In a message dated 8/11/99 1:22:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > Too bad the powers that be that wrote the histories didn't > realize how important all these plain folks were. Hi Shadow: I would say you ought to get a hold of the great classic book, "Plain Folk of the Old South," by Frank Owsley. It dates from the 1940's, although a paperback revision came out in the 1980's. (My county library has the original hardcover first edition. I haven't seen the 1980's version.) This book shows that it is possible, and very worthwhile, to write a first-rate cultural history of "plain folk", and it dispels many of the myths, such as those perpetrated by Frederick Law Olmsted and Al Capp, about Southern uncouthness. It is -- in my never to be humble opinion -- something that should not be ignored by any serious student of Southern genealogy. (Ditto, of course, for "Albion's Seed" and "Cracker Culture," both of which owe much to Owsley's pioneering work.) Rgds, Jim Brown ([email protected])