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Post by TRK on Jul 3, 2010 18:30:22 GMT -5
I have a problem accepting that there may have been a real-life historic counterpart to Judge Holden. AFAIK, the only basis for the Judge Holden character is Sam Chamberlain, as described in his semi-factual, semi-fictional memoir, My Confession. Chamberlain claimed to have joined Glanton's scalphunter gang, and paints a pretty extensive word portrait of Holden. The issue is, Chamberlain often made up "historical" events from whole cloth, with himself as one of the participants. Chamberlain's tales often were indeed factual, or based in fact, but other times his stories are demonstrably fabricated. IMO, Chamberlain, who wrote My Confession well after the events that took place in it, concocted many a tale, probably including the one of his joining the Glanton gang, using books, newspaper accounts, and other gleanings from what he saw and heard while in Mexico and the West.
In brief, there's no doubt Chamberlain was in the middle of numerous famous historic events, but you always need to take his claims with a very heavy dose of salt.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Jul 3, 2010 20:00:27 GMT -5
I always thought the Judge was the white whale. He's certainly bigger than life and death in McCarthy's vivid prose. Jim
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 4, 2010 23:51:25 GMT -5
All valid points and that thesis looks pretty interesting. I just think that since some of Chamberlain's/ McCarthy's scalp hunters existed in historical sources that perhaps the mysterious Judge Holden was also running around in some form. I found a Holden, who was a bigamist, gambler, murderer in late 1840s Texas. I'm not sure he was a giant albino pedophile though.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 5, 2010 15:59:56 GMT -5
I should have also stated that this Mr. Holden was once a ranger and one of the key players in the group that returned the archives to Austin. I think he is a better candidate than Webber.
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Post by markpatrus on Jul 9, 2010 15:27:44 GMT -5
I read somewhere that crafted Blood Meridian after Herman Melville's Moby Dick. The mention above as the Judge being the white whale was an interesting analogy.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 11, 2010 21:25:02 GMT -5
Like Moby Dick, Blood Meridian is a larger than life book, but McCarthy's work is based on a less violent historical event. Glanton's scalping expedition set out from San Antonio, TX with thirty men and most of their names are lost to history. Samuel Chamberlain and contemporary newspapers revealed some members of the company, then McCarthy apparently added others to flesh out the gang for his book. I doubt there was a Toadvine, Grannyrat, Bathcat as these sound like weird animal creations of McCarthy, but at least there's a little evidence that Holden and some of the book's characters existed. There's no doubt about Glanton.
Here's a list of Glanton Gang members from Chamberlain's memoir and other sources:
Joseph A. Anderson William Carr Samuel E. Chamberlain C.O. Brown John Dorsey, killed by Yuma. Tom Hitchcock "Crying Tom" Judge Holden John Jackson, killed by Yuma. John A. Johnson, Killed by Yuma. William Prewitt, killed by Yuma. Ben Tobin Fillipe Valenzuela Marcus Webster "Long Webster"
PS. I don't have the actual memoir. Did I miss anybody?
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Post by TRK on Jul 12, 2010 8:47:11 GMT -5
Joseph A. Anderson was a for-real character. He was present at the massacre of the Glanton gang by the Yumas but managed to escape. His account of the massacre was published and reprinted in numerous newspapers. Aside from Glanton, Anderson mentioned only two other members of the gang in his account: Carr and Webster.
Ben Tobin was a concoction of Chamberlain's, partially based on a real-life Texas Ranger, George Tobin, who almost certainly would have been known to Chamberlain in and around Saltillo in 1847-48. In fact, Chamberlain narrates a couple of events that involved "Ben Tobin" that actually are documented to have involved George Tobin. Then again, Chamberlain recites a cock-and-bull story about Tobin having attended "Maynooth College to be educated for the Priesthood, [but] was expelled...." The real Tobin graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with a degree in the Classics, and was Protestant. Further, the real Tobin was nowhere near the area of operations of the Glanton gang, and he was dead months before the Yuma massacre.
RR, you should definitely check out Chamberlain's My Confession. He was of that class of truth-stretchers that J. Frank Dobie called "authentic liars." He's entertaining, and sometimes tells it like it was, but you really have to watch him.
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 12, 2010 11:26:30 GMT -5
...why we had so much trouble trying to find the Bexar Exchange....
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Post by TRK on Jul 12, 2010 12:43:09 GMT -5
...maybe because there was a Bexar Exchange in Austin, Texas, by late 1841, but, as for a Bexar Exchange in San Antonio, another figment of Sam's famous imagination?
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 12, 2010 12:52:18 GMT -5
...maybe because there was a Bexar Exchange in Austin, Texas, by late 1841, but, as for a Bexar Exchange in San Antonio, another figment of Sam's famous imagination? An 1841 Chain? When Bill Goetzmann was working on the big Chamberlain book, several of us attempted to figure out where (and if) the Bexar Exchange was...it should (according to Sam's illustration) have been where the present Bexar County Courthouse is...but no real luck. When I worked in Castroville, I talked to several of the old timers who remembered how scandalized the colonist families were when the story about old Sam romancing the doctor's wife came out in the LIFE Magazine article....
