The Alabama Experience; The Story of Faunsdale Plantation

the he's 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 king 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 fb soria france they'll be much much earlier fausto as a

plantation started in the aging 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 took it down their license very thick wonderful so well one of the souls productivity spread east and much of the region sort of been depleted from over farming and the 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 one liza columns and the same 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 presented louisa 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 it was a good combination for the two of them what's really interesting about it is the fact that scene or sisters even though they were not come back on particular tradition a woman's role playing new exactly what they themselves under what they possess to their parents that really aren't so they were all left a sizeable state and so loser was quite familiar what with tammy sleigh she had inherited how much bank stocks he and she knew was fully aware of what her own net worth was harrison set out for alabama within the year to prepare fond still for his bride december fourteenth at forty three letters was susie only few moments i have before the mill closes the nose to 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 lighted teresa's journals and fb a plantation actually it's uniquely american winning this game over the sixteen hundreds they wanted what they called a transplantation they wanted their own ways and in place seven stories make a difference in a plantation form of the plantations where you raise a cash crop of course when it was created was raising cotton farmers small farmers raised crops for subsistence plantations you raise a crop to sell and this was a large tracks of land where you have a

large lead the force this case for some slaves that raise new cash the majority of slaves are african americans not all were jacob george is mike cherokee ancestry george shearing eastern band of the cherokee in the fall there's a slave to georgia whistle back to to follow georgia's who brought him are at the slave 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 slave but it was anything that was not part of their job description like it she paid willis from un cane by my 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 there's several things about slavery that we know nail that seem odd from what we know we as twentieth century people think about slavery we know towards a horrible institution and i can't imagine voting someone or being and russell but at the time and a very paternalistic attitude about it and on they thought in a lot of ways the nicer that they could make the slaves life the better it was for them in the day of sly rickles people as slaves and that's just the white and lonely the white family of so much bad i'm actually on a war really come in on that yet sometimes thought about those cannons were some understands the upton an error something that is not very robust not now not great about foster plantation is that the house and most out buildings were

built by two very talented african americans peter lee and joe glasgow who were trying to our readers even construction different from expected at phones down a number of outbuildings or gothic structure you have steeply pitched roofs on that record for a diamond shaped window panes set of college and got a songbook supports workers would work on the front porch the architecture is unique in the fall still is a virginia 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 players and their equipment in wagons they also brought with him ideas about how to construct the house of the house should look like and they based their house on houses they were

familiar with in virginia so you have this three part plan house two story cinderblock 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 can almost reconstruct every bit of its life so twenty of the bill's receipts and account books have survived and you can always go hear why uber years each think the construction of knives that were again i'm eighteen forty seven and we know that the harrison's barked seven thousand bricks for votes from thomas key and matthew francis scott key our winner that felix morgan did the plaster work in here 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 so much the one that was hung in eighteen sixty the life of his house and much alike of its kind of people 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 collins harrison was born it became a home man's right right now among the liaison was a very religious woman shame then won a moment danny and told her husband had built a church and nine she mailed to chapel on the skies for the slightest just for the slaves for 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 for more truth to be the other senior still needed salvation her reputation for piety travel beyond the bounds 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 but the station was built in the area and they are 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 to god was smiling on their endeavors that phone still plantation times were happy and prosperous dr harrison typical of most people wars plantations in that area was he was clearing two to three hundred barrels of cotton be here 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 one

is it's 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 new york from fritz unlimited ms harrison i had a good friend of mr kurtz to pick up her piano foreign had made especially for a destination that they said it was an once thought nonstop party and the staple around 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 home from a party one night in late party in the office course in contractor that lingered for several weights is imminent not a very pleasant

death one quick but an initial forces and he was the first drug driving fatality and in reno can louisa farm thousand and thomas there's been named icon for the senate in the church and as their out that he ended up and their first one of a bear as a widow louisa followed protocol she wore a mind of thomas a lock of hair already 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 you we're 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 the worst of the worst thing we could own property if you're married you could not everything was in your husband's name for some marriages about is appealing his death wyoming january eight eighteen forty five my darling cousin 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 tell me the ways of fort collins rancher many years or so which is very actively involved in the production of crum trilogy the louisa did not remain a widow she married again an episcopalian priest who reportedly spell celibacy not surprisingly they had no children paul still has an interesting kind of continuum it's

