166,067 research outputs found
Jo J. Gentry
No full textJo J. Gentry receives an award for 20 years of service in Business Affairs. (l-r) President William Perry, Jo J. Gentry, Vice President of Business Affairs William Weber.https://thekeep.eiu.edu/years_of_service_2013/1097/thumbnail.jp
'To Knowe a Gentilman': Men and Gentry Culture in Fifteenth Century Yorkshire
No full textThis is a study of gentry culture, specifically the culture of gentry males in fifteenth century Yorkshire. Its aim is to examine what it meant to be a gentleman in this period, looking at how gentry males defined themselves as gentlemen, what was expected of them and what they expected of others. A single county has been chosen to allow for more detailed examination of the evidence than would be possible in a wider study, with this county in particular chosen for the richness and variety of its sources. The range and quality of sources is important, for this is an interdisciplinary study which makes used of a varied collection of evidence in order to gain the fullest picture possible of gentry culture in this period. Through a series of case studies, each focusing on a particular piece, or collection of pieces, of evidence to include chancery documents, wills, letters, art and architecture, I will identify several themes integral to the construction of identity for gentry males. In looking specifically at gentlemen, rather than gentlewomen or the gentry in general, this thesis will consider questions not only of status but also of gender, a combination of factors that have seldom been considered in previous scholarship. It is hoped that this this new perspective, combined with the interdisciplinary nature of the study, something that has also seldom been been attempted, will prove useful in gaining a greater understanding of what it meant to be a gentleman in late medieval England. By extension, it is intended that this will contribute towards a greater understanding of late medieval society as a whole
Joe Gentry Oral History Interview
No full textInterview with Joe Gentry by Leah Warner about Sevier County during the Great Depression
Gentry Identity and the Politics of Vernacular Letter Writing in the Fifteenth Century
No full textThe individual authorial voice of the late-medieval gentry letter-writer as heard in the context of private, familial or public land disputes is the focus of this thesis. It uses as its main sources two fifteenth-century letter collections which arise out of legal challenges: the Armburgh Roll and the letters of John Shillingford, a mayor of Exeter. The Armburgh Roll, c.1417-c.1453, focuses on a disputed inheritance claim and the affairs of the claimants Joan Armburgh and her husband Robert. The Shillingford letters detail a public dispute between the city of Exeter and the ecclesiastical authorities in the 1440s.
The aim of this thesis is to further the understanding of the social and cultural attitudes of the fifteenth-century gentry through the analysis of the language and composition of their personal writings as well as to advance the historiographical appreciation of those gentry letters where they were written within the framework of conflict.
It is both the deployment of a literary line of enquiry and a comparative study of the language, content and context of the letters that comprises the main strands of the study. It shows how by ‘reading between the lines’ and examining the individuality of the texts it is possible to reveal the thought processes that sit behind the individual writers’ words and therefore to gain a greater insight into the literate gentry strata. It demonstrates the importance of examining the letters with the emphasis on the politics of the writing which in turn reveals the emotional engagement that the individual gentry writer had with his or her own writing. Primarily, the thesis argues that by appraising the personal writings of the gentry with the emphasis on the creation of the texts against an appreciation of the complex ideological beliefs and concepts of the late-medieval period we can develop our understanding of gentry close personal relationships which in turn enables us to add to our knowledge of that important land-owning class and its evolving social hierarchy
Interview with John Joyner by George Gentry, May 15, 2003
No full textOral history interview with John Joyner. Also present: John Joyner, Jr. and John Joyner's daughterINTERVIEW WITH JOHN JOYNER
BY GEORGE GENTRY MAY 15, 2003
MR. JOYNER: My name is John Robert Joyner. J-O-Y-N-E-R.
MR. GENTRY: Tell everyone where we are today, conducting this interview.
MR. JOYNER: We are in the Pine Grove section; we call it, of Pierce County.
MR. GENTRY: And what is that near?
MR. JOYNER: That’s near Blackshear, in the State of Georgia.
MR. GENTRY: Do you mind telling us how old you are, and when you were born?
MR. JOYNER: I was born the 25th day of November in 1911.
MR. GENTRY: And where were you born?
MR. JOYNER: I was born in Folkston. We didn’t live there. My mother was visiting
my father’s family when I was born. She lived in Waycross [Georgia]. My father, was,
well, I don’t know if this is the right time to say it…
MR. GENTRY: Yeah, go ahead, it’s fine.
MR. JOYNER: My father was, I believe the first paid Fire Chief in Waycross. I wasn’t
born yet. It was in 1910, I believe, when he was made Chief.
MR. GENTRY: I guess that era in this part of the country was when the railroad had
just come through and opened it up for timber?
MR. JOYNER: Oh yes. And the north and south railroad and the east and west railroads
crossed at Waycross. That was a crossing of the ways. That’s where it got its name of
course. My family was connected with the Baileys. My mother’s first husband was
Theodore Bailey. He was a Dentist I believe. Sometime later, they were divorced and she
married my father who was James Mitchell Joyner.
MR. GENTRY: And the Joyner name is that of English dissent?
MR. JOYNER: They were from England. He arrived at Fort Fredericka on St. Simon’s
Island. In history, there is one of the lots in this town of Fredericka that was owned by a
man named John Joyner. My aunts told me when I was a boy that we had people who
were born at Fredericka. It’s a town that [General] Oglethorpe had built in that Fort to
guard against the Spanish intrusion into Georgia.
MR. GENTRY: So you can trace your family, as best you can tell, back to the settling of
Georgia by Oglethorpe?
