Hecho en Tejas: Texas-Mexican Folk Arts and Crafts (open access)

Hecho en Tejas: Texas-Mexican Folk Arts and Crafts

Book about Texas and Mexican folk arts and crafts, including paper crafts, quilting, weaving, sculpture, yard art, saddle-making, and other folk crafts. The index begins on page 349.
Date: 1991
Creator: Graham, Joe S.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century

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Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century is an anthology of fifteen previously published articles and chapter excerpts covering key topics of the Texas Rangers during the twentieth century. The task of determining the role of the Rangers as the state evolved and what they actually accomplished for the benefit of the state is a difficult challenge. The actions of the Rangers fit no easy description. There is a dark side to the story of the Rangers; during the Mexican Revolution, for example, some murdered with impunity. Others sought to restore order in the border communities as well as in the remainder of Texas. It is not lack of interest that complicates the unveiling of the mythical force. With the possible exception of the Alamo, probably more has been written about the Texas Rangers than any other aspect of Texas history. Tracking the Texas Rangers covers leaders such as Captains Bill McDonald, “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, and Barry Caver, accomplished Rangers like Joaquin Jackson and Arthur Hill, and the use of Rangers in the Mexican Revolution. Chapters discuss their role in the oil fields, in riots, and in capturing outlaws. Most important, the Rangers of the twentieth century experienced changes in …
Date: September 15, 2013
Creator: Glasrud, Bruce A. & Weiss, Harold J. Jr.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Small Town America in World War II: War Stories From Wrightsville, Pennsylvania

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Historians acknowledge that World War II touched every man, woman, and child in the United States. In Small Town America in World War II, Ronald E. Marcello uses oral history interviews with civilians and veterans to explore how the citizens of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, responded to the war effort. Interviews with citizens and veterans are organized in sections on the home front; the North African-Italian, European, and Pacific theatres; stateside military service; and occupation in Germany. Throughout Marcello provides introductions and contextual narrative on World War II as well as annotations for events and military terms. Overseas the citizens of Wrightsville turned into soldiers. A veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, Edward Reisinger, remembered, “Replacements had little chance of surviving. They were sent to the front one day, and the next day they were coming back with mattress covers over them.” Tanker Mervin Haugh recalls, “The next thing we knew, the German tanks attacked us. They knocked out five of our tanks quickly, and they all burned up in flames.”
Date: April 2014
Creator: Marcello, Ronald E.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Captain Jack Helm: A Victim of Texas Reconstruction Violence

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Biographical account of John Jackson “Jack” Helm, a law man and eventual victim of man-killer John Wesley Hardin. During his lifetime in Reconstruction Texas he served as deputy sheriff, then county sheriff, and finally captain of the notorious Texas State Police, developing a reputation as a violent and ruthless man-hunter. Helm’s aggressive enforcement of his version of “law and order” resulted in a deadly confrontation with two of his enemies in the midst of the Sutton-Taylor Feud.
Date: March 2018
Creator: Parsons, Chuck
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
"Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds": The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley (open access)

"Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds": The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley

This book contains a collection of letters written by Lieutenant Theodore Thadeus Sobieski (T. T. S.) Laidley between 1845 and 1848. The letters discuss life as a soldier during the Mexican War; most of the letters were written from various stations in Mexico. Each letter is bracketed by editorial commentary on the historical context and the collection is prefaced by a brief biography of Laidley's life prior to the first letter. Index starts on page 179.
Date: 1997
Creator: McCaffrey, James M., 1946- & Laidley, Theodore, 1822-1886.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Women and the Texas Revolution

