Alabama history

An 1851 publication described Abraham (Abram) Mordecai, reportedly the first Jew in Alabama, as “a queer fellow . . . a dark-eyed Jew.” A mysterious figure as a Jew and in his navigation of Indigenous populations and trade, Mordecai’s story, existing at the intersection of history and legend, has been shaped and reshaped by storytellers during his lifetime and after his death. A complex figure because of his outsider status, Mordecai’s life has intrigued and perplexed generations of Alabamians.

The struggle for gender equality has been a long and continuous skirmish. The need for gender equality continues to evolve globally and hasn't left a field of study such as music and an institution; church choir vindicated for a no discourse. The imbalance between men and women in choir is a global issue that has garnered attention from researchers, Music educators, and music directors. Some scholars claimed the gender identity of choir singers has shifted dramatically in the past century, from a male only club into an activity for females. The leadership positions; Music Director, Assistant Music Director, Organist, Welfare Director, Treasurer, Financial Secretary, Librarian, Public Relation Officer, General Secretary etc. though relative from one church choir to another has some gender struggles. The aim of the study was to propose gender balance in the Church Choir and Choir leadership. In doing this, it analyses the ratio of female choristers and male choristers in selected churches in Ibadan and the gender representations on the different leadership positions in the Choir. It also aimed at identifying leadership roles or responsibilities of female and male in the selected choir. It elucidates aptly on biblical acme as it touches Church choir and gender. The study employed a descriptive survey research design and data were collected through observation and interview and analysed with Pie chart and Percentage error. The study concludes that both males and females gender are fit to be a member of the Church choir and can play any leadership role. Church music directors and Choral music educators must celebrate all elements of music; not only encouraging members to engage in musical experiences during adolescence, but also equipping them with the necessary knowledge and skills to find success and lifelong engagement with music.

In the summer of 1933, Texas-born folklorist John Lomax with his  eighteen-year-old son Alan made a visit to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi.  Parchman was really a plantation, a survival of the contract work system begun in the South after Reconstruction. With his heavy aluminum disc-cutting machine, John Lomax was able to capture the work songs sung in unison to a call by the gang leader along what was called “the line,” (a line of inmates inching forward clearing the land with hoes, chopping wood with axes, and or picking cotton). These songs were survivals from the ante-bellum slavery days. A variation on the farm/plantation work songs were the work songs of the “gandy dancers,” the workers who were farmed out from the prisons to straighten the tracks on the railroads in the days before this work was done by machines.

It was at Angola prison in 1933 that John and Alan Lomax discovered the blues singer Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as  “Lead Belly.” Their recordings for the Library of Congress led to Lead Belly having several record-recording sessions for the American Record Corporation (ARC). But the recordings received little commercial success, because ARC released only his blues songs, not his full repertory.  Elijah Wald mentions that Alan Lomax recorded blues-singer Muddy Waters from Coahoma County in the Mississippi Delta in 1941 and 1942, but less than half the songs were blues.

The blues singer Bukka White was a former prisoner at Parchman Farm.  His music shows how work songs at Parchman Farm transitioned into the blues. The blues transitioned into jazz and then into rock and roll. An example is jazz singer Mississippian Mose Allison’s own version of “Parchman Farm” that influenced Pete Townsend of The Who and Elvis Costello.

There was a revival of the blues in the 1960s as part of the folk song revival, in part because British rock and roll musicians began listening to and playing the blues. In 1962 there were series of Folk Blues Festivals tours of Europe, feature blues performers Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Memphis Slim, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, and Willie Dixon as well as Helen Humes, the former singer with the Count Basie jazz band. Over the next two years, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Lonnie Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sleepy John Estes, and Victoria Spivey were added to the tour. On the 1963 tour Sonny Boy Williamson met Eric Clapton, the English guitarist for the Yardbirds. In their 1965 appearance on the American television show Shindig!, the Rolling Stones sat at the feet of blues-singer Chester Arthur Burnett, known as “Howlin’ Wolf,” from Mississippi.

Robert Leroy Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. His father Charles Dodd was a prosperous landowner and furniture maker.  His mother Julia brought her baby Robert to join her husband in Memphis who had changed his name to Charles Spencer. Robert attended the Carnes Avenue Colored School in Memphis. Around 1919 or 1920 Robert rejoined his mother in Arkansas, where his mother married a sharecropper named Will “Dusty” Willis. They originally lived on a plantation in Crittenden County, Arkansas. They then moved across the Mississippi River to Commerce in the Mississippi Delta, where they lived on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation. As a youth Robert already was playing the harmonica and jaw harp (or Jew’s harp). When his mother told him about his biological father, Robert changed his surname to Johnson. He married fourteen-year-old Virginia Travis in 1929, but she died in childbirth shortly after. Her relatives said that it was Divine punishment for Robert’s decision to sing the blues, considered “selling your soul to the Devil.” Johnson left Robinsonville to Martinsville area to be close to his birthplace. There he perfected the guitar style of Son House and Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman, who according to legend had perfected his guitar style by visiting cemeteries at night. When he returned to Robinsonville, Johnson miraculously was a better guitar player. Thus, began the legend that Johnson had made a pact with the Devil.

William Christopher Handy was born in 1873 in Florence, on the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, who thought that musical instruments of the tools of the devil. Despite this, Handy secretly bought a guitar from money he saved by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap. His father made him take it back and arranged for his son to take organ lessons. As a teenager, Handy joined a local band, and he bought a cornet from a fellow band members. In his autobiography Father of the Blues, Handy described how at the age of fifteen he joined a traveling minstrel show that came to Florence and organized a home town minstrel show. In 1892 Handy moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where he obtained a teaching license. He then taught at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical College (present-day Alabama A&M University) in Normal, outside Huntsville. But he quit the teaching job because of low pay, and he then worked at a pipe works plant near Bessemer. In his spare time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught the musicians how to read music. In 1892, Handy was invited again to teach at the Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, where he taught until 1902. But he was disheartened that the college emphasized teaching European Classical music. During this time he traveled throughout Mississippi, especially to the cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta. There he was exposed to the work songs and blues of local musicians. In 1909, Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played at clubs on Beale Street.

