Daguerreotype courtesy of Alabama
Department of Archives and History.
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Article Abstracts and Supplements
The Extraordinary Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard
by Robert Mellown and Gene Byrd
Former University of Alabama alumnus and president William R. Smith remembered one of his favorite professors at the university, F. A. P. Barnard, as "a marvel of intellectual brilliancy and practical versatility. He was conceded to be the best at whatever he attempted to do; he could turn the best sonnet, write the best love story, take the best daguerreotype picture, charm the most women, catch the most trout, and calculate the most undoubted almanac." Barnard’s reputation as a renaissance man was well deserved, and his contributions to academia and the natural sciences in the nineteenth- century south were enormous. Robert Mellown and Gene Byrd chronicle two of Barnard’s many interests -- daguerreotypy and astronomy -- and the accomplishments he made in those respective fields.
How Marie Bankhead Owen Almost Killed the WPA Guide to Alabama
by Harvey H. Jackson, III
In the spring of 1935—when the country was scraping out of its worst-ever depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s make-work New Deal policies were starting to take shape—the Federal Writers Project was born. When critics assailed the project designed to put unemployed writers to work, Harry Hopkins, the director of the Works Projects Administration, reportedly cut them off with a blunt, "Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people." First, administrators set about deciding what these writers would write about. Soon the idea of individual guides to each of the states, complete with highlights of their histories and accomplishments, won favor. Hardy Jackson describes the involved—and often contentious—process administrators in Alabama went through to develop the state’s version of the project.
Daniel Cram’s Sketches of the Mexican War
by John McCall, with T.J. Beitelman
In the summer of 1847, young Lt. Daniel Houston Cram of New Hampshire stepped onto Mexican soil and into one of the most important—but often neglected—conflicts of the nineteenth century. During the Mexican War, fourteen thousand American soldiers lost their lives—as did many more Mexicans—fighting over the land that would eventually become the American southwest. Cram not only saw it firsthand as a participant, he stole moments to sketch some of the more dramatic scenes in a notebook that has been passed down through generations of his family. John McCall, assisted by T.J. Beitelman, tells the story of Cram’s Mexican War experiences, complete with photographs and detailed descriptions of the sketches themselves.
DEPARTMENTS
ALABAMA ALBUM – "The Tuscaloosa Gun Club" by Maxwell Elebash
SOUTHERN ARCHITECTURE – "History on the Move:The Evolution of the Humphreys-Rodgers House, c. 1848" by Christopher Lang
RECOLLECTIONS – "The Travels of a Cameo" by Alexander Ingram
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