loan to the museum for the opening. The center letter is from Sam Houston to Phillip Dimmitt; it tells of the fall of the Alamo, and commands Dimmitt to fall back to headquarters. Other significant collections on loan were those of Emil Hurja and Everette DeGolyer.

The foundation of the museum's collections came from gifts of artifacts and documents donated in early 1939 from a large number of people, including Hill. Here, Jeanne Sully Smyth presents a Mexican army saber and scabbard to museum director Ike Moore for the museum.

Volunteers from the Houston Fire Department served as security guards in the galleries during the two-day opening.

Clarence R. Wharton at the afternoon session on April 21, 1939: "This ostentatious shaft marks the scene of one of the major events ofhistory. Here culminated the struggle which had been going on for more than three centuries for the mastery of North American and which determined for all time that the country west of the Mississippi to the Pacific should be part of the United States."

The day concluded with a banquet at the Rice Hotel, featuring a speech on "Texas, A Heritage and a Trust" by Peter Molyneaux, editor of The Texas Weekly, and music by the 5-piece Joe Belle Orchestra. "Our heritage is this rich region of the earth, this Texas, which we inhabit and which is our homeland, and something else besides, something even more precious - the freedom to govern ourselves and to order our lives under the protection of equitable laws of our own making."

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