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While there is wide scholarship on the Texas Revolution, there is no comparable volume on the role of women during that conflict. Most of the many works on the Texas Revolution include women briefly in the narrative, such as Emily Austin, Suzanna Dickinson, and Emily Morgan West (the Yellow Rose), but not as principal participants. Women and the Texas Revolution explores these women in much more depth, in addition to covering the women and children who fled Santa Anna’s troops in the Runaway Scrape, and examining the roles and issues facing Native American, Black, and Hispanic women of the time. Like the American Revolution, women’s experiences in the Texas Revolution varied tremendously by class, religion, race, and region. While the majority of immigrants into Texas in the 1820s and 1830s were men, many were women who accompanied their husbands and families or, in some instances, braved the dangers and the hardships of the frontier alone. Black, Hispanic, and Native American women were also present in Mexican Texas. Whether Mexican loyalist or Texas patriot, elite planter or subsistence farm wife, slaveholder or slave, Anglo or black, women helped settle the Texas frontier and experienced the uncertainty, hardships, successes, and sorrows of …
Date: September 15, 2012
Creator: Scheer, Mary L.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Phantom Vietnam War: An F-4 Pilot’s Combat over Laos

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David R. “Buff” Honodel was a cocky young man with an inflated self-image when he arrived in 1969 at his base in Udorn, Thailand. His war was not in Vietnam; it was a secret one in the skies of a neighboring country almost unknown in America, attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail that fed soldiers and supplies from North Vietnam into the South. Stateside he learned the art of flying the F-4, but in combat, the bomb-loaded fighter handled differently, targets shot back, and people suffered. Inert training ordnance was replaced by lethal weapons. In the air, a routine day mission turned into an unexpected duel with a deadly adversary. Complacency during a long night mission escorting a gunship almost led to death. A best friend died just before New Year’s. A RF-4 crashed into the base late in Buff’s tour of duty. The reader will experience Buff’s war from the cockpit of a supersonic F-4D Phantom II, doing 5-G pullouts after dropping six 500-pound bombs on trucks hidden beneath triple jungle canopy. These were well defended by a skillful, elusive, determined enemy firing back with 37mm anti-aircraft fire and tracers in the sky. The man who left the States …
Date: September 2018
Creator: Honodel, David R.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Civil War Heavy Explosive Ordnance: a Guide to Large Artillery Projectiles, Torpedoes, and Mines

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Civil War Heavy Explosive Ordnance is the definitive reference book on Union and Confederate large caliber artillery projectiles, torpedoes, and mines. Some of these projectiles are from the most famous battles of the Civil War, such as those at Fort Sumter, Charleston, Vicksburg, and Richmond. Others were fired from famous cannon, such as the “Swamp Angel” of Charleston and “Whistling Dick” of Vicksburg. And some were involved in torpedo attacks against major warships. Jack Bell covers more than 360 projectiles from public and private collections in smoothbore calibers of 32-pounder and up, rifled projectiles of 4-inch caliber and larger, and twenty-one Union and Confederate torpedoes and mines. Each data sheet shows multiple views of the projectile or torpedo (using more than 1,000 photos) with data including diameter, weight, gun used to fire it, rarity index, and provenance. This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to Civil War historians, museum curators, field archaeologists, private collectors, dealers, and consultants on unexploded ordnance. “This will become a required reference guide at every Civil War site and related museum.”--Wayne E. Stark, Civil War artillery historian
Date: June 15, 2003
Creator: Bell, Jack
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

From Santa Anna to Selena: Notable Mexicanos and Tejanos in Texas History since 1821

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Author Harriett Denise Joseph relates biographies of eleven notable Mexicanos and Tejanos, beginning with Santa Anna and the impact his actions had on Texas. She discusses the myriad contributions of Erasmo and Juan Seguín to Texas history, as well as the factors that led a hero of the Texas Revolution (Juan) to be viewed later as a traitor by his fellow Texans. Admired by many but despised by others, folk hero Juan Nepomuceno Cortina is one of the most controversial figures in the history of nineteenth-century South Texas. Preservationist and historian Adina De Zavala fought to save part of the Alamo site and other significant structures. Labor activist Emma Tenayuca’s youth, passion, courage, and sacrifice merit attention for her efforts to help the working class. Joseph reveals the individual and collective accomplishments of a powerhouse couple, bilingual educator Edmundo Mireles and folklorist-author Jovita González. She recognizes the military and personal battles of Medal of Honor recipient Raul “Roy” Benavidez. Irma Rangel, the first Latina to serve in the Texas House of Representatives, is known for the many “firsts” she achieved during her lifetime. Finally, we read about Selena’s life and career, as well as her tragic death and her continuing …
Date: March 2018
Creator: Joseph, Harriett Denise
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Star of Destiny: The Private Life of Sam and Margaret Houston (open access)

