326,407 research outputs found
'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
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
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
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
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
Interview with Ron Furnetton by George Gentry, April 23, 2003, Okefenokee, GA
No full textOral history interview with Ron Furnetton and George Gentry as interviewer.INTERVIEW WITH RON FURNETTON
BY GEORGE GENTRY APRIL 23, 2003
OKEFENOKEE, GA
MR. GENTRY: Boy, listen to all the birds out here! Okay Ron, let me get you to
identify yourself.
MR. FURNETTON: My name is Ronald Arvin Furnetton, but everybody calls me Ron.
I was born in 1938 in northwest Wisconsin. I lived in a little town called Webster. The
population was about 500. I was actually born in the neighboring county where they had
a hospital in Polk County, Wisconsin.
MR. GENTRY: Tell us a little background on your education and your area of expertise
and that sort of thing.
MR. FURNETTON: Like everybody around my age when I got out of high school, if
you couldn’t go to college then you went into the Service. I was in the Navy for a few
years. When I got out, I worked in electronics for a little while and decided that I didn’t
really like that field. I was interested in Forestry and I went to the University of
Minnesota, School of Forestry. I got my degree there in Forest Resource Management.
I graduated in 1968.
MR. GENTRY: Has that been your work for your whole career?
MR. FURNETTON: During the time I was in school I worked summers for the Forest
Service out in Montana. When I graduated I had three different offers. One was with the
Forest Service in Wisconsin, which was a temporary job. One was with the Bureau of
Land Management in Oregon. Then I got an offer from USFW at St. Marks, which is just
south of Tallahassee in Florida. It’s St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge. I accepted that
one. I was interested in the southeast anyhow because one of my favorite subjects when
I was in school was fire and fire history. We had a professor from Alabama. He was a
very good professor and I learned a lot about the long leaf pine community and the natural
role of fire. I was interested in fire management in this part of the country, so I jumped
on the opportunity to get into this area. After I spent a little over a year at St. Mark’s
NWR I went up to Piedmont NWR between Macon and Atlanta. Then in 1974, I came
down here to Okefenokee and I’ve been here until I retired in 2000.
MR. GENTRY: For the sake of the transcriptionist, tell us the date, and where we are.
MR. FURNETTON: Today is April 23, 2003. We are located at a County campground;
Traders Hill Recreation Area. This is kind of a historic spot because there used to be a
town right around us here. This used to be the County Seat of Charlton County. It’s
called Trader’s Hill because we’re just above the St. Mary’s River. It’s just down the hill
here. This point on the river was the farthest upstream that sailing vessels could come.
They’d come up here and trade with the Native Americans and with settlers for whatever
goods they had. They also took on water here that was acidy, but it prevented growth of
parasites and things like that. It was good water to carry and store. So they took on
water here, from the river.
MR. GENTRY: How are we located here in relationship to Okefenokee here?
MR. FURNETTON: We’re roughly five or six miles from the actual edge of the swamp.
We are east of the swamp. The river below us, St. Mary’s River comes out of the
southeast corner of the swamp and flows probably forty or so miles before it gets here.
It takes off down to the south then turns to the east and back north again before it makes
the loop here. It sort of borders the area of Georgia called “the Big Bend”, which is the
knob that sticks down to the southeast of Georgia when you look at it on the map.
MR. GENTRY: You said that the part of this country that interested the most was fire.
Tell me a little bit more about when you came here in 1974; what sort of ecosystem it
was and what your observations about it were.
MR: FURNETTON: My interest in fire really had to do with its relationship to the
maintenance of this community. Most of the uplands in the southeastern part of the
United States, or at least the southern coastal plain were covered with the long leaf pine
community. That was really my interest; the relationship of fire to the long life pine
community as well as some of the other communities we have in the southeast. The long
life pine community is dependent on fire. The trees and the under story all depend on
low intensity fire for its existence. All of the wildlife in this area is adapted to this
frequent fire regime. Over period of years since we settled here a number of things took
place. Long leaf pine makes a very good lumber species. Of course a lot of it was cut for
timber. But one of the factors that limits the range of long leaf pine is that we destroyed
the fire regime. At one time, depending of what literature you read, there was anywhere
between sixty and ninety million acres of long leaf pine community. Now it’s down to
just two or three percent of that. It’s really one of the most endangered communities that
we have in North America.
MR. GENTRY: What was the range of the long leaf pine community?
MR. FURNETTON: It goes all the way up into Virginia and down around the coastal
plain to well into east Texas. The long leaf pine as an interesting characteristic that makes
it adaptable to fire. When the seedlings come up, it grows in what we call the grass stage
for several years while it’s developing a root system. During this time, fire can burn over
it and it’s bud is right at the surface of the ground. It stays there for several years and fire
can burn over it without damaging it. When the root system is developed it shoots up a
candle, or the stem part of the tree for sometimes several feet in a single year. In just two
or three years, it’s back out of the stage when fire would damage it. This is of course
very different from other pines, which have a delicate little seedling for two or three
years. When the other pines and other trees that are in that stage; the frequent fires that
came along would destroy them. So because of fire, long leaf pine was able to establish
itself in this community.
MR. GENTRY: Was there some reason why there were so many fires here naturally?
MR. FURNETTON: The fires would occur during the lightening season. From here on
down probably to where Cape Kennedy is, is probably one of the most lighting prone
areas in the country. We have afternoon lightening storms almost every afternoon during
the summer. The lightening would strike and start a fire. It might race for several miles
before it reached some natural barrier where it would go out. The under story, because of
the frequent fire regime, we didn’t have tall brush. It’s not like now where the fire
doesn’t occur. The under story was primarily grasses and low shrubs like blueberry and
ground oak. In some cases they would come up rapidly from the stem part of the plants
that were underground. That’s the ground oak or runner oak. Some perennial herbs like
blazing star and a lot of the other perennials where their roots systems will live in the
ground and it will grow and stem, bloom and go to seed in the fall. But the under story
was low and the fire would just race through without a tremendous intensity. It would
not damage the mature trees but it would burn up the seedlings of the other varieties.
MR. GENTRY: When I imagine that, I see the forest as being almost park-like, where
you could see for a long way because there was no under-story.
