None.
None.
(Identify the item), Francis Richard Lubbock Correspondence. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
Francis Richard Lubbock served as state treasurer of Texas from 1879 to 1891, near the end of his long career in Texas politics and government. Lubbock was born in South Carolina on October 16, 1815; he clerked in a hardware store and managed a cotton warehouse before he became a druggist in New Orleans in 1834. He followed his brother Tom to Texas in 1836, after the Battle of San Jacinto. He claimed to have sold the first barrel of flour and the first sack of coffee in the village of Houston. After clerking in the House of Representatives in the Second Congress of Texas, he was appointed comptroller of the Republic. He became the district clerk of Harris County in 1841, and bought a ranch near Harrisburg in 1846.
Lubbock was elected lieutenant governor in 1857, and governor in 1861.
Among his actions were the mobilizing of a frontier regiment of cavalry against
hostile Indians, the modest expansion of industrial resources, and the sale of
U.S. bonds acquired in 1850 to help replenish an exhausted treasury. His
interpretation of conscription laws made every able-bodied man between 16 and
60 years of age liable for military service. He did not run for re-election,
preferring to join the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel in November
1863. In 1864 he joined Jefferson Davis' staff, and was captured with him in
May 1865. Upon his release he returned to business in Houston and Galveston. He
was tax collector in Galveston for three years, and state treasurer
(1879-1891). As state treasurer, he was an active member of the Capitol
Building Commission. He served under Governor James Hogg on the Board of
Pardons before retiring at age 80. In addition to his government service,
Lubbock was an officer in the Texas Veteran Association. Lubbock wrote his
autobiography
Materials are correspondence of Francis Richard Lubbock, 1869,
1879-1881, 1895, 1904, and undated (bulk 1880-1881), mainly dating from the
period he served as Texas state treasurer. Most of the letters are incoming and
many do not concern the business of the Treasury Department. Subjects include
invitations to speak at meetings, letters of introduction, requests and
recommendations for appointments and endorsements, requests for advice and
assistance, letters concerning payment for school lands, thank you notes, a
letter of resignation, and a newspaper subscription invoice. A few letterpress
replies, drafts, and an explanatory note dating 1904 are included. One letter
from an old friend, who had helped lay out Austin and its outlots in the 1840s,
discusses the drawbacks of Austin as the site for the state university. Another
letter asks for advice and help for Allen and Stafford, who put up a bond for
someone who escaped. [Lubbock was friends with Samuel William Allen; Stafford
could refer to R. E. Stafford of Columbus.] A letter from the Texas Adjutant
General's Department requests Lubbock's recollection on the number of Texas men
sent into Confederate service along with the numbers killed and wounded. Other
letters mention Lubbock's reelection and the nominees for Comptroller.
Correspondents include C. L. Cleveland, Richard Coke, William Preston Johnston,
Henry Orsay, Amory R. Starr, James Harper Starr, James W. Truitt, and W. D.
Wood. The volume that originally contained these letters is described in the
These letters are arranged chronologically.
Tonia J. Wood, May 2002
A scrapbook (in which this correspondence was interleaved) and three letterpress copybooks were donated to the Texas Department of Insurance, Statistics and History by Francis R. Lubbock on March 22, 1904.