Artist Edward Troye captured on canvas the dignity of slave and groomsman Parson Dick. (Courtesy of Fenner Milton. Photograph by Chris Rohling.)
Artist Edward Troye captured on canvas the dignity of slave and groomsman Parson Dick. (Courtesy of Fenner Milton. Photograph by Chris Rohling.)


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Spring 2006, Issue 80

Article Abstracts and Supplements

•Alabama’s Own: Ten Endemic Fishes
•The Alabama Cavefish: Our Natural Heritage Imperiled
•Edward Troye in Alabama
•Thoroughbred Horses at Muscle Shoals
•The Hawes Murders
•Departments


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Alabama’s Own: Ten Endemic Fishes
By Liliana Loofbourow

 Alabama is home to a bewildering variety of aquatic life. Featured here are ten fishes found only in Alabama, some of which have yet to be described. From the Alabama Darter to the Cahaba Shiner and the now-extinct Whiteline Topminnow, this collection of fishes represents Alabama’s unique biological heritage and responsibility to protect its biodiversity. Nature artist Joseph Tomelleri has rendered these fishes in exquisite detail using a combination of photographs, live specimens, and careful notes.


Additional Information
Information for this article was extracted from Herbert T. Boschung and Richard L. Mayden’s book, Fishes of Alabama, Smithsonian, 2004.


About the Author
Liliana Loofbourow is an Assistant Editor at Alabama Heritage magazine. She has degrees in psychobiology, music, and English and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Alabama. She thanks Herbert T. Boschung and Joseph Tomelleri for the use of materials from their book, Fishes of Alabama.
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The Alabama Cavefish: Our Natural Heritage Imperiled
By Herbert T. Boschung

Key Cave in Alabama’s Lauderdale County is the only known home of the blind, albino Alabama Cavefish. Discovered by speleologist John Cooper in 1966, the skittish fish has proved a challenge to researchers, who, in order to collect information, have to navigate Key Cave’s extremely tight quarters and then wait for hours in the hope of catching a specimen for observation purposes. One of the rarest fish in the world, the current estimate of the population size is one hundred individuals.


Additional Information
Boschung, H. T., and R. L. Mayden, 2004. “Family Ambylopsidae.” Pages 363-367 in Fishes of Alabama, Smithsonian Institution Press. xviii+ 736 pp, 112 color plates.

Cooper, J. E. and R. A. Kuehne. 1974. “Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni, a new genus and species of subterranean fish from Alabama.” Copeia 1974(2): 486—493.

Kuhajda, B. R. 2004. The Impact of the Proposed Eddie Frost Commerce Park on Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni, the Alabama Cavefish, a Federally Endangered Species Restricted to Key Cave, Lauderdale County, Alabama. Vol. 2, No 2. Endangered Species Update.

Kuhajda, B. R., and R. L. Mayden. 2001. “Status of the federally endangered Alabama cavefish, Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni (Amblyopsidae), in Key Cave and surrounding caves, Alabama.” Environ. Biol. Fishes 62: 215—222.

Poulson, T. L. 1963. “Cave adaptation in amblyopsid fishes.” Amer. Midl. Nat. 70(2): 257—290.

Poulson, T. L., and W. B. White. 1969. “The cave environment.” Science 165: 971—981.


About the Author
Herbert T. Boschung Jr. has spent more than fifty years studying and teaching about fishes. He is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Alabama and the senior author of the Audubon Society’s Field Guide to North American Fishes, first edition.


Update – April 2006
We thank Dr. Joe Scanlan for the following information on another endangered Alabama fish:

The Stippled Studfish, Fundulus bifax, is found only in clear, sandy-bottomed, upland streams. While historically, F. bifax have been found in Georgia, recent searches have proved fruitless, due to the silting up of streams and developments. The Stippled Studfish will only spawn in clean fine gravel in the aquarium and only after the male and female have cleaned the area by taking up large mouthfuls of gravel and spitting it out many times, possibly because a layer of silt would easily suffocate the eggs in the two weeks it takes them to develop. It has a very limited range in Alabama and its numbers are usually few at any given site. Dr. Scanlan has published an article on the subject in the Sept-Oct. issue of the Journal of American Killifish Association.


