One of the most elegant mansions in Florida, Goodwood was built over a century ago and stands today as one of Tallahassee's grandest historical monuments. It was once the center of a thriving plantation founded by the Croom family of North Carolina, who in the 1820s sought to revive their fortunes in the newly opened Florida territory. William Warren Rogers and Erica R. Clark tell the story of this family and their legacy, shedding new light on many aspects of antebellum family life, plantation management, and race relations. They describe how brothers Hardy and Bryan Croom developed Goodwood Plantation to over four thousand acres with nearly two hundred slaves before Hardy and his family were killed in a shipwreck, and how a twenty-year lawsuit, complicated by questions of survivorship and residency, denied Bryan control of the estate. This meticulously detailed account, drawing extensively on family correspondence and court records, is a story of humaneness, hard work, and family values—but also of selfishness and greed—that reveals an intriguing chapter of southern history.
"This book is for those inhabited by the same desires that drove the early naturalists afield, who yearn to know wilder territory. We read it voraciously, as if in the understanding of how they loved we might also begin to do so, as if in the reliving of their lives we might recapture some vanishing part of the human psyche that must know wilderness."-- Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood "Like the naturalists she profiles, Gail Fishman takes us on an odyssey through a time when the extraordinary diversity of the southeastern United States was first being explored and described. . . . Entertaining."-- Steve Gatewood, executive director, Society for Ecological Restoration, Tucson "Fishman modernizes the men and their explorations by retracing the terrain that they explored, wrote about, drew and painted. The result is an intriguing and appealing lesson in biographical and scientific history and a literary reading experience that will appeal to a wide audience."-- William W. Rogers, professor of history emeritus, Florida State University Following the original steps of pioneering naturalists, Gail Fishman profiles thirteen men who explored North America’s southeastern wilderness between 1715 and the 1940s, including John James Audubon, Mark Catesby, John and William Bartram, John Muir, and Alvan Wentworth Chapman. The book is also Fishman’s personal travelogue as she experiences the landscape through their eyes and describes the changes that have occurred along the region’s trails and streams. Traveling by horseback, boat, and foot, these naturalists--dedicated to their task and blessed with passion and insatiable curiosity--explored gentle mountains, regal forests, and shadowy swamps. Their interests ran deeper than merely cataloging plants and animals. They identified the continent’s foundations and the habits and histories of the flora and fauna of the landscape. Fishman tells us who they were and what compelled them to pursue their work. She evaluates what they accomplished and measures their importance, also pointing out their strengths and failings. And she paints an engaging picture of what America was like at the time. Fishman combines natural history and American history into a series of portraits that recapture the American Southeast as it was seen by those who first tramped through the wilderness and whose voices from the beginning urged the preservation of wild places. Gail Fishman, a freelance writer who lives in Tallahassee, has worked for the Florida Defenders of the Environment, The Nature Conservancy, and the National Audubon Society. She is a volunteer for the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge and helped form the St. Marks Refuge Association.
Florida was the first region of the United States to be discovered, explored, and, after a fashion, settled by Euroamericans. Its population in the early 21st century is approaching 17 million. Within years the number of people living in the state will surpass those living in New York, and the Sunshine State will become the most populous area east of the Mississippi. The first book in English about Florida was written by Jean Ribault. A French adventurer, Ribault established a colony of Huguenots near present-day Jacksonville. He was captured by the very able Spanish commander Pedro Menendez, who ordered his French rival and all his minions killed. The state’s long and colorful past is matched by its equally long and colorful literary production. Strangely, critical assessment of Florida literature has lagged far behind. With this volume, the Florida College English Association has formally begun an effort to correct this lamentable oversight. Included are papers on every aspect of Florida literature and history by scholars from every part of the state who are employed in every kind of institution of higher learning. Of special interest are the studies of Florida literature in the 19th century and in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, areas that are generally ignored in national journals. The papers on the contributions of African-American literary figures, such as Zora Hurston and James Weldon Johnson, are noteworthy. Of particular interest are the suggestions for teaching Florida studies in the classroom, which can be adapted for high school as well as college students.
Set on the antebellum southern frontier, this book uses the history of two counties in Florida's panhandle to tell the story of the migrations, disruptions, and settlements that made the plantation South. Soon after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, migrants from older southern states began settling the land that became Jackson and Leon Counties. Slaves, torn from family and community, were forced to carve plantations from the woods of Middle Florida, while planters and less wealthy white men battled over the social, political, and economic institutions of their new society. Conflict between white men became full-scale crisis in the 1840s, but when sectional conflict seemed to threaten slavery, the whites of Middle Florida found common ground. In politics and everyday encounters, they enshrined the ideal of white male equality--and black inequality. To mask their painful memories of crisis, the planter elite told themselves that their society had been transplanted from older states without conflict. But this myth of an "Old," changeless South only papered over the struggles that transformed slave society in the course of its expansion. In fact, that myth continues to shroud from our view the plantation frontier, the very engine of conflict that had led to the myth's creation.
