Search results for ""Author Carolyn Murray-Wooley""

In the years before the Revolutionary War, intrepid frontiersmen with roots in northern Ireland claimed vast tracts of land in Kentucky on which they developed plantations. They settled the land and with their families built enduring stone houses that became the centerpieces of their properties. In Early Stone Houses of Kentucky, author Carolyn Murray-Wooley examines these early frontier homes as well as the people who built and lived in them. What traditions did these settlers call on to provide construction techniques and plans? How do the frontier dwellings of settlers with differing origins compare with these stone houses? Murray-Wooley looks at these and many other questions, exploring the transfer of cultural traditions from northern Ireland to the state of Kentucky. Drawing on extensive field work and genealogical research, Murray-Wooley examines the history of these resourceful settlers and their architectural practices, uses scale drawings and floor plans to illustrate how the houses would have appeared at the time of construction, and compares them to modern photographs. The book includes color plates of more than thirty stone houses, as well as many black and white construction illustrations. Early Stone Houses of Kentucky is a fascinating look at the impact of a little-known community on the architecture and culture of the Bluegrass State.

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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.

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