Texas Folklore Society

[1] According to John Avery Lomax, the first print collection included "public songs and ballads; superstitions, signs and omens, cures and peculiar customs; legends; dialects; games, plays and dances; fiddles and proverbs.

"[2] Academics John Avery Lomax and Dr. Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr. served as its first officers, with the latter becoming the organization's first president and the former becoming the first secretary.

[1] Once Francis Edward Abernethy became the Secretary-Editor, the Texas Folklore Society moved its offices to the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.

[4] The first African-American member of Texas Folklore Society was J. Mason Brewer who published several works in the folklore and poetry genre including The Word on the Brazos (1953), Aunt Dicey Tales (1956), Dog Ghosts and Other Texas Negro Folk Tales (1958), and Worser Days and Better Times (1965).

[8] Happy Hunting Ground is a "collection of popular folklore from Central and South America, including Mexican ballads, primitive art, cowboy dances, reptile myths, superstitions, Indian pictographs, and other folktales.

[1] This piece's presentation at the Founders' Day dinner in the Union Building at the University of Texas marked the perseverance and accomplishments of the Society.

[10] In the speech, Payne narrates the inception of the Texas Folklore Society, which began as a conversation between himself and John Avery Lomax in 1909, after a Thanksgiving collegiate football game.

Afterwards, they determined academia to be the necessary elite space to gather folklorist whom document Texas culture they proceeded to draft a charter for the organization.

[1] Despite TFS writers becoming the "most educated and sophisticated people of their time and culture"[1] they knowingly distributed accounts that justified the racial hierarchy.

Estill collects his stories describing bouts with "savage Indians" who would "capture or kill... pretty pioneer maidens with long flowing hair".

For example, she mentions how indigenous subjects would dip arrows in the poison from venomous snakes to ensure the fatality of their victims when pierced.

Estill's writings serve to distribute racial stereotypes amongst broad audiences by solely depicting the perspective of while settler colonials, a negative attribute often seen in the folklore genre.

[13] Beatrice Upshaw is an African-American Texas Folklore Society member, whose other careers include being a performer, therapist, and Bible study instructor.