The Alabama Experience; The Story of Faunsdale Plantation

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been introduce yourself to anyone in the south and the next question will follow way from its as if by locating place we know where to start taking place in the black belt once home of keen cotton seven bells that it becomes easy to resort to stereotypes easy to dismiss individuals but don't forget this is going to sound nothing here is ever easy it's probably sorry if i've felt that much earlier fausto as a

plantation started leaching forties and it was an area of alabama that was relatively new this summer it was a great part of the black belt is called the painter grew here and when they could be down on their lives is very thick wonderful so well one of the souls productivity spread east and much of the region sort of been depleted from over farming subsequent rush to several alabama was called alabama fever one young virginia thomas pierson is particularly susceptible because he was struggling to win the approval of a young woman louisa columns and fame we need to elevate the social standing but with little more than first family in virginia named in a medical degree in which at the time was respected but not particularly lucrative he needed something that offered a promising future von still plantation seem to be any answer in july eighteen forty two person senegalese against an engagement bracelets bearing

his picture she accepted his proposal and they were married in december of that year dr harrison was smart young handsome and elisa was handsome and had lots of money so i was a good combination for the two of them what's really interesting about it is the fact that she and her sisters even though they were not how particular tradition a woman's role at new exactly what they themselves under what they possessed an appearance at fairly young so they were all left a sizeable statements a loser was quite familiar what with tammy sleigh she had inherited how much bank stocks she and she knew was fully aware of what her own net worth was harrison set out for alabama within the year to compare farms still for his bride december fourteenth at forty three murders was susie only few moments i have before the mill closes the nests you by safe arrival at home after a trip of fifty

days my health is perfectly good the negroes are all well the exceptional cold and saying please witty appearance of a new home and more than the lada teresa's journey's end fb a plantation actually it's uniquely american winning this game over the sixteen hundreds they wanted what they call a transplantation they wanted their own ways and in place so the stories make a difference in a plantation in the form of the plantations where you raise a cash crop it also of course when it was created was raising cotton farmers small farmers raised crops for subsistence plantations you raise a crop so there's large tracks of land where you

have a large lead the force this faithful slaves picking cotton and the other majority of slaves were african american majority is my cherokee ancestry georgia eastern man who follows a slave to georgia you fall back to inflame in the fall to the georgians who brought him at the flake to be here who does slavery was forced labor committee were compensated one of the things our souls odd as and in the plantation records who is a hater slaves are things that couldn't show why would you need to pay a slight but it was anything that was not part of their job description like it she paid willis for a campaign but in a chair or grace for doing a job she wasn't for making a hat those were things that they did normally have to

do in their so called job description as a slide and so they got paid for there are several things about slavery that we know now that seem odd from what we know we as twentieth century people think about slavery and we know it's all so horrible institution and then can imagine owning someone or being an awesome but at the time and a very paternalistic attitude about it and i am they thought in a lot of ways the nicer that they could make the slaves wife the better it was for them and the mayo slightly coarse people as slaves and masters twice the white family of so much bad i'm actually on a war really come in and then you get something started but those cannons were some of the canyons be open and air is not very robust not now not regular foster plantation is that the house and most

out buildings were built by two very talented african americans generally and joe glasgow who were trying to carpenters even construction differed from the expected phones jail now buildings or gothic structure you have steeply pitched roofs that regard for diamond shaped window panes so the county got their song work supporters would work on the front porch the architecture is unique in that the boss bill is a vision house located in the heart of the album what's so when dr thomas harris and his wife move from virginia to alabama like so many other people they didn't just pack their clothes in there how so lawyers and they're witnessing wagons they also brought with him ideas about how to construct the house about how should look like and they based their house are houses that were familiar with in virginia so you have this report plans to store a

central blog with liking one story wings what's interesting about one so what makes one thing to make it so special is the fact that you can it's a place that he could almost reconstruct every bit of its life so twenty of the bill's receipts and account books have survived and you can always go your way you wear your siege think the construction lives that were again i'm eighteen forty seven we know that the harrison's bart seven thousand bricks for votes from thomas key and matthew francis scott key our winner that felix morgan did the plaster work and hear i can remember the business record he did the grainy of the mandolin here says so much of the work around this size we know exactly what's the rate for the wallpaper and here is similar to the one that was hung in eighteen sixty the life of his house and much a lot of the people that lived here have survived in their letters and diaries and

account books in great detail but the plantation was more than a business and more than a house when daughter lisa cohen's harrison was born it became a home man right right now among the liaison was a very religious woman chain then won a moment danny and told her husband had built a church and nine she mailed the chapel on the supplies for the slightest just for the slide louisa baptism was an important part of the religious process at slate she'd inherited and brought the farm still listed those already bad times from oregon to be the others she knew still needed salvation her reputation for piety travel beyond the downs of phone still one clergy wrote this is harrison has devoted more time and care to the religious instruction of her servants than any other church woman i know i trust that got her savior

