Old Western History

More wise and witty talks on Texas folk and lore from members of the legendary Texas Folklore Society. Thirteen Texas Folklore Society members offer spoken word performances, introduced by award-winning western writer Elmer Kelton with music by the East Texas String Ensemble. Subjects include...

Hear the funny, inspirational papers that were spoken at annual meetings of the legendary Texas Folklore Society (TFS). These collections put the listener in the audience to hear Society members talking up a Texas tempest on the state's wide-ranging folk and lore. The East Texas String Ensemble...

Recorded for the first time ever, here are ten of the wise and witty spoken word presentations at the 90th annual meeting of the legendary Texas Folklore Society featuring a special tribute to teacher, writer, and Pecos cowboy Paul Patterson by Elmer Kelton and two others. Subjects include early...

"The entire cowboy-outlaw era, which reached its climax in 1897 and ended around 1905, comes vividly alive in this kaleidoscopic work ... countless other instances of robbing, stealing and retribution, are woven splendidly into this rousing saga of the closing years of the outlaw epoch of the...

The definitive account of the Dalton Gang and the most brazen bank heist in history, by the multiple New York Times bestselling author. The Last Outlaws is the thrilling true story of the last of one of the greatest outlaw gang. The dreaded Dalton Gang consisted of three brothers and their...

Shotguns and Stagecoaches tells the true stories of the Wild West heroes who guarded the iconic Wells Fargo stagecoaches and trains, battling colorful thieves, vicious highwaymen, and robbers armed with explosives. The phrase "riding shotgun" was no teenage game to the men who guarded...

Andy Adams (1859-1935) was born to pioneer parents in Indiana, worked in Texas for a decade driving cattle, and settled in Colorado Springs, where he penned his cowboy narratives. The Log of a Cowboy chronicles a five-month drive of three thousand head of cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana. This classical work of fiction provides fascinating insights of everyday life on the Great Western Cattle Trail with a team of 12 cowhands, a cook, a horse wrangler and a foreman.

In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he...