Tales From the Big Thicket

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Edited collection of writing about the Big Thicket area in Texas, including geographic descriptions, anecdotes, historical accounts, and other aspects of the people and features of the region. Index starts on page 235.
Date: February 15, 2002
Creator: Abernethy, Francis E.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Built in Texas (open access)

Built in Texas

Book describing folk building in Texas, including information about the construction of churches, cabins, sheds, barns, fences, and other folk building techniques. The index begins on page 277.
Date: 2000
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Corners of Texas (open access)

Corners of Texas

This volume contains popular folklore of Texas, including information about folk music, folk arts and crafts, history of Texas, prominent Texas writers, and other miscellaneous folklore. The index begins on page 285.
Date: 1993
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Folk Art in Texas (open access)

Folk Art in Texas

This book describes popular folk art of Texas, including basket weaving, hat-making, yard art, sculptures, murals, cemetery art, quilt-making, tattoo art, and other miscellaneous folk art. The index begins on page 198.
Date: 1985
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Juneteenth Texas: Essays in African-American Folklore (open access)

Juneteenth Texas: Essays in African-American Folklore

Volume of essays about African-American folklore, including reminiscences of African-American folk culture in Texas, studies of specific genres of folklore, information about Texas-African food-ways, studies of specific performers, information about songs and other folklore. The index begins on page 353.
Date: 1996
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Observations & Reflections on Texas Folklore (open access)

Observations & Reflections on Texas Folklore

Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including stories about hunting, warfare, religion, Texas traditions, and other miscellaneous folk tales. The index begins on page 149.
Date: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Observations & Reflections on Texas Folklore (open access)

Observations & Reflections on Texas Folklore

Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including stories about hunting, warfare, religion, Texas traditions, and other miscellaneous folk tales. The index begins on page 149.
Date: 1972
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Some Still Do: Essays on Texas Customs (open access)

Some Still Do: Essays on Texas Customs

Collection of essays about Texas folklore and customs, including information about cooking, woodworking, farming, festivals, folk music and other Texas folklore. The index begins on page 151.
Date: 1975
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany (open access)

Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany

Collection of popular Texas folklore, including cowboy and gaucho songs, information about boat-making and other folk crafts, religious anecdotes, and other miscellaneous stories of early cowboy life in Texas. The index begins on page 165.
Date: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany (open access)

Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains popular Texas folklore, including cowboy and gaucho songs, information about boat-making and other folk crafts, religious anecdotes, and other miscellaneous stories of early cowboy life in Texas. The index begins on page 165.
Date: 1985
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Texas Folklore Society: Volume 2, 1943-1971 (open access)

The Texas Folklore Society: Volume 2, 1943-1971

Book describing the Texas Folklore Society "includes the publishing history of the TFS books, anecdotes about the gatherings of the Society [...] and the emphasis on singing beginning at Society gatherings" (inside the front cover). The index begins on page 311.
Date: 1994
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Texas Folklore Society: Volume 3, 1971-2000 (open access)

The Texas Folklore Society: Volume 3, 1971-2000

Book containing information about the publishing history of the Texas Folklore Society, as well as anecdotes about the gatherings of the Society, information about past presidents of the Society, and Society by-laws. The index begins on page 219.
Date: 2000
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Both Sides of the Border: A Scattering of Texas Folklore (open access)

Both Sides of the Border: A Scattering of Texas Folklore

Collection of Tex-Mex folklore and related essays, including papers presented at Texas Folklore Society meetings. The book is organized into four topical categories: I. Remembering Our Ancestors, II. Texas-Mexican Folklore, III. Miscellaneous Memorabilia, and IV. The Family Saga (Cont'd).
Date: November 15, 2004
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward & Untiedt, Kenneth L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Family Saga: A Collection of Texas Family Legends (open access)

The Family Saga: A Collection of Texas Family Legends

Series of family anecdotes, collected from authors across the state of Texas describing general family history, how families arrived in Texas, and experiences related to the Civil War, Indians, animals, religion, ghosts, feuds, historic figures, and various other topics. Index starts on page 349.
Date: 2003
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward; Lincecum, Jerry Bryan & Vick, Frances Brannen, 1935-
System: The UNT Digital Library

