Austin Archives - Not Even Past

From Africa to Austin: Bondy Washington

Census records are invaluable historical documents, but they are frustratingly limited, especially when you try to use them to tell the stories of formerly enslaved people. One example is Bondy Washington, a woman likely trafficked from Africa into slavery who became a long-term Austin resident.

For the past three years, I have been working with Dr. Edmund T. Gordon to create demographic maps of Austin, Texas from 1880-1950. These maps were created with massive amounts of census data—over 372,000 people’s information was transcribed from thousands of scanned pages across seven decades. When we completed this large database, I calculated some other large aggregate figures, beginning with the 1880 census.

In 1880, 49.99 percent of Austin residents were born in Texas. In today’s terms, that would mean almost half a million people, but back in the late nineteenth century, this figure was less than six thousand or 5,481, to be precise. Digging deeper into the census figures, I found an intriguing data point—one. In 1880, one person in Austin was born in Africa. Her name was Bondy Washington, and she was a Black woman.

At first, I thought that this could be a transcription error. I checked the original document and saw that the person recording her information had in fact written “Africa” as her birthplace.

Bondy Washington in the 1880 Census

I also found Bondy in the 1900 Census. Again, Bondy’s birthplace is recorded as Africa.

Bondy Washington in the 1900 Census

Bondy wasn’t in my database again after 1900, but I became fascinated with her story and decided to dig deeper. The earliest record that I can confidently match to her dates from 1870. In this census, Bondy’s birthplace is recorded as “Congo R., Africa.” She is listed as living with a man named Frank, who, in other censuses, is recorded as her husband. Several city directories from 1880 to 1900 mention Frank, all associating him with the same address—821 E 11^th Street, in a neighborhood then known as Robertson’s Hill. It is safe to assume that Bondy also lived there and that her exclusion was probably related to her gender. City directories from 1903 and 1906 associate Bondy with the same address. Frank, who was left out of these documents, possibly passed away between 1900 and 1903.

Picture of original - Bondy Washington in the 1870s Census — *Bondy Washington in the 1870 Census*

I later found Travis County death certificate for a Black woman named “Bondig Washington.” Despite the error, I believe that this is likely the same person. While people provide their own information in the census and directories, someone else must record their death certificate. In this case, the (white) county clerk filled it out and recorded Bondy’s birthplace as Texas. In her death, her place of birth was erased.

Picture of original document - Bondy Washington's Death Certificate — *Bondy Washington’s Death Certificate*

Already, Bondy has a remarkable story: a Black woman born in Africa around 1850 was brought to Austin, TX and lived in the same place for more than thirty years. But what else can we know about her? Who was she before 1870, and who was she before emancipation?

Picture of original document - Bondy Washington's sale — The final record I found that mentions Bondy is a notice of sheriff’s sale in the Statesman. The house that she had lived in, at least since 1880, was being sold for $3.77. Sheriff’s Sale of Bondy Washington’s Property

It’s impossible to say what her life was like, but Bondy was likely trafficked to the United States from Congo as a child. She had enough memory of this to claim her birthplace as Africa on records she filled out personally.

Bondy’s African origins are especially puzzling when considered in the context of the legality of the slave trade. When the United States Constitution was written, its authors agreed to allow the trafficking of African slaves into the county until at least 1808. In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed into law a bill banning the practice starting the next year. Because Texas was not a part of the United States, and was rather a part of Mexican territory, it was not beholden to this rule. The Mexican government banned the importation of slaves into Texas in 1824. When Texas became a Republic, its constitution also banned the practice.

Image of Canoe for Transporting Slaves, Sierra Leone — *Section of Canoe for Transporting Slaves, Sierra Leone, 1840’s.*
Source: *Slave Voyages*

So, if Bondy was brought to Texas to be enslaved, she was brought illegally. Historians have written about the illegal slave trade in Texas in the republican period and thereafter. They have documented that the illegal slave trade continued through the 1850s, sometimes on ships purporting to import camels into the United States.

American politicians generated a scheme to allow for clandestine trafficking of Africans to the United States. They petitioned the United States War Department to allow the importation of camels for use in domestic combat. This gave large cargo ships travelling to West Africa a cover story—their large holds were for military camels, not slaves. The last speculated instance of this practice was in 1856.

Illegal trafficking continued during Bondy’s early years, and it is likely that this is how she came to the United States. We can’t know, though, how she was brought there—on a camel ship or otherwise. Rare is the slave ship that records the names of its passengers. Certainly, an illegal slave ship trafficking people to the United States in the 1850s didn’t leave such traces. Even if they did, who knows the name Bondy was given by her mother? Who knows if she changed it once she landed in Texas or had it changed for her?

Ship records weren’t the only ones that excluded people’s names. The 1860 slave census records the number of people an individual enslaved, but it completely omits their names. As such, it would be impossible to identify Bondy in the slave registers. However, there is one potential lead. Someone in the Austin area with the surname “Washington” enslaved, among many others, two people of the same ages that Bondy and Frank would have been in 1860. Since some people took the surnames of their enslavers upon emancipation, it is possible that these two people were Bondy and Frank.

Two images of selection of the 1860 Slave Census, showing two people of Frank and Bondy’s ages, owned by a man in Travis County named T. P. Washington. — *A selection of the 1860 Slave Census, showing two people of Frank and Bondy’s ages, owned by a man in Travis County named T. P. Washington.*

Because those collecting their information recorded them as property and not people, we don’t know the names of those two people, and we don’t know who they are.

A depiction of the house at 821 E 11th St (on the corner) in 1887 from the Augustus Koch map. — *A depiction of the house at 821 E 11^th St (on the corner) in 1887 from the Augustus Koch map.*

We do know some things. Bondy was from Africa, and she lived in Austin. Bondy and Frank probably built that house themselves, and they lived there for decades. They lived in a neighborhood that is today so utterly transformed by modernity, segregation, and gentrification.

A Google Streetview photo of the location of historic 821 E 11th St, Austin, Texas—just across the street from Franklin BBQ and the African American Cultural and Heritage Facility. — *A Google Streetview photo of the location of historic 821 E 11^th St, Austin, Texas—just across the street from Franklin BBQ and the African American Cultural and Heritage Facility.*

Bondy had no children, so no personal genealogical inquiries would have made her story known. Our project has the potential to find other people in Austin with unique stories. By looking at big data, we can find individuals with differences. However, there are still limitations to what we can know because of what was recorded in the past.