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 The Southern Cavefish is the only other amblyopsid species found in Alabama. (Photograph courtesy Bernard Kuhajda.)
Other inhabitants of Key Cave include the gray bat and the blind, white cave crayfish. While the Alabama Cavefish feeds on juvenile crayfish, the adult (shown here) is larger than the cavefish itself. (Photograph courtesy Bernard Kuhajda.)
Armed with an elaborate system of neuromasts (sensors that are extremely sensitive to vibrations) the Alabama Cavefish is extremely skittish and quite difficult to catch. It carries its young in the gill chamber, which is located under the opercular flap shown here. (Photograph courtesy Bernard Kuhajda.)
A visitor to Key Cave would encounter a very strong odor of bat guano upon entry, due to the large colony of gray bats. Features of the cave include the “guano slide,” the “worm hole,” and the “thirty feet of hell.” (Cave map by Bill Torode.)
Bernard Kuhajda, Curator of the University of Alabama Ichthyological Collection, is shown here moments after emerging from a pool in Bell Cave, a cave near Key Cave in which he hoped to find additional populations of the Alabama Cavefish. Unfortunately, none have been found. (Photograph courtesy Bernard Kuhajda.)
Edward Troye in Alabama
By Charles Cort

Although both Alabama and Kentucky would like to claim famed horse painter Edward Troye as their own, the artist is hard to pin down. Painting livestock, especially thoroughbred horses, led Troye to travel the eastern and southern United States. As early as 1836, Troye is known to have painted Alabama thoroughbreds. In 1850 he moved his family to Mobile where he taught at Spring Hill College. After a five-year contract at Spring Hill, Troye traveled to the Holy Land with the prominent Kentucky breeder Keene Richards. Afterwards, Troye moved his family to Kentucky. The family eventually moved back to Alabama, and Troye purchased a farm in Madison County. Although Troye died in Kentucky while visiting Keene Richards, his family remained in Madison County, and his descendents continue to live on the land originally purchased by Troye. Paintings by Edward Troye are highly collectible today. He contributed to the Orientalist style and left behind accurate and detailed records of thoroughbreds, landscapes, people, and architecture.


Additional Information
Race Horses of America, 1832-1872: portraits and other paintings by Edward Troye. Alexander Mackay-Smith, 1981.

Two of Edward Troye’s well-known paintings. The self-portrait was painted while Troye was living in Mobile, Alabama:
the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=1203&msg=new

Information on throughbred horses and their history. The portraits portion of the site contains images of many of the horses mentioned in the Edward Troye and Muscle Shoals articles, some of which are paintings by Edward Troye:
tbheritage.com/index.html
tbheritage.com/Portraits.html


About the Author
Charles Cort lives in South Alabama near Spanish Fort where he works in the apartment development business. His great-great grandfather was from Kentucky and worked at the Oakland Race Track in Louisville. His great grandfather worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal where he wrote many of the early Kentucky Derby race reports. Many people assisted the author in his research, especially James Christian, Judy and Carl Covan, Donna Dunham, Ann Bevins, Carol Shipp, Childs Berry, Collette King, Charles Boyle, Chuck Torrey, and the late Madeline Berry, who was so kind in her conversations with the author.
Charles Cort first became interested in Edward Troye after reading Made in Alabama published in 1995 by the Birmingham Museum of Art. “I saw Edward Troye’s farm was located in Madison County and I really wanted to find where it was” Cort said.“It was right by the post office in Owens Cross Roads. Later that afternoon I found his will. This pretty much hooked me on the saga of Edward Troye.”


