Recollections of Other Days

Recollections Of Other Days is a compilation of memoirs of early settlers of Corpus Christi and the Nueces Valley of South Texas. The great value of their accounts, both written down and told-to, lies in the fact that they lived through the times they recalled. Some had first-hand knowledge of Corpus Christi in the 1850s when it was a struggling frontier outpost. Robert and William Adams tended their flocks in the early years of the great sheep industry of South Texas. Anna Moore Schwien, daughter of a slave, Andrew Anderson, son of a bay pilot, and Eli Merriman, a doctor’s son, shed light on what it was like during the dark times of the Civil War. Thomas Noakes wrote about the famous Noakes Raid of 1875 while he retained a vivid memory of the sight of his burning store. E. H. Caldwell, W. S. Rankin, Annie Marie Kelly, Mrs. Delmas Givens, and Roy Terrell provide unique accounts of Corpus Christi at the end of the 19th Century and early years of the 20th Century. Ruth Dodson and J. Frank Dobie offer fascinating pictures of their own ranch lives in the valley watered by the Nueces River. Louis Rawalt describes the long white island where he came to die but found a new life. They bore the heat and burden and violence of the frontier. They endured hard times. Their legacy is the Texas we know today. Their stories are part of our history. And part of ourselves.