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mcc-bc1-019
The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 5
• Did you throw unwanted/discarded items in the outhouse? • Who were your neighbors? What can you tell me about them? • What did you eat? What did you grow/raise? Did you can food? • What did you buy at the store? Where was the store? Who owned the store? • What crops did you raise? • Where did you take your cotton/corn/cane? (Where was the mill/gin?) • Where did you get your mail? • Where did you go to church? • Did anyone in your family hunt or fish? • Where did you go to school? How did you get to school? Can you describe the school? • What did you do at Christmas time? Special meal? • What did you do for recreation? • Can you tell me about social interaction? Between White people and Black people? • Did your family have a hard time during the Depression? • Did you have a particular doctor? Home remedies? Army Real Estate Maps. After the initial interviewing was conducted, the researcher located the Army real estate maps that showed the owners of the parcels of land when the Army bought the land in 1941. These were two very large sheets, one for the upper half of the arsenal and the other for the lower half. On each parcel a designation was given, such as A-15, B-45, etc. In the upper right hand corner of each sheet was a key that listed first all the parcels designated with the letter “A” and then the numerical identifier, in order, with the name of the property owner listed by each. These maps were definitely very helpful. However, they were unwieldy to spread out in someone's home, and looking back and forth from the key to the map took up much precious time. At the request of the Cultural Resources team at RSA, Alexander Archaeological Consultants prepared for the Army a digital map of the 1941 landowners, with each landowner name printed on the parcel that he or she owned. The map could be printed on a single large page. When the interviewing began in 2005, the researcher carried the condensed map. It was an excellent research tool and greatly facilitated the task of ascertaining where subjects had lived and who their neighbors were. If the person being interviewed said his or her family owned the land, then the parcel was located on the map. If the person had been a tenant farmer or sharecropper, the researcher asked the name of the property owner. Sometimes, the person did not remember the name of the property owner. The subject was asked who lived nearby, as identifying neighbors could lead to location of the property. Revisiting the First Subjects Interviewed. Since the focus of the study had changed since the initial interviews were conducted some years before (one as long as six years earlier), the researcher attempted to contact those people and talk with them again. In some cases, she was successful. In one case the telephone number was no longer in service, and in two instances she got no answer even though calls were made on a number of days during both daytime and evening hours. A relative of one subject said her aunt had suffered a stroke and an interview was no longer feasible. The researcher learned that a man interviewed in 1997 and a woman interviewed in 1999 had since died. 5 - (4038)