passed down through the females mean it's all been the americans had a daughter she had a daughter to his past to that eighty eight female connection i mean is this all run by women and i think that's an interesting aspect of alabama history that this is a four hundred and a caution and fifty years now a series of women muslim women always releases have run this plantations on bottled water preserving ancestral history where there it's black or white or wherever nationality it is very import it is important to me because like i said before stories are being asked and they're 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 beliefs of their ancestors and how they get or 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 with arsenal and that they had arrested her cage down but something that he did not didn't look into cotton she entered our token on and when to call it cause i'll down for us but it turned out that bike than that the true star and pray to me once he interviewed the ruling defining for you know going crazily complicated of fonz dale and throughout the country eight but they'll march thirty six people now in a besieged city surrounded on every side by the

agony of italy prospect of starvation before us as saying that will be we can't tell the enemy has led to their 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 that can be effectively close to our enemies were you at closing that it's so comically and bring all your mail negroes the ford fell as did the south taking with it fine still plantations prosperity the most of the moral force of war got no closer than the front page of the newspaper and still struggled with its own set of problems threatened outsiders just constant it was the slaves who kept want to provide insecurity that seems both slave and master were afraid of change months turned into years finances suffered slaves were pressed into service

eventually fear gave way to design a desire for the old ways a desire for new weapons the desire for anyone that didn't involve law in the war did he can still found that nothing had changed and everything changed after the civil war on an order they'll vote won't get your citizenship rights restored army could prove that she had been a loyal citizen and because this is that they have been a priest during the war he was able to get him a technicality that he had not avian health centers and whose scientists believe that to make and six about that song is for them that would go into effect we support protect and again the cost issue nine states in the union in the states they're after and that will in like manner by pirates for all also proclamations would have been made during the existing rebellious preferences of emancipation let's rejoin union did not pay the bills however this didn't 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 merged the two and often reverence 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 families were to assemble peaceably clatter of speech the contract also stipulates attitudes and it's selling compliance using parks 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 all a 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 the sharecropper fly they have been an honest dialogue their life they've been everywhere

and they are stories of my family the widow of coal show called repo one here the landowner for a delay in the seeds different about them you 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 isn't a 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 sharecropping contracts are just a fraction of the written records left by stickney there were journals laughed explaining the sale of service lines there were slaves sold for mules there were after the civil war there were record slash letters tell about well today our own jam maybe a sharecropper on their land came out and i sold in a couple or says solar wind and just everyday life fans dale is the life

will move my wife my struggle is always has been to keep it hurts to the end of her reign there would 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 assignment remained with his father with the infant daughter has returned the fonz dr elisa harrison shepherd the 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 sign up for grabs a local physician and business in tongues secured 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 his debate with sticky perform the ceremony in april twenty six and wrote

all things red neon sharp tied for the ceremony in three and a half at that exact our united my dear child louise dr thomas kessner my heart tried to chime in with the law but not so cheerfully as i desired god grant my precious child listen safety and soul and body through her exile journey marriage lasted a night of an apparent heart attack but by then three more daughters have been built the path finances remained a struggle but unlike her grandmother this louisa remarried after a 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 anchor co creator norman week our city in his whitey layers and brilliantly read by canoe to get to their feet below the word for that and this really wanted to heal and then donovan like leave tammany will include all in a wheel we just get the bee with decay 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 challenges seemed increasingly isolated fabio a surge in violent place here in taos delivery only outcome now we have an article called hello will pick up for episode ryan bedroom boy you looked out and my grandmother told you just walk down the hall because you always free some level have not had to meet with a port and another

million to that there were a lot of people that thought in paperwork isn't a savant is happening in the body so mobile to be at 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 an awful thing to have a folded and they have like that it's been a lot to happen in my life i guess the big civil rights was an idea that was the 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 they'll we want artie lange and it was hard even use a telephone and that i would like to find one that many years ago some left in search of opportunities independent of the way you want to sing that would take a microphone his way into the rock n roll hall of fame and fifty h wilson pickett still infuses his career in the insurance plans but after thirty five years in the music business is still going to try and sound like williams and hall never let a board approves the years since for many independents on the land has been a lack of economic advancement that often translates into poverty in reno county where fonz is located almost forty percent of the children are growing up at or below the poverty level uncertainty maybe all that their future holds in anything were they of the

us toys below four the black and the white people that has seen sales of that we're here we go there we got a way to go in order to make this clear what sort of powerful but others came back to farms down in search of answers only the land can provide it's narrow maid's though as if i want the men's side of the line and because of amahl a stroke a nine pound because you never know from one year to the knicks fan because we learned the end zone welcome we'll save about education not say in this land was perfect for land rolling hills the night did ponds i share when i visit your 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 and i want to thank that we saw 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 when they want to because the phone line i don't think they would want to leave the land that they have inherited yes you know back this fall it and there is just no them on board will always felt that no matter what kind of the lions and that means a lot of airports how this that in the end is just a veil on with this life with your home in your voice needs it video tape

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