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 In 1837 Edward Troye produced this 14”x 17” oil painting of Suzette, a successful long-distance racehorse from Kentucky. Displaying Troye’s typical realism in his subjects, Suzette appears to be in foal. Bare ground and a dead tree are also Troye trademarks. (Courtesy Charles Cort. Photograph by Rickey Yanaura.)
This hand-colored print was based on Edward Troye’s 1850 painting of the thoroughbred Revenue in Mobile. The John Bascombe Course (background) was one of five horse tracks in pre-Civil War Mobile. (Courtesy Charles Cort. Photograph by Rickey Yanaura.)
Completed in 1864, this painting shows the thoroughbred Asteroid with his trainer and jockey on a 28 ¼” x 38 5/8” canvas. A prominent artist whose works serve as both artistic and historical record, and were regularly used as documentation, Troye was lauded for his accurate depictions of the African American trainers of the time.(Courtesy the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.)
The gardens of Spring Hill College. Edward Troye spent five years teaching French and drawing at the Alabama college. Located just outside of Mobile, Alabama, Spring Hill afforded Troye with a steady income and ample time with which he completed a wealth of portraits between the years 1849 and 1855. (Courtesy Spring Hill College Archives.)
Spring Hill College, founded in 1830, is the third oldest Jesuit educational institution in the nation. Pictured here in 1869 before a fire burned the campus’ main buildings, and twenty years after Edward Troye was appointed as a member of the college faculty, Spring Hill College remains one of the premier liberal-arts institutions of the South. (Courtesy Spring Hill College Archives.)
Photograph of artist Edward Troye, taken in Huntsville, Alabama by Ira F. Collins. Huntsville, with its racetracks and thoroughbred community, served as home for Troye and his family throughout the last artistically productive years of his life. The photograph was sold by Cornelia Cobb, Troye’s granddaughter, to Spring Hill College for five dollars. (Courtesy Spring Hill College Archives.)
Troye’s daughter and the Artist’s only child to survive infancy. Both Anna and her mother spent much of their adult lives in or near Mobile, Alabama. Pictured here in 28” x 23” portrait c1868, her marriage to Cave Johnson of Kentucky ended in divorce and is cited as a possible reason for Troye’s residence in Kentucky at the time of his death.(Courtesy the Kentucky Department of Parks, Waveland State Historic Site, Lexington, Kentucky and the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
This 25” x 30” portrait depicts the thoroughbred Wagner. The winner of highly publicized races throughout the Black Belt, and owned for a period by eminent Troye patron John Campbell, Wagner was put to stud in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, where he died in 1862.(Courtesy the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.)
Painted during his trip to the Holy Land, this Edward Troye piece displays the variety of subjects that interested him on the voyage. This one painting contains representations of landscape work, livestock painting, portraiture, and the desire to create a historic record of an area. Also notice the unfinished face of the sheep. (Courtesy Charles Cort. Photograph by Rickey Yanaura.)
At 61”x 86”, this newly discovered Troye painting of William Gardner and an unidentified huntmaster is one of Troye’s largest. He often painted his human subjects on horseback. The discovery of this Troye painting demonstrates his lingering legacy in the state he finally called home. (Courtesy Private Collection. Photograph by Rickey Yanaura.)
Thoroughbred Horses at Muscle Shoals
By Curtis Parker Flowers

Southern thoroughbreds have captured American sporting interests for generations. At first an informal American event, by the 1800s, horseracing became not only a captive pastime in the South, but a prosperous business as well. Chronicled here are the individuals who at once revolutionized and promoted the sport's modern incarnation, as well as an examination of the thoroughbred bloodlines that carry their legacies.


