"Though it flies in the face of almost universally accepted wisdom, moderately disorganized people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, more resilient, more creative, and in general more effective than highly organized ones."
E. Abrahamson and D. H. Freedman, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder (New York: Little, Brown, 2006, p. 5.
I told you so!
Chaos — 1870
AQQ
"The French, like true artists, always regarded war as one of the fine arts."
The Education of Henry Adams, (1918) Cap. XIX. "Chaos (1870)".
The Glory of Knowledge
"There is a glory, greater than, the glory of wealth, and power, and arms, and conquest — the glory of loving, getting, cherishing, diffusing, perpetuating knowledge . . ."
Robert J. Breckinridge, (1853) Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Kentucky.
Molly and Jane Cloud
Boone County, Kentucky, Court Orders, 3rd. day of October 1825:
"On motion of Jane Cloud and for reasons offered the court She is released from the payment of Poll tax here after for her old negro woman named Molly on account of her age & infirmity." [CO/ C-2]
Back When Weather Meant Something
AQQ
"Medieval man had to live by daylight. At night he could travel only by the intermittent moon. Few trades could be carried on by artificial light. Winter in the north was the time of repose, of fireside diversions, of song and storytelling. It was also the time of hardship, perpetual chill, scanty, monotonous, vitaminless food, further restricted by Lenten fast. So when spring came, it roused people to a pagan frenzy. After the harshness of winter, the sun shone blessedly down, sap flowed, as did the lusty blood. Most love poems were timed with the spring. Weather really meant something in those days."
Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), p. 126-127.
The Destiny of the West: A Prophecy by Owen Barfield
AQQ
"I believe it lies in the destiny of the West, not to abandon but rather to intensify its concern with history; not to abandon its interest in the past of mankind, and of the world, but to deepen its understanding of both."
Owen Barfield, "Dream, Myth, and Philosophical Double Vision," in J. Campbell, Myths, Dreams, and Religion (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1970), p. 217.
The Music of the Present & the Past
AQQ
"The music of the present explains that of the past, and not the other way round."
Alfred Einstein, Geschichte der Musik (1934).
AQQ: On Memory
Beryl Markham writes in her remarkable memoirs, West With the Night (1942):
The very process of remembering distorts memory. What ever you focus on, even for a moment, rips the thread, like a fly entangled. To dip into the pool at all is to start an agitation on its surface that alters the vision, but also makes it alive. Memory raised to its highest power, by the assistance of systematic thought and analysis, that is, bringing order out of memory, is the process we call history. We never begin at the beginning. We start with what we have and work back, peeling away the layers, using evidence to reconstruct what happened earlier. There is always something earlier, and for humans the process is never complete."How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, 'This is the place to start; there can be no other.' "
Statistics of Ye Olden Time
A few days since the County Clerk, in moving old books and papers in his office for the purpose of having some repairing done, brought from their long hiding place a bundle purporting to be the Commissioners' books for Boone County during the early part of its history. These books contain about two quires of heavy paper each, about the size of foolscap. The Binding and all the ruling in them was done by hand, in fact, they are purely homemade, and have somewhat an antediluvian look, having grown yellow with age. The oldest one we could find was for the year 1802. Upon examining this, we found that in those days the property was listed without the valuation being appended. Real estate was given in by classes, there being three classes, first, second and third, and a man living in Boone gave in all the land he owned in other counties, always giving the name of the county in which the land was located, and in whose name it was entered.
In 1802 there was 39,998 acres of land listed. Of this there were 516 acres first class, 17,551 acres second class, and 21,901 acres third class. All the first rate land listed this year was situated in Franklin and Fayette counties. John H. Craig owned 1,650 acres of second-rate land, being the largest amount listed by anyone at the time. James Marshall was the largest owner of third class land his list being 1,462 acres. This year there were 232 whites over twenty-one years of age, 137 blacks and 599 horses and mares. There was no agricultural list given. There was but one carriage in the county at the time, and this belonged to Jeremiah Kirtley.
During the next decade the first class land increased to 2,776 acres. All of this class except 33 acres was in Boone County. Of this amount Cave Johnson, Peter Gregory and William Willis each owned 600 acres; Jeremiah Kirtley, 153 acres; Thomas Noble, 150 acres; and Paddy Wallace, 120 acres. The remainder was owned in lots of 100 acres and less. In this year, 1812, there were 536 whites over the age of 21; 332 blacks over the age of 10, and the whole number of blacks in the county was 755. 1,962 made up the list of horses and mares. In 1802 there was no store in the county, but since that time Zerah Tousey had embarked in the mercantile business at what was then called Touseytown. This is the first store of which the records of our county give any account. Abner Gaines and Joseph Davis each were returned as tavern keepers. It seems that taste for pleasure was being cultivated and rapidly developed in these youthful days of county. The owners of pleasure carriages were becoming more numerous, and during the ten years from 1802 to 1812 the number of these conveyances was increased to three, Peter Gregory, Samuel Hedges and William Willis each owning one.
It was our purpose to enter into a more minute account of these early days, but when we commenced our investigation we found the records upon which we relied were not perfect, there being several links of the chain for a considerable period gone. The gleanings, which we present, are sufficient to give some idea of the wealth and population of our county at the early date. To look upon the wealth, improvement at the present date, and then compare it with the state of affairs those ancient records develop, we are compelled to rejoice that we enjoy the advantage of the improvements upon the foundation laid by the early settlers for our prosperity.
Boone County Recorder 30 Nov 1876
The Historian and the Specialist
Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom: An Interpretation of History said:
The word "amateur" owes its evil reputation to the arts. An artist must be a master or nothing, and must dedicate his life to his art, for the arts, of their very nature, demand perfection.
In learning, on the other hand, a man can only be a master in one particular field, namely as a specialist, and in some field he should be a specialist. But if he is not to forfeit his capacity for taking a general view, or even his respect for general views, he should be an amateur at as many points as possible, privately at any rate, for the increase of his own knowledge and the enrichment of his possible standpoints. Otherwise he will remain ignorant in any field lying outside his own speciality and perhaps, as a man, a barbarian.
But the amateur, because he loves things, may, in the course of his life, find points at which to dig deep.
Jacob Burckhardt, Force and Freedom: An Interpretation of History, was originally delivered as a series of lectures at Basel in 1868-1871. This Archival Quality Quotation appears in the Meridian Books edition, J. H. Nichols, ed., 1955, p. 89.
Wild Comphisey - Cynoglossum virginianum
Latin name: Cynoglossum virginianum
Common Names: Wild Comfrey, Wild Comphisey, Blue Hound's Tongue
This is an indigenous American plant found growing in the Southern States from April through May. It is quite common in Virginia and Kentucky. It is found as far north as Long Island, N. Y., and also in New Jersey. The related Cynoglossum officinale (Hound's Tongue), is found much further north as well. It was naturalized from Europe, and is sometimes considered a troublesome weed. The Cynoglossum boreale (Northern Wild Comfrey) is a variant found almost exclusively in the north, though the two species are very similar.
Medical Uses: Cynoglossum virgininum is used medicinally as a substitute for Symphytum officianale (Common Comfrey), with which white settlers were familiar. Symphytum is a European plant that has occasionally escaped cultivation, but is not native to this country. Cynoglossum virgininum was used in Indian medicine, and was quickly adopted by the white settlers as a substitute for the plant they were used to.