This gripping study examines slave resistance and protest in antebellum Florida and its local and national impact from 1821 to 1865. Using a variety of sources such as slaveholders' wills and probate records, ledgers, account books, court records, oral histories, and numerous newspaper accounts, Larry Eugene Rivers discusses the historical significance of Florida as a runaway slave haven dating back to the seventeenth century and explains Florida's unique history of slave resistance and protest. In moving detail, Rivers illustrates what life was like for enslaved blacks whose families were pulled asunder as they relocated from the Upper South to the Lower South to an untamed place such as Florida, and how they fought back any way they could to control small parts of their own lives. Against a smoldering backdrop of violence, this study analyzes the various degrees of slave resistance--from the perspectives of both slave and master--and how they differed in various regions of antebellum Florida. In particular, Rivers demonstrates how the Atlantic world view of some enslaved blacks successfully aided their escape to freedom, a path that did not always lead North but sometimes farther South to the Bahama Islands and Caribbean. Identifying more commonly known slave rebellions such as the Stono, Louisiana, Denmark (Telemaque) Vesey, Gabriel, and the Nat Turner insurrections, Rivers argues persuasively that the size, scope, and intensity of black resistance in the Second Seminole War makes it the largest sustained slave insurrection ever to occur in American history. Meticulously researched, Rebels and Runaways offers a detailed account of resistance, protest, and violence as enslaved blacks fought for freedom.
This book uses the history of Breathitt County, Kentucky, to examine political violence in the United States and its interpretation in media and memory. Violence in Breathitt County, during and after the Civil War, usually reflected what was going on elsewhere in Kentucky and the American South. In turn, the types of violence recorded there corresponded with discernible political scenarios.
This first-of-its-kind biography tells the story of Rev. James Page, who rose from slavery in the nineteenth century to become a religious and political leader among African Americans as well as an international spokesperson for the cause of racial equality. Winner of the Rembert Patrick Award by The Florida Historical Society, Florida Non-Fiction Book Award by the Florida Book Awards, Harry T. and Harrietter V. Moore Award by the Florida Historical Society James Page spent the majority of his life enslaved—during which time he experienced the death of his free father, witnessed his mother and brother being sold on the auction block, and was forcibly moved 700 miles south from Richmond, VA, to Tallahassee, FL, by his enslaver, John Parkhill. Page would go on to become Parkhill's chief aide on his plantation and, unusually, a religious leader who was widely respected by enslaved men and women as well as by white clergy, educators, and politicians. Rare for enslaved people at the time, Page was literate—and left behind ten letters that focused on his philosophy as an enslaved preacher and, later, as a free minister, educator, politician, and social justice advocate. In Father James Page, Larry Eugene Rivers presents Page as a complex, conflicted man: neither a nonthreatening, accommodationist mouthpiece for white supremacy nor a calculating schemer fomenting rebellion. Rivers emphasizes Page's agency in pursuing a religious vocation, in seeking to exhibit "manliness" in the face of chattel slavery, and in pushing back against the overwhelming power of his enslaver. Post-emancipation, Page continued to preach and to advocate for black self-determination and independence through black land ownership, political participation, and business ownership. The church he founded—Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee—would go on to be a major political force not only during Reconstruction but through today. Based upon numerous archival sources and personal papers, as well as an in-depth interview of James Page and a reflection on his life by a contemporary, this deeply researched book brings to light a fascinating life filled with contradictions concerning gender, education, and the social interaction between the races. Rivers' biography of Page is an important addition, and corrective, to our understanding of black spirituality and religion, political organizing, and civic engagement.
Roland McMillan Harper (1878-1966) had perhaps "the greatest store of field experience of any living botanist of the Southeast," according to Bassett Maguire, the renowned plant scientist of the New York Botanical Garden. However, Harper's scientific contributions, including his pioneering work on the ecological importance of wetlands and fire, were buried for decades in the enormous collection of photographs and documents he left. In addition, Harper's reputation as a scientist has often been obscured by his reputation as an eccentric. With this book, Elizabeth Findley Shores provides the first full-length biography of the accomplished botanist, documentary photographer, and explorer of the southern coastal plain's wilderness areas. Incorporating a wealth of detail about Harper's interests, accomplishments, and influences, Shores follows his entire scientific career, which was anchored by a thirty-five-year stint with the Alabama Geological Survey. Shores looks at Harper's collaboration with his brother Francis, as they traced William Bartram's route through Alabama and the Florida panhandle and as Francis edited the Naturalist Edition of The Travels of William Bartram. She reveals Roland's acquaintance with some of the most important, and sometimes controversial, scientists of his day, including Nathaniel Britton, Hugo de Vries, and Charles Davenport. Shores also explores Harper's personal relationships and the cluster of personality traits that sparked his interest in genetic predestination and other concepts of the eugenics movement. Roland Harper described dozens of plant species and varieties, published hundreds of scientific papers, and made notable contributions to geography and geology. In addition to explaining Harper's eminence among southeastern naturalists, this story spans fundamental shifts in the biological sciences-from an emphasis on field observation to a new focus on life at the molecular level, and from the dawn of evolutionary theory to the modern synthesis to sociobiology.