Amy Shreeve Bridges is a J.D. Candidate at Yale Law School and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. While pursuing her undergraduate degree in history, she completed digital humanities and urban geography research that focused on mapping the racial geography of historic Austin. Her research interests include historical GIS, segregation, and urban housing policies.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

References

“912 E 11^th Street,” Google Streetview, March 2024, https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2698205,-97.7309772,3a,75y,209.52h,104.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1syJa1RPhIgQNCmJL-o4CPKg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DyJa1RPhIgQNCmJL-o4CPKg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D209.52129397598353%26pitch%3D-14.140192174838944%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 168. Morrison & Foumy. 1881.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 239. Morrison & Foumy. 1887.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 258. Morrison & Foumy. 1891.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 288. Morrison & Foumy. 1893.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 297. Morrison & Foumy. 1895.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 273. Morrison & Foumy. 1903.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 285. Morrison & Foumy. 1906.

“Sherrif’s Sale,” Austin Statesman, March 16, 1909. https://www.newspapers.com/image/366290646

Barker, Eugene C. “The African Slave Trade in Texas.” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 6, no. 2 (1902): 145–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784929.

Koch, Augustus. Austin, State Capital of Texas. 1887. Lithograph, 28 x 41 in. Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

“Racial Mapping Austin,” Central Texas Retold, accessed June 19, 2024, https://ctxretold.org/black-communities/mapping-the-city/.

“Report of Death,” Travis County Death Certificates via FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9Y1H-SYKH?view=index), image 1490 of 3319.

U.S. Census Bureau. The Ninth Federal Census (1870); Census Place: Austin, Travis, Texas; Roll: M593_1606; Page: 297A.

U.S. Census Bureau. The Tenth Federal Census (1880); Census Place: Austin, Travis, Texas; Roll: 1329; Page: 262d; Enumeration District: 136.

U.S. Census Bureau. The Twelfth Federal Census (1900); Census Place: Austin Ward 8, Travis, Texas; Roll: 1673; Page: 3; Enumeration District: 0096

Slavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery

On the eve of the Civil War, an advertisement appeared in the Texas Almanac announcing the sale of five enslaved people at the Stringer’s Hotel.

“Negroes For Sale––I will offer for sale, in the city of Austin, before the Stringer’s Hotel, on the 1st day of January next, to the highest bidder, in Confederate or State Treasury Notes, the following lot of likely Negroes, to wit. Three Negro Girls and two Boys, ages ranging from 15 to 16 years. The title to said Negroes is indisputable” —The Texas Almanac, Austin December 27th, 1862

Image of the cover of The Texas Almanac for 1862 — via Portal for Texas History

This hotel was one of the many businesses in Austin using enslaved labor, a commonplace practice that extended to every part of Texas. However, urban slavery in Austin differed substantially from slavery on the vast plantations that stretched across Texas’ rural geography. Unlike rural planters, urban slaveholders were largely merchants, businessmen, tradesmen, artisans, and professionals. The urban status of these slaveholders in Austin meant that enslaved people performed a wide variety of tasks, making them highly mobile and multi-occupational. Austin property holders, proprietors, and city planners built enslaved labor not only into the city’s economy, but into its very physical space to meet local needs. This examination of the Stringer’s Hotel provides a brief window for looking into Austin’s history of slavery and perhaps the history of enslaved people in the urban context.

Close-up image of the 1885 Sanborn Maps of Austin showing the map's title and the eastern part of Austin — Sanborn Maps of Austin, 1885 (via Library of Congress)

Close-up image of the 1885 Sanborn Maps of Austin showing the blocks around the Avenue Hotel — Sanborn Maps of Austin, 1885 (via Library of Congress)

On September 3, 1850, Swante Magnus Swenson purchased a city lot in Austin. In 1854, he built the Swenson Building on Congress Avenue where the current Piedmont Hotel stands today. Inside the building, on the first floor, were a drug store, a general goods store, a hardware store, and a grocery store; a hotel, (named the Avenue Hotel but locally known as the Stringer’s Hotel) was located on the upper two levels of the building. The Travis County Deeds Records show that sometime later, Swenson leased the hotel to a John Stringer, giving the hotel its name “the Stringer’s Hotel.” An 1885 Austin city Sanborn map of the Swenson Building shows that Swenson had a room built for “servants” in the hotel portion of the building. There is no documentation detailing whether enslaved people stayed in that room since the Sanborn map is dated twenty years after the Civil War. However, an 1889 Sanborn map shows that Swenson had the Stringer’s Hotel remodeled to remove the room for “servants,” which suggests that enslaved people originally potentially stayed there, given that “servant” and “dependency” were variant terms used for “slave” in urban spaces. The National Register of Historic Places Inventory notes that businesses on Congress Avenue did not have the financial capacity to maintain, let alone remodel, their properties right after the Civil War. This explains the twenty-year delay to remove the said “servants” room, no longer utilized by enslaved people in the 1880s. Further evidence also shows that Swenson himself had strong ties to slavery in Texas.

S.M. Svensson (via Wikipedia)

S. M Swenson was born in Sweden and came to New York as an immigrant in 1836 at the age of twenty. A few years after his arrival, Swenson worked as a mercantile trader. Through his trade dealings in the south, he befriended a slaveholder by the name of George Long, who then hired Swenson to work at his newly relocated plantation in Texas. A year later, when Long died due to poor health, Swenson married his widow, who then too died of tuberculosis three years later. By 1843, Swenson became a full-scale slaveholder in Texas through inheriting his now-deceased wife’s plantation. In 1848, he enlarged his property holdings by purchasing the adjoining plantation and expanding his cotton crop. In 1850, along with purchasing 182 acres a few miles outside of Austin, he bought the lot on Congress Avenue and constructed the Swenson Building and inside, the Stringer’s Hotel.

There are no records that detail the lives of enslaved people at the Stringer’s Hotel but other sources show that slaveholders expected slaves to fill a variety of roles in running their establishments on Congress Avenue. In his book, a Journey Through Texas, Frederick Olmstead describes his encounter with an enslaved woman who was responsible for tending to the hotel’s patrons along with upkeep and building maintenance. These slaves were also responsible for running errands and transporting goods. Many slaves also lived and traveled to and from homes and communities that formed on the outskirts of town. Traveling to and from their labor obligations or social engagements in their free time illuminates the various networks of movement created by the enslaved. Hence, given their relative independence, expectations, and responsibilities, it is not impossible to imagine enslaved people taking on leading roles in running the Stringer’s Hotel and other establishments in Austin.

