Missouri’s “Little Dixie”

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Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Honored Fallen Comrade
Joined
Dec 3, 2011
Location
Laurinburg NC
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Missouri's “Little Dixie” is a section of the State where the local culture historically paralleled the Upper South. During the Antebellum period, massive waves of migrating Southern farmers and planters flooded the area and transplanted their slave dependent culture and economy. By 1860, Little Dixie had indeed become a microcosm of the South's plantation hierarchal society, a Southern enclave where distinctive cultural traits and attitudes matched those of the Antebellum South.

http://littledixie.net
 
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Coming from this area, the distinctness is fading away. However Boone County still has some rural smoked country ham I would put up against anything out of VA . They have old-time fiddlers at the BoCo Historical Soc one night a month. The further west and the counties just north of the MO River in Little Dixie still retain a somewhat more southern accent in their speech.
 
I love this part of Missouri and spent much time here quail hunting. The landscape generally ranges from rolling hills to large open areas. It was the land that dominated the hemp production, pre-war, so essential to cotton and the river trade. Corn and soybeans rule there now.
 
Missouri Humanities Council News

Missouri Little Dixie Slave Cabin Project

Contributed by Gary Fuenfhausen-Project Director, Arrow Rock Historian

During six typical changing spring days this April, over one hundred dedicated attendees and followers met with the Slave Cabin Project’s celebrated founder, Mr. Joseph McGill, and members of the newly formed Missouri’s Little Dixie Heritage Foundation (MLDHF), to learn about and honor the often forgotten slave cabin. The event, Missouri’s Little Dixie Cabin Project, grew out of a desire to create an awareness of these overlooked and often misunderstood architectural testaments of our State’s antebellum African American slave history.

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As a background reference, the “slave cabin,” or slave dwelling, was once a common feature of the rural and urban antebellum landscape in Missouri’s Little Dixie region. To give you an idea of its presence, in 1860, nearly 52% of Missouri’s slaves were located in the 17 county region of this Southern enclave (out of total 114 counties).

In that same year over half of Missouri’s slave owners were located in Little Dixie on some 11,009 farms, plantations, manufacturing and urban settings. Little Dixie held the greatest concentration of large slave owners, with 16% of the Little Dixie estates holding 10 or more slaves and 7% owning 15 to 200 slaves. It is estimated that in 1860, “Little Dixie’s” slave owners, farmers, planters, and urban dwellers, owned some 60,311 slaves living in 13,300 “slave houses.” Of the total number of “Little Dixie” slave quarters or cabins built by 1860, only about 130 (or 1%) survive.

Missouri’s slave culture and history is one of the most under studied and under researched aspects of our State’s past. Many Southern and state scholars overlook or dismiss our Missouri’s “Peculiar Institution,” regarding it as unimportant when compared with slavery in the Deep South. It is often forgotten that Missouri’s diverse agricultural system, in particular Little Dixie’s hemp, tobacco, corn, and livestock production, were an essential component of the Southern slave system.

This lack of understanding and research of Missouri’s and Little Dixie’s slavery has in many ways lead to an atmosphere of misinterpretation of slavery within our borders. In particular, with a lack of proper research, information, and funds to document Missouri’s historic slave related sites, museums and preservation organizations can not properly manage slave history and sites. A few historical organizations have met or excelled in this field, such as the Friends of Arrow Rock in Arrow Rock, Missouri, who over a course of several decades have sponsored several important African American research and archeological investigations in their area.

http://www.mohumanities.org/news-up...-4/missouri-little-dixie-slave-cabin-project/
 
I love this part of Missouri and spent much time here quail hunting. The landscape generally ranges from rolling hills to large open areas. It was the land that dominated the hemp production, pre-war, so essential to cotton and the river trade. Corn and soybeans rule there now.

Civil war and bird hunting, now you are speaking my language! One of my pointers is a native of your fine state!
 
Civil war and bird hunting, now you are speaking my language! One of my pointers is a native of your fine state!

