Travis County District Clerk Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza gratefully accepted a grant award from the Texas Bar Historical Foundation on Aug. 13, 2013. The funds will be used to preserve the District Court Civil Minutes: Volume B, the second oldest in the county.
Volume B accounts for court records from the fall term of 1848 to the fall term of 1849, a time when the State of Texas was asserting itself into the framework of the United States after nearly a decade as an independent republic. This unassuming volume records many significant cases relating to the growth of Texas and its historical figures, such as Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas. In 1848, Houston served as one of the first senators from Texas in the United States Senate and was considered a contender in the nation’s presidential race.
The Texas Bar Historical Foundation selected Volume B because the important document has become so fragile—the binding is loose and the pages are brittle and falling from the book block, requiring immediate attention. Once preserved, the records will be publicly accessible and stored in a climate-controlled environment in the Travis County Heman Marion Sweatt Courthouse.
The foundation also selected a similar project in Cameron County to preserve court records detailing the tumultuous history of South Texas.
Pictured above from left, Alexandra Myers Swast, State Bar staff liaison to the Texas Bar Historical Foundation, and Travis County District Clerk Amalia Rodriguez-Mendoza.