yellow rose

[George Thompson]

Regarding the person who was "The Yellow Rose of Texas":
I quote from an article by  Margaret Swett henson, in The Portable
Handbook of Texas, publ. by the Texas Historical Assn in 2000.

West, Emily D.  Called the "Yellow Rose of Texas" by twentieth century
mythmakers; also erroneously called Emily Morgan by those who presomed
her a slave of James Morgan; b[orn] free in New Haven Connecticut.  [A
long survey of her activities.]  Strangers assumed Emilly was James
Morgan's slave because she was black.  A story was told around
campfires and in barrooms that Emily had helped defeat the Mexican army
by a dalliance with Santa Anna, but there is almost no evidence of
this.  ***  [The story] launched a prurient interest on the part of two
amateur historians -- Francis X. Tolbert and Henderson Shuffler -- who
concocted the modern fiction.  By then, a popular song by Mitch Miller
was celebrating the "Yellow Rose".  Shuffler added other
fictions. . . .  In 1976 English professor Martha Anne Turner published
The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga and Her Song, in which she credits
Shuffler and adds even more undocumented details.  Thus the story was
full blown for the journalistic frenzy of the Texas Sesquicentennial of
1986.  ***

Amateur historians have their faults, but at least they know a good
story when they hear one/make one up.  There's a portrait at the New-
York Historical Society of a remarkably homely middle-aged person in a
opulent blue silk gown.  This has been accepted for years as a portrait
of Lord Cornbury, the Governor of New York province under Queen Anne.
One of my friends in the history department here has spent years
debunking this identification, and her mischief has reached the point
of leading the N-YHS to change its label.  Now New York can no longer
claim the first transvestite governor and Rudy Giuliani doesn't have
tradition to support his capers.

Tarnation.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.