History of Texas: From Its Discovery and Settlement, with a Description of Its Principal Cities and Counties, and the Agricultural, Mineral, and Material Resources of the State

J. M. Morphis

United States publishing Company, 1875 - Texas - 591 pages

What people are saying

User Review -

If anyone has any interest in the history of Texas, at all, you will love this book! You will shed tears, if you know about the settlement and growth of Texas. It is a wonderful book--written long long ago, when Texas was, indeed, a wilderness. Morphis never goes for the thrill. He does not make issue out of the dreadful Reconstruction that lasted so long...the reign of terror the people of northeast Texas lived under, with Martial Law under the Federal Military He writes a true "history of Texas, itself, it's cities and their growth, without the drama.
My area of study is northeast Texas concerns a terrible situation that happened almost four years after the war was over, in an era of profound peace and growth in Marion Co, Texas. Mr. Morphis...the ONLY writer I have EVER found, and my research shows a Bibliography of over one hundred entries, writes the simple facts that the beautiful city has been built more beautiful than ever! And leaves us with a good feeling...
[The sixth city of Texas, numbering more than 8,000 inhabitants, is Jefferson, situated on Cypress Bayou, at the head of navigation. Jefferson, since the war, was almost entirely burned, but has been rebuilt with more substantial and elegant structures—more than 150 new brick stores have been erected in the place of the wooden ones consumed by the fire.]
When most writer today want to avoid the fact that a carpet bagger from the northeast was having innocent freedmen burn the great city of Jeffereson to the ground, Mr. Morphis, in 1875, only six years later, wrote the facts. For that, he rises high on the list of Texas historians. All that with quotations from Shakespeare, other poets, and quaint ads for sewing machines. This book covers everything about the growth of civilization in Texas, the cities and their successes.
You will love it and it is a quick read!
Lue J Allred
to Jefferson, TX 1860 

Popular passages

Page 586 - Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently : for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Page 323 - With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances ; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and...

Page 586 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature : for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Page vi - Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Page 586 - ... accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Page viii - With tears of thoughtful gratitude. My thoughts are with the Dead; with them I live in long-past years, Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears, And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with an humble mind. My hopes are with the Dead; anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all Futurity; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust.

Page vii - From wandering on a foreign strand ? If such there breathe, go mark him well : For him no minstrel raptures swell ; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ; Despite those titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Page 161 - Anna, who, having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.

Page 159 - ... minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants: When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms, themselves, of the constitution discontinued; and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons; and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet : When,...

Page 262 - I have pass'da miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days : So full of dismal terror was the time.

Bibliographic information

• Title: History of Texas: From Its Discovery and Settlement, with a Description of Its Principal Cities and Counties, and the Agricultural, Mineral, and Material Resources of the State; American County Histories - TX only; Making of America
• Author: J. M. Morphis
• Publisher: United States publishing Company, 1875
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Feb 17, 2006
• Length: 591 pages