Features essays, statistical data, period photographs, maps, and documents.

Civil War America (Almanacs of American Life)

History

Selcer, Richard F.

Americas

FACTS ON FILE+

VG/VG, INSCRIBED TO SUZANNE AND SIGNED BY AUTHOR, 364 PAGES

Hell's Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District (Chisholm Trail, 9)

Texas Christian Univ Pr

Texas is a place where legends are made, die, and are revived. Fort Worth, Texas, claims its own legend – Hell’s Half Acre – a wild ’n woolly accumulation of bordellos, cribs, dance houses, saloons, and gambling parlors. Tenderloin districts were a fact of life in every major town in the American West, but Hell’s Half Acre – its myth and its reality – can be said to be a microcosm of them all. The most famous and infamous westerners visited the Acre: Timothy (“Longhair Jim”) Courtright, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, Mary Porter, Etta Place, along with Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch, and many more. For civic leaders and reformers, the Acre presented a dilemma – the very establishments they sought to close down or regulate were major contributors to the local economy. Controversial in its heyday and receiving new attention by such movies as Lonesome Dove, Hell’s Half Acre remains the subject of debate among historians and researchers today. Richard Selcer successfully separates fact from fiction, myth from reality, in this vibrant study of the men and women of Cowtown’s notorious Acre.

Hell's Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District (Chisholm Trail Series) (Volume 9)

TCU Press

Before cattle drives, Alliance Airport, oil production and defense industries, Fort Worth was home to the United States Army’s Second Dragoons. They came in 1849 (and left less than four years later) and occupied the last outpost between the Brazos River and the Red River. They were followed to the banks of the Trinity by other elements of the army, forming the first U.S. military presence in North Texas. They were there to protect lands to the north and to the west, Indian lands coveted by the white men but controlled by the Comanche and Kiowa.

The Fort that Became a City: An Illustrated Reconstruction of Fort Worth, 1849 1853 (Chisholm Trail Series)

Potter, William

Texas Christian University Press

Fort Worth has been called "the City Where the West Begins," "Cowtown," and the silent partner in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. None of these descriptions quite tells the story of this city and its people. Since its founding in the mid-nineteenth century as a military outpost, Fort Worth has gone through many phases—cattle, oil, aviation, and tourist. The little village on the Trinity has grown up to become a global city that is a melting pot of economic forces and diverse cultures. At its most basic, Fort Worth's history is the story of leadership, of how men and women of vision built a flourishing community at a river crossing on the north Texas plains. Through troubled times—the 1850s, the Civil War, the 1930s, the 1970s—the leadership kept its eye on the future. The city pulled itself through the down times—and put itself on the map—by visionary projects like the railroad, the Spring Palace, the Stockyards, Camp Bowie, the Bomber Plant, and Sundance Square. This book helps to put a modern face on Fort Worth, move it out of the shadow of Dallas, and place it firmly in the twenty-first century. The book is illustrated with many historic photographs, including: a pair of Wichita Indians; Main Street in old Fort Worth; the current Tarrant County Courthouse, under construction in 1895; Fort Worth Medical College, opening in 1893 as just the third medical school in Texas; Fort Worth's Meacham Field in its early years (ca. 1926) and Meacham field in 1937; the Boeing B-29 and the Convair B-36 side by side at Carswell Air Force Base; Pig Stand drive-ins; the Fort Worth Cats and their opponents, the Memphis Chicks; the Light Crust Doughboys Western swing band in the 1940s; Six Flags over Texas; the "Bombardier 500" race; William B. McDonald, successful African American businessman and political leader; the Woman's Wednesday Club in its weekly luncheon meeting at the Metropolitan Hotel, 1918; the flood of 1949; Sundance Square, looking west across Main Street in the 1980s; and African American drover Chester Stidham with the "Fort Worth Herd" of longhorns. Also enlivening the text are various sidebars giving detailed information about "Fort Worth's Most Historic Cemeteries," "Courthouse Square," "The Cultural District," "Sundance Square," and "The Historic North Side."

Fort Worth: A Texas Original! (Volume 17) (Fred Rider Cotten Popular History Series)

Texas State Historical Assn

"Faithfully and forever your soldier": Gen. George E. Pickett, CSA (Farnsworth House commander series)

Farnsworth House Military Impressions

Fort Worth history is far more than the handful of familiar names that every true-blue Fort Worther hears growing up: leaders such as Amon Carter, B. B. Paddock, J. Frank Norris, and William McDonald. Their names are indexed in the history books for ready reference. But the drama that is Fort Worth history contains other, less famous characters who played important roles, like Judge James Swayne, Madam Mary Porter, and Marshal Sam Farmer: well known enough in their day but since forgotten. Others, like Al Hayne, lived their lives in the shadows until one, spectacular moment of heroism. Then there are the lawmen, Jim Courtright, Jeff Daggett, and Thomas Finch. They wore badges, but did not always represent the best of law and order. These seven plus five others are gathered together between the covers of this book. Each has a story that deserves to be told. If they did not all make history, they certainly lived in historic times. The jury is still out on whether they shaped their times or merely reflected those times. Either way, their stories add new perspectives to the familiar Fort Worth story, revealing how the law worked in the old days and what life was like for persons of color and for women living in a man’s world. As the old TV show used to say, “There are a million stories in the ‘Naked City.’” There may not be quite as many stories in Cowtown, but there are plenty waiting to be told—enough for future volumes of Fort Worth Characters. But this is a good starting point.

