Has anyone read Alabama's Mitchum Wars by

[Frances]

Jerry Elijah Brown?

Jerry, former head of the Auburn's journalism department, has written a fascinating family history detailing how his ancestors came as pioneers to an area known as Mitchum Beat in Clarke County. While doing his research, Jerry learned that his long deceased, beloved grandfather had been jailed for complicity in the murder of one of the men in the mob who attacked Mitchum Beat in 1894. This attack was the result of the murder of a cotton broker who had lent money to one of the farmers in the Mitchum community.

This war could best be described as a class war. Race was not an issue because the people doing the fighting were all white and some on each side had owned slaves and had volunteered and then fought in the Confederate Army.

The Mitchum War still reverberates in Clarke County.

Around 10 years ago, Tom Franklin, an award winning author, wrote a novel based on this war called Hell at the Breach. When I googled the title, I discovered that the Guardian, an English newspaper, had reviewed it back in 2004. Obviously, the novel had a wide circulation.

Hope someone will discuss the MItchum War or either of these books with me.

[Syrinx]

1. I haven't read that but it sounds interesting

I think the Guardian does have a few stringers in the state. At least one is a UA professor that contributed a devastating profile of then state representative Gerald Allen a few years ago. But I guess it wasn't too devastating since Allen in now a state senator. :shrug:

[vdub2197]

4. i agree

[trof]

2. I read a review just the other day. Like to read it.

I have cousins in/from Clarke County.

[Frances]

3. Trof, I think you told me a few years ago

that you have cousins in Jackson. I grew up in Grove Hill, but live in CA now. Jerry moved from Mitcham Beat to a farm close to Jackson when he was about four.

The author of Hell at the Breech is the son of my classmate. One of my friends told me that when Hell at the Breech was published, some people in the county got very angry because they did not like the way the people of Mitcham Beat were described. I haven't read that book yet.

I am pretty sure you are the person who explained that a group of German immigrants bought land in Baldwin County and settled there not too many years before World War II. My father worked with these farmers as an assistant county agent during World War II. He was transferred to Clake County after the war.

Jerry explains that while most of his ancestors were from England, Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, at least one ancestor came from Germany to South Carolina and then to Alabama. Many southerners (as I once did) think they have a Dutch ancestor, when really the ancestor had said he was from Deutschland, not Holland.

Where did you read the review? Was it a good review? Let me know when/if you read the book.