The name Wild Comphisey was used by John Ingles, about 1824, in his narrative of the capture of his mother, Mary Ingles, and her sister-in-law, Bettie Draper. Mrs. Draper's arm was broken by a gunshot wound during the attack, and Mrs. Ingles hunted the woods and used the Wild Comphisey, which appears to be nothing else than Cynoglossum virginianum, to repair the wound, and promote healing. It is said that the juices of the plant crystallize when dry, and so form a kind of cast to prevent the movement of broken bones. This plant is useful for such a wound, nec ossa solum, it also helps repair the wounded tissues.
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Big Bone University
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
2008
On Blogs: A New Media Elite
AQQ
Fareed Zakaria writes:
In the world of journalism, the personal Web site ('blog') was hailed as the killer of the traditional media. In fact it has become something quite different. Far from replacing newspapers and magazines, the best blogs — and the best are very clever — have become guides to them, pointing to unusual sources and commenting on familiar ones. They have become new mediators for the informed public. Although the creators of blogs think of themselves as radical democrats, they are in fact a new Tocquevillian elite. Much of the Web has moved in this direction because the wilder, bigger, and more chaotic it becomes, the more people will need help navigating it.
The Future of Freedom (2004), p. 254.
More on Fareed Zakaria.
This is justification for Archival Quality Communications
Col. Zebulon Montgomery Pike
Col. Pike married Clarissa Harlowe Brown of Boone County, Ky. They were married in 1801 in Cincinnati.
Read more about Zebulon Pike.
John Tanner and the Landscape of Life
I have been reading an essay by Ms. Erdrich in her Books and Islands (2003), entitled "John Tanner and the Landscape of Hunger", in which she states that his book was about the "relentless efforts of a man to feed himself." Is this the truth? What about feeding his adopted family, later his wife and children, and many other Indians whom he lived among? It is true, according to Tanner's book, much of the time it was feast or famine, though there must have been many times of sufficient, but not too much, as well.
Is The Narrative of the Adventures of John Tanner (1830) really the sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)? I think the time sequence is a little out of order. This suggestion, which Erdrich borrows from her sister, is especially misleading, if, as Wendell Berry thinks, Huckleberry Finn was trying to escape growing up. I do not get the impression that John Tanner was trying to escape growing up; he was living the life that destiny had given him, and doing it at least as well as most people do in the situations in which they find themselves. As Ortega y Gassett remarks: "Nothing so saps the profound resources of a life as finding life too easy." This is the real landscape of Tanner's life. He had developed profound resources for dealing with people and nature "in the raw", so to speak. When he came back among his white kin he was nearly stifled by the comparative ease of their lives. He needed the challenges of the Indian life to pit himself against great natural forces, and realize his potential for meeting these challenges.
The book he wrote, with the assistance of Dr. James, is a tribute to the value of such a life. Despite the flaws of the book, words and phrases rather obviously inserted by James, that a man in John Tanner's position would never use, his stunningly stubborn and unique personality come through. Like Esau, his hand may have been against every man's, and every man's against him, but he is a real man, and his care for his children, and others about him, and his participation in that culture, means that he lived, in that culture, a life successful in the only way human life can be. As Ortega y Gasset says: "Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been."
It may have been, as Erdrich quotes her sister as saying: "He vanished into his own legend." Adding for herself, "His end was as mysterious and tragic as the outline of his life in this beautiful, unforgiving country." He did one thing at least that had never yet been done, for as she states: "his is the first narrative of native life from an Ojibwe point of view."
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University: Think Tank & Public Policy Center
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
2008
Is The Narrative of the Adventures of John Tanner (1830) really the sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)? I think the time sequence is a little out of order. This suggestion, which Erdrich borrows from her sister, is especially misleading, if, as Wendell Berry thinks, Huckleberry Finn was trying to escape growing up. I do not get the impression that John Tanner was trying to escape growing up; he was living the life that destiny had given him, and doing it at least as well as most people do in the situations in which they find themselves. As Ortega y Gassett remarks: "Nothing so saps the profound resources of a life as finding life too easy." This is the real landscape of Tanner's life. He had developed profound resources for dealing with people and nature "in the raw", so to speak. When he came back among his white kin he was nearly stifled by the comparative ease of their lives. He needed the challenges of the Indian life to pit himself against great natural forces, and realize his potential for meeting these challenges.
The book he wrote, with the assistance of Dr. James, is a tribute to the value of such a life. Despite the flaws of the book, words and phrases rather obviously inserted by James, that a man in John Tanner's position would never use, his stunningly stubborn and unique personality come through. Like Esau, his hand may have been against every man's, and every man's against him, but he is a real man, and his care for his children, and others about him, and his participation in that culture, means that he lived, in that culture, a life successful in the only way human life can be. As Ortega y Gasset says: "Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been."
It may have been, as Erdrich quotes her sister as saying: "He vanished into his own legend." Adding for herself, "His end was as mysterious and tragic as the outline of his life in this beautiful, unforgiving country." He did one thing at least that had never yet been done, for as she states: "his is the first narrative of native life from an Ojibwe point of view."
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University: Think Tank & Public Policy Center
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
2008
Faith in the Past v. Fear of the Future
"The man who has not lost faith in the past is not frightened by the future, because he is sure that in the past he will find the tactic, the method, the course, by which he can sustain himself in the problematic tomorrow. The future is the horizon of problems, the past is the terra firma of methods, of the roads which we believe we have under our feet. Consider, my dear friend, the terrible situation of the man to whom the past, the stable, suddenly becomes problematical, suddenly becomes an abyss. Previously, danger appeared to lie only before him, in the hazardous future; now he finds it also behind his back and under his feet."
Ortega y Gasset, "In Search of Goethe from Within," (1932); in The Dehumanization of Art, and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature (Princeton, 1968), p. 134.
Water Purity
"Water's a very peculiar thing—you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers."
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860).
"Water needs soil, soil needs vegetation, vegetation needs animals, animals need water — and all these factors compose a single cycle. It is a cycle of which man in a part. If thrust from that cycle, he dies. What he does to parts of that cycle, which he denominates as separate resources, what he does to forests, game, crops, water, affects the whole cycle, and ultimately affects the conditions of his life, or whether he shall have a life."
Earl F. Murphy, Water Purity: A Study in Legal Control of Natural Resources (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), p. 5.
John Tanner On His Life among the Indians
"As long as I lived among the Indians, I made it my business to conform, as far as appeared consistent with my immediate conscience and comfort, with all their customs. Many of their ideas I have adopted, but I always found among them opinions which I could not hold."
John Tanner's Narrative, Cap. IX (Loomis Edition, p. 145-146)
The Past: A Different Universe
AQQ
"The past isn't simply another country, it's an entirely different universe."
Mark Gregory Pegg, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. xii.
He continues with the following observation:
"History is more art than science, striving for the precision of the imagination. Only through imaginative rigor does the imaginative sympathy occur. That is why historical prose must experiment with narrative styles and structures. The past is hard enough to write without thinking there is only one way to write about it."
(Ibid., xiii.)