MR. PHERNTTON: The old historians write about a park like effect. I remember
reading where you could just ride horses through the woods for miles and miles. The
mature timber would not by thick. It would be fairly sparse. Long leaf pine will grow for
400 years and it gets to be quite large and it needs a little space. Gradually the less
vigorous trees would be crowded out. The under-story would be fairly clear. It was
really sort of paints a beautiful picture. When some areas that still have the whole
community; the long leaf pine over story along with the fire dependent under story; it’s
beautiful.
MR. GENTRY: Well what happened to it all?
MR. FURNETTON: The timber was cut, in many cases because it makes very good
lumber.
MR. GENTRY: What period of time did most of that cutting take place?
MR. FURNETTON: Probably during the 1800’s. I’m kind of using my imagination
now, but we primarily had settlers here. During that time of course, they would clear out
their home places and pastures and gardens and fields and this sort of thing. In some
cases there was some farming; tobacco, cotton and other major crops. In this particular
area, we probably had more settlers. They probably didn’t have a tremendous effect.
They probably made holes in the woods, and thinned it out. I think the major part of the
timber that was cut was for their own use. They probably didn’t have a lot of effect on
the area. Then, later on when the timber industry started shipping lumber to other parts
of the country, I think long leaf pine was prized in several places in the north for timber.
Then of course the big lumber companies came and cut down the timber, sawed it up and
shipped in away. This was probably between the late 1800’s and 1920 and into the
Depression.
MR. GENTRY: Was there any replanting at that time, when they came in and cut it?
MR. FURNETTON: At that time it was not replanted. The second growth, in some
cases of long leaf pine up on the high hill where it was so dry that the other trees could
not compete very well because of the low nutrient level and dryness of the soil. Long leaf
pine can survive where others won’t. In those areas such as the high ridges, long leaf pine
came back. In the lower areas slash pine, loblolly pine and pond pine moved into what
was the long leaf pine community. The reason it was able to move in was; for one thing
it’s a lot more vigorous seeder. All of these types of pine all produce a lot of seed. Had
we still had the frequent fires, they would have taken care of that. The fires would
normally keep the other species [under control]. The other species have always been here
but they were around the ponds and creeks and low areas where it wouldn’t normally
occur. Now, since we cleared areas for farms, fields, pastures and roads, which had a big
effect, we created a lot of barriers to the fires. Fire would no longer race for miles and
miles like it would at one time. Our second growth was long leaf pine up in the dry areas
and probably slash and loblolly and some time a mixture in the lower more fertile areas.
This went on for quite some time until probably around the 1950’s and 1960’s when the
timber companies started planting pines. Around this area during that time, they usually
planted slash pine because it would grow pretty fast. It also made a pretty good timber
tree. Later, they planted loblolly pine because it grows even faster. Of course the
interest in these later years was not in producing lumber. The interest was in producing
wood fiber for pulp mills.
MR. GENTRY: Was there a period of time where fire was suppressed?
MR. FURNETTON: Yes. We have suppressed fire for ages of course. This, of course
has had a great effect. The greatest effect is probably the fact that we moved here and
created a lot of unnatural barriers to stop the fire.
MR. GENTRY: I am thinking of an interview that I have just recently done a month or
two ago with Mr. Joyner who was employed by the Charlton County Commission to
ride the woods and prevent the homesteaders and settlers from burning the woods, like
they would because they had cattle running free out there and they wanted to regenerate
grasses. That was in the 1920’s and 30’s. Does that make sense to you?
MR. FURNETTON: Yes it does. A while ago I mentioned that probably the greatest
cause of fire was lightening. But during the settlement times, and really the Native
Americans for a long time before that; realized the value of fire because it renewed the
forest floor. It made it easier to hunt and to get around. It creates crops of blueberries
and such that they wanted. It also stimulates the grasses. This is why the settlers liked
to burn the woods. Almost everyone around here did burn the woods. They probably
weren’t as large as they were back when no one lived here. But still, with all of the
settlers who were burning there was still a pretty good acreage that burned. And it served
the same purpose as the natural fires.
MR. GENTRY: Mr. Joyner said that the scientific thinking in those days was that fire
was bad.
MR. FURNETTON: Yes, during this time, probably from the late 1920’s and through
the Depression era and later up into the 1950’s and 60’s we had the idea that fire was
bad. It did have the potential to destroy people’s homes and people thought that it was
destroying the trees as well. Other than a few people, like the Professor I was taking
about, we did not really realize the role that fire played in the environment. I think that
now we realize that it has a role throughout the whole continent, but particularly here in
the southeast where the maintenance of this now rare long leaf pine community was
absolutely dependent upon fire.
MR. GENTRY: That’s a good background. Now even I understand about long leaf pine.
What part did you play in all of this when you came to time part of the country?
MR. FURNETTON: When I came here in 1974 we were doing the same thing as we
were doing at St. Marks when I was there. But when I came here, I continued a program
of fire management, which has already been started by other fire managers. But during the
period of time, when we excluded fire; when we thought fire was bad, we developed a
tremendous under story in the woods. We no longer had the grass and low shrub and
perennial herbs on the forest floor. We had gall berry, palmetto, myrtle bushes and the
hurrah bush which were some times six, eight or ten feet tall. It really didn’t matter what
type of timber you’re talking about; if you have this type of under story and if a wildfire
went through then, particularly during the growing season, the natural time for fires it
would destroy just about everything. So during this time our main emphasis was not
mainly to restore the community; of course this was our goal, but at this particular time
we were trying to reduce the fuel level so that when we had a fire it wouldn’t destroy
absolutely everything. When I came here we were still doing dormant season burns. This
is not the natural time that fire occurs. And it’s not the best time to restore the long leaf
pine community; the under story part, but the main thrust was to reduce the fuel level so
that if we had wildfires it wouldn’t destroy everything. Also, we had the idea that some
day we could start burning during the growing season when the fires occurred naturally.
MR. GENTRY: So how did you go about doing that?
MR. FURNETTON: During the winter, the dormant season, that’s really the easiest
time to burn. In this part of the country the weather varies. The temperature might be
warm. It might be seventy degrees in January and then front comes through and it’s liable
to drop down into the teens. Well usually this front brings along a little rain. We might
have a half-inch or so. After the front passes we have a so steady wind, usually from the
northwest and shifting around to the north. During that time it’s pretty stable and it’s
easy to set a backing fire. A backing fire would start with a fire line on the down wind
side of the area that we wanted to burn. We’d set that on the down wind side and let the
fire back into the wind. It would do a pretty good job of reducing the under story and it
would not get really hot. We didn’t get a lot of acres, but gradually by keeping at it we
were able to reduce the levels of the under story. Of course one time wouldn’t do the job.