Star of Destiny: The Private Life of Sam and Margaret Houston

This biography of Sam and Margaret Houston draws on surviving personal letters and writings to describe their lives together. The book roughly covers the time from their meeting to their deaths in 1863 and 1867, respectively. Index starts on page 419.
Date: 1993
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall, 1929-
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 4: 1852-1863 (open access)

The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 4: 1852-1863

This book is the fourth in a series of four volumes and contains collected correspondence to and from Sam Houston. The letters include footnotes that give clarification and context. The volume also has an appendix, addenda, bibliography, and an index (which starts on page 523).
Date: 2001
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Captain J.A. Brooks, Texas Ranger

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James Abijah Brooks (1855-1944) was one of the four Great Captains in Texas Ranger history, others including Bill McDonald, John Hughes, and John Rogers. Over the years historians have referred to the captain as “John” Brooks, because he tended to sign with his initials, but also because W. W. Sterling’s classic Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger mistakenly named him as Captain John Brooks. Born and raised in Civil War-torn Kentucky, a reckless adventurer on the American and Texas frontier, and a quick-draw Texas Ranger captain who later turned in his six-shooter to serve as a county judge, Brooks’s life reflects the raucous era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American West. As a Texas Ranger, Brooks participated in the high profile events of his day, from the fence-cutting wars to the El Paso prizefight, from the Conner Fight–where he lost three fingers from his left hand–to the Temple rail strike, all with a resolute demeanor and a fast gun. A shoot-out in Indian Territory nearly cost him his life and then jeopardized his career, and a lifelong bout with old Kentucky bourbon did the same. With three other distinguished Ranger captains, Brooks witnessed and helped promote the …
Date: March 15, 2007
Creator: Spellman, Paul N.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

This Corner of Canaan: Essays on Texas in Honor of Randolph B. Campbell

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Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell has spent the better part of the last five decades helping Texans rediscover their history, producing a stream of definitive works on the social, political, and economic structures of the Texas past. Through meticulous research and terrific prose, Campbell’s collective work has fundamentally remade how historians understand Texan identity and the state’s southern heritage, as well as our understanding of such contentious issues as slavery, westward expansion, and Reconstruction. Campbell’s pioneering work in local and county records has defined the model for grassroots research and community studies in the field. More than any other scholar, Campbell has shaped our modern understanding of Texas. In this collection of seventeen original essays, Campbell’s colleagues, friends, and students offer a capacious examination of Texas’s history—ranging from the Spanish era through the 1960s War on Poverty—to honor Campbell’s deep influence on the field. Focusing on themes and methods that Campbell pioneered, the essays debate Texas identity, the creation of nineteenth-century Texas, the legacies of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the remaking of the Lone Star State during the twentieth century. Featuring some of the most well-known names in the field—as well as rising stars—the volume offers the latest scholarship …
Date: February 15, 2013
Creator: McCaslin, Richard B.; Chipman, Donald E. & Torget, Andrew J.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
In the Shadow of History (open access)

In the Shadow of History

Collection of Texan and Mexican folklore, including stories about the Navajo Indians, the Alamo, Jim Bowie, various folk characters, tortilla making, and other humorous anecdotes. The index begins on page 181.
Date: 1980
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the 35th President