Alan Lomax admitted that he “was no great fan of jazz at the time, because jazz was what was driving folk music into obscurity.” Nevertheless, in 1938 Jelly Roll Morton came to the Library of Congress to prove that jazz was not what W. C. Handy had said being from Memphis, but from New Orleans. Lomax brought down his recording device and began recording a series of long interviews with Morton “to see how much folklore was in it.” It later became a biography titled Mr. Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” (1950). Despite its suggestion that Morton was the “inventor of jazz,” Morton acknowledged the influence on him of the brass bands at funerals and Mardi Gras and the piano players at the brothels in the tenderloin district

No better example of the merging of folk, popular, and Classical music exists than in the development in the 1890s of piano music known as ragtime. The foremost player of ragtime was Scott Joplin. He was born in 1868 in Texas, the son of Giles Joplin, a former slave from North Carolina, and Florence Givens, a free Black woman from Kentucky. In 1880 the Joplins moved to Texarkana, Arkansas, where Giles worked as railroad laborer and  Florence as a domestic. Giles played the fiddle for plantation parties, and Florence played the banjo and sang. However, Giles left the family for another woman. At the age of 16, Scott Joplin performed in a vocal quartet with three other boys and played the piano in and around Texarkana. Scott was taught by a German-born-Jewish music teacher named Julius Weiss, who migrated to Texas in the late 1860s. Weiss had studied music at a German university, and he introduced Scott to folk and Classical music. One of the Black clubs was named the Maple Leaf Club, after which Joplin named one of his most famous rags, “Maple Leaf Rag.” His first recording was in July 1891, when as a member of the Texarkana Minstrels the band raised money for a monument to Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederate States of America.

Another example of how folk religious songs were revived as Classical music was the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Fisk University was a historically Black College in Nashville, Tennessee, founded by the American Missionary Association at the end of the Civil War in 1866 to educate freedmen and other young African Americans. However, by 1871 Fisk was facing bankruptcy, and its treasurer and music director, a White Northern missionary, assembled a nine-member student chorus of four Black men and five Black women to go on tour to raise money for the university. On October 6, 1871, they began their tour with two quartets and a pianist in Cincinnati, Ohio. During the next 18 months they traveled through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington, DC.

In 1939, six students from the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega, Alabama, formed a gospel group originally named the Happy Land Jubilee Singers. The school, which was run by White administrators, would not allow its chorus to sing African-Americans songs. The students learned about gospel music by hearing it on the radio. In 1945 the six—Clarence Fountain, Velma Bozman Traylor, Johnny Fields, Ollice Thomas, and George Scott—and the only sighted member J. T. Hutton dropped out of school and started touring the gospel circuit. In June 1944 they performed on the radio at WSGN (WAGG today) in Birmingham, Alabama. The lead singer Velma Bozman Traylor died in 1947 in a gun accident, but the group continued to tour under the name the Happy Land Gospel Singers. They performed in Newark, New Jersey, in 1948 with another group of blind gospel singers, the Jackson Harmony. The promotion was billed as a battle between the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Blind Boys of Mississippi, and the names became permanent for both groups.

James Charles Rogers was born in 1897, in Meridian, Mississippi. His father Aaron Rogers worked as a section foreman for the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad, but his mother became sick living in the unsanitary conditions of the railroad camp. Rodgers’ father got him a job as a waterboy for t...

Historian C. Vann Woodward wrote about the term The New South, "From the beginning it had the color of a slogan, a rallying cry. It vaguely set apart those whose faith lay in the future from those whose heart was within the past. . . . It was invariably ladened with a hopeful nationalism suggesting that the lately disaffect South was at last one in faith with the country—or would be as soon as a few more bonds were sold, another appropriation passed, the depression was ended, or the new railroad completed."

In 1877 the so-called "Redeemers" overthrew the governments of Black Reconstruction that had established public schools and guaranteed the right to vote for the former Black slaves. They did it with the help of the Ku Klux Klan that wore white robes and hoods to terrorize Blacks. The Redeemers were an alliance of former Southern Whigs and Democrats who undertook a policy of railroad building and industrialization. Birmingham, Alabama, developed by the railroads as a steel making town using coal, coke, and iron from nearby mines. The Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company was founded in Tennessee and used mostly Black convicts instead of poor White unionized laborers. When Tennessee frowned on the practice, the TCI&L moved its headquarters to Birmingham. In the early twentieth the TCI&L was sold to U.S. Steel.

Initially, the Redeemers restricted the right to vote for Freedmen, but they did not institute a system of segregation initially. They also instituted a system of share cropping for both poor Whites and Blacks. But when the Populists attempted to form a coalition of White and Black sharecroppers against the railroads and banks, the Southern Democrats who initially joined the Populists instituted a policy of segregation in the 1890s. The system was enforced by a lynchings by the KKK and other White Nationalist groups. Lynching was opposed by the reformer Ida B. Wells, but  in 1895 Book T. Washington, the president of Tuskegee Institute proposed a policy of accommodation to segregation.

The led to the rise of Southern Democrat demagogues, including James Kimble Vardaman and Theodore Bilbo both of Mississippi, Huey Long of Louisiana, and Edward Hull Crump, Jr. of Tennessee.