Black and white photograph of the Avenue Hotel — Avenue Hotel. Photograph, University of North Texas Libraries (via The Portal to Texas History)

The analysis of the Stringer’s Hotel through Sanborn maps and other qualitative sources illuminates the roles and occupations of enslaved people in Austin’s urban space. Unlike the enslaved people confined to the private domain of plantation estates, urban slaves worked in spaces with considerable mobility, meeting the needs of their owners and to fulfill their own social lives. Perhaps mapping the movement of enslaved people in this way, could allow for further interpretations of possible realities and lived experiences of enslaved people that archival texts obscure and make difficult to see.

Sources

“Negroes for Sale.” The Texas Almanac. December 27, 1862, 1 edition, sec. 34.
“Texas General Land Office Land Grant Database”, Digital Images, Texas General Land Office, Entry for Swenson, S M, Austin City Lots, Travis Co., TX, Patent no 429, vol.1
“Austin 1885 Sheet 5,” Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Map Collection, Perry-Castañeda Library, Austin, Texas.
Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey through Texas: or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989: 50;
Austin City Sanborn Map, 1885;
Bullock Hotel. Photograph, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, accessed December 3, 2019

Additional Readings

“Bullock House.” The Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association, June 12, 2010.
Gail Swenson. “S. M. Swenson and the Development of the SMS Ranches,” M.A. thesis, University of Texas, (1960).
Gage, Larry Jay. “The City of Austin on the Eve of the Civil War.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 63, no. 3 (1960).
Kenneth Hafertepe. “Urban Sites of Slavery in Antebellum Texas” in Slavery in the City, Edited by Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, University of Virginia Press. (2017)
Jason A. Gillmer. Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821-1871. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, (2017)

You might also like:
Documenting Slavery in East Texas: Transcripts from Monte Verdi
Slavery World Wide: Collected Works from Not Even Past
Love in the Time of Texas Slavery

From There to Here: Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

Map of Nigeria (via Wikimedia)

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

This Spotlight, this City

In my space and time of growth,
The long metallic snake of screeching hisses
And novel magical magnetic movement
Became a muse of songs and fantasies
Making the urge for voyage ineluctable

And from a tender age I fell for it
Paying with prizes of stigmatization as some alien
But as phoenix from fire and a reversing ram
The urge arose, heightened and strengthened
When I beheld the world reduced to print

History came as another huge impetus
Revealing creeds and tastes beyond imaginations
And so I saw this spotlight of glory and merit

I saw the promise of greater fulfillments
In this city reposing upon a hill
As Winthrop saw the promise of first freedom

Thus I set out to this spotlight, this city
Sailing across the Atlantic, but this time
Up in the sky, in a new model of the Arbella

Also in this series:
Julie Hardwick
Tatjana Lichtenstein

Also by Toyin Falola:
Toyin Falola on Africa and the United States

Sanctuary Austin: 1980s and Today

By Edward Shore

Civil war and unrest have triggered a global humanitarian disaster without parallel in recent history. In June 2015, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees reported that the number of refugees and internally displaced people had reached its highest point since the Second World War. Violence in countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan has forced more than 60 million men, women, and children from their homes. One in every 122 people worldwide is a refugee or an internally displaced person (IDP). More than 9.5 million Syrians, roughly 43% of the Syrian population, have been displaced since 2012. The majority of asylum seekers have re-settled in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Yet a rising tide of virulent xenophobia has inflamed much of Europe and the United States.

Texas has opposed President Obama’s plan to grant asylum to 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016. Nearly half of all Texans support banning non-U.S. Muslims from entering the country and more than half support the immediate deportation of all undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S. Last December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against the Obama administration to block the relocation of refugees from Syria to Texas. Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to use next year’s legislative session to punish “sanctuary cities,” a loose term describing municipalities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. One Austin-based non-profit organization is leading the charge to defend Texas’ refugees.

Image of the front facade of Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas — Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. Courtesy of Casa Marianella.

Casa Marianella is a transitional shelter for refugees and asylum seekers in East Austin. It emerged during the Sanctuary Movement, a religious and political campaign that provided safe-haven to refugees fleeing civil wars in Central America during the early 1980s. At its height, the Sanctuary Movement comprised a network of 500 religious congregations that provided shelter and legal counsel to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees. Advocates acted in open defiance of U.S. immigration law. Over half a million Guatemalans and Salvadorans arrived to the United States during the 1980s. The vast majority were civilians fleeing atrocities perpetrated by anti-communist paramilitaries. Yet the Reagan administration, which supported right wing military juntas in their crusade against leftist insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala, accepted less than three percent of all asylum applications from those countries. The U.S. government argued that Guatemalans and Salvadorans were “economic migrants” fleeing poverty, not governmental repression. In 1983, the United States granted political asylum to one Guatemalan.

Press conference launching the Sanctuary Movement at University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, California. March 29, 1982. Photo courtesy of share-elsalvador.org. — Press conference launching the Sanctuary Movement at University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, California. March 29, 1982. Courtesy of share-elsalvador.org.

Activists Ed Wendler, Mercedes Peña, and Jennifer Long were members of the Austin Interfaith Task Force for Central America, an ecumenical peace coalition that opposed U.S. military aid to Central America. In the fall of 1985, they lobbied Mayor Frank Cooksey to declare Austin a “sanctuary city.” The city council, under intense pressure from anti-immigration groups, rejected the proposal. Unfazed, the Austin Interfaith Task Force for Central America established a residential space to serve the needs of refugees in East Austin’s Govalle neighborhood. Casa Marianella opened its doors to dozens of Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers on January 6, 1986. Casa’s namesake honors the memory of Marianella García Villas, a Salvadoran human rights lawyer who was assassinated by paramilitaries in March 1983. She was a close associate of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in San Salvador by state security forces while celebrating mass on March 24, 1980.

A mural honors the memory of Marianella García Villas. Photo courtesy of Casa Marianella. — A mural honors the memory of Marianella García Villas. Courtesy of Casa Marianella.

Today, Casa Marianella provides shelter and social services to asylum seekers from 28 different countries, including Colombia, Nepal, India, Angola, and Nigeria. The shifting demographics correspond to recent changes in U.S. immigration policy. “It’s much harder to cross the U.S. border from Mexico today than it was thirty years ago,” explained Jennifer Long, current executive director of Casa Marianella.

In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice launched Operation Streamline, a “zero-tolerance” approach to unauthorized border crossing. Those caught at the U.S. border in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas may be subject to criminal prosecution for misdemeanor illegal entry, an offense that carries a six-month maximum sentence. Any migrant who has been deported in the past and attempts to re-enter without authorization can be charged with felony re-entry, an offense that carries a two year maximum sentence. Ninety-nine percent of detainees prosecuted under Operation Streamline plead guilty. Detainees from Mexico and Central America are often placed in removal proceedings.

