Another Year Finds Me in Texas

Another Year Finds Me in Texas
Author: Vicki Adams Tongate
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1477324674

Lucy Pier Stevens, a twenty-one-year-old woman from Ohio, began a visit to her aunt’s family near Bellville, Texas, on Christmas Day, 1859. Little did she know how drastically her life would change on April 4, 1861, when the outbreak of the Civil War made returning home impossible. Stranded in enemy territory for the duration of the war, how would she reconcile her Northern upbringing with the Southern sentiments surrounding her? Lucy Stevens’s diary—one of few women’s diaries from Civil War–era Texas and the only one written by a Northerner—offers a unique perspective on daily life at the fringes of America’s bloodiest conflict. An articulate, educated, and keen observer, Stevens took note of seemingly everything—the weather, illnesses, food shortages, parties, church attendance, chores, schools, childbirth, death, the family’s slaves, and political and military news. As she confided her private thoughts to her journal, she unwittingly revealed how her love for her Texas family and the Confederate soldier boys she came to care for blurred her loyalties, even as she continued to long for her home in Ohio. Showing how the ties of heritage, kinship, friendship, and community transcended the sharpest division in US history, this rare diary and Vicki Adams Tongate’s insightful historical commentary on it provide a trove of information on women’s history, Texas history, and Civil War history.

Finding Butterflies in Texas

Finding Butterflies in Texas
Author: Roland H. Wauer
Publisher: Big Earth Publishing
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2006
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781555663667

Finding Butterflies in Texas, the first in a series of Spring Creek Press state guides, is an indispensable book for all butterfly enthusiasts living and traveling in this butterflyi-rich state. It's the next best thing to having a local guide.

Foraging Texas

Foraging Texas
Author: Eric M. Knight
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2021-08-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1493056107

The diverse geography of Texas overflows with edible plant species. From elderberry to amaranth and dandelion to cactus, Foraging Texas guides you to 92 edible wild foods and healthful herbs of the state. This valuable reference guide will help you identify and appreciate the wild bounty of the Lone Star State. Foraging Texas provides all of the information you need about wild foods in the state: Detailed descriptions and full-color photos of edible plants Tips on finding, preparing, and using foraged foods Recipes suitable for the trail and at home Botanical terms and diagrams complete with an illustrated bibliography Distribution maps for every plant

Hometown Texas

Hometown Texas
Author:
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1595348085

Brown and Holley are interested in place and what makes people who they are. With particular interest in how people take the hand they’ve been dealt—fate, family, circumstance, luck—and craft a life for themselves, the authors celebrate the grit and gumption of these Texas originals. Introducing quirky characters and tenacious spirits, Holley’s stories seek out the personality of the small town while Brown’s photographs capture the essence of a changing landscape. Hometown Texas aims not to be nostalgic or sentimental but rather to show readers an unknown Texas—one that, while not vanishing, is certainly on the wane. Organized into five topographical, geographic, and cultural sections—East, West, North, South, and Central—three dozen stories and more than eighty complementary images work to create a parallel narrative to reveal what Brown has described as the “collective, various, remarkably complex soul that makes Texas unique.” Hometown Texas is an exploration across miles and cultures, of well-traveled roads and forgotten byways, deep into the heart of Texas.

Lost, Texas

Lost, Texas
Author: Bronson Dorsey
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1623496179

In Lost, Texas: Photographs of Forgotten Buildings, Bronson Dorsey takes us on a tour of old, abandoned buildings in Texas that evoke the mystique of bygone days and shifting population patterns. With a skilled photographer’s eye, he captures the character of these buildings, mostly tucked away in the far corners of rural Texas—though, surprisingly, some of his finds are in the midst of thriving communities, even, in one case, the Dallas metroplex. Most of the buildings are abandoned and in a state of decay, though a handful have been repurposed as museums, residences, or other functional structures. Encompassing all regions of the state, from the Piney Woods to the Panhandle, the images in Lost, Texas evoke distinctive memories of the past. They grant a sense of how those who preceded us lived and how the Texas of earlier days became the Texas of today. Some of the historic sites include a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Beeville, a lumberyard built over two generations, a beautiful, mission-style schoolhouse raised in a small farming community, the skeleton of a boomtown gas station near the Yates oilfield, and what remains of the only silver mining operation in Texas. With Dorsey as a guide, readers may explore these hidden and neglected gems and learn the basic facts of their origins and intended uses, as well as the principal reasons for their demise. Along the way and in the background, he quietly makes the case for preserving these buildings that, while no longer central to the ongoing function of their communities, still serve as important emblems of the past.

From South Texas to the Nation

From South Texas to the Nation
Author: John Weber
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469625245

In the early years of the twentieth century, newcomer farmers and migrant Mexicans forged a new world in South Texas. In just a decade, this vast region, previously considered too isolated and desolate for large-scale agriculture, became one of the United States' most lucrative farming regions and one of its worst places to work. By encouraging mass migration from Mexico, paying low wages, selectively enforcing immigration restrictions, toppling older political arrangements, and periodically immobilizing the workforce, growers created a system of labor controls unique in its levels of exploitation. Ethnic Mexican residents of South Texas fought back by organizing and by leaving, migrating to destinations around the United States where employers eagerly hired them--and continued to exploit them. In From South Texas to the Nation, John Weber reinterprets the United States' record on human and labor rights. This important book illuminates the way in which South Texas pioneered the low-wage, insecure, migration-dependent labor system on which so many industries continue to depend.