Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley 1783–1860

Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley 1783–1860 PDF

Author: Paul C. Henlein

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0813194598

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The great beef-cattle industry of the American West was not born full grown beyond the Mississippi. It had its antecedents in the upper South, the Midwest, and the Ohio Valley, where many Texas cattlemen learned their trade. In this book Mr. Henlein tells the story of the cattle kingdom of the Ohio Valley—a kingdom which encompassed the Bluegrass region in Kentucky and the valleys of the Scioto, Miami, Wabash, and Sangamon in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The book begins with the settlement of the Ohio Valley, by emigration from the South and East, in the latter part of the eighteenth century; it ends with the westward movement of the cattlemen, this time to Missouri and the plains, toward the end of the nineteenth century. Mr. Henlein describes the intricate pattern of agricultural activities which grew into a successful system of producing and marketing cattle; the energetic upbreeding and extensive importations which created the great blooded herds of the Ohio Valley; and the relations of the cattlemen with the major cattle markets. An interesting part of this story is the chapter which tells how the cattlemen of the Ohio Valley, between 1805 and 1855, drove their fat cattle over the mountains to the eastern markets, and how these long drives, like the more famous Texas drives of a later day, disappeared with the advent of the railroads. This well-documented study is an important contribution to the history of American agriculture.

The Southern Frontiers, 1607-1860

The Southern Frontiers, 1607-1860 PDF

Author: John Otto

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1989-05-04

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0313389403

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Although many specialized studies have dealt with the colonial and antebellum American South, very little attention has been paid to the Southern agricultural frontiers before 1860. This study focuses on agriculture, the primary economic activity and the single most important factor in shaping the South's colonial and antebellum frontiers. After examining the agricultural economy on the Southern seaboard during colonial times, Otto explains the economic and environmental forces that led to the expansion of upland and lowland agriculturalists across the trans-Appalachian South during the antebellum period. Although many specialized studies have dealt with the colonial and antebellum American South, very little attention has been paid to the Southern agricultural frontiers before 1860. This study focuses on agriculture, the primary economic activity and the single most important factor in shaping the South's colonial and antebellum frontiers. After examining the agricultural economy on the Southern seaboard during colonial times, Otto explains the economic and environmental forces that led to the expansion of upland and lowland agriculturalists across the trans-Appalachian South during the antebellum period. Synthesizing sources drawn from history, geography, anthropology, and folklife, Otto has added an important new dimension to our knowledge of the American South. This book is an appropriate resource for courses or studies in Southern and American history, historical geography, folklife, anthropology, and agricultural history.

The Allegheny Frontier

The Allegheny Frontier PDF

Author: Otis K. Rice

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 0813194997

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The Allegheny frontier, comprising the mountainous area of present-day West Virginia and bordering states, is studied here in a broad context of frontier history and national development. The region was significant in the great American westward movement, but Otis K. Rice seeks also to call attention to the impact of the frontier experience upon the later history of the Allegheny Highlands. He sees a relationship between its prolonged frontier experience and the problems of Appalachia in the twentieth century. Through an intensive study of the social, economic, and political developments in pioneer West Virginia, Rice shows that during the period 1730–1830 some of the most significant features of West Virginia life and thought were established. There also appeared evidences of arrested development, which contrasted sharply with the expansiveness, ebullience, and optimism commonly associated with the American frontier. In this period customs, manners, and folkways associated with the conquest of the wilderness to root and became characteristic of the mountainous region well into the twentieth century. During this pioneer period, problems also took root that continue to be associated with the region, such as poverty, poor infrastructure, lack of economic development, and problematic education. Since the West Virginia frontier played an important role in the westward thrust of migration through the Alleghenies, Rice also provides some account of the role of West Virginia in the French and Indian War, eighteenth-century land speculations, the Revolutionary War, and national events after the establishment of the federal government in 1789.