Additional Information
“Thoroughbred,” by The Jockey Club
imh.org/imh/bw/tbred.html

Information on throughbred horses and their history. The portraits portion of the site contains images of many of the horses mentioned in the Edward Troye and Muscle Shoals articles, some of which are paintings by Edward Troye.
tbheritage.com/index.html

Images and information for the Pope’s Tavern museum mentioned in the “Thoroughbred Horses at Muscle Shoals” article:
flo-tour.org/popes.html

Images of James and Sarah Jackson, important figures in the thoroughbred horses article and a photo of James Jackson’s gravesite:
rootsweb.com/~allauder/cem-jackson.htm
rootsweb.com/~allauder/pic-jamesjackson.htm
rootsweb.com/~allauder/pic-sarahmoorejackson.htm

Historical information about the area and people mentioned in thoroughbred article:
travel.nostalgiaville.com/Alabama/florence/florence%20al.htm


 About the Author
Curtis Parker Flowers is a graduate of the University of Alabama, now retired from teaching history in the public schools of Florence. For further reading on the race horses of North Alabama, Flowers’s new publication Thoroughbred Horses at the Muscle Shoals explores the topic in greater detail and includes nineteenth-century sporting humor pieces written by Thomas Kirkman and originally published in the Spirit of the Times. This book is available from Pope's Tavern Museum in Florence (256) 760-6439 and Coldwater Books, Tuscumbia (256) 381-2525.


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 In this Currier and Ives print, Peytona, the popular Southern thoroughbred owned by Thomas Kirkman, triumphs over the Northern champion Fashion. Estimates of attendance at this event range from 70,000 to 100,000, a testament to the popularity of horseracing during the mid-nineteenth century. (From Currier and Ives: Chronicles of America, 1968.)
James Jackson arrived in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1819. The Irish-born merchant soon made his mark as a producer of fine thoroughbreds, a clever businessman, and a member of the Alabama House and Senate. Jackson’s home, the Forks of Cypress, near Florence, remained a center for horse breeding and racing even after Jackson’s death in 1840. (Courtesy Pope’s Tavern, Florence.)
Often referred to as “the greatest broodmare sire of the 19th century,” Keene Richard’s Glencoe was painted by Troye in 1857. Richards, a close and constant patron of Troye, was given much of the artist’s work upon his death in Richard’s home in 1874. (Courtesy the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.)
Land sales after the Creek wars allowed James Jackson, a new arrival to Alabama, to purchase valuable property near the Tennessee River. Part of his purchase would become the Forks of Cypress, Jackson’s home and headquarters for the breeding of prize-winning thoroughbreds, some of which were painted by the famous artist Edward Troye. (Courtesy Curtis Parker Flowers.)
The Forks of Cypress was established by James Jackson when he came to Alabama from Nashville. This home provided a base for Jackson’s endeavors in raising cotton, flax, and livestock. The Forks of Cypress is best remembered for the thoroughbreds imported from England and bred under the direction of Jackson to improve American bloodlines. (Courtesy Curtis Parker Flowers.)
The Forks of Cypress was established by James Jackson when he came to Alabama from Nashville. This home provided a base for Jackson’s endeavors in raising cotton, flax, and livestock. The Forks of Cypress is best remembered for the thoroughbreds imported from England and bred under the direction of Jackson to improve American bloodlines. (Courtesy Curtis Parker Flowers.)
The Forks of Cypress was established by James Jackson when he came to Alabama from Nashville. This home provided a base for Jackson’s endeavors in raising cotton, flax, and livestock. The Forks of Cypress is best remembered for the thoroughbreds imported from England and bred under the direction of Jackson to improve American bloodlines. (Courtesy Curtis Parker Flowers.)
James Jackson, one of the founders of Florence, Alabama, completed his mansion in 1822. The farm surrounding the home consisted of over 3000 acres and was used by Jackson for growing crops and raising racehorses. The mansion burned in 1966 after being struck by lightning. (Courtesy Curtis Parker Flowers.)
Edward Troye captured this image of Parson Dick, the talented handler of horses at the Forks of Cypress who vanished during the Civil War. James and Sarah Jackson were so impressed by the painting that they bought it and hung it in their mansion where it remained for many years. (Courtesy Pope’s Tavern, Florence.)
This charcoal portrait of a horse’s head was given by Edward Troye to his friend Colonel J. Stoddard Johnson in 1866. The 16 ½” x 13 ½” oval portrait depicts the famous Southern sire Lexington. (Courtesty the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.)
The Hawes Murders
By Pam Jones

On December 4, 1888, two local teenagers discovered the body of a young girl. Further investigations yielded evidence of a grizzly triple homicide, as Richard Hawes, a Georgia Pacific engineer, became the lead suspect in the killings of his wife and two daughters. The lengthy trial that followed created a swarm of media interest, while also widening social and racial schisms in Birmingham communities. These tensions culminated in a riot, during which numerous citizens were killed by armed militia and law officials.


