One of my photos from my drive along the Natchez Trace in 2017 |
CGS has a modest collection pertaining to Arkansas. It includes just five books and one entire shelf of the Arkansas Family Historian journal spanning the period 1962 to the Spring edition of 2018. Our collection includes their current journals.
The Outlaw Years |
The first book that caught my eye was The Outlaw Years by Robert M. Coates, published in 1930. Its subtitle is The History of the Land Pirates of the Natchez Trace. (While on my 2017 Genealogy Journey I found myself in that vicinity, so I made a small adjustment in my route and drove north on a short segment of the famous road to Nashville, Tennessee.) The first chapter is about Daniel Boone and how he was the first to forge a trail from the Great Smoky Mountains. It refers to the Watauga and Cumberland Gap – places where my ancestors lived or where I visited while on my trip, so of course this book appealed to me. But I wondered: why was it shelved with Arkansas? The Natchez Trace starts in Mississippi in the south, crosses through a small portion of Alabama and ends in Tennessee. It turns out the Library of Congress catalog system, which our library uses, groups together states of the “Old Southwest,” the southwestern frontier territories of the United States from the Revolutionary War era through the early 19th century. The territory of the Old Southwest eventually formed the states of Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida panhandle.
CGS has a large collection of Arkansas genealogy journals |
The CGS collection includes two volumes of Publications of the Arkansas Historical Association, dated 1906 and 1911. Volume One is divided into two books. Part I covers topics such as “An Account of Books, Manuscripts, Papers and Documents About Arkansas in Public Repositories” covering foreign offices, federal offices and libraries and societies. Part II includes state offices, county offices, municipal offices, educational institutions, returned Confederate flags, and an Industrial History of Arkansas, and much more.
Fold-out map showing Native American lands in Arkansas |
Volume Two devotes an entire chapter to the “Pronunciation of the Name ‘Arkansas.'” It also has a chapter by Myra McAlmont Vaughn on “Habitat of the Quapaw Indians” that includes a map that folds out to about 15” x 20” showing “Indian Cessions, Grants to Indians and Changes in Western Boundaries of Arkansas.” It notes the dates of each transaction and shows rivers traversing the state.
Copyright © 2018 by California Genealogical Society
SEP
2018