William Pool Papers

William Clayton Pool, Ph. D. was born in February 2, 1919 at Valley Mills in Bosque County, Texas. He graduated from high school in Clifton and received a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1941 from the University of Texas. Following his graduation, he was married to his wife, Jeanette and became a high school history teacher and an elementary school principal in Buffalo, Texas between 1941 and 1943. He joined the Army Air Corps (Air Force) as a pilot from, 1942 to 1945 and again in 1951 and 1952, travelling extensively with the military in India, Pakistan, and Burma (Myanmar).

During his first stint in the Air Force in the 1940s, Pool flew supply routes known as the China-Burma-India Hump. In one year, he flew 196 combat missions, 782 combat hours. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Medal with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre Ribbon with 2 Campaign Stars. In appreciation of his service, he was awarded pilot wings by the Chinese Air Force.

Pool returned to civilian life and continued his education earning a Master of Arts in History in 1946, and a Ph. D. in History in 1949 from the University of Texas, where he studied under Eugene C. Barker, Walter P. Webb, and Roy Bedichek. He was a member of Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society, and Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, and earned scholarship at the University of Texas in both 1946 and 1947. During the summer of 1947, Pool worked as an Instructor for the university.

Following a brief stint at the University of Texas, William Pool had a distinguished career as a professor of history and a scholar at Texas State University, then Southwest Texas State University, from 1947 to 1986. He began as an Assistant Professor of History, from 1947 to 1949, when it was Southwest Texas State Teachers College, and continued as an Associate Professor of History from 1949 to 1957. His teaching career was interrupted for 21 months when he was called up for active duty during the Korean War (1950 – 1953), where he was a pilot training instructor. After his return to Texas State, he participated in a Mexico and Latin American History Program at Mexico City College in 1956.

By 1959, Pool had been promoted to full Professor, and by 1977 he was tenured. He was acknowledged as Professor Emeritus in 1991. He taught courses in American History, American Government, Modern European History, Great Britain and the British Empire, The History of Mexico and History of Western Civilization.

Pool was a member of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, the Southern Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the Great Plains Historical Association, and a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. He contributed articles to the North Carolina Historical Review, and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, and was a staff writer for the Handbook of Texas.

He authored multiple books, including The Bosque Territory and the Texas Frontier, A Historical Atlas of Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson – The Formative Years, Eugene C. Barker: Teacher and Historian, Mexican Federalism and the Texas Revolution, and an article within A Guide to the History of Texas, and Texas: Wilderness to Space Age, a textbook in Texas history for junior high students, beginning at the northward expansion of the Spanish-American frontier, through the events on 1962.

Pool died on April 30, 1995 and was survived by his wife, Jeannette. He had a daughter, Mary Ruth, multiple grandsons, and a great-granddaughter. He loved Scotland and made six trips there. He was an avid golfer, helped coach the Texas State Baseball Team, and served as a city councilman for San Marcos.

Currently through the history department at Texas State University, there is a William C. Pool endowment established to provide financial resources for the production and publication of scholarly work by department faculty.