2025 Virtual Portal to Texas History Partners Forum Recap

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The March 27th Virtual Portal to Texas History Partners Forum showcased the exciting work that UNT Libraries’ Digital Libraries Division and partners of The Portal to Texas History are accomplishing! This event gave Portal partners the opportunity to ask questions about how their Portal contributions impact researchers, and it was a chance for people to share their experiences in working with these Texas history resources and to learn helpful tips about navigating the Portal.

Presentations from the UNT Libraries included a welcome from Interim University Librarian and Vice Provost, Dr. Sian Brannon and a Portal to Texas History overview from Dr. Mark Phillips, the Associate University Librarian over the Digital Libraries Division.  These presentations showcased how contributions from our partners have benefited UNT students, faculty, and the wider public through the wide variety of partner-contributed materials related to Texas history.  Dr. Ana Krahmer presented about how partners can add their newspaper collections to the Texas Digital Newspaper Program, and Jake Mangum presented about the Rescuing Texas History program. Also from UNT, Christina Kellum and Tim Gieringer gave tours of the Digital Projects Lab and the Digital Newspaper Unit, respectively offering windows through the virtual realm into their daily routines. 

A presentation from Dreanna Belden and Courtney Abubakar about Texas History for Teachers highlighted how partner contributions are being incorporated into lessons for the K-12 History classroom, developed by Courtney and other members of the UNT team.  Offering a different perspective, Marcia McIntosh, librarian from the Digital Projects Lab, and two student workers from the division, presented about what their daily work with partner materials involves.  Noah Garcia, from the Digital Projects Lab, gave an informative explanation of the scanners he works with to represent partner materials on the Portal, while Spencer Houghton from the Digital Newspaper Unit showed how his work contributes both to the National Digital Newspaper Program and to The Portal to Texas History.  

To close the forum, Portal to Texas History partners presented about how access to their collections on the Portal have benefited their own patrons and researchers.  These partners included:

These presentations highlighted the value of the Portal and the support it receives from the Cathy Nelson Hartman Portal to Texas History Endowment.  All UNT Libraries staff who heard these presentations were deeply impressed by the partner work with the collections, and they all agreed that they could have listened to Portal partners talk all day.  We are very grateful for the dedication and hard work that Portal to Texas History partners put into building access to their Texas history collections.  Keep an eye out for future Portal to Texas History events that showcase partner collections!

Join us for the 2025 Virtual Portal to Texas History Partners Forum

Posted by & filed under Events, General.

If you’re a Portal partner, or have considered becoming a partner, please join us for our Virtual Portal Partners Forum, taking place online on March 27, 2024, 10AM-3PM. 

If you are a Portal to Texas History partner, this event is for you! During this forum, you can expect to learn everything about digital projects with The Portal to Texas History, from initiating a new project to how your current materials get used!

Please register here, if you are interested in attending!

Virtual Portal Partner Forum Schedule (March 27, 2025, 10 am – 3 pm)

  • 10 am: Welcome from Interim University Librarian and Vice Provost

  • 10:05 am: Portal to Texas History Overview Session

  • 11 am: Newspapers: How projects work, obtaining funding

  • 11:30 am: TX4T (Texas History for Teachers)

  • 12 pm: Lunch, with Optional Virtual Tour of Digitization Labs

  • 1 pm: Rescuing Texas History Awards

  • 1:30 pm: Digital Projects and Newspapers–A Day in the Life of a Student

  • 2:00 pm: Lightning Rounds with Portal Partners: Current Projects and Benefits of Contributing to the Portal

  • 2:50 pm: Farewells

Opening of the Laredo-Mexico Highway

Two Great Nations Join Hands at Laredo

Posted by & filed under Featured, General, National Digital Newspaper Program.

This post was prepared by NDNP graduate student assistant Spencer Houghton, supported by Timothy Gieringer, Coordinator for the NDNP-Texas project. Spencer Houghton is a student at the University of North Texas pursuing a master’s degree in Archival Studies. He lives in Denton, TX with his wife Kaylia and two dogs Joey and Penny.

Delegates arrive for highway openingOn the morning of Wednesday, July 1, 1936, US Vice President John Garner, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations General Eduardo Hay, and delegations that included ambassadors, diplomats, and cabinet secretaries from the US, Mexico, and Guatemala met on the international bridge in Laredo, Texas, to celebrate the opening of the Laredo-Mexico Highway. The highway, Mexico’s longest section of the larger Pan-American Highway, covers more than 700 miles of rough terrain, crossing deserts, winding through jungles, and scaling mountains, to connect Laredo to Mexico City. Map of the Laredo-Mexico Highway

Though the highway would eventually cover just a small portion of the sprawling Pan-American highway, the road from Laredo to Mexico City would establish Laredo as America’s Gateway to Mexico. In the months leading up to the highway’s opening, both the US and Mexico opened new tourist bureaus on their respective side of the international divide. Jose Rivera, general manager of the influential Mexican Automobile Association, told The Laredo Times on June 6, 1936, “Laredo is a key point on our planned system for serving tourists on their way to and in Mexico.” It was estimated that in 1936, millions of American tourists were eagerly awaiting the highway’s opening.

 

 

Inauguration of the Laredo-Mexico Highway

 

In anticipation of the event, The Laredo Times published a 12-page special section in their June 30, 1936, issue, containing information relevant to the highway’s opening, with coverage in both English and Spanish.

Tourist scenes 'at the end of the highway'

Features included a sightseeing guide for American tourists headed south to Mexico City, an article by Laredo native and engineer J.W. Berretta praising Mexican engineers for their accomplishments, and a call from Laredo Mayor Albert Martin mandating local businesses close during the opening ceremony to encourage would-be shoppers to attend the celebration. For more information on the Laredo-Mexico Highway, browse Chronicling America for additional issues of The Laredo Times.