MR. JOYNER: Yes sir, we are. There is a river island over in Wayne County, near
Jesup named Joyner’s Island. There is another place in there, where my grandfather was
born and raised right across the river from Joyner’s Island. It was deeded to them by the
King of England. That’s the way a lot of people got their land back in those days. They
were pretty good pieces of land too. But that’s beautiful country up and down that
Altamaha River.
MR. GENTRY: Let’s jump now to 1911, you were born in Folkston. Can you describe
your earliest recollections of not only Folkston, but also the Okefenokee and Waycross
area around the Swamp; this coastal plain area? What are your earliest recollections of
what it looked like compared to now? What kind of a habitat was this?
MR. JOYNER: Back in those days cattle and hogs and all ran free range. They were just
loose. We’d get out late in the evening and call the hogs. They could hear you from four
or five miles down in the creek swamps and places. They’d come up for their feed. Of
course hogs had their own way of eating. They hand a little intelligence too, because
they’d fight for the low end of the trough. People would save their dishwater and food
scraps and make a slop out of it. Of course at the low end of the trough it was deeper.
You had more to eat. And the hogs would fight over that end of the trough.
MR. GENTRY: So you had cattle and hogs and other livestock just running free? It’s
kind of like the open range of the west?
MR. JOYNER: That’s exactly what it was. Just the same way. Back in, oh good night,
I forget the times, but I think Roosevelt was President; Franklin Roosevelt, and the
farmers out west had a terrible drought out there. The government, to keep everybody
from going broke bought a lot of cattle from those people out west and shipped them
down to south Georgia and probably other states. They shipped just hundreds of head of
cattle down here and they brought that “screw worm”, we called it with them. It just
about devastated everything that we had. Because those screwworm flies would lay their
eggs on the other animals, you know. And if there was a sore spot or whatever, they’d
just bore right down into the skin. Finally, and especially in sheep when they turned
sheep out, you couldn’t see the flies soon enough to kill them. They’d kill the sheep.
MR. GENTRY: Back in that time when you were out just walking in the woods or riding
through the woods, however you got about as a young person, what did the land look
like? Was it all pine trees?
MR. JOYNER: It was pine trees and wire grass.
MR. GENTRY: Well what kind of pine trees?
MR. JOYNER: They were mostly slash pine; it’s the same ones that we have now. But
there’s what they call Loblolly now. We called them Black Pine in those days. It
wouldn’t do for turpentine because it just didn’t run the sap that the slash pine did. Slash
pine of course, they’d contract with some man and his family to work say ten thousand
cups on it. They had a metal tool with about a five or six pound weight on one end of it.
And they’d strike across the bark of the tree and knock it down a layer. Then they do the
same on the other side so that you had a “V” shaped face on that tree. It wasn’t a
pronounced V but anyhow, that’s the way it was. They would mold an apron up against
the tree on each side of that face and hang a cup under it. They’d just drive a thirty or
forty penny spike under the cup, slip it up under that metal and the pine gum would run
down in the cup. Approximately once a month they would take the barrels and put out
in the woods. They’d take a dip bucket, we called it, and scoop out the pine tar in a
bucket and tote it to the barrel and dump into there. It seems like the barrel was always a
mile and a half too far! You had to tote that bucket and it was just all a man could do, to
do a real days work out in the turpentine woods.
MR. GENTRY: Was that done in the middle of the summertime?
MR. JOYNER: It was done in the summertime, of course, when the sap was running. In
the wintertime, the faces grew up. I’ve seen faces that would be up twelve or fifteen feet.
But then they’d get to the point where you don’t have much gum running because it
sticks to that face as it comes down and dries. You had to be real careful of woods fires
because turpentine burns like gasoline, you know, or worse. They’d hire a bunch of
people to get out there with hoes and weed around the tree to cut the wiregrass away
from each pine tree. That was wintertime work. My uncle was a turpentine man. He
had is own still out in back of his house in Folkston. He’d lease timber from around.
MR. GENTRY: What were they using all of that turpentine for back then?
MR. JOYNER: Oh lord; they used the resin for all kinds of things! I don’t know what, I
guess in manufacturing stuff, I don’t know what else. But the spirits of turpentine, of
course, we used it as a medicine. I remember one time some boys and I were going one
time in a Model A sedan to the river to go swimming. Back in those days it was free
country and there was grass on the roads. The shoulders of the highways had cattle on
them all of the time. You had to be careful or you’d wreck with the cows. There was a
cow with her backend up on the edge of the road and her front feet were down in the
ditch. She was leaning over. I had my arm kind of out the window by the elbow. I told
the guy to pull over that way and I would catch her by the tail, just playing. But the boy
got too close and I stuck my arm out like I was gonna catch her by the tail and I actually
hit the cow on the hip and it drove my arm up against the back of the window. It took
the hide and all off of it back there. Well, they carried me on back to town because it was
bleeding a little bit. I had to walk four miles to home out to Trader’s Hill. I walked by a
turpentine still and they were running off, or what they called “taking off a charge”. They
were running the turpentine into a barrel. It was coming out of the still. It was still
warm. It was being condensed. It was coming down into the barrel, and I stuck my arm
down in the barrel of hot turpentine; all the way up to here. I held it there for three or
four minutes. When I got home, my arm wasn’t sore at all. It just healed right up with no
problem. It was pretty good lick that hit it there.
MR. GENTRY: I want to go back to the cattle and livestock running free; but were you
old enough at that time, or were you aware of any kind of damage to the environment at
that time because of that?
