This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains information about folklore in Texas and Mexico, including folk songs and ballads, ghost stories, Mexican animal tales, sermons, stories about games and celebrations, folklore of Texas plants, and information about folk remedies. The index begins on page 349.

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains information about folklore in Texas and Mexico, including folk songs and ballads, ghost stories, Mexican animal tales, sermons, stories about games and celebrations, folklore of Texas plants, and information about folk remedies. The index begins on page 349.

Two Counties in Crisis offers a rare opportunity to observe how local political cultures are transformed by state and national events. Utilizing an interdisciplinary fusion of history and political science, Robert J. Dillard analyzes two disparate Texas counties—traditionalist Harrison County and individualist Collin County—and examines four Reconstruction governors (Hamilton, Throckmorton, Pease, Davis) to aid the narrative and provide additional cultural context. Commercially prosperous and built on slave labor in the mold of Deep South plantation culture, East Texas’s Harrison County strongly supported secession in 1861. West Texas’s Collin County, characterized by individual and family farms with a limited slave population, favored the Union. During Reconstruction, Collin County became increasingly conservative and eventually bore a great resemblance to Harrison County. By 1876 and the ratification of the regressive Texas Constitution, Collin County had become firmly resistant to all aspects of Reconstruction.

In TFS Extra Book #28, Beatrice Upshaw shares her memories of growing up in County Line. A Biscuit for Your Shoe captures the lore of a community which began as a freedom colony west of Nacogdoches in East Texas. The book is a memoir, but it shares more than merely family memories of significant events. It tells of beliefs, home remedies, folk games, and customs, as well as the importance of religion and education to a community of like-minded people. The narrative is a rich source of colloquial language and proverbial sayings that help define a group of people and their strong sense of place. Richard Orton was first introduced to County Line by F. E. “Ab” Abernethy, the Secretary-Editor of the TFS for nearly four decades. Richard eventually did a photographic book on the people of the community, The Upshaws of County Line: An American Family, but he believed that Beatrice’s memoir should be developed into a separate work that could be shared with an audience larger than just family and friends. Richard’s introduction explains the value of the stories Beatrice Upshaw presents in A Biscuit for Your Shoe; they are personal, but the overall narrative speaks collectively about …