Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy

by Terry G. Jordan and Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292780702
• ISBN13: 9780292780705
• Release Date: June 1982
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

A superb wealth of information

This book is a must have for anyone interested in the Texas graveyards. Written with a more cultural and social viewpoint, it immediately began as an excellent read with many places that you can actually visit for yourself!

Tx Graveyards--another excellent resource

For anyone interested in rural graveyard history, this book has it all. Even though it is slanted toward Texas Germans (Jordan is a 6th gen. Texan) and their particular way of burying their dead, southern, black and hispanic rituals are treated justly. Tidbits: -in the southern Texan tradition (East, Southeast), sinners and thieves are buried facing south. Everyone else faces east to receive the morning sun, and the second coming. -All burial rituals in Texas are basically based on pagan theology, but Germans apparently take this idea farther than most - they employ, among other things, pentagrams and other sun symbols popular with satanists.