I would say, rather, that history is both art and science. The part Pegg calls "rigor" is simply science, or knowledge. That is hard enough to accomplish, but to imaginatively re-create the past as a structure built up from the materials created by historical method is indeed the difficult part, and requires the greatest artistic effort of which the writer is capable. Only a great artist can write a great historical work.
Jas. Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
2008
Chronocosm
"The protected, and usually large, physical spaces that creative individuals demand for their work — studios, libraries, laboratories — are matched by the protected expanses of time that they stake out, day after day, across their careers. These regularly repeated periods, often whole mornings or afternoons, are so massive that they become quasi-physical presences whose substance can be sculpted into regular achievement. I call these expanses of time 'chronocosms' (time worlds): periods that set up their own unique time dynamics, develop an integrity all their own. People unaquainted with such time worlds have little chance to experience creative insight."
Robert Grudin, The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990),p. 83-84.
Or as Rousseau wrote in Émile, to teach a child (or anyone for that matter) we must lose the time in order to save it. That includes teaching ourselves.
Robert Grudin, The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990),p. 83-84.
Or as Rousseau wrote in Émile, to teach a child (or anyone for that matter) we must lose the time in order to save it. That includes teaching ourselves.
"Intellectual Property"
"Intellectual property" names
the deed by which the mind is bought
and sold, the world enslaved.
"Some Further Words" by Wendell Berry, American Poetry Review, May/Jun 2002
Read the entire poem "Some Further Words". It contains much good philosophy for living, such as these lines: "I don't want to live on mortal terms forever, or survive an hour as a cooling stew of pieces of other people. I don't believe that life or knowledge can be given by machines."
And
I know
a "fetus" is a human child.
I loved my children from the time
they were conceived, having loved
their mother, who loved them
from the time they were conceived
and before. Who are we to say
the world did not begin in love?
"Some Further Words"
The Lost Silver Mine of Kentucky
AQQ
John Swift is the true forefather of our history here . . .
One of the oldest and most persistent legends of the white man's occupation of Kentucky is that of John Swift's silver. Swift was a silver miner who is supposed to have wandered in the Kentucky mountains in about 1760. He left a journal describing his adventures, paramount among which was the discovery of a marvelously rich lode of silver. The journal contained directions for finding this wealth and also a map, but because of Swift's poor knowledge of the country and its landmarks both directions and map have proved meaningless.
And that very meaninglessness has assured the survival and the dispersal of the legend, and of the indefatigable dream that the legend represents. Today, according to Thomas D. Clark, there are still people in the Kentucky mountains 'who had rather seek fortune by searching for nebulous silver than by plowing corn.' And that region is said to be littered with vaguely defined sites where maybe John Swift found and then lost his silver mine. One of those places is the Red River Gorge, and a tributary of the Red is named in commemoration of Swift's passage through that country: Swift Camp Creek.
There could be no better parable of the white man's entrance into Kentucky. For John Swift is the true forefather of our history here, and his progeny have been numerous. The have descended upon this land from the eastward passes and from their mother's wombs with their minds set on the dream of quick riches to be had, if not from a vein of precious metal, then from coal or from logs. Or from the land itself, for those who preferred to plow rather than hunt silver have all too often followed the agricultural method known as 'mining,' by which the growth is taken from the land and nothing given back, until the fields are exhausted like a mined-out seam of coal.
Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971), p. 13-14.
This is an Archival Quality Quotation
Here is a version, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kywolfe/swift.htm, that claims the story began in 1755, the year Mary Ingles was captured and brought to the Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. If Swift had simply "followed the rivers", like Mary and her companion, he could have found his way out, and back again. Here is the link to an article that gives the story a masonic twist: Joe Nickell, "The Secrets of Oak Island" Skeptical Inquirer, March, 2000. The paragraph on Swift's mine is on page 4 of the internet version. Nickell wrote an article on the subject for the Filson Club Historical Quarterly 54 (Oct 1980): 324-345, and the entry in the Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992), p. 863-864.
Thoreau on Local History
AQQ
An Archival Quality Quotation
Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.
I remember talking a few years ago with a young man who had undertaken to write the history of his native town, a wild and mountainous town far up-country, whose very name suggested a hundred things to me, and I almost wished I had the task to do myself, so few of the original settlers had been driven out, and not a single clerk of the exchequer buried in it. But to my chagrin I found that the author was complaining of want of materials, and that the crowning fact of his story was that the town had been the residence of General C— and the family mansion was still standing. Around this all the materials of this history were to arrange themselves.
You can't read any genuine history, as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede, without perceiving that our interest depends on the subject but on the man — on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius — a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world. Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.
Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript, Bradley P. Dean, ed. (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 234-235.
Notes on a Museum at Big Bone Lick
This evening I crashed a "by invitation only" party of the Friends of Big Bone, and was asked not to say anything. That was a good thing, because it is always tempting to say what needs to be said, even if it doesn't do any good.
The question at stake was this: Since there is never going to be a Museum at Big Bone, what do we do instead?
Now that is not really a very good question. Rather, a better question is "What do you mean by Museum?" or "Do we really have anything to do at Big Bone Lick?" or even better "If something needs to be done at Big Bone Lick, are we the people to do it?"
I think the answer to the first is: "A building with exhibits that tells about the history and natural history of the Lick."
The answer to the second is: "Maybe we will have something to do if we can get the right people involved."
The answer to the third is: "No 'we' are not the right people to do this, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be done."
What needs to happen at Big Bone is for someone (me) to publish a history of the area. I am working towards that, and hope to finish before too long. I have some done already, and more in the planning stages. I am also collecting and editing the original documents from which this must be done.
The problem with the people who want to "do something" about Big Bone Lick, is that it is not "their" history. They see it as something interesting, something to be exploited, either personally, or for the community. They do not know enough about the history of the area to truly appreciate it as a place. They see it as a footnote to science: The birth-place of "inveterate" paleontology. That is not the way I see it at all. The local people have always appreciated Big Bone as a unique geographical place. It was an integral part of the community long before it became a park. There have been numerous attempts to make it into an attraction like other natural wonders, but all of the major attempts failed for some reason or other. It has always aroused fascination, but it has never been quite attractive enough to become a commercial attraction. Its history has never been written. How do you write the history of a Lick? You write the history of the people who thought about it, worked at it, were influenced by it in any way.
It is a history of salt — sweat and tears. It is a history of exploitation. It is a history of fame, near fame, and obscure fame. It is both more and less than its promise. It will never be Niagara, or the Grand Canyon, or even Natural Bridge. It is not that spectacular. Not even when there were bones on the ground. It was more subtle in its influence and required more appreciation than those places required. It was such that people could use the bones for everyday purposes. They could use the springs for domestic and commercial purposes; not until Niagara was harnessed for electricity could the same be said for any of the other attractions I have named. Big Bone Lick was like a vast hoard of treasure that is carried away a little at a time, till at last there is nothing but the name; even the springs have gone into abeyance, and are at a very low ebb. Knowledge about the area's past trickles out into the world at about the same rate.
