"Professor Bolton is acknowledged to be an authority on the southwest...he is the author of a book 'With the Makers of Texas.'" -San Francisco Call, Oct. 21, 1912
"'With the Makers of Texas,' by Bolton and Barker, known to thousands of Texas school children, past and present." -The Monitor (McAllen, Texas), Nov. 17, 1938
"Excellent... has a human interest and appeal...of varied interest and real merit...should become a standard supplementary reader and a widely accepted and useful source book." -The University of Texas Record, 1906

Used as standard school textbook for the history of Texas during the first half of the 19th century, would Bolton and Barker's "With the Makers of Texas" make an excellent home-schooling resource?

First published in 1904, "With the Makers of Texas" is a Texas contribution to the modern historical means of teaching local history written by famous Texas historian Herbert Eugene Bolton, PH.D. along with Eugene C. Barker, M.A.

According to Bolton, "With the Makers of Texas" may serve either as a reader or to supplement the history text. To fit it for a reader, selection has been made of pieces with literary merit and of varied character. And yet, they possess, withal, a unity and localization of interest which few ordinary readers can claim.

The compilers have gathered copiously from every period of the State's history, and those who helped to make Texas what it is are allowed to tell in their own words of the hardships and dangers, triumphs and pleasures, of the life they lived.

The selections have been arranged in six groups, corresponding with the large periods in Texas History:

I. The Spanish and French
II. The Filibusters
III. Anglo-American Colonization
IV. The Revolution
V. The Republic
VI. The State

The book opens with the period of the Spanish and French explorations and settlements in Texas. This is a shadowy period to most lay minds, but an alluring one by reason of the dim light in which men of arms and dreamers of empire move and missionaries advance the cause of Christianity. The documents selected to illustrate this period are drawn from the most authoritative sources. Some of them have not appeared before in translation, and many of them are made for the first time easily accessible. Their representative selection is a useful supplement to the part of Texas histories covering this period, and should define loose ideas as to the presence and purpose, the failures and accomplishments of the French and Spanish upon this soil.

Upon the stage of the military and mission rule of the Spanish, the Anglo-American is introduced as a filibuster, and the chronicle becomes full and fast with great conceptions and bold deeds. The Anglo-American becomes successively a colonist, a fighting patriot, the citizen of an independent Republic, and a citizen of a State. The documents are well selected to unfold this drama of the birth and progress of a State. In them may be read the character and purpose of the Texas pioneers, and throughout all there is breathed the spirit of noble sacrifice, and those Anglo-Saxon characteristics of love of home and liberty which are given illustrious exemplification in real characters.

About the authors:

Herbert Eugene Bolton (1870 –1953) was an American historian at the University of Texas who pioneered the study of the Spanish-American borderlands and was a prominent authority on Spanish American history. He originated what became known as the Bolton Theory of the history of the Americas which holds that it is impossible to study the history of the United States in isolation from the histories of other American nations, and wrote or co-authored 94 works.

Eugene C. Barker, M.A. (1874 –1956) was an Instructor in History at the University of Texas where he was a colleague of Bolton.

Other books by Bolton include:

• The Colonization of North America: 1492-1783
• Spanish Exploration in Texas
• The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771
• Coronado; Knight of Pueblos and Plains
• New Light on Manuel Lisa and the Spanish Fur Trade