Dodson Family Papers

Given how intertwined with Texas history Ruth Dodson’s progenitors were, it is perhaps unsurprising she had a talent for writing stories about Texas when it was struggling to find its identity. Her grandfather, Archilaus Bynum Dodson arrived in Texas in 1827, shortly after Stephen F. Austin’s Old 300 had begun the Anglo settlement of the region. In 1835 he married Sarah Randolph Bradley. Shortly after, he was with Captain Andrew Robinson’s Texas Defense Unit as a First Lieutenant. Sarah presented to the unit a red, white, and blue flag with a single star, which with a later minor format change became the Lone Star state flag of Texas that is still in use today.

One of Archilaus and Sarah’s children had a daughter in 1876 and named her Viola Ruth. Ruth would grow up on the family homestead, Rancho Perdido, or Lost Ranch, surrounded mostly by Spanish speaking Mexicans. This necessitated her learning Spanish at a young age, and she used her bilingual talent to absorb stories of Mexican culture that might not have been easily forthcoming if she had not been a child.

She later used this knowledge to compile a book of folk healing stories surrounding Don Pedrito Jaramillo. Her family had lived near the Dobie family, and J. Frank Dobie encouraged her to continue writing and submitting stories from her time on the sparsely populated frontier as there were few narratives written with primary knowledge. She wrote over 40 short stories, many of which were published in places such as Frontier Times and Southwest Review. She also contributed to Dobie’s work. Dodson wrote a novel about migrant workers called Cock Crows, which was later retitled to The Rooster Crows. It won an award at the Dee Woods sponsored Southwest Writers Conference, but was never published, and only the first pages of the manuscript are known to still exist.

Ruth Dodson never married or had children. She spent her later years writing and liaising with other historians and assisting her less educated neighbors with their affairs. With the encouragement of J. Frank Dobie and Dan E. Kilgore, she unsuccessfully attempted to have an anthology of her works published. After her death in 1963, her niece, Henrietta Newbury, also attempted to publish a collection. Her writings are a window into a time in South Texas few experienced and even fewer had the ability to pass down to future generations. This collection will ensure that legacy is preserved.