Immigration activists protest Operation Streamline at Sen. John McCain's office in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo courtesy AFSC Arizona. — Immigration activists protest Operation Streamline at Sen. John McCain’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Courtesy of AFSC Arizona.

By contrast, refugees from the Horn of Africa are jailed at ICE detention centers pending the outcome of their asylum cases. This is because the U.S. government cannot deport people to states without recognizable governments. Detainees seeking asylum that ICE determines not to be flight risks or threats to national security can secure release after posting bond. This is how most refugees arrive at Casa Marianella. In 2015, the majority of Casa’s residents came from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Several must still wear ankle monitors, including a father and his young daughter, while they await the court’s decision on their asylum requests.

As one of the last remaining shelters for asylum seekers in the United States, Casa Marianella labors to meet the needs of the country’s swelling refugee population. Last Friday, a deluge of collect calls poured into Casa Marianella from ICE detention facilities in Port Isabel, Pearsall, Hutto, Taylor, and Karnes, Texas. Others called from Krome, Florida, where a federal judge boasts a 95% denial rate for asylum seekers. Casa Marianella reserves space for 38 residents but currently shelters 51. Although overcrowded, the organization still manages to assist the majority of its residents and the refugee community at large to secure legal counsel, work, medical care, English classes, and a place to call home. Of the 188 refugees who entered Casa’s adult shelter last year, 92% successfully exited. Casa’s triumph is a testament to the compassion, dedication, and courage of its staff, volunteers, and residents.

Casa Marianella staff, residents, and volunteers gather for Convivio, a monthly celebration of food, live music, and community. Photo courtesy of Casa Marianella. — Casa Marianella staff, residents, and volunteers gather for Convivio, a monthly celebration of food, live music, and community. Courtesy of Casa Marianella.

Mattias is an asylum seeker from Eritrea. He visited Casa’s office last Friday when I interviewed Jennifer Long. Mattias arrived at Casa last year and has since found a stable job and lives with his family in an apartment in East Austin. “What’s the secret for your success, Mattias?” I asked. “Oh, just walking here,” he replied. “That’s it. Nothing else.”

Now, more than ever, Casa Marianella needs volunteers. Students and faculty with language skills can get involved by interpreting for pro bono attorneys who are working on residents’ asylum cases. For instance, I recently interpreted for an Angolan refugee fleeing sectional violence in Luanda. I also officiated a wedding in Portuguese for an Angolan couple at Casa. Posada Esperanza, Casa’s women and children’s shelter, needs volunteers to assist students with their homework. Others are needed to help prepare and clean up after meals. Finally, join Casa residents and staff from 6-8 pm every last Sunday of the month for “Convivio,” a celebration of community with live music, dancing, and ethnic cuisine.

To volunteer, please email volunteer@casamarianella.org.

Arminda married Gabriel at Casa Marianella in the presence of family and friends. February 13, 2014. Courtesy of the author.

Disclaimer: I used pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of Casa’s residents.

Austin’s Municipal Abattoir

By Betsy Frederick-Rothwell

In late October 1939 a photographer from the Bureau of Identification spent the day among both warm and chilled beef carcasses, shrouded sides of pork, and racks of washed and dried offal, documenting the daily activities of the Austin Municipal Abattoir. The building’s foreign name (abattoir is French for slaughterhouse) and the photographer’s dramatic black and white images obscure the rather prosaic purpose of the documentation effort. The photographs illustrated not a volume of contemporary art, but rather an annual report written by the superintendent of the city-owned slaughterhouse for the City of Austin council members, informing the city managers of monthly revenues, recent building improvements, and new markets for slaughter by-products. A formal report such as this, with detailed operational descriptions and illustrations, was probably necessary because the city council members likely would not have visited the abattoir—then located at Pleasant Valley and East Fifth Street—in the regular course of business in the same way they may have toured the earlier-built public library or even the soon-to-be-completed Tom Miller Dam. Although the abattoir was a signal of Austin’s “modernity,” and its operation was critical to a hygienic life in Austin, most residents likely preferred that it be out of sight.

While a municipally funded and operated slaughterhouse may seem strange to Austin residents today, the city abattoir was a common feature of many urban centers in the early twentieth century. The French term for the facilities implies their origins in the large cities of Europe, but the widespread construction of city-owned slaughterhouses in American cities was a response to the exclusion of domestic slaughterhouse inspection in the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The statue only required federal inspection of meat intended for interstate or foreign trade; for meat produced in slaughterhouses intended for sale within the city or the state, inspection was not required. The city abattoir, where inspection of meat for local markets could be assured, was proposed as a remedy.

Black and white image of Austin's Municipal Abattoir as it appeared in 1939

Austin’s Municipal Abattoir as it appeared in 1939 (Photo Credit: PICA 00609, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library)

A bond issue passed in 1929 funded the Austin Municipal Abattoir’s 1931 construction as a concrete-frame building with brick and hollow-tile infill. The building’s legislated purpose, easily sanitized construction materials, and highly controlled inspection, slaughter, and rendering processes conjure a narrative common to almost all cities in the United States that wished to be “modern” and hygienic. The plant’s highly standardized workflow as described in the 1939 report gives a sense of why many radical writers at the time presented the modern slaughterhouse (or more pointedly the slaughter “factory”) as another step in the march toward the technological control of nature. Area ranchers bringing their animals to the Austin Municipal Abattoir for slaughter surrendered their yield not to an individual butcher but rather to an Abattoir intake clerk, who issued the rancher a “slaughtering ticket” that would eventually be exchanged for the finished product, a processed carcass with the adequate number of inspection stamps to make it acceptable for delivery to markets in Austin and surrounding small towns. The work of the Austin Abattoir was executed in carefully defined steps to increase operational efficiency. According to the abattoir’s annual report, in 1938 alone, the seventeen employees of the Austin Abattoir responsible for inspection, killing, butchering, washing, and chilling processed 22,975 cattle, 6,825 hogs, and 1,239 sheep and goats, with similar numbers adding up for 1939.