In 1937 Abel Meeropol, a Jewish-American born in the Bronx, New York City, and a member of the Communist Party wrote a song titled "Strange Fruit" about lynching that continued in the South. In 1937 the jazz singer Billie Holiday recorded the song. In 1939 a Jewish-American playwright from New Orleans named Lillian Hellman wrote a play titled "The Little Foxes" about a corrupt family in Alabama. in the South that attempts to steal railroads bonds to fund the building of a cotton mill. The original play starred the actress Tallulah Bankhead of Alabama. In 1941 it was made into a Hollywood motion picture directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis.

2008 marks the 500th anniversary of Palladio's birth. We might ask why Americans should consider this to be a cause for celebration. Why should we be concerned about an Italian architect who lived so long ago and far away? As we shall see, however, this architect, whom the average American has never heard of, has had a profound impact on the architectural image of our country, even the city of Baltimore. But before we investigate his influence we should briefly explain what Palladio's career involved. Palladio, of course, designed many outstanding buildings, but until the twentieth century few Americans ever saw any of Palladio's works firsthand. From our standpoint, Palladio's most important achievement was writing about architecture. His seminal publication, I Quattro Libri dell' Architettura or The Four Books on Architecture, was perhaps the most influential treatise on architecture ever written. Much of the material in that work was the result of Palladio's extensive study of the ruins of ancient Roman buildings. This effort was part of the Italian Renaissance movement: the rediscovery of the civilization of ancient Rome-its arts, literature, science, and architecture. Palladio was by no means the only architect of his time to undertake such a study and produce a publication about it. Nevertheless, Palladio's drawings and text were far more engaging, comprehendible, informative, and useful than similar efforts by contemporaries.

In working part time at the McDaniel-Tichenor house located in Monroe, Georgia, it became evident in researching the family history the impact that Governor Henry Dickerson McDaniel made on the state of Georgia not only in his lifetime but even now almost 100 years after his death. Governor McDaniel was a humanitarian and he believed as a civil servant that he needed to represent everyone equally. Governor McDaniel served as Georgia's 52nd governor (1883-1886), leading the state through post-Reconstruction recovery. A Monroe native and a Mercer University graduate, Civil War veteran, and dedicated public servant, McDaniel played a key role in Georgia's financial reforms, tax laws, higher education, and infrastructure development. He helped to establish what is to today the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia and oversaw the design, budget, and construction of the Georgia State Capitol. After his term was complete, he returned to Monroe to continue his law practice and became heavily involved with the University of Georgia board of trustees. His home in Monroe, Georgia is on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980. The house serves as a living museum and a community gathering place for all to share. In exploring his accomplishments, which is the most any governor has done for the State of Georgia, Governor McDaniel's ideologies and practices illustrates how a politician should represent the people by being unbiased, empathetic, and as a visionary, very prolific.

the Southeastern Tribes (the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries played-off the British colonies (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) against the French colony in Louisiana and the Spanish colony of La Florida (Florida today). Although the Choctaw and Chickasaw were culturally and linguistically related, the Choctaw became allied with the French, and the Chickasaw with the British. While originally the trade with the English was in deerskins, when the deer were depleted, the Chickasaw turned to capturing  other Indians, who then were sold as slaves to be exported by the English in South Carolina to the West Indies. Both the Creek and the Cherokee traded with the English, but the Creek and Cherokee were enemies of each other. Both the French and the English tried to realign these tribes, but the tribes played one against the other.

The situation was complicated by the fact that escaped African-American slaves and Creek took refuge in Spanish Florida, where they coalesced into the Seminole tribe. Governor George Oglethorpe of Georgia attempted to enlist Chickasaw in his attacks against the Spaniards in Florida. The play-off between these tribes and the French ended in 1763, when France ceded the land east of the Mississippi River to England. But after the American Revolution, the trade-off between the Southeastern Tribes, the Spaniards, and the United States continued into the first half of the nineteenth century.

In March and April of 1825 General LaFayette , "the Nation's Guest" journeyed through the Creek Nation as he traveled from Georgia to Alabama. In 1825 the Creek Nation was still an independent nation. How would the Creek leaders respond to a former enemy? Would he be welcomed or would be shunned? Surprisingly the entire Creek Nation enthusiastically welcomed and honored the man they referred to as, "The Favorite Father" and "The French Captain."  They respected him because he clearly believed in equal rights for all.

There were numerous stage stops, inns and taverns that offered travelers lodging along the Federal Road. 1 Many of these sites were known as "stands." Within the Creek Nation they were often owned by prominent Creek Chiefs, who were silent partners, and were managed by "white men" who had ties to the Creek Nation. Many of the men who managed the stands had married Creek women or were respected traders who had lived in the Creek Nation for several years. The lodgings were often very crude and offered extremely limited amenities. Some stops were barely better than sleeping outdoors while others were rustic but comfortable. Structures were not elaborate hotels but simple log cabins. Many of the sites were "dog trout" log houses with a large central breezeway where meals were often served if weather permitted. 2 The quality and cleanliness of the lodgings varied greatly. In addition, the meals provided could be extremely basic or lavish spreads filled with an abundance of wild game and fish. 3 LaFayette's lodgings while he traveled within the Creek Nation were definitely not as grand as the mansions he stayed in while in Savannah, Augusta and Milledgeville but many were popular stops with a reputation for providing good care to weary travelers along the road. 4

Our modern-day vision of cowboys typically conjures up images of men with Stenson hats herding cattle in Texas or perhaps Wyoming. Few people realize that cattle drives regularly took place here in East Central Alabama during the 1830s to 1860s. In the 1830s as white settlers were able to purchase land that belonged to the Creek Nation the most desired sections were rich "bottom land" near the abundant rivers and creeks found in our area. Wealthy families would often buy these tracts and establish large cotton plantations. "The good cotton lands, no matter where they were located would go quickly. Small farmers and poor settlers were quickly squeezed out of the competition." 1 This was especially true in the southern half of Russell County and Macon County where the fertile "black belt" of Alabama begins to extend westward throughout the southern central part of the state to Mississippi. Immediately above this "black belt" region lies a large swath of land in East Central Alabama that was largely ignored by many of the early settlers. This area referred to as the "Piney Woods of Russell County" by Reverend F. L. Cherry in his The History of Opelika and her Agricultural Tributary Territory extended from the Uchee Creek northward in Russell County and westward to Chewacla Creek near Auburn in present day Lee County, Alabama. 2 It was here that cattle would thrive, cowboys and cattlemen would flourish, and cattle drives would begin.

