Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy

Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveller fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has travelled 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.

© 2010 University of Texas Press (E-bog): 9780292788435

Release date

E-bog: 5. juli 2010