Julia Lee Sinks and Her Chronicles of Fayette County, Texas

Julia Lee Sinks—pioneer settler, historian, and author—wrote, “Folklore constitutes the only basis of history in the settlement of a new country…. I have let those as near as possible who have made this history write it themselves.”

Indeed, as Lonn Taylor notes in the book’s foreword, Chronicles of Fayette is not so much a narrative history as a collection of sources—“a group of voices from Fayette County’s past, recording their own experiences.”

But it was Julia Lee Sinks who gathered these sources, who brought the voices together to tell a story. With her talent for writing, which she called a “taste for scribbling and recording,” Sinks helped preserve the history of Texas and Fayette County.

A “loyal, enthusiastic, and valuable supporter,” Sinks was a person whose “character and influence…manifested those high ideals of womanhood which were the finest products of the Old South,” wrote The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association in April 1905.

Men respected Sinks and encouraged her to participate in various historic preservation projects, at a time when business and public meetings did not often include women. Though she was not a native Texan, Sinks revered Texas and respected the settlers who arrived during the Republic and early statehood periods.

Sinks was born on January 18, 1817, to George and Mary (Morse) Lee. In early 1840, her family left Cincinnati, Ohio, to settle in Austin, the new capital of Texas. There she met George W. Sinks, the chief clerk of the Republic’s Post Office Department. They married in 1841. A year later they moved to La Grange, where George Sinks pursued a career as a merchant. The couple had six children.