The Texas Folklore Society 1971-2000: Volume III

In 1999 the Texas Folklore Society looked back on its ninety years and saw that it was still strong. It has met annually since 1909, except when interrupted by wartime. It has collected, presented, and preserved more folklore than any other similar society in the United States. It has amassed a list of publications in Texas folklore that compare favorably with collections throughout the United States. It has brought to Texas and sent out from Texas some of the leading folklorists of the nation. And large numbers of the Society's members continue to gather annually to honor and enjoy the traditions of Texas. Volume III of its history begins with the move from Wilson Hudson’s editorship at the University of Texas to F. E. Abernethy’s editorship at Stephen F. Austin State University: “We moved during the burnt-out end of August, Wilson and I . . . We sweated and cussed some as we packed the Society's materials in cardboard boxes and carried them out to the station wagon parked behind Parlin Hall. We took down the pictures of Lomax and Payne and Thompson and some Cisneros sketches . . . Frank Dobie's old felt hat with a turkey feather in the band was sitting on a filing cabinet, so we put it in. Very gently we loaded a box of Mody's paisanos, five or six of them . . . And the Society's publications . . . that stretched back to Stith Thompson's Volume I in 1916 and make up our umbilicus, the visible chain of the Society's being, that makes us all a part of it from its inception in 1909.”