Light
Townsend Cummins
Short Biography
LIGHT
T. CUMMINS is the Guy M. Bryan
Professor of American History at Austin
College in Sherman, Texas,
where he has been a member of the history department since 1978, having
served
as its chair for a number of years. He is also currently the director
of the
Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies at Austin
College.
A native of San Antonio, he was educated in the Alamo Heights schools,
graduated
from the San Antonio Academy, attended
Texas
Military Institute, and is a graduate of Alamo Heights High School. He
received
a BA and MA from what is now Texas
State University,
where he studied Texas
history. After service in the U.S. Air Force as an
intelligence officer during the Vietnam
era, he received a Ph.D. in History from Tulane
University.
Cummins'
research specialty is the history of the Spanish and
Mexican Texas, along with Spanish Louisiana and the lower Mississippi
valley. He is especially
interested in the history of the Anglo-American advance into Spanish
and
Mexican territory during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Among
his six books are A Guide to the History
of Louisiana; Spanish Observers and
the American Revolution; Louisiana: A
History; A Guide to the History of Texas; and Austin College:
A Sesquicentennial History, 1849-1999. He is the author of several
dozen
scholarly articles dealing with Spanish colonial Texas
and Louisiana.
His most recent book, United States History to 1877, was published in July of 2006 by
HarperCollins
for use as a textbook in Advanced Placement and college survey courses.
At
present, he is completing a biography of Emily Austin Bryan Perry, the
sister
of Stephen F. Austin and daughter of Moses Austin. This biography will
appear
as part of the Texas Biography Series from the TCU Press.
Cummins has
been a Fulbright Scholar to Spain, serves
as an Associate of the Danforth Foundation, and is a former member of
the Board
of Directors of the Louisiana Historical Association. In addition, he
is a
former chair of the Grayson County Historical Commission. He served two
terms
as a member of the Board of Directors of the Texas Council for the
Humanities,
now known as Humanities Texas. He is a lifetime Fellow of the Texas
State
Historical Association, a former president of the Southwestern
Historical
Association, and a life member of the Louisiana Historical Association,
along
with being active in a number of other historical organizations,
including the
Southern Historical Association. He currently serves on the Board of
Directors of the Texas State Historical Association. He was named a
Minnie Stevens Piper
Professor
in 2006. He is also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and
the
Sons of the Republic
of Texas, William
B.
Travis Chapter. His wife, Dr. Victoria
Cummins,
is also a Professor of History at Austin College.
They have two
daughters. Cummins is active the affairs of the Episcopal Church as a
layperson, having served on various committees of the Diocese of Dallas
and also
in his home Episcopal parish in Sherman.
He has been a member of the Kiwanis Club of Sherman,
has served on the board of the Friends of the Sherman Public Library,
and various other organizations in Grayson County.
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