MR. JOYNER: No. I found nothing wrong with it. The woods were open in those
days. You could see through the woods. You didn’t have all that underbrush because it
was burnt off every year. The fires were low, it was just grass burning. Every once in a
while a tree would catch but even if it burned ‘til it burned out, it didn’t burn the tree
down or anything.
MR. GENTRY: Were those natural fires, or what?
MR. JOYNER: Well, they could be natural. But the farmers would carefully burn all
around out there were their cows used, that called it. That green grass would come up and
the cows begin to get some nourishment out of it. But just wiregrass in itself, old dry
wiregrass, is just that; wire. It looks like and feels like it. The cows won’t eat it. They
can’t get any nourishment out of it anyhow. It was burnt off every year. It keeps all the
scrub down. But now, if the fire gets out in the woods, it’ll burn up half a million dollars
worth of timber before you can get it stopped. Because all that brush is grown up you
know. You can just look out around here and see it. But there’d be thousands and
thousand of robins. They’d coming down every year to these burned off woods. They
could eat the cooked insects and all like that you know. But there would just be crowds
of the woods. You could hear them.
MR. GENTRY: I wonder where the farmers learned to burn the woods like that? Do
you suppose they learned that from the Native Americans that lived in this part of the
country?
MR. JOYNER: I don’t see why they had to learn it from anybody. It just looks like
common sense. They burned it off and got tender grass when they did that. The cows
begin to get a little fat.
MR. GENTRY: So who come along with this bright idea to stop all the burning?
MR. JOYNER: Oh boy, I don’t know. I just have no idea, but there was signs all up
around everywhere. “You can grow soft timber in forty years if you keep fire out”. Of
course the pulp wood people, the big timber companies say that we’ve got more pine
trees now that we’ve ever had. That’s true but saplings is all in the world it is. There’s
no lumber to it. The trees that they cut, they might get two by fours or four by fours out
of it.
MR. GENTRY: Were those government signs that were up? Were they from the
Department of Agriculture?
MR. JOYNER: I think so. I’m not sure where they came from. But I know they were
from the timber service part of the government, or the state government. I guess it was
just the State of Georgia.
MR. GENTRY: So how did that turn out?
MR. JOYNER: Well we still got it. And what we’ve got now is just a jungle out there
and all the timber’s been cut off just about. It’s all saplings now. The fields have been
just abandoned you know, and they plant pine trees in it. I just enjoyed coming up. I
was a “one horse farmer”. I had a horse, and a milk cow. And we had several other cattle
in the woods. We could kill a beef if we wanted to. We killed hogs most of the time. We
butchered them out and had a smoke house. We had a hand pump on the back porch. It
was just the old-time way. The way they came in, very few houses were sealed on the
inside. You just had the outside boards overhead and around you.
MR. GENTRY: Were the woods prettier back then?
MR. JOYNER: Oh yes. It was open. You could see for half a mile through the woods.
Pine trees were all there. The weather was different back in those days. We had, in the
fall of the year we would pull the leaves off of the corn stalks while they were still green
and hang them up behind the ear of corn one right after another. Those corn leaves would
dry and we’d tit them in bundles and put them in the crib in the barn, to feed on. There’s
never been a better smelling feed than the fodder we called it. There would be ‘fodder
showers’ we called it. You could see white rain coming through the woods as a cloud
went over you know. But every time you’d pull fodder wanting it to get dry, then it was
the time of year when those fodder showers would come every afternoon just enough to
make you wait another day before you could get your leaves into the crib.
MR. GENTRY: You mean just regular rain showers coming through the woods?
MR. JOYNER: Oh yes! It would be what we always called “white rain”. We didn’t
have telephones or electric lights or anything like that. But if you got in trouble you took
the old shotgun off of the door up there and fired three shots, evenly spaced. Then your
neighbors would come to you. People lived sometimes half a mile from their nearest
neighbor. You could get in a spot where you needed a neighbor every once in a while.
MR. GENTRY: I understand that they had this idea to stop the farmers from burning
and everything; the proscribed burning is what it’s called now. You took a job checking
on all of that?
MR. JOYNER: I took a job trying to keep the farmers and people from burning.
MR. GENTRY: Who was that with?
MR. JOYNER: That was with the County Commissioners of Charlton County. I
believe there were four Commissioners, and each one hired a man to ride his section.
They divided the county up like that. My mind just won’t work right or I could tell you
who the Commissioner was that worked for.
MR. GENTRY: Well, that’s probably not as important as getting you to describe what
your job was like. How did you go about doing it?
MR. JOYNER: I just rode through the woods, off of the roads, all back in among the
farms back in there. I remember one; the man’s name was Reese Rider. They were
supposed to be kind of rough people. I never found them that way. Any body I ever had
association with back out in the woods there was just good people. They went to church
and all that. Now and then you’d find somebody that’d kill you if you messed with him!
But they were all good people. On top of the fact that they stopped us from burning the
woods, then they had a law that said you had to have a fence around your field, to keep
the livestock out of your field.
MR. GENTRY: You mean out of the woods?
MR. JOYNER: No, out of your fields.
MR. GENTRY: Let me get this right, the livestock were running everywhere?
MR. JOYNER: The livestock were in the woods. You fenced in your corn patch, your
cornfields or whatever you farmed; the farming land, to keep all of the cattle out of your
field. But then they passed what they called the “no fence law”. You didn’t have to have
a fence around your field. And if my cattle got into your patch, and ate up your corn or
whatever, then I was liable for it. Because I had to keep the cattle fenced up then instead
of having to fence off the field. So what did that do? That stopped people from running
cattle in the woods. We don’t have cows out in the woods now.