This had to be done repeatedly. We burned on about a three or four year cycle for many
years, trying to get the under story in a condition where we could have a growing season
fire. Probably our first growing season fires were in the early 1980’s. From that point
we started out with small little blocks. Now, a great deal of the Wildlife Refuge, the pine
lands or uplands are burned during the growing season.
MR. GENTRY: Are you saying that the fire, after you had cleared and made a fire barrier
was set against that barrier? The wind would have to have blown the fire across that
barrier? The fire was burning against the wind? I imagine this was so that the wind
would pick it up and race it along at a high rate of speed.
MR. FURNETTON: That’s correct. When setting these backing fires, of course we’d
set them from either a natural barrier or a plowed or cleared line. If we had a ‘jump’ that
would be a head fire, a wild fire. That was the touchiest time of the whole operation was
getting that base line set. We call a fire burning into the wind a ‘backing fire’. The fire
that’s burning with the wind is a ‘head fire’. We also had flanking fires which kind of
burn along in the flanking lines of the block where it was set.
MR. GENTRY: What sort of crew and equipment would it require to do this right?
MR. FURNETTON: You said, “Do it right”! I can remember being out in the woods at
three o’clock in the morning all by myself setting fire! As time when on, we’d normally
have a tractor. There would be a crew of three typically. Two of us would be setting fire
and the other would be on the tractor. As time went on we’ve had disasters, mistakes or
problems; here and in other places. Now I think the standard crew it as least five or six
people including somebody who mans the radio all of the time. Now, we’ll have a tractor
plow unit, an engine, plus the grown crews. The engine is usually about a one ton or up
to a two and a half ton vehicle with a two hundred gallon tank in it. That isn’t a lot of
water when you think of a fire engine. But it’s what we can use in the woods. It gets
around in the woods and helps a lot. The plow is there to cut the firebreak. This is
something that has kind of evolved over the years. We used to use a plow that would go
down into the ground and turn a furrow both ways. It would essentially make a ditch
through the entire woods. We still use those today particularly during wild fires, at times
when we have to have a fast plough line. But as you can imagine this plough line through
the woods could cause a lot of problems as far as erosion and basis soil disturbance and
other things like this. Now, in a lot of cases where we can we use natural barriers. A lot
of times instead of plowing a line we’ll harrow it. At least we don’t have a ditch. In
some cases, especially now that we’ve got the fuel levels down; we burn in a lot larger
blocks and have a lot fewer lines that we used to have.
MR. GENTRY: Wasn’t that kind of dangerous out there in the woods doing that?
MR. FURNETTON: Yes, it was very dangerous. One of the things we did was to try
and make a pretty good plan. Our plans kinds of evolved over time. Every time we made
a little mistake, then you’d try to build in something that would safeguard against that in
your next plan. Now, I think our fire management prescriptions are now huge volumes
when they used to be a couple of sheets of paper. But it is a dangerous occupation.
We’ve had people killed or hurt throughout the region doing prescribed fire and fighting
wild fires. The risk of a prescribed fire is significant, but they really pay dividends
wherever we have a good burning program. The wild fire incidents are way down. That’s
when the risk of accidents is much greater, when we’re fighting a wild fire.
MR. GENTRY: Is it fair to say that the people who were here just prior to your arrival,
and you upon arriving in 1974 were responsible for writing the book so to speak of how
to do the prescribed burns?
MR. FURNETTON: Yes, in a way. I think our first burners learned a lot of the settlers
that you mentioned a while back. They used to go through and set the woods. They
were really pretty good; some of them. They knew what fire was going to do. They
could reach down and grab a handful of pine straw and tell you if it was going to burn to
hot, or whether it was going to burn at all. Our first burners probably learned a lot from
these people. They really knew what they were doing.
MR. GENTRY: Were you involved in creating official manuals to pass on this
knowledge to other FWS firefighters? Who wrote the manual about how to do all of this?
Or, has it been written?
MR. FURNETTON: I mentioned our prescriptions; and this is probably something that
needs to be defined. When you go to the doctor, he writes a prescription and you go to
the drugstore. On the prescription it tells you what’s on the prescription and how you’re
supposed to take it. When we are planning to burn a unit we’ll first go in there and see
what it looks like and see what needs to be done. Then we’ll write a plan for that. As a
result of our prescriptions and each Refuge had to have a fire management plan of some
sort. I think the first ones were just called forest management plans or timber
management plans. Prescribed burned was just a section in that plan. The details of why
it needed to be burned, and how it should be burned was spelled out in that plan. The
plans just got bigger and bigger and more detailed as time went on. A lot of our expertise
probably came from the various universities and schools. Long before fire actually was
used by the different agencies, a lot of the schools were studying it and doing a lot of
research on fire management. I think a lot of the texts and plans and expertise just
evolved from the work of a lot
Interview with Warren Parker by George Gentry, November 2, 2000
No full textOral history interview with Warren Parker as interviewed by George Gentry.
Mr. Parker was the coordinator of the Red Wolf Recovery Program.
Organization: FWS
Name: Warren Parker
Years:
Program: Endangered Species
Keywords: History, Employees (USFWS), Endangered and/or threatened1
INTERVIEW WITH WARREN PARKER
BY GEORGE GENTRY NOVEMBER 2, 2000
MR. PARKER: My name is Warren T. Parker. I served with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife
Service for thirty-two years. I came to Ashville, North Carolina in 1977 as the
Endangered Species Coordinator in the old area office, back when we had area offices.
The area offices folded up in the early 1980s. We moved through another reorganization
and I was left as the Field Supervisor of an Endangered Species Field Office in Ashville. I
recruited personnel for the office and I served as Field Supervisor from roughly 1981
through late 1984. I then became the Red Wolf Coordinator for the U. S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. As the Red Wolf Coordinator I actually inherited a lot of work from
Curtis Carley who had been the Fish and Wildlife Service Red Wolf Specialist for many
years, but in Region 2. Since Region 4 suddenly became directly involved in the Red Wolf
Recovery program Region 4 insisted that he bow out of the project, or else move to
Region 4, which he wouldn’t do. I became the Red Wolf Coordinator. If I am not
mistaken, the Red Wolf Coordinator may have been one of the first Endangered Species
Coordinators.
