Visitors are invited to enjoy an afternoon of lively discussion and light refreshments at the OJAC Fandangle Focus Lecture on Saturday, June 30th.
Deborah Liles will discuss women and ranching primarily in the years before and during the Civil War. Women’s involvement in the livestock economy offered wealth, independence, and options that were not generally available elsewhere. From Lucinda Walker, who traded at the Red River Station, to Martha Loring, at one time the second wealthiest rancher in Cooke County. This presentation examines women of all ethnicities and marital standings during a time that is traditionally not associated with Texas ranching.
Deborah Liles is a Senior Lecturer for the Department of History at the University of North Texas. She is also an assistant professor at Tarleton State University where she holds the W. K. Gordon Chair of Texas History.
She is the co-editor of Women in Civil War Texas: Diversity and Dissidence in the Trans-Mississippi, which won the Liz Carpenter Award for best book about women's history and the Ottis Lock Award for book of the year.
She is also co-editor of Texas Women and Ranching: On the Range, At the Rodeo, In the Community, to be released Spring 2019. Works in progress include "Southern Roots, Western Foundations: The Peculiar Institution and the Livestock Industry in Texas," which examines the connection between livestock raisers and slave ownership, and a biography of Oliver Loving, a rancher who lived on the Texas frontier.
The OJAC Focus Lecture Series is a quarterly offering of presentations by artists, speakers and historians on a variety of social, cultural and historical topics ranging from the visual arts to community and Texas History.
This lecture will be in the Stasney Center for Education. This event is free and open to the public.