MR. GENTRY: Let’s go back and talk about your job? How much did you get paid, if
you don’t mind me asking?
MR. JOYNER: I got paid 100.00 a month out of it, and I was tickled to death to get that.
MR. GENTRY: How far did you ride on that horse on a daily basis doing that?
MR. JOYNER: Well, I’d ride from Trader’s Hill to out there in the swamp and that was
about ten or twelve miles. I was supposed to ride from the time the grass dried until the
dew started falling; which was almost an impossibility to do. Sometimes the dew didn’t
start falling. They saw dew doesn’t fall, but I’ve seen it spatter on the car. It wasn’t
raining.
MR. GENTRY: So you mean that you had to ride from in the morning, when it got hot?
MR. JOYNER: That’s right.
MR. GENTRY: So, you were to ride your horse out from Trader’s Hill out to the
swamp from the time in the morning, maybe nine or ten o’clock maybe?
MR. JOYNER: I’d just get up at daylight and go to work as soon as I could get my horse
fed and eat some breakfast myself. I get astride and go on and be in the woods.
MR. GENTRY: I am trying to picture this in my mind. You are sitting on your horse.
You’ve probably got you some lunch packed, or something like that.
MR. JOYNER: Yeah, usually some smokehouse meat and baked sweet potatoes and
things like that.
MR. GENTRY: And you’ve probably got you a weapon of some type?
MR. JOYNER: Well, they wanted me to carry a gun, but I knew better that to take a gun
out there among those people. I wasn’t after shooting anybody, so I didn’t. They were
friends of mine, you know! I just didn’t want to make a war out of it.
MR. GENTRY: So you didn’t carry anything for rattlesnakes or anything like that?
MR. JOYNER: Oh no, I didn’t a gun with me at all.
MR. GENTRY: I just trying to kind of picture your day. We’re just going to kind of
walk through this. You got on your horse at daybreak, got you some smokehouse meat,
and you are unarmed and you set off riding on your horse.
MR. JOYNER: That’s right, and I’d kind of get in my mind where I wanted to ride that
day. I’ve been back in; this was in the season when farmers usually would begin to burn
off patches of woods.
MR. GENTRY: What time of the year was that?
MR. JOYNER: The time of the year was in the fall and winter. The grass would be
dead, and they’d burn it off. Then before warm weather came, that wiregrass would be
green and growing. The cows would begin to get a little fat on it you know.
MR. GENTRY: So the purpose of you riding out through the woods and doing this was
what?
MR. JOYNER: It was to keep people from burning the woods. The fact that there was
somebody looking for it out there would be a deterrent to keep the farmers from setting
the woods on fire. Most of the farmers wouldn’t do it, but you’ve always got some that
would you know.
MR. GENTRY: This was a County effort to stop burning so the timber would grow?
MR. JOYNER: That’s correct. That is right.
MR. GENTRY: Even to this day, that’s sort of a political question, I guess. Who
determined what was most important? The farmers had an interest in… It’s seems like
there was kind a struggle here, between the poor one horse farmers and the landowners.
Do you know what was going on there?
MR. JOYNER: In some instances it could be, and was, I am sure. But the agricultural
colleges, like the college at Tifton, they are studying all this all of the time. They come up
with the recommendations a lot of times and the counties will follow their
recommendations. Then they get up there and pass these little laws that the farmers have
to do.
MR. GENTRY: But the passing of that law to reduce the burning was in the interest of
someone in the County to produce more timber, is that correct?
MR. JOYNER: That’s right. That’s correct.
MR. GENTRY: Who were the one’s passing those laws?
MR. JOYNER: Your County Commissioners I guess. Unless it was the State
government that did it; the Forestry Departments and things like that.
MR. GENTRY: Was suppressing the burning at the expense of the small one horse
farmer?
MR. JOYNER: The small farmer didn’t have anything to feed his cattle on in the woods.
If you couldn’t burn the grass off, all you had was old oak scrub and stuff coming up in
the pine forest and the cows didn’t have anything to eat. They couldn’t eat just that.
They’d survive if a farmer could help them a little with feed or something. But it wasn’t,
you couldn’t just turn your cows out in the woods and let them go. They’d have their
calves raised out there just like they would in the west.
MR. GENTRY: Who did the woods belong to at that time?
MR. JOYNER: Usually around every little town there was maybe one or two families
that had the bank and had the dry good store and grocery store, if you sold anything you
had to sell to those places of business that were owned by the prominent families. If you
bought anything, you had to buy it from their store.
MR. GENTRY: So they owned most of that land?
MR. JOYNER: They owned most of that land, that’s right. Because they could by if
for, lord, I’ve seen it go for $12.00 an acre. They’d buy up every bit that they could get.
MR. GENTRY: I am trying to understand if this prevention of burning was their effort
to protect their land, their timberland from the local farmers who wanted just to let their
cattle run out there, and to burn.
MR. JOYNER: That’s right.
MR. GENTRY: They perceived that as not a good thing. Now I understand. So your
riding on your horse, and your job is to ride around and let people know that you are
watching so they don’t burn, is that right?
MR. JOYNER: That’s right. Well let me tell you about my horse now.
MR. GENTRY: Okay, tell me about your horse.
