Lone Star Steeples
Lone Star Steeples

Author: Pixie Christensen

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1623493935

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In Lone Star Steeples: Historic Places of Worship in Texas, Carl J. Christensen Jr. and Pixie Christensen present sixty-five captivating and historically significant structures in exquisite watercolor illustrations accompanied by brief summaries and convenient, handcrafted maps. Ranging from stately edifices of brick and stone located in urban centers to more humble wood-frame chapels in rural surroundings, the houses of faith shown in these pages have one important trait in common: They have all served as centers of cultural identity, spiritual comfort, and public service to the communities in which they arose. In their introduction, the Christensens write, “The journey behind Lone Star Steeples crisscrossed the state along back roads, farm roads, and state highways. In these journeys and in the stories that were told, certain patterns began to emerge: the pride of the people in building their churches debt-free, the perseverance of the people who endured their beloved church being destroyed by natural disaster once, twice, or even three times . . . the people’s recognition of the church as their cultural foundation, their moral foundation, their social center.” As the Christensens demonstrate, Texas is home to a remarkable diversity of people, and their places of worship reflect and celebrate that diversity.

Pleasant Bend
Pleasant Bend

Author: Dan Worrall

Publisher: Dan Michael Worrall

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0982599625

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Today’s Greater Houston is a vast urban place. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, Houston was a small town – a dot in a vast frontier. Extant written histories of Houston largely confine themselves to the small area within the city limits of the day, leaving nearly forgotten the history of large rural areas that later fell beneath the city’s late twentieth century urban sprawl. One such area is that of upper Buffalo Bayou, extending westward from downtown Houston to Katy. European settlement here began at Piney Point in 1824, over a decade before Houston was founded. Ox wagons full of cotton traveled across a seemingly endless tallgrass prairie from the Brazos River east to Harrisburg (and later to Houston) along the San Felipe Trail, built in 1830. Also here, Texan families fled eastward during the Runaway Scrape of 1836, immigrant German settlers trekked westward to new farms along the north bank of the bayou in the 1840s, and newly freed African American families walked east toward Houston from Brazos plantations after Emancipation. Pioneer settlers operated farms, ranches and sawmills. Near present-day Shepherd Drive, Reconstruction-era cowboys assembled herds of longhorns and headed north along a southeastern branch of the Chisholm Trail. Little physical evidence remains today of this former frontier world.

Reflections of Faith
Reflections of Faith

Author: Willard Bethurem Robinson

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13:

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From the early Spanish missions through antebellum, Victorian, early twentieth century, and modern buildings, Reflections of Faith presents a rich treasury of social, religious, and architectural history. This examination of religious architecture seeks to interpret the social and theological conditions that contribute to the numerous design variations found throughout the state, and provides us with a sense of the society and culture in which architecture takes form. As symbols reinforcing theological dogmas, these houses of worship, including some for nearly every denomination found in Texas, reflect the increasing complexity of theology and society.