Come to Texas

Come to Texas, urged countless advertisements, newspaper articles, and private letters in the late nineteenth century. Expensive acres lay fallow, ready to be turned to agricultural uses. Entrepreneurial Texans knew that drawing immigrants to those lands meant greater prosperity for the state as a whole and for each little community in it. They told the ""Texas story"" to whoever would read it. In this book Barbara J. Rozek documents their efforts, shedding light on the importance of their words in peopling the Lone Star State. Rozek traces the efforts first of the state government (until 1876) and then of private organizations, agencies, businesses, and individuals to entice people to Texas. In whatever form, the appeals were to hope - hope for lower infant mortality rates, business and farming opportunities, education, and marriage - and they reflected the hopes of those writing. Using archival material, Rozek shows the enthusiasm with which Texans promoted their native or adopted home as the perfect home for others. Texas is indeed an immigrant state - perhaps by destiny; but certainly, Rozek demonstrates, by design.