Author: Lawrence H. Larsen Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700631615 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 198
Book Description
Historians have largely ignored the western city; although a number of specialized studies have appeared in recent years, this volume is the first to assess the importance of the urban frontier in broad fashion. Lawrence H. Larsen studies the process of urbanization as it occurred in twenty-four major frontier towns. Cities examined are Kansas City, St. Joseph, Lincoln, Omaha, Atchison, Lawrence, Leavenworth, Topeka, Austin, Dallas, Galveston, Houston, San Antonio, Denver, Leadville, Salt Lake City, Virginia City, Portland, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Stockton. Larsen bases his analysis of western cities and their problems on social statistics obtained from the 1880 United States Census. This census is particularly important because it represents the first time that the federal government regarded the United States as an urban nation. The author is the first scholar to do a comprehensive investigation of this important source. This volume gives an accurate portrayal of western urban life. Here are promoters and urban planners crowding as many lots as possible into tracts in the middle of vast, uninhabited valleys. Here are streets clogged with filth because of inadequate sanitation systems; people crowded together in packed quarters with only fledgling police and fire services. Here, too, is the advance of nineteenth-century technology: gaslights, telephones, interurbans. Most important, this study dispels the misconceptions concerning the process of exploration, settlement, and growth of the urban west. City building in the American West, despite popular mythology, was not a response to geographic or climatic conditions. It was the extension of a process perfected earlier, the promotion and building of sites—no matter how undesirable—into successful localities. Uncontrolled capitalism led to disorderly development that reflected the abilities of individual entrepreneurs rather than most other factors. The result was the establishment of a society that mirrored and made the same mistakes as those made earlier in the rest of the country.
Author: John Philip Young Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag ISBN: 3849650618 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 773
Book Description
Although the period of active life of San Francisco has been a short one, as historical periods go, it has been crowded with incident. Enough of the latter could be found to present a vivid picture of the career of the metropolis of the Pacific coast, but in this work something more has been attempted than a mere recital of occurrences. It has been the purpose of the author to trace the causes of the growth of the City, and to describe the manifold activities of its citizens. This is volume one out of two of one of the most thrilling and detailed histories of San Francisco.
Author: John Philip Young Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag ISBN: 3849650626 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 809
Book Description
Although the period of active life of San Francisco has been a short one, as historical periods go, it has been crowded with incident. Enough of the latter could be found to present a vivid picture of the career of the metropolis of the Pacific coast, but in this work something more has been attempted than a mere recital of occurrences. It has been the purpose of the author to trace the causes of the growth of the City, and to describe the manifold activities of its citizens. This is volume two out of two of one of the most thrilling and detailed histories of San Francisco.
Author: R. Isabela Morales Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197531792 Category : African Americans Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
A poignant, multi-generational saga of a mixed-race family in the US West and South from the antebellum period through the rise of Jim Crow. When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the fifty-two-year-old white planter left behind hundreds of slaves, thousands of acres of rich cotton land, and a net worth of approximately $200,000. In life, Samuel had done little to distinguish himself from other members of the South's elite slaveholding class. But he made a name for himself in death by leaving almost the entirety of his fortune to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces: all of them his slaves. In this deeply researched, movingly narrated portrait of the extended Townsend family, R. Isabela Morales reconstructs the migration of this mixed-race family across the American West and South over the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could exercise their newfound freedom and wealth to the fullest, members of the family homesteaded and attended college in Ohio and Kansas; fought for the Union Army in Mississippi; mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies; and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama to purchase part of the old plantation where he had once been held as a slave. In Morales's telling, the Townsends' story maps a new landscape of opportunity and oppression, where the meanings of race and freedom--as well as opportunities for social and economic mobility--were dictated by highly local circumstances. During the turbulent period between the Civil War and the rise of Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century, the Townsends carved out spaces where they were able to benefit from their money and mixed-race ancestry, pass down generational wealth, and realize some of their happy dreams of liberty.
Author: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Publisher: Woodbridge, CT. : Research Publications ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 548
Author: Lawrence H. Larsen
Author: John Philip Young
Author: Mary Bosworth
Author: John Philip Young
Author: Charles P. Deatherage
Author: 
Author: Charles P. Deatherage
Author: R. Isabela Morales
Author: Glenn Danford Bradley
Author: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library