Historians donate book collection to Southwestern University

Historians donate book collection to Southwestern University

By Community Impact Newspaper Staff Wednesday, 29 July 2009

GEORGETOWN — Two Georgetown residents and historians are donating much of their personal library to Southwestern University's A. Frank Smith Jr. Library Center.

Robert Utley and his wife, Melody Webb, moved to Georgetown in 1996. Utley was the former chief historian for the National Park Service and has written 16 books on the American West. Webb was a regional historian for the National Park Service in Alaska and Santa Fe, and also served as superintendent of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and assistant superintendent of Grand Teton National Park.

After 13 years in Georgetown, the couple decided to move to a retirement community in Arizona. In order to put their house on the market, they needed to free up space in their library, which contained approximately 5,000 books. About 1,000 were sold to a collector and Southwestern will receive more than 2,000 books on Alaska, American history and the American West, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Texas, and environmental and historic preservation, among others.

“Southwestern has been wonderful to us,” Webb said in a statement. “They welcomed us as a part of the family from the day we got here. This is our way to show our appreciation to them.”

Utley used the library for his first book on the Texas Rangers, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, which was published in 2002. He will conduct a presentation about his Texas Ranger books at 7 p.m. Sept. 3 in the Grace Heritage Center, located at 811 S. Main St.

Among the most valuable books in the collection are a 30-volume set of oral histories from Alaskan Natives that Webb helped develop for the National Park Service in the 1970s. The series was produced when the Park Service was working on proposed new national parks in Alaska.

Utley’s collection of books about the fur trade in the American West is also quite valuable. In all, the collection is estimated to be worth more than $55,000.

“We are extremely grateful for this gift collection,” said Lynne Brody, dean of library services, in a statement. “These books will significantly enrich our holdings of western American history. We are especially excited about several unique Texana titles they have donated that will enrich our already strong collection of Texana.”

Among those titles is a two-volume, limited edition set titled Shooting the Sun: Cartographic Results of Military Activities in Texas, 1689-1829, which examines the mapping of the interior of Texas by direct observation as opposed to maritime exploration. It provides a survey of Texas maps and mapmakers from the time the Europeans first came to Texas until the period of the Texas Revolution.