The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 452

                                
Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Driftwood Heritage: The History of Driftwood, Texas. Edited by Minnie
Lea Rogers. (Driftwood: Driftwood Ladies-Aid, 1970. Pp. 190. Illustra-
tions, index. $6.50.)
The appearance of Driftwood Heritage, the third book to be published
in twelve months dealing with a Hays County community, suggests that
local historians are inspiring each other in the process of recording county
history. The newest contribution is a competent and attractive addition.
Driftwood is in the beautiful hill country along Onion Creek in the
northeast part of Hays County. The first land titles in this area were
granted in 1835, and one of these went to William Barrett Travis. Upon
his death at the Alamo the property passed to his small son and daughter.
In the early 1850's the children sold valuable cypress timber from the land
to aid the building boom in nearby Austin. Interestingly enough, it was
well into the twentieth century before an acre of land in this area brought
the equivalent of what one cypress tree brought in 1849.
Driftwood Heritage began as a group project of the Driftwood Ladies-
Aid, but Mrs. Minnie Lea Rogers gets the credit for carrying the job to a
successful completion. This is a well-told story of people, their institutions,
their means of livelihood, their pastimes, and their manner of confronting
change.
The principle flaws in the book are the failure to indicate the specific
source materials that were used and the ineffective index, which is nothing
more than a table of contents misplaced at the back of the book. Organiza-
tion might have been improved if the chapters on institutions and recrea-
tion had followed the chapters devoted to family history, instead of being
interspersed among them. Nonetheless, this is good grass-roots history,
filled with true-to-life anecdotes. Mrs. Rogers and her friends are entitled
to a salute for having compiled this account before Father Time closed the
door on the living witnesses whose stories are related herein.
Physically, the volume is attractive in appearance, with a nice looking
title page, good presswork, and a sturdy binding.

452

Institute of Texan Cultures

AL LOWMAN