MR. GENTRY: It was the first. So you were actually the second person to take over
the recovery of that endangered species.
MR. PARKER: The recovery, that’s correct. One of the first things that I did was to
appoint a Recovery Team. My knowledge of Wolves was sparse. The reason for my
being appointed as the Endangered Species Coordinator was because of the location of the
reintroduction sites. I had worked for two years with Curt Carley at Land Between the
Lakes over in western Tennessee and Kentucky on a proposed reintroduction project in
conjunction with TVA. Because as Field Supervisor, my responsibility included
Kentucky and Tennessee, North and South Carolina and all endangered species activities
in those four states. I was almost mandated to become directly involved in that project of
the national significance of the reintroduction of an “extinct in the wild” species. I spent a
great deal of time in the Land Between the Lakes area for two years with Curt on that
project. The main failure of that project was that we did not have an experimental
nonessential designation for endangered animals at that time. It was being proposed at
that time, but we did not have anything officially on the books in 1982-83. There was
nothing there to give us the legal authority to reintroduce an endangered animal that was
not fully protected by the Endangered Species Act. The local people over there and the
deer hunters were afraid that the Wolves were going to kill all of the deer and then
possibly even shut down deer hunting in the Lake Between the Lakes area. Then the
environmentalists thought that we were not going to provide them enough protection.
The project started failing and we saw that it wasn’t going to make it. We held five or six
public meetings and they enlisted a tremendous amount of local interest. There was a lot
of opposition and a lot of support. But the reality of the project was unless you had
good public support you were really kind of spinning your wheels.
2
MR. GENTRY: Was that a lesson that you think that your group took to heart?
MR. PARKER: Absolutely.
MR. GENTRY: What then was the thing that you learned from the Land Between the
Lakes experience?
MR. PARKER: You have to be honest with the local people. You can’t pull the wool
over them and be a politician. You have to tell them straight up in the best of your
opinion and to the best of your knowledge what is going to happen. And you can’t pull
any punches. You’ve got to gain the confidence of the local people. That is a hard task;
to walk into an area where a predatory animal has been gone for a hundred years and say
“we want to put these animals back where they were”. And then try to explain why this
is in their best interest.
MR. GENTRY: They don’t always see it that way.
MR. PARKER: That’s right. They really don’t understand that. Another key problem,
the one that I failed to anticipate was the fact that the Land Between the Lakes National
Recreation Area was designated when Johnson was President. Through condemnation,
lands were taken from local people. There was a great deal of animosity towards TVA
over there. All of a sudden the Fish and Wildlife Service and TVA were in bed together.
A lot of local people who had lost properties to the Federal government for the National
Recreation Area came to the public meetings and blasted the Fish and Wildlife Service
along with TVA. It gave them a podium to blast the project as well as the whole idea of
the Federal government being involved in that area. This really hurt the whole project.
MR. GENTRY: Did you start the St. Vincent’s Island project?
MR. PARKER: Yes.
MR. GENTRY: Tell me about that. What was the purpose there?
MR. PARKER: One of the problems in dealing with the Red Wolf was that we had a
captive breeding project out at Graham, Washington. And there were half a dozen or less
Zoos around the country that had captive animals in pens. These were second and third
and fourth generation captive animals that had never been in the wild. I came up with the
idea of using Fish and Wildlife Service islands in the southeast, and releasing captive
animals on those islands. This would allow them to breed and bring offspring on those
islands, which should theoretically be wild animals, which would be wild stock to utilize
in a reintroduction project. I think this proved to be a very valuable concept. I think that
3
a lot of the success of the Alligator River project has come about because of using animals
that were born in the wild, instead of captive animals that had never been in the wild.
MR. GENTRY: Let’s go back to the public meetings. Was dealing with the public the
most difficult part of the recovery?
MR. PARKER: Oh yes, absolutely. Dealing with the public is the absolute key. If you
can gain the confidence again, and be completely honest and straightforward with the
public, you are miles ahead.
MR. GENTRY: You have had other, vast experiences with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Does that same message or way of operating carry over into all of the other things that we
do?
MR. PARKER: I think it does. In any aspect of recourse management, the public has to
be made aware of what the situation is. And then you try and get them involved in the
project in any way that you can come up with. It is all in the public interest, and in the
interest of the resource to get the public involved at any level you can, at any level you
can either volunteer, or whatever. The main thing up front is to make sure that you tell
them the truth.
MR. GENTRY: From what I have heard of the history of the Service, and the way the
Refuges have been in the past, that was a hard lesson to learn.
MR. PARKER: Really! That is correct.
MR. GENTRY: Can you talk about that, about way back when, and you’re seeing it
change?
MR. PARKER: That’s been true over the years on all of the Federal projects. I worked
on Savannah National Refuge, which was my first job with the Fish and Wildlife Service
back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. That problem was even there at Savannah.
Although Savannah provided a lot of income for local hardware stores, and places around
like that but the very fact that a lot of that Federal property had been taken away and
was now in Federal ownership was a problem. It was now up to the Refuge Manager to
permit trapping or public hunting or whatever on the Refuge. I think that this was a sore
spot with the local people. Therefore, you had to go out of your way as a Manager to
make sure that you continued to help the public in their quest for resources as far as fur
harvest or hunting, fishing or whatever it might be, even gathering medicinal plants. If it’s
feasible to let the public participate and be involved on the Refuge, I think that’s a key to
the success of any Refuge effort. I know that it is true in the event of trying to
reintroduce an endangered species that has been gone for many, many years. If you can’t
gain that confidence, then you are going to have a tough time of it.
4
MR. GENTRY: How do you feel about the Red Wolf program there? Are you keeping
up with?
MR. PARKER: I keep up with it through Gary Henry. Gary is now retired, so I won’t
have any real source of information. But the project in eastern North Carolina has gone
very well. I would like to go back in a moment and go through some of the historical
facets about the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge project. The project in the
Smokeys, which I initiated in 1989 failed because of several reasons. One was that the
Park really didn’t have the prey base, except in Cave’s Cove where we reintroduced
animals into the area. We had animals leaving the Park and we found that it was difficult
to keep the animals in the Park, primarily because of the prey base. The prey base just
isn’t that good in the Park because it is all old growth. Therefore, the small mammal base
isn’t there for the Wolf to prey on. That project, when I was in charge of the program
was set up as a two-year experiment to see if the project could succeed. But it was also
to see what the interactions between the Coyote, which was then expanding not only into
the Park but also into eastern North Carolina. We wanted to see if it was possible to
reintroduce Wolves into an area where you already have resident Coyotes. That was the
original thesis for the project. It was a two-year project, but then I retired in 1990 and
the project was kept on track for another three or four years. I think that I might have
pulled the plug a little earlier. But nevertheless, a great deal of knowledge and information
was gained from the project in the Smokey Mountain National Park.
