David B. Trimble, family historian and genealogist, self published a series of books on his family's history, which he traced back to the late 18th century. The Trimble family and their ancestors lived in Texas, Tennessee and Virginia with more distant relatives in Illinois. Members of the Buchanan and Gillespie branches served in the Civil War. The Hestand family had connections to the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee the 1870s. Benjamin S. Davidson co-owned the American Pneumatic Equipment Corporation and held patents for shock absorbers for automobiles. Homer Trimble served in France during WWI, and during WWII he served in the South Pacific as Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers and was awarded for his construction of a track through the New Guinea wilderness. Edgar F. Smith was a lawyer in Austin, Texas.
This collection documents the Bailey, Buchanan, Davidson, Gillespie, Hestand, Kincanon, McPherson, Nevill, Smith, Trimble, and Willis families with correspondence, business records, land records, manuscript materials, printed items, newspapers and clippings, and photographs. The collection dates from 1764 through 1994, but the bulk of materials date from the 1860s to 1940s. The items illustrate daily life in small towns and rural areas in Texas and in the South. The collection includes some items, such as the sermons of Rev. William Tennent and a German almanac, which do not appear to be related to the family, but collected by members of the family.
The collection is arranged by format and grouped by families alphabetically, much as it was received from the donor. The Photocopies and Transcripts series contain copies of letters and records which duplicate many of the original items in this collection, though they also contain copies of items which David Trimble did not own and are not otherwise found in this collection. In the Correspondence series, "bundle" refers to original groupings of letters that were tied with ribbon; the numbering here is arbitrary.
In the Scrapbook series, two albums have been dismantled due to the deteriorating state of the materials. Photographs were taken of the album pages before re-housing to record their original state; copies of these images are in the folders with the photographs.
Spellings of names appear here as they are most commonly spelled in the collection items, although some variations exist: Nevill also spelled Neville, Hestand also spelled Hiestand, Besse also spelled Bessie, Shell also spelled Shel, Wolfe also spelled Wolf.
Some portions are restricted due to format. Please contact repository for further information.
Trimble (David B.) Collection 1764, 1783 - 1994, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.