Alabama is the home of numerous forts or fortified sites that were established in the early 1800s. Larger forts typically served as a warning of the American military might to the resident Indian tribes and served as a source of protection for white settlers in the region. Smaller outposts were often established as supply depots with a limited number of troops garrisoned there. The locations of many of these once strategic sites are largely forgotten. A few such as Fort Mitchell in Russell County, Fort Toulouse, previously known as Fort Jackson, near Wetumpka, Alabama and Fort Mims near Stockton, Alabama have been preserved as historic sites. Countless others are largely forgotten. Fort Bainbridge is one of those sites that is known by only the most avid of historians. The exact location of the fort is unknown. By the time of General LaFayette's visit to Alabama and the Creek Nation in 1825 the fort had been abandoned, and Fort Bainbridge was no longer known as a military site, instead Fort Bainbridge was known as the location of Kendall Lewis' tavern. This doesn't mean that Fort Bainbridge did not serve a strategic purpose in those early years of conflict between the Creek Nation and the United States Military. Fort Bainbridge's existence may have been brief but the role the site played was significant.

In March and April of 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette traveled through the Creek Nation in his journey from Georgia to Alabama.  The Creek Nation was an independent nation, and many of the Creek braves had supported the British during the American Revolution. How would the Creek leaders respond to a former enemy? Would he be welcomed? This paper follows Lafayette's journey from Savannah, Georgia into the Creek Nation and then into the state of Alabama. Compelling quotes by three Creek Chiefs provide through provoking insights into the Creek Nation's celebration of the French Captain.

In October 2012, Michael Pozzebon, Vice-President of DG Group, a major Greater Toronto land developer, called to announce the purchase of 180 acres of prime land at the corner of Bathurst Street and Major Mackenzie Drive in the City of Vaughan. Michael requested that we conduct an archaeological assessment on a priority basis as the property
development was imminent.
    Little did I know that this would become one of the two largest, most complex, archaeological excavations that I have ever undertaken. Two full, and one partial field seasons were required to complete all field work and an additional two years were required to clean, catalogue, describe, and
analyze the very large collection of artifacts to prepare the final report for the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. We discovered that there had been a partial assessment of the property by a previous archeological consultant and that they had delimited Patterson Village, the 19th century
company town beside the Patterson & Bro. Manufacturers of Agricultural Implements, as being 1.46 hectares in size, and did not collect a single artifact.
The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport defines four stages in undertaking archaeological assessments. Stage 1 is background research of existing knowledge of the property. This was done by the staff in our office. The second stage was to assess the remaining parts of the property to ensure that there were no additional sites which needed to be investigated. This work was done in November 2012 and demonstrated
that Patterson Village was the only significant archaeological site on the property.
    Stage 3 involved collecting the artifacts from the surface of the freshly cultivated site to determine its size and to dig test pits across those parts of the site which could not be cultivated. This work revealed that the site covered about 7.75 hectares, more than five times larger than the previous estimate.
    DG Group’s plan was to develop the northern and eastern portions of the property first. To do that they needed two corridors cleared of archaeological resources to install their services to those parts of the property outside the site. Thus, our next task was to undertake the Stage 3 test excavation and the Stage 4 salvage excavation of the North-South, and East-West Service Corridors. This was started in November and completed in the spring of 2013. 
    Our final tasks were to complete the Stage 3 test excavation and the Stage 4 salvage excavation of the two remaining parts of the site which we called Area 1 – the Triangle, and Area 2 – the area west of the North-South Corridor.
    After more than 18 months of fieldwork, our excavations revealed the presence of 18 houses, a church, a raised grain storage building, 20 pit privies, 16 box privies, six cisterns, and a well within the residential part of the village. In the western part of the village we found the boarding house
with four pit privies, one box privy, and five cisterns. Our excavations investigated 334 other features in the subsoil which produced varying quantities of artifacts. The excavations produced a total of 291,911 artifacts and an additional estimated 1,113,097 artifacts of preserved plant remains from the processing of soil samples using a flotation technique.
    In the fall of 2012, I met Ruth Redelmeier, whose family trust had sold the property to DG Group. Ruth had spent the previous 25 years researching both Patterson Village, and Patterson & Bro. Manufacturers of Agricultural Implements. She graciously provided a CD with copies of her research which yielded a bonanza of historical information which
would not otherwise have been available. Her data has provided many significant insights into the site interpretations which would not normally have been possible.
    This book is intended to provide the public with information about Patterson Village, Patterson & Bro. Manufacturers of Agricultural Implements, and the results of the archaeological excavations. Filing a 1,200 plus page licence report on such a significant site is simply not enough.
    Peter Patterson was an exceptional individual who immigrated
to Canada about 1850 and eventually established one of the first major manufacturers of farm equipment and also established one of the earliest company towns in Ontario.  Unlike many company towns, Patterson paid fair wages, and provided housing for both families and single men at
reasonable rates. Families were provided with seeds for planting gardens near their houses, and fruit trees as a source of fresh fruit. In part, Patterson was controlling his workforce by providing quick access to the factory and improving their lives by forbidding alcohol and tobacco. His
wife also checked-in with the villagers weekly to see that all was well. Thus, Peter Patterson was a paternalistic capitalist at a time when capitalism reigned with little care for the workers or their families.
    Our work on DG Group land has provided a wealth of new information on Patterson Village, its residential houses, and a boarding house. While most of the Patterson & Bro. manufactory was demolished and the area redeveloped as farm buildings after closure of the factory and village, more research could be undertaken outside DG Group land. The
original factory building constructed in 1856 lies within land now under ownership of the Metro Region Conservation Authority. Further, Peter Patterson’s house remains standing in its original position on a lot to the west of the factory. A search for privies on this property might provide
interesting details about the content of privies used by the Patterson family compared with those of the villagers in their family residences and the boarding house.
    This book is also my attempt to provide some value-add to the significant expenditure made by DG Group to remove, document, and record a very important archaeological resource located on their property.
    Archaeology is a very visual venture. We took hundreds of pictures of the excavations as well as hundreds of pictures of the most interesting artifacts. These were in a digital format and in colour. Yet with the tremendous increase in technology relating to the preparation of publications, most archaeological books in Ontario are published
in black and white with, in some instances, a few colour illustrations.
    With this book, I have adapted many of these new
publishing technologies to further innovate the field of archaeological publication. The original copy of this book was created in iBooks Author. The book contains 112 colour pictures of the excavations and colour maps, 20 black and white figures and 63 colour plates of 678 artifacts. Once the iBook was completed, the text was exported and provided to
I C Publishing along with all illustrations. This firm then edited the volume and typeset the book using InDesign. This allowed publication of the book in full colour and the creation of an Adobe PDF version of the book which will be marketed at a cost-effective price. The edited text of the
print version was then imported back into another copy of the iBooks Author in order that all three versions would contain the same text. The iBooks version is available from the Apple Store online while the print and Adobe PDF versions can be ordered from the publisher.
    I hope you will find your reading of this book as intriguing as I found the excavation of the site, the analysis of the artifacts, and historical features for the licence report; and then ultimately authoring and producing three versions of the book on the excavations for public enlightenment
as a personal project outside the purview of This Land Archaeology Inc.