will remember her in her troubles and afflictions for her pious care of her servants even the railroad helped her in high regard when the station was built in the area and then fall still stationed in her honor a small town grew and they're still small population ninety six still remains the railroad station however doesn't for the harrison's it must have seemed god was smiling on their endeavors it's gone stale plantation times were happy and prosperous dr harrison typical of most people or plantations in that area was he was clearing two to three hundred barrels of cotton a year and cut prices as a worthy and allowed him to have it income in eighteen fifties alabama of anywhere from thirteen to twenty thousand dollars from a cash crop

music was really popular at the time it was entertainment and they enjoyed what musical evenings here and so important thing that happened is a piano and they were the piano from your conference in london ms harrison i had a good friend of mr kurtz to pick out her piano foreign had made especially for a destination that they said it was a one stop nonstop party in the state double the piano and guitars as is the only painting of elisa despite being lost somehow etsy honor out the fonz dale and then reclaim from the walls were popular tavern but prosperity like mortality is often less a matter of survival and circumstance dr harrison that and kind of timely death coming over party one night in late party in the office course in the tragedy of that lingered for several weights is not a very

pleasant death one quick in the leadership policies that he was the first drug driving fatality and in reno can louisa farm husband thomas there's been named a high i go to the senate in the church and as their out that he ended up in their first one they buried as a widow lisa followed protocol she wore a minder thomas a lot of parental been wearing it on a chain around her neck she chose to wear in approach from anyone entering this time choice aimed at unavailable privilege harrison to of let this plantation to his wife yes it was very unusual usually a man would leave it to perhaps his brother he would well it to his wife's brother his brother in law but to our very unusual for a

woman to actually see the plantation special won't the small daughter they didn't have voting rights they didn't have any legal rights they could not own property actually married women had it the worst of you were single you could own property if you're married you could not everything was in your husband's name psalm marriage is about is appealing his death wyoming january eight eighteen forty five my darling person as the wind to see you and that your baby is yours don't speak of it if i can come to sit i will be with you next winter so my dear unless i'm dead are married to catastrophes i shall endeavor to ward off you can count on me the reason for collins ran for many years or so which is very actively involved in the production of crime she and today elisa did not remain a widow she married again an episcopalian priest who reportedly a spell celibacy not surprisingly they had no children fausto has an interesting kind of continuum

it's passed down through the females mean it's all been there has had a daughter she had a daughter to his past to that eighty three no connection to this all women and i think that's an interesting aspect of alabama history that this is a four hundred and fifty years now and a series of women most of them women always releases have run this plantations on bottled water preserving ancestral history where there it's black or white or whether other nationality it is very import it is important to me because like i said before stories are being lost and their young people in this generation that don't seem to care or they don't seem to understand or maybe someone hasn't taken the time to share with him the

struggles of the belief that i'm of their ancestors and how they get why should say how we get to where we are today because of the struggles that they went through in time yes as a story about molaison the first one that they have arrested birdcage down but something that he did not didn't look into cotton she entered our took him on and when to call it cause i'll down for yield but it turned out that his bike and at the true story and crazy me once he interviewed the ruling defining for you know going crazily complicated of phones dale and throughout the country eight but they'll march thirty first debate now in a besieged city surrounded on every

side by the agony and the glee the prospect of starvation before us and soon that will be weakened as the enemy has led forces about four miles below the city on the western shore and have been fighting it spanish four days but had not yet succeeded in taking as soon as they do we are gone mo willems the gate of your plantation with assistance it can be effectively close to our enemies were you at closing that it's so comically and bring all your mail negroes before it fell as did the south taking the define still plantations prosperity the most of the moral force of war that no closer than the front page of the newspaper and still struggled with its own set of problems threatened outsiders just constant there was the slaves who kept want to provide insecurity seems both slave and master were afraid of change months turned into years finances suffer slaves were impressed into

service eventually fear gave way to design a desire for the old ways a desire for new ones the desire for a new and it didn't involve war in the war did he can still found that nothing changed and everything changed after the civil war armed enormity of the ledger citizenship rights restored army could prove that she had been a loyal citizen and because it's just that they have been a priest during the war he was able to get a technicality that he had not avian health centers and whose scientists believe that to make and six about that song is for them who would eventually they please support protect and defend the constitution and nine states in the union in the states they're after and that will in like manner by pirates for all walls and proclamations would have been made during the existing rebellion preference to emancipation rejoining the union did not pay the bills however in the state we struggle to make the mortgage and it was clear that business practices would