MR. JOYNER: She was a four year old, bay, mare. And we hit it off, right in the
beginning; just like I do any animal. She got to the point to where she would
Aspects of the history of the Catholic gentry of Yorkshire from the Pilgrimage of Grace to the First Civil War
No full textThis study looks at the responses of the Yorkshire Catholic gentry to the immense
changes to their religious landscape in the early modem period, between 1536 and
1642. It examines how they continued to adhere to the Catholic religion, despite all
attempts first to induce and then compel conformity and highlights the ways in which
they managed to survive and prosper throughout the period, demonstrating that
previously neglected groups such as women and younger sons had a crucial role to
play in this process. The overwhelming theme to their actions was one of pragmatism,
rather than the heroic and self-destructive behaviour that was much admired by earlier
historians who wanted to identify martyrs to the Catholic cause.
The areas that are to be examined reflect both public and private gentry activities. In
the public sphere the Yorkshire gentry's part in the rebellions of the Tudor and Stuart
eras are studied along with their rejection of plots. The importance of marriage as an
early modem tool for building alliances and social advancement is acknowledged and
the impact that a continuing adherence to Catholicism had on this is considered. The
gentry and the church are examined through a study of the Catholic gentry's
involvement with their local parishes, their reaction to the dissolution and their
continuing adherence to monasticism, as shown through their devotion to English
orders on the continent. To reflect the changes that were occurring in this period
Catholic involvement in education, the law and medicine are also explored showing
that the Catholic community was not isolated from the wider society. Lastly the role
of Catholic women is given specific consideration in order both to redress the
imbalance in previous studies and due to the crucial role that women played in the
continuation of the Catholic community within Yorkshire
Marriage record of Gentry, George J. and Howard, Mary
No full textMarriage license for George J. Gentry and Mary Howard. W.D.F. Snipes was the officiant
Interview wtih Donald Hankla by George Gentry May 15, 2003
No full textOral history interview with Donald Hankla. George Gentry as interviewer.INTERVIEW WITH DONALD HANKLA
BY GEORGE GENTRY MAY 15, 2003
MR. HANKLA: My name is Donald Hankla, H-A-N-K-L-A. I live in Anna, Illinois.
MR. GENTRY: Where are you from? Can you give us some background information?
MR. HANKLA: I was born and raised in Union County, near Anna, Illinois and I have
gone back there to retire. After getting out of high school and a short stint in World War
II I went to Southern Illinois University and got the first degree in Wildlife Management
from that small school in 1951. I went to work for the North Carolina Natural Resources
Commission as a Biologist. Ten years later, I went with the Fish and Wildlife Service as
an east coast Waterfowl Biologist.
MR. GENTRY: Your date of birth?
MR. HANKLA: February 25, 1927.
MR. GENTRY: What was your career span with the Fish and Wildlife Service?
MR. HANKLA: Twenty-seven years with the Fish and Wildlife Service. I retired in
1987.
MR. GENTRY: What were your main areas of expertise in the Service?
MR. HANKLA: My main areas of expertise had a biological orientation. I started
seeking and identifying areas to be purchased for the National Wildlife Refuge System.
When that ended, I immediately became the Regional Biologist in Atlanta for all refuges. I
went to the Departmental Manager Training Program from that, in 1966. I came back
from that program and became as Assistant Regional Supervisor of Refuges for the States
of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. From there, after a few years, I went to
the Washington, D.C. office where I was on the Refuges staff for about a year. I was
doing biological support work. Then I became the Chief of the Branch of Resource
Management in Washington, D.C., which dealt with hunting and fishing programs and
management of all of the resources on national wildlife refuges. From there, after four and
a half years, I went to Portland as Associate Regional Director for the Northwest Region.
After about four and a half years in that position, which was a wonderful position, I
accepted a job as Area Manager. The Fish and Wildlife Service reorganized again, they do
that every few years, and I became one of eighteen Area Managers. I applied for two
Area Manager positions; one in Asheville, North Carolina and one in Jacksonville,
Florida. Luckily, I got the one in Jacksonville, Florida. I was the Manager for Puerto
Rico, The Virgin Islands, Georgia and Florida, of all the Fish and Wildlife Activities
except Law Enforcement. Then Area Offices were wiped out in 1982 and I retreated back
to Atlanta. I had luckily kept the house that I had purchased when I was there earlier. I
just moved back into that house. I was the Deputy Assistant Regional Director for
Wildlife for two or three years. I ended up as the Deputy Assistant Regional Director for
Ecological Services. I was kind of cooling my heels waiting to retire. That has been the
span of my career.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could you tell us some of the highlights, some of the
accomplishments that you are most proud of, or that you think made the most
impression on the Service?
MR. HANKLA: I have thought about this a lot. I am convinced that the legacy that I
want to be remembered for is first work that I did on land acquisition. I actually worked
by myself to establish, or locate the sites for new National Wildlife Refuges. The first
one that I located, completed an Acquisition Report on, and was purchased, was the Pee
Dee National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. The second was Lake Woodruff in
Florida. The third was the Hatchie Refuge on the Hatchie River in west Tennessee.
There was the St. Vincent Refuge, which is in Florida, and Pungo Lake, which no longer
has that name; I think it’s in with the Pocosin Lakes Refuges. I first recommended the
Mason’s Neck Refuge in Virginia, which is now a refuge. It wasn’t acquired at that time
but I recommended that it be acquired. So land acquisition and the establishment of
refuges is, I think, the most exciting thing. I didn’t know at the time that it would be all
that important. But I know now that that little bit of work that I did, helped shape, a
little bit, the direction of what’s happening. I had good advice from a number of people.
