DeGolyer Library Archival Collections: Q-R

Annual reports to the Railroad Commission of Texas and the Interstate Commerce Commission; correspondence regarding the annual reports; and three volumes of financial records.

Known as the “Mother of Family Law in Texas,” Louise Ballerstedt Raggio was the only woman in her graduating law school class in 1952. She went on to become the first female Assistant District Attorney of Dallas County, and the first woman to prosecute a criminal case in Dallas. She was a major influence in the passing of Texas Marital Property Act of 1967 which equalized spousal rights, liabilities, responsibilities, including management and control of community property, child custody, and finances. Her papers document her personal life, career, participation in professional law organizations, and her civic work advocating for women’s rights. Materials comprise: biographical and genealogical information, calendars/planners, awards and certificates, correspondence, programs, scrapbooks, clippings and articles, photographs, minutes and agendas, research files and manuscripts for her autobiography, Texas Tornado .

This collection contains correspondence, blueprints, and technical information on the interlocking railroad towers built under the authority of the Railroad Commission of Texas from about 1900 until 1966. The purpose of the towers was to ensure safe passage of trains over intersecting railroad lines or trains switching from one line to another. Each tower was assigned a number; the records in this collection have been arranged in numerical order.

Robert C. Rawlings was a businessman in the cotton and real estate trade. The bulk of this collection contains his business papers, love letters to Edna, and Dallas family correspondence from the 1920s-1940s. Edna Rawlings Vitz was a teacher at the College of Fine Arts on Swiss Avenue in Dallas, Texas where she taught "psychology, literature, and any branch of the spoken word." Her papers include programs and photographs of plays in which she performed, as well as a number of photographic negatives of actor headshots from 1936-1937. Hugo J.R. Vitz was May Blessington's executor. He married Edna Myers Rawlings, and became the stepfather of Robin Rawlings. Included are several folders of photographs from the 1936 Cavalcade of Texas pageant, in which Edna and her daughter Robin participated. Part of the George W. Cook Dallas/Texas image collection.

The Ridge family papers include John Ridge's 1835 journal while he was a Cherokee Nation delegate to Washington D.C. when the Cherokee Nation was in the process of ceding all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi. Also included in the collection are letters from Arkansas, photographs, newspaper clippings, printed material, poetry by John Rollin Ridge, a leather pouch, and Elias Boudinott's published An address to the whites (1826).

Nela Río is an Argentine-Canadian poet, artist, and educator who has published collections of poetry and short stories anthologized in both the United States and Canada from the 1980s-2010s. She was also a professor of Spanish language literature at the University of St. Thomas in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada for thirty-three years. This collection contains Nela Río’s manuscripts, academic work, correspondence, and poem posters. A major part of her papers include manuscripts and recordings for her collaborative project from 1998-2007: La Voz y la Escritura.

David L. Rousar (1936-2018) was an American railroad historian who had a special interest in nineteenth century lithographs of locomotives. His papers include his research notes, drafts for articles, railroad ephemera, and publications.

David Rousar was a railroad and locomotive historian who amassed an impressive collection of 19th and 20th century photographs, stereographs and lithographs. This collection consists of over 600 photographs and lithographs of railroads and locomotives from the 1850s to the 1940s.

R. Richard Rubottom, Jr. returned to Southern Methodist University as Vice President for university life in 1964 after having received his Bachelor and Masters degrees from the University. His SMU papers include lectures, committee and task force notes, and correspondence. Rubottom's career included service in the Navy, the Foreign Service, President of the University of the Americas, and volunteer work with the Boy Scouts of America. The bulk of the collection concerns his interest in the foreign affairs of the United States and particularly relationships with the Latin American countries where he served. During his seventeen years with the Foreign Service, Rubottom served as Assistant Secretary of State, Inter-American Affairs (1956-1960), and Ambassador to Argentina, 1960-1961.