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The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the Present. By Margaret Lewis Furse. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014. Pp. [xx], 231. $24.95, ISBN 978-1-62349-110-9.)
Margaret Lewis Furse recreates the history of her family, and the ranch in Matagorda County, Texas, it has called home for 160 years, using old letters, ranch records, memories, and secondary sources. By placing her focus on the domestic life of the Hawkins family and its relationship to the ranch, she has extracted many of the details that humanize the ranch's history. To accomplish this goal, she divides her narrative into three sections. The first examines the establishment of the ranch by North Carolinian James Boyd Hawkins and its progression from a sugar plantation to working ranch during the nineteenth century. The second introduces Hawkins's grandchildren, who...