have to be reassessed and revamped the land was still under the laborer still sharecropping merge the two and often reverence known for his obsession with detail device contractors in his agreement between master and hire servants the first joint obligation call trinity church attendance was man every time the jurors were open families were to assemble peaceably clatter of speech the contract also stipulates attitudes and it's selling compliance using dogs and on sunday for hollywood and writing off a new without consent were among the attractions that resulted in monetary penalties fines began to twenty cents and arranged to ten dollars if the violation of our conjuring trick king preaching a different beliefs the result could be objections mr william zheng mr hall they're both historians because they have

lived a sharecropper fly they have been owned farms they'll all their life they've been everywhere and they are stories of my family the widow of coal show called repo one heck with the land owner for a delay in the seeds the fruit allowed them to a new footage to label and the fbi in libya u p o u n d a salary your head of the time and this new thing you know which will not most of what is a band that came to you as an individual what the landlord out his head rattled to talk sharecropping contracts are just a fraction of the written records left by stickney there were journals left explain all the sale of service lines there were slaves sold for mules there were after the civil war and there were record slash letters tell about well today our old jam maybe a sharecropper underlying came up and i sold him a couple horses are

sold in a wagon just every day life fans still is the life will move my what my struggle is always has been to keep it hurts to the end of her reign who it might be lost the next day elisa di toward the end of reconstruction her daughter elise had died earlier after giving birth to her second child her first son remained with his father with the infant daughter was returned a font still liza harrison shepherd granddaughter would retain the hill the trial of the century brought more change in more financial struggles gone stale plantation was put up for sale for grabs a local physician and businessman thomas souter the mortgage whether he thought he would recoup his investment isn't certain what is certain is that elisa harrison shepherd married him in nineteen ninety nine well this union was on his debate with sticky perform the ceremony on april twenty six and

wrote all things ready and sharp time for the ceremony in three and a half point at that exact our united my dear child louise dr thomas kessner my heart tried to chime in with all but not so cheerfully as i desired god grant my precious child listen satan and so and body through her exile turning in hearings lasted eight years died of an apparent heart attack but by then three more daughters have been born fb finances remained a struggle but i want her grandmother this louisa remarried after short time friend golf was repeatedly affectionate man he was also a banker elisa's and sister struggled to keep their land others are

struggling to buy their first a co creator norman lear our city in his whitey layers and brilliantly read by canoe finally got to their feet below the water for the future and it really wouldn't really old and then donovan like a nice family will include all in all we all we just get the b would give dicky do you what they hit and then they wheeled out to do you know what date that we were doubtful as the century progressed the first big challenge of seeing increasingly isolated fabiola such a violent place here in the town of two of the only outcome now hear him out cold calling him a war pickup truck and harrison riding the ruble you looked out and my grandmother at all he just walking down the hall because you were always free some level have not yet to meet with the reports of

another meal have been but there were a lot of people that thought in paperwork isn't a savant is happening in the body so mobile beaten and some level keel billed for legos and it allowed the white people buy me one more would grow to do a lot and occasionally would be you know in a lot of things very fortunate in that they have to live it there's been a lot to happen in my life i guess the big civil rights then with the night of the mr michael thousand sound of the sixties in right in the middle of a us album artists were in salem which is forty miles along a lot of the people in the marches were in unions nice wow you won the brightest an engines

is a portable telephone to make it as one we made snow where one partner and it was hard even use a telephone and that i would like to but one that many years ago some left in search of opportunities independent elaine what the senate will take a microphone his way into the rock n roll hall of fame at fifty eight wilson pickett still infuses his career but after thirty five years in the music business is still some light williamson whole never let a board approves the years since her remaining dependence on the land has no lack of economic advancement that often translates into poverty in reno county wisconsin is located almost forty percent of the children are growing up at or below the poverty level uncertainty maybe all that your future holds in anything were

they of the us toys below four the black and the white people that it seemed a good sales of that we healing yoga and we got a week to go in only define what sort of a mouthful but others came back to phones down in search of answers only the land can provide it's narrow main story is about one of the men's side of the line and because of amahl a stroke i can because you never know from one year to the knicks fan because we learned the end zone welcome we'll save about education not saying this land was perfect for land rolling hills the maggot pawns i share what it is they're she's very determined she wants to make a go of the plantation still calls it her plantation that does not mean she's living in the past and given very determined modern woman that like to think that police it was a lot like her or ship was a lot like we said i truly believe there

are people in france they'll on the air and they lived there because that's what i want to bring back to life i don't think they would want to leave the land that they have inherited it's you know that this fall in paris there's another long for the mine will always felt that no matter what kind of the lions that means a lot of airports now this is just the players but the supplies are i

know video tape copies of this program maybe purchased by calling one eight hundred four six three a date to five learn more about this and other programs from the album experience on the world wide web at dubie toby toby you daughter alanna tv dot org