John Frost, Border Wars of the West Comprising the Frontier Wars of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee and Wisconsin, and Embracing Individual Adventures Among the Indians, and Exploits of Boone, Kenton ... and Other Border Heroes of the West (1853).
Early Border Wars
John Frost, Border Wars of the West Comprising the Frontier Wars of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee and Wisconsin, and Embracing Individual Adventures Among the Indians, and Exploits of Boone, Kenton ... and Other Border Heroes of the West (1853).
The Essence of Elections
AQQ
"Speculation is just one aspect of a market economy but it is the essence of elections."
"Speculation is just one aspect of a market economy but it is the essence of elections."
Thomas Sowell, Basis Economics, (2007), p. 420.
Getting Down to Reality — More Than Words
AQQ
"We are a culture consumed by verbalism, and the effect of our words is to place a screen between us and things."
"We are a culture consumed by verbalism, and the effect of our words is to place a screen between us and things."
William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique (Anchor, 1979), p. 370.
The Creation of Public Policy
AQQ
"If policy created by public bodies is not public policy, I don't know what is."
"If policy created by public bodies is not public policy, I don't know what is."
Socrates Ruggles, Esq.
Tiqun 'Olam — Improving the World One Job at a Time
AQQ
"I think they are in trouble; they just don't know it yet. The Bible says, Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. (Ecc. 7.8) So we'll just have to wait and see how this thing turns out before we say what happened."— Socrates Ruggles
AQC: The Significance of Mary Ingles’s Life
The Significance of Mary’s Life
Against what background can we view the life of Mary Ingles. What is the significance of this single event that people should continue to discuss it after so long a time? I think it can best be understood in the light of the great intellectual tradition that culminated in what is often referred to as the Judeo-Christian, or Biblical wisdom literature.
The significance of a single life in the worldview of the wisdom tradition can best be grasped, according to Prof. James Kugel of Harvard University, by comparing that life to the canvas of an artist. Each of us gets to paint a canvas; just one, then it is ours forever. Not everyone will produce a masterpiece. It is difficult to evaluate a painting — or a life — while it is in progress. What was potential becomes actual as the process continues, but many other possibilities are ruled out as the canvas fills up. At last it is filled up completely. It is only then that we can step back and see its significance: The past is present there on the canvas.
It is not the subject that counts. All those brushstrokes, and everyday events, were creating a stark reality, not shades of gray, but in black and white, standing aloof from the variegated intricacies of life — for neither money, ability, position, or intelligence, is what counts in the end. What counts in this view of the world is what Prof. Kugel calls “the sharp contrast of moral opposites and all-or-nothing choices”. With one bold stroke Mary marked her canvas forever. This event eclipses everything else in her life. It is the main thing we see when we see her canvas. It is not the journey itself that stands out; it is the spirit in which she did it. Her travelling companion made the same journey, but what tends to stand out there, for most viewers, is the “moral opposite” — even her name has been forgotten. We must not only do a thing, we must do it surpassingly well against all odds to produce a masterpiece.
The Song of Moses (Psalm 90), as Prof. Kugel says, stands as a kind of culmination of the wisdom tradition: The Psalmist reminds us that if, by reason of strength, we reach the age of fourscore years, still we are soon cut off and fly away: so teach us to number our days, and apply our hearts unto wisdom. Then the song continues, showing us the significance and value of life: Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children, and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. It is this stark beauty that rests upon the life of such as Mary Ingles. The “all-or-nothing” choice was Mary’s, but both Mary and her son, John, attributed the accomplishment of it to the work of divine Providence. Her inspiring deed has enriched us by example, becoming part of the texture of our life and history. It teaches us to value the beauty possible in each individual life, for some of her beauty has come to rest upon us.
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University: Think Tank & Public Policy Center
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
The Idea of World History: Still Misunderstood
An Archival Quality Quotation:
William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in Technological Civilization (Anchor Books, 1979), p. 196.
