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Plain Folk Recovered: Class, Property And Agriculture In Lawrence County, Alabama, 1850-1860, Joseph Thomas Richardson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the population and economy of farmers in Lawrence County, a county in northern Alabama, in the decade between 1850 and 1860. It uses the manuscript schedules of the United States census and statistical analysis aided by a computer database to determine landownership and bring a focus to the class of landowning yeoman farmers on the border between two physiographic regions: the Tennessee Valley, where land and resources were largely dominated by large planters, and the hill country in the south of the county, where yeomen enjoyed access to open land and opportunity for economic advancement. It shows …