But still, I had to go out and work on the ground and find a suitable location. I had to
identify it, decide on its size and how it would be managed. I talked to the State Fish and
Game Departments and everybody else about it. That was kind of exciting. Each one had
its own story. As is happened, at the Pee Dee in North Carolina, I had hunted there one
time when I worked for the state. There were geese and Black Ducks and things like this.
So that became the first one that I recommended; not because I had hunted there, but
because I knew of the quality of it. The second one, which was at Hatchie, I was excited
about the Hatchie. I conferred with the Habitat Committees of the Atlantic Flyway
Council and the Mississippi Flyway Council. I got recommendations from them. The
Corps of Engineers had just permitted the Obion and the Forked Deer Rivers in western
Tennessee to be drained, draining a huge amount of fantastic habitat that wintered many,
many thousands of birds.
MR. GENTRY: Let me just interrupt for a minute. If you could just sprinkle this with a
little bit of dates, so that for those of us who don’t have a clue about this, even if it’s just
an approximate date.
MR. HANKLA: Surely. It was 1962, in March, when we submitted the proposal to
acquire the Pee Dee. That was the first one. It went to Washington and it was reviewed.
I got a personal letter from J. Clark Salyer, the famous Salyer whom I consider to be the
father of the Refuge System, really. He said, “You sure did a good job on this
reconnaissance, keep up the good work”! So, if I can just digress for a minute; when I
went to Washington I went along with the proposal when it went before the Migratory
Bird Commission to answer any questions they might have. You can’t spend Duck
Stamp money without getting the approval of the Migratory Bird Commission. That’s
where I met “Clark” Salyer. He had retired from his position as Chief of Refuges but was
in a consulting position. He was blind, and everything had to be read to him. But he had
a mind that wouldn’t quit. He remembered all of the places in the United States where he
had been and he thought there should be new wildlife refuges. He pulled me aside and
told me of some great places. He insisted that I find a place for a refuge in Florida for the
Sand Hill Crane. But where he wanted me to locate it had already been drained and there
were citrus groves there. He had seen that habitat years before when he was out making
his surveys. We had many discussions, and I was up there several times. All of sudden I
didn’t go anymore because we had completed the acquisition work. The Hatchie was in
1962, later. The important thing there was that the Corps had permitted the drainage of
those rivers and wiped out the habitat. The Habitat Committee of the Flyway Council
said, ‘see if you can find something in west Tennessee to replace that’. So I found a
beautiful place on the Hatchie. We established it to straddle the river thinking that if the
Corps was going to drain that, maybe we could get enough fuss caused about them
destroying a National Wildlife Refuge. They never did. I don’t know if they ever would
have, but nevertheless, we have two refuges on the Hatchie now. [Lower Hatchie, and
Hatchie] They are big bottomland hardwood refuges. That was in 1962. This all was
done in 1962 through 1964. The Congress had passed legislation called The Wetlands
Loan Act. They were actually loaning the Fish and Wildlife Service that was the intent of
the legislation one hundred and five million dollars that would have to be replaced with
the sale of Duck Stamps. So it was actually a loan, and the one hundred and five million
dollars became available, and when I was hired to represent Region 4 in Acquisitions,
other biologist were doing the same thing I was. We were all competing for the money.
They set aside about one third of the one hundred and five million, or maybe a fourth, for
the wetland production areas in the Pothole country. The rest of it was up for grabs. I
think that the refuges that I found in about three years took about thirty five million of
the one hundred and five million. One refuge stood out in all of those. I found, just by
chance; I went down to the Gulf Coast to look for a refuge and couldn’t find one in a
certain area. I looked offshore and there was an island there. That turned out to be the St.
Vincent National Wildlife Refuge. I went out there and there were Zebras on that island,
and Sambar Deer. Two brothers owned it, and they had stocked these Zebras there. The
Sambar Deer are still there. The Zebras are long since gone. But when I came back to
Atlanta and wrote this up, I said that we didn’t have any funds for this. Only a part of
this would qualify for Duck Stamp funds. The rest of it would have to wait until we find
some. This was in 1964. In 1965 the law passed making offshore oil revenues available.
So the Land and Water Conservation Fund came into being in 1965. I was training in
Washington and the Regional Director came by one day and he asked me to come back to
Atlanta. He said that they were going to meet with the owners and try to buy St.
Vincent. They did buy it. I just went along. I am real proud of that Refuge. It was
purchased with Land and Water Conservation funds and I think it was established in
1968. That is a beauty. That took care of my Land Acquisition chores, except for one.
President Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird. He had become President in 1964, and somewhere
along in there she wanted to beautify the Potomac, and the Washington, D. C. area. So all
of the federal agencies that had any responsibilities in that area were called in. I
represented the Department of the Interior, because Virginia at that time was in Region 4.
I went up there and spent almost three months searching up and down the Potomac
looking for a suitable site for a National Wildlife Refuge, and could find nothing that I in
mind’s eye would make a good NWF. Except there was this one place at the mouth of
the river which is Mason’s Neck, which is now the Mason’s Neck NWR.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But it wasn’t made a refuge at that time?
MR. HANKLA: No, it wasn’t.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How much later, or longer did it take?
MR. HANKLA: I really don’t know. I looked yesterday, on the planks but I didn’t see
it, so I don’t know. I did recommend it. It’s in my file. I got a letter back from the
Director thanking me for the time that I spent away from my family up there making that
survey.
MR. GENTRY: Take St. Vincent’s Island for example; you went there the first time to
scout that out as a refuge. What year was that?