Black and white photograph of the Austin Abattoir's slaughter room from the Bureau of Identification

Bureau of Identification image of the Austin Abattoir’s slaughter room, October 1939 (Photo Credit: University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, Austin, Texas)

The building’s relatively late construction date and location within the city evoke a story particular to Austin at the beginning of the twentieth century. The City of Austin considered sponsoring a municipal abattoir as early as 1913, and Paris, Texas, a town somewhat smaller than Austin, was the first city in the United States to build a city-owned slaughterhouse in 1909. However, heavy municipal debt resulting from the construction of the Austin Dam limited funds for other citywide improvements until the late 1920s, when an official city plan for beautification and improvement was passed by the city council. That plan, passed in 1928, also served the purpose of instituting racial segregation on a citywide scale. African Americans, who prior to 1928 lived in neighborhoods throughout Austin, were refused city services in all locations except those neighborhoods east of current-day Interstate Highway 35. Not surprisingly, the city located the Austin Municipal Abattoir at the city boundary on the far east side of this segregated neighborhood. Although proximity to the primary railroad lines was certainly a factor in locating the facility at the city’s eastern limit, the plant’s location in a segregated neighborhood and its distance from downtown embodies contemporary city leaders’ desire to keep this necessary public utility “invisible” to the city’s most prominent residents. However, the plant would not have been easy for its immediate neighbors to ignore; anecdotal accounts from other cities with similar abattoirs tell of terrible smells emanating from such buildings.

The Austin Abattoir’s closing in 1969 represented yet another shift in city dwellers’ relationship to the meat they consumed on an ever increasing scale. Changes in meat distribution networks and widespread availability of in-home refrigeration made city support of a local processing and preservation plant seem less critical.

Research for this article is based in part on:

Eldred Perry, “City of Austin Municipal Abattoir – Annual Report for the year 1939,” Austin History Center, Austin, TX.

Handbook of African American Texas

By Joan Neuberger

Do you love Texas history? The Texas State Historical Association, which makes Texas history readily accessible through its Digital Gateway to Texas History, now offers a huge, new, terrific series of readings in the Handbook of African American Texas.

Launched on Juneteenth, 2013, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached African American Texans, this 800 article online encyclopedia includes more than 300 new entries and is part of the 26,000 article collection called the “Handbook of Texas.” The project was envisioned and spearheaded by Merline Pitre of Texas Southern University and former TSHA president. She worked with Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell of the University of North Texas and TSHA chief historian.

Read articles about the Victory Grill, originally opened in 1945 for servicemen returning from fighting in World War II (and pictured below).

Or the history of the African Methodist Episocpal Church in Texas (this is the Wesley Chapel AME Church in Georgetown, built in 1904).

Photograph of the front facade of the Wesley Chapel AME Church in Georgetown, Texas

You can read about everything from Black Cowboys to Black Visual Artists, and everything in between: African American Texans in the arts, business, community organizations, education, the military, journalism, religion, sports, and slavery & civil rights.

You can find an introduction to this wonderful new resource in the Newsletter of the TSHA.

Photo Credits: Wikimedia Commons.

The Many Histories of South Austin: The Old Sneed Mansion

By Dennis Fisher

You wouldn’t think much of the limestone walls hanging on for dear life as you walked along Bluff Springs to get to the grocery store or the bus stop. Not least because they are set back about thirty feet from the road and concealed by trees. I first heard something about the walls and the Sneed mansion they once supported while walking along the Onion Creek greenbelt in South Austin. “The mansion on the hill was built by slave labor,” a local told me.

I decided to explore for myself on a recent drizzly Sunday. The entire neighborhood, mostly apartment complexes, a few empty lots, and bus stops, has grown up around this small patch of land, which has been just barely “preserved” (given its dilapidated state) by city officials. Walking past the crumbling walls of the Sneed mansion, marked by graffiti and littered with plastic bottles, evokes not only Austin’s past but also a sense of loneliness.

A black and white 1936 photograph of the Sneed House still intact taken by the Historic American Buildings Survey

A 1936 photograph of the Sneed House still intact taken by the Historic American Buildings Survey (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Sebron Sneed Sr. was born in Kentucky in 1802. He spent his early years bouncing around—first in the Missouri militia in 1823 and later in Arkansas practicing law. He married Marinda Atkins of Tennessee in 1824 and they both ended up in Austin, Texas in 1848 after the conclusion of the War on Mexico, making a new home for themselves. They both joined the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church—which still stands today on William Cannon across IH-35. Sebron started the local Democratic Party chapter in 1857. It’s probably not too hard to discern what the Sneed family thought about Texas in the 1850s. Coming from the Appalachian borderlands into newly conquered territory they probably hoped to prosper in a land that would soon expell its Native inhabitants—Tonkawa, Apache, and Comanche peoples around here—and in a place where black slavery was firmly entrenched and outside of the reach of the troublesome former Mexican government as well as the current Federal one—up until 1861, that is, when Lincoln was elected to the presidency. Sebron Sneed Sr. owned 21 people as property in 1860. One of them, Nancy Jane, was purchased by Sneed as “the highest bidder . . . of a certain mulato girl” in Arkansas in 1848 just before he relocated to Texas. We have no idea what Nancy Jane, almost entirely lost to us in the historical record, must have thought, felt, and dreaded–torn from her relatives and brought to a strange land.

Daguerreotype of Marinda Atkins (1809-1878), wife of Sebron Sneed, ca. 1849-1850 in an ornate gold frame

Daguerreotype of Marinda Atkins (1809-1878), wife of Sebron Sneed, ca. 1849-1850 (Image courtesy of Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library)

The location chosen for Sneed’s mansion still makes good sense. It stands on a hill that lifts slightly to the west but then drops down to where IH-35 currently sits. The land gently slopes downward on all remaining sides. Close by on the north and east sides of the house wind small streams that gently make their way downhill. Limestone, soft and porous, is readily available in this area. All of south Texas (and extending down into Guatemala and Belize) was covered by a shallow sea some sixty million years ago, which left behind as its primary legacy a thick layer of limestone—great for building houses and pyramids as well as collecting and channeling water into natural wells, creeks, and aquifers.

Sneed made his money in the legal profession. His papers, located at the Briscoe Center for American History at The University of Texas, are full of promissory notes from clients. In 1860, he paid fifty dollars in “occupation taxes” as a lawyer. By looking at his tax receipts we find that he owned enslaved people, horses, cattle, and land in Del Valle (just east on Highway 290)—the numbers vary from year to year suggesting he sold people as well. In 1864, he paid his county taxes in kind with 545 bushels of corn. During the war he made money by selling two enslaved men—Peter and Isaac—to Confederate General Magruder for building fortifications at Galveston. If Sebron saw Texas as a promised land, his vision and future rested firmly on the foundation of white supremacy. Furthering that vision, Sneed opened his mansion in south Austin as a recruiting station at the outset of the Civil War and later as a convalescent home for returning wounded soldiers. Both he and his son fought in the war—he as a provost marshall and his son as a captain. Sebron Sr. would die in 1879, at the time engaged in “agricultural pursuits”—the records shed little light on this post-war aspect of his life. He would be buried in the adjoining family cemetery along with his wife, other family members, and “infant Sneed.” After the war, his son moved downtown to Colorado and 3rd and kept busy as a lawyer, acting Comptroller, and later as superintendent of Travis County schools.

