Article Abstracts and Supplements

Alabamians at Pearl Harbor
by Maridith Walker Geuder

On the 50^th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, author Maridith Walker Geuder provides a chilling story of that fateful day through eyewitness accounts of Alabamians who served there. "We could see them waving at us. They were grinning, and we could see the Rising Sun insignia," said veteran Henry L. Bush of Abbeville, Alabama, as he recalled the horror of seeing his attackers’ faces. Operation Hawaii, as it was named by the Japanese, came as a complete surprise to the United States despite messages Washington intercepted from Japan, and a submarine sighting on the morning of the attack. George Seibel of Eastaboga, Alabama, saw the planes coming in and screamed, "The Japanese are coming!" But the officers in his tent insisted the bullets were blanks fired from a navy plane. When he checked his bed, Seibel discovered real bullet holes. December 7, 1941, devastated the American people, but the events of that Sunday also united the nation and marked the entry of the U. S. into World War II.



The Federal Road: Tourists in the Creek Nation
by Jerry Elijah Brown

From 1811 until several years after1836, the route that introduced travelers to Alabama was the Federal Road, which initially ran from north Georgia to Fort Stoddert, near present-day Mount Vernon, Alabama, through the diminishing Creek Nation. During the period of its maximum use when "Alabama fever" was epidemic in the Carolinas and Georgia, despite all manner of dangers, the population of the region increased by over half a million. Chances are good that all who trace their ancestry to anywhere in Alabama south of the Tennessee Valley have a forebear who came over the Federal Road. Jerry Elijah Brown, who coauthored The Federal Road through Georgia, the Creek Nation, and Alabama, 1806-1836, with Henry deLeon Sutherland, Jr., vividly illustrates this formative period in Alabama history with letters, diary entries, accounts by travelers and delightful camera lucida sketches by Captain Basil Hall.



Excerpts from "Travels in North America in the Years 1827 & 1828"
by Captain Basil Hall, Royal Navy

During his trip to North America in 1827-28, Captain Basil Hall, along with an Indian agent, traveled to "the country of the Creek Indians" and describes in great detail a "grand ball-play" and all the accompanying ceremonies. Describing the action of the game, Hall writes "…the Indian who got hold of the ball…with thirty or forty swift-footed fellows stretching after or athwart him, with their fantastic tigers’ tails streaming behind them…(he) sometimes tumbling at full length…but never losing hold of his treasure without a severe struggle…These parts of the game were exciting in the highest degree and it almost made the spectators breathless to look at them." Captain Hall illustrated his accounts of his travels with a camera lucida, a device invented in 1807 that allowed an artist to trace the outline of an object by means of a prism that projected its image onto a piece of paper or canvas.



Julia S. Tutwiler: Years of Innocence
by Paul M. Pruitt, Jr.

Part I of a two-part study examines the upbringing and preparations that influenced and enabled Julia Tutwiler to carry out her goals of making educational and social reforms in Alabama and the world. Teaching was a family tradition for the Tutwilers and Julia absorbed many of her parents’ ideas about education. Her father, Henry Tutwiler, who started the Greene Springs School in present-day Hale County, believed "that learning could be made enjoyable without sacrificing intellectual content…He was eager to give (his students) a sense of the world’s broad horizons." And he passed this belief, as well as other advanced social and political attitudes, on to his daughter Julia. After teaching a few years in the U. S., when she was more than thirty years old, Julia turned to travel and study abroad, focusing particularly on German language and history. But, on returning to Tuscaloosa, the plight of a friend propelled her toward social activism and a new path. The conclusion of this article is found in Alabama Heritage Winter 1992, issue #23.




DEPARTMENTS

SOUTHERN ARCHITECTURE & PRESERVATION –
"Elm Bluff – A New York House in an Alabama Forest" by Robert Gamble