The Top Shelf

UTSA’s YouTube Channel features a clip about the Aline Carter Family Papers and their importance to San Antonio’s history. Head of Archives and Special Collections Mark Shelstad talks about what the Carter collection reveals about life in San Antonio more than a century ago.

by Tatina Wulzer, Collections Assistant

New to UTSA Archives are the Alfred Giles Family papers. The collection is largely made up of correspondence, photographs, artwork, and other materials that range in date from 1861-1956. The collection was created by various members of the Giles family, including Alfred Giles, his spouse, Annie James Giles, daughters Mary Milby Giles and Annie Marcella Giles Booth, and sons Geoffrey James Giles and Ernest Palmer Giles. A smaller amount of material, dating between 1972-1989, includes news clippings and magazine articles about Hillingdon Ranch and its success raising livestock.

Letter from Alfred Giles to family, 1911

Alfred Giles was a successful architect, originally from England, who created designs for over 90 architectural structures in and around San Antonio and Mexico. Giles married Annie Laura James, the daughter of Judge John James, a surveyor of Bexar County. They had 8 children and after the purchase of Hillingdon Ranch, Alfred resided with his family on his ranch near Comfort, Texas until his death in 1920.

Giles family scrapbook, undated

The Giles correspondence includes many family letters, most concerning ranch news or family travels. One letter from Alfred Giles to his living children expresses his sadness concerning the deaths of his children— Laura, Amy, and Geoffrey. There is also correspondence advising his daughter, Milby, while she is away at Gunston Hall in Washington D. C. The collection also includes original artwork, including a painting of a field of bluebonnets, a drawing in pen and ink of a four-storied detailed house, and a pencil sketch of a monk. There are also many photographs of the Giles family and Hillingdon Ranch and diaries pertaining to a trip to England.

Additional material can be found on Alfred Giles and his architectural work in the Mary Carolyn Hollers George Papers.

Sources:
The Handbook of Texas Online – http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/fgi15_print.html
The University of the Incarnate Word website – http://www.uiw.edu/sanantonio/AlfredGiles.html

Beginning Monday, February 1st, 2010, the UTSA University Archives will be relocating to the newly renovated Special Collections suite on the 4th floor of the John Peace Library. The university archivist, along with the Gil Barrera Collection and the Office of University Communications Photographs, will now be located in the Special Collections suite to provide better service and access to the UTSA community.

Newly renovated Special Collections Reading Room on the 4th Floor of John Peace Library, 2010

In addition to giving the University Archives a more visible place on the UTSA campus, the move will allow UTSA Archives and Special Collections to provide patrons access to archival collections at two locations. Beginning February 1st, 2010, patrons will simply need to submit the off-site collection request form to have archival materials transferred to the Special Collections reading room on the 4th floor of John Peace Library.

Before entering the world of archives and special collections, I received an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Iowa in 2007. My research focused on human-environment relationships, and in 2006 I conducted fieldwork on community forestry in Oaxaca, Mexico. I then decided to pursue an MLIS and Certificate in Book Arts and Book History, also at the University of Iowa. During my two years of library school, I served as an Olson Fellow in Special Collections, where I worked on the digitization of two large manuscript collections: the editorial cartoons of J.N. “Ding” Darling and the letters of 19th century British writer Leigh Hunt. As part of my certificate studies, I also studied bookbinding and researched the the negotiation of feminine identities in 1976 Bicentennial community cookbooks.

As the Special Collections Librarian at UTSA, I’m responsible for the books, maps, and ephemera that make up the department’s subject collections on the history and development of the Texas-Mexico Border region. Our holdings also include over 500 volumes in the Laurie Gruenbeck Mexican Cookbook Collection; the personal library of architect Ralph Haywood Cameron; and fine press collections from Encino and Texas Western Presses. I carry out acquisitions, outreach, and reference services related to these collections.

This week we are opening the Special Collections reading room in our new location on the 4th floor of the JPL, with extended hours for the spring semester: Mon.-Thurs. 9AM-Noon and 1PM-4PM. I’m happy to be joining the department at such an exciting time, and I look forward to working with the University’s research community to focus and build our collections.

by Rose Rodriguez, Collections Assistant

San Antonians and citizens nationwide will march in the streets today to honor and give tribute to the memory of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. San Antonio will host one of the largest marches in the country with over 100,000 people expected to attend this year’s event. The effort to make a holiday in commemoration of Dr. King’s memory was championed by a number of individuals at the national, state, and local level. In Texas and San Antonio, Mario Marcel Salas was part of the movement to establish Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a Texas state holiday in 1991 and participated in numerous events commemorating Dr. King’s legacy. The Mario Marcel Salas papers document Salas’ efforts to establish of a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in Texas, and his other political activities as a San Antonio City Councilman and civil rights leader in San Antonio.

1998 San Antonio MLK Day March, Mario Marcel Salas Papers