the University of Texas
at Arlington Libraries
Vol. XIV * No. 2 * Fall 2000
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Special Collections Division the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Vol. XIV * No. 2 * Fall 2000 |
The culmination of several months’ work by archival students has
resulted in descriptive finding aids for three diverse collections preserved in the
Special Collections Division: the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Records, the Joe
O. Crawley Family Papers, and the University of Texas at Arlington Women’s Center
Records. Information about each collection was compiled from a variety of sources, and a
summary of the content and organizational structure is provided in each guide. Completion
of the processing of our collections makes them easier to use and provides the staff with
a valuable resource to assist users. Unprocessed collections, however, are almost always
available for research. Exceptions include materials restricted by the donor, materials
that require repair or preservation treatment, or extremely large collections for which
there is no comprehensive inventory.
If any of the following collections would aid your current research, please request the finding aid by name and number when you visit the library. The finding aids described here and in all future articles are available on the Internet, linked to the Web version of The Compass Rose from the Special Collections Division homepage at http://www2.uta.edu/library/SpecColl/
For those without internet access, a photocopy of any finding aid in Special Collections may be requested by mail or telephone for a small photocopy and mailing fee. Please contact:
Shirley Rodnitzky, Archivist
UTA Libraries, Special Collections Division
Box 19497
Arlington, TX 76019-0497
Metro: 817-272-3393; Fax 817-272-7512
E-mail: rodnitzky@uta.edu
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Records (AR425), 18 boxes (7.2 linear ft.)
 A travel brochure for the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway's route to Arizona. |
The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company (AT&SF) was founded by Cyrus K. Holiday in Kansas in 1859. By 1888, the railroad stretched from Chicago to the West Coast and was seeking to tap Texas and Gulf Coast markets. To reach these markets the AT&SF first purchased the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway (GC&SF) in 1886. The AT&SF then purchased other railroads that were operated under the authority of the GC&SF. The ten railroads that comprise these records are: Beaumont Wharf and Terminal Company; Cane Belt Railroad; Concho, San Saba and Llano Valley Railroad; Gulf and Interstate Railway; Gulf, Beaumont and Great Northern Railroad; Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Railway; Jasper and Eastern Railroad; Port Bolivar Iron Ore Railroad; Texas and Gulf Railway; and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway.
The AT&SF records contain more than 200 volumes of field notebooks, logbooks, and reports, 1889-1991, bulk 1889-1930, 1965-1979. The collection contains field notebooks kept by engineers and maintenance workers during the construction and maintenance of railroads primarily in the Galveston District and East Texas beginning with chaining notes for lines in 1889. The notebooks also document depot construction, industries along the tracks, fences, telegraph and telephone lines, and grade construction. In addition to the logbooks are town plats, encroachments with property owners’ names, and diagrams of tracks. The collection contains an Interstate Commerce Commission Division of Valuation for Beaumont, 1917, valuation records for the majority of the railroads, and six volumes of side track records for the 1970s. Chaining and log records are for the cities of Beaumont, Brownwood, Cleburne, Houston, and Temple in Texas, as well as Oakdale, Louisiana, to mention but a few. Blueprints of a bridge and its ravine crossing are also included.
 Page from an AT&SF filed notebook showing a commissary and office at Tally, Texas, and a railroad bridge over the Sabine River marking the boundary of Gregg and Harrison Counties. |
Station surveys give evidence of Jim Crow laws as illustrated in the labeling of waiting rooms for whites and African Americans, as well as notations of landowners’ race on encroachments and town plats. Other racial attitudes are noted in the description of a "Mexican type bunkhouse."
Researchers and railroad historians will find this collection of interest not only for the information it contains about the building of the AT&SF railroad company in Southeast Texas, but for the social history it reveals in the town plat maps and sketches of buildings and other structures that were documented during the planning of the railway routes.
Joe O. Crawley Family Papers (GA219-221, OS360), 4 boxes (1.5 linear ft.)