Mechanicsville, Alabama was an established settlement as early as the 1840s. There was a thriving mechanics shop that provided essential services to residents of the community during a time of intense growth and development. This machine shop and the skilled mechanics that
worked there almost certainly inspired the name of Mechanicsville. During its peak years the community also had a Post Office, a shoe shop, a general store, a tavern, a wagon factory, a gunsmith shop, a school and at least four churches.
One of the earliest residents in the Mechanicsville community was Reverend Cyrus White and his wife Verlinda Harvey White. In 1822 he and Reverend Jesse Mercer helped organize
the General Association of Baptists in Georgia. Reverend White traveled throughout Georgia preaching and was
a very popular speaker. In 1829 Reverend White published a pamphlet on atonement which was extremely controversial and not well received by Baptist leaders and ministers with strong Calvinist leanings. His pamphlet
sparked a heated doctrinal controversy that raged among the Baptists of Georgia in 1830. Eventually White and the churches that aligned themselves
with his teachings were disfellowshipped from the Georgia Baptists’ Ocmulgee Association. In “the winter of 1835 Mr. White and his wife and children emigrated from Georgia to Russell, now Lee County and settled near Mechanicsville.” In Alabama Reverend White was primarily known as a teacher rather
than a preacher. He established a school at Mechanicsville, and he also taught school in the Wacoochee Valley community. Many of the residents of the Mechanicsville community attended Mr. White’s school and remembered him as “a man of independent thought, indomitable mental energy and spiritual zeal.”11 Even though he was now a teacher his “spiritual zeal” was still evident in many ways. Reverend White organized Smyrna Baptist Church which was located one-mile northeast of Mechanicsville.

Dr. Stephen Miles Ingersoll was recognized as an inventor, scientist, adventurer, and philosopher. He was also a medical doctor, surgeon, Indian Agent, educator, entrepreneur, gold prospector, politician, and land developer. His influence, innovations and ideas had a major impact on the development of both Columbus, Georgia and Girard, Alabama. He was a dominant figure in the area for almost fifty years.

When the Alabama Folklife Association announced their 2023 Cauthen
Fellows through a series of Facebook posts, I was not surprised that my
project on drag pageants received a couple of angry face emojis. Although
disheartening, I was also not surprised by the negative comments on
the post. Not even by the one that contained a homophobic slur. It was
encouraging, however, to read the positive messages and to see that this
organization did not waiver in its support for this project.171
When I made it to Mobile, Alabama to start the research, I happened
upon a gentleman who ended up in a drag brunch at a local brewery by
accident. It was his first encounter with the art of drag. At first, he was
a bit uneasy, but as the afternoon progressed, he seemed to be having
a great time. When I replied to his query about what I was doing in
Mobile, he asked: “Does that have a history? His emphasis on that
seemed to indicate that he did not think the answer could be an enthu-
siastic, Yes! While slightly annoyed, again, I was not surprised.
A few months later, I met some inspiring young folks at a breakout
room discussion for the Queer History South Conference in Charlotte,
North Carolina. When asked what historians and memory workers
could do to support them, one replied, “You can show that we have a
history that is not only about oppression and suffering.”
I’m writing this essay with those three interlocutors in mind. They
each seem to need this history, albeit for very different reasons.