MR. HANKLA: I’d say it was in 1963. It could be early 1964.
MR. GENTRY: Other than finding those exotic species there, what was that habitat like?
Give us a picture of that in the 1960’s. Where it was located, and all of that.
MR. HANKLA: St. Vincent’s Island is located near Apalachicola, west of Tallahassee in
the panhandle, just offshore. On one end it’s about half a mile across, into the ocean. But
on the other end it must be ten or twelve miles. It’s a twelve thousand acre island. It is
largely upland pine. In fact, at one time there was a bridge across to it so they could
harvest the pine off of it. I was interested in it because there was one ownership. It had
not been developed, and it had fantastic, really beautiful salt marshes and fresh marshes. I
saw blind there. At the time of the year when I was there, no duck were there, but I saw
duck blinds, which indicated to me that ducks were there in the wintertime and people
were seeking them there. So I knew it was a waterfowl area. Then I got on to it and saw
it and it was just wonderful salt and fresh marsh there, but not enough to qualify it to
purchase for a whole refuge. But I knew that it ought to be in public ownership. At that
time, all of those beautiful places were being scarfed up for commercial development.
That was a beautiful one and I thought it should be in public ownership. It turned out
that the Regional Director went to the Smithsonian, and the Smithsonian Institute wanted
to be involved in it. They wanted to do research there. We thought that might encumber
us too much, in terms of what we wanted to do in NWR, so we didn’t get involved. But
it was just a beautiful island; with one ownership and no in holdings or other problems
that refuges have when they are adjacent to anybody else.
MR. GENTRY: That one wasn’t owned by the Reynolds family was it?
MR. HANKLA: It was owned by the Loomis brothers. One of the Loomis brothers was
the head of Voice of America in World War II. He came back, and the other brother was
in New York. They got together and wanted to sell it. Thank goodness, the Fish and
Wildlife Service was there at the right time.
MR. GENTRY: Maybe you can tell me kind of a general picture of the history of most
of those barrier islands, not along the Atlantic but on the Gulf. They were owned by
wealthy families for one reason or another.
MR. HANKLA: They were.
MR. GENTRY: Are there other examples of that that you are aware of?
MR. HANKLA: I looked at another island off of Southport, North Carolina; Bald Head
Island, right at the conjuncture of North and South Carolina. I thought that would make a
nice NWR as well. I don’t know who owned it at the time. It hadn’t been developed.
That’s the key, to get there and acquire it before it’s been developed. Because we can’t
afford; “we” the Fish and Wildlife Service, can’t afford the prices of buying big
plantations and developments. Usually, they are spoiled anyway, from the standpoint of
NWR.
MR. GENTRY: At that time, did you ever feel like you were in this race against time
with development, to acquire these places?
MR. HANKLA: There was a race against time. That’s why I was so excited about
finding St. Vincent; because it was still whole, nobody had gotten hold of it yet. I
couldn’t afford it. But there are several other barrier islands around Florida that have been
developed. And price is something else. The Fish and Wildlife Service can only do an
appraised price and we don’t want to spend all of our money buying as island which has
limited value in the sense that it’s not available to the public and so it has to have
something special about it. I thought that St. Vincent had something special with all of
those wetland marshes there, of value to Fish and Wildlife.
MR. GENTRY: I think you also in acquiring St. Vincent’s, acquired a pretty interesting
cultural, archeological site there; the oyster [sounds like] middins.
MR. HANKLA: How’d you know about that?
MR. GENTRY: I know a lot of things! You might be surprised!
MR. HANKLA: Yes! I am not familiar with all of the values. But on the north side
there, it’s obvious that there were some prehistoric culture. As my wife and I would go
down to visit, others saw it too; the waves were washing out all of these beautiful
artifacts. We have some of those little potshards. There are a number there. And I hope
that somebody, some time, if they haven’t, will go in scientifically and study it. But that
wouldn’t be involved in any of the value that I would place on the island as a NWR.
Another area that has the same kind of value that I was involved in, was Lake Woodruff.
It was on the St. John’s River in Florida and there, somebody was mining shell. There
was all kinds of archeological things in those shell mounds.
MR. GENTRY: St. Vincent’s wasn’t a pristine area. It had already been harvested and
things like that right?
MR. HANKLA: That’s true. It was not, in the sense that the owners had no doubt
previously harvested the timber and was well aware of in managing large blocks of land
like that, you need roads, or fire barriers. So it had been blocked off with roads that
would permit periodic burning or at least permit fire control in the event that a fire broke
out. Of course a lot of lightening strikes would set the woods on fire. Yes, it had been
managed in that sense. There was nobody there at all. I don’t know who they hired to do
it, but the roads were drug, and kept open. But there was no active management going on
at that time. I know that timber was harvested, and from the looks of the size of it, it had
all been replaced at one time, either naturally or planted.
MR. GENTRY: What about Hatchie? What was that ecosystem like?
MR. HANKLA: Hatchie was something different. I had to learn anew how politics
works on Hatchie. I wanted something that we didn’t have to wait forever to be able to
see the benefits from. So I found a place on the Hatchie where a timber owner had been
managing carefully the timber. The hardwoods were spaced nicely and were growing well.
