J. Frank Dobie (1888 – 1964)

J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964)

Dobie was born on a ranch in Texas, and was the eldest of six children.  He began to publish his first articles in 1919. In 1920 he wrote articles mostly about life in the southwest. Dobie left the faculty at the University of Texas to work his uncle's ranch where he discovered a desire to put the rich experience of Texas ranch life and southwestern folklore into words.

After a year on the ranch, he returned to the University of Texas and began to use its library and the resources of the Texas Folklore Society to write articles about the vanishing way of life on rural Texas ranches. In 1923, unable to get a promotion without a PhD, Dobie accepted a job at Oklahoma A&M University as the chair of the English department. While in Oklahoma, he wrote for the Country Gentleman. He returned to Austin in 1925 after receiving a token promotion with the help of his friends.

In 1930, Dobie published Coronado's Children, a collection of folklore about lost mines and lost treasures. This was followed by a series of books in the 1930s. In 1937, Dobie was visiting a friend in El Paso, prominent attorney Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr., and after seeing the art work of Lea's son, Tom Lea, asked him to illustrate the book that he was working on then, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver.