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Bexar Archives Online
Detail from document which concerns the foundation of settlements in Béxar and La Bahía, circa 1717. e_bx_000002
Given the magnitude and importance of the Bexar Archives and the need for greater availability, the Briscoe Center has created the Bexar Archives Online, a web-based resource that joins digital images of the original Spanish documents with the corresponding English-language translations. The project has received a TexTreasures grant in both 2009 and 2010, with funding from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
Bexar Archives Online features over 5,000 original documents (23,000 pages) that have been digitized from microfilm. Researchers may browse, by year, the originals and translations, or compare an original and its translation side-by-side. Full-text searching of the translations is also supported.
At present, Bexar Archives Online presents the military, civil, and political life of the Spanish province of Texas from 1717 to 1792. The area covered by the documents in this portion of the collection is wide indeed, and future digitization projects will broaden the Bexar Archives' online scope even further.
In the immediate future, from September 2011 to August 2012, the Briscoe Center will embark on its third TexTreasures-supported project, which will add to Bexar Archives Online documents spanning the years 1793 to 1801, as well as the 37-volume Calendar which describes every document in the collection.
Bexar Archives is "one of the great historical treasures of the American continent," according to Historian Lester Gladstone Bugbee. The Bexar Archives preserve the military, civil, and political life of the Spanish province of Texas and the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas, and constitute the principle resource for the Spanish and Mexican history of Texas from 1717–1836.
Watermark detail from page 3 of a letter from Cruillas to Martos y Navarette. e_bx_000216_003
Within the Briscoe Center’s sizeable and significant Texas History collection, the Bexar Archives stands out as one of the most important. Particularly rich in administrative, social, and ethno-history, and because of their volume and breadth of subject matter, the documents are an essential source for any scholar interested in the history of the borderlands.
During the period covered by the Bexar Archives, Texas, originally populated by a variety of Indian tribes, became a major arena of conflict, as a host of invaders gradually penetrated the area. Indian nations fought one another. The Spanish fought the Indians. The French fought the Spanish. Soldiers, civilians, and missionaries fought amongst themselves. The Mexicans fought the Spanish for their independence. Finally the Anglo-American colonists fought the Mexicans for their own independence, and then returned to fighting the Indians. Thus modern Texas emerged from a long and complex struggle between competing interests. The story of that struggle—with all its heroism and depravity, daily routines and hair-raising adventures, and suffering and triumph—is recorded in the pages of the Bexar Archives.