The idea of world history was born of the European mind at a time when Europe itself was spreading its power to the four quarters of the globe. We, who are so used to it, forget how novel this idea was and how late in its appearance. The voyages of the fifteenth century, and the continued explorations and settlements that followed, opened the whole world to European civilization. Hitherto history had been local or tribal, limited to particular peoples or empires. By the eighteenth century the age of the enlightenment could envision all humanity as the subject of one history and the whole earth as the theater of a single drama.
It was only natural then that Europe, at this moment of expansive power and in the self-assurance of its mission, should create the idea of universal history after its own image and see itself as the center of the historical process, natural too that it should read the meaning of this history in the terms on which it prided its own civilization.
William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in Technological Civilization (Anchor Books, 1979), p. 196.
AQC: Tax Equalization in Old Kentucky
Monday, 24 September 2007
Mr. Richard Crisler
North Bend Bottoms
Boone County, Kentucky
Dear Sir,
It was nice to talk to you today about Boone County History. I think there is quite a lot, especially about the northern part of Boone County that I could learn from you. I look forward to seeing your completed book, or books. Do you have any papers or other material you have compiled that might be instructive for someone such as myself to review? If so I would look them over right away and return the material to you as soon as possible.
In regard to your question about tax equalization, I will be as informative as possible, but I do not (yet) know how the equalizations function, or why it seems to fall on some taxpayers, and not others. There must be some formula for how the equalizations function, or some policy as to whom it applies, and when. That will have to wait for an answer at a later time.
Equalization refers to the process of achieving a uniform rate of valuation, and hence an equitable burden of taxes. This may be between individual taxpayers within a district; or it may refer to a means of equalizing them between districts, which would be counties in Kentucky. The aim is that similar property would be taxed at like values uniformly across the state, not according to local considerations. (Black’s Law Dictionary, s.v. “Equalization”) This applied to counties, and not to individual taxpayers within the county, in Kentucky. This can be shown from the fact that the Commonwealth received the property taxes; the county laid a levy on individuals. The counties today receive part of the property taxes, but even now equalization is between counties. The current law states: “The Department of Revenue shall equalize each year the Assessments of the property among the counties. . . . When the property of any county, or any class of property in any county, is not assessed at its fair cash value, such assessment shall be increased or decreased to its fair cash value by fixing the percentage of increase or decrease necessary to effect the equalization.” (K.R.S. 133.150)
In the early days the land was divided into first, second, and third rate lands. This seems to have been changed by the equalization law. At least in the 1840 tax book, at which I am looking right now, the lands are not so rated, nor in any later book which I have examined. This is probably because the classification of the various rates was so subjective that many first and second class lands hid under the third class rate. The equalization was to establish the true value of the land instead of classifying all the classes at the same rate.
There are some interesting remarks made on this taxation in the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1842.
"Kentucky. — This State had a revenue from taxation, in 1839, of $250,000 on an assessment of ten cents on $100; by a law of the last session this tax has been increased five cents on the $100. The State has also a revenue of over $40,000 derived from taxes on law process, deeds, seals, &c." (p. 105)
The Commercial Review of the South and West, for 1850, edited by J. D. B. de Bow in New Orleans, lists all the revenue in the state for 1845 and 1846. He summarizes this by saying:
"The whole value of the above articles, including the effects of the equalization, about 27 millions, was, in 1846, estimated in taxation at $242,388,967. The whole revenue from taxes, $1383,283. The average value of land in the State was estimated at $6.31 per acre." (p. 198)
Prof. Arthur Yager in a paper entitled “State and Local Taxation in Kentucky”, (1884) writes:
"In Kentucky about one-third of all the taxes in the state are levied and collected by the state government. In many rural districts the only kinds of property taxation known are those imposed by the state authorities. The unit of administration for financial, as well as other purposes, is the county." (The Johns Hopkins University Circulars. Baltimore, 1884, p. 130) He goes on to say (in 1884):
“There is no state board of equalization, and the most glaring inequalities between different counties and classes of property naturally result.” (ibid.) And he adds that the same difficulty is found all over the South. There was later instituted a Board of Equalization, but it was not very efficient. In the Report of the Special Tax Commission of the State of Kentucky, 1912-14 (Frankfort, 1914) it is stated in regard to the functioning of this body under the heading “Equalization between counties”:
The State Board of Equalization then proceeds to “equalize” between counties by adding to or deducting from the value of the property as accessed such percentages as will make the value conform to the true value in money. Whenever they intend to raise a county, they send notice of that intention to the county, and the County Court may send representatives to object. The same procedure is followed in case of a proposed reduction. But this is obviously unimportant. (p. 18)
This is all very interesting, and may serve to show what equalization is, but it does not show how it works. We may imagine just what political machinations come into play when a County Court is notified that its valuation is being raised. We can also consider that valuations may be raised for political motives, or to put pressure on certain politicians. In short, we can imagine that the process of equalization may have been worse than the original evil of inequalities between the counties. Kentucky, and most of the rest of the South, with a long tradition of “pauper counties” (the term is actually very old), have never had a very fair system, if that means everyone paying the same rates on the same types of property.
