The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection
of the South Texas Border Area
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The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection contains more than 8,000 photographs that document the history and development of the South Texas border area during the early twentieth century. The collection includes photographs of the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. military presence at Fort Brown during the 1910s, and a unique visual record of the social and economic growth of the Lower Rio Grande Valley during that period. Donated by the Runyon family to the Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin in 1986, the collection also includes glass negatives, nitrate negatives, lantern slides, prints, and postcards representing the life's work of commercial photographer Robert Runyon (1881-1968), a longtime resident of South Texas. Robert Runyon, Border Photographer (1881-1968) 
Seeking better employment opportunities, Robert Runyon left his native Kentucky in 1909 and traveled to Texas, where he hired on as a concessionaire for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway on its route between Houston and Brownsville. Within months he became manager of the lunchroom and curio shop in the Brownsville depot, and the following year he owned his own photography studio. In 1913 he married Amelia Lenor Medrano, daughter of a prominent Matamoros family, and they had three daughters and two sons, in addition to a son from Runyon's previous marriage. Robert Runyon lived in Brownsville for 59 years, until his death in 1968, and throughout his life he showed an avid interest in the evolving history and culture of the south Texas border region. He worked as a commercial photographer from 1910 to 1926, recording the Rio Grande terrain and urban life in Brownsville and Matamoros (Mexico). In 1913 he began to photograph the events of the Mexican Revolution as they reached the Texas border, and he traveled briefly with General Lucio Blanco and his Constitutionalist troops. Runyon also documented the military buildup of nearby Fort Brown and the preparations for the U.S. entry into World War I. 
During the 1920s Robert Runyon turned his attention to city life and to the natural environs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, with a special interest in botany. In 1926 he left commercial photography for the more profitable trade in curios and souvenirs, becoming a partner in curio stores in Matamoros and Brownsville. He pursued his interest in botany, publishing two books on native plants, crusading to save the native Texas palm, and discovering several species of plants that now bear his name. Runyon participated in a number of botanical organizations, including the Phi Sigma Society, a biological fraternity at The University of Texas at Austin. His herbarium became one of the largest in Texas, containing more than 8,750 specimens at the time of his death. The herbarium was donated to UT Austin and is now housed in the UT Plant Resources Center. In the late 1930s Runyon entered local politics, serving as the Brownsville city manager in 1937 and as the mayor from 1941-43. For his efforts as Brownsville's municipal defense coordinator during World War II he was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Distinguished Service. In 1952 he unsuccessfully ran for the Texas House of Representatives. He continued his involvement in civic and political matters into the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he served as chairman of the Brownsville Planning and Zoning Board. Runyon Collection on the Internet The UT Austin General Libraries is one of ten libraries across the U.S. that has been awarded funding through the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition to digitize historically significant American collections and make them available for the first time via the Internet. The grant to UT Austin, totaling $46,945, has supported the digitization of the Robert Runyon Photograph Collection. "American Memory" is the Library of Congress's online collection of primary source materials in U.S. history and culture from the period 1850-1920. UT's Runyon Photograph Collection represents a geographical region and ethnic population undocumented in the digital collection. Other institutions that received funding were Brown University, Denver Public Library, Duke University, Harvard University, New York Public Library, North Dakota State University, Ohio Historical Society, University of Chicago, and University of North Carolina. "It is an honor to be a part of this exciting project," said Don E. Carleton, director of UT's Center for American History. "The Center's photographic archive ranks among the nation's leading resources for visual information on the Southwest. I am delighted by this opportunity to make this valuable collection more widely accessible through this innovative partnership with the Library of Congress and the UT General Libraries." The UT General Libraries has overseen the digitization of the 8,241 images from the Runyon Collection, assembled the images into a database, indexed them for retrieval, and made the database available on the World Wide Web at http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu. Once the project is completed, the Library of Congress "American Memory" site will link to the UT Austin General Libraries site. Students and researchers will be able to approach the images in the Runyon Collection through the digital finding aid or subject queries, determine which photographs they wish to view, examine thumbnail-size images, and download and view the fuller images. In addition, the public will be able to purchase reproductions of the photographs from UT's Center for American History. "Students, scholars, and lifelong learners will all benefit from having these materials readily available on the Internet," said Harold Billings, director of UT's General Libraries. "This award recognizes the richness of our collections here at UT Austin and is an affirmation of our technical expertise to make these materials digitally available."
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