The project at Alligator River is relatively secure. I think that there will be Red Wolves in
that area for many, many years. The only thing that I regret is that we didn’t try another
reintroduction site somewhere in the intervening years. Where that would have been, I am
not sure. I probably would have attempted one on the Francis Marion National Forest,
which is near Bull’s Island. We had great public support there in that area north of
Charleston. On the Bull’s Island project, I think the Forest Service would have worked
with us. But again, the problem with the Red Wolf is the expansion of the Coyote into
its former range. With the demise of the Wolf, the Coyote has moved east.
MR. GENTRY: You said you wanted to talk about some historical things in the Red
Wolf project. Let’s go back and go over those.
MR. PARKER: In 1984 the Prudential Insurance Company offered to give the property
that is now known as the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge to the Federal
government for a tax write-off. As I understand, going back those many years ago to the
mid 1980s, Prudential was financially strapped and having a difficult time with that
property down there. They were having a difficult time in managing that property in
mainland Dare County for farming. They decided to take the tax write-off and donate the
one hundred and eighty thousand acres or so to the Federal government. The Fish and
Wildlife Service secured the land through that arrangement. Immediately I saw that this
5
land down there, which is a peninsula, might be an ideal site for a Red Wolf reintroduction
because there was water on three sides. It was a fairly sizeable piece of property with
adjacent properties that might be made available for expansion onto private lands. The
new Refuge Manager down there was John Taylor. He and I became close friends. John
came down from Alaska where he had initiated a new Wildlife Refuge. He was very much
interested in Wolves. John became my right hand man; he and I really worked together
for about a year trying to secure the interest and support of local people in the Dare
County area and in surrounding areas. We wound up hosting four public meetings down
there and after a year of working with the people there, we ended up getting about eighty
or ninety percent support from the local people. I thought that this was extraordinary.
The Red Wolf had been gone from eastern North Carolina for about two hundred years.
So this was novel, and it was really different. But I think that the public realized the
plight of the Red Wolf and I give those people a lot of credit, I’ll have to say; they were
really willing to work with us and that made it more important to John and I to give them
the straight facts as we knew them. There were some things that we told those people
that didn’t turn out the way that we thought they would. One of the major ones that I
still have nightmares about was the recapture collar. Dave Meach and I had worked
together some in northern Minnesota in an effort to learn about Wolves and capture
techniques. Dave is the acknowledged Wolf specialist in the world probably. Dave and I
became good friends. Dave was interested in developing a recapture collar, which was a
collar that you fitted around the neck of an animal. You could, through darts implanted in
the collar, tranquilize the animal by remote radio signal. You could then go and pick the
animal up. This was a tremendous reintroduction ploy. The local public thought that
this sounded great. If you can put collar on these animals and “If they end up in my back
yard you can knock then down and go pick them up”. It was great PR. Dave and I went
to 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, and some how or another those people decided that this
idea had some merit. They agreed to develop the recapture collar for us. After the
support of the local people, and including this concept of the recapture collar to which I
attribute gaining their support, the animals actually got to the Alligator National Wildlife
Refuge, and we put the animals out in the wild after acclimation, we found that the
recapture collars were failing. They were not working. Some of the collars worked, and
some didn’t. There were a lot of gold connections in the collar technology, as I
understand it. The salt-water environment down there in mainland Dare County was just
too harsh. It caused corrosion in some of the internal components.
MR. GENTRY: So they failed. And to the locals, you were a liar probably.
MR. PARKER: That is right. However, we talked to a lot of people. We started to hold
a public meeting and explain the problem but we talked to some local people and they
kind of understood. Again, that was three or four months into the project, and given that
three or four month period of time, the Wolves had not created a problem with anybody.
I think that kind of took the edge off of the potential for public problems. There was a
chicken lost every now and then. There were some other problems that came up but
6
these were mainly law enforcement type problems. One of the things that I told the
people was that under this experimental, nonessential designation of these animals; if a
hunter for example, happened to shot a deer and the bullet went through the deer and
killed a Wolf we wouldn’t prosecute. This was a hypothetical example that I gave them.
And of course there was no intent involved. Then we had a case down there in which one
of the gentlemen that I had talked to, and who was supporting the project; he was a
trapper on the Refuge, caught a Red Wolf in one of his sets and the Wolf drowned. His
intent, I am sure was not to catch a Red Wolf, but the way that he had set his traps had
violated State Fish and Game Commission law. Our law enforcement people decided that
they wanted to get involved too and that became an issue and a little bit of a problem.
From the biological perspective, and I can only speak from that end of it since I am not a
Law Enforcement Agent, we did everything that we could to isolate the public from any
actual involvement in killing a Wolf. A Wolf hit by a car at night is something that we
would not prosecute. That was the attitude that we took. And that attitude held good
the whole time that I was involved in the project, and I think that continues today. There
has been some “blips” here and there with the project; local landowners shoot one,
thinking that it is a Coyote, and all of a sudden they are being prosecuted by the Federal
government. That’s happened, and it has caused some real hard feelings. But by and
large the idea that John Taylor and I presented to the people down there; we maintained
that continuity of thought and intent. There was never any intent to do anything except
for what we did. But I am getting ahead of myself; after five years, we did go back and
hold public meetings down there. After the Wolves were released, there was a five-year
interim. We evaluated the project and went back and held public meetings and the public
was, by and large, was still ninety percent in favor of the project because there had been
no interactions or problems. Nobody had been attacked by a Wolf. Again, I think that
the project was successful. The only problem down there now is the potential for inter-breeding
with Coyotes.
MR. GENTRY: That is still a problem?
MR. PARKER: It is still a problem, and will probably always be a peripheral problem.
The concept, as Curt Carley explained to me, and I accepted, is that you can maintain a
core base of pure Red Wolves, but on the perimeter you are going to have some inter-breeding.