As one of only four state institutions awarded seven times by the NEH, UNT has enjoyed a long history working with the National Digital Newspaper Program, and the opportunity to learn what other states do in newspaper preservation is something we look forward to every year. NDNP, “a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to provide permanent access to a national digital resource of newspaper bibliographic information and historic newspapers, selected and digitized by NEH-funded institutions (awardees) from all U.S.” The collection NDNP has built on Chronicling America represents all 50 United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Comprising over 20 million pages of news content, ChronAm is a rich, free resource for anyone interested in historical and genealogical research. 

 

Telling the Story of the Harris and Eliza Kempner Collection

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Written by Max Rhodes, Lead Metadata Student for the Kempner Collection and a journalism major and history minor.

[Photograph of Kempner Family Members with Rabbi #1]

[Photograph of Kempner Family Members with Rabbi #1]

The Digital Projects Lab has recently completed the process of digitizing and describing over 50,000 letters from the Harris and Eliza Kempner Collection. Starting back in March of 2017 and enlisting the help of approximately 30 student employees, completing the letters of the Kempner Collection has been a massive undertaking.  

The total collection consists of over 66,000 items, including the letters and a myriad of legal documents, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and other text items. Most were originally created between the 1940s and 1960s, but some date back to the late 1800s. The collection was donated by the Kempner Family to the Rosenberg Library in Galveston. In 2016, these items were lent to the UNT Digital Library to be digitized and uploaded to the Portal to Texas History with funding for digitization provided by the Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund.  

The scanning process began the following year after all the letters and other items were shipped to Denton and took a team of students nearly six years to get everything digitized by October of 2022. Since each piece of paper was scanned front and back and some of the letters and other items were several pages long, over 180,000 total scans were made. However, the work was far from complete.  

Next, metadata had to be written for each letter. Metadata makes specific items easier to search for and can allow researchers to find very niche topics. The information in the metadata for each letter would include the date it was written, the name of the person or business who wrote it, the name of the person or business it was addressed to, a summary of the content of the letter, the location where the letter was sent from and addressed to as well as a list of searchable key words or phrases. Despite the sheer number of letters, giving each one its own set of unique information in the metadata makes it possible to keep track of them and find references made to very specific topics. 

[Telegram from Albert Einstein to Harris Kempner]

[Telegram from Albert Einstein to Harris Kempner]
[Letter from D. W. Kempner to Danny Thorne, January 13, 1956] - writing to his grandson, who was five-years old at the time

[Letter from D. W. Kempner to Danny Thorne, January 13, 1956] – writing to his grandson, who was five-years old at the time

 

Who are the Kempners? 

[Letter from H. Kempner in Yiddish, May 23, 1880]

[Letter from H. Kempner in Yiddish, May 23, 1880]

Harris Kempner was born in a small village in Poland in 1837. He immigrated to New York at the age of 17, and to the newly formed state of Texas in 1856. He joined the Confederate army at the outbreak of the Civil War and served as quartermaster sergeant after being injured in battle. Following the war, he briefly operated a general store in Coldspring before moving to Galveston in 1870. Working with his business partner Mark Marx, Kempner established himself as an important figure in the growing city. He worked to expand the railroads, improve the port to allow for larger ships, and started a powerful banking and cotton empire. 

[Copy of Congressional Record Page: Extension of Remarks of Hon. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, April 25, 1950] - tells the story of the founding families of Galveston, including the Kempners

[Copy of Congressional Record Page: Extension of Remarks of Hon. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, April 25, 1950] – tells the story of the founding families of Galveston, including the Kempners

Kempner married Eliza Seinsheimer of Cincinnati Ohio in March of 1872, and they would have eleven children together, eight of whom survived past childhood. We see correspondence from them all in the collection. Some of the most prominent are Isaac H. Kempner (1873-1967), Daniel W. Kempner (1877-1956) and Isaac’s son, Harris L. Kempner (1903-1987). These three men, along with several other family members ran the company known as H. Kempner for several decades spanning the early and mid-20th century. Some of the enterprises overseen by the H. Kempner Cotton Company include the Imperial Sugar Company, the United States National Bank, the Texas Prudential Insurance Company and several others. The Kempner family had an enormous impact on the city of Galveston, and on the state as a whole. They kept very detailed accounts of their business practices and saved nearly all business and personal paperwork spanning from the creation of Harris Kempner’s business in the 1880s nearly 100 years to the 1970s.

 

 

Sources:

New Historical Texas Newspapers Available on Chronicling America

Laredo, Texas--The Future Great Railroad Centre and Grand Gateway of International Commerce.

Posted by & filed under Featured, General, Grants, National Digital Newspaper Program.

As part of UNT Libraries’ seventh round of National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant funding awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress has begun uploading more Texas newspaper issues to Chronicling America, the digital repository for historic U. S. newspapers. This seventh round of funding, focused on building content from south- and border-Texas cities, includes new titles from Laredo and McAllen and additional issues to the previously digitized San Antonio Light. After being uploaded to Chronicling America, these newspapers will also go into the Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP) on the Portal to Texas History.

Laredo Daily NewsThe first titles to go online for this round include Laredo Daily News, showcasing a small number of issues from the late nineteenth century. We then have issues of the Laredo Weekly Times, from several years spanning the early twentieth century.  This first batch of digitized newspapers also includes some 1935 issues of The Laredo Times, a title that featured news in both English and Spanish. More issues from the Laredo Weekly Times and The Laredo Times will be added Chronicling America in the coming months.

Chronicling America currently provides over 20 million pages of digitized historic newspapers in 30 different languages from all 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. You can find a list of previously digitized Texas newspapers on Chronicling America, as well as see when new titles and issues are added to Chronicling America here.