Barker were now close friends and cowriting With the Makers of Texas, which he thought would “have a good market” because the state's history was required to be taught in every school. The University of Washington asked him to apply for an assistant professorship there, but he decided to stay in Texas, probably with Garrison's encouragement. The university was growing. The student body had increased from 353 to 1,348 in the past ten years.52 In the long run Texas was the best place for Bolton, or so it seemed in 1903.
From Garrison's point of view Bolton's work in Mexico advanced his plan for Texas and Southwest history. He thought of Bolton as his assistant in a program of research that Garrison managed. In 1903 he sought funding from the Carnegie Institution for Bolton's work in the Mexican archives. Garrison would send a party from Texas “composed of an instructor…and two assistants, all of them well trained and competent.”53 The proposal was not approved on account of uncertainty about whether the Mexican documents were merely copies of original records in Spanish archives. Until that question was answered, the Carnegie Institution was unwilling to fund translation work in Mexico.54
Nevertheless, Bolton and three University of Texas student assistants (all young women) went to Mexico City that summer. The Texas women had “worked in Spanish four or five years each,” he explained to Fred. Herbert could speak more fluently, but the women read more accurately because they worked full-time with the Spanish manuscripts in the Bexar Archives. With the help of these assistants Bolton greatly improved his ability to decipher colonial writing.55 The researchers set a grueling pace. They entered the Archivo General at eight in the morning and worked until it closed at two. Then they ate before going to the library of the National Museum, working there from about three until it closed. After supper they translated Philippines documents.56 Adhering to this taxing schedule, Bolton and his assistants collected more than a thousand folios of material on Texas history. He thought that in two or three years he would be an authority on the manuscript sources of southwestern history—“a thing worth accomplishing.”57
The Texas women helped him immensely in Mexico. He especially appreciated their work on the Philippine translations. Bolton told his brother, “They have helped me to the last and it will be published as a joint product.”58 Bolton was as good as his word. When the document was published, he shared credit with the two young women.59 This small act of scholarly generosity told much about Bolton as a man and about his conception of the scholarly enterprise. While he demanded all the credit he thought he deserved, Bolton also believed that scholarship was essentially a cooperative enterprise. A hard worker himself, he recognized and rewarded hardworking men and women. Though not a feminist, throughout his career Bolton helped women scholars, took women graduate students, and worked to get them fellowships and jobs.
Bolton actively sought competent Spanish-language students to help him with his work. One semester he prefaced a medieval history lecture with a question: was there anyone who knew “Spanish and would like to work in the history of the old Spanish Southwest? If so, please see me after class.” Freshman William E. Dunn came forward. Bolton put him to work in the state capitol, indexing and copying Spanish and Mexican government manuscripts at twenty cents per hour. The work fascinated Dunn, who thereafter accompanied Bolton on his summer excursions to Mexico and became his graduate student.60
In the spring of 1904 two prominent Americans visited Austin—President Theodore Roosevelt and David Starr Jordan, then president of Stanford University. They arrived on the same train. Teddy gave his stump speech and moved on. Jordan remained to deliver a formal lecture. Bolton took the opportunity to drive Jordan through the Texas hill country in a buggy.61 Jordan remembered that the Texas faculty had a spirited debate about whether to serve wine for dinner at their club, where Jordan would be guest of honor after his lecture. The Stanford president was, after all, a man of the world. What would he think of a place that did not serve wine with dinner? The epicures lost by one vote. Worried that the lack of spirits would give Jordan a negative impression of Texas, several heroic professors missed Jordan's lecture and repaired instead to the club, where they furiously smoked in order to fill the rooms with a convivial blue haze that would make Jordan feel at home. But instead of appreciating the club's cosmopolitan atmosphere, Jordan requested that the windows be opened to evacuate the smoke.62 Whether Bolton—a chain smoker—had a hand (or lung) in the smoke-out is unknown, but he had made an important acquaintance in Jordan. They would become better acquainted in the future.
Bolton did not go to Mexico in the summer of 1904, perhaps because Gertrude was in the final stage of pregnancy with their fourth daughter, Eugenie, who was born in September. He was also working on an article on the Spanish abandonment and reoccupation of Texas and finishing his textbook with Barker.63 Garrison, who no doubt regarded the book as the latest good advertisement for the University of Texas school of history, wrote a graceful introduction.64
Book royalties may have improved Bolton's financial situation somewhat, but he was betting on future prospects associated with his Mexican research. Money problems pestered him, yet in the same letter in which he complained of grim prospects for promotion at Texas—“They are terribly stingy”—he reported that he had rejected the presidency of Vincennes University.65 There is little doubt that, had Bolton remained in Milwaukee, he would have jumped at a university presidency. But Texas had changed the trajectory of his ambitions. Now he was a dedicated scholar who was convinced of the importance of his work and the eventual rewards that it would bring. Bolton's reputation was spreading. Texas would have to recognize his achievements or he would go. In June 1905 the regents promoted Bolton and raised his salary to $1,800.66 He was finally a regular member of the faculty with an improved salary (plus a stipend for managing the Quarterly and other university publications). There would be bigger payoffs in the future.
As Bolton continued to develop his expertise in the Mexican material, his relationship with Garrison became fraught with jealousy and mistrust. In early 1905 both men were evidently involved in Garrison's new application for Carnegie money to support Bolton's work in the Mexican archives.67 Andrew McLaughlin, the Carnegie Institution's director of research, had apparently given Garrison strong assurances that the project would be funded, because the Quarterly carried an announcement about it. But McLaughlin's successor, J. Franklin Jameson, was mainly interested in underwriting the publication of guides to U.S. materials in foreign archives.68 In February Jameson informed Bolton (and probably Garrison) that the Carnegie Institution's executive committee had turned down the Mexican project.69 Jameson reasoned that without sound guides to foreign archives, historians could not make reliable decisions about what should be copied. Jameson's desire for a guide to the Mexican archives eventually would raise Bolton's professional stature and wound Garrison's pride.
Before leaving for Mexico in the summer of 1905, Bolton scattered a little professional seed corn. He wrote Turner about documents in the Archivo General that might be of interest to him. Heading the list was correspondence concerning the 1819 Transcontinental Treaty. There were also eighteenth-century documents about England and Texas. “Do you suppose that the American Historical Review would care to publish good material of this sort?” he asked.70 Turner immediately (and without telling Bolton) forwarded Bolton's letter to Jameson, who was editor of the Review. “Bolton is a good man—trained here and at University of Penna,” he explained. “The stuff sounds interesting and…copies ought to be gotten, I imagine.”71
Turner's note prompted Jameson to contact Bolton, who sent a detailed report to Jameson. He revealed that he had found new Spanish material on the Lewis and Clark expedition and mentioned the possibility of renewing Garrison's application for funds to pursue work in Mexico. “If there are any questions that you would like to ask me personally,” Bolton offered, “I shall do my best [to] answer them.” He had done a great deal of research at his own expense, he explained, but he needed more funds to work more extensively. “The field is rich here, and it ought to be harvested.”72
Garrison