 About the Author
Pam Jones is a freelance writer and researcher based in Birmingham. Her particular areas of interest in Alabama history are true crime and the state between the two world wars. She is a history instructor at a Birmingham college and writes corporate histories.


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The front page of the Birmingham Daily Age-Herald, published the day after Hawes was hanged at the gallows. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
Facing a potential riot, a gauntlet of militia, law officials, and civic leaders opened fire on the volatile mob gathered outside of the jail. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
After the discovery of May Hawes’s body, Richard Hawes was arrested while traveling by train with Mayes Story, his newly betrothed. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
Once apprehended, Richard Hawes told the Birmingham Daily Age-Herald that he had last seen his dauther three days before her body had been found. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
A Birmingham Daily Age-Herald image of Emma Hawes, who had defied the wishes of her father by eloping with Richard Hawes. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
The body of May Hawes (shown here in the Birmingham Age-Herald), was found by two teenagers rowing across East Lake. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
A week after the body of May Hawes was recovered, investigators found the bodies of the child’s mother and sister, Emma and Irene Hawes. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)
This nineteenth-century map of Birmingham details several sites relevant to the murders, including East Lake, where the bodies of May, Emma, and Irene Hawes were discovered. (From Stanley Hoole’s The Birmingham Horrors, Courtesy the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, the University of Alabama.)

Departments

Alabama Mysteries
The University Graves Mystery
By Pam Jones

In the early days of the University of Alabama, a one-acre plot of land was set aside as a campus cemetery. Although two students were interred in the cemetery during the antebellum period, one was removed by family. The cemetery also provided a burial place for two university slaves who were honored with a ceremony in 2005. The only marked graves are that of a professor’s family, and the exact location of the other graves remains a mystery.


About the Author
Pam Jones is a freelance writer and researcher based in Birmingham.

Photographer
Mystery Graves photography by Joe Lambert. Website: http://home.comcast.net/~wlambert2908/

In 2005 the University of Alabama honored the three lost graves with a ceremony, placing a plaque and new landscaping around the old Pratt cemetery. (Photograph by Joe Lambert.)
Today, only the Pratt family enclosure remains of the original cemetery. A narrow lane separates the graces from the now-spacious lawn of Kilgore House (background). (Photograph by Joe Lambert.)
The Pratt family grave markers stand as a reminder of the mysterious University of Alabama cemetery. Although the exact location of the missing bodies of a student and two slaves is unknown, Alabama Heritage staff hopes that their front yard provides a peaceful final resting place for the three men. (Photograph by Joe Lambert.)
Since its creation eight years after the founding of the University of Alabama, the campus cemetery and its surroundings have seen many changes. In this current panorama, the Kilgore house is visible to the left, and the Biology building is seen to the right of the Pratt family graves. The original one-acre cemetery may have been in the Kilgore house yard or where the Biology building now stands. (Photograph by Joe Lambert.)
 
Nature Journal
Sex and the Single Freshwater Mussel
By Larry Davenport

Freshwater mussels in Alabama’s rivers and streams have creative ways of ensuring the survival of their vulnerable offspring. The mussels pack their superconglutinates that resemble flatworms, leeches, or midges. These bundles explode onto the fish that disturbs them, allowing the embryonic mussels to attach to the host fish until they mature.


About the Author
Larry Davenport is a professor of biology at Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.
 This Lampsilis or pocketbook mussel inhabits the upper Cahaba River. (Digital photograph by W. Mike Howell.)
Alabama Album
Spinning Jennies

Index
Issues 71-80

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