Jