Grasping at Independence: Debt, Male Authority, and Mineral Rights in Appalachian Kentucky, 1850–1915. By Robert S. Weise. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 374. $40.00.

Extract

Robert S. Weise, of the history department at Eastern Kentucky University, has provided a counterbalance to the standard emphasis upon outsiders' exploitation of the mineral resource of Appalachian Kentucky. Focusing on the aspirations of residents in Floyd County, he traces the economic development from pre–Civil War agricultural localism to the corporate mining structure of the twentieth century. His account rests upon creative use of census returns and county court files of land deeds, tax records, mortgage books, and case documents, personalized by reference to business correspondence of Walter Scott Harkins, Prestonburg lawyer, banker, and regional promoter, as found in the manuscript collection of the University of Kentucky library. The volume provides 28 statistical tables of agricultural, population, tax assessment, and mortgage data; 52 pages of footnotes; and 19 pages of bibliography—the last compilation offering much more than is directly applicable to his narrative, but useful as an excellent survey of recent interpretive literature on Appalachia and the New South.