I thought, “My goodness, we could make a green timber reservoir out of this. Just flood
this and bring all the ducks in here!” It was just a fantastic place. The owner, Powell
Lumber Company didn’t like that a bit, that anybody was thinking about buying it and
taking it from them. I wasn’t aware of this, but when it was approved at the Washington
level, and I guess they checked with Powell to see if he would sell it, why, he realized that
he might loose it and he doubt went to a Congressman. So the Fish and Wildlife Service
then had to negotiate. And the negotiation was, which I thought was terrible at the time;
but really it wasn’t, it was fine; they would permit him to cut the timber down to a
certain diameter level. I thought, “My God, you’ve ruined it!” But they really hadn’t.
Within just few years after he removed the bigger stuff, it was all right back just like it
was. Timber will restore itself, and is renewable. So we got it a lot cheaper by letting him
cut that timber, but it was a beautiful timberland area that flooded periodically from the
Hatchie. It had not been channelized. The water came down slowly and worked out into
the land of either side.
MR. GENTRY: The Hatchie is a tributary of what?
MR. HANKLA: The Hatchie is a tributary of the Mississippi. It’s near Brownsville,
TN and now we have a nice large refuge down on the Lower Hatchie, right at the mouth.
It has even additional greater values than that one did.
MR. GENTRY: What about the Pocosin area like? Did you say Pungo?
MR. HANKLA: I said, Pungo.
MR. GENTRY: What was Lake Pungo and the Pocosin area like?
MR. HANKLA: We were encouraged to buy a refuge there. I never felt that the refuge
was really necessary. But we were encouraged to buy a refuge there and unfortunately,
we were kind of told where to buy it! I don’t know how much about politics I should get
into here. It could be embarrassing.
MR. GENTRY: It doesn’t matter anymore! You are retired!
MR. HANKLA: Okay, I’ll just tell you what I know about it! The Chair of the
Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee in Congress that had our budget and looked
after Fish and Wildlife was from the Mattamuskeet, Pungo Lake area in North Carolina.
At this minute, I can’t think of his name, but that’s irrelevant really. We got a map in the
office in Atlanta with a red circle around it saying, ‘give consideration to buying this area
for refuge purposes.’ Well, it was adjacent, or very close to Mattamuskeet. And
Mattamuskeet was a beautiful functioning Refuge with geese, and waterfowl and
everything we wanted; Swan Quarter was nearby. We didn’t need another refuge there,
but he felt we did. So what happened was that a person had purchased Pungo and the
lands around it. It was the North American Land Company, as I remember it; this was
many years ago. They had attempted to farm it, and that is peat soil. It is very poor soil.
You couldn’t grow anything unless you watered it and fertilized it, and watered it and
fertilized it. They were going broke. They had cleared a lot of it. To bail them out, they
went to the Congressman; I am guessing this. But anyway we were told to buy and by
golly, we bought it! I’ve got that on my record. But later they purchased additional
Pocosin Lakes that were not cleared around, and joined them all. Now it’s the Pocosin
Lake NWR. We were kind of encouraged to buy that, and when I talked to the Director
about; I knew him quite well, he said, “Don, it’s a small to pay. That guy controls our
budget and everything we need nationwide!”
MR. GENTRY: What year was that, about?
MR. HANKLA: That was in 1964.
MR. GENTRY: What is a Pocosin, anyway?
MR. HANKLA: Oh my, you are reaching into… I am an interior biologist, not a coastal
biologist!
MR. GENTRY: I’ve seen a lot of other people try to answer that question. Nobody
really knows I don’t guess.
MR. HANKLA: Well, I can describe the looks of one. A Pocosin is a low wet area that
normally in that part of the country is dominated by what’s called Pond Pine. It is a fire
species. They have to run a fire through it to get it to reproduce. They are short and
dumpy and they’d never make a tree but they just occupy land. It’s on peat soil; so it’s a
very marginal type of situation where plant succession hasn’t proceeded far enough yet
from the water receding to make the soil rich enough to grow anything. So you’ve got
peat soil and a species that are normally found on those kinds of soils; which are not rich,
or even support wildlife. It’s good cover perhaps, but not food. That’s a Pocosin. And
the coastal part of North Carolina has a number of Pocosin areas.
UNI
Gentry, Mary
No full textJ. W. Gentry - husbandhttps://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-ch-memoranda-1913/1008/thumbnail.jp
The Durham gentry: social stablility and change in the palatinate of Durham, c.1286-1346
No full textThis thesis is a study of the gentry society of the palatinate of Durham in a sixty year period embracing the end of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century. It sets the evidence concerning Durham against a number of key debates concerning the development and status of the gentry class within the north of England and the realm as a whole, and demonstrates that whilst the position of the gentry fits with general themes common to the realm, it had a different experience from the gentry of the far north because it stood aloof from the effects of the Scottish wars. The central theme is the notion of cohesion: did cohesion exist within Durham society and what form did it take? It is argued that this cohesion was not based upon a rigid separate administrative structure, but rather a whole range of social relationships manifested in the lordship of the bishop. The main areas to be considered are the role of the Durham gentry in administration and office-holding, and landholding and lordship. First, it is demonstrated that Durham administration was highly organised and comprised three distinct types of men, but that these men had varied careers and also identified their interests outside Durham. Second, it is demonstrated that there was great stability within landholding in the palatinate, and that theories of decline in the gentry class are not borne out by the evidence relating to Durham, although the role of the gentry was, itself, distinctive. Finally, the role of ecclesiastical relations, and the gentry within these, is considered, and it is proposed that a stratification took place between ecclesiastical and secular society in this period. Overall, this thesis argues that experience of the Durham gentry demonstrates that Durham society possessed a high degree of cohesion in this period, but that the historian should still be cautious when talking of 'identity' within that society
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