This document is an extension of a Phase I Cultural Resources Survey of a proposed subdivision undertaken by the author in the Oxmoor area of the City of Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama in December 2017 and the following April. The report generated by that survey was issued by Environmental, Inc., Odenville, Alabama, in December 2017. During that survey, the foundations and assorted material remains of a former TCI fan house, built in 1954 and razed in 1967, once used for mine ventilation—likely part of the ventilation system of the Wenonah Group of ore mines—was discovered and documented. Also identified and documented were the structural remains of a substation that had been noted on some of the earlier topographic quadrangles. This substation was once part of an approximately 15-mile TCI telephone and 44kv power transmission line which made a circuit around Shades Valley; it was put in place in the early- to mid-1950s and abandoned sometime in the mid-1980s. Due to the parts these two structures played in the larger industrial history of the Birmingham District, it was decided to make this information available to the interested public. The report generated from that Phase I survey is largely presented here, albeit modified and expanded to include some additional photographs from the project as well as new information, a brief discussion of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the project, the findings of the literature review, a discussion of the methods and procedures utilized during the field reconnaissance, and notes regarding the additional documentation work once the site was cleared of vegetation.

April 6, 1865, proved to be a tumultuous day in the waning life of the Confederacy. In Pickens County, Alabama, a small detachment of Union cavalry burned the Pickens County courthouse and skirmished intermittently with Pickens County home guards for two days, culminating in the skirmish at King's Store, on the southern edge of the county. Previously unexamine  archival sources as well as local oral histories have provided greater detail of this foray into the state of Alabama by forces of General James H. Wilson in 1865.

In April of 1865, the Federal cavalry brigade commanded by Brigadier General  John T. Croxton marched into the southern edge of Pickens County, Alabama, and were assaulted by the Confederate cavalry command of Brigadier General Wirt Adams.  Twentieth century  sources recounting this engagement are vague on the locations of the running cavalry skirmish, and rely entirely on Croxton's Official Records account to determine the outcome.  Examination of archived diaries, soldier letters, and heretofore overlooked NARA sources, however, has revealed this cavalry clash was not inconsequential nor should be considered a Federal success.  The Federal brigade was turned back in its line of march, denied the objective of its advance, and suffered twice as many casualties as its commander reported for the Pickens County action.

“Huntsville is not like other Alabama towns.” In a city full of nonnatives, this is a common refrain. Huntsville truly is a unique place forged by a unique history. From its early settlement through the Space Race, Huntsville’s fortunes have been tied closely to that of the larger nation. Today, more than 70 federal entities have a presence in Huntsville, including at least nine with headquarters or major branches in the area. The strong federal presence has a significant influence on the local economy, politics, and culture. In a nod to Huntsville’s German connection, the term Bundesstadt, or “federal city” is used here to recognize Huntsville’s distinctive role. None of Huntsville’s other sobriquets—Rocket City, Pentagon of the South—fully capture the scope of federal activity there and how it shapes the cultural fabric that makes the city special.

Brothers Columbus and Reuben Jones rose from uncertain origins on the Jones plantation west of Huntsville to both represent Madison County in the Reconstruction Alabama legislature. After moving to Tuscaloosa before the Civil War and both serving in the Union army, the brothers moved back to the plantation they grew up on and actively pursued equal rights and representation for the freedpeople. Columbus was a delegate in the Constitutional Convention of 1867 and strove to draw national attention to the plight of freedpeople in Alabama until his untimely death before the end of his first term. Reuben was elected to the Alabama House in 1872 and helped his friend William Hooper Councill establish his first freedmen's school in Madison County. The brothers and their families bought a portion of the Jones plantation and established a small community of African-American landowners which thrived along Athens Pike west of Huntsville until the land was acquired in the 1950s and ultimately incorporated into the University of Alabama in Huntsville campus.

In 1817, Maxfield Ludlow solicited subscribers for a map to be published the same year.  Inscribed "A Map of the State of Louisiana, with Part of the State of Mississippi and Alabama Territory", only a few copies are extant. Regarding the map’s publication, scant, often confused, information exists. Further, it is not generally known that a dispute between Ludlow and Thomas Freeman, Surveyor General of Public Lands of the United States South of Tennessee (1810-1821), over authorship of the map resulted in two defamation lawsuits. The purpose of this note is to obviate the 1817 publication date of Ludlow’s prospectus and map, and to describe the two defamation lawsuits stemming from that map’s publication.

Thomas Freeman was in public service during the presidential administrations of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. During the last decade of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century, whether via political patronage or by virtue of his expertise as a surveyor, Freeman made significant contributions to the westward expansion of the United States. In 1810, he was appointed Surveyor General of Lands of the United States South of the State of Tennessee, and held the office until his death in Madison County, Alabama, on November 8, 1821

This article explores the importance of uncovering and preserving the often-overlooked lives of early local leaders whose contributions shaped community history but risk being lost to time. While national figures dominate published biographies, countless state and county leaders remain hidden within historical newspapers and archives. Drawing on his experience publishing multiple award-winning genealogical and community histories, Christopher Hunt Robertson, M.Ed., offers practical strategies for recovering these stories through online newspaper databases, genealogical records, timelines, and wide reading of county histories. He emphasizes the value of critical verification, contextual storytelling, and creative presentation formats such as scrapbook-style narratives. By sharing his process, Robertson inspires both historians and family researchers to rediscover forgotten figures—whether prominent officials, educators, church leaders, or ordinary citizens—highlighting how their legacies continue to shape today’s communities. This piece not only serves as a guide for local history research but also as an invitation to broaden the historical record by making visible an often invisible past.

The Transatlantic Slave trade began during the 15th century when Portugal and subsequently other European kingdoms were able to expand overseas and reach Africa. The Portuguese first began to kidnap people from the West Coast of Africa and took those that they enslaved to Europe. This saw a lot of African men and women transported to Europe and America to work on the huge plantations that the Whites owned. The transportation of these Africans exposed them to inhumane treatments which they faced even upon the arrival at their various destinations. The emancipation Proclamation signed on 1st January 1863 by the United States President Abraham Lincoln saw a legal stop to slave trade. However, the African Americans that had been taken to the United States and settled especially in the Southern region faced discrimination, segregation, violence and were denied civil rights through segregation laws such as the Jim Crow laws and lynching, based on the color of their skin. This forced them ...

