Pioneer Jewish Texans

With more than 400 photographs, extensive interviews with the descendants of pioneer Jewish Texan families, and reproductions of rare historical documents, Natalie Ornish’s Pioneer Jewish Texans quickly became a classic following its original release in 1989.
This new Texas A&M University Press edition presents Ornish’s meticulous research and her fascinating historical vignettes for a new generation of readers and historians. She chronicles Jewish buccaneers with Jean Lafitte at Galveston; she tells of Jewish patriots who fought at the Alamo and at virtually every major engagement in the war for Texan independence; she traces the careers of immigrants with names like Marcus, Sanger, and Gordon, who arrived on the Texas frontier with little more than the packs on their backs and went on to build great mercantile empires. Cattle barons, wildcatters, diplomats, physicians, financiers, artists, and humanitarians are among the other notable Jewish pioneers and pathfinders described in this carefully researched and exhaustively documented book.
Filling a substantial void in Texana and Texas history, the Texas A&M University Press edition of Natalie Ornish’s Pioneer Jewish Texans brings back into circulation this treasure trove of information on a rich and often overlooked vein of the multifaceted story of the Lone Star State.

NATALIE ORNISH was born and raised in Galveston, Texas, a third-generation Texan on both sides whose family dates to 1848. She obtained a bachelor's degree in English from Sam Houston State University at age 17, and at 18 became the youngest person at the time to obtain a master's degree from Northwestern University, in journalism.

Following graduation, she worked for the Associated Press in Omaha, Nebraska, later returning to Texas, founding Dallas Records & Creative Productions. An album of her original songs for children, The Ages of Childhood, was a featured gift in the famed Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalogue, and songs from the album were performed at a Dallas Symphony Orchestra children's concert. A video documentary on Alzheimer's research also received awards.

In 1976, Ornish wrote and produced a multi-media production, Texans All, in conjunction with the US Bicentennial. It was used in college classes to fulfill the multicultural requirement for the master's degree in education and by the Dallas Independent School District.

Between 1986 and 1996, Ornish contributed 61 entries to the New Handbook of Texas, published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Ornish's writings were also part of the 2008 compilation, Literary Dallas, the third in TCU Press's "Literary Cities" series.

Ornish is listed in The World Who's Who of Women, The International Who's Who of Intellectuals, and other publications.