Fort Worth Characters

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

University of North Texas Press

Fort Worth history is far more than the handful of familiar names that every true-blue Fort Worther hears growing up: leaders such as Amon Carter, B. B. Paddock, J. Frank Norris, and William McDonald. Their names are indexed in the history books for ready reference. But the drama that is Fort Worth history contains other, less famous characters who played important roles, like Judge James Swayne, Madam Mary Porter, and Marshal Sam Farmer: well known enough in their day but since forgotten. Others, like Al Hayne, lived their lives in the shadows until one, spectacular moment of heroism. Then there are the lawmen, Jim Courtright, Jeff Daggett, and Thomas Finch. They wore badges, but did not always represent the best of law and order. These seven plus five others are gathered together between the covers of this book. Each has a story that deserves to be told. If they did not all make history, they certainly lived in historic times. The jury is still out on whether they shaped their times or merely reflected those times. Either way, their stories add new perspectives to the familiar Fort Worth story, revealing how the law worked in the old days and what life was like for persons of color and for women living in a man’s world. As the old TV show used to say, “There are a million stories in the ‘Naked City.’” There may not be quite as many stories in Cowtown, but there are plenty waiting to be told—enough for future volumes of Fort Worth Characters. But this is a good starting point.

“Another line of duty death” is a chilling headline that serves as an obituary for too many “first responders.” In 2002 Fort Worth joined the ranks of other communities across the nation in building a memorial to its fallen heroes, an elaborate, million-dollar Police and Firefighters Memorial, dedicated in 2009, that recognized fifty-eight policemen going back to the city’s beginnings. Written in Blood is a more inclusive version of that idea because it covers more than just members of the Police Department; it is about the men from all branches of local law enforcement who died defending law and order in the early years: policemen, sheriffs, constables, “special officers,” and even a police commissioner. All were larger-than-life characters who took an oath to “preserve and protect” and therefore deserve to be remembered.
Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster tell the stories of thirteen of those early lawmen, starting with Tarrant County Sheriff John B. York in 1861 and going through Fort Worth Police Officer William “Ad” Campbell in 1909. York died in a street fight; Campbell was shot-gunned in the back while walking his beat in Hell’s Half-Acre. This is also the story of law enforcement in the days when an assortment of policemen and marshals, sheriffs and deputies, and special officers and constables held the line and sometimes crossed over it.
Co-authors Selcer and Foster bring academic credentials and “street cred” to the story, explaining how policemen got (and kept) their jobs, what “special officers” were, and the working relationship between the city marshal’s boys and the sheriff’s boys. The book is also a primer on court proceedings in the old days as it follows accused cop killers through the justice system. In some instances, the court cases were as fantastic as the crime itself. Each victim’s and perpetrator’s story is fleshed out with the details of his life, ultimate fate, and in some cases his descendants.
Written in Blood is not a paean to these thirteen men. They were not saints; they were real flesh-and-blood men: violent, sometimes racist, often carrying a chip on their shoulder. Most of them would not meet the strict professional standards required of officers today. None of the thirteen has ever had their full story told before now. They were men on the front lines of law enforcement at a time when the job did not come with health insurance or a retirement package. Selcer and Foster show the real men behind the badges, warts and all, leaving it to the reader to judge each officer’s place in history.

Written in Blood: The History of Fort Worth’s Fallen Lawmen, Volume 1, 1861-1909 (Written in Blood: History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen)

Foster, Kevin S.

Written in Blood: The History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen, Volume 1, 1861-1909

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Books by Selcer, Richard F.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Selcer, Richard F.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Civil War America (Almanacs of American Life)

Hell's Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District (Chisholm Trail, 9)

Hell's Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District (Chisholm Trail Series) (Volume 9)

The Fort that Became a City: An Illustrated Reconstruction of Fort Worth, 1849 1853 (Chisholm Trail Series)

Fort Worth: A Texas Original! (Volume 17) (Fred Rider Cotten Popular History Series)

"Faithfully and forever your soldier": Gen. George E. Pickett, CSA (Farnsworth House commander series)

Fort Worth Characters

Fort Worth Characters

Written in Blood: The History of Fort Worth’s Fallen Lawmen, Volume 1, 1861-1909 (Written in Blood: History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen)

Written in Blood: The History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen, Volume 1, 1861-1909