There is a good deal more that can be said on this subject, and I would be interested in any comments you have about the matter. I would be particularly interested in any observations that would serve as evidence for how the equalizations work in practice. I am hoping to find a good description of this somewhere, but actual instances from the tax records are the best way of telling how it worked in practice.
All the best,
James Duvall, M. A.
Local History Research Specialist
History Department
Boone County Public Library
Request for Dispute Resolution to the Director of the Boone County Public Library, Burlington, Kentucky
24 July 2009
Lucinda Brown, Director
Boone County Public Library
Cindy,
I am sending the following notes for a meeting I thought would take place weeks ago. I am disturbed at the direction our project has taken in the last month or so, and I think you should become aware of the problems before it is too late to act in an effective manner. It may take the new director months to figure out what we were supposed to be doing, and what went wrong.
I was under the impression the project (after weeks of semi-secrecy) was being turned over to me to complete, so I began the next afternoon, a Friday (in the two hours I had before I went on the desk for the evening), by adding 99 new pages. I completed some of them, intending add the text to the rest on Monday. Monday I found myself locked out of the project. Bridget said I had changed the structure of the wiki "behind her back", etc. (I pointed out that it would have been senseless to think I was doing anything behind her back, since I knew she would be in Monday morning.) She decided she did not want me to add any pages, as she disapproved of the structure I have been developing for the last two years for the page tags. She said I could edit her pages, but not add any of my own. That I said would cause nothing but trouble, and predicted that if the current direction was continued that whole thing would become a nightmare very soon. I offered to resign from the project, so then she decided that I would only supply "content" (a word to watch), and she would edit everything.
I do not think this is a good resolution to the difficulty, for reasons that should become apparent below, but I thought it was a good tenative solution until we could have a meeting. Time is now slipping away. I tried to cooperate by sending her a great deal of material. I sent her that week 150 items, some things short notes, some long papers (I send you documentation that I supplied these items), as well as additional essays and papers in the period following. There should have been enough material there for at least 500 entries in the wiki, but I have not noticed any appreciable addition since then. I cannot at this point promise you that the Annals of Boone County will ever appear in anything like the form we initially agree on if the current rate and kind of progress continues. I think this is explained sufficiently in the essay I drafted, which appears below. I hope it will be clear that I have thought this over well, and hope that the project can take a new direction.
You can well understand that I do not wish to go head to head with Bridget. Since I am now fully at the mercy of this department I do not wish to aggravate any problems here. However, I think that there will be nothing but problems if I am locked out of the project, when I proposed it, and am supposed to be responsible for its ultimate success. I see now that she proposes to be the editor, but she does not understand how the material fits together. I know how it fits, but I cannot hand someone else the pieces and hope they get things right. It will never do for me to be constantly standing over her shoulder pointing out yet another mistake, or stylistic misjudgment, or . . . anything at all! I am not happy with what is there now; I think it can only get worse; but, I have a proposal for constructive changes that should
make everyone happy. So please consider carefully the following, which I have also attached as a pdf document, so that you may print it, and consider it carefully, if you will.
