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Reference · Organization

Dallas Historical Society

The Dallas Historical Society is a private nonprofit organization that collects, preserves and interprets material on the history of Dallas, Dallas County, Texas and the Southwest.1 It was founded on March 31, 1922, by the newspaper publisher George B. Dealey together with a hundred other charter members, and the society describes itself as the oldest organization in Dallas County devoted to the region’s history.12 Its home since 1938 has been the Hall of State in Fair Park, where it keeps a museum, a research library and an archive.3

Founding and early years

Its incorporation, as an educational body, followed on August 10, 1922. Before moving to Fair Park it had rooms in the library at Southern Methodist University.1 Dealey, then publisher of the Dallas Morning News, left papers that are now part of its holdings.1

The Hall of State

Texas erected the building for the 1936 centennial exposition under the name State of Texas building; construction ran from October 1935 to September 1936, so it was not finished when the exposition opened on June 6.4 Its grounds are described in the entry on Fair Park. Once the fair closed, Texas let the hall to Dallas under a lease; in 1938 Dallas asked the society to run the museum, library and archives there, and Herbert Gambrell became the first historical director.3 The state conveyed the building to the city in 1976.3 The city still owns the building and the society manages it, financing part of its operations by renting the halls for private events.4 How that arrangement came about is traced in a Dallas history essay on the society and its building.

Collections

The society runs the G. B. Dealey Library, housed in the building’s West Texas Room, which collects photographs, documents, artifacts, books and periodicals on Dallas, Dallas County and Texas.4 Its archives include diaries, journals, maps, newspapers and rare books, and part of the collection can be searched online.2 The Handbook of Texas lists among its manuscript collections the papers of Sarah Horton Cockrell, the nineteenth century businesswoman who with Alexander Cockrell bought John Neely Bryan’s remaining interest in the Dallas town site in 1852, as well as those of Congressman Hatton W. Sumners, the Democratic leader Thomas B. Love, Jessie Daniel Ames and the 1936 Texas Centennial Commission.15

The museum collection centers on the social, economic and political history of Dallas and Texas. The Handbook notes among its rarer pieces the spurs of Antonio López de Santa Anna and the watch of James W. Fannin, and counts 3,500 costumes in a museum collection of more than 15,000 items.1 The history these collections document is also the ground of several essays on this site, among them studies of the coming of the railroads, Dallas and its hopes for a river port and the La Reunion colonists who stayed on.

Programs and publications

The society offers exhibitions, lectures, historic city tours, field trips and other programs, and admission to its exhibits is free.2 Its school tours use the building’s art, architecture, regional rooms and statues to teach Texas and United States history.1 A more recent program, the Moody Digital Immersive Learning Experience, uses augmented reality to attach clues and challenges to artifacts, statues and murals throughout the building, and is aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards used in the state’s schools.2 Its publications include Dallas Rediscovered, a photographic chronicle of the city from 1870 to 1925 (1978); When Dallas Became a City, an edition of the letters of John M. McCoy from 1870 to 1881 (1982); and Legacies, a history journal for Dallas and North Central Texas published with the Dallas County Heritage Society.1

Another landmark of the county’s past, the 1892 courthouse that now houses a county history museum, is covered in the Old Red entry.6 Rosser Newton is one of the society’s trustees, a role set out with his other civic work on the civic page.7

References

  1. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Dallas Historical Society ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Dallas Historical Society, Dallas Historical Society home page ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Hall of State ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Dallas Historical Society, The Hall of State ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Dallas, TX ↩

  6. Texas Historical Commission, Dallas County Courthouse ↩

  7. Rosser Newton, Texas history ↩