Summer 1997, Issue 45

Article Abstracts and Supplements

Tax Breaks for Owners of Historic Properties
By Mort P. Ames with Warner McGowin and Jennifer Horne

In clear and concise language, Mort Ames, an attorney formerly with the Environmental Division of the Office of the Attorney General of Alabama, explains the easement donation process in Alabama and describes the tax advantages of donating an easement on a historic property. Ames relates how, across the country, the donation of a preservation or conservation easement to the state or to a nonprofit agency is becoming increasingly popular. It isn’t necessary to own an antebellum mansion to participate in an easement donation; businesses, apartment buildings, and even historically significant land can garner tax deductions for their owners while preserving a part of the state’s history. Property owners who wish to obtain further information regarding donation of a preservation easement may contact the Alabama Historical Commission, 468 S. Perry St., Montgomery, Alabama, 36130-0900; telephone (334) 242-3184. The two other agencies in the state currently accepting easements are the Mobile Historic Development Commission and Heritage Preservation, Inc., in Florence.



Blanche Dean, Naturalist
By Alice S. Christenson and L. J. Davenport

Teacher, biologist, author, early environmentalist: native Alabamian Blanche Dean was one of the first naturalists to recognize the importance of her state’s amazing array of plants and wildlife. Her dedication to the outdoors and her constant good humor were legendary to those who knew her best, and the lessons of respect for and conservation of the Alabama wilderness she taught to students and friends still resonate across the state. Alice S. Christenson, president of the Birmingham Audubon Society, and Larry J. Davenport, a professor of biology at Samford University, have collaborated on an examination of Dean’s life, career, and impact on Alabama wildlife studies. Blanche Dean shared her lifelong love of nature with a generation of Alabamians and became one of the state's most respected and beloved naturalists. Long before many others, Dean saw the need to protect the environment. She deeply valued her native state’s natural riches and taught others to do the same.



The Intrepid Sanders: Lee’s ‘Boy Brigadier’
By Bailey Thomson

Alabama native John C.C. Sanders became, at age twenty-four, Lee’s "Boy Brigadier," one of the three youngest generals in the Confederate army. Fighting in many of the major battles of the war, Sanders distinguished himself by his gallant conduct. A member of the university’s newly formed Corps of Cadets, Sanders left the University of Alabama in his senior year to fight in the Civil War. Writing to his parents in January 1861 for permission to withdraw from the university, he said, "I feel that my country calls for all her sons, and I, for one, cannot refuse to obey her maternal voice." When he died in 1864, the Richmond Daily Dispatch eulogized him as a beloved commander "who gave promise of a glorious and distinguished career." Author Bailey Thomson, a former associate editor of the Mobile Register, is now an associate professor of journalism at the University of Alabama.



The Wright Connection
By Paul Tribble

Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama is best known for its pivotal role in the training of U.S. and international pilots. But aviation history and Montgomery, Alabama, had been linked long before there ever was a Maxwell Air Force Base. For it was on the same site where Maxwell now sits that in the spring of 1910 Orville and Wilbur Wright, the "pioneers of the skies," opened up the world’s very first flight training school. The flight school’s presence, the Montgomery Advertiser noted, "brought the South into the world’s eye." Author Paul Tribble, retired from the U.S. Air Force and now a geography teacher at Alabama State University, chronicles the Wright brothers’ path from a bicycle shop in Dayton to the flat fields of an old Montgomery cotton plantation. The author details the events that led to the Wright brothers’ selection of Montgomery as well as the advances in aviation history and the death-defying feats of bravery achieved there by Orville Wright and his team of hand-picked aviators, known as the "wizards of the skies."

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