I haven't blogged in over a month. It's sort of hard to get back into it. I have been traveling. The first of August I took a trip to East Texas with an old friend of mine. We had a good time visiting and seeing the sights along the way. I will post some pictures of some churches and gardens we saw along the way. Our trip started in Madrid and we traveled to Montgomery and went West by way of Selma and Demopolis, also known as the Alabama Canebreak. We stopped in a small settlement called Prairieville where we saw a beautiful old church, Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church. Saint Andrew's is a National Historic Landmark. We visited the adjoining cemetery and saw some beautiful monuments marking the grave sites of the early settlers of Prairieville.
The following is Wikipedia's definition of the Canebreak:
The Canebrake refers to a historical region of west-central Alabama that was once dominated by thickets of Arundinaria, a type of bamboo, or cane, native to North America.[1] It was centered on the junction of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior rivers, near Demopolis, and extended eastward to include large parts of Hale, Marengo, and Perry counties.[2] Portions of Greene and Sumter were also often included.[1][3]
Cane thickets once covered hundreds of thousands of acres in Alabama, but this area, lying within the Black Belt, had the most extensive stands and was known as "The Canebrake."[4] It was noted by naturalist William Bartram as he traveled along the Tombigbee River in 1775. He described cane that was "thick as a man's arm, or three or four inches in diameter; I suppose one joint of some of them would contain above a quart of water."[1]
The cane began to disappear with the large-scale arrival of white settlers following the Creek Wars. The settler's introduced crops that replaced the native cane and their suppression of fire allowed the cane in other areas to be overtaken by species that would have naturally been kept in check by fire. However, as late as 1845 Scottish geologist Charles Lyell noted the height and density of the canebrakes along the Black Warrior River.[1]
I once read "Cease Not to Think of Me" the Steele Family Letters, a wonderful book that is now out of print. The book was composed of the letters that were sent home from one of the Steele Family sons who traveled from Huntsville to Demopolis, Mobile and New Orleans buying and selling cotton. I found some members of the Steele family buried in Saint Andrews Cemetery. If you ever run across a copy of this book do not pass it up. I am sure there is a copy in the Huntsville, Al. public library if you are in Huntsville.
Hope you are all doing well and enjoy the coming fall season. I will be sharing a Seafood Chowder recipe next from Granny's box of newspaper clipped recipes This one looks old maybe from the 50's. Wade is the guinea pig tonight! He likes spicy soup so I may turn up the seasonings a knotch for him.
