Customer Reviews

Texas Cemeteries: The Resting Places of Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Interesting Texans (Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas Heritage Series)

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This is a really good book if you are interested in the final resting places of many lesser known as well as more famous Texans with all kind of interesting life stories that are buried throughout the state. The book goes into pretty good detail about what made each Texan that is highlighted interesting and pretty much pinpoints their individual graves. It also does a good job of representing the entire state. However, if you are interested in the stories of the graveyards themselves, as I am, this book is missing that information for the most part, and Texas graveyards themselves have some interesting stories.

I'll give an example. When I was in college I was living in an apartment complex in Arlington, Tx. Across from the complex was/is a park, adjacent to the University of Texas at Arlington. There is an unnamed cemetery in that park with headstones from 1900-1920 approximately. A couple of the headstones are large and elaborate, but there are about two rows of headstones that merely say Infant #1, Infant #2, etc. It turns out that the apartment complex I lived in was once the site of an unwed mother's home and the cemetery across from it was where those unwed mothers who had died in childbirth, disowned by their families, were buried. The unnamed infants were the ones that didn't make it at a time in the early 1900's when so many babies didn't make it through the birthing process. How sad to think about these infants, buried with nothing more than a number to ID them. These were the kinds of stories I was really looking for, but it is not really the subject of this book.

This book will make you want to explore the cemeteries of Texas and learn more about the people you find buried there. The authour has thoughtfully included GPS coordinates to help find the cemeteries. This is especially helpful for some of the more remote locations. I was especially glad to see the respect shown to the people mentioned in the book, especially Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Hopefully this book will help to foster a deeper understanding of our state's history and a nurturing of it cemeteries.

Interesting book on a seemingly obscure subject, a very good nitch book. I really was surprised at how fascinating I found this book, it's amazing how many famous people are buried here in the Lone Star State. The research is well done and the book is quite thorough, frankly this is a very good history lesson: don't be alarmed this is a lesson that you will enjoy, reguardless of your acumen for history. In my experience the dont miss cemetery in Texas is Glenwood in Houston, it is simply spectacularly beautiful, it's actually hilly, so odd for Houston and many famous Texans are buried there, most famous of course being Howard Hughes. Highly recommended.

This book was an enjoyable and easy read. It had many known historical facts and an some interesting and entertaining unknown facts. It made searching cemeteries something of an adventure and one that could be thoroughly fun! The pictures were good, but would have liked to have seen more. I enjoyed it very much!