This past week, I was tasked with finding dates to add to our timeline from 1868 to 1910. In my initial search, I was not able to find too many events during this time period related to Dowling’s life. There were a few instances where Dowling was honored in some way, such as the speech delivered by Jefferson Davis in 1882, but for the most part the only truly significant date was the unveiling of the Dowling monument in 1905 here in Houston. Of course, there are many more events tied to the monument than just the unveiling, but our group has decided to avoid including too many extraneous events (like committee meetings or discussions with granite suppliers) unless we find them to be necessary to the overall discussion of Dowling’s story we hope to convey through our timeline. I also took a look at external dates, such as those associated with Reconstruction (13th, 14th, and 15th amendmends) and some Texas history (such as its readmission into the Union) that would fit into our timeline overall. As a group, we agreed that we all needed to look for some more events similar to these.

I was also able to get the initial technological steps done for our timeline, such as starting a spreadsheet in Google Docs for our group, which can be found here. I also created a simple HTML file for our timeline, which I have tested locally. However, I’m unsure of how I should proceed from there; our group needs a way to host that HTML file. Still, we can get plenty of work done on the timeline without having to worry about that detail, so we should be good for now. It’s just as easy as the tutorial suggests to make a timeline tailored to our preferences, although unfortunately it seems that we won’t have much control over how the content is displayed (beyond categories). This was something else our group discussed at our most recent meeting: we decided to categorize the timeline’s events into events in U.S. history, events in Texas history, Dowling’s life, remembering Dowling, and Dowling’s statue. Some events are likely to exist in multiple categories, but we feel these will provide the best options for any given user who might visit our timeline in search of information about Dowling.

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