Issue 132, Spring 2019
On the cover: A math class at the Kate Duncan Smith DAR School. [Photo courtesy National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution Archives]
Features
The Gem of Gunter Mountain
The Kate Duncan Smith DAR School
By Emily McMackin
For almost a century, the Kate Duncan Smith DAR School (KDS) has served the Gunter Mountain community, educating its members, supporting its people through all kinds of need or hardship, bolstering the area’s identity, and instilling young people with big dreams and the skills needed to achieve them. KDS has affected the area’s academics, medical facilities, social spaces, agricultural practices, and home life—just to name a handful of places where the school’s training or programs have had an impact. Thanks to the vision of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and bolstered by its members’ continued support and partnership decade after decade, the KDS School has become an indelible part of Gunter Mountain, and it has shaped the lives of many generations in the process.
Alabamians of West Point’s Class of 1944
By James L. Noles Jr.
The men accorded the moniker “The Greatest Generation” often remain lumped together in our collective memory, recognized for their importance but not understood as individuals. Archival records dating to before their historical moments converged, though, demonstrate how those men carried unique histories and identities, helping reveal the humans behind the history. Jim Noles traces six Alabamians—members of the West Point Class of 1944—whose lives intertwined briefly before departing to various aspects of the war effort.
Lycurgus Breckinridge Musgrove
Alabama Industrialist and Politician
By Pamela E. Jones
A native son of Jasper, Alabama, Lycurgus Breckinridge Musgrove used all the tools at his disposal—from hosting possum dinners for New York City’s elites to forays into journalism, business, philanthropy and politics—to advance his state—and himself. He also robustly promoted causes in which he believed, such as the Prohibition Movement. Though Musgrove’s efforts did not always meet success, his energy and enthusiasm were likely unmatched, and his colorful legacy continues to shape the state today.
“Make the Dirt Fly!”
Alabama and the Panama Canal
By Scotty E. Kirkland
Few people in the twenty-first century may truly understand just how tumultuous and audacious an undertaking it was to construct the Panama Canal. The French tried for decades and failed, sacrificing a fortune and a great number of lives in the process. Before the project was completed, America got involved, Panama declared its independence from Columbia, and numerous men—and some women—traveled to the Canal Zone to aid in the effort. Among those were about five hundred Alabamians, who had a particularly strong interest in ensuring that the canal’s success, as they believed its proximity to their state’s coast meant that Alabama and Panama were bound together.
Department Abstracts
Southern Architecture and Preservation
Historic Alabama Watermills
By Ken Boyd
Though many of Alabama’s watermills began as functional devices, designed to ease the labor of early settlers, they also served a decorative purpose, adding to the state’s scenic natural beauty. Today, though, few original watermills survive, and those that do remain are in dire need of historic preservation.
Alabama 200
Reading Alabama: Books for the Bicentennial
By Jay Lamar
A number of new books—from academic to general-interest, from poetry for adults to coloring books for children—celebrate different aspects of Alabama during the state’s bicentennial year.
The Alabama Territory
Quarter by Quarter: Spring 1819
By Mike Bunn
Before the Alabama Territory could be officially recognized as a state, its leaders had to hammer out the complicated—and sometimes contentious—laws by which the new state would be governed. During the hot summer of July 1819, men from around the territory gathered in Huntsville, in the inauspicious shop of a local cabinet maker, to do just that. From their sessions eventually came the new state’s constitution—a document that clarified many aspects of life in Alabama, even as it obscured or complicated some crucial issues.
Alabama Governors
Thomas Hill Watts 1863-1865
By Samuel L. Webb
Alabama’s eighteenth governor navigated the rebellious state through the final years of the Civil War before trying, with only moderate success, to navigate his own political career after his term as governor.
Behind the Image
The Wedding Dress that Wasn’t
By Frances Osborn Robb
The discovery of what looks like a bride posing in a lovely, store-bought wedding gown seems rather straightforward—until family members report that she never actually wore this dress to her wedding. As always, using historical records, family memories, and some careful sleuthing, Alabama Heritage’s trusty photographic expert tracks down an unusual wedding story.
From the Archives
A Great Migration Diary
By Haley Aaron
An important part of Alabama’s history concerns its native sons and daughters who decided to leave and pursue lives elsewhere. While some decisions were certainly due to individual or personal factors, during the Great Migration, many African American families fled the South in search of promise, prosperity, and acceptance in northern areas. The diary of Lavina Bright, whose family relocated from Alabama to Michigan during the Great Migration, sheds valuable light on the pressures and perspectives surrounding that choice.
The Nature Journal
Of Melanistic Squirrels and Noccalula Falls
Perhaps you’ve read about the towns or campuses that boast their own black squirrel population. Or maybe you’ve even seen some of Alabama’s own charcoal-black critters and wondered how they got to be that way. Alabama Heritage’s resident nature expert recalls his own family’s exploration of that topic—and teaches us what they learned.
Reading the Southern Past
Sneden’s Civil War
This quarter’s installment of “Reading the Southern Past” explores two texts related to the same Civil War soldier, Pvt. Robert Knox Sneden. Stephen Goldfarb discusses both Eye of the Storm: Written and Illustrated by Private Robert Knox Sneden edited by Charles F. Bryan Jr. and Nelson D. Lankford (Free Press, 2000) and Images from the Storm: 300 Civil War Images by the Author of “Eye of the Storm,” edited by Charles F. Bryan Jr., James C. Kelly, and Nelson D. Lankford (Free Press, 2001).
