In the April, 1971, issue of "Southwestern Historical Quarterly," historian Llerena Friend wrote that there was a need for a new editing of Houston correspondence to complement the eight-volume collection compiled in the 1930s by Eugene C. Barker and Amelia Williams.
When author Madge Roberts began research for her previous book, "Star of Destiny: ""The"" Private Life of Sam and Margaret Houston," she began to collect just such a file of previously unpublished Houston correspondence, which soon consisted of nearly a thousand letters. Because most of these letters were until recently in...

Volume II of Sam Houston s personal correpondence continues the four-volume series of previously unpublished personal letters to and from Sam Houston. This volume begins March 6, 1846, as Houston leaves Texas to take his place in the U. S. Senate. Included in his letters are comments on national politics and life in Washington, D. C., descriptions of politicians and their wives, and his observations on generals of the Mexican War. New information sheds light on his feelings towards being a candidate for the presidency. Family letters give a picture of life on Texas plantations during the...

Volume IV of this series brings to a close nearly ten years of research and publication of Sam Houston's correspondence by Madge Thornall Roberts and the University of North Texas Press. As befitting a final volume in this series, it includes a comprehensive index of all four volumes.
Volume IV continues with letters from 1852 showing Houston's concern over the approaching Civil War and his hopeless struggle to prevent it. His letters during the Civil War prior to his death reveal his feelings on military strategy and his pride and mixed emotions as his eldest son joins the Confederate...

As the great-great-granddaughter of Sam Houston and Margaret Lea, Madge Thornall Roberts played in her great-grandparents home in Independence, Texas, which had Santa Anna s saddle in the upstairs hall, the San Jacinto sword over the mantle, and where she kept her doll s clothes in an old chest of Margaret Lea s. Trunks of documents sat unattended in the barn. Some of those papers later were burned, and what remained were divided among descendants. Madge Roberts has gathered these documents together again and, along with other Houston letters and interviews, woven them into the story of the...