American Historical Ephemera & Photography

7 x 4 3/8 in. satiny coated paper invitation (creasing, with areas of light discoloration). Sheet vertically folded for delivery, with manuscript address "To The Attorney General" one one side and invitation text on the other. Partly printed invitation accomplished in manuscript requests the company of John Birdsall, Esq. at "a Ball, to be given on the 25th inst. in the Representative Hall." Ball managers listed below. Ca 1837. -- 4 x 6 1/4 in. printed invitation (light spots, creasing, one area of loss along left edge). Text banner reading "Liberty, Union, Independence" surmounts a circle of stars surrounding text, "4th of JULY, / '76." Text below invites the holder to a ball at Marshall Hotel, 18 June, 1848. Ball managers also listed. -- Together, 2 invitations to balls held in independent and early-statehood Texas. 

John Birdsall was appointed Attorney General of the newly independent Republic of Texas on 15 August 1837. Prominent figures in the early republic (whose names are listed on Birdsall's invitation as managers of the Ball) include Francis Lubbock, appointed Comptroller by President Sam Houston (later governor of Confederate Texas); James W. Scott, appointed Texas Army Paymaster in May of 1837; William Gordon Cooke, a member of Houston's staff at the Battle of San Jacinto; William M. Shepherd, who served as a surgeon in the Texas Army and was appointed Secretary of the Navy in December of 1837; Berhard Elliott Bee, Sr., who settled in Texas in 1836 and served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State in David G. Burnet's ad interim government, as Secretary of War under Sam Houston, and as Secretary of State in Mirabeau B. Lamar's first administration.