Which now, they are finding is true even up in Canada with the Grey Wolves in
Ontario and in northern Minnesota. Those animals’ genetic makeup has been tainted by
Coyote genetics. If you talk about pure Grey Wolves, you have to be careful about
where you are talking about.
MR. GENTRY: Pure anything!
MR. PARKER: That’s right! [Laughing]
7
MR. GENTRY: The life expectancy of any Endangered Species Coordinator is pretty
precarious isn’t it?
MR. PARKER: Oh yeah! Well, I was fortunate, because I had timed my retirement well.
I had planned my retirement, and when I hit thirty-two years, I decided to retire. In a
way, I am glad that I did, and in a way, I wish I had stayed another two or three years. I
really enjoyed it. I thought that that was one of the best jobs in the Fish and Wildlife
Service. The Park Superintendent in the Great Smokeys, and I’m not trying to blow my
own horn, but he really hated to see me retire. But Gary Henry, who I had hired, was
with the Forest Service and he came down and worked with me and I wanted Gary to take
my place because I trusted him. I knew that he was a top biologist and I knew that he
could handle the job easily, and he did. Gary did a fine job with it. But yes, a
Coordinators job is one where if you are successful, you have worked yourself out of a
job.
MR. GENTRY: And if you’re not?
MR. PARKER: And if you’re not [successful] you’re in the frying pan with the Fish
and Wildlife Service! I still think that the Coordinators have sort of fallen by the
wayside. They don’t seem to be the key that they used to be. The Coordinator, to me, is
the guy that the Fish and Wildlife Service should depend on. You don’t give a job to a
Coordinator unless he’s the guy that’s going to do the job. Then you turn loose, you
don’t put constraints on him, and you let him go. Let him run his budget, and he gets the
job done. Fortunately for me, my Supervisor was in Atlanta, in the Regional office there.
And he gave me carte blanche and let me do what I wanted to do and what I had to do. In
my opinion, that’s the way that the Coordinator job can be best handled. Trust the guy,
pay him the salary and let him loose, and he’ll do the job. I have every confidence in the
Fish and Wildlife Services professional staff.
MR. GENTRY: We were talking about some of the public problems with the Red Wolf
and other endangered species; what about biological problems that you had with the Red
Wolf?
MR. PARKER: There were biological problems. I am sure that Curt Carley has told you
about these. The remnant animals that we had to deal with were numbered in the
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen realm. That was the genetic pool from which we had to work
which was always a concern. There was always a fear of inter-breeding, genetic
bottlenecks, so that was always in back of our minds. In the project out at Graham,
Washington, Sue Burns took care of the Wolves. Sue was very careful in separating these
animals, genetically, as far as she could. The gene pool to start with was very small, but
you try to expand that as much as you can, and that was a problem. Looking back at the
Land Between the Lakes and the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge projects,
actually the Wolves themselves were not difficult to deal with biologically. It was easy to
8
trap a Wolf, but it is hard to catch a Coyote. Mike Phillips came down; John Taylor and
I hired Mike Phillips. Mike was in Alaska at the time and he came down and took over
the Field Project at Alligator River. Mike did a splendid job. And that was a day and
nighttime job. You had to be all the time, and he did a great job. But again, the Wolves
were not that hard to deal with. If you had to catch a rogue Wolf, he wasn’t all that hard
to catch. But now the Coyote moving in has proven to be another problem. They are
much more difficult to cap
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
Interview with Bill Ashe by mark Madison and George Gentry, March 15, 2003
No full textOral history interview with Bill Ashe. Mark Madison and George Gentry were interviewers. Bill Ashe discussed the following people: Jack Watson, Ira Gabrielson.
Organization:FWS
Name: Bill Ashe
Years: 1953-1990
Programs: Realty (Refuges)
Keywords:History, Biography, Employees (USFWS), Wildlife refugesINTERVIEW WITH BILL ASHE
BY MARK MADISON AND GEORGE GENTRY
MARCH 15, 2003
MR. GENTRY: Let me get you to identify yourself. This is March 15, 2003 and we’re
in Vero Beach. No, we’re not in Vero Beach; we’re in Melbourne, Florida.
MR. ASHE: Well, almost. My name is Bill Ashe, A-S-H-E. I was with the Fish and
Wildlife Service from 1953 to 1990.
MR. GENTRY: What was you date of birth if you don’t mind.
MR. ASHE: It was May 28, 1929. I was born in New Haven, Connecticut.
MR. GENTRY: What is you educational background?
MR. ASHE: I went to the University of Connecticut and got a BA in Forestry and
Wildlife Management.
MR. GENTRY: Do you claim any area of expertise?
MR. ASHE: I started out in Reality as a Forester, and then did just about every job in
what was at that time the Branch of Lands, then the Division of Reality. I then became
an administrator; I was Deputy Regional Director in Region 5, and a whole host of other
things.
MR. MADISON: Why don’t you tell us about the first job you had with the Service.
MR. ASHE: That’s very interesting from my standpoint. My first job, as I said was
with the Branch of Lands, which was predecessor to the Division of Reality. In my first
trip in the FWS was down through Okefenokee, to Santa Bell, which later became the
Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge and the Florida Keys. That was the first trip that
the Service made as preparatory to the National Key Deer Refuge. I came down with my
boss, a fellow named Bob Lyons a capable guy. We began the first activities for
establishing that particular refuge. We didn’t see any Key Deer at the time. In fact, there
were two; there was a Life Magazine crew that spent three weeks looking for Key Deer
and they couldn’t find any. From that time, actually the Key Deer and the Refuge was
the inspiration of the Regional Director there at the time; a guy by the name of Jim Silver.
That’s another story. There are people who are visionaries and inspirers and then there
are people who come and get the same job done. Sometimes they are the same people,
but not normally. I did a lot of work in each one of the areas. And in fact, I just came
from Santa Bell [Ding Darling]. One of the reasons I don’t normally like to get into these
interviews; but one of the things I wanted to…and because I thought I could bring across
a point. And that is neglected. Over there I went through the Visitor Center, they have a
fantastic set up over there. And there is a testimony to Ding Darling. And there should
be testimony to him. Ding Darling got across a Presidential Order which established that
particular Refuge. But really, and it did start it. And I don’t mean, it really didn’t do
anything but Santa Bell was the result of a fraudulent General Land Office survey in the
1870’s. So while they set aside certain federal lands on Santa Bell, because of the
fraudulent survey none of the lands north of the Periwinkle Drive and Santa Bell Kepi
could be identified so that they were not disposed of in the normal way federal lands are.
