Charles Ramsdell
Born on 1909 April 5 in Austin, Texas, author and journalist Charles W. Ramsdell, Jr. was the son of noted historian Charles W. Ramsdell (1877-1942) and Susanna Griffith Ramsdell. Through his mother, he was a descendant of Angelina Dickinson Griffith (1834-1869), who with her mother survived the 1836 Battle of the Alamo. Ramsdell attended the University of Texas and traveled extensively in Mexico before working as a historian for the National Park Service and as a translator for the Texas General Land Office. He contributed articles to numerous publications and was a staff writer for the San Antonio Express Magazine for a number of years. Ramsdell published a highly-regarded guidebook, San Antonio, a Historical and Pictorial Guide, in 1959 and updated it in 1968. He translated a work by Alfonso Reyes, Mexico in a Nutshell, for publication in 1964.
Articles by this Contributor
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Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
