The Special Collections Department has been the beneficiary of two excellent donations of rare books in the last few months. The collections are the Professor Leonard A. Duffy Papers and Law Book Collection, and the San Jacinto County Law Book Collection, both of which have interesting stories behind them.

Leonard A. Duffy was a beloved professor of law at South Texas College of Law from 1968-1997, teaching property law, oil & gas law, mineral law, trusts & estates, Texas land titles, water law, abstract and title examination, and mortgages. Evidence of the high quality of his teaching can be found in the fact that former students often contacted him for advice long after their graduation. Professor Leonard Allen Duffy was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1929 and after graduation from high school in 1946 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, intent on making the military a career. He served for two tours, the first in the Philippines and the second starting in Shanghai and ending in Korea, for a total of five years before being severely wounded during the Korean War. During fighting at the Chosin Reservoir, Professor Duffy received a shrapnel wound from a Chinese hand grenade, and due to the fierceness of the fighting there, was unable to receive proper medical attention for a while, the result being that he lost his leg due to his wound. When finally evacuated from the fighting, he recuperated first at the Yokosuka, Japan Naval Base and later in the San Diego, California Naval Hospital. As a result of his wound he received the Purple Heart and several other medals and an honorable discharge. Aptitude tests taken while he was recovering from his wound led Duffy to believe he should become an attorney. Upon his discharge from the service, following coaxing by an aunt and a military friend, Duffy relocated to Dallas, Texas.

Duffy obtained a B.A. from North Texas State University in 1955 (now the University of North Texas) with a dual major in history and political science, and then an LL.B. from Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation from law school and admission to the bar in 1957 he relocated to Houston with his Houston-born wife. Duffy then began the practice of law with the firm of Jones, Donoghue and Butler, which later changed names to Steeger, Dohoney, Jones and Caldwell. While at the firm Duffy became an expert in property and oil & gas law, and then in 1962 he went into private practice on his own, operating a general civil practice in Houston.

In the spring of 1968 Professor Duffy was approached by Assistant Dean and Professor John Ensle at South Texas College of Law about teaching a course for the school, and thus in the summer of 1968 Professor Duffy taught for the first time as an adjunct at South Texas, leading a course on trusts & estates. In August of 1968 Professor Duffy accepted a full-time position teaching at South Texas. He was an assistant professor at South Texas from 1968-1972, an associate professor from 1972-1975, and a professor of law since 1975. Professor Duffy spent the summers of 1972 and 1973 at the University of Mississippi, completing all the coursework for a Master of Laws degree in real property, but he never finished his thesis entitled "Prescriptive Rights in Water." Professor Duffy wrote an article entitled "The Character of Mortgages of Real Estate in Texas" for the South Texas Law Journal in 1970 and from 1975 to 1980 he also served as the faculty advisor to the Journal.

The number of courses Professor Duffy taught expanded over the years, as he started teaching trusts & estates, later included oil & gas law and finally added property law, a subject he continually enjoyed due to its complexities, including Texas' own peculiarities on the subject. After 29 years of service with South Texas College of Law, Professor Duffy retired in 1997. He died on August 12, 2004. After his death his widow, Mrs. Nola Duffy, donated to the Fred Parks Law Library Professor Duffy's lecture notes, as well as his extensive book collection consisting of 78 boxes of books, including 48 titles or 76 volumes added to the Special Collections department. These titles include volumes on Texas and American law as well as Texana. The titles added to the Special Collections department include such rare items as Bouvier's Law Dictionary from 1857 and Rapalje and Lawrence's Law Dictionary from 1883.

South Texas College of Law deeply appreciates Professor Duffy's military service and tremendous sacrifice for his country, and will greatly miss his legal expertise, teaching skills and keen wit. A tremendous thank you is sent to his family for donating his extensive book collection and lecture notes, which will benefit South Texas students, faculty and researchers far into the future.

This collection consists of 44 titles or 53 volumes, with the approximate inclusive publication dates of 1870-1915, the former date being when the county was created out of parts of four other Texas counties. The books were part of the law library recovered from the original wooden San Jacinto County courthouse when it burned down in 1915. Subsequently a new stone courthouse was built, and all new law books were acquired for the law library, and the old salvaged books were forgotten. Later when they were re-discovered the law books were donated to the San Jacinto County Heritage Society. The Heritage Society runs a museum complex, including the original county jail, near the current county courthouse, and the Society eventually ran out of space for the law book collection.

The Fred Parks Law Library obtained this collection almost by accident. The San Jacinto County Heritage Society decided to get rid of the law books, and started calling schools they thought might be interested in the books. The Society had no idea what books they had in the numerous boxes, and due to limited staffing and lack of legal expertise they were also unprepared to create any type of list of the books. The Society called the closest college first, Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, and offered them the books. Sam Houston State staffers made arrangements to visit the books two weeks after they had been contacted.

