Issue 80, Spring 2006
On the cover: Artist Edward Troye captured on canvas the dignity of slave and groomsman Parson Dick. [Courtesy of Fenner Milton. Photograph by Chris Rohling]
Features
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nature Journal
Sex and the Single Freshwater Mussel
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.