It was later determined that most of the lands, or much of the land was actually conveyed
to the State by the Swamp and Overflow Grants of the 1850. So because of the
fraudulent survey and the fraudulent surveyor, a man named Horatio Alger Jenkins, that
part of the island was not developed for over one hundred years. That then gave us the
opportunity, and I was a part of the small group; there were two of us, to work out an
exchange with the State of Florida, which merged the Title, and which was the basis for
that Refuge. I say this because what we neglect is we honor certain people who were the
inspirers. But much of the work that established the National Wildlife Refuge System,
and this is multiplied by many hundreds of thousands; is done by the people you see here
now, in the field. They are the Biologists, the Reality people, the Refuge Managers.
They are the ones basically, who have gotten the System to where it is today.
MR. MADISON: Tell us more about Jack Watson.
MR. ASHE: Well, Jack was a character. He was like many of the early Refuge
Managers. He was not [well educated]. He didn’t have a Master’s Degree, or a
Bachelor’s Degree. He had probably the quickest gun in south Florida. He was a Law
Enforcement person converted into a Refuge Manager on the Key Deer Refuge. At the
time, poaching was a big problem in the Florida Keys. And these people were rough.
The “conchs” of the lower Florida Keys were a rough element. It took a guy like Jack
Watson to bring order. Many of us outgrow our usefulness and he wouldn’t have been a
Refuge Manager today. But he was a Refuge Manager and a refuge protector back then.
He was probably of the same character as Paul Kreigel. Paul was a German immigrant
and I am sure he wasn’t educated in the ways that many of our Managers are today. But
he, with his shotgun, brought order and control to this particular area.
I had an involvement too, on Pelican Island in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The State of
Florida was conveying their Water Bottoms, the wetlands. That was the nature at the
time. They were in a development mode and they would sell anything to get money and
establish development. We were told, and actually two of us made the recommendation; a
fellow by the name of Rudy Rudolph and I. Rudy was a Refuge Biologist. We worked
out a lease with the State of Florida for about five thousand acres of the water bottoms
around the island itself. So now, with the recent additions, and they’ve done a great job in
adding lands; I guess the refuge is in access of five or six thousand acres. But I went down
yesterday to see what they did, and it is super.
MR. MADISON: What are you most proud of? What are the highlights of your career?
MR. ASHE: I mentioned those because they were tied up in my first trip that I made
with the FWS. There are a lot of highlights. I was recently asked to name the successes
by Ted Williams, the Audubon writer. I gave him a few of what I thought were Refuge
successes. A couple of there were some that I was a principle in. There are a number,
and it’s hard to say because you approach things from different aspects. Now, was it the
work that was done to establish the Sevilleta Refuge, a desert refuge in New Mexico, a
two hundred and fifty thousand land grant; it was a over grazed land and over utilized
land that in the twenty-five or thirty years since we acquired it has shown tremendous
recovery. Or, is it helping to establish Mason Neck, outside of Washington, which was
the first eagle refuge. Or, is it the Great Dismal Swamp, or twenty or thirty others? I
don’t know. They all have a different story. They all give you a great deal of satisfaction
in retrospect as to what was done and what the results have been of helping to establish
those refuges.
MR. GENTRY: I don’t know which Refuge this might apply to, and it may apply more
to National Parks than Refuges except maybe at Okefenokee. But where the government;
the FWS or whatever part of the government would condemn land. There are still places
like at Okefenokee where families are still angry with the federal government over stuff
like that. Did you have some experiences like that?
MR. ASHE: Oh yeah, we used eminent domain.
MR. GENTRY: And let’s put this in a time frame. Was it in the 1930’s?
MR. ASHE: It was in the 1930’s and it went on up into the 1960’s; the use of eminent
domain was prevalent. Actually a lot of the adverse reaction came from the work of the
Park Service. They were much more aggressive in the use of eminent domain. We did it.
Much of it was what we called ‘friendly condemnation’ for title purposes. Some of it
was arbitrary too. But you know, a lot of that reaction now… remember, economic
conditions in the 1930’s were a lot different that they are now. These people who resent
it were happy to sell it, then. But with the advent of land value appreciation over the
years, they look back at the past with a different set of values. They were well paid. I
negotiated for a lot of lands. You talk to these people and say, “I could have acquired”’
those lands sold for one dollar and acre. I was cheated! Well one dollar an acre was the
going rate at that time. Looking backward, you might think you were cheated but actually
you were dealt with fairly. And the Service always, as long as I was with them, paid fair
market value. Plus, sometimes a little bit more, to tell the truth, to get the land.
MR. GENTRY: Is there also a flip side of that with places like Archie Carr [Refuge]
which I think the land was originally federal land and was sold to private landowners for
virtually nothing. Now, we are buying it back for millions. Did some of that sort of thing
go on too?
MR. ASHE: I really don’t know the Archie Carr situation, except that I wanted to drive
threw it, and I did the other day. But I doubt if that was federal land. It may have been
state land. I think most of land might have been patented out a long time ago. In those
situations, if they were patented out, the payment was rather small. In terms of that, I
was fortunate. In my early career for example, I would be boating up the St. John’s
working on a refuge at Lake Woodruff or the St. John’s Refuge, and I would say, “Man, I
am getting paid to do this work!” Now later on, I became an administrator and you dealt
with problems of people and budgets and other things, so I figured that was the payback
that came. I really had a very enjoyable career. I really enjoyed it. I like to think I did
good work and earned my keep. Personally, I couldn’t have picked a better line of work.
MR. MADISON: One of your legacies is your son. Tell us about him.
MR. ASHE: Yes. One of the things; I like to keep in balance. I rose fairly high in the
Service. I was offered jobs beyond where I was. But it would have impacted my family
and so I said “No, we’ll do what we can here”. I had children. If you’ve talked to my son
Dan, he’ll probably tell you about traveling to places like the Florida Keys and to Santa
Bell when I was doing work there, and also going to Blackbeard Island or to the Piedmont
Refuge in Georgia; places like that. I did like to take my family. I have five boys. He’s
the only one who has gone into this field. As a consequence, I am proud to say that all of
my boys have done well, are doing well and turned out well. To me there’s no better way
of doing that than by introducing them to the out of doors, and to nature. And then let
them make their own choices as to what their life’s work is going to be. Of course, I am
especially proud of Dan. You like people to follow what you’ve done. It gives you a
good feeling. He’s done well and he’s going to do better.