Anyone who is truly interested in Big Bone will be more interested in the history of the area than any other aspect of it. That history cannot be just the study of some old bones. A museum must be more than just a collection of old bones and teeth. Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem. What is needed is a living history museum. What was taken in the past is basically worthless for research purposes in any case. I think Adrienne Mayor is on the right track when she writes: "Both scientists and traditional Indians agree that context is crucial in reading the messages of past life-forms, that something important is lost when creatures of the deep past are torn from their matrix. Johnson Holy Rock, Lakota elder, explained it to me this way: 'To take fossils out of the ground snaps the line of knowledge.' Later at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas, I mentioned this to paleontologist Greg Liggert. He nodded, 'Excavation is information destruction.' " (Fossil Legends of the First Americans, Princeton, 2005, p. 321.) Most of the finds of the past are now virtually worthless.
The past is what is left to us. This we can understand, if we approach it the right way. Fustel de Coulanges, one of the great early historians, said "Fortunately, the past never dies for man. Man may forget it, but he always preserves it within him." ( The Ancient City, 1864; Anchor ed., p. 14) Since this is true we can be sure the true significance of Big Bone will never be lost.
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Big Bone, Kentucky
2008
Falling Through Space
AQQ
"The work of a writer is to create order out of chaos. Always, the chaos keeps slipping back in. Underneath the created order the fantastic diversity and madness of life goes on, expanding and changing and insisting upon itself. Still, each piece contains the whole. Tell one story truly and with clarity and you have done all anyone is required to do."
Falling Through Space: The Journals of Ellen Gilchrist (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), p. 128.
On the Writing of History by NeltitÃca
AQQ
"Young lord and lady students, this illustrates what I have often told you before now. Be skeptical of the many versions of the world's history you are likely to hear, for some are as full of impossible invention as they are of vanity. What is more, I have never met a historian — I have never met any sort of professional scholar who could put into his work the slightest trace of humour or ribaldry or jollity. I have never met one who did not consider his particular subject the most momentous and weighty of all studies. Now, I concede the importance of scholarly works — but need importance always wear the long face of stern solemnity? Historians may be serious men, and history may sometimes be so somber that it saddens. But it is people who make the history, and they often play pranks or cut capers while they are doing it."
Cited in Gary Jennings, Aztec, p. 106.
This is an Archival Quality Quotation. (Lighten up a little!)
"Young lord and lady students, this illustrates what I have often told you before now. Be skeptical of the many versions of the world's history you are likely to hear, for some are as full of impossible invention as they are of vanity. What is more, I have never met a historian — I have never met any sort of professional scholar who could put into his work the slightest trace of humour or ribaldry or jollity. I have never met one who did not consider his particular subject the most momentous and weighty of all studies. Now, I concede the importance of scholarly works — but need importance always wear the long face of stern solemnity? Historians may be serious men, and history may sometimes be so somber that it saddens. But it is people who make the history, and they often play pranks or cut capers while they are doing it."
Cited in Gary Jennings, Aztec, p. 106.
This is an Archival Quality Quotation. (Lighten up a little!)
Lowell On Biography
"The modern biographer has become so indiscriminate, so unconscious of the relative importance of a single life to the Universe, so careless of the just limits whether of human interest or endurance, so communistic in assuming that all men are entitled to an equal share of what little time there is left in the world, that many a worthy, whom a paragraph from the right pen might have immmortalized, is suffocated in the trackless swamps of two octavos. Meditating over these grievances with the near prospect of a biography to write, I am inclined to apply what was said of States to men also, and call him happiest who has left fewest materials for history."
James Russell Lowell, "Walton", in Latest Literary Essays and Addresses
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892), p. 58.
Research in History: Importance of the Task
Historical research is tempting. As one thing leads to another, and each thing as interesting as the last, or more so, there is a temptation to run amok finding out a little about everything. There is also the desire to become a specialist, and to find out everything there is to know about a single subject. And this is the peculiar temptation of modern scholarship. An example is the noted scholar, Ignác Goldziher, better known to students of Oriental history as the "Geniza mouse", from the vast amount of time he spent among those interesting discards of the past. This is well for such a scholar, but is it the best way to introduce history to the young mind?"Too often, the work of research still wanders aimlessly with no rational decision about where it is to be applied."
Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1953), p. 86.
Tolkien speaks of students (encouraged by their professors), who run about "after the manner of research-mice running off with little bits nibbled out of unexplored sacks to build up a little thesis." These people, he says, get the degrees. The idea is to promote original research and use of sources, but it can lead to a false sense of confidence and a feeling of having exhausted the fountain of history. It can destroy the ability of students to see the big picture, and to regard history as an academic exercise, rather than the fount of the present. In compiling everything found on one subject there is a tendency to ignore the significance of the material, that is what it means in a broader context. The student is content to order and recite his findings without questioning them. He has no plan other than to present the material, and get the degree.
Is research mere compilation, and can research wander aimlessly and still be considered research? This needs to be considered.
The steps in research should be directed towards solving the problem or problems which arise from material in context. The researcher, like every other worker, should have a plan. (Napoleon, the master of strategy, once remarked that there is nothing so rare as a plan.) The terms of a question also imply the answer. False problems, usually set by a teacher, might include such open ended questions as: research the War of 1812. This means the student goes along thinking everything he finds mentioning this war is equally important. In fact, all "facts" are not equally important. The historian must always choose. He chooses, as Collingwood remarks, from an infinite welter of past events, and he must do so based on his own judgments of value. If everything is of equal value then the question of what a general ate for breakfast the morning of the battle is as important as the decisions he made, and the orders he sent. No one thinks this to be true. Our novelists do not detail every step the hero takes as he crosses the desert; our historians may detail what a general is said to have eaten for breakfast if his death before or after the battle is due to poisoning, and so on, especially if it led to some significant historical condensation of incident. Since we must choose what to concentrate on, we must have a criteria by which to choose what is important in our story, and if we are to write history it must be an historical criteria.
Information is not something that simply exists, nor does history, which is a highly structured kind of information about the past. At the root of the word "information" is the Latin forma — informare means to "shape, form an idea of something, or to describe." Information without interpretation does not exist. Information is a kind of perception, as well as an articulation of that perception. No one simply writes the history of an area or event; he writes his history, that is his perception of that event and its significance. Whether the work produced is good history or not depends for the most part what kind of person he (or she) is, and how well they know their business. The criteria of success can only be judged in relation to the task that person has set to accomplish.
A task (and the historian's work, if it is to be of value, is always a task), is objective, that is, it involves judgments of value; but it is never merely objective, it also involves subjective, or personal evaluation. The philosophy of the historian (as of all other knowledge workers) will determine what he can know: this is particularly the case in terms of his conclusions, for that conclusion is the result of decisions concerning what he thinks important and unimportant in the "infinite welter" of the past. To seriously ask a question about the past means that already the researcher has assigned it some importance. Knowing his business means asking the right questions, in the right order. All knowledge exists in relation to a question, but what gives the question value, or makes it important, is the task. This is why knowledge acquisition, and teaching (including writing or speaking for an audience), is a co-ordinate part of the research experience. There is no task where there is no call to make use of the findings. The task, which means the work of solving the problem (that is getting the questions in the right order, and answering them based on the evidence one has uncovered), goes on in the researchers head, as we say. It is not solved in the laboratory or library (however helpful these may be). Thoughts do not happen in people's heads, and you do not even have a thought until it can expressed in some kind of language, for thought and language, which means speaking or writing, always go together.
