The three volumes of the Texas Folklore Society's history 
were the result of Jack Duncan and John West requesting 
that all the Society's programs be published in a volume. 
They wanted to know what folklore topics members had been 
interested in and talking about since the first TFS 
gathering in 1909. Abernethy set the TFS secretary to typing 
up all past TFS meeting programs and contents of Society
publications.


Abernethy gathered information about the Society and soon 
had enough material to make a good entry for each year. 
Then Abernethy read Leonidas Payne's description of the 
seminal meeting between Payne and John Lomax, which was so 
vivid that Abernethy was caught up in the social history 
of the times. These were the settings in which the meetings 
that Duncan and West were interested in took place. Abernethy 
also collected pictures and early illustrations to augment 
the writing. Thus the project turned into three volumes, 
with Volume I covering the years 1909-43 and Volume II 1943-71.


In 1999 the 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 compares 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.


The final volume begins with the move from Wilson Hudson's 
editorship at the University of Texas to 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.


_________________________________________________________


FRANCIS EDWARD ABERNETHY is Regents Professor Emeritus of 
English at Stephen F. Austin State University, the executive 
secretary and editor of the Texas Folklore Society, the 
curator of exhibits for the East Texas Historical Association, 
and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. In addition 
to the first two volumes of The History of the Texas Folklore
Society, he is author of Singin' Texas, Legends of 
Texas' Heroic Age and editor of Tales From the Big 
Thicket and nineteen Texas Folklore Society publications.


Texas Folklore Society Publications LVII