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Legends and Life in Texas: Folklore from the Lone Star State, in Stories and Song

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Collection of Texas folklore and historical anecdotes split into three main sections: "Legendary" Texans; Texas Folk Song and Dance; and Life in Texas -- As We Remember It. Index starts on page 311.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Untiedt, Kenneth L.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas

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In early 2013 same-sex marriage was legal in only ten states and the District of Columbia. That year the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor appeared to open the door to marriage equality. In Texas, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes, together for sixteen years and deeply in love, wondered why no one had stepped across the threshold to challenge their state’s 2005 constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. They agreed to join a lawsuit being put together by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLD. Two years later—after tense battles in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, after sitting through oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges—they won the right to marry deep in the heart of Texas. But the road they traveled was never easy. Accidental Activists is the deeply moving story of two men who struggled to achieve the dignity of which Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke in a series of Supreme Court decisions that recognized the “personhood,” the essential humanity of gays and lesbians. Author David Collins tells Mark and Vic’s story in the context of legal and …
Date: August 2017
Creator: Collins, David
System: The UNT Digital Library

Death on the Lonely Llano Estacado: The Assassination of J. W. Jarrott, a Forgotten Hero

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In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature. But frontier cattlemen who had been pasturing their herds on the unfenced prairie land were enraged by the encroachment of these “nesters.” In August 1902 a famous hired assassin, Jim Miller, ambushed and murdered J. W. Jarrott. Who hired Miller? This crime has never been solved, until now. Award-winning author Bill Neal investigates this cold case and successfully pieces together all the threads of circumstantial evidence to fit the noose snugly around the neck of Jim Miller’s employer. What emerges from these pages is the strength of intriguing characters in an engrossing narrative: Jim Jarrott, the diminutive advocate who fearlessly champions the cause of the little guy. The ruthless and slippery assassin, Deacon Jim Miller. And finally Jarrott’s young widow Mollie, who perseveres and prospers against great odds and tells the settlers to “Stay put!”
Date: July 2017
Creator: Neal, Bill
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

The Ranger Ideal

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Established in Waco in 1968, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum honors the iconic Texas Rangers, a service which has existed, in one form or another, since 1823. They have become legendary symbols of Texas and the American West. Thirty-one Rangers, with lives spanning more than two centuries, have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame. In The Ranger Ideal Volume 1: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1823-1861, Darren L. Ivey presents capsule biographies of the seven inductees who served Texas before the Civil War. He begins with Stephen F. Austin, “the Father of Texas,” who laid the foundations of the Ranger service, and then covers John C. Hays, Ben McCulloch, Samuel H. Walker, William A. A. “Bigfoot” Wallace, John S. Ford, and Lawrence Sul Ross. Using primary records and reliable secondary sources, and rejecting apocryphal tales, The Ranger Ideal presents the true stories of these intrepid men who fought to tame a land with gallantry, grit, and guns. This Volume 1 is the first of a planned three-volume series covering all of the Texas Rangers inducted into the Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas.
Date: October 2017
Creator: Ivey, Darren L.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Graham Barnett: A Dangerous Man

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Graham Barnett was killed in Rankin, Texas, on December 6, 1931. His death brought an end to a storied career, but not an end to the legends that claimed he was a gunman, a hired pistolero on both sides of the border, a Texas Ranger known for questionable shootings in Company B under Captain Fox, a deputy sheriff, a bootlegger, and a possible “fixer” for both law enforcement and outlaw organizations. In real life he was a good cowboy, who provided for his family the best way he could, and who did so by slipping seamlessly between the law enforcement community and the world of illegal liquor traffickers. Stories say he killed unnumbered men on the border, but he stood trial only twice and was acquitted both times. Barnett lived in the twentieth century but carried with him many of the attitudes of old frontier Texas. Among those beliefs was that if there were problems, a man dealt with them directly and forcefully—with a gun. His penchant to settle a score with gunplay brought him into confrontation with Sheriff W. C. Fowler, a former friend, who shot Barnett with the latter’s own submachine gun on loan. One contemporary summed it …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Coffey, James L.; Drake, Russell M. & Barnett, John T.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Ornament

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In this debut collection, Anna Lena Phillips Bell explores the foothills of the Eastern U.S., and the old-time Appalachian tunes and Piedmont blues she was raised to love. With formal dexterity—in ballads and sonnets, Sapphics and amphibrachs—the poems in Ornament traverse the permeable boundary between the body and the natural world. The contents include: Midafternoon -- Qualifications for one to be climbed by a vine -- Trillium -- Ornament -- Piedmont -- Pears -- Fall swim -- Trifoliate orange -- Unhomemaking -- Mapping -- Girl at the state line -- I'm going back to North Carolina -- Unfinished story -- Limax maximus -- Knot -- The waxweed girl -- Wand -- Proem -- Strapless -- Dishwashing -- Shade -- Crosses -- Bonaparte crossing the Rhine -- Strike -- Green man -- And not look back -- Girl at the state line -- Stitch -- To do in the new year -- The royal typewriter company delivers by parachute, 1927 -- Sunday -- Nesting -- When the fire comes down from heaven -- Honeysuckle -- Early blackberries -- Roustabout -- Overture -- June swim -- Sprout wings and fly -- Hush.
Date: April 2017
Creator: Bell, Anna Lena Phillips
System: The UNT Digital Library

Sutherland Springs, Texas: Saratoga on the Cibolo

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In Sutherland Springs, Texas, Richard B. McCaslin explores the rise and fall of this rural community near San Antonio primarily through the lens of its aspirations to become a resort spa town, because of its mineral water springs, around the turn of the twentieth century. Texas real estate developers, initially more interested in oil, brought Sutherland Springs to its peak as a resort in the early twentieth century, but failed to transform the farming settlement into a resort town. The decline in water tables during the late twentieth century reduced the mineral water flows, and the town faded. Sutherland Springs’s history thus provides great insights into the importance of water in shaping settlement. Beyond the story of resort spa aspirations lies a history of the community and its people itself. McCaslin provides a complete history of Sutherland Springs from early settlement through Civil War and into the twentieth century, its agricultural and oil-drilling exploits alongside its mineral water appeal, as well as a complete community history of the various settlers and owners of the springs/hotel. The contents include: Setting a pattern -- Losing a generation -- Another start uphill -- Building new Sutherland Springs -- Century of decline -- Endnotes.
Date: February 2017
Creator: McCaslin, Richard B.
System: The UNT Digital Library

All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music

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Historical account of musicians in Texas, grouped by region, describing "underappreciated" artists as well as some famous artists. Each chapter provides anecdotes and biographical information about an artist or musical group. Index starts on page 299.
Date: May 2017
Creator: Corcoran, Michael
System: The UNT Digital Library

Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836-1845

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Does Texas’s experience as a republic make it unique among the other states? In many ways, Texas was an “accidental republic” for nearly ten years, until Texans voted overwhelmingly in favor of annexation to the United States after winning independence from Mexico. Single Star of the West begins with the Texas Revolution and examines the emergence of a Texas identity. Next, several contributors discuss how the Republic was defended by its army, navy, and the Texas Rangers. Individual chapters focus on the early founders of Texas—Sam Houston, Mirabeau B. Lamar, and Anson Jones. Texas’s efforts at diplomacy, and persistence and transformation in its economy, also receive careful analysis. Finally, social and cultural aspects of the Texas Republic receive coverage, with discussions of women, American Indians, African Americans, Tejanos, and religion.
Date: March 2017
Creator: Howell, Kenneth Wayne & Swanlund, Charles
System: The UNT Digital Library

Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, 1978-1985

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Even though the potential passage of the Equal Rights Amendment had cracked glass ceilings across the country, in 1978 jazz remained a boys’ club. Two Kansas City women, Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg, challenged that inequitable standard. With the support of jazz luminaries Marian McPartland and Leonard Feather, inaugural performances by Betty Carter, Mary Lou Williams, an unprecedented All-Star band of women, Toshiko Akiyoshi’s band, plus dozens of Kansas City musicians and volunteers, a casual conversation between two friends evolved into the annual Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival (WJF). But with success came controversy. Anxious to satisfy fans of all jazz styles, WJF alienated some purists. The inclusion of male sidemen brought on protests. The egos of established, seasoned players unexpectedly clashed with those of newcomers. Undaunted, Comer, Gregg, and WJF’s ensemble of supporters continued the cause for eight years. They fought for equality not with speeches but with swing, without protest signs but with bebop. For the first book about this groundbreaking festival, Carolyn Glenn Brewer interviewed dozens of people and dove deeply into the archives. This book is an important testament to the ability of two friends to emphatically prove jazz genderless, thereby changing the course of jazz …
Date: March 2017
Creator: Brewer, Carolyn Glenn
System: The UNT Digital Library
From Hell to Breakfast (open access)

From Hell to Breakfast

Volume of popular folklore of Texas and Mexico, including religious anecdotes, stories about Native American dances, stories about petroleum and oil fields, folk songs, legends, customs and other miscellaneous folklore. The index begins on page 205.
Date: 2017
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
System: The UNT Digital Library
Happy Hunting Ground (open access)

Happy Hunting Ground

Collection of popular folklore from Central and South America, including Mexican ballads, primitive art, cowboy dances, reptile myths, superstitions, Indian pictographs, and other folktales. The index begins on page 127.
Date: 2017
Creator: Texas Folklore Society & Dobie, J. Frank (James Frank), 1888-1964
System: The UNT Digital Library
Hunters & Healers: Folklore Types & Topics (open access)

Hunters & Healers: Folklore Types & Topics

Volume of Texan and Mexican folklore, including stories about hunting, folk medicine, ballads, religion and other folklore. The index begins on page 169.
Date: 2017
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
System: The UNT Digital Library
Legendary Ladies of Texas (open access)

Legendary Ladies of Texas

Collection of historical anecdotes providing "a study of Texas women and the conflicting images and myths that have grown up about them" (back cover). The index begins on page 225.
Date: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Golden Log (open access)

The Golden Log

Volume of popular Texas folklore, including information about unusual Texas place names, folktales about spiders, folktales about witchcraft, ghosts and superstitions, and information about early petroleum geologists. The index begins on page 167.
Date: 2017
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
System: The UNT Digital Library
T for Texas: a State Full of Folklore (open access)

T for Texas: a State Full of Folklore

Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including information about crafts, stories about vampires, stories about peyote ceremonies, prison folklore, folk songs, and other miscellaneous folk tales.
Date: 2017
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
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: 2017
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: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward & Untiedt, Kenneth L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
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: 2017
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
System: The UNT Digital Library
What's Going On? (In Modern Texas Folklore) (open access)

What's Going On? (In Modern Texas Folklore)

Volume of "a collection of essays by contemporary folklorists who are writing about the customs and traditions and the songs and the stories that are going on now" (inside the front cover). It includes information about the folklore of cowboys, rodeos, chain letters and marijuana, as well as information about country, swing and gospel music. Index begins on page 301.
Date: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Bounty of Texas (open access)

The Bounty of Texas

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains a miscellany of Texas, Mexican and Spanish folklore, including information about hunting, canning, cooking, and other folklore. The index begins on page 225.
Date: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Paisanos: A Folklore Miscellany (open access)

Paisanos: A Folklore Miscellany

Collection of Texas and Mexican folklore, including "folk tales, folklore in journalism, reflections on the lore of the past, and some analyses of folklore generally" (inside of the front cover).
Date: 2017
Creator: Abernethy, Francis Edward
System: The UNT Digital Library
Tire Shrinker to Dragster (open access)

Tire Shrinker to Dragster

Collection of Texas, Jamaican and Irish folklore, including stories about drag racing, treasure hunting, frontier preachers, Irish storytellers, mock bidding in Jamaica, and more. The index begins on page 247.
Date: 2017
Creator: Hudson, Wilson M.
System: The UNT Digital Library