Black and white photograph of the second floor fireplace of the Sneed House, 1936

Second floor fireplace of the Sneed House, 1936 (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Today echoes of that era linger in both small and not so subtle ways. Ranch owners along the Onion Creek greenbelt still regularly take their horses out along the trails and locals flock to McKinney Falls to play along the limestone and creeks that crisscross the area. Confederate flags still find a place at rallies at the capitol as well as on t-shirts and pickup trucks. But today south Austin at William Cannon and IH-35 looks very different. Anglo-Americans, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Mexicans all call this place home. Hispanic Texans constitute the majority of enrolled students in a state that could swing Democratic in a decade or less in a country that has twice elected an African-American to be president. Looking at what remains of the Sneed mansion serves to remind us of the very different histories that have inhabited these places.

If you’d like to learn more about the Sneed family:

A 1982 issue of the Austin Genealogical Society which includes an 1860 letter from Sebron Sneed jr. to his wife

The Sneed House’s city zoning information

A guide to the Briscoe Center’s Sneed family papers

Austin’s First Electric Streetcar Era

As Austin considers building a new electric light rail system—streetcars, really—it is worth looking back to the city’s first streetcar era. For fifty years, from 1891 until 1940, Austin had an extensive network of electric streetcar lines, running from Hyde Park in the north to Travis Heights in the south, and from Lake Austin in the west to the heart of East Austin. The trolley cars were central to the lives of many Austinites, carrying them between their homes, jobs, and schools, shaping their decisions about where to live and work, and providing a site for racial contact and conflict at the height of the Jim Crow era. Austin was far from unique in any of this. Electric streetcars were one of the defining technologies of cities and towns around the world from the 1890s until at least the 1930s, and a look at Austin’s experience with streetcars will help us to see how global patterns played out in a local setting.

Austin’s first streetcars were propelled by mules, not electricity. They began operating in January 1875 and ran mostly along Congress Avenue from the train stations up to the Capitol. Austin was the railhead in the mid-1870s, the farthest point reached by the railroads, and though it only had about 10,000 residents, it bustled with activity. As the railroads extended further west, however, Austin became something of a backwater, and by the 1880s city leaders were looking for new ways to spark growth and development. They hit on the idea of building a huge dam to supply industrial power, and though the project eventually proved disastrous, it set off a speculative boom in the city in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

Gated entrance to Hyde Park in Austin, Texas in the 1890s featuring a trolley car to the left of the entrance

One of those attracted to what Austin seemed to offer was Monroe Shipe, a developer from Kansas. After acquiring a plot of land north of town, which he rather grandly dubbed “Hyde Park,” he set about offering what he said would be the finest home sites in the region. But Hyde Park was too far from the center of town to be attractive to potential buyers; Shipe needed a way to bring it closer. In May 1889 he set out to do just that, securing a franchise from the city for the Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company and setting out to build an electric streetcar line running from downtown to Hyde Park.

Electric streetcars were the hot new technology in 1889. Thomas Edison and others had been trying for several years to devise a practical way to use electricity to drive streetcars, but it was Frank J. Sprague who in 1888 managed to pull together a working system. Working on a short deadline in Richmond, Virginia, Sprague designed and built a streetcar system that was rugged, efficient, and clearly superior to any of its competitors. One of his key steps was to power his cars from overhead wires tapped by the arm of a spring-loaded “trolley,” a name that was soon applied to the cars themselves. Sprague’s new system spread extremely rapidly, and within a few years hundreds of electric streetcar lines were up and running all over the United States. The new technology came along at just the right time for Monroe Shipe, and he jumped on it.

A map of Austin, Texas and its suburbs detailing the streetcar system of the city

Shipe’s franchise required him to have his line in operation under electrical power by the end of February 1891. He beat the deadline, he later said, by just one hour and forty-four minutes. The line was an immediate hit, no doubt initially in part for its novelty value. Over 2000 Austinites rode Shipe’s streetcars that first day, and the line continued to carry heavy traffic for months to come, many riders taking the loop all the way out to Hyde Park. Like many streetcar operators around the country, Shipe built attractions to draw riders at off-peak hours; though in other cities these often took the form of garish amusement parks (many with names like “Electra Park”), Shipe provided a more sedate pavilion and lake at the north end of his line (near 43rd and Guadalupe), perfectly placed to allow visitors to see how pleasant their lives could be if they bought a home site in Shipe’s development. With its tree-lined streets and carefully planned amenities, Hyde Park was a classic streetcar suburb, of a kind that began to appear all over the United States toward the end of 19th century. Rapid and convenient electric streetcars allowed city-dwellers to live much further from their jobs than had previously been possible, contributing to a shift in housing patterns and a greater separation between home and workplace. Shipe promoted Hyde Park as the “bon ton residence” of Austin, and especially in the early years sought to attract the upper stratum of Austin homebuyers.

The Austin City Railroad Company, the operators of the old mule car line, resented Shipe’s intrusion into the Austin transit business and fought back hard during the early months of Shipe’s operation. Then in May 1891 a fire struck the old company’s barn, destroying many of their cars and killing thirty mules. The owners, described as “a syndicate of Chicago and Boston capitalists,” leaned toward liquidating their remaining property, but decided first to see what they might salvage. According to the Austin Statesman, whose boosterism in those years knew few bounds, once they visited the city, the northern investors were so impressed by Austin’s “brilliant future” that instead of selling out they decided to invest in rebuilding and electrifying their system. By the end of 1891 the two companies had merged into a fully electrified system whose twenty cars ran on fifteen miles of track that reached through most of the city north of the river.

Soon after he had engineered the merger, Shipe withdrew from the streetcar business. He knew the real money lay not in collecting nickel fares, but in using the availability of streetcar service to boost the value of the land he was trying to sell. It was a wise move. After the early 1890s, Austin’s streetcar companies struggled financially; though they experienced occasional periods of profitability, generally after receiving an infusion of outside capital, these were inevitably followed by stagnation, losses, bankruptcy, and reorganization. In 1902 the Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company gave way to the Austin Electric Railway Company, followed in 1911 by the Austin Street Railway Company and in 1921 by Austin Transit.

