A Life of Albert Pike

A Life of Albert Pike
Author: Walter Lee Brown
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 645
Release: 1997-07-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1682261646

A Life of Albert Pike, originally published in 1997, is as much a study of antebellum Arkansas as it is a portrait of the former general. A native of Massachusetts, Pike settled in Arkansas Territory in 1832 after wandering the Great Plains of Texas and New Mexico for two years. In Arkansas he became a schoolteacher, newspaperman, lawyer, Whig leader, poet, Freemason, and Confederate general who championed secession and fought against Black suffrage. During his tenure as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite—a position he held for more than thirty years beginning in 1859—Pike popularized the Masonic movement in the American South and Far West. In the wake of the Civil War, Pike left Arkansas, ultimately settling in Washington, D.C., where he lived out his last years in the Mason's House of the Temple. Drawing on original documents, Pike’s copious writings, and interviews with Pike’s descendants, Walter Lee Brown presents a fascinating personal history that also serves as a rich compendium of Arkansas’s antebellum history.

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1
Author: Brooks Blevins
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2018-06-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252050606

Winner of the Missouri History Book Award, from the State Historical Society of Missouri Winner of the Arkansiana Award, from the Arkansas Library Association Geologic forces raised the Ozarks. Myth enshrouds these hills. Human beings shaped them and were shaped by them. The Ozarks reflect the epic tableau of the American people—the native Osage and would-be colonial conquerors, the determined settlers and on-the-make speculators, the endless labors of hardscrabble farmers and capitalism of visionary entrepreneurs. The Old Ozarks is the first volume of a monumental three-part history of the region and its inhabitants. Brooks Blevins begins in deep prehistory, charting how these highlands of granite, dolomite, and limestone came to exist. From there he turns to the political and economic motivations behind the eagerness of many peoples to possess the Ozarks. Blevins places these early proto-Ozarkers within the context of larger American history and the economic, social, and political forces that drove it forward. But he also tells the varied and colorful human stories that fill the region's storied past—and contribute to the powerful myths and misunderstandings that even today distort our views of the Ozarks' places and people. A sweeping history in the grand tradition, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1: The Old Ozarks is essential reading for anyone who cares about the highland heart of America.

Town and Country

Town and Country
Author: John William Graves
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1990
Genre: African Americans
ISBN: 9781610754316

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 2

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 2
Author: Brooks Blevins
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2019-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252051599

The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era.

The Washingtons. Volume 4, Part 2

The Washingtons. Volume 4, Part 2
Author: Justin Glenn
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 875
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1940669367

This is the fourth volume of Dr. Justin Glenn’s comprehensive history that traces the “Presidential line” of the Washingtons. Volume One began with the immigrant John Washington, who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va., in 1657, married Anne Pope, and became the great-grandfather of President George Washington. It continued the record of their descendants for a total of seven generations. Volume Two highlighted notable members of the next eight generations of John and Anne Washington’s descendants, including General George S. Patton, author Shelby Foote, and actor Lee Marvin. Volume Three traced the ancestry of the early Virginia members of this “Presidential Branch” back in time to the aristocracy and nobility of England and continental Europe. Volume Four resumes the family history where Volume One ended. It presents Generation Eight of the immigrant John Washington’s descendants, containing nearly 7,000 descendants. Future volumes will trace generations nine through fifteen, making a total of over 63,000 descendants. Although structured in a genealogical format for the sake of clarity, this is no bare bones genealogy but a true family history with over 1,200 detailed biographical narratives. These in turn strive to convey the greatness of the family that produced not only The Father of His Country but many others, great and humble, who struggled to build that country. Volume Four, Part One covers the descendants of the immigrant John Washington’s child Lawrence Washington. Volume Four, Part Two covers the descendants of the Immigrant’s children John Washington, Jr., and Anne (Washington) Wright.