Digging in your own backyard

Archivaria

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 91-104

  Schein, Richard H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY   (United States)

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EID: 66349111722     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. See, for example, Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, "Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory," Archival Science, vol. 2, nos. 1-2 (March 2002), pp. 1-19
2. Terry Cook and Joan M. Schwartz, "Archives, Records, and Power: From (Postmodern) Theory to (Archival) Performance," Archival Science, vol. 2, nos. 3-4 (September 2002), pp. 171-85.
3. For an introduction, of sorts, in my own sub-discipline of historical geography, see Historical Geography, vol. 29 (2001), Thematic Issue: Practicing Historical Geography, edited by Richard H. Schein.
4. Sanborn Map Company, Midway, Kentucky (New York, 1886): one map on two sheets;
5. Sanborn-Perris Map Company, Midway, Woodford County, Kentucky (New York, 1891): one map on two sheets.
6. County Clerk's office, Versailles, Woodford County, Kentucky, Will Books N:413 (will) and N:465 (appraisal) of R.H. Davis, 1850.
7. Transcribed oral interviews (typescript) with African-American residents of Midway, Kentucky, conducted under the supervision of Kristina Minister and funded by the Kentucky Heritage Council, conducted between 1990 and 1992 and housed in the collection of the Midway Free Library, Midway, Kentucky (hereafter Minister Interviews).
8. Richard H. Schein, "Introduction" to Focus Section: Race, Racism, and Geography, The Professional Geographer, vol. 54, no.1 (2002), pp. 1-5;
9. Richard H. Schein, "The Normative Dimensions of Landscape," in C. Wilson and P. Groth, eds., Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Study after J.B. Jackson (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 199-218.
10. And I did so by broadening my search from the original property (four parcels) to the entire small city block of land of which my house is a part.
11. In keeping with common US deed practice, property records in Woodford County, Kentucky are kept in large ledgers in a vault in the County Clerk's office. Property is most easily traced backwards, starting with the current owner, who is locatable in the deed transfer index. Once the owner is located in the index, reference is given to the deed book and page number of the most recent transfer. That deed book is readily accessible, and by reading that deed transfer, reference can be gleaned to the penultimate deed transfer that preceded the one in question (usually in the form of "... as transferred to John Smith by Mary and Joseph Jones on... as recorded in deed book... page..."). In this manner deeds can (theoretically) be traced backwards to the first legally recorded owner (and in my part of the country that usually means a post-Revolutionary land-grant made after Native American titles had been "extinguished"). Of course, one can "break into" the sequence at any point with knowledge of one or another of the transfer parties (and provided the county courthouse didn't have a fire destroy records at some point). It was this general procedure that I undertook, starting with four different properties and working backwards, for the story being told here.
12. County Clerk's office, Versailles, Woodford County, Kentucky, Will Books 3:421 (will) and 4:317 (appraisal) of N.B. Risk, 1896.
13. Sanborn Map Company, Midway, Woodford County, Kentucky (Sanborn Map Company, 1903); one map on three sheets.
14. Bayley Wyatt, "A Right to the Land," in Roy E. Finkenbine, ed., Sources of the African-American Past (New York, 1997), p. 88. Original reprinted (and corrected) in Bayley Wyatt, A Freedman's Speech (Philadelphia, 1867).
15. John Kellogg, "Negro Urban Clusters in the Post-bellum South," Geographical Review, vol. 67 no. 3 (1977), pp. 310-21
16. John Kellogg, "The Formation of Black Residential Areas in Lexington, Kentucky, 1865-1887," Journal of Southern History, vol. 48, no. 1 (1982), pp. 21-52;
17. Karl B. Raitz and Peter C. Smith, "Negro Hamlets and Agricultural Estates in Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass," Geographical Review, vol. 64, no. 2 (1974), pp. 217-34.
18. Minister Interviews: Geneva Lee Hawkins, October 1990, pp. 85-87.
19. David Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law 1836-1948 (Austin, 1998), pp. 13-14.
20. Bell Hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination," in David Roediger, ed., Black on White (New York, 1998), pp. 38-53.
21. See also Warren Montag, "The Universalization of Whiteness: Racism and Enlightenment," in Mike Hill, ed., Whiteness: A Critical Reader (New York, 1997), pp. 281-93.
22. Steven Hahn, A Nation Under our Feet (Cambridge, MA, 2003)
23. Dylan C. Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk (Chapel Hill, 2003).
24. Ibid., p. 6.
25. Bell Hooks, Killing Rage (New York, 1995), pp. 5-6.
26. Mona Domosh and Karen M. Morin, "Travels with Feminist Historical Geography," Gender, Place, and Culture, vol. 10, no. 3 (2003), pp. 257-64.
27. Bell Hooks, "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination," in Ruth Frankenberg, ed., Displacing Whiteness (Durham, 1997), pp. 165-79, quotation on p. 172.
28. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 4-8.
29. James Baldwin, "White Man's Guilt," in Roediger, ed., Black on White, p. 321.
30. Richard H. Schein, "The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting an American Scene," Annals of the Association of American Geographers vol. 87, no. 4 (1997), pp. 660-80.