Anatomy of a Book
The Story Behind Bastrop Literary Knights – How one idea ignited a ten-year quest to recover a forgotten legacy
At an April 2016 Bastrop Ladies Reading Circle meeting, President No. 54 Joan Russell challenged a small group of history-loving members—none of them historians—to bring the Reading Circle’s founders and presidents back to life. Each writer claimed a president; and together uncovered the stories of all fifty-four women to create the book Bastrop Literary Knights.
Glenda Dayton, Brenda Uptain, Carol Kysar, Mary Lucas
Photo: Glenda Dayton and Jane Hunt
We also traced Reading Circle founder Emma Holmes Jenkins’s work as a paid correspondent for the Houston Post, Galveston News, Houston Chronicle, Dallas News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, San Antonio Express, Austin American and Statesman, and the Bastrop Advertiser in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Newspapers.com led us to many of these and other Bastrop stories in the papers.
Turning Records Into Resources
From these collections, the authors created book appendices for readers and future researchers:
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The table of Reading Circle Founders and Presidents
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Master Membership Roster including tenure, offices, committee service, and federation board representation (Appendix A)
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Annual Programs and Reading Lists, 1900 – Today (Appendix B)
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Roll-call Questions, 1902 – 1958 (Appendix C)
Discoveries in the Museum Archives
The Bastrop County Historical Society Museum archives unlocked the story of some of our subjects and their families. Some searches came up empty; others struck gold—a family folder in the vertical files or an entire box of material, sometimes uncatalogued in the archives. The rarity made each discovery unforgettable.
In the archives, we found another treasure: Reading Circle minutes, attendance records, papers and ledgers tracing its members, leaders, and programs. Annual yearbooks record membership classifications—standard, associate, or life—along with officers, committees, and reading selections for each one- or two-year term. All the yearbooks from 1901 to the present survived except for 1910–1911 and 1998–1999.
Bastrop Ladies' Reading Circle Notebooks
Photo: Jane Hunt
We explored the genealogy sites Ancestry.com and Family Search. The Bastrop Courthouse yielded property deeds, death certificates, marriage licenses, wills, and schedule of assets. When digging through the old wills sometimes made us feel intrusive, Rose Pietsch of the Bastrop County Clerk’s office cut through our hesitation: “It’s public record, for goodness’ sake.” The impact of Spanish civil law on the tragic story of President No 6. Alice Taylor Haynie is documented through real estate transactions recorded in the Bastrop County Courthouse.
President No. 54 Joan Russell
Following the Trail
Our search moved beyond the museum. The University of North Texas Libraries’ Portal to Texas History opened a 160-year run of the Bastrop Advertiser—Texas’s oldest continuously published weekly and biweekly newspaper—from 1854 to 2014. The Reading Circle’s 27th president, Amy Smith Standifer, received the Bastrop Advertiser as a wedding present in 1930 and published the paper for almost fifty years. One of Amy Standifer’s most remarkable legacies was the way she wove community moments into the civic fabric of Bastrop. The community-building work of the Bastrop Ladies’ Reading Circle, chronicled in Amy Standifer’s Bastrop Advertiser, helped shape the town that exists today.
Amy Smith Standifer
Photo: Reid and Cindy Sharp
Photo: Virginia Gerstenberg
Photo: Glenda Dayton
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About a year into the project, Bastrop historian Robbie Moore Sanders joined us. A Bastrop County Historical Society trustee for more than fifteen years, she independently researched and verified the book’s historical details. She had a great deal of practice. Her book Historic Homes of Bastrop, Texas, was published in 2022. We interviewed relatives, longtime residents, and club members. The years turned us from amateurs into investigators. Piece by piece, records and memories brought the women who built, led, and sustained the the Bastrop Ladies Reading Circle vividly to life.
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Revealing the Reading Circle’s Illustrious Pedigree
Very early on, we discovered that while we thought that we were simply writing a book about one of Texas’s oldest book clubs, as the club routinely proclaimed, but research revealed much more. The Reading Circle was not simply Texas’s oldest book club, but a pioneering women’s club and one of the oldest early Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs (TFWC) organizations that are still active. Federated with the TFWC—and through it, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs—from 1900 to 1976, the Circle carried local action onto state and national stages. Those ties shaped its programs, committees, and mission. After 1976, the club pressed on independently. In the early 1920s, the “Petticoat Lobby” pushed for Progressive Era reforms in child labor, juvenile justice, food and drug safety, workplace protections, and workers’ compensation. As a federated club, the Reading Circle helped launch the Bastrop County Federated Women’s Club (BCFWC) in order to participate in these reforms. Members’ focus shifted from making Bastrop a “lovely town” to improving conditions surrounding homemaking and child welfare in predominantly rural Bastrop County. Reading Circle member and BCFWC president Winnie Waugh, fondly known as the unsinkable Molly Brown of club women, said the work bridged town and country, turning understanding into cooperation through the county nurse and extension agent.
Winnie Waugh
Photo: Sanders Family
Feline editors
Photo: Glenda Dayton
As our admiration for the Bastrop Ladies Reading Circle grew, so did our resolve to publish its story. There were setbacks. Our book was rejected twice by a major academic publisher. But undaunted, in 2026 we decided to self-publish.
To every writer facing rejection: keep going. It took us a decade to research, write, and shape a book we were ready to publish. Who knows, the founders’ and presidents’ individual stories may yet inspire a second volume.
The authors - Robbie Sanders, Glenda Dayton, Brenda Uptain
Photo: Jane Hunt
And so, at the risk of sounding like a University of Texas marketing slogan – Come for the women’s clubs, Bastrop history, regional life, or a possible family connection to the Reading Circle. Stay for the remarkable women who brought this story to life. This book is our labor of love; we believe these women will capture your heart, too.
-Glenda, Brenda, and Robbie