MR. GENTRY: I have this perception about the refuges that in many, many cases we
have taken land that nobody wanted; former military bases or clean up sites. Do you
have any historical perspective on that?
MR. ASHE: Yes, you mentioned Okefenokee for example. Okefenokee falls in the same
category as the one I talked about earlier; Sevilleta. The bulk of Okefenokee, about two
hundred thousand acres, was acquired from the Hebbard Lumber Company. The Hebbard
Company logged Okefenokee from 1909 to 1937. I first went on Okefenokee, doing some
work in about 1953, or 1954. That area was a mess! You could see from the aerial
photographs that they did what they called ‘high lead logging’. They had a small railroad
system. It was a mess. I went back there, twenty years later. I had worked
continuously, but that was the next time I was in the region. Twenty years later, you
look at the aerial photographs and you couldn’t see that stuff. Now, unless you are
trained, you wouldn’t notice what happened between 1909 and 1937. It tells you that
nature will recover if you give it a chance; and you manage and protect it well. I also, in
my home town by the way; a good portion of Fort Devons lies. When I moved back into
New England, in Massachusetts to work in Region 5, I moved to a town called Harvard,
which is about forty miles west of Boston. Part of Fort Devons lies in Harvard, and in
three other towns. A Refuge was established there. I figured, “Hell, if we could do it all
over the country, we could do it there”. The Refuge there started with seven hundred
acres of former military lands. When the Army said in the early 19… “No way are we
moving out of Fort Devons”. I decided that we’d better do some work here because
that’s bad news. I knew they were going to move out, when they were so vehement. We
through the Appropriations Bill in 1992, we got the FWS (I was out of the Service then)
to do a study of what part of Fort Devons should be a part of this refuge. The Service
did an ascertainment study and it outlined some areas. Those areas in large part have been
turned over to the refuge. Some of them were contaminated. But because the refuge was
there; and because of the active part of the towns… (I am a Selectman in my town by the
way). New England has Town government as opposed to County government in the rest
of the country. A Selectman is analogous to a County Commissioner. We got the Army
to clean up those areas. And at least at Fort Devons, they had done an outstanding job.
And they are still doing it. We’re going to have a refuge there of about ten or twelve
thousand acres when we’re through. It’s along the Nashua River. We’re going to tie it in
with the State Wildlife Management area that is to the south. So ten or twelve thousand
acres in New England, is big stuff. It’s not much in many areas in the west, but in New
England that’s big stuff. This will be an outstanding refuge. There will be grassland
nesting birds, waterfowl, butterflies and a whole host of things. To get back to your
question; I think a lot can be done with military lands that are disposed of. I know
there’s a concern, even my son has a concern about contaminated sites. But if you’ll
notice that when you go to contaminated sites, critters don’t seem to be bothered by it.
Go to John Heinz Refuge in Tinicum and look at what’s been done there in the city of
Philadelphia. And there are two dumps in that facility. I was involved in the early work
of establishing that, although I had my concerns at the time too, because of that
contamination. But what are you going to do with those sites? You can do a lot with
them. The Service is disinclined to take it over because of the liabilities. But understand,
the Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t own anything. The Army doesn’t own anything.
Those lands are owned by the United States of America! It doesn’t matter which agency
has jurisdiction. And I think we can do a lot, from a wildlife standpoint with many of
those contaminated areas that the military are disposing. I don’t know if that answered
your question.
MR. GENTRY: Yeah! I just had this impression that we’ve taken land that people have
over farmed, over logged, contaminated or blown up; you know, everything. There’s just
many, many of those around the country.
MR. ASHE: I met Ira Gabrielson a couple of times. Once was at a seminar when I was
an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut. Then I met him when I was in Texas
at one of the refuges. We sat and we talked for about two hours. I mean, just a fabulous
conversations with one of the icons of this business. He heard that I had worked in
Region 4 before I had gone out to New Mexico. He asked me about the Piedmont Refuge.
If you go in the Refuge office there; that was all agricultural land and there was real
erosion; sheet erosion, gully erosion, it was a mess! Being a visionary, he thought that
they could do something with that in the Refuge System. It came to the Service under
what they called Title 3 of the Bankhead-Jones Act. These were farms lands that were
acquired during the depression. And if you go there, that is one heck of a timber, wildlife
refuge. And the only way you can tell what has happened to that in the past; you’ll see
these trees that are in the gullies and they have a sight index of about eighty. But on the
top of the hills the trees have a sight index of about twenty because all of the topsoil was
going in to the gullies. But again, you can do a lot with these abused lands if you give it
some care, and give it some time. I think that what the Service has done with these areas,
is I think, what the country is going to have to do with much of it’s area to restore it’s
productivity, not only from a wildlife standpoint, but from any other standpoints too.
MR. MADISON: Silvia Conte is a classic example. That wouldn’t have been a Salyer
type refuge.
MR. ASHE: You’re talking about the Silvia Conte Refuge? Well, maybe some other time
I’ll talk to you about that.
MR. MADISON: I know, we’d need another whole tape for that. But you know, the
Service is doing like you suggested; there are thinking about types of lands that they
might not have thought about. The other one that occurs to me is Rocky Mountain
Arsenal. There’s a polluted mess! It has coyotes and eagles.
MR. ASHE: Oh, it’s the most polluted area they say, in the United States.
MR. MADISON: The critters don’t seem to mind it.
MR. ASHE: You can go to Tinicum along Darby Creek. When they are first looking at
that an EPA guy was there and he happened to slip into the creek. Man, he ran to the
phone to see what the status of his shots were, because it was that polluted. But go there
now. Go there now and you won’t even notice. It still has a level of contamination
because it takes time to correct that situation. But as in the case of Okefenokee, as is the
case of Sevilleta, in fifty years you won’t know it. We’re in this business, as they said
during the meeting, not necessarily for ourselves. We’re in the business for our kids, our
grand kids and beyond. I got a nice letter from… I got an award up in my home place.
My son sent me a note. He said, “I thank you Dad. Any Mary and Michael thank
you”.
Those are my grandkids. That’s what it’s all about.
MR. MADISON: That’s a good place to end. Thank you so much!
MR. ASHE: Your welcome
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