Noah Smithwick and Document Forgery

[Jim Boylston]

Another find in the Philpott Collection catalog was the manuscript for Smithwick's "The Evolution of a State".
Wolf and I had a long conversation with TRL about Smithwick, and I know Tom had major objections to the book. I'm hazy on some of them and tend to get his arguments confused with those against "Tall Men With Long Rifles", which was a part of the same conversation. Maybe Wolfpack can illuminate.
At any rate, the item's description mentions that most of the manuscript was in typescript with some pages in the hand of Mrs. Donaldson, Smithwick's daughter. Apparently, Smithwick was blind at the time the manuscript was written, and dictated the book to his daughter.
Jim

[Herb]

I really felt I couldn't talk about this for a long time, Tom had mentioned, that he wanted to publish this in Traces II, and so I didn't feel free to discuss it before.

Tom told us, I did not see the documentation, that he had found correspondence between Deshields and Smithwick's daughter, where DeShields was apparently supplying part of the Smithwick Narrative, Tom specifically mentioned some Indian accounts.

He also mentioned a letter where she requested something to jazz up a portion of the book, and DeShields suggested some more Indian accounts and she rejected that idea saying there were already enough stories about Indians in the book.

I can't remember the details, but Tom also mentioned some similar correspondence about Tall Men. Tom also mentioned having statements from Creed Taylor's family, that Creed Taylor never supplied any of the information in Tall Men.

While I don't doubt, Tom's word, I never saw the documentation and I have no way for evaluating Tom's theories. Tom apparently shared some of this with Tim Niessen, blackben, but again I don't know if Tim ever saw the documentation either.

While I can't evaluate Tom's conclusion, the quotes, he told us that day convinced me to use both sources carefully and only when I could find some other source or similar documentation. Thus my careful use of Smithwick when we were debating whether Tumilson's company was part of an Alamo Reinforcement. Because, we were able to find the Hornsby account, that verified that Smithwick was there, and agreed with Smithwick's version - I felt in this case that Smithwick was probably reliable. Then of course somebody found the Tumilson receipt.

Until somebody does a thorough research of the Lindley Papers, though, or finds the original information that Tom found so Tom's opinion can be fully evaluated , the only thing I can say is we probably need to use these two sources carefully.

[stuart]

My own view on both the Smithwick and Taylor narratives is that Tom went way overboard in dismissing them. There seems no doubt that both narratives as published were heavily padded out directly or indirectly by DeShields in order to turn them into readable/marketable books, but judging by what can be verified in both cases I'd say that like a lot of historical sources there is a genuine narrative in there, which might need to be treated with caution but must not be dismissed.

Its really very very common and with experience its pretty easy to get a feel for what's been added or exaggerated and then filter it out.

I found Creed Taylor useful when I was writing the book on Grant. Apart from being consistently out in his dates by about 4 days (and the consistency is interesting in itself) I found nothing in the relevant part of the narrative that contradicted any other sources of unquestioned veracity, and I did find his insights into attitudes interesting.

So yes, there's certainly cause for caution, but not for rejection. There's good stuff in both those narratives and simply sitting back and yelling forgery just doesn't cut it.

[Jim Boylston]

I though "Rip" Ford played some part in this according to Tom...maybe my memory is faulty.
Jim

[Herb]

I don't think so.

That was a pretty far ranging discussion, I remember we got into the Sutton-Taylor Fued (yes, the same Creed Taylor) with John Wesley Hardin.

I seem to remember Rip Ford coming up - but in a different context.

[Jim Boylston]

You're probably right, my memory of the conversation is muddled. It was far ranging and went on for a long time.
Jim

[sloanrodgers]

Smithwick's book was not a diary, but a memoir dictated
by an old blind man to his loving daughter. Obviously he
had lapses of memory as we all do. There are certainly
omissions and submissions of data, but you will see this
in most frontier narratives. One doesn't throw out a book
simply because the author got a few details wrong. I try
to seperate the wheat from the chaff. Some ranger bios
have little historical value, but Smithwick's Evolution of a
State is not one of these. It's a great read and many of
its incidents and facts are backed up by sources in the
various archives. All it takes is a little work and some
knowledge of ranger history. Later.

[Jim Boylston]

Frankly, if we were to eliminate every source that was somewhat problematic we'd have little left to study.
I find value in the Smithwick book.
Jim

[sloanrodgers]

I can't remember the details, but Tom also mentioned some similar correspondence about Tall Men. Tom also mentioned having statements from Creed Taylor's family, that Creed Taylor never supplied any of the information in Tall Men.

