Item Detail
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Taylor, Edith Wharton Dallas
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1930-1991
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MSS SC 2664
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Manuscript
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Edith Wharton Dallas Taylor was born on 18 April 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to George Mifflin Dallas III and Constance Hopkins Snow Dallas. She had one older sister, Constance Hopkins Dallas, who was her senior by 4 years, as well as one younger brother, George Mifflin IV, who was 5 years younger than her.
Not much is known about her early life other than that she graduated from Germantown Friends School in 1948. She became a receptionist in the United States Senate shortly thereafter, thus marking the beginning of her lifelong career with the US military forces.
On 12 January 1949, just a year after her graduation, Edith married Charles A. Taylor, Capt. USAF. They had one child together, Jaime Taylor, born in Wiesbaden, Germany. They traveled around the country as well as outside of it a great deal for their work. While in California, Edith studied ballistics and tested guns and ammunition. She also studied the Arabic language at the Army Language School in Monterey.
In the 1950s, Edith expanded her knowledge to include archaeology (Leptic Magna), still and motion picture photography (Leitz School of Photography, Westlauer, Germany), and flying, building, and shipping aircraft (Germany and the US). In the 1960s, she furthered her eclectic studies by learning Burmese at the Sanz Language School in Washington, D.C. She also attended the Army Intelligence School.
In 1967, Edith and Charles divorced, and lifelong student that she was Edith went on to attend East Texas State University, earning a bachelors degree in History and French. She then worked in the Graduate Program of the History Department, eventually earning a masters degree in History with a minor in German in 1972, and a doctorate a few years after that. Not much is known of her years after she finished her formal schooling.
She died on 28 October 1991 in Cumby, Texas. -
This manuscript is a copy of Edith Wharton Dallas Taylors masters thesis, entitled Money on the Hoof Sometimes. It covers the history of the cattle trade in Texas, and it numbers 81 typescript pages.
The manuscript starts with a survey of the beginnings of Texas burgeoning cattle trade, which started with the Spaniards who came to settle the area. It goes on to talk about the history of tick infestations and treatment methods such as dips used to keep the cattle safe and healthy. After spending some time highlighting the lives of a few men who took the cattle business by the horns, as it were (such as Tom Saunders, Ted Gouldy, Ben Green), the manuscript finishes with an overview of the emergence of a centralized livestock market, which coincided with the invention of mechanical refrigeration.