My hunting partner had 2 Brittanys that always did well, but we also used an English Setter on occassion and once even a Lab! Unfortunately my partner has passed. He was a Boone County school teacher and administrator, so he taught all the farmers/farmers children who let us hunt on their land. Bagging limit was a matter of getting out and hunting! Since corn and soybeans rule here now those are the favorite of quail as is milo (cattle feed crop) which is also abundant. Pheasant don't do well in the vast majority of Missouri as the soil does not support their ground nesting well.

Now his son, a friend of mine from NMSU (now Truman State U) does not have the connections. It's been 8 years or so since I've hunted quail...

I'll look for some pics tonight for posting! It'll still be in the spirit of Little Dixie!

Borderruffian should be all over this thread... He is a quail hunter as well if I have it right.
 
Where is Borderruffian? I haven't seen him around in quite a while. I always enjoyed his posts.

I don't know. I haven't seen him here in a while.

These are about 24 years old now...
Birds on point! That'll get your blood up!
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A fine days catch! I'm on the right:
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From left, me, Tom and Chet (the damned Rebel mentioned above!). I miss the hunting and the old man...
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Coming from this area, the distinctness is fading away. However Boone County still has some rural smoked country ham I would put up against anything out of VA . They have old-time fiddlers at the BoCo Historical Soc one night a month. The further west and the counties just north of the MO River in Little Dixie still retain a somewhat more southern accent in their speech.

As for the culture, it would appeal to most Southerners below the Mason-Dixon. It is still very rural and yes, they hold a pretty decent accent, as much so as any Missourian along the Arkansas border. The area is still mostly Protestant, but in a few towns like Higbee, in Randolph Co., near Moberly, there is a solid Italian/Catholic majority that settled there sometime around and after WWI. My buddy's Grandma still had the family wine press from the homeland!

It's a great area. I'm always looking for that 80 acres in Little Dixie I can retire on! If only I could find it for a good price...
 
My hunting partner had 2 Brittanys that always did well, but we also used an English Setter on occassion and once even a Lab! Unfortunately my partner has passed. He was a Boone County school teacher and administrator, so he taught all the farmers/farmers children who let us hunt on their land. Bagging limit was a matter of getting out and hunting! Since corn and soybeans rule here now those are the favorite of quail as is milo (cattle feed crop) which is also abundant. Pheasant don't do well in the vast majority of Missouri as the soil does not support their ground nesting well.

Now his son, a friend of mine from NMSU (now Truman State U) does not have the connections. It's been 8 years or so since I've hunted quail...

I'll look for some pics tonight for posting! It'll still be in the spirit of Little Dixie!

Borderruffian should be all over this thread... He is a quail hunter as well if I have it right.

Thoroughly enjoyed your post and pics, Thanks!
Same here regarding hunting corn, beans and milo (grain sorghum) old Bobwhite loves it!
Takes a little more boot leather to find them these days but we can still get into 4/5 coveys a day.
Truly appreciate the pics, good stuff!
 
Thoroughly enjoyed your post and pics, Thanks!
Same here regarding hunting corn, beans and milo (grain sorghum) old Bobwhite loves it!
Takes a little more boot leather to find them these days but we can still get into 4/5 coveys a day.
Truly appreciate the pics, good stuff!

My pleasure Brass! When I mentioned the quail, I knew I had to look for some pics and share them. Found a bunch of others... Anyway, the Missouri Conservation Dept has done great work in fostering the quail population. The problem is finding private property where you're allowed to get at them. Boone, Audrain, Monroe and Shelby (you know this name, General J.O!)to seemed to be the best for bird hunting, Randolph not so much. Those counties are mainly prime corn/beans country and going for $2000 up to $3000 an acre, depending on how much tillable ground and wooded and how easily accessible it is... Yes, milo the grain sorghum. Interesting plant. Tons of seed for Bob to feast on, if he can dodge the hawk and stray cat!!!

Little Dixie continues west into Saline County, site of the Battle of Marshall, a Shelby Raid site, Lafayette County with JO Shelby's hometown of Waverley after he left Kentucky. Boone County has Centralia (where the prize quail hunt pics are taken) home of the massacre of Union troops by Bloody Bill, etc. A lot of historic sites. Borderruffian is from Calloway County and is also a bird hunter. He has tons of stuff on here about Little Dixie.
 
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