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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 12
In addition, preparing a manuscript with many photographs, using the only computer software made available to her through the Army, Microsoft Word, which is not friendly to publishing, consumed even more valuable time.
When the researcher's contract with the Army ended on September 1, 2005, and she simultaneously retired from the University of Alabama, she had drafts of some of the interviews written and many stacks of notes, pictures to be downloaded and cropped, and other resource materials to be prepared for inclusion. The RSA Cultural Resources team had no one who could take the materials and complete the work. The researcher stayed in Huntsville and intensely worked on the project for a month after she was no longer employed. At that point, it was necessary for her to leave Huntsville. She spent a number of months working full-time at her home to organize the data and write the report.
Presentation of the Information Gained from the Interviews
Individual interviews are presented with the name of the subject at the top of the first page. Three sections have more than one component and address a specific parcel of land and/or landowners; these sections address Parcel A-17, which was owned by M.G. Chaney at the time of sale to the War Department; the Lee House (J.B. Harris property); and the Union Hill C.P. Presbyterian Church area.
The communities represented are the (1) Union Hill C.P. Presbyterian Church area, (2) the Chaney property and those who lived on farmsteads near the town of Elko, (3) Pond Beat, (4) Mullins Flat, and (5) Hickory Grove. The first interview presented is that of the Reverend McKinley Jones, because this research was conceived because of that interview. The sections that follow it represent the area in the vicinity of the church. The sections that follow are organized in the order that they are listed above.
Sections of the map showing landowner names on the parcels have been inserted in some of the interviews. The map sections are pertinent to the particular interview and those that follow it; they show where the subject lived and where other people who are mentioned lived. Referring to the landowner parcels provides the relationship between people and places. Larger sections of the parcel map are presented in the appendix.
The sections are divided by headings to allow easier reading. As a result, one could skim through the manuscript and find all the headings for a specific topic, for example, “School” and compile the information found on schools. However, this method of using the data would result in a great loss. Families, their histories, neighbors, and relationships have been discussed in detail because it is the people who made the communities. The rest of the information provides the context for their daily lives. In order to know the community, one must read the interviews as part of a whole.
The following section takes the reader on a walk through Pond Beat. It is based on the information found in the interviews of the former residents of Pond Beat.
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