Hendrick and Ware Plantations

Archeologist Ross C. Fields, Historian Amy E. Dase and TBH Assistant Editor Emily McCuistion wrote the Rusk County Plantation exhibit. Fields and Dase, who were involved in the Hendrick and Ware plantation project since its inception, are employed by Cox|McLain Environmental Consulting, Inc. (CMEC), and were formerly employed by Prewitt and Associates, Inc. (PAI). CMEC, a small Austin-based environmental and cultural resources consulting firm, purchased PAI in early 2020. When the present exhibit was developed in mid-2021, the combined CMEC-PAI cultural resources program had nearly 30 full-time archeologists and historians who have completed approximately 3,500 cultural resources studies, the majority in Texas.

Emily McCuistion and TBH Editor Steve Black designed and developed the exhibit for the web, with assistance from Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS) at UT-Austin and Stacy Vlasits. Sandy Hannum, of CMEC and previously PAI, created the regional and site maps, with the exception of the interactive Cultural Landscape map designed by Emily McCuistion and Cristina Nunez of LAITS. Maria Franklin, Department of Anthropology at University of Texas at Austin, reviewed the exhibit and provided helpful comments.

North American Coal Corporation–Sabine Mine sponsored and funded the project, with Josh McAfee, Steve Billingslea, and Eric Anderson overseeing the project for the mine. The Hendrick and Ware Plantations TBH exhibit is the second major public archeological exhibit sponsored by Sabine Mine. The first, Pine Tree Mound, documents a unique Caddo site that has revolutionized our understanding of the ceremonial, political, and economic landscape of northeast Texas in the fourteenth–eighteenth centuries.

Print Sources

1. Fields, Ross C., Aaron R. Norment, Amy E. Dase, Eloise F. Gadus, and John E. Dockall 2021 Excavations at the Ware and Hendrick Plantation Sites (41RK551 and 41RK571), South Hallsville No. 1 Mine–Rusk Permit, Area V, Rusk County, Texas. Reports of Investigations No. 189. Prewitt and Associates, Inc. CMEC AR-309. COX|McLAIN Environmental Consulting, Inc., Austin.
2. Norment, Aaron R., Jennifer K. McWilliams, Catrina Banks Whitley, Ross C. Fields, and Eloise Frances Gadus 2014 National Register Testing of Historic Sites 41RK551, 41RK571, and 41RK582 and Relocation of Historic Cemetery Site 41RK572 in the South Hallsville No. 1 Mine–Rusk Permit, Area V, Rusk County, Texas. Reports of Investigations No. 171. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Austin.
3. Avilo, Jr., Philip J. 1974 Phantom Radicals: Texas Republicans in Congress, 1870–1873. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 77(4):431–444.
4. Gregory, Ronald Haywood 1982 Hendrick Family, in: Rusk County, Texas, History, by the Rusk County Historical Commission. Taylor Publishing Company, Dallas, for the Rusk County Historical Commission, Henderson.
5. Pearson, Joseph W. 2020 The Whigs' America: Middle-Class Political Thought in the Age of Jackson and Clay.University Press of Kentucky, Lexington.
6. Walther, Eric 2015 “The Lives of Enslaved Women in Texas: Changing Borders and Challenging Boundaries.” In: Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives, edited by Elizabeth Hayes Turner et al., University of Georgia Press, pp. 53–81.
7. Williamson, Lee 1992 Dr. Seaborn Jones Hendrick Family, in: Remembering Rusk County, by John R. Dulin. Curtis Media Corporation, Dallas, for the Rusk County Genealogical Society, Henderson.
8. Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Texas 1941 Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Washington, D.C.

Links

1. Depot Museum, Henderson, TX The Depot Museum is a living history museum in Henderson, Rusk County, which houses the Rusk County Historical Commission and Rusk County archives, as well as a Children’s Discovery Center.
2. Texas Beyond History: Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead The Williams Farmstead Archeological Project is the most intensive archeological and historical investigation ever attempted for an African American–owned farmstead in Texas. Texas Beyond History’s extensive exhibit documents the project, which presents the archeology and archival study of a late-nineteenth-century freedman family’s farmstead in Central Texas, the history of slavery in Texas, and oral histories from the descendant community.
3. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project The Texas Freedom Colonies Project is an educational and social justice initiative dedicated to supporting the preservation of Black settlement landscapes, heritage, and grassroots preservation practices through research.
4. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture This website from the New York Public Library contains excellent educational resources, lessons, and timelines.
5. The Texas Runaway Slave Project Stephen F. Austin State University's online database of advertisements, articles and notices from Texas newspapers, documenting the names of over 400 individuals who fled their slaveowners.
6. Digital Library of American Slavery A searchable database of information regarding persons and subjects involved in the slavery system, including enslaved people, slaveowners, and free persons of color in the United States from 1775 to 1867, published by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the Race and Slavery Petitions Project.