MEET THE AUTHORS

The author, Carl L. Duaine (r), with his son Laurence Alan Duaine, on the job in 1951. The streets and curbs being laid led to the (then) new Administration Building at Texas A&I University in Kingsville.

Bios
Carl L. Duaine Carl L. Duaine had an intimate relationship with the South Texas of his origin. First as a youth, wandering the brush country on horseback, alone weeks at a time working cattle, and later as a surveyor, measuring and documenting that expansive region and living among its people. Understanding that much of his experience of the land mirrored that of his forebears, Duaine embarked upon a quest to learn more about the Mexican side of his own family history. Forty years of research resulted in With All Arms, a genealogical socio-history of the first permanent settlers of northeastern Mexico and South Texas.

Other books by Duaine include The Dead Men Wore Boots, a History of the 32nd Texas Volunteer Cavalry and Caverns of Oblivion, the translation, with commentary, of three early Spanish journals on the early exploration of what is now northern Mexico and South Texas. Duaine, a descendant of the indigenous people of Mexico as well as Spaniards who landed at Vera Cruz with Hernan Cortez, died in 1988, leaving us this remarkable benchmark by which one of regional Hispanic origins may gauge something of who he is.

L. Alan Duaine, eldest son of Carl Duaine and a former Air Force fighter pilot and airline pilot, acted upon the oft-repeated suggestion of a second edition of his father’s lifetime work, With All Arms, and stumbled into one of the more fulfilling adventures of an adventurous life. An aspiring writer himself, the younger Duaine found the next two years an exhilarating ride through the pages of the book. In the process of editing and revising for clarity, digging up new photographs and illustrations, and vastly expanding the index, Duaine at last came to fully appreciate the miracle that “old man Duaine” had achieved in the original. The son remains satisfied that this second edition, begun as filial duty, has, in fact, been one of the better privileges of his life. Duaine lives in Corpus Christi and Paris, France. He has three children and four grandchildren.