The Center of a Great Empire

The Center of a Great Empire PDF

Author: Andrew Robert Lee Cayton

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0821416200

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A forested borderland dominated by American Indians in 1780, Ohio was a landscape of farms and towns inhabited by people from all over the world in 1830. The Center of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early Republic chronicles this dramatic and all-encompassing change. Editors Andrew R.L. Cayton and Stuart D. Hobbs have assembled a focused collection of articles by established and rising scholars that address the conquest of Native Americans, the emergence of a democratic political culture, the origins of capitalism, the formation of public culture, the growth of evangelical Protestantism, the ambiguous status of African Americans, and social life in a place that most contemporaries saw as on the cutting edge of human history. Indeed, to understand what was happening in the Ohio country in the decades after the American Revolution is to go a long way toward understanding what was happening in the United States and the Atlantic world as a whole. For The Center of a Great Empire, distinguished historians of the American nation in its first decades question conventional wisdom. Downplaying the frontier character of Ohio, they offer new answers and open new paths of inquiry through investigations of race, education, politics, religion, family, commerce, colonialism, and conquest. As it underscores key themes in the history of the United States,The Center of a Great Empire pursues issues that have fascinated people for two centuries.Andrew R. L. Cayton, distinguished professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is the author of several books, including Ohio: The History of a People and, with Fred Anderson, The Dominion of War: Liberty and Empire in North America, 1500-2000 . Stuart D. Hobbs is program director for History in the Heartland, a professional development program for middle and high school teachers of history. Hobbs is the author of The End of the American Avant Garde.

Making Bourbon

Making Bourbon PDF

Author: Karl Raitz

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 844

ISBN-13: 0813178789

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“Raitz examines the rich story of distilling in its Kentucky heartland and traces its maturation from a local craft to an enduring industry.” —William Wyckoff, author of How to Read the American West While other industries chase after the new and improved, bourbon makers celebrate traditions that hearken back to an authentic frontier craft. Distillers enshrine local history in their branding and time-tested recipes, and rightfully so. Kentucky’s unique geography shaped the whiskeys its settlers produced, and for more than two centuries, distilling bourbon fundamentally altered every aspect of Kentucky’s landscape and culture. Making Bourbon: A Geographical History of Distilling in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky illuminates how the specific geography, culture, and ecology of the Bluegrass converged and gave birth to Kentucky’s favorite barrel-aged whiskey. Expanding on his fall 2019 release Bourbon’s Backroads, Karl Raitz delivers a more nuanced discussion of bourbon’s evolution by contrasting the fates of two distilleries in Scott and Nelson Counties. In the nineteenth century, distilling changed from an artisanal craft practiced by farmers and millers to a large-scale mechanized industry. The resulting infrastructure—farms, mills, turnpikes, railroads, steamboats, lumberyards, and cooperage shops—left its permanent mark on the land and traditions of the commonwealth. Today, multinational brands emphasize and even construct this local heritage. This unique interdisciplinary study uncovers the complex history poured into every glass of bourbon. “A gem. The depth of Raitz’s research and the breadth of his analysis have produced a masterful telling of the shift from craft to industrial distilling. And in telling us the story of bourbon, Raitz also makes a terrific contribution to our understanding of America's nineteenth-century economy.” —David E. Hamilton, author of From New Day to New Deal

A New History of Kentucky

A New History of Kentucky PDF

Author: James C. Klotter

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2018-11-26

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 0813176506

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When originally published, A New History of Kentucky provided a comprehensive study of the Commonwealth, bringing it to life by revealing the many faces, deep traditions, and historical milestones of the state. With new discoveries and findings, the narrative continues to evolve, and so does the telling of Kentucky's rich history. In this second edition, authors James C. Klotter and Craig Thompson Friend provide significantly revised content with updated material on gender politics, African American history, and cultural history. This wide-ranging volume includes a full overview of the state and its economic, educational, environmental, racial, and religious histories. At its essence, Kentucky's story is about its people -- not just the notable and prominent figures but also lesser-known and sometimes overlooked personalities. The human spirit unfolds through the lives of individuals such as Shawnee peace chief Nonhelema Hokolesqua and suffrage leader Madge Breckinridge, early land promoter John Filson, author Wendell Berry, and Iwo Jima flag--raiser Private Franklin Sousley. They lived on a landscape defined by its topography as much as its political boundaries, from Appalachia in the east to the Jackson Purchase in the west, and from the Walker Line that forms the Commonwealth's southern boundary to the Ohio River that shapes its northern boundary. Along the journey are traces of Kentucky's past -- its literary and musical traditions, its state-level and national political leadership, and its basketball and bourbon. Yet this volume also faces forthrightly the Commonwealth's blemishes -- the displacement of Native Americans, African American enslavement, the legacy of violence, and failures to address poverty and poor health. A New History of Kentucky ranges throughout all parts of the Commonwealth to explore its special meaning to those who have called it home. It is a broadly interpretive, all-encompassing narrative that tells Kentucky's complex, extensive, and ever-changing story.

Back Talk from Appalachia

Back Talk from Appalachia PDF

Author: Dwight B. Billings

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2013-07-24

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0813143349

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Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty--the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.