Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - January - 2010 Issue
Texas and the Old West from Kenston Rare Books
Correcting an error in the first edition, first issue of John Wesley Hardin's autobiography.
Item 182 is a circa 1909 land promotion from The Lakeview Fortune Builders of the City of San Antonio. This was to be a new development around Elemendorf Lake, outside the city, "where malaria and mosquitoes will be unknown to its residents." Mosquitoes weren't the only "undesirable" residents to be unknown to this community, as the brochure proclaims lots will be prohibited from being sold to "a negro or other undesirable residents, thus insuring choice environment." Today, Elmendorf Lake is located within San Antonio's expanded city limits. $375.
Item 113 is a rare item from one of the most tragic days in American history, the Austin Welcome Dinner. It is a package of material, in its original shipping sleeve, given to those who had purchased tickets for a Democratic Party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, on November 22, 1963. The featured speaker was to be President John F. Kennedy. After his visit to Dallas earlier in the day, Kennedy was to fly to Austin that evening for the fundraising dinner. The package includes a commemorative record album of three speeches he gave in Texas, along with his inaugural, a program for the dinner, and copies of the speeches he was to give in Dallas that day, and at the Austin dinner that evening. Kennedy had come to Texas to stop the fissure between the party's liberal and conservative wings, proclaiming in his planned Austin speech, "Texas and the Democratic Party have been linked in an indestructible alliance." Today, Democrats hold nary a single statewide office, the "indestructible alliance" long ago destroyed. $750.
You may reach Kenston Rare Books of Dallas at 214-526-7033 or ken.huddleston@sbcglobal.net.