James Duvall, M. A.
Local History Research Specialist
Annals of Boone County
Boone County Public Library
1786 Burlington Pk.
Burlington, Kentucky 41005
859-342-2665
Note: Attached to this letter was a 14 page essay outlining the importance of the structure of the material, and the problems with the direction it was being taken by Bridget Striker and Jennifer Gregory, who had assumed editorship. This document will be posted else where, and a link established.
James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
The Tide will Turn
AQQ
"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Si judicas, cognosce. — Seneca
AQQ
"I hate dealin' with stupid people, they don't know what they can't do!"
"I hate dealin' with stupid people, they don't know what they can't do!"
Socrates Ruggles
What the Postman Feared
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (Penguin Books, 1986, 2005), p. xix.
AQQ: Great Art Dominates Life
"Minor art is a dream, indulged in because we can dominate it when we cannot dominate real life: great art is the domination of real life itself by our own understanding of it."
R. G. Collingwood, "Jane Austin," (1921) ; rpt. in The Philosophy of Enchantment, (2005), p. 26.
AQQ: What Libraries Do is a Secret!
"What libraries do, and what librarians can do, is the best kept secret in the world. It was probably some taxpayers who burnt the library at Alexandria."
—Socrates Ruggles
—Socrates Ruggles
Feynman: Forced to Consider History
Omni: "What about Cosmology? Dirac's suggestion that the fundamental constants change with time, or the idea that physical law was different at the instant of the Big Bang?"
Feynman: "That would open up a lot of questions. So far, physics has tried to find laws and constants without asking where they came from, but we may be approaching the point where we'll be forced to consider history."
Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Cambridge: Persus/Helix, 1999), p. 199.
A Philosophy of History
AQQ
"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. (1813), cap. lviii.
Thomas Nuttall. On Early Banking in Kentucky. 1818.
Thomas Nuttall, a botanist and zoologist from Great Britain, traveled down the Ohio River in 1818. He writes about the money situation at that time in a Journal entry dated 23 Nov 1818:
"At length I arrived at the large and flourishing town of Louisville, but recently a wilderness. Labour and provision rated here much above the value which they commonly bore in the state and the surrounding country. The markets were very negligently supplied, and at prices little inferior to those of New Orleans. In fact, the vortex of speculation, this commercial gambling, absorbed the solid interests of the western states, and destroyed all mercantile confidence. The whole country was overrun with banks, which neither deserved confidence nor credit. Not a note in Kentucky commanded specie, the capital was altogether fictitious, and ought to have been secured by every species of property possessed by the stockholders. A more ruinous and fraudulent system of exchange was never devised in any Christian country; it is truly a novelty to see a whole community, at least the wealthy part of it, conspiring in a common system of public fraud."
He had his opinions on why the banking scheme was originally put into effect, and he understood the country, as he lived here from 1818 till 1841. He wrote:
"The love of luxury, without the means of obtaining it, has proved the bane of these still rude settlements of agriculturists, naturally poor in money by reason of their remoteness from the emporium of commerce, and their neglect of manufactures. When one heard a farmer demand a price for his produce in Kentucky, equal nearly to that of Philadelphia, we might be certain that he expected payment in depreciated paper."
Thomas Nuttall. Journal of Travels Into the Arkansa Territory, (Philadelphia, 1821)
(Note the Title Page has "Arkansa Territory" without a "W" at the end.)
The Easiest Lifestyle in the World
AQQ
Prof. James T. Lemon writes: "A relatively sloppy landscape was the reflection of the easiest lifestyle in the world. The wastefulness of American society today may well follow from the abundance of the colonial era."
"Agricultural and Society in Early America", Agricultural History Review 35 (1987): 89.