Oh by the way. Creed Taylor didn't supply any information to DeShields
because there's no evidence that they ever met. However, Ol' Creed did
dictate his life story to John Warren Hunter (J. Marvin Hunter's father) in
the 1890's for a book that never got published. Several years later Hunter
and DeShields corresponded. Eventually sly DeShields used Hunter's info on
Creed without giving credit to the man who actually collected it. I'm sure
he also souped up the narrative a little. A couple years ago, I wrote the
Handbook of Texas and asked them to note this in the source section of
Creed Taylor's biography. I'm happy to say that they promptly gave John
W. Hunter the credit he was due. Hunter's literary effort on Creed Taylor
is located at the State Archives and is still an interesting read.

[stuart]

Thanks for that info. which bolsters my faith in the Creed Taylor narrative; explaining as it does the actual story behind De Shields’ involvement.

Tom Lindley in my view was always far too ready to shriek Fake! whenever he detected the involvement of a third party, rather than filtering out the good stuff from the padding and tidying needed to turn an unreadable manuscript into something publishable.

Running off at a slight tangent on this one I’d like to pose what I suspect is a hypothetical question. There is as you know a school of thought which holds that the whole DLP manuscript was faked as a vehicle for the rather brief and unsatisfactory account – less than a single page – describing the apparent execution of a certain Mr Crockett. Leaving aside all those technical arguments over paper, ink and ion migration which have been settled to the satisfaction of all but the faithful, TRL laboured long and hard to find flaws in the narrative itself and every time he thought he detected one there was a triumphant shout of vindication. Yet, and to be charitable, all of the flaws and discrepancies cited to date are trivial little matters, well within the ordinary margin for error of any set of memoirs. I don’t propose to rehash them here and now, but rather to pose that question.

If, hypothetically, the DLP manuscript is a fake, who wrote it and when? And I ask this question in all seriousness because leaving everything else aside whoever did write it not only knew what they were talking about in general terms, but had an unparalleled grasp of detail. It certainly isn’t a quick lash-up job. If it really is a modern production it can only have been written by a very knowledgeable historian who was either Mexican himself or an American with sufficient specialist knowledge of Mexican military history to pass himself off as such.

Did such a historian exist in the 1940s?

[Jim Boylston]

Groneman's books strongly suggests John Laflin as the forger of at least part of the DLP papers. Personally I don't think a believable case was made for Laflin as the perp, but then again, I don't think a believable case has been made for the document being a forgery at all.

I know that there were quite a few Texas Rev papers on the market that were forgeries, but many of them were printed broadsides that were more easily manufactured.

Since this thread is titled "Noah Smithwick", but is becoming a more general discussion of forgery, I'm going to change the thread's title rather than migrate this discussion to another thread.

Jim

[TRK]

There's a rebuttal to the Groneman theory concerning John A. Laflin in James Crisp's Sleuthing the Alamo, starting on p. 66.

[Herb]

stuart said:

If, hypothetically, the DLP manuscript is a fake, who wrote it and when? And I ask this question in all seriousness because leaving everything else aside whoever did write it not only knew what they were talking about in general terms, but had an unparalleled grasp of detail. It certainly isn’t a quick lash-up job. If it really is a modern production it can only have been written by a very knowledgeable historian who was either Mexican himself or an American with sufficient specialist knowledge of Mexican military history to pass himself off as such.

This has always been my major problem with the forgery claims.

The scope (size and data) of the work is beyond that of almost all forgeries (the Hitler diaries are the only forgery that I can think of that compares). Because of the tremendous scope/amount of work involved in producing a forgery the size of DLP - motive has to be addressed - despite the claims that it is irrelevant by the forgery advocates. The payoff, simply isn't there.

Besides, today we have possession of authentic earlier versions of the "memior" and authentic service records/indorsements on DLP that were not available when the "diary" was first published. The fact that all this latter found, evidence does not contradict, but collaborates the contested document is a coincidence beyond belief if it was a forgery.

The forger simply had to have too many documents, then unknown, in hand to write a story so collaborated.

I may be naive, but I simply don't believe there would be any forgery fuss, if a couple of paragraphs had been omitted. Except for those paragraphs, DLP, would just be another source rarely used except by authors and scholars.

[stuart]

Jim Crisp's rebuttal in "Sleuthing" is quite magisterial, but the question I was really posing concerns the content. There are always going to be two aspects to a fakement; one is the technical ability to reproduce what looks like an authentic document, and the other is to write a convincing text.

Laflin may or may not have had the technical ability, but was he really such an expert historian as to be able to write such a lengthy document to a standard that has held up to all but the pickiest criticism.

I suggest not.

[Jim Boylston]

I doubt it too, Stuart, and there are some things that were uncovered in "Sea of Mud" that corroborate DLP statements that were previously unpublished and therefore unavailable for reference.

In addition to the technical ability and historical research involved in the undertaking, there's also the nagging question of motive, which to my mind has never been satisfactorily answered.

Frankly, most of the arguments in favor of DLPs authenticity seem to me more logical than the convoluted conspiracy theories that claim it to be a fake.

Jim