Gray rock fences built of ancient limestone are hallmarks of Kentucky's Bluegrass landscape. Why did Kentucky farmers turn to rock as fence-building material when most had earlier used hardwood rails? Who were the masons responsible for Kentucky's lovely rock fences and what are the different rock forms used in this region? In this generously illustrated book, Carolyn Murray-Wooley and Karl Raitz address those questions and explore the background of Kentucky's rock fences, the talent and skill of the fence masons, and the Irish and Scottish models they followed in their work. They also correct inaccurate popular perceptions about the fences and use census data and archival documents to identify the fence masons and where they worked. As the book reveals, the earliest settlers in Kentucky built dry-laid fences around eighteenth-century farmsteads, cemeteries, and mills. Fence building increased dramatically during the nineteenth century so that by the 1880s rock fences lined most roads, bounded pastures and farmyards throughout the Bluegrass. Farmers also built or commissioned rock fences in New England, the Nashville Basin, and the Texas hill country, but the Bluegrass may have had the most extensive collection of quarried rock fences in North America. This is the first book-length study on any American fence type. Filled with detailed fence descriptions, an extensive list of masons' names, drawings, photographs, and a helpful glossary, it will appeal to folklorists, historians, geographers, architects, landscape architects, and masons, as well as general readers intrigued by Kentucky's rock fences.

Rock Fences of the Bluegrass (Perspectives On Kentucky's Past)

History

Raitz, Karl

Murray-Wooley, Carolyn

Americas

University Press of Kentucky

"[Stone houses] soon dotted the countryside, and in such houses traditions lived on―for a while. Now many of them sit neglected, their histories forgotten, yet each can tell us much about that era, the people who lived in it, and their world. This book tells those stories."―from the book In the years before the Revolutionary War, intrepid frontiersmen with roots in northern Ireland claimed vast tracts of land in Kentucky. These aristocratic families developed plantations and built stone houses that became the centerpieces of their properties. In Early Stone Houses of Kentucky, author Carolyn Murray-Wooley examines these early frontier homes and explores the lives of the people who built and inhabited them. Who were these settlers? What traditions did they draw on to provide construction techniques and plans? How do the frontier dwellings of settlers from different origins compare with these stone houses? Murray-Wooley found that Ulster descendants were three times more likely to build with stone than were other cultural groups and they almost always built hall-parlor with gable end chimneys. Many wealthy families from the north of Ireland who had settled in the eastern colonies migrated to the Bluegrass to claim some of the richest and most valuable land in the commonwealth. They quickly became leaders in the areas of politics, education, and religion and they brought many of the cultural traditions of northern Irish gentry to their homes in Kentucky. These energetic settlers transformed a wilderness into an agricultural landscape in fewer than twenty-five years. Drawing on extensive field work and genealogical research, Murray-Wooley provides an accurate history of this group of settlers and their architectural practices. Early Stone Houses of Kentucky includes measured drawings and floor plans to depict these houses as they would have been at the time of construction, pairing them with photographs of the structures today.

Early Stone Houses of Kentucky

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Books by Murray-Wooley, Carolyn

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Murray-Wooley, Carolyn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rock Fences of the Bluegrass (Perspectives On Kentucky's Past)

Early Stone Houses of Kentucky