We think of early Americans as being poor. In most of the things that matter, air, land, forest, space, and water, they were surpassingly rich; and they squandered most of it. Talk about mortgaging your grandchildren's future.
An oldtimer once told Clifton Johnson, an early travel writer: "No matter how much land the old-time farmers cleared up they kept a piece of the best woodland for posterity. It was the sentiment of every farmer that this woodland should be saved to draw from to keep up the buildings on the place, and it was sacred to them. Yet as soon as posterity got their hands on it they turned it into money and swept those patches of woodland off the face of the earth as clean as you could sweep with a broom." (Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes, 1911, p. 13.) It appears that it may have been the grandchildren that destroyed the inheritance of the great grandchildren. Still, there is no doubt that the pioneer white settlers were wasteful of natural resources, and passed on the attitude.
Prof. James T. Lemon writes: "A relatively sloppy landscape was the reflection of the easiest lifestyle in the world. The wastefulness of American society today may well follow from the abundance of the colonial era."
"Agricultural and Society in Early America", Agricultural History Review 35 (1987): 89.
We think of early Americans as being poor. In most of the things that matter, air, land, forest, space, and water, they were surpassingly rich; and they squandered most of it. Talk about mortgaging your grandchildren's future.
An oldtimer once told Clifton Johnson, an early travel writer: "No matter how much land the old-time farmers cleared up they kept a piece of the best woodland for posterity. It was the sentiment of every farmer that this woodland should be saved to draw from to keep up the buildings on the place, and it was sacred to them. Yet as soon as posterity got their hands on it they turned it into money and swept those patches of woodland off the face of the earth as clean as you could sweep with a broom." (Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes, 1911, p. 13.) It appears that it may have been the grandchildren that destroyed the inheritance of the great grandchildren. Still, there is no doubt that the pioneer white settlers were wasteful of natural resources, and passed on the attitude.
Indian Captivities
"
"
Samuel Gardner Drake. Indian Captivities, Being a Collection of the Most Remarkable Narratives of Persons Taken Captive by the North American Indians... to which are Added, Notes, Historical, Biographical, &c., 1839
Samuel Gardner Drake. Indian Captivities, Being a Collection of the Most Remarkable Narratives of Persons Taken Captive by the North American Indians... to which are Added, Notes, Historical, Biographical, &c., 1839
Why God created Historians
"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence."
Samuel Butler, Erewhon Revisited
(1901), cap. XIV.
Uncle Tom’s Hogs
"It is a notorious fact that the social qualities of Uncle Sam Cowen's hogs are an annoyance. They are not at all particular about the hour of the day they march into a person's house, not even giving notice of their intention of making a visit."
Boone County Recorder, 7 Oct 1875, p. 3, col. 1.
Boone County Recorder, 7 Oct 1875, p. 3, col. 1.
Beneath the Records
"History, always a palimpsest, is never more so than in its annals of our region, where, beneath the records of our race, are dimly seen those of alien early folk, whose story in its last days is involved with that of the white man, and in its more ancient periods recedes through imperfect records, through legend and myth, until it grows illegible on the parchment of time, lost in the realm of the unknowable."
Frank H. Severance, An Old Frontier of France 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917), Vol. 1, p. 21.
The Training of the Historian
In one sense historians are always self-trained. In some ways people trained in the field may be at a disadvantage, because they may inherit their teacher's prejudices. In other ways they may be more prepared to recognize certain pitfalls. Everyone's special experience prepares them to do certain work that may not be possible to others. Probably the most valuable thing I learnt in my training was what my professors thought about their professors, and how to use various sources. This is similar in some ways to what orchestra conductors learn in school, which is the "traditions" that may be esoteric to the rest of us.
On the other hand they may simply be passing on prejudices that developed long after the composer wrote: A novice may have an inspired moment, and discover the "right" tempo of a classical piece, and the big name conductor may be wrong. The real problem of the autodidact is that they usually spent a huge amount of time learning things that those properly trained got right away. Because they spent so much time learning it they give it a disproportionate value: They may think they have found something of supreme value (which indeed it may be), and not realize that the professionals take it for granted, like a mason does his trowel and hammer — where would we be without them, but still they are tools.
