Texas Originals

According to J. Frank Dobie, the writer and naturalist Roy Bedichek "liked to cook outdoors, eat outdoors, sleep outdoors, look and listen outdoors, [and] be at one . . . with the first bob-whiting at dawn." Born in 1878 and raised in Waco, Bedichek is best known for his 1947 book Adventures with a Texas Naturalist, a classic of American nature writing.

That Houston is a destination for art lovers is due in part to the generosity of Dominique and John de Menil, a French couple who left their Nazi-occupied homeland in 1941, ultimately settling in Houston. Their museum, the Menil Collection, remains true to their vision of art as a spiritual pursuit.

African American leader Norris Wright Cuney forged a remarkable career in post-Civil War Texas. Born into slavery in 1846, he nonetheless studied law and became a civic and political force in the years following Reconstruction.

Critics call Texas-born writer Katherine Anne Porter a "poet of the story." Her carefully crafted short fiction earned her the highest acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her most accomplished stories spring from her childhood in central Texas—what she once called her "native land of the heart."

Texas revolutionary Juan Seguín was a politician, a soldier, a land speculator, a businessman, and a suspected traitor. Yet he was undoubtedly a hero and died an honored veteran. The perplexing contrasts of Seguín's life illustrate how complicated loyalty could be during the struggle for Texas independence—especially for Tejano citizens of the Republic.

Called "the Storyteller of the Southwest," James Frank Dobie was born in 1888 on a ranch in Live Oak County. Throughout his life, he lived astride two worlds: the old-time Texas of his family's cattle ranch and the state's modern centers of scholarly learning. The focus of Dobie's career was to record and publicize the disappearing folklore of the Southwest.

"Belle Starr was the most desperate woman that ever figured on the borders," declared an 1889 news report that she’d been shot dead by an assassin. Confirmed details of her life are few. But after her death at age forty, her legend grew, and she became known as "Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen."

The Gutenberg Bible, completed in 1454, is the first substantial book printed with movable type. Of the twenty-one complete copies in existence, one is on view to the public at The University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. This book—and the center that houses it—are the proud legacy of Chancellor Harry Huntt Ransom, "The Great Acquisitor."

The German army considered Pointe du Hoc a perfect spot for defending the coast of France from Allied forces during WWII. The Germans placed six cannons on the point and thought the position secure. And it was—until June 1944, when Texan James Earl Rudder was ordered to take the point with his 2nd Ranger Battalion.

Born in 1867, folklorist John Lomax spent his life collecting songs "around chuck wagons, up hollers and down in river bottoms, on levee and railroad, in the saloons, churches, and penitentiaries of the South and Southwest." Upon his death in 1948, the New York Times wrote, "If anybody ever did, John Lomax really heard America singing."