John Nance Garner Museum
Introduction
The John Nance Garner Museum, located in Uvalde, Texas, is one of the five divisions of the University of Texas Center for American History. The Garner Museum documents the remarkable life and career of Texas native son John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner (1868-1967), the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history and the second most powerful politician in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The museum is located in the house that served as Garner’s home for more than thirty years.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives during the last two years of Herbert Hoover’s presidency (1931-1933) and Vice President during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first two terms (1933-1941), Garner was a dominant national political figure who played a critical role in the passage of most of the federal legislation aimed at alleviating or ending the most severe economic crisis in U.S. history.
Garner and his wife, Ettie, who had served as his personal secretary during their years in the nation’s capital, lived in the two-story brick house on 333 North Park Street in Uvalde until her death in 1948. In 1952, Garner donated the structure to the City of Uvalde as a memorial to his late wife, but continued to reside on the property in a small one-story cottage until his death on November 7, 1967. Since 1973 it has been the Garner Museum’s mission to preserve and exhibit photographs, cartoons, documents, paintings, sculptures, and artifacts documenting Garner’s life and career and to educate the public about one of the most important and colorful political figures in Texas and American history.
On November 20, 1999, the City of Uvalde transferred ownership of the Garner Museum to the University of Texas at Austin to become a division of the University’s Center for American History (CAH). The Center is among the leading research agencies in the nation for the study of historical topics that relate to the life and career of John Nance Garner. Its Research and Collections Division located on the UT-Austin campus constitutes the largest archive and library in existence on Texas history, with special strengths on the history of south and southwest Texas, the region Garner represented in Congress for thirty-one years. The CAH archives include the extensive John Nance Garner Scrapbook Collection, the only significant body of Garner papers that exist. The Center also houses the personal papers of individuals who played critical roles in Garner’s career, including Houston financier and publisher Jesse H. Jones and south Texas political boss Jim Wells, whose papers are a rich source for letters from the early years of Garner’s congressional career. CAH’s Congressional History Collection contains the papers of many of Garner’s colleagues in the House of Representatives, including Sam Rayburn, James P. Buchanan, Albert Burleson, Maury Maverick, Sr., and Harry Wurzbach.
Additionally, the John Nance Garner Museum is connected thematically with the Center’s Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham. Historically, Rayburn and Garner were closely linked: Garner fostered Rayburn’s congressional career and, following Garner’s election to the vice presidency, the two men worker together to steer Roosevelt’s legislation through Congress. It is fitting, therefore, that the Center connect the Garner and Rayburn museums through projects, exhibits, and programs that examine topics relating to these two legislative giants.
The John Nance Garner House was named a National Historic Landmark in 1972.