About

Dan Michael Worrall is one of a fifth generation of his family to live in the Houston area. Trained in regional geology, he retired from a career in petroleum exploration research and management. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Rice University, a master of arts from the University of Wyoming, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, all in geology, as well as a masters in teaching from Northwestern.

    Dan has served on the Harris County Historical Commission since 2014, and is currently working on a project to bring historical markers to significant sites in western Harris County. He led an effort to save the pioneer Morse-Bragg Cemetery in Houston from destruction, and it is now a Harris County park. In 2017 he published Pleasant Bend, a history of the early settlers of the western part of Greater Houston that grew out of that preservation effort. Curious about the vanished world of the very earliest residents of his native Houston area, he joined the Houston Archeological Society and began to research and compile digital records from hundreds of archeological sites, as well as seek information on the development of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene physical and vegetal landscape of Southeast Texas. In 2021 he published the results of that research in A Prehistory of Houston and Southeast Texas.

    Earlier in retirement, Dan studied the history of the concertina, a Victorian era invention that was extremely popular back in its day and has a small but enthusiastic worldwide following. Publications include a 2005 study of the musical style of noted late nineteenth and early twentieth century English player William Kimber, published in London by the English Folk Song and Dance Society. It was followed in 2008 by The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History, based on that instrument’s early heyday on four continents; and a 2014 CDRom entitled House Dance of the playing of this instrument for rural house dances on the same four continents, published in the UK by Musical Traditions. He currently serves as an Editor of the international Concertina Journal.

   He lives with his wife on a farm in the lower Brazos valley just west of Fulshear, Texas. They have two grown children and two grandchildren.

   His particular interests in Houston area history and prehistory as well as global music history no doubt lack mass appeal, and Concertina Press was begun in 2007 as a vehicle for bringing his research to those who share his passions.