Texas Graveyards
A Cultural Legacy
Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveler fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has traveled the back roads and hidden trails of rural Texas in search of such cemeteries. With camera in hand, he has visited more than one thousand cemeteries created and maintained by the Anglo-American, black, Indian, Mexican, and German settlers of Texas. His discoveries of sculptured stones and mounds, hex signs and epitaphs, intricate landscapes and unusual decorations represent a previously unstudied and unappreciated wealth of Texas folk art and tradition. Texas Graveyards not only marks the distinct ethnic and racial traditions in burial practices but also preserves a Texas legacy endangered by changing customs, rural depopulation, vandalism, and the erosion of time.
...throw away your inhibitions, forget the ghost stories, and travel with Terry Jordan through the fascinating world of tombstones and epitaphs, the departed, the remaining, and the odd, revealing ways in which we honor the dead.... Jordan treats his subject with respect in both words and pictures.
...Jordan's wonderful Texas Graveyards is a tour of Texas history in quite a unique way.... the book is a genuine masterpiece.
- Acknowledgments
- 1. The Truth about Cemeteries
- 2. The Southern Folk Cemetery in Texas
- 3. Traditional Southern Grave Markers
- 4. The Mexican Graveyard in Texas
- 5. The Texas German Graveyard
- 6. A Legacy Squandered?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Map of Texas Counties
