Sheryl Reed Rascher

This book is part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, eye-catching local history books with a single sepia-tone historic photograph on the cover. Sheryl Reed Rascher, a sixth-generation Erath County descendant and president of the rel="nofollow" target="_top">Erath County Genealogical Society, is the ideal author for Texas' Erath County entry in the series.

Besides the cover, the book has 203 historic photographs plus a map of the county. Most of the photographs come from the Ralph and Dossie Rogers Historic Images Collection, some of which is digitized and available at the Portal to Texas History and in the Cross Timbers Historical Image Project at Tarleton State University's Dick Smith Library. In addition, Rascher's connections to the county enabled her to use images and stories from the Stephenville Historical House Museum, the Dublin Public Library, the Erath County Historical Commission, and the private collections of numerous members of these groups.

Along with the excellent selection of images, Rascher has provided detailed captions for each photograph. Where people can be identified, they have been, making the book a gold mine for anyone with Erath County settlers in their ancestry. An index would be helpful, but Arcadia's strict formatting requirements only allow 60 entries in an index, and there are far more persons and places identified in this book. Rather than an incomplete index, Rascher chose instead to include a bibliography of additional sources.… (altro)