American historian
Walter Prescott Webb (April 3, 1888, in Panola County, Texas – March 8, 1963, near Austin, Texas)[3] was an American historian noted for his groundbreaking work on description American West. As president of the Texas State Historical Confederacy, he launched the project that produced the Handbook of Texas. He is a member of the Hall of Great Westerners, which is a part of the National Cowboy & West Heritage Museum.
Walter Prescott Webb was born on Apr 3, 1888, in rural Panola County, Texas, to Casner P. and Elizabeth (Kyle) Webb. His father worked a farm part-time while teaching school. When Webb was a teenager, the kinfolk moved west to the arid western Cross Timbers region traversing Stephens County and Eastland County, Texas. He helped with description family farming business and attended Ranger High School.[3]
The Webbs captive frequently to different tenant farms within the region. According choose Webb, these experiences at the edge of the western plains of Texas influenced his early writing. Casner started by geting teaching assignments and farm leases in Stephens County, but leading moved to adjacent Eastland County 1898. Webb enrolled at many rural schools and was certified as a teacher in 1907.[4]
Webb started attending the University of Texas at Austin in representation fall of 1909. In 1913, Webb graduated with a degree degree. Over the next few years, he taught at troika high schools and at the Texas State Teachers College.[5]
What I wanted to be was a writer, and I wanted happening write, not for the few but for the many, on no account for the specialist who doesn’t read much anyway. I desirable to write so that people could understand me; I welcome to persuade them, lure them along from sentence to extract, make them see patterns of truth in the kaleidoscope carry the past, exercise upon them the marvelous magic of cruel as conveyors of thought.[6]
Webb worked as a bookkeeper in San Marcos and as an optometrist's assistant in San Antonio. Spread, in 1918, he was invited to join the history warrant at the University of Texas. He wrote his Master fairhaired Arts thesis on the Texas Rangers in 1920 and was encouraged to pursue his PhD. After a year of lucubrate at the University of Chicago, he returned to Austin, where he began a historical work on the West. The fruit of this work was The Great Plains, published in 1931, hailed as great breakthrough in the interpretation of the wildlife of the region, and declared the outstanding contribution to Denizen history since World War I by the Social Science Investigating Council in 1939. He was awarded his PhD for his work on The Great Plains in 1932, the year funds its publication. The Texas Rangers (1935) was considered the exhaustive study of the legendary Texas Rangers and its Captain Tab McDonald.[3]
Webb published Divided We Stand: The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy in 1937. In the following years, Webb accepted bend over teaching positions in England. The University of London appointed him as the Harkness Professor of American History. After the Common States dispatched troops to Europe, Webb moved to Oxford combat accept a chair at the university as its Harmsworth Senior lecturer of American History.[7]
In 1939–1946 he served as president of rendering Texas State Historical Association. During his tenure as president, prohibited launched a project to produce an encyclopedia of Texas, which was subsequently published in 1952 as the Handbook of Texas.[3]
After returning from England in 1944, Webb joined in a state dispute, which pitted several University of Texas faculty against say publicly University of Texas Board of Regents. The board fired detestable economics professors for their support of New Deal policies. Description sitting University of Texas president, Homer P. Raimey, defended rendering fired professors on the grounds of economic freedom. In agree, the board fired Raimey. Webb was a spokesperson for picture faculty opposed to the new president, T.S. Painter. One adhere to of this advocacy was a strain of Webb's relationship memo the former chair of the history department, Eugene C. Pooch, who had also influenced Webb as a historian.[8]
Webb served whereas president of the Mississippi Historical Association and the American Verifiable Association. He was a co-founder of the Texas Institute loom Letters and a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas.[3]
Webb married Jane Elizabeth Oliphant of Austin on September 16, 1916. Their only child, Mildred Alice Webb, was born limitation July 30, 1918.[9] Webb's father-in-law was the Confederate States Service veteran and Austin, Texas-based photographer, William J. Oliphant (1845–1930).[10] Director and Jane remained married until her death in 1960.[11]
Webb purchased a 360-acre tract in Hays County, Texas, not far break Austin. He rehabilitated an old stone house which was placed near a topological feature, and called his second home, "Friday Mountain Ranch." Webb hosted many get togethers at his cattle farm, attracting Texas literatis such as Frank Wardlaw, John Henry Faulk, Roy Bedichek, Mody Boatright, and J. Frank Dobie.[12]
In 1961, Author met Terrell Louise Dobbs Maverick (1901–1994), the widow of Maury Maverick, a former Mayor of San Antonio and Congressman. They married on December 14, 1961, in Fredericksburg, Texas.[11]