This is a publication in English presenting historical and genealogical researches about the family of composer and cellist Sebastian Lee and specifically his brother Moritz Lee, who also was a composer and a pianist. He lived and worked in Paris, France, and London, UK with his family and this article ties one of his daughters up with French cellist Ernest Gillet.

In New York Times, the Supreme Court held that the first amendment "prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'-that is, with knowledge that it was false or reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Id. at 279-80. 2. In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967), the Supreme Court extended the actual malice standard to defamatory statements concerning "public figures." Id. at 155. In Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374 (1967), the Court said that persons suing the media for invasion of privacy must also meet the actual malice standard of New York Times. Id. at 387-88. Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U.S. 29 (1971), marked the furthest expansion of the first amendment in defamation cases. In Rosenbloom, the Court held that plaintiffs must prove actual malice in defamation cases involving "matters of general public concern" regardless of the fame or anonymity of the participants. Id. at 43-44. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), the Court reaffirmed its holdings in New York Times and Butts but said that Rosenbloom had gone too far. Id. at 342-43. The Court viewed Rosenbloom as an unacceptable encroachment on the legitimate state interest in the protection of reputation. Id. at 347-48. The Court based the application of the actual malice test on a distinction between public officials/public figures and private individuals. Id. at 351-52. The principal defamation cases since Gertz have been concerned with defining who is a public official or public figure. See Wolston v. Reader's Digest, 443 U.S. 157 (1979) (a man who had once been cited for contempt for refusing to appear before a grand jury investigating Soviet espionage was not a public figure when he sued a book which listed him as a Soviet agent); Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111 (1979) (a scientist who received federal funds for research purposes was not a public figure for purposes of a libel suit against a United States Senator who ridiculed the research as a wasteful expenditure of public funds); Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 153 (1976) (a wealthy Florida socialite involved in a divorce suit was not a public figure). The Court has held, however, that the plaintiff's attorney has the right to inquire about a reporter's state of mind in preparing a news story in order to establish actual malice.

History depends upon more than authentic sources but also in understanding the nature of the background material and the creator's intention. Authenticity too often begins and ends with only asking if the document is fake. Some sources hide deeper

This bibliography lists books, articles, and journals as well as a selection of sound recordings and videotapes to assist individuals and teachers researching the folklife of Georgia. Print resources are organized under 10 major categories including: (1) "General Folklife Studies"; (2) "Fieldwork Methodology"; (3) "Regional Folklife Studies"; (4) "Georgia Folklife and History"; (5) "Folk Art and Folk Craft"; (6) "Folk Narrative"; (7) "Folk Belief and Folk Medicine"; (8) "Foodways"; (9) "TraditiOnal Music"; and (10) "Multicultural Communities." Local public and university libraries are listed as resource facilities. A listing of major national research centers housing Georgia folklife information is included. Finally, relevant journals and periodicals are cited. (MM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

William Billings (1746-1800) was the first professional American composer and music educator. A self-taught musician, Billings probably attended singing schools and choral societies and received instruction from singing masters. He taught singing in Boston's fashionable churches and at singing schools in Providence, Rhode Island, and Stoughton, Massachusetts. In order to support his family, he accepted minor municipal appointments and worked as a tanner. Billings composed over threehundred compositions of choral music, published in six tune books and as individual pieces. He wrote psalm and hymn tunes, fuging tunes, canons, and anthems. His music was mostly written for four-voice unaccompanied chorus with the principal melody in the tenor voice. The American Musicological Society and The Colonial Society of Massachusetts have published the complete works of Billings in a scholarly edition that includes detailed background material. David McKay and Richard Crawford have written a biography of Billings, James Barbour has written about Billings' church music, Karl Kroeger catalogued his works, and Hans Nathan described his life and publications. In 1996 The Quarterly Journal ofMusic Teaching and Learning published a special issue of seven articles to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Billings's birth. George N. Heller has published a bibliography of articles, books, scores, and recordings. I

Globalization is changing the game of economic development, but the emerging rules and optimal strategies remain somewhat unclear The Mercedes case discussed in this article illustrates the rough and uncertain nature of this transition. From the perspective of the traditional strategy, the price of the jobs initially promised by Mercedes seemed high; and the ultimate cost was increased by the intense competition among the bidding states. Yetfrom another perspective, the incentives offered by Alabama can be viewed as "table stakes" for the new global game of economic development.

My review of RaMell Ross’s monograph, "Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body" (MACK, 2023) is now live on the site ASX. Here is an excerpt: “Perhaps Ross’s work is better understood as reticent and reserved, with the photographer and sitter both purposefully withholding something. Ross is a co-conspirator in the figure’s concealment, shrouding them behind a cloud of dust, a bush, or a bus seat. From our perspective, it is not always clear what the figure is doing in Ross’s images, as their thoughts and intentions cannot be fully discerned or inferred from the photograph, or even illuminated by the work’s caption. The photograph of reverie is closer to an ecstatic experience, an experience where the subject is taken outside of themselves, slipping into a state that is beyond their own condition, outside of their own control.”

2008 marks the 500th anniversary of Palladio's birth. We might ask why Americans should consider this to be a cause for celebration. Why should we be concerned about an Italian architect who lived so long ago and far away? As we shall see, however, this architect, whom the average American has never heard of, has had a profound impact on the architectural image of our country, even the city of Baltimore. But before we investigate his influence we should briefly explain what Palladio's career involved. Palladio, of course, designed many outstanding buildings, but until the twentieth century few Americans ever saw any of Palladio's works firsthand. From our standpoint, Palladio's most important achievement was writing about architecture. His seminal publication, I Quattro Libri dell' Architettura or The Four Books on Architecture, was perhaps the most influential treatise on architecture ever written. Much of the material in that work was the result of Palladio's extensive study of the ruins of ancient Roman buildings. This effort was part of the Italian Renaissance movement: the rediscovery of the civilization of ancient Rome-its arts, literature, science, and architecture. Palladio was by no means the only architect of his time to undertake such a study and produce a publication about it. Nevertheless, Palladio's drawings and text were far more engaging, comprehendible, informative, and useful than similar efforts by contemporaries.

