Relying on memory is a disservice to historical reporting
Historians Kyvig and Marty point out that memory is often imperfect and formed by the exigencies and prejudices of the time. To write a history or tell the story of any place by relying on memory is a mistake that does disservice to those who struggled to leave future generations something they could proudly call home. To date, no one has written a comprehensive history of Duval County, Texas. A number of brief histories of the county and its various communities and ranches have appeared in manuscript form, but their authors wrote all of them, with the exception of a few graduate school papers, based on the personal memory and accounts as participants or descendants of participants. Take, for example, the vital relationship between Mexican-descended and European-descended Texans. Clearly, the clash between these two groups was at the epicenter in the history of Duval County and South Texas, as a whole. To tell the story of the area based on the memory of descendants of either gro...