Black and white image of a trolley car moving down Congress Avenue towards the Texas State Capital Building

Austin itself struggled, too. The dam, completed in 1893, never produced enough power to attract industrial customers, and the city was saddled with an enormous debt and little way to pay it off. Then in April 1900 the dam failed in a flood, leaving the streetcar system without power. Mules were pressed into service for several months until the streetcar company could erect its own steam powered generators at 4th and Pressler Street on the west side of town.

Shipe found that the market for high-end house lots in Hyde Park had declined as well, and he began to aim his pitch a little further down market, offering lots on favorable terms of just $2 per month. On one point, however, the pitch remained the same: as Shipe’s advertisements stated in bold letters, “Hyde Park is Strictly for White People.” Racial lines were hardening in the 1890s, and the advent of electric streetcars and streetcar suburbs made it easier to enforce a separation in housing patterns.

Black and white photograph of large groups of pedestrians crossing Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, Texas

The turn of the century also witnessed a wave of Jim Crow laws mandating segregation on public transportation. City councils across the South passed ordinances requiring separate seating on streetcars, with blacks forced to the back. The streetcar companies generally opposed such laws, saying they imposed new costs without providing any new revenues, made it more difficult to respond to shifts in demand, and forced drivers and conductors to enforce policies that were likely to arouse opposition. In many cities, black citizens boycotted the segregated streetcars in favor of informal “hack” lines of wagons and carriages operated by black drivers. The Houston Electric system was hit especially hard; after the city passed a Jim Crow law in November 1903, black ridership plummeted. A few months later, the white streetcar drivers went on strike, further crippling the system. When frustrated whites asked the black hack drivers for a ride, they were politely told that the city ordinance prohibited letting blacks and whites sit together, and that the hack wagons did not have the required separate compartments.

The Houston streetcar boycott fizzled out toward the end of 1904, but others followed. In March 1906, the Austin city council passed an ordinance requiring segregated seating on all streetcars. The law was not set to take effect until June, but blacks began their boycott immediately, and by April the Austin streetcars reportedly carried almost no black riders. Black drivers soon started up mule-drawn hack lines, and local black leaders even talked of acquiring a “large auto passenger bus” to carry black riders. But despite determined efforts, the boycott collapsed in June, and black riders seemingly resigned themselves to taking their places in the back of Austin’s streetcars. Public transportation remained a racial battleground in the South, however, as the story of Rosa Parks and the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott makes clear.

Black and white photograph of Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, Texas with a view of the State Capital Building in the background

Both Austin and its electric streetcar system continued to grow in the early 20th century. After the new concrete Congress Avenue Bridge was built across the Colorado River in 1910, streetcar lines were extended into South Austin and the new suburban development at Travis Heights. Lines were also extended further into East Austin, until by the mid–1920s the system reached its peak extent, with 23 miles of track to serve a population of about 40,000. By then, however, the streetcars were coming under increasing competition from automobiles, and farebox income was insufficient to keep the streetcar system in good repair. Many cities began to shrink their networks of streetcar lines, and in 1933 San Antonio became the first major city to junk its electric streetcars in favor of buses. Austin followed in 1940. In a ceremony presided over by Mayor Tom Miller, Austin’s electric streetcars made a last nostalgic run along the Main Line up Congress Avenue on 7 Feb. 1940 before giving way to shiny new buses. The remaining rails were pulled up in 1942 during a wartime scrap metal drive.

I first began delving into Austin’s streetcar history while teaching an undergraduate seminar on “Electrification.” I encourage my students to explore the rich local history of electrical technologies and their social impacts, and they have turned up some fascinating stories. In fact, much of what I said above about the 1906 black streetcar boycott was drawn from an excellent paper my student Kevin Stewart wrote a couple of years ago. I have also learned a lot just by talking with Austinites. I recently gave a talk about Austin’s streetcar history at the Neill-Cochran House Museum in West Campus, and struck up a conversation there with Virginia Wallace, a longtime Austin resident. Her stepfather was a streetcar driver, and she described how handsome he looked in his uniform. She also told how, sometime after the ceremonial “last run” in February 1940, he let her ride with him as he drove the last streetcar to the old car barn on Pressler Street to be retired. With that Austin’s streetcar era—or at least its first streetcar era—came to an end.

Check out more of Professor Bruce Hunt’s contributions to Not Even Past:

“City Lights: Austin’s Historic Moonlight Towers”

“The Rise and Fall of the Austin Dam”

“The Atomic Bombs and the End of World War II: Tracking an Elusive Decision”

Photo Credits:

Streetcar along the entrance to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Austin
Citation: [Gated Entrance to Hyde Park], Photograph, 1894; digital image, accessed March 18, 2013), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, Austin, Texas.

A 1925 map of Austin with the streetcar lines highlighted (Image courtesy of Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Streetcar on Congress Avenue, 1913
Citation: Congress Avenue with street rail, Photograph, 1913; digital image, accessed March 18, 2013, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, Austin, Texas.

Streetcars run along Congress Avenue on their “last run” in Austin, February 7, 1940
Citation: Ellison Photo Service. Street Railroad Downtown, Photograph, February 7, 1940; digital image, accessed March 18, 2013, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, Austin, Texas.

Congress Avenue after the streetcar lines were removed, 1943 (Image courtesy of the U.S Government)

The Rise and Fall of the Austin Dam

If you cross the Colorado River at Redbud Trail and look upstream toward Tom Miller Dam, there amid the tumbled rocks you can still see the wreck of Austin’s dream. In 1890, the citizens of Austin voted overwhelmingly to put themselves deeply in debt to build a dam, in hopes that the prospect of cheap waterpower would lure industrialists who would line the riverbanks with cotton mills. Austin would become “the Lowell of the South,” and the sleepy center of government and education would be transformed into a bustling industrial city.

Black and white image of the completed Austin dam from the 1890s — View of the completed Austin Dam, 1890s. (LCRA Archives, W00108)

It never happened quite that way, of course. After strenuous efforts to sell enough bonds, and after several setbacks during construction, the city managed to complete the great granite dam in 1893 at a site just northwest of town. Standing sixty feet high and stretching nearly 1200 feet across the river, it was then one of the largest dams in the world. A. P. Wooldridge and other boosters of the project had originally envisioned harnessing the river to drive mill machinery directly, but the engineers they called in soon steered them toward the new technology of the day, and the powerhouse erected on the east bank of the river was filled with electrical dynamos that supplied current to Austin’s new network of electric streetcars, as well as to the “moonlight towers” the city acquired in 1895. The shores of the lake that formed behind the dam—named “Lake McDonald” for John McDonald, the mayor who had whipped up support for the project—attracted new residents and developers, while the waters of the lake itself drew those seeking respite from the Texas heat. Austin boomed in the mid-1890s, driven largely by land speculation. Monroe Shipe established “Hyde Park,” a classic “streetcar suburb” north of downtown, and smaller developments sprang up around the city.

