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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 425
highly probable that the only way these stores can be identified is through oral history. • The kind of dishes people used was “whatever we could get,” and this was true for most households. More than once the researcher heard it said, “We did everything on barter, because we had everything but cash money.” People bought or traded with the same peddlers and shopped at the same stores in Huntsville and Triana. Generally, their purchases were necessities. The few families who were more affluent would have had choices. One store, now considered an historic attraction, is still on the square in Huntsville. That is Harrison's store. Store records as well as newspaper ads could serve as a source of information for household items. People bought what was locally available. • While three blacksmiths (one in Farley) were identified as being patronized by arsenal residents, some men who had their own farms had their own blacksmith shop and did their own work. Going further back in time, the 1880 census showed that Amanda and John Sheffield had living on their farm a farmhand who was a blacksmith. • The excavation of outhouses is of concern to archaeologists. When the ethnoarchaeology study was discussed in a meeting with the Alabama State Archaeologist, he mentioned the importance of excavating outhouses. Some of the very “pitiful” sharecropper houses had no outhouse. Most people did have an outhouse. However, when the researcher asked if they threw their discarded items in the outhouse, the answers ranged from a polite pause and a “no,” that were accompanied by a look that implied the question was considered “odd,” at best, to one person who exclaimed, “Whatever would we want to do that for!” The researcher has asked this question of many other people of what could be called average means who were not subjects in this study and none of them threw discarded items in their outhouses. This study found that the outhouses of the tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and most of the other landowners of average means on the pre-arsenal land were not used as a place to discard their refuse, thus, excavation would not yield information. • The location of one cemetery that was not recorded by the Army was discerned. Juanita Lassiter (p. 369) said a cemetery was on the property of Stella Tolbert McWhorter (D-166). She said the cemetery had “one tombstone and mostly unmarked graves.” [It has been shown that tombstones were removed from some known cemeteries after the Army took ownership of the land so it is probable that this occurred at the abovementioned cemetery.] This conclusion has identified only a few of the assertions that can be developed from the data. It is suggested that future researchers draw their own framework for analyzing the data contained within the interviews. It is suggested that the data in the interviews be read in conjunction with the parcel maps and with thought to the interrelationships among the people. 425 - (4458)