The historian who is forever "researching" but never producing anything (and I do not mean formal publication, but also teaching, or passing his knowledge along to others in some significant way), is merely entertaining himself with trinkets from the past. The sign of this is that every minor detail appears to such people to be equally significant and interesting. At this rate no problem can ever be solved; in fact the first criteria of research is missing, the question, and such a one can only go on reading and collecting trifles.
This is an Archival Quality Communication 15 Mar 2008
Origin of Nations: The Importance of History
AQQ
"Nations do not shake off their origins, they only learn to see them in different ways."
J. M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Oxford, 1993), p. 519.
Comment on this Archival Quality Quotation:
By saying that we learn to see our origins in different ways it might be assumed that means to whitewash the past and see our origins in terms flattering to ourselves. This has been often done. Apparently the Aztec historians did this, though the historians of the nations around them were well aware that this was propaganda, and that the Aztecs though the dominant group had a highly unflattering origin compared with the others. Other groups have done the same, but self-delusion often leads to destruction, and this has a tendency to bring out the truth. The past is much harder to hide than most people think. Virtually no one now believes the Nazi version of the past. I think what is really meant here is that as we learn more about our past we gain a deeper understanding of who we are and how we got to this point; as we gain more understanding we are able to see more in the past, and this leads to more self-knowledge: the more you know the more you can learn. As Collingwood once said: "A people, like a single individual, is what its past has made it."
Cause in History
AQQ
"The cause of an event in history is its intrinsic relation to other events in history, and the causal nexus is not external to them but lies in their very nature."
R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis (1924)
Comment on the Archival Quality Quotation:
There is no "cause and effect" in history, if that means that one thing causes a chain of events. People think of cause and effect in terms of hitting a pool ball, which hitting another, is the cause of the movement on the table. In fact the table, the position of the rest of the balls, the skill of the player, and what is going on in his head, is as much a part of the causal nexus as the movement of the cue ball. In history there is no single cause for any event; people react the way they do to stimuli of various sorts in one way because of the situation they are in, or think they are in, and might have reacted very differently in another situation.
How Pioneers Felt about Trees
Conrad Richter's The Trees is a beautiful book of pioneer times. The heroine, Sayward, fears the forest, and the trees she hates dominate the book in a negative way. As Richter's series progresses the pioneers begin to make headway in clearing the forest. The second volume is The Fields. But in the last volume, The Town, there comes a point at which the last tree in the town in which Sayward now lives — it has grown up around her — is destroyed in a storm. Then at last she finds her feelings about trees are different, and she, and her family, are surprised at the change. With the destruction of the old tree she at last begins to plant some trees; she realizes that they are not the malevolent beings she has always imagined, but in talking to herself of her feelings she gives us a good idea of how many of the people of that early time looked at trees, a feeling difficult for most of us to understand today:
"It couldn't be that old tree lying on the ground that bothered her, she told herself. Why, all her life she had hugged herself to see a tree come down. It meant you could see the sun and stars a little better. A mite more light and air could come in. A few more stalks of corn could grow and give meal to hungry young mouths. Why, back in the woods, she and every other settler woman hated the trees like poison. They were your mortal enemy. All your life you had to fight them, chop, split, nigger them off till nothing was left. And then their wild sprouts kept coming up to plague you. Even now long after the trees were gone, the big butts still lived on in your joints. Heavy lifting and rolling had thickened them till you sometimes felt like an old tree walking."
Conrad Richter, The Town, Cap. 23; in the Trilogy The Awakening Land, (1989), p. 520.
This is an Archival Quality Communication 4 Mar 2008
The Miller’s Pottle: Taking Toll in Milling
I remember reading an interesting book in High School John Goffe’s Mill, by George Woodbury (New York: Norton, 1948). I turned it up from the bottom of my collection to see what it had to say about how the miller was paid:
“Taking toll has been the custom of gristmillers since the beginning. A certain measure of grain is brought to the mill to be ground. The miller grinds it to flour and retains a percentage (the toll) for his service. The toll, sometimes called the ‘pottle,’ varied between a quarter and a fifth of the grist. In this connection there is insight into the ethics of country milling in the instruction of one miller to his son: ‘Never take toll from a widow’s grist, or from a man bringing grain on his back.’ ” (pp. 238-239)
Woodbury still had the original Mill Books back to 1754. He gives an interesting account of how the books were balanced (pages 237-238): The miller would grind for someone, say the blacksmith, who would shoe his horse later (2½ shillings), and each transaction was recorded. The balance would then go back and forth between the two, each being ahead at different times; whenever the accounts happened to balance a line would be marked through the accounts, and a new one begun. There was one account in his books that ran for twenty-two years before it was eventually settled, and under the scratched out list are the words: “This acct. settled from the beginning of Time til now. J. Goffe. I. Orr.” Woodbury remarks that credit was liberal; everyone knew everyone else, and where they lived; and no one was ever too poor to pay eventually in either goods or work.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here is an account from an editress telling of her first experience with a customer, and how Woodbury got the story of the mill published in the Atlantic Monthly. (Note the prejudice against men with beards.)
“My instructions were very simple: one, get rid of them as quickly and as civilly as possible; two, never let a poet read aloud; and three, if it's a man with a beard, throw him out. So of course, my first customer was a man with a beard. It was a very neat beard of good quality and quite becoming. Everything about him was unmistakably "Harvard junior faculty." As a Radcliffe graduate, I saw Harvard as taking precedence over that beard. So I invited him in, gave him a chair, asked what he had in mind. Sure enough he began by saying,"I must confess, I am ex-Harvard faculty." He'd rehabilitated an old mill which was thought to have been founded by John Goff, one of the two regicides who condemned Charles I to death. The British ultimately chased both of them all around New England and never caught them. He was gratified that I knew who John Goff was. John Goff's mill was now in order and turning out cornmeal, and he wondered if perhaps The Atlantic would be interested in hearing about it. Struck me that we certainly would be. So I told him to send in the manuscript, and off he went. Then I realized that the first thing I had done at The Atlantic was disobey all the rules.”
She also read and liked The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, by one of our best Kentucky writers, and interviewed Hemingway (a man with a beard) — see what comes of avoiding prejudice and breaking the rules?
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/08/plainterview.htm
This is an Archival Quality Communication
25 Feb 2008
“Taking toll has been the custom of gristmillers since the beginning. A certain measure of grain is brought to the mill to be ground. The miller grinds it to flour and retains a percentage (the toll) for his service. The toll, sometimes called the ‘pottle,’ varied between a quarter and a fifth of the grist. In this connection there is insight into the ethics of country milling in the instruction of one miller to his son: ‘Never take toll from a widow’s grist, or from a man bringing grain on his back.’ ” (pp. 238-239)
Woodbury still had the original Mill Books back to 1754. He gives an interesting account of how the books were balanced (pages 237-238): The miller would grind for someone, say the blacksmith, who would shoe his horse later (2½ shillings), and each transaction was recorded. The balance would then go back and forth between the two, each being ahead at different times; whenever the accounts happened to balance a line would be marked through the accounts, and a new one begun. There was one account in his books that ran for twenty-two years before it was eventually settled, and under the scratched out list are the words: “This acct. settled from the beginning of Time til now. J. Goffe. I. Orr.” Woodbury remarks that credit was liberal; everyone knew everyone else, and where they lived; and no one was ever too poor to pay eventually in either goods or work.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here is an account from an editress telling of her first experience with a customer, and how Woodbury got the story of the mill published in the Atlantic Monthly. (Note the prejudice against men with beards.)