Black and white image of a group of men laying large granite blocks for the first Austin Dam in 1892 — Laying the last granite block in the first Austin Dam, 1892 (LCRA Archives W100198)

One of the biggest land deals was engineered by San Antonio banker and businessman George Brackenridge, who had acquired a large tract of land just downstream from the proposed site of the dam, evidently hoping to sell mill sites once the dam was completed. But the promised cotton mills never materialized. The flow of the Colorado proved to be far more variable than the project’s promoters had claimed, and the dam was never able to produce the kind of steady power needed to drive a bank of mills. At times it barely sufficed to power the lights and streetcars.

Having never lived up to expectations, the dam failed spectacularly on 7 April 1900. Enormous storms upriver sent a torrent of water cascading eleven feet over the crest of the dam. After the rains had stopped, Austinites came out that bright Saturday morning to see their local version of Niagara. Then at 11:20 am they heard a loud crack—“like a gunshot,” several said—and watched in horror as a central section of the dam gave way and slid sixty feet downstream. Water blasted into the powerhouse, wrecking it and killing eight people. Lake McDonald vanished, and though the western end of the dam still stood, the eastern half was destroyed. More than a century later, great chunks of it are still to be found scattered in the riverbed, forming part of the present Red Bud Isles.

Black and white image of the destroyed Austin Dam with large chunks of debris in the water after the flood of 1900 — The first Austin Dam in pieces after the April 1900 flood (LCRA Archives W100514).

The Austin Dam was probably doomed from the start. Over the objections of their engineers, McDonald and other city leaders had chosen a singularly poor site to build a dam: the exact spot where the Balcones Fault Zone passes under the river. The rock on the eastern end of the site was so loose and fractured it could be shoveled up and water percolated freely through it, undermining the foundation of the dam. Nor had the dam been properly built. Joseph Frizell, the original engineer on the project, quit in disgust, complaining that McDonald had meddled with the design and let the contractor use inferior materials. Faced with such knavery, Frizell said, a responsible engineer had no choice but “to abandon the work as he would abandon fire and pestilence.” A string of other engineers quit the project, too, and the eventual collapse of the dam was in some ways not a surprise.

After 1900, the people of Austin did what they could to recover from the disaster. Having gotten a taste of city-owned electric power, they refused to go back; they bought out the local private power company, which used steam-driven generators, and today’s Austin Energy municipal utility is in a sense a legacy of the old Austin Dam. The city also tried to rebuild the dam itself, but a dispute with the contractor left the repairs unfinished in 1912, and another flood in 1915 damaged it further. By then Brackenridge had given up his hopes for industrial development, and in 1910 he donated his five hundred acres of riverside land to the University of Texas, which now uses it for student housing and a biological field laboratory.

The wrecked dam sat derelict, “a tombstone on the river,” until the Lower Colorado River Authority stepped in and, with federal money, rebuilt it as Tom Miller Dam, completed in 1940. The remaining portions of the 1893 and 1912 dams were incorporated into the new structure, but are now hidden under new layers of concrete. By the time it was finished, however, Tom Miller Dam was already overshadowed by the much larger LCRA dams built upstream at Lake Travis (Mansfield Dam) and Lake Buchanan (Buchanan Dam), which for the last seventy years have provided water, hydroelectric power, and flood control for Central Texas.

Most Austinites barely notice Tom Miller Dam today, and few know the story of the old Austin Dam at all. Over the years I’ve have several students write research papers and senior theses about the dam and its effects on Austin in the 1890s; one of the best, by Ed Sevcik, was published by the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in 1992 as “Selling the Austin Dam.” Ed emphasized how the story of the dam reflected an ongoing tension in Austin between proponents of development, eager to spend public money to try to attract private business, and those who see such urban bustle and industry as something to be avoided rather than embraced. It is a story that has not ended even yet.

Notes:

The Lower Colorado River Authority website has more historical material, including a large digital photographic archive.

Ed Sevcik, “Selling the Austin Dam: A Disastrous Experiment in Encouraging Growth,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly (96:2, Oct 1992)

Lauren Belfer, City of Light (2003). A novel, set in Buffalo in 1901, about building dams for electricity and the conflicts that came with industrialization, with a wide-ranging view of gender and class conflicts in that period.

Click here for Bruce Hunt’s previous article on Austin’s moonlight towers.

Photographs courtesy of the Lower Colorado River Authority

Family Outing in Austin, Texas

By Madeline Hsu

This photograph captures a 1943 family outing to The University of Texas, in Austin.

Image of an Asian family from July 19, 1943 sitting on the edge of a fountain on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin

The young father, Fred Wong, was a grandson of one of “Pershing’s Chinese“–a group of 527 Chinese who accompanied General John J. Pershing into the United States after the failure of his campaigns against General Francisco “Pancho” Villa in 1917. Villa threatened retaliation against the Chinese for aiding Pershing, who determined to bring them back with him to the United States even though he had to lobby for special federal permission to do so in violation of immigration laws that banned the admission of all Chinese laborers. Many of these refugees settled in San Antonio where they established grocery stores, laundries, and restaurants.

Fred Wong grew up in San Antonio and in 1936 married Rose Chin from Chelsea, Massachusetts. They moved to Austin in 1938 and opened New China Food Market at 714 Red River. Fred served as a Rollingwood Councilman and R.C. became a well-known artist. The couple had three children, Mitchel–reportedly the first Chinese baby born in Austin–and Linda, and Kay. Mitchel went on to attend UT and became a leading ophthalmologist in central Texas, credited with introducing Lasik surgery to the region.

On May 11, 2011, Mitchel Wong was honored with a Legacy Award at the Asian American Community Leadership Awards jointly organized by UT’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, the Center for Asian American Studies, and the Texas Exes Asian Alumni Network.

For more information about Chinese in Texas, please visit:
The Institute of Texan Cultures
The University of Texas at Austin’s Asian American Studies website
The Texas State Historical Association online

You can look up materials available at the Austin History Center, here in its finding guide.

More about Asian Americans, in Texas and beyond:
Edward J. M. Rhoads, “The Chinese in Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 81 (July 1977).
Irwin Tang, ed., Asian Texans: Our histories and Our Lives (2008).
Pawan Dhingra, Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities (2007).

The photograph of the Wong family is posted here with the kind permission of the Austin History Center; AR.2008.005(027), Wong Family Papers, Austin History Center.

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