 we were told that Salado was an artist community, up-and-coming.  We first visited the town on a hot afternoon in August and went to an art show.  There was pretty much nobody there.  On another occasion, we went to Salado and most every shop was closed.  Nobody was on the streets.  On yet another occasion we decided to stroll the sculpture garden.  Nothing there.  

Of course, it’s all a matter of getting to “know the territory” as the song goes.  And, once we did that, we were better able to appreciate Salado.  Shops are open but only sometimes.  Restaurants are open but only on certain days. (There are some good ones, like Barton House.)  There is a glass-blowing studio, a brewery that now seems to have regular hours and the best thing we’ve discovered about Salado is the creek.  Salado Creek has proven the perfect place to spend hot Texas afternoons with the entire family.  

Salado Creek, August 2021

Salado is low-key and maybe ambivalent about its future.  There are now—as of August 2021--sidewalks along Main Street.  Previously, one shared the gravelly, dirt shoulder of the street with the  cars.  There are signs that say Open more often than they say Closed.  The jury is still out on whether or not Salado will re-emerge with the vitality it had pre-1920.   

One of the reasons I like this book is because it gives me a perspective of just how rural Texas was and still is.  Mrs. Shanklin writes that in 1896 her sister, Ola, got her first teaching job near Nolanville, “in plain sight of Comanche Gap.”  Now, Nolanville is more or less where I live and Comanche Gap is about a mile away as the crow flies.  Mrs. Shanklin writes that it was “beautiful” around Nolanville but “lonely.”  For Mrs. Shanklin, Salado was home, the center of her universe.  For her and her sister, our neck of the woods was the hinterlands! Here in Harker Heights, Texas we really are in the middle of nowhere! 

Four Books About Texas

 

The German Texans by Glen E. Lich is what I would call a monograph.  It is part of a series put out by the Institute of Texan Cultures of the University of Texas.  It is not excessively scholarly, but tells the story of the German immigrants in the Texas Hill Country with facts and figures and pictures, but never enough maps.  In fact there are none.  Still, this book was very good reading for understanding the three phases of German immigration and the German history of Fredericksburg, Kerrville, New Braunfels and the many other towns and areas of German settlement in Texas.

German Seed in Texas Soil by Terry G. Jordan

This book, which does have maps and very good ones, is Mr. Jordan’s Phd dissertation in Geography.  I can’t claim to having read it word for word but I did go through it page by page;  it’s got to be one of the most readable dissertations to be found anywhere.  Made me want to study geography.  Really!  

The author gives a fairly detailed account of German immigration patterns in Texas to introduce his thesis question which is how did the German immigrant farmers differ from their Anglo-American counterparts.  In general, the author shows that many of the presumed differences (German dairy production exceeded Anglo, greater German diversity in vegetable gardens, Germans were abolitionists and Unionists) don’t hold up under examination.  A few differences do come to mind: the Germans initially had much smaller farms than Anglos, they were more often landowners than tenants, they tended not to use slave labor and they adapted to southern American agricultural ways to a greater degree than they preserved their European ways.  That includes their architecture and lay-out for their farms.  They were industrious and marketed their produce but they introduced no new plants or animals (except greater use of the mule!) into American agriculture.  

There are numerous charts to support these various claims. Mr. Jordan’s descriptions of the East Texas area where Germans settled as well their settlements west and north of San Antonio is good reading and enhances and amplifies the other three books mentioned here.  Lastly, his Conclusion had a thought-provoking discussion of cultural rebound or artificial assimilation whereby a group initially conforms to a new environment out of necessity or expediency and then later incorporates or reverts to its own cultural ways. 

De Brett’s Texas Peerage by Hugh Best (1983) 

Apparently, De Brett’s Peerage and Baronetage has been around for ages.  As the Foreword to this book explains, it is “a directory of the titled patricians of the United Kingdom. . . .”   How funny that this first foray of the Debrett directory into the nabobs of American society would be a foray into the world of Texas nabobs.  The editors found Texas a logical choice because Texas is free and independent and “has never been conquered.”  I guess. 

This book often reads like Page 6 or People magazine though the writing is far better and the celebrity gossip content is more than balanced by a good amount of history and actual facts.  Here, one encounters the Kings, the Klebergs, the Hoggs as well as lesser lights like the Schlumberger de Menils, the Connallys and the Kempners.  There is a chapter devoted to real heroic Texans like Crockett, Bowie and Travis as well as profiles of some of the original 300 settlers of Texas and other historical figures.  It’s a good book, one you can pick up at leisure and not feel you’ve lost your place. 

People and Places in the Texas Past by June Rayfield Welch (1974) 

This is a history coffee-table book with 72 entries on the people and places that have had a significant place in Texas history.  The author takes us from pre-historic Indian pictographs to 20^th century Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn who died in 1961.  There are nice large black and white photographs with accompanying entries of about 800-1200 words.  It’s all well-written and highly readable, overall an enjoyable book to which I would expect to return again and again.  Like the Debrett book, it can be picked up at whim and you can start reading at the middle, end or beginning of the book as you wish.  Each entry is a separate topic.