The Society next contacted the University of Texas School of Law Tarlton Law Library, perhaps because they are the best-known law library in the state. However, staffers at the Tarlton Library, being the oldest law school in the state in continuous operation, doubted there were many books worth the effort of obtaining them. Especially since San Jacinto County was a three-hour drive away, and because of its stature, UT also regularly receives rare book donations, and they also purchase a fair amount of rare law books each year. Thus UT declined to pursue the collection. The Tarlton Library rare book librarian then contacted the Fred Parks Law Library, knowing our law school was newer, and that only fairly recently (1990) we had started actively collecting rare books in Texas and American Law. The Fred Parks Law Library is also much closer to San Jacinto County, only an hour's drive north of Houston on Highway 59 just before Livingston, Texas.

Fresh from obtaining the information about the books from the UT rare book librarian, I contacted the museum, and set up a time two days later to meet with the museum staff to view the books. I had good reasons for wanting to view the books so quickly. I had been told that staff from Sam Houston State would be there in a few weeks to view the books, and I wanted to beat them there, to have the first chance at any truly rare items. It probably would not be worth my institution's time and money to view the books unless we had first crack at the rarest items, and it was also my professional opinion that any rare law books should end up housed in a working law library, where they could be of benefit to more legal scholars, than in a general academic library.

Making the trip north was certainly a gamble and a potential waste of time, since we possibly already had all of the books, and we did not know the exact condition the books were in, or their storage environment. There were supposed to be around 1500 books total, and at least one title was suspected to be a large set of the Southwestern Reporter, based on the title from the spine labels the museum curator was able to read to me over the phone. Books stored for over 85 years potentially also could have had all kinds of insects living in them eating and damaging the books, since bugs like to eat the organic glues used in old books, so it really could be a problem just touching old books.

Due to the large size of the collection, I requested the help of the library's Associate Director, Sally Langston, a Texas law book expert. Thus, the two of us drove up to Coldspring, San Jacinto County, Texas on Tuesday, August 10th, at 8 am dressed to work with hundreds of dirty old books, hoping to find at least a gem or two in the mess. Our supplies included work gloves and aprons to keep from getting filthy, flashlights in case the books were in a poorly lit space, boxes to repack the books if needed and a dolly (handcart) to move the boxes of books.

Our appointment with the museum curator was for 10 am, but she showed up half an hour late, right about when we were getting antsy about apparently having been stood up. The museum curator then gave us a quick tour of their old jail museum, and led us to the books, stored in an old two-room schoolhouse museum on the same site. We were lucky that the schoolhouse had plenty of space, numerous windows and good lighting, and the books had been laid out for our viewing. Also, the museum staff had attempted to stack the large sets of books like the Southwestern Reporter together, which allowed us to quickly view them and then move onto the full boxes of books.

Ms. Langston and I started at opposite ends of the room with the boxes of books, and we had to pull out each decaying book and view its title page, since almost the entire leather spine labels had by then decayed and had fallen partially or fully off the books. Many of the books showed signs of the 1915 courthouse fire, and some were burned beyond use or recognition. Slowly but surely we went through the dozens of boxes searching for prizes, and we began assembling our choices by the front door of the schoolhouse. We tried to contain our glee when we came upon hidden treasures, such as a first edition of Black's Law Dictionary, and calmly laid it in our stack of "keepers." By the end of our search, we had about several boxes of books to take with us, and we were able to authoritatively tell the museum staff that almost all of the books left then were reporter sets like the Southwestern Reporter that were duplicated most larger law libraries, and thus probably not of interest to any other law library or academic library. The museum staff appreciated our help and expertise.

After about an hour and a half of searching, Ms. Langston and I left dirty, sweaty, and thanking the museum staff profusely. We had obtained approximately seven boxes full of books, some in horrible condition, with pages and spines missing, detached covers, flaking leather and some with actual burn-marks on them from the 1915 courthouse fire. After matching each book with two covers to protect it during handling, we searched our library catalog and O.C.L.C., the national library catalog, and found that we had obtained 44 titles in 53 volumes, some very rare. The volumes mostly consisted of Texas law books, along with some American law treatises. Our rarest finds included the first edition of Black's Law Dictionary from 1891, with a current market value of at least $500, 13 other titles held only in two or less libraries in Texas, including the first edition of Black's Law Dictionary, and 5 other titles not presently found in the collection of any other Texas library.

Many of the books will need conservation work done on them costing at least $30/book to make them completely accessible to researchers, since they are presently in such poor condition. However, all of the titles have now been added to our collection and catalog and will remain forever valuable tools in legal research and legal history. Many thanks to the San Jacinto County Heritage Society for this wonderful donation.