Volume I. Quilts and textiles, Ceramics, Silver, Weaponry, Furniture, Vernacular architecture, Native American art -- volume II. Photography, Fine art.
Long out of print and found only in rare-book stores, it is now available to a contemporary audience with this new paperback edition. When slavery was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation, there were slaves in every county of the state, and almost half the population was directly involved in slavery as either a slave, a slaveowner, or a member of an owner’s family. Orville Taylor traces the growth of slavery from John Law’s colony in the early eighteenth century through the French and Spanish colonial period, territorial and statehood days, to the beginning of the Civil War. He describes the various facets of the institution, including the slave trade, work and overseers, health and medical treatment, food, clothing, housing, marriage, discipline, and free blacks and manumission. While drawing on unpublished material as appropriate, the book is, to a great extent, based on original, often previously unpublished, sources. Valuable to libraries, historians in several areas of concentration, and the general reader, it gives due recognition to the signficant place slavery occupied in the life and economy of antebellum Arkansas.
A compilation of the history and genealogy of the original settlers of Petit Jean Mountain, Arkansas. It includes the origins, settlement and family history of the first settlers and includes three generations of genealogical information for those families. Mountain legends and lore are differentiated from fact. The author is a resident of the mountain who is fascinated by its history.
Billingsley reminds us that, contrary to the accepted notion of rugged individuals heeding the proverbial call of the open spaces, kindred groups accounted for most of the migration to the South's interior and boundary lands. In addition, she discusses how, for antebellum southerners, the religious affiliation of one's parents was the most powerful predictor of one's own spiritual leanings, with marriage being the strongest motivation to change them. Billingsley also looks at the connections between kinship and economic and political power, offering examples of how Keesee family members facilitated and consolidated their influence and wealth through kin ties.
On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter. Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas. The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an exposé, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.
Volume I. Quilts and textiles, Ceramics, Silver, Weaponry, Furniture, Vernacular architecture, Native American art -- volume II. Photography, Fine art.
In the first book-length study of Arkansas slavery in more than sixty years, A Weary Land offers a glimpse of enslaved life on the South’s western margins, focusing on the intersections of land use and agriculture within the daily life and work of bonded Black Arkansans. As they cleared trees, cultivated crops, and tended livestock on the southern frontier, Arkansas’s enslaved farmers connected culture and nature, creating their own meanings of space, place, and freedom. Kelly Houston Jones analyzes how the arrival of enslaved men and women as an imprisoned workforce changed the meaning of Arkansas’s acreage, while their labor transformed its landscape. They made the most of their surroundings despite the brutality and increasing labor demands of the “second slavery”—the increasingly harsh phase of American chattel bondage fueled by cotton cultivation in the Old Southwest. Jones contends that enslaved Arkansans were able to repurpose their experiences with agricultural labor, rural life, and the natural world to craft a sense of freedom rooted in the ability to own land, the power to control their own movement, and the right to use the landscape as they saw fit.
Genealogists and other historical researchers have valued the first two editions of this work, often referred to as the genealogist's bible."" The new edition continues that tradition. Intended as a handbook and a guide to selecting, locating, and using appropriate primary and secondary resources, The Source also functions as an instructional tool for novice genealogists and a refresher course for experienced researchers. More than 30 experts in this field--genealogists, historians, librarians, and archivists--prepared the 20 signed chapters, which are well written, easy to read, and include many helpful hints for getting the most out of whatever information is acquired. Each chapter ends with an extensive bibliography and is further enriched by tables, black-and-white illustrations, and examples of documents. Eight appendixes include the expected contact information for groups and institutions that persons studying genealogy and history need to find. ""