The historian's tools are his skills of critically evaluating and presenting the conclusions he draws from historical evidence. There are many methods he uses, and no historian is equally skilled in all of them. If the historian is to write fact rather than fiction he must rely on what his evidence tells him, after he has squeezed it for all it is worth. The writer of fact is much more limited in what he (or she) can say than the fiction writer. Great copy is always seductive. Of course if you can present it as true that makes it even more interesting. I am not sure we should be so hard on these writers. We should be, or continually become, more astute readers and critics.
When people who work in a certain field of historical research read a book on their subject, they are not starting from scratch. I have had people tell me how wonderful a certain book is, and it was informative to them, because it was all new to them. I, however, might recognize the same tired old arguments, the same misinformation, the appropriating great thoughts from other writers, and say "This is a beginners book, and perhaps not even very good for that, since there will be a lot for the reader to unlearn if they pursue the subject."
When I find a book that claims to have new documents hitherto unknown, and appears to be totally rewriting the history of a certain period, on the first reading, I check the documentation; or, if not in a position to do so, remark (at least to myself) that if such a document exists it is certainly strange that I should have missed it. You can be sure that when I search and try to track it, and when it does not turn up (which is what all those footnotes are for), then I will eventually arrive at the conclusion that the author is perpetuating a hoax.
In the game of history (and it may be likened to a game in certain respects) all the cards must be laid on the table. It breaks the rules to cite documents that no one else has access to. If you have them you must show them: you cannot expect people to simply accept what you say. That is because history is a science, and the data must be universally accessible. Whether people draw the same conclusions based on them, which is their interpretation, is an entirely different matter.
I wrote a thesis on the philosophy of history and I am very interested in how we know what we know. When we look at huge volumes of documents transcribed many years ago we often think they do not come up to our standards; but we might remind ourselves that it is only because of such books that we even have standards. We have a long way to go.
I like to be critical rather than judgmental when it comes to the practices of earlier historical writers. Some practices are considered reprehensible: most people think fabrication of documents falls in this category. I tend to think that even the fabrication will work itself out, and it adds its own layer of history. We would be lacking something of significance without the "Donation of Constantine", or the Kensington Runestone, or the Horn Papers, or those inviting maps showing Jonathan Swift's silver mines? In one sense they are the very stuff of history. Someone is going to come along and have fun with the forgeries by figuring out what really happened. It is always worth knowing what people believed that is false, and it is of interest and value to discover what some people thought was worth deluding others about. If you want to do a little discover in this regard I suggest the "Vinland Map". I won't tell you what I think, yet. You decide. It will be good self-training.
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
The Haunted Woman
"Many of the cleverest women in history have been the most fascinating."
"But history has been written by men, and men aren't the most enlightened critics where women are concerned. All that will have to be re-written by qualified feminine experts some day."
David Lindsay, The Haunted Woman (London : Methuen & Co., 1922) Cap. VII.
The Manuscript of Time
LXXXVI
Hast thou not read the Manuscript of Time,
All dotted by Misfortune and by Crime?
Hast thou not pondered on it—hast thou not
Rejoiced and gloried in its tone sublime?
The 86th Quatrain of Abu'l-AlaThe Quatrains of Abu'l-Ala, trans. Ameen F. Rihani (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1903.
For more on Abu'l-Ala see R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907
Has This Dog Any Wings?
"Years ago. I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hadn't wings and was uncertain was a reptile. Well, then, has this dog any wings?"
Mark Twain "A Horses's Tale" (1906)
Burlington Market House 1816
"On motion leave is given by the Court to the trustees of Burlington and the Commissioners appointed by them to superintend the building of a market house to erect their market house in a range with the seat for the new Courthouse below Washington Street running in a direction with Jefferson Street pursuant to the Order of said trustees, &c." CO/ A-372
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