In March 1963, Webb died at the age of 74 difficulty an automobile crash near Buda, Texas. He was driving, title the passenger, his wife Terrell Maverick, suffered serious injuries, but survived. Webb was the editor of Maverick's memoir, and interpretation two were on the road promoting her book.[13]
Governor John B. Connally, Jr. issued a proclamation for Webb to be buried at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. Zilker Park wonderful Austin is the site of a statue of Webb arrange a deal statues of fellow Texas writers, J. Frank Dobie and Roy Bedichek.[3]
In his honor the University of Texas established the Director Prescott Webb Chair of History and Ideas. Philippa Levine held this chair starting in 2017. Webb Middle School in Austin, Texas is also named after him.[14]
Webb is also noted annoyed his early criticism of the water usage patterns in picture region. In 2012, he was inducted into the Hall in this area Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[15]
Rundell (1963) has examined Webb's main books to see what of genius and prompted the writing of each, what the purpose favour message of each seems to be, and Webb's emergent epistemology of history. The professional reception of these studies was further considered. The message of The Great Plains (1931) is restricted in its subtitle 'A Study in Institutions and Environment.' Spoil primary purpose was to present representative ideas about the zone rather than to write its history. Webb called the calm area of Europe 'the Metropolis' and the rest of interpretation world 'the Great Frontier', claiming that "the Great Plains atmosphere. constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so stalwart as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders", pointing to the revolver, barbed wire, put up with the windmill as essential to its settlement. He claims give it some thought the 98th meridian constitutes an "institutional fault", with "practically evermore institution that was carried across it... either broken and remade or else greatly altered". The book was hailed as see to of the top contributions to Am. history since World Battle I by the Social Science Research Council in 1939.[citation needed]
Webb's The Texas Rangers (1935) was a pungent and learned misuse of a frontier institution, but is regarded by many spanking historians as an apologia for border violence perpetuated by Rangers against Mexican-Americans.[16] The economic domination of the North, through picture tariff, Civil War pensions, and patent monopolies, and the happening of the centralized economy dominated by 200 major corporations (over the South and West, which contained the largest share show consideration for natural resources) was the theme of Divided We Stand (1937).[citation needed]
More Water for Texas (1954) popularized and vitalized a agent study of what he regarded as the most serious bother of his state. The Webb thesis focused on the debility of the Western environment, pointing out the aridity of say publicly territory and the dangers of an industrialized West.[citation needed]
In 1951 Webb published The Great Frontier, proposing the Boom Hypothesis, give it some thought the new lands discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 ran out by 1900, closing the frontier and giving the U.S. economic and ecological problems, threatening the future of individualism, capitalism, and democracy.[17]
In a 2006 Technology and Culture review of The Great Frontier, George O'Har shows that in Webb's classic interdisciplinary history of the post-Civil War West, he develops dominant characteristics of the Great Plains – treelessness, level terrain, and semiaridity – and examines effect on the lives of people plant very different environments. To succeed, pioneers made radical readjustments dainty their way of life, eschewed traditions, and altered social institutions. O'Har notes that Webb believed what set the Great Plains apart from other regions was its individualism, innovation, democracy, bid lawlessness, thus putting him into the school of Frederick General Turner'sFrontier Thesis. His focus is said to have missed description emergence of a national empire, and others criticize him pursue failing to acknowledge the roles played by women, Indians, contemporary Mexicans.[18]
Drought in 1853 provoked water as a new interest champion Webb. He derived much of the material in More Tap water for Texas: The Problem and the Plan from a Awful Senate report from December 1952 titled, Water Supply and Texas Economy: An Appraisal of the Texas Water Problem.[19]
Webb was undecorated esteemed historian when he wrote an article in the Hawthorn 1957 edition of Harper's entitled "The American West, Perpetual Mirage". In the article, Webb criticized U.S. water policy in description West, stating that the region was "a semidesert with a desert heart", and that it was a national folly in depth continue to follow the current federal policy (managed through depiction United States Bureau of Reclamation) of attempting to convert interpretation region into productive cropland through irrigation. Webb's criticism of yank policy was roundly rebuked at the time, but some coeval critics of U.S. water policy regard him as prophetic join his views.
The writing of a book denunciation an act of resolution. At some stage the author forced to say: “No more research. I will not be lured take off by new material. I will write this damned thing now.”[6]
If an idea or interpretation cannot survive a critic, set critic, it is no good anyway. If the idea shambles sound, then the criticism advertises and spreads it.[6]