As a teenager in the 1950s, John Holmes Jenkins set to work on collecting and editing his great-great-grandfather's writings about his experiences on the Texas frontier. John Holland Jenkins joined General Sam Houston's army at age thirteen after losing his stepfather at the Alamo. In addition to fighting the Mexicans, he faced peril from Indian warriors as well as the everyday difficulties of pioneer life. His reports on the events of the time were included in newspapers with very small readerships-and, his descendant would discover, were sometimes used word-for-word in respected history textbooks without any credit given to the source. This volume includes these memoirs of the Texas Republic and early statehood, along with illustrations, notes, biographical sketches, a bibliography, and an index.