“My instructions were very simple: one, get rid of them as quickly and as civilly as possible; two, never let a poet read aloud; and three, if it's a man with a beard, throw him out. So of course, my first customer was a man with a beard. It was a very neat beard of good quality and quite becoming. Everything about him was unmistakably "Harvard junior faculty." As a Radcliffe graduate, I saw Harvard as taking precedence over that beard. So I invited him in, gave him a chair, asked what he had in mind. Sure enough he began by saying,"I must confess, I am ex-Harvard faculty." He'd rehabilitated an old mill which was thought to have been founded by John Goff, one of the two regicides who condemned Charles I to death. The British ultimately chased both of them all around New England and never caught them. He was gratified that I knew who John Goff was. John Goff's mill was now in order and turning out cornmeal, and he wondered if perhaps The Atlantic would be interested in hearing about it. Struck me that we certainly would be. So I told him to send in the manuscript, and off he went. Then I realized that the first thing I had done at The Atlantic was disobey all the rules.”
She also read and liked The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, by one of our best Kentucky writers, and interviewed Hemingway (a man with a beard) — see what comes of avoiding prejudice and breaking the rules?
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/08/plainterview.htm
This is an Archival Quality Communication
25 Feb 2008
AQQ: On Contrasts in Human Conditions
In the early era of our country as in the Middle Ages there was less for people to fall back on than there is now:
"There was less relief available for misfortune and for sickness; they came in a more fearful and more painful way. Sickness contrasted more strongly with health. The cutting cold and the dreaded darkness of winter were more concrete evils. Honor and wealth were enjoyed more fervently and greedily because they contrasted still more than now with lamentable poverty."
This is an Archival Quality Quotation from Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages (trans. 1996), p. 1.
This you may read online at: HERFSTTIJ DER MIDDELEEUWEN, 1919
If you prefer English you may read the first translation, which is incomplete and somewhat misleading, and devoid of footnotes and other documentation: The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924)
The new English translation is available from Amazon for under $2.00. If you are interested in history written by a master historian I suggest you get and read this book. Just a few months before his death one of my professors, Dr. Chanan Brichto, a literary master, told me that this is one of the books he would like to re-read; that is an excellent recommendation for any book.
GEOLOGY and DEVELOPMENT of BOONE COUNTY (Kentucky) for OIL AND GAS
[Printed circa 1936]
GEOLOGY OF BOONE COUNTY, KENTUCKY
Geological Boone County is 'an extremely interesting region. In its general psysiographic and geologic relations the county lies in the grand natural division known as the Appalachian Province, all parts of which have had a common history which is recorded in the rocks and surface features.
Big Bone Lick, in the south central portion of the county, was discovered in 1729 by Captain Charles Lemoin de Longeuil. [date incorrect] This is one of the most noted regions in the world for fossil corals. In number of species and specimens this great burial grounds of the inhabitants of the district in a far distant age is perhaps unrivalled throughout the world. Some of the limestone beds are actually old coral reefs, crowded with coral remains.
Other parts of the county, and other stratas are equally rich in the fossils that record the ancient life of the seas which covered the region possibly twenty million years ago.
It will be the purpose of this paper to take advantage of these and other geological conditions such as the great Cincinnati Arch, the west branch of which passed entirely through the county in an approximate north-west south-east direction, in an effort to determine the possibilities of the region for oil and gas. Major geological features, —uplifts, folds, faults, anticlines, and synclines,—are easily traced throughout the county in the creek beds, road cuts, and outcrops.
Big Bone Lick itself is in a syncline. This can be proved by a correlation of wells drilled there to a depth of several hundred feet. In addition these wells have been producing salt water for years, which is in itself an indication of a syncline.
OIL AND GAS POSSIBILITIES IN BOONE COUNTY, KENTUCKY
On the authority of leading petroleum engineers and geologists by far the greater percentage of all known oil and gas fields were discovered through oil and gas seepages of crude oil that will compare favorably with those over existing oil fields throughout the world. Oil seepages are also found in appreciable quantities in water wells throughout the county.
Every known indication in advance of the actual drilling of a test well are present in this county. The following facts will show from a geological standpoint the possibility of the presence of one or more of the largest oil and gas fields in the state.
The salt wells at Big Bone Lick have been mentioned previously. These wells show that there is here one of the largest deposits of salt water in the State of Kentucky. The presence of this water indicates that adjoining it somewhere there is a possibility of a deposit of oil and a great pressure of natural gas. In this connection it is interesting to note that in Isabella, Midland, and Saginaw Counties in Michigan, as well as in various counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas, wells were drilled for salt water, and salt water was produced in the synclines for years before anyone thought to drill for oil and gas on the adjacent anticlines. The presence of salt water is an indication of a syncline, and there is always an excellent chance for oil and gas on an anticline laying next to it. In other words, in practically all known oil and gas fields there is either an adjoining syncline producing salt water, or a salt dome.
The west branch of the Cincinnati Arch, the key structure to all geology passes (as has been mentioned before) through this territory in an approximate north-west south-east direction. This structure has oil and gas field on its flanks throughout fully one-third of its length everywhere else.
From time to time various devices have been brought forth by hopeful inventors, who claim that they will positively locate oil and gas. To date these devices have, without exception, proved to be of no practical value. It is true, there are geophysical methods of prospecting for oil and gas. These methods have been classified as magnetic, gravitation, seismic, and electrical. The proper use of one or more of these methods will locate the position of salt domes or structures, from which findings the geologist can quite definitely locate the position of possible oil and gas bearing structures. It remains for the bit, however, to disclose its actual presence. The necessity of the use of these expensive methods in this district has been eliminated by the very nature of the territory. The presence of the brine wells already drilled, as well as the rock exposures in the creek beds and road cuts, quite definitely locate the structures.
A report of a survey supervised by the Bureau of Mines, Geological Department, Washington, D. C., says of Kentucky that of the total of 25,982,720 acres in the state, 24,648,064 acres are areas favorable for the production of oil and gas. To date the actual producing areas may be estimated at less than 60,000 acres, and you might add that many acres prospected for oil and gas.
It is a definite fact, however, that there is no instrument, and no geologist, that can tell positively the location of oil and gas. The geologist can locate the favorable structure, but the only positive method of determining the presence or absence of oil and gas is a drilled well, with the water properly cased off, drilled to the depth of the probable oil and gas bearing stratas.
Any production of oil in this territory will be found in the "Trenton limestone." "The Trenton limestone" is a driller's term for a formation found in the middle Ordovician system. It has proved itself one of the most prolific sources of oil and gas in the United States. It is probably safe to say that it has as many, if not more wells than any other single formation. It has not thousands, but tens of thousands of wells throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Any attempt to find production below the Trenton would, in all probability, be useless. Below the Trenton lies the St. Peter sandstone, which is also Ordovician. The St. Peter is usually a white sandstone, although at times it may contain more or less limestone. There are geologists who claim that production may be found in the St. Peter. [—3—] Suffice it to say that of the thousand of wells drilled into the St. Peter, little or no production has been found.
