The reference

The reference is the encyclopedic half of this site. Its twenty seven entries describe the people, places, institutions, documents and ideas that the essays keep returning to, written in the third person and at a length meant for a reader who wants the facts in one place. Every factual statement in an entry carries a numbered note to an outside source, most often the Handbook of Texas, the Library of Congress, the Texas State Library and Archives or the Legislature’s own records.

Readers coming to the site for the history will usually want to begin with the entry on Richard Coke, the governor at the center of the biography, and then the period around him in the essays on Reconstruction Texas. Readers interested in the courthouse plaques will want the entry on the Travis Victory or Death letter and the entry on Texas county courthouses. Anyone doing their own research should start with the entry on the Portal to Texas History and the essays on the archive. On the energy side, the entry on growth equity defines the kind of investing the rest of that material assumes.

Entries are kept short on purpose. Each one states what its subject is, when it mattered and where the record of it can be found, and stops there; argument and interpretation belong to the essays, which link back to the entries whenever a name or a document needs explaining. Each entry also says, in a sentence, why its subject belongs on this site. The first person essays are listed on the writing page; the home page explains how the two halves fit together, and the contact page lists where to reach the author.