An update to my earlier manuscript summarizing most of the research on the Paleoindian Period in Alabama as of 2023.  The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of the journal articles, drafts, thesis and gray literature on the Paleoindian sites in Alabama, along with a brief descriptive narrative of the resource.  This document captures many of the more useful resources on the Dalton culture in Alabama where it occurs with other early point types.  Readers are cautioned more work exists on exclusively Dalton and later sites this subject than time, scope and space allow.  Still, it is hoped this manuscript will assist future researchers in pinpointing the specific works most useful to their study.

Background Among the senior American officers during the St. Lawrence Campaign was Philadelphian Robert Carr, Lt. Colonel of the 15 th Regiment of Infantry. Born in Ireland, Carr's youth was spent next door to Benjamin Franklin, to whose grandson, B. F. Bache, he was apprenticed before embarking on a successful career in publishing. Commissioned a major in 1812, by October 1813, Carr was stationed at Sackets Harbor, NY during the logistical build-up to Lt. Gen. James Wilkinson's failed invasion of Montréal. Carr's Diary is in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 3 While not digitized, a photocopied portion with entries from October to early November 1813 is held at the Fort Ontario Historic Site in Oswego, NY. Paul Lear, Historic Site Manager, kindly provided a scanned version of the same which is was transcribed by the authors in an attempt to locate all eyewitness accounts of the Battle of French Creek. Carr describes the experience of travelling from Sackets Harbor to nearby Grenadier Island on Lake Ontario, where the American vanguard was assembled; and the subsequent journey down the St. Lawrence to the Americans' forward-operating base, the smugglers' rendezvous of French Creek, modern-day Clayton, NY. Present during the Battle of French Creek on the afternoon of November 1 st and the morning of the 2 nd , Carr also records details not included in the firsthand accounts of Royal Navy Commander Lt. James Mulcaster; American Commander Brig. Gen. Jacob J. Brown; and Major Abraham Eustis of the American Light Artillery, whose battery of 18 pounders under the direction of Captain Robert H. MacPherson was decisive in the American victory. The authors were unaware of the Carr Diary until after their early 2023 publication which used primary sources and landscape analysis to develop a new hypothesis about the location of the Battle of French Creek. Subsequent assessment of the Carr Diary bolsters the authors' hypothesis, archaeologically tested during summer 2023, that: "…the battle occurred much further inland from the St. Lawrence River than previously believed, near the historically-understood mouth of French Creek, an important tributary that was known to the commander of the American vanguard, wealthy local smuggler, Brig. Gen. Jacob J. "Potash" Brown." 4 1 MBA, MAE, BSC, Independent Researcher.

The Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company, established in 1926 in Dallas, Texas, by Virgil Oliver Stamps and Jesse Randall Baxter, Jr., contributed significantly to American music education by organizing singing schools sponsoring the Stamps-Baxter Normal School of Music. The singing schools and the normal school, promoted from 1934-1974 through the company's journals, The Southern Music News and Gospel Music News, provided two basic forms of music education to its participants. The singing schools, established when the company was founded, continued the American singing-school tradition of improving singing in the churches. Churches often sponsored the company's singing schools by providing facilities and paying the required fees for the singing-school teacher and necessary materials. Attracting students of all ages, the Stamps-Baxter singing school offered a curriculum that remained elementary-teaching basic music literacy in sightsinging, ear training, and conducting. 1 The Stamps-Baxter Normal School of Music is based on the "normal schools" of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which many public school teachers received their training. The term "normal" indicated a school that trained teachers for elementary and secondary general education. However, the Stamps-Baxter Normal School of Music not only provided short-term classes for music teacher preparation, it also offered elementary music courses like the ones taught in the singing schools. As a result, the Stamps-Baxter normal schools were larger than other singing schools of their time and attracted students at various levels of musicianship. 2 Separating the history of singing schools and normal schools becomes difficult because the singing schools were often a subset of the Stamps-Baxter normal schools, where students learned how to teach music classes offered in the singing schools. The various classes within the normal schools were offered at different levels of difficulty. The more difficult courses took longer. In the singing schools, a single instructor taught one class comprised of students of various levels of

Newspaper obituaries are an easily accessible and cost-effective data source.Although obituaries offset many of the challenges involved with the cohort study designs, their use in public health research is limited and their reliability remains untested. The current study investigates the reliability of life history data obtained from obituaries for 620 lung cancer cases and controls between the years 1980-1990. New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene death certificates, in-person/surrogate interviews, and obituary notices from the Staten Island Advance were obtained and compared on the following life history variables: Age, Length of Residence on Staten Island, Major Job Title, and Occupational Risk Exposure. Obituaries and in-person/surrogate interviews were in excellent overall percent agreement on 'Age' [97.3% (+/1yr)], 'Length of Residence on Staten Island' [76.1% (+/-1 year); 81.1% (+/-2 years); 85.3% (+/-3 years); 87.6% (+/-4 years); 91.9% (+/-5 yea...

This paper discusses the role of the local production of liquor-or hooch-as a means of cultural reproduction and participation in the informal economy within rural areas, and what this has implied for both state control and local resistance. I examine these issues comparatively, looking at the informal production of moonshine in Appalachia, and ţuica in Carpathian Romania. A global comparative lens helps to illuminate the changing nature of state-society relations in the context of rural peripheries and the increasing globalization of local culture and lifeways.