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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 10
the Huntsville community who had expertise in specific areas in which the researcher was searching for a piece of information. The researcher talked with Ranee' Pruitt in the Heritage Room at the Huntsville Madison County Library about information that might be held by the library but not easily found by traditional research methods, i.e, one must know of its existence in order to look for or ask for it. The researcher also telephoned the editor of the Old Huntsville magazine, who is a mature gentleman who has been delving into local history daily for many years. She discussed with him the town of Elko and also moonshine making and stills. While he provided an extensive and detailed account of “the moonshine business” and the politicians and sheriffs who supported it, this is not presented at length in this study; however, it did give the researcher a frame of reference for what she was told by subjects who were interviewed. The researcher, who is somewhat of a bibliophile, found, at a used book sale, a copy of Huntsville and Madison County Alabama, which is a 4-inch by 8-inch paperbound pamphlet originally put out “Under the direction of the Business Men's League of Huntsville, Alabama” in 1908. Inside the cover the following statement is printed: I found this book in an Antique Store. It is a development booster of Huntsville in the year 1908. The back and first page was gone, and I wouldn't know who to give credit to for compiling it, but it was so fascinating I just had to have it reproduced so others could enjoy it too. Beneath this, printed in a block was the person's name and address: T.H. Speegle, P.O. Box 677, Huntsville, Alabama. What year T.H. Speegle found this booklet and had it reprinted is not known, but the prior owner of this reproduction wrote his name in it, with the date 1972, thus, the reprint was made in or prior to that year. This booklet presents many details about Huntsville in the early years of the 1900's and it contains many illustrative photographs, a few of which have been copied and included in this report. Having become very familiar with a 1909 map showing pre-arsenal property owners, the researcher recognized the name John Hertzler, the owner of a farm pictured in the book, as being the owner of a number of parcels on pre-arsenal land, and a brief section at the end of this reports speculates about the Hertzler farm being on what is now RSA. In some instances, the reader has quoted from books still available in select bookstores in Huntsville. The book Medicine Bags and Bumpy Roads, written by Jewell S. Goldsmith and Helen D. Fulton in 1985, provided a history of the hospitals and doctors in Madison County. The researcher talked with Helen Fulton, who gave her permission for quoting material and copying relevant photographs for use in this research. It was stated earlier that the researcher found issues of The Redstone Rocket that went back as far as twenty years or more and contained articles that were interviews of former residents of communities that were on the land that is now Redstone Arsenal. Some of the people who were featured in the interviews were located and interviewed. Some people who had been interviewed were not sought out, because they had been very young 10 - (4043)