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.

A Quick Visit to Fayette

Last August I posted an item about the visit my brother and I made to the Fayette Art Museum the month before. In this post I wanted to offer photos and information about the city of Fayette itself.

The town is located in northwest Alabama and is the seat of Fayette County. That county was created by the legislature on December 20, 1824, from parts of Marion and Tuscaloosa counties. The town of Fayette predates the county, having been incorporated in January 1821. The town had several different names until a November 1898 vote settled on the same name as the county. 

The city and county once depended largely on agriculture, but now various types of manufacturing employ over a third of workers. The population of Fayette in 2020 was 4329, and of the county 16, 321. One of the oldest businesses in Fayette is the Golden Eagle Syrup Manufacturing Company founded in 1928. 

Fayette's business district burned on March 24, 1911; structures destroyed included the county's sixth courthouse, which had cost $40,000 to construct. A new courthouse, costing $59.000, opened the following year. A roof and interior renovation in 1999 cost more than $2 million, a million of which was donated by a local philanthropist. Photographs of the sixth courthouse and the seventh one soon after construction can be seen in the Hughes book cited below.

More comments accompany some of my photographs. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Hughes, Delos. Historic Alabama Courthouses: A Century of their Images and Stories. NewSouth Books, 2017, pp 64-65

National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Alabama, eds. Early Courthouses of Alabama Prior to 1860. 1966, pp 30-31

Rumore, Samuel A. Jr. Building Alabama's Courthouses: Fayette County Revisited. The Alabama Lawyer 2000 March; 61(2): 104-105

We enjoyed a great lunch at Fannie's, surrounded by some local art. This eatery is in the same block as the courthouse. 

The courthouse lawn has a Civil War statue and the Fayette County Veterans Memorial 1990 that lists the county's casualties in World War I and II, Korea and Vietnam.

The Fayette Art Museum is located in this building, along with the Civic Center and the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame.

Art in the community and the schools is supported by the Sipsey Art Alliance formed in 2014.

Frogs can be spotted around town.

The Fayette Depot was originally constructed by Southern Railway in 1887; this similar structure of brick replaced the wooden one in 1913. Unfortunately, the museum was closed when we visited Fayette. 

Eddy Gilmore: From Selma to Russia and Back

Here we have another discovery that popped up recently as my brother Richard and I continued our journey through all the family materials at mom's house in Huntsville. Of course, what caught my attention first about this October 6, 1953 Look magazine was actress Ava Gardner on the cover. Duh. But as I examined the issue, I also found a long article on Alabama native Eddy Gilmore and his Russian ballerina wife Tamara. You just never know what will turn up where. I'd read a bit about Gilmore in the past, so I decided to do this blog post and explore his life and career some more.

Eddy Lanier King Gilmore was born in Selma on May 28, 1907. I found little about his family via Ancestry.com. His father was Edwin Lanier Gilmore and mother Evelyn B. "Emely" King Gilmore. That at least explains his two middle names. I did find Edwin's World War I draft registration card, which listed him as a traveling salesman for the C.W. Cooper Company, wholesale grocers. Indicative of his future profession was Eddy's job as a young boy--delivering newspapers for the Selma Times-Journal. 

Gilmore graduated in 1928 from Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, founded by Andrew Carnegie and now Carnegie Mellon University. He worked at the Atlanta Journal until 1932 and then the Washington Daily News until the Associated Press hired him sometime before 1940. Soon the AP sent him to the Soviet Union as bureau chief where he lived until 1953. Thus he covered the Eastern Front of World War II as the Soviets battled Nazi Germany.

During his time in the country he interviewed Joseph Stalin; that piece won him the 1947 Pulitzer Price for Telegraphic Reporting-International. Gilmore spent most of the rest of his life working for the AP in London, He died there of a heart attack at his East Grinstead country home after a day at work on October 6, 1967. Several people who knew him noted that he never lost his Southern accent. 

While living in the Soviet Union Gilmore met and fell in love with Tamara Kolb Chernashova, a ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet. Soviet citizens were not supposed to fraternize with foreigners, but their relationship persisted despite government refusals to let them marry. They were finally able to wed in 1950, but unable to leave the country until after Stalin's death in 1953. The couple would have three daughters and a son. After leaving the Soviet Union Gilmore often wrote about the royals of Europe he met, both their glamour and the reality. 

The Look magazine article features Eddy and Tamara describing life in the Soviet Union--the prices of foods and clothing, the salaries earned by different workers, etc. A pair of quotes from Tamara struck me. 

"I am a Russian, sometimes happy, sometimes sad. It is a big and strange and mysterious country, even to Russians, but it is our land. It's not for me to criticize."

"When we came away, it was first Stockholm, and then Paris and then New York and then Alabama. They are nice, these places. I would like to go again to Paris."

I don't know about Tamara visiting Alabama again, but Eddy's body was returned to Selma for a funeral service and burial. See below for more images and information.

In 1968 Tamara published Me and My American Husband. She remained in London until her death on April 15, 1980; she was 52, 20 years younger than Eddy. 

A 2014 article about "Selma's forgotten Pulitzer Prize-winner" can be read here and the Associated Press' obituary here. Some of his papers are held by Syracuse University.

Gilmore's grave in Live Oak Cemetery, Selma. According to an Episcopal Diocese record I found via Ancestry.com, his burial service was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in that city. 

Source: Find-A-Grave

Tamara's grave in Gunnersbury Cemetery, Greater London

Source: Find-A-Grave

Via Ancestry.com I found Gilmore's World War II draft registration card, which he filled out on October 16, 1940. At the time he was living in Silver Springs, Maryland, and working for the Associated Press. On the other side the personal description noted height as 6 feet, 205 lbs., with brown eyes and hair and a "ruddy" complexion. Oh, and the card gives next of kin as Mrs. Margaret Cook Gilmore, "wife", the first I've read about her. I was unable to find any more information.