Tamers of the Texas Frontier

Name: Tamers of the Texas Frontier
Author: C. Herndon Williams

In the 1820s, Texas was a wilderness. Settlers thought it was uninhabited although rich with wild game. But many Native American tribes lived in Texas and were at war with the Spanish in Mexico. Mexico ignored Texas and did not try to inhabit this wilderness. Finally, in the late 1820s and early 1830s Stephen F. Austin was allowed to bring in three hundred Anglo settlers and Texas began to be civilized. But to start there was only one town, no roads, no bridges, no planted fields. Texas was starting from ground zero but started fast. They tamed the wilderness and fought the Indians. They got their independence from Mexico and became a Republic, soon a U S state. They established a stable government similar to the one in the US and developed the infrastructure for business and international commerce. In less than eighty years Texas had tamed the wild frontier and became a modern state in the United States. C. Herndon Williams has found forty-two stories that chart this progress.

C. Herndon Williams

Calvit Herndon Williams Jr. is a native Texan from Houston. His ancestors have deep roots in Texas from the 1830s colonial period: Alexander Calvit, John Hunter Herndon and Samuel May Williams. The author has a PhD in chemistry and worked as an environmental chemist, retiring in 2004. Then he began writing about stories he found in Texas history. He has two books of nonfiction by The History Press and a book of fiction about the evolution of dogs, self-published by Archway. This will be his third book with The History Press.