Joseph Oakely Crawley, 1870-1938, was an Arlington, Texas, builder who worked for contractor Frank Thomas, constructing and remodeling some of Arlington’s early businesses and homes, including some of the first structures on the campus of Arlington College and Carlisle Military Academy, now the University of Texas at Arlington. Crawley became grounds superintendent for North Texas Agricultural College (NTAC) in 1924 and remained there until his death in 1938. He was also an elected street commissioner and fire chief of the volunteer fire department. Crawley married Sarah Elizabeth Thomas. She was a Red Cross worker during both world wars. After her husband’s death, she operated a boarding house for students of NTAC in her home on Pecan Street. The Crawley’s had three children: Cecil and Jim Crawley and Margaret Crawley Christopher.
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The personal and business papers of the Crawley family include correspondence, financial documents, certificates, photographs, architectural plans, newspaper clippings, printed material, and ephemera, 1894-1982. Architectural plans and financial records partially document Joe Crawley’s activities as an Arlington builder. A variety of materials document the family’s civic activities and the development of Arlington in the first half of the twentieth century. The majority of the correspondence is to Elizabeth Crawley during World War II from the cadets who boarded with her while attending NTAC. Margaret Crawley Christopher’s correspondence is primarily about Arlington High School reunions. Advertising items from early Arlington businesses, a Red Cross manual, and items related to travel, such as railroad time tables, travel brochures, and road maps of the southwest, 1914-1937, document the varied interests of the family. A few early photographs of Arlington are included along with memorabilia of Arlington High School, Grubbs Vocational College, and NTAC, ca. 1912-1982.
The Joe O. Crawley Family Papers provide a unique, social history of the formative years of the city and the university. Researchers of World War II will find many interesting details and insights in the letters of former NTAC cadets who served overseas with the armed forces.
University of Texas at Arlington. Women’s Center Records (AR426, OS353), 12 boxes (4.5 linear ft.)
 Jeanne Ford (left) and Wendell Nedderman (center) accept a donation to help underwrite WomanFair in 1980. |
The UTA Women’s Center was comprised of three administratively separate organizations: the Center for Women’s Studies, the Displaced Homemakers Center, and the Women’s Center. The Women’s Center evolved from the Center for Women’s Studies, sanctioned in 1974, to meet the particular needs and interests of women and to increase awareness of women’s issues on the UTA campus and in the surrounding community. During its years of operation, the center participated in the activities of the National Women’s Studies Association, the South Central Women’s Studies Association, and the Women’s Information and Service Exchange. It was a multi-purpose facility providing services in continuing education, counseling, conferences, job placement, referral, training, and workshops.
Jeanne Ford, UTA associate professor of English, directed the center until 1979, when the university closed both the Women’s Center and the Displaced Homemakers Center. During her directorship she was responsible for founding the Women’s Information and Service Exchange (W.I.S.E.), which aided in the exchange of information and services available to women at other Metroplex colleges and universities. The Center for Women’s Studies remained, however, and continued to provide services for women and hold conferences, seminars, and workshops. In the 1980s, the Center for Women’s Studies merged with the Women and Work Research and Resource Center, active since 1985, to form the Women and Minority Research and Resource Center under the directorship of history associate professor Kathleen Underwood. In 1991, a separate Women’s Studies Program was established offering an undergraduate minor in Women’s Studies and is currently under the directorship of Beth Anne Shelton, professor of sociology.
The UTA Women’s Center Records include correspondence, budgets, mailing lists, photographs, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, literary works, audiotapes, printed materials, and posters, 1974-1989, bulk 1974-1984. The records trace the history of women’s studies, activities, and facilities on campus during the 1970s and 1980s. The materials document the commitment and struggle of women in academe to further women’s causes and make women’s issues a priority. Subject files containing articles and conference materials, 1974-1987, reveal national activities of the women’s movement. A third of the collection concerns the planning and execution of WomanFair 1980 at UTA, which was the second annual convention of the South Central Women’s Studies Association.
Researchers of women’s history, and in particular the women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s, will find this collection an excellent source.
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