Native American Quarry in Lamar County

This site where Native Americans quarried something from sandstone is located on private property in western Alabama in Lamar County near Beaverton and Guin, north of US 278 and near the Marion County line.  In the late 1920's my maternal grandfather, Rev. John M. Shores and Guy Gilmer were on a hunting trip and found the quarry. 

In the fall 1966 and spring 1967 two trips were made to the site by the authors of the article below, my dad Amos J. Wright, Jr. and Bart Henson, as well as Rev. Shores, my mom Carolyn Shores Wright,  Bart's wife Bettye, my younger brother Richard and yours truly. On one of those trips Emmett Cantrell, who had lived on the property as a boy, helped relocate the site, a sandstone outcropping that runs along a creek for several hundred yards.

The article by Dad and Bart appeared in the December 1968 issue of the Journal of Alabama Archaeology published by the Alabama Archaeological Society. I have reproduced most pages of the article here. They note that little had previously been written about Native American sandstone quarries. The discs resulting from this work may have been used for ceremonial purposes or shallow bowls. Cutting or drilling tools of jasper similar to those found at another site were in abundance at this one.

Conical holes were also found, but their use was unknown. The authors suggest the holes could have been used as part of the quarry work, used in ceremonial activities or in grinding of grain, seeds and/or nuts. 

In one of our recent forays through family memorabilia, Richard and I found the photographs taken on December 16, 1966, and in May 1967 during the visits. I scanned some and have included them below as an addendum to the article. 

Richard is not in this photo and says he must have been wandering in the woods or something.

Three Generations in One Library

Being a librarian with an interest in history, I guess I notice these kind of things. We seem to have an "interest in history gene" that runs in some of the family. My dad had it, my brother and I have it, my son and daughter have it, one of my nephews has it.

Although dad--Amos J. Wright, Jr.--worked for many years for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, mom tells me he once wanted to be a history professor. He ended up in civilian computer system work; he figured teaching college might not support a family the way he wanted. 

But he gave in to that history gene by many years of walking cotton rows in north Alabama and southern Tennessee looking for artifacts [often accompanied by mom, my brother Richard and I--a story for another day] and membership in the Alabama Archaeological Society. That participation led to a couple of terms as AAS President and long stints as assistant editor and editor of the society's Stones and Bones newsletter. 

He eventually started collecting material for a book on Alabama Indian towns, which was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2003 just prior to his death. In the process of gathering all that material he amassed information on other topics, including traders in the Southeast before the Native American removal on the Trail of Tears. A book on some of those traders was published in 2001 by New South Books in Montgomery.




New South Books, 2001

University of Alabama Press, 2003


Recently I noticed that three generations--my dad, my son and I--are represented by materials in UAB's Sterne Library. My son Amos IV finished his M.A. in creative writing at UAB in 2011 and a copy of his thesis, a collection of three short stories, is held at Sterne along with all theses and dissertations done at the university. The library's catalog record for "Nobody Knows How It Got This Good" can be found here.  Maybe one day Sterne will be able to buy a more formally published version. 

UPDATE 15 February 2021: Amos' collection of short stories, most set in Birmingham, was published in 2018 as Nobody Knows How It Got This Good. You can read more about it and his other writing here. 

Livingston Press, 2018

Finally, we come to my contribution to Sterne's collections. In a previous life cycle I did a bit of research and writing on crime in Alabama and the Southeast before 1930. One result of that effort was a book published by Greenwood Press in 1989. 

Greenwood Press, 1989

Perhaps I'll tap some of that material for future posts. Lots of fascinating--not to mention horrible--crime running around in Alabama's past. Train and post office robbers, ax murderers, counterfeiters, wife killers, husband killers--just the usual people stuff.  


Now about that library gene...I'm a librarian, one of my maternal aunts and another relative on that side in California are librarians, even my wife is a librarian...weird.