Riding Lucifer's Line: Ranger Deaths Along the Texas-mexico Border

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The Texas-Mexico border is trouble. Haphazardly splashing across the meandering Rio Grande into Mexico is—or at least can be—risky business, hazardous to one’s health and well-being. Kirby W. Dendy, the Chief of Texas Rangers, corroborates the sobering reality: “As their predecessors for over one hundred forty years before them did, today’s Texas Rangers continue to battle violence and transnational criminals along the Texas-Mexico border.” In Riding Lucifer’s Line, Bob Alexander, in his characteristic storytelling style, surveys the personal tragedies of twenty-five Texas Rangers who made the ultimate sacrifice as they scouted and enforced laws throughout borderland counties adjacent to the Rio Grande. The timeframe commences in 1874 with formation of the Frontier Battalion, which is when the Texas Rangers were actually institutionalized as a law enforcing entity, and concludes with the last known Texas Ranger death along the border in 1921. Alexander also discusses the transition of the Rangers in two introductory sections: “The Frontier Battalion Era, 1874-1901” and “The Ranger Force Era, 1901-1935,” wherein he follows Texas Rangers moving from an epochal narrative of the Old West to more modern, technological times. Written absent a preprogrammed agenda, Riding Lucifer’s Line is legitimate history. Adhering to facts, the author is …
Date: May 15, 2013
Creator: Alexander, Bob
System: The UNT Digital Library

Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands: The Wild West Life of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones

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Many well-read students, historians, and loyal aficionados of Texas Ranger lore know the name of Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones (1856-1893), who died on the Texas-Mexico border in a shootout with Mexican rustlers. In Six-Shooters and Shifting Sands, Bob Alexander has now penned the first full-length biography of this important nineteenth-century Texas Ranger. At an early age Frank Jones, a native Texan, would become a Frontier Battalion era Ranger. His enlistment with the Rangers coincided with their transition from Indian fighters to lawmen. While serving in the Frontier Battalion officers' corps of Company D, Frank Jones supervised three of the four “great” captains of that era: J.A. Brooks, John H. Rogers, and John R. Hughes. Besides Austin Ira Aten and his younger brothers Calvin Grant Aten and Edwin Dunlap Aten, Captain Jones also managed law enforcement activities of numerous other noteworthy Rangers, such as Philip Cuney "P.C." Baird, Benjamin Dennis Lindsey, Bazzell Lamar "Baz" Outlaw, J. Walter Durbin, Jim King, Frank Schmid, and Charley Fusselman, to name just a few. Frank Jones’ law enforcing life was anything but boring. Not only would he find himself dodging bullets and returning fire, but those Rangers under his supervision would also experience gunplay. …
Date: March 2015
Creator: Alexander, Bob
System: The UNT Digital Library

Whiskey River Ranger: The Old West Life of Baz Outlaw

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Captain Frank Jones, a famed nineteenth-century Texas Ranger, said of his company’s top sergeant, Baz Outlaw (1854-1894), “A man of unusual courage and coolness and in a close place is worth two or three ordinary men.” Another old-time Texas Ranger declared that Baz Outlaw “was one of the worst and most dangerous” because “he never knew what fear was.” But not all thought so highly of him. In Whiskey River Ranger, Bob Alexander tells for the first time the full story of this troubled Texas Ranger and his losing battle with alcoholism. In his career Baz Outlaw wore a badge as a Texas Ranger and also as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. He could be a fearless and crackerjack lawman, as well as an unmanageable manic. Although Baz Outlaw’s badge-wearing career was sometimes heroically creditable, at other times his self-induced nightmarish imbroglios teased and tested Texas Ranger management’s resoluteness. Baz Outlaw’s true-life story is jam-packed with fellows owning well-known names, including Texas Rangers, city marshals, sheriffs, and steely-eyed mean-spirited miscreants. Baz Outlaw’s tale is complete with horseback chases, explosive train robberies, vigilante justice (or injustice), nighttime ambushes and bushwhacking, and episodes of scorching six-shooter finality. Baz met his end in a …
Date: April 2016
Creator: Alexander, Bob
System: The UNT Digital Library

Tall Walls and High Fences: Officers and Offenders, the Texas Prison Story

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Texas has one of the world’s largest prison systems, in operation for more than 170 years and currently employing more than 28,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been involved in the prison business in Texas: inmates, correctional officers, public officials, private industry representatives, and volunteers have all entered the secure facilities and experienced a different world. Previous books on Texas prisons have focused either on records and data of the prisons, personal memoirs by both inmates and correctional officers, or accounts of prison breaks. Tall Walls and High Fences is the first comprehensive history of Texas prisons, written by a former law enforcement officer and an officer of the Texas prisons. Bob Alexander and Richard K. Alford chronicle the significant events and transformation of the Texas prison system from its earliest times to the present day, paying special attention to the human side of the story. Incarceration policy evolved from isolation to hard labor to rodeo and educational opportunities, with reform measures becoming an ever-evolving quest. The complex job of the correctional officer has evolved as well—they must ensure custody and control over the inmate population at all times, in order to provide a proper environment conducive to …
Date: October 15, 2020
Creator: Alexander, Bob & Alford, Richard K.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy

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Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910-1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger? Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors’ answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.
Date: July 2017
Creator: Alexander, Bob & Brice, Donaly E.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Folk Medicine: 1,333 Cures, Remedies, Preventives, & Health Practices (open access)

Texas Folk Medicine: 1,333 Cures, Remedies, Preventives, & Health Practices

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains a compilation of 1,333 folk cures, remedies and prevention techniques. It includes information about various diagnoses, such as acne, poison ivy, whooping cough, nosebleeds, and others.
Date: 1970
Creator: Anderson, John Q.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Along the Texas Forts Trail

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The task of providing military defense for the Texas Frontier was never an easy one because the territory was claimed by some of the greatest querrilla fighters of all times—the Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, and Lipans. Protecting a line running from the Red River southwest to El Paso was an impossible task, but following the Mexican War the federal government attempted to do so by establishing a line of forts. During the Civil War the forts were virtually abandoned and the Indians once again ruled the area. Following the war when the military began to restore the old forts, they found that the Indians no longer fought with bows and arrows but shouldered the latest firearms. With their new weapons the Indians were able to inflict tremendous destruction, bringing demands from settlers for more protection. In the summer of 1866 a new line of forts appeared through central Texas under the leadership of General Philip H. Sheridan, commander of federal forces in Louisiana and Texas. Guardians of a raw young land and focal points of high adventure, the old forts were indispensable in their day of service and it is fitting that they be preserved. In and around the forts and …
Date: October 15, 1997
Creator: Aston, B. W.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town

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Founded in 1845 as a steamboat port at the entryway to western markets from the Red River, Jefferson was a thriving center of trade until the steamboat traffic dried up in the 1870s. During its heyday, the town monopolized the shipping of cotton from all points west for 150 miles. Jefferson was the unofficial capital of East Texas, but it was also typical of boom towns in general. For this topical examination of a frontier town, Bagur draws from many government documents, but also from newspaper ads and plats. These sources provide intimate details of the lives of the early citizens of Jefferson, Texas. Their story is of interest to both local and state historians as well as to the many readers interested in capturing the flavor of life in old-time East Texas. “Astoundingly complete and a model for local history research, with appeal far beyond readers who have specific interests in Jefferson.”—Fred Tarpley, author of Jefferson: Riverport to the Southwest
Date: March 15, 2012
Creator: Bagur, Jacques D.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Roy Bedichek Family Letters (open access)

The Roy Bedichek Family Letters

This book is a collection of letters written by Roy Bedichek and letters written to him from other family members. Annotations and notes about the letters have been added as footnotes. Biographical information based on interviews of family members as well as genealogical charts of the Bedichek and Greer families are also included. Index starts on page 447.
Date: 1998
Creator: Bedichek, Jane Gracy, 1918- & Bedichek, Roy, 1878-1959
System: The UNT Digital Library

Ben Thompson: Portrait of a Gunfighter

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Ben Thompson was a remarkable man, and few Texans can claim to have crowded more excitement, danger, drama, and tragedy into their lives than he did. He was an Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, Confederate cavalryman, mercenary for a foreign emperor, hired gun for a railroad, an elected lawman, professional gambler, and the victor of numerous gunfights. As a leading member of the Wild West’s sporting element, Ben Thompson spent most of his life moving in the unsavory underbelly of the West: saloons, dance-houses, billiard halls, bordellos, and gambling dens. During these travels many of the Wild West’s most famous icons—Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, John Wesley Hardin, John Ringo, and Buffalo Bill Cody—became acquainted with Ben Thompson. Some of these men called him a friend; others considered him a deadly enemy. In life and in death no one ever doubted Ben Thompson’s courage; one Texas newspaperman asserted he was “perfectly fearless, a perfect lion in nature when aroused.” This willingness to trust his life to his expertise with a pistol placed Thompson prominently among the western frontier’s most flamboyant breed of men: gunfighters.
Date: August 2018
Creator: Bicknell, Thomas C., 1952- & Parsons, Chuck
System: The UNT Digital Library