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In Making JFK Matter, Paul Santa Cruz examines how popular memory of John F. Kennedy has been used politically by various interest groups, primarily the city of Dallas, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert Kennedy, as well as how the memory of Kennedy has been portrayed in various museums. Santa Cruz argues that we have memorialized JFK not simply out of love for him or admiration for the ideals he embodied, but because invoking his name carries legitimacy and power. Memory can be employed to accomplish particular ends: for example, the passage of long overdue civil rights legislation, or even successfully running for political office. Santa Cruz demonstrates the presence and use of popular memory in an extensive analysis of what was being said, and by whom, about the late president through White House memoranda and speech material, museum exhibits (such as the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas and the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston), public correspondence, newspapers and periodicals of the time, memoirs, and archival research. He also explores how JFK has been memorialized in films such as Bobby, JFK, and Thirteen Days. Written in an accessible manner to appeal to both historians and the general public, Making JFK …
Date: May 2015
Creator: Cruz, Paul H. Santa
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th U.S. Cavalry

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The military career of General James Monroe Williams spanned both the Civil War and the Indian Wars in the West, yet no biography has been published to date on his important accomplishments, until now. From his birth on the northern frontier, westward movement in the Great Migration, rush into the violence of antebellum Kansas Territory, Civil War commands in the Trans-Mississippi, and as a cavalry officer in the Indian Wars, Williams was involved in key moments of American history. Like many who make a difference, Williams was a leader of strong convictions, sometimes impatient with heavy-handed and sluggish authority. Building upon his political opinions and experience as a Jayhawker, Williams raised and commanded the ground-breaking 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment in 1862. His new regiment of black soldiers was the first such organization to engage Confederate troops, and the first to win. He enjoyed victories in Missouri, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), and Arkansas, but also fought in the abortive Red River Campaign and endured defeat and the massacre of his captured black troops at Poison Spring. In 1865, as a brigadier general, Williams led his troops in consolidating control of northern Arkansas. Williams played a key role in taking Indian …
Date: May 15, 2013
Creator: Lull, Robert W.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Texas Folklore Society: Volume 1, 1909-1943 (open access)

The Texas Folklore Society: Volume 1, 1909-1943

Book describing the history and publications of the Texas Folklore Society between the years of 1909 and 1943. It includes information about "public songs and ballads; superstitions, signs and omens; cures and peculiar customs; legends; dialects; games, plays and dances; riddles and proverbs" (inside front cover). The index begins on page 317.
Date: 1992
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Always for the Underdog: Leather Britches Smith and the Grabow War

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Louisiana’s Neutral Strip, an area of pine forests, squats between the Calcasieu and Sabine Rivers on the border of East Texas. Originally a lawless buffer zone between Spain and the United States, its hardy residents formed tight-knit communities for protection and developed a reliance on self, kin, and neighbor. In the early 1900s, the timber boom sliced through the forests and disrupted these dense communities. Mill towns sprang up, and the promise of money lured land speculators, timber workers, unionists, and a host of other characters, such as the outlaw Leather Britches Smith. That moment continues to shape the place’s cultural consciousness, and people today fashion a lore connected to this time. In a fascinating exploration of the region, Keagan LeJeune unveils the legend of Leather Britches, paralleling the stages of the outlaw’s life to the Neutral Strip’s formation. LeJeune retells each stage of Smith’s life: his notorious past, his audacious deeds of robbery and even generosity, his rumored connection to a local union strike—the Grabow War—significant in the annals of labor history, and his eventual death. As the outlaw’s life vividly unfolds, Always for the Underdog also reveals the area’s history and cultural landscape. Often using the particulars of …
Date: December 15, 2010
Creator: LeJeune, Keagan
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Storming the City: U.S. Military Performance in Urban Warfare from World War II to Vietnam

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Book describing military philosophy before and after WWII, with full chapters analyzing how the U.S. Army and Marine Corps engaged in urban warfare during four specific battles: Aachen (October 1944), Manila (February 1945), Seoul (September 1959), and Hue (February 1968). Index starts on page 363.
Date: October 2015
Creator: Wahlman, Alec
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Raza Rising: Chicanos in North Texas

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Book about Chicano and Latino experiences in North Texas, based on the author's personal history, newspaper articles, community input, and other sources. Chapters address education, culture, politics, heritage, and related topics.
Date: March 2016
Creator: Gonzales, Richard J.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas, Volume 1, 1835 - 1837

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This first volume of the Savage Frontier series is a comprehensive account of the formative years of the legendary Texas Rangers, focusing on the three-year period between 1835 and 1837, when Texas was struggling to gain its independence from Mexico and assert itself as a new nation. Stephen L. Moore vividly portrays another struggle of the settlers of Texas to tame a wilderness frontier and secure a safe place to build their homes and raise their families. Moore provides fresh detail about each ranging unit formed during the Texas Revolution and narrates their involvement in the pivotal battle of San Jacinto. New ranger battalions were created following the revolution, after Indian attacks against settlers increased. One notorious attack occurred against the settlers of Parker's Fort, which had served as a ranger station during the revolution. By 1837 President Sam Houston had allowed the army to dwindle, leaving only a handful of ranging units to cover the vast Republic. These frontiersmen endured horse rustling raids and ambushes, fighting valiantly even when greatly outnumbered in battles such as the Elm Creek Fight, Post Oak Springs Massacre, and the Stone Houses Fight. Through extensive use of primary military documents and first-person accounts, Moore …
Date: September 15, 2007
Creator: Moore, Stephen L.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

Nancy Love and the Wasp Ferry Pilots of World War II

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She flew the swift P-51 and the capricious P-38, but the heavy, four-engine B-17 bomber and C-54 transport were her forte. This is the story of Nancy Harkness Love who, early in World War II, recruited and led the first group of twenty-eight women to fly military aircraft for the U.S. Army. Love was hooked on flight at an early age. At sixteen, after just four hours of instruction, she flew solo “a rather broken down Fleet biplane that my barnstorming instructor imported from parts unknown.” The year was 1930: record-setting aviator Jacqueline Cochran (and Love’s future rival) had not yet learned to fly, and the most famous woman pilot of all time, Amelia Earhart, had yet to make her acclaimed solo Atlantic flight. When the United States entered World War II, the Army needed pilots to transport or “ferry” its combat-bound aircraft across the United States for overseas deployment and its trainer airplanes to flight training bases. Most male pilots were assigned to combat preparation, leaving few available for ferrying jobs. Into this vacuum stepped Nancy Love and her civilian Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). Love had advocated using women as ferry pilots as early as 1940. Jackie Cochran …
Date: March 15, 2008
Creator: Rickman, Sarah Byrn
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Royal Air Force in Texas: Training British Pilots in Terrell During World War II

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With the outbreak of World War II, British Royal Air Force (RAF) officials sought to train aircrews outside of England, safe from enemy attack and poor weather. In the United States six civilian flight schools dedicated themselves to instructing RAF pilots; the first, No. 1 British Flying Training School (BFTS), was located in Terrell, Texas, east of Dallas. Tom Killebrew explores the history of the Terrell Aviation School and its program with RAF pilots. Most of the early British students had never been in an airplane or even driven an automobile before arriving in Texas to learn to fly. The cadets trained in the air on aerobatics, instrument flight, and night flying, while on the ground they studied navigation, meteorology, engines, and armaments–even spending time in early flight simulators. By the end of the war, more than two thousand RAF cadets had trained at Terrell, cementing relations between Great Britain and the United States and forming lasting bonds with the citizens of Terrell.
Date: October 15, 2003
Creator: Killebrew, Tom
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Folklore: in All of Us, in All We Do (open access)

Folklore: in All of Us, in All We Do

Compilation of articles about various topics related to folklore organized into five chapters by subject: "The first tackles this issue of folklore and its relationship to history, with some of the articles trying to provide some of that folkloric filler to historical facts. Another chapter focuses on women; one features various types of occupational lore; and another is a tongue-in-cheek look at 'shady characters' such as police officers, politicians, and horsetraders. A final chapter has no theme; it is a catch-all, containing a few interesting articles you may remember from some of our [Texas Folklore Society's] most recent meetings" (p. viii).
Date: December 15, 2006
Creator: Untiedt, Kenneth L.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library