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 12, 2010 21:47:04 GMT -5
Joseph A. Anderson was a for-real character. He was present at the massacre of the Glanton gang by the Yumas but managed to escape. His account of the massacre was published and reprinted in numerous newspapers. Aside from Glanton, Anderson mentioned only two other members of the gang in his account: Carr and Webster. Ben Tobin was a concoction of Chamberlain's, partially based on a real-life Texas Ranger, George Tobin, who almost certainly would have been known to Chamberlain in and around Saltillo in 1847-48. In fact, Chamberlain narrates a couple of events that involved "Ben Tobin" that actually are documented to have involved George Tobin. Then again, Chamberlain recites a cock-and-bull story about Tobin having attended "Maynooth College to be educated for the Priesthood, [but] was expelled...." The real Tobin graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with a degree in the Classics, and was Protestant. Further, the real Tobin was nowhere near the area of operations of the Glanton gang, and he was dead months before the Yuma massacre. RR, you should definitely check out Chamberlain's My Confession. He was of that class of truth-stretchers that J. Frank Dobie called "authentic liars." He's entertaining, and sometimes tells it like it was, but you really have to watch him. Yea, I have Joseph Anderson's account listing Carr and Webster. I also suspected Tobin was based on Captain George Tobin, but I don't know about the others. I'm keeping an open mind that some of Sam Chamberlain's old war tales might be true. I've got the big Chamberlain book that you worked on, but not the one with the full narrative of his adventures in Texas and Mexico. Real people, places and events seemed to inspire him along with his personal macho fiction.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 12, 2010 23:09:15 GMT -5
...why we had so much trouble trying to find the Bexar Exchange.... Score one for Wilt Chamberlain. I just found the Bexar Exchange listed twice in The Western Texan newspaper in early 1850s San Antone, but that doesn't mean J. J. Glanton slashed or shot anybody there. The building was apparently located near C. F. Fisk's property around Commerce Street. Please have a little faith in old soldiers. We're not complete liars on every detail. ;D
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 14, 2010 12:26:41 GMT -5
...why we had so much trouble trying to find the Bexar Exchange.... Score one for Wilt Chamberlain. I just found the Bexar Exchange listed twice in The Western Texan newspaper in early 1850s San Antone, but that doesn't mean J. J. Glanton slashed or shot anybody there. The building was apparently located near C. F. Fisk's property around Commerce Street. Please have a little faith in old soldiers. We're not complete liars on every detail. ;D Nice hunting there RR! Back in the day when we were looking, we had to do it on good old micro film machines...the digital stuff on line is so much nicer! Those two 1853 references to the Bexar Excahnge are interesting-the 5/12/1853 one is from a legal description of the boundaries of Precinct 1 of Bexar County and notes that "commencing on the San Antonio river in San Antonio, at the alley between the property of S.A.Maverick & C.F. Fist, in front of the Bexar Exchange, thence up said alley to the middle of Commerce Street to Presidio Street..." The second reference (June 23, 1853) is that Dan Murphy has a restaurant in the basement of the Bexar Exchange. So-there we have a Bexar Exchange in SA. Not quite where old Sam C. shows it in his watercolor and a few years after 1846. Still very cool!
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 14, 2010 19:35:47 GMT -5
Nice hunting there RR! Back in the day when we were looking, we had to do it on good old micro film machines...the digital stuff on line is so much nicer! Thanks Quincey. I see you're proficient with a certain newspaper database, but I searched for the Bexar Exchange old school/ TRL style, through dozens of crappy microfilmed newspaper reels to find those references. No seriously it only took me an hour or so with the computer database. Thank God. I wrote Fisk before and you have it as Fist, but I think the surname is actually Fish-er, but I might be wrong with the paper being badly ripped. Not sure it really matters. Well, I'm not sure there was a rowdy saloon up top, but there was definitely a restaurant down below. Maybe Glanton's poor ranger victim interrupted a steaming plate of wavy rancheros at Murphy's place. I agree it's a nice find, but not the complete puzzle. I just thought I'd throw it out there. Here's a crazy idea, which I call my One-Exchange-Theory. There were two exchanges or saloons in that area with locales in their names, but only one hosted the famous Glanton shoot-out with a ranger or infantrymen. The American Exchange was located on North Main Street across from the Huck & Sartor Cigar Store and the McManus Tin Shop on Commerce. Perhaps the killing occurred in this location and Chamberlain just got the names of the two exchanges mixed up. The Jan 12, 1849 Western Texan newspaper stated that the fixtures (pool tables, lamps, etc) of the American Exchange were up for sale. Maybe Glanton and other rowdy loafers drove the place out of business. A. A. Lockwood eventually sold the American Exchange building on Sept. 16, '52 to a Wm. Boyd. It's just a thought and I'm not sure The American Exchange would line up with Chamberlain's painting.
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 14, 2010 20:30:04 GMT -5
Or-the establishment moved from Main Plaza between 1846 and the 1853 date. From the precinct report, it sounds like it may have been located more to the east of Main Plaza.
Don't know about the plate of Mexican eggs, but you have to figure that a place run by Murphy is going to have Irish Stew.
Yes-the on line digital makes things so much nicer!
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