Watt Matthews of Lambshead

About this book

The TSHA is pleased to announce the return of a classic in this second edition of Watt Matthews of Lambshead by renowned photographer Laura Wilson. In this new edition Wilson adds an afterword to her original award-winning photographic essay published in 1989 when Watt Matthews was ninety years old and the vital force behind a vast West Texas ranch. Watt was the ninth and last child of pioneering parents who had established the ranch on the banks of the Clear Fork of the Brazos in 1858 and in the words of historian David McCullough "created a family kingdom so large and still so true to its traditional way of life that visitors sometimes have to remind themselves that it is all real." Except for four years at Princeton Watt spent his entire life on the ranch which had remained its own separate world into the late twentieth century. Those days are beautifully chronicled in Wilsons photographs and in this new edition she brings the story of Lambshead Ranch up to the present by writing of Watts funeral and what has happened to the ranch since Watts death in 1997.