At this point it may be of interest to give a brief outline of the formations to be encountered in drilling a well in this territory. Below the soil and surface drift the first rock is of the upper Ordovician system. The first formation encountered in the hills of the county will be the upper part of the Maysville group, the lower part of which will be found on the slopes of the hills, and in the lowlands. The Maysville Group consists for the most part of blue, coarse, calcareous shales, with many rough, thin, limestone layers. The Eden Group consists of bluish gray to black, predominantly soft, fairly fissile, aluminous and calcareous shales, with numerous thin, even limestone layers. The Cynthiana Group lies below the Eden Group. The Cynthiana consists of a heavy, more or less irregular limestone, with occasional thin shale layers. It will probably be from thirty to fifty feet thick in this territory. It should be noted that inexperienced drillers frequently mistake the Cynthiana for the Trenton. Care should be taken to avoid this error. Below the Cynthiana lies the Trenton limestone of the middle Ordovician. The Trenton is a brown limestone, shade characteristic and easily distinguished, varying from brown to buff, with occasional grays.
Production in existing Trenton fields is usually found within the upper fifty feet, although there are occasions of production at several hundred feet in the Trenton. For this reason any test well should be drilled at least several hundred feet in the Trenton. The top of the Trenton should be reached at an average depth of about five hundred feet. It will be considerably deeper in the higher elevations, and somewhat shallower in the lowlands, all depending on the structure and surface elevation.
In prospecting for oil and gas in a news territory the usual quota of skeptics and doubters are found. The people with the least theoretical and practical knowledge are the first to condemn a territory. It is well to remember when prospecting for oil and gas that all future fields will be found according to the same theories, and in territory as likely looking as in existing fields. Practically all existing fields are condemned as worthless until the oil and gas were found.
The automobile, with its consequent great demand for oil and gasoline, has been developed within the past thirty years. With the growth of the automobile industry, the oil industry has had a parallel growth. It is only within the past thirty years that the oil and gas yield of any consequence were discovered.
Contrary to popular opinion the first oil well in the country was not the Drake well at Titusville, Pennsylvania. The first oil well was drilled in 1826 in Cumberland County, Kentucky. The driller was looking for salt water, and the discovery of oil was entirely accidental. There was no market for the oil at that time, and it was allowed to flow into the river.
It remained for the railroad conductor, Colonel Drake, to drill the first commercial well at Titusville in 1859. The custom of knocking started early. The well was known as "Drake's folly."
In every state and county where oil has been discovered, however, there were men who had the courage, confidence, and vision, to do the pioneer development. The major oil companies rarely, if ever, do this work. It is only after it has been done that they come in with their hundreds of drilling outfits and their pipe lines and fully develop the territory, with mutual benefit to themselves, and every inhabitant of the district.
There are forty-one counties producing oil and gas in the State of Kentucky. There is every possibility that Boone County can be the next on that list. This will happen, however, when the citizens of the county get behind development and lease their land to the man who has done all the pioneer work.
Almost three quarters of the county has as its northern and western boundary the Ohio River, one of the finest navigable streams in the country. Along its banks could be constructed safe landings and towns to care for the commerce and business of the county. Such enterprises would come with the discovery of oil and gas.
There is enough natural gas in the ground in Boone County to supply cheap fuel to glass factories and steel plants that always follow cheap fuel and transportation, as well as all the cities of northern Kentucky and Southern Ohio.
Any such resources will not be developed by the people of other districts. They are too busy minding their own business. It will remain for the business and professional men of Boone County to support such development with their encouragement and moral support.
The wealth brought into a district by the discovery of oil and gas is almost unbelievable. In Lee County, Kentucky in 1918, there was one hundred and twenty-five million dollars in oil produced and sold through the pipe lines, and in 1919 ninety million dollars worth. These wells are still producing. Farmers and landowners with even small farms were paid as high as two and three thousand dollars a day by the pipeline companies. These figures can be verified. They are a matter of state record and report, and may be found in any public library in the State of Kentucky.
It should be noted that there had never been a well drilled on any of the favorable structures in Boone County until the writer drilled his Number One well on the Dr. F. D. Crigler farm.
Since the writing of the above article the writer made a complete geological survey; moved in equipment and brought in six large gas wells. The first well was drilled in December 24, 1935 on the Dr. F. D. Crigler farm, two miles southeast of Hebron. This well, was, according to gas engineers the largest gas well ever brought in east of Texas. There has been five large gas wells brought in by the same parties since then. One on the Hafer Heirs farm just east of Hebron; one on the B. H. Tanner farm three miles southeast of Hebron; one on the Chester Tanner farm just east of Limaburg, a gas well has been brought in which took four days to get under control. This was only accomplished then, by sending to Butler, Pa., for equipment as all equipment the operators were able to acquire in this territory had been used and failed to control the enormous flow of gas. A large well has also been found on the Ogden farm one half mile north of Limaburg. A well drilling on the H. L. McGlasson farm two miles north of Hebron struck a good gas sand and flow of gas Saturday, July 11, 1936.
There are now three wells drilling and one large 27-Star Machine being moved on location. The wells so far completed are all large natural gas wells, each estimated to produce, when connected to the pipe lines over two million cubic feet of gas per day.
The Columbia Gas & Electric Company will take all the gas produced as soon as pipe line connections can be made.
The drilling operations are carried on night and day, therefore, quite a number of men are employed in the various operations around the leases and drilling equipment, such as hauling coal, water, laying pipe lines and other work. It is by far the largest industry in Boone County outside of farming. Visitors are invited at all times to see the drilling wells while in operation.
Wells are now drilling one on the Griffith farm just east of Limaburg, one on the J. P. Tanner farm at Florence, one on the H. L. McGlasson farm 2 miles north of Hebron, Ky. Equipment is being moved onto the J. D. Cloud farm two miles east of Hebron. This is a very deep well outfit shipped here from Oklahoma at great expense. This well will be drilled deeper than any well ever drilled in Northern Kentucky or Southern Ohio.
The above wells were all located and drilled by the writer of the above article, since Sept. 15, 1935. We do not want your money, but we do want your good will and cooperation. We have nothing to sell but the gas and oil that will come out of the earth in Boone County, Kentucky.
Printed by BOONE COUNTY RECORDER
Furniture for the Boone County Court House
In April of 1821 Churchill Gaines was asked to take charge of the Public Buildings of the Boone County, KY, under an act of the Kentucky Legislature. He was asked to fix the spouts in the Courthouse to prevent water from injuring the walls. He was also to have seats made and put on the lobby floor of the Courthouse. [CO/ 2 Apr 1821 = B-181] In October of that year he was paid $6.00 for the benches, $5.00 for a bookcase, $1.00 for something unreadable, possible stovepipes, and $2.00 for cleaning the building. He was paid $6.00 for keeping the stray pen, and taking care of the public buildings.
In October of that year Moses Scott, long-time county surveyor, and Justice of the Peace, was to purchase two stoves "upon the Best Terms" and have them fixed in the Courthouse. [CO/ 1 Oct 1821 = B-206]
This is the only furniture we can document up to that year. There were no doubt seats or benches for the assembled Justices, and a seat with a clerk's table — possibly the one now in the old county clerks building. There may have been a few more odds and ends there, but probably not much. The bookcase was certainly for the county records and for the statues of the Commonwealth, with which every Justice was supposed to be familiar.
Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus. - Cicero
This sentence requires a corollary:
Never less alone than when alone.
Never more active than when doing nothing.
An AQQ
See: Etidorhpa Chapter 2: "Never less alone than when alone."
Never less alone than when alone.
Never more active than when doing nothing.
An AQQ
See: Etidorhpa Chapter 2: "Never less alone than when alone."
Kentucky Agriculture: Boone County
Settlement in Kentucky is intimately related to agriculture. The earliest explorers were interested in hunting, but those that followed were invariably looking for lands to cultivate. The pioneers did not like trees, at least not large forests full of trees, and they set to work to clear the countryside as soon as possible. The clearing of the trees was all done with the ax, and with fire, at an enormous cost in labour. Trees were something to be gotten rid of. They were unproductive, and could not be used for crops until the clearing was done. In addition they might hide lurking Indians. Though settlers may have contemplated the beauty of these primeval forests they did not let this hinder them in their prime objective: They loved to see large expanses of cleared land in crops and pastures.
Along the banks of the Ohio River, in the alluvial flood plains, lies the largest amount of prime cropland in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The only area that can match it is the inner Bluegrass. Boone County, with more than forty miles of river shoreline, one of the longest in the state, offered a quantity of such land as a prime attraction to early settlers. Even today these river bottom lands have the highest yields of corn per acre any where in the nation. It was not long before all of these lands were claimed. The lands at Big Bone, though claimed early, include very few acres of this prime land; most of what there is lies in narrower strips along Big Bone and Mud Lick creeks.
Aside from the flood plains Boone County falls into two distinct sections based on soil type: These sections are the eastern and western, and this has had a huge impact on settlement and agriculture in Boone County, for the best lands (excepting the river areas) were furthest from the river, which meant difficulties in transportation. Picture a wavy line running roughly down the center of the county, with a single band running along the Ohio River: this band is considered to be 75 to 100 percent prime. To the east the land is considered to be between 25 to 50 percent prime, which means that the land is considered suitable for cultivation. To the west the land is considered less than 25 percent prime, which means that it is considered suitable for pasture for stock, and occasional cultivation, and it is in this area that most of the land at Big Bone falls. The soil is mostly composed of silty clay, and the steepness of most of the land means that the top soil is but a shallow layer in most places. Most of it is marginal agricultural land. Its best use would be as woodland and pasture, with some intermixture of crops on the most suitable land.
This is an Archival Quality Communication
Life in a Log Cabin
De Tocqueville writes of the inside of a typical cabin:
"We entered the log house: the inside is quite unlike that of the cottages of the peasantry of Europe; it contains more that is superfluous, less that is necessary. A single window with a muslin curtain, on a hearth of trodden clay an immense fire, which lights the whole interior; above the hearth, a good rifle, a deerskin, and plumes of eagles' feathers; on the right hand of the chimney, a map of the United States, raised and shaken by the wind through the crannies in the wall; near the map, on a shelf formed of a roughly hewn plank, a few volumes of books: a Bible, the first six books of Milton, and two of Shakespeare's plays; along the wall, trunks instead of closets; in the center of the room, a rude table, with legs of green wood with the bark still on them, looking as if they grew out of the ground on which they stood; but on this table a teapot of British china, silver spoons, cracked teacups, and some newspapers."
My Visit to Old Boone (1903)
The following article was published in the Boone County Recorder 14 Jan 1903 page 1 col. 5. It was written by Daisy Belle Rouse of Milan, Indiana, and tells of her recent visit to Burlington, our county seat. It gives a glimpse of the way our county was viewed at that time by at least one visitor who lived in the north:
From Christmas until New Year’s, I spent a delightful vacation in old Boone and to say that I had an enjoyable time, would be expressing it too mildly. For of all the places I have ever been, I have never yet found more fun or hospitality than in Boone. I fully agree with the “editor of the Union Blade,” that no where on earth can these delightful peculiarities be found except in “Old Kentucky.” No State can excel her in sociability and the art of entertaining. While over there I was honored by invitations to several turkey dinners, which to me, were very enjoyable and unique.
On Sunday I spent the day at Mr. Will Clore’s; Monday, at Mr. Lineas Kelly’s, and on Wednesday at Mr. Chas. Kelly’s. Three more delightful day, I never spent, and never did I find more entertaining hosts and hostesses.
One amusing feature, to me, was “horse back riding” and as it was something new to me, I enjoyed it very much and saw some rugged yet beautiful country. The old Parson’s mill had an attraction for me, it brought to my mind these lines,
I also had the pleasure of calling on the Misses Cook, and meeting many of Boone’s young people, that every one should feel honored to become acquainted with. As far as my visit at Mr. Doc Clore’s is concerned, Well, there is no need of me giving an account of that, for every one knows “Cousin Doc” and his family to be one of the best and most entertaining in the county.
The 2d of Jan. I returned home. My ride on the “Swan” was enjoyable and as the hills of “Old Kentucky” faded into a dim outline, against which the mist above the water nestled in shadowy folds, I took one last look at them, sincerely hoping that before many months I may again visit that enchanting region, called “Old Boone.”
Daisy Belle Rouse, Milan, Ind.
From Christmas until New Year’s, I spent a delightful vacation in old Boone and to say that I had an enjoyable time, would be expressing it too mildly. For of all the places I have ever been, I have never yet found more fun or hospitality than in Boone. I fully agree with the “editor of the Union Blade,” that no where on earth can these delightful peculiarities be found except in “Old Kentucky.” No State can excel her in sociability and the art of entertaining. While over there I was honored by invitations to several turkey dinners, which to me, were very enjoyable and unique.
On Sunday I spent the day at Mr. Will Clore’s; Monday, at Mr. Lineas Kelly’s, and on Wednesday at Mr. Chas. Kelly’s. Three more delightful day, I never spent, and never did I find more entertaining hosts and hostesses.
One amusing feature, to me, was “horse back riding” and as it was something new to me, I enjoyed it very much and saw some rugged yet beautiful country. The old Parson’s mill had an attraction for me, it brought to my mind these lines,
Then after sampling some of Mr. Parson’s “chewing gum” and viewing his neat little store, our gay little party turned our horses homeward. I especially, feel amply repaid for my ride over the hills.“Nestled down in the snowy hillsIt stood in silence dark and grim,A structure in ruins and sad decay,That frailer grew as the years grew dim.”
I also had the pleasure of calling on the Misses Cook, and meeting many of Boone’s young people, that every one should feel honored to become acquainted with. As far as my visit at Mr. Doc Clore’s is concerned, Well, there is no need of me giving an account of that, for every one knows “Cousin Doc” and his family to be one of the best and most entertaining in the county.
The 2d of Jan. I returned home. My ride on the “Swan” was enjoyable and as the hills of “Old Kentucky” faded into a dim outline, against which the mist above the water nestled in shadowy folds, I took one last look at them, sincerely hoping that before many months I may again visit that enchanting region, called “Old Boone.”
Daisy Belle Rouse, Milan, Ind.
Copied 12 December 2007
I cannot verify the source of the poetry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)