Imagining Texas PreRevolutionary Texas Newspapers 18291836 - Southwestern Studies Author:Carol Lea Clark Texas--big, rugged, independent, rebellious--few states evoke such immediate reactions with the mere mention of their names. Texas--gun-toting, maverick-spirited, patriotic. But why did those images become part of the legend that surrounds Texas and how did the word spread? Between 1821 and 1836, Texas belonged to the state of Coahuila and Tex... more »as, Mexico; fought for independence from Mexico; established itself as an independent country; and became the twenty-eighth state of the United States of America. In the middle of this turbulent period, Godwin Brown Cotton established the first permanent press in Texas in 1829. The Texas Gazette was a largely promotional press used to communicate Stephen F. Austin's reports of the status of Texas to the Mexican government, to recruit new settlers, and to provide news and entertainment to the people of Texas. Nine days after the first shot of the Texas Revolution was fired in October 1835, the "unsinkable" Telegraph and Texas Register went to print. Established with the intention to promote the "accumulation of wealth and consequent aggrandizement of the country," the paper quickly became the news source for the events of the revolution. Contained in these early newspapers are the images that continue to define our perception of Texas. Author Carol Lea Clark delves into how the settlers--fragmented, independent, competitive--and the publishers of the papers "wrote Texas" into existence. Read the original "tall tales," accounts of life on the "highly favored . . . earth, where the God of nature has scattered choicest blessings," as well as news of the surrender of the Spanish army in Mexico and the seeds of the revolution through the introduction of Mexican troops into Texas. This is the birth of mythic Texas.« less