Issue 45, Summer 1997

The image appears to be a magazine cover titled “ALABAMA HERITAGE.” The background is a solid dark green color. In the center, there’s a square cut-out showing a photograph of green leaves. Below the image of the leaves, there’s text that reads “PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AND THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM.” The magazine cover is dominated by the dark green background. The title “ALABAMA HERITAGE” is displayed in bold white letters at the top. Centered below the title, there’s an inset square photo of vibrant green leaves. The texture and veins of the leaves are clearly visible. At the bottom, in smaller white text, it states that it’s published by two universities in Alabama.

Issue 45, Summer 1997

On the cover: Blanche Dean thought that the Oakleaf Hydrangea, whose distinctive leaves are pictured, should be the state flower. [Photograph by Robin McDonald]

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Features

Kirkwood in Eutaw, c.1850s [Photo courtesy Robin McDonald]

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.

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Blanche and her new husband celebrated Thanksgiving in Goodwater in 1939. Left to right: Will and Blanche Dean, with Earl Evans (Blanche’s nephew), Mamie Ingram, and Ella Evans (Earl’s wife). The Deans were married for less than a year. [Courtesy Ella Evans]

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.

John C. C. Sanders (1840-1864) “gave promise of a glorious and distinguishing career,” eulogized the Richmond newspaper shortly after his death. Sanders was one of sixty-two Confederate brigade commanders killed in action during the Civil War. [Courtesy Alabama Department of Archives and History]

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.”

Wilbur (left) and Orville Wright in Dayton, Ohio, 1910. Wilbur’s death in 1912, at the age of forty-five, was a devastating loss to aviation and to Orville, who sold the Wright Company in 1915 and spent the rest of his life in research. Outliving his brother by thirty-six years, Orville saw the airplane used as a principle tool in the Allied victory in World War II and acknowledged as one of the most important inventions of the twentieth century. He died in 1948. [Courtesy Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum]

Departments

The Village Creek walking trail in Mountain Brook, Alabama, was made possible by ISTEA funds. [Photograph by Robin McDonald]

Report from the Historical Commission

Iced Tea or Hot Tea? Preservationists Have a Clear Choice 

By Camille Bowman and Mary Elizabeth Johnson Huff

ISTEA is an acronym for the bulkily named funding initiative administered by the Federal Highway Administration: the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. Familiarly known as “Iced Tea,” the initiative requires that 10 percent of all dollars allotted by the federal government to each state for highways should be used for “enhancement” of transportation facilities.  This act allow communities to preserve sites that might otherwise fall into decay.

Art in the South

The Byrd Portrait of Justice Silas Parsons

By Edward Pattillo

Huntsville artist Henry Byrd painted Silas Parsons, an early associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, in 1848. The portrait, newly conserved, rescues Parsons from the obscurity accorded so many public figures in Alabama.

[Courtesy Alabama Supreme Court and State Law Library, Montgomery; portrait conservation by the Fred Reed Company, Atlanta]
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