Lincecum's experiences of following the frontier in the early 1800s, all the way from Georgia to Texas, were not so unusual in themselves, but the intellect and wit that inform his memoirs make them unique. His scientific articles and collections of specimens, his correspondence with leading scientists of the time, and his six years among the colony of ex-Confederates in Tuxpan, Mexico, offer still other insights into the age. Lincecum portrays many aspects of frontier social life, including marriage and divorce, slavery as practiced by the small slaveholder, education, religion as critiqued...

Lincecum's experiences of following the frontier in the early 1800s, all the way from Georgia to Texas, were not so unusual in themselves, but the intellect and wit that inform his memoirs make them unique. His scientific articles and collections of specimens, his correspondence with leading scientists of the time, and his six years among the colony of ex-Confederates in Tuxpan, Mexico, offer still other insights into the age. Lincecum portrays many aspects of frontier social life, including marriage and divorce, slavery as practiced by the small slaveholder, education, religion as critiqued...

The effects of the Civil War on civilian life in Texas are powerfully conveyed in the correspondence of Dr. Gideon Lincecum (17931874), a natural scientist and philosopher who moved to Texas in 1848 with his family of ten children and settled in Washington County. Having retired from an extensive and lucrative botanical medical practice in Mississippi, Gideon devoted much of his time in Texas before the war to studying the natural sciences and carrying on an extensive correspondence that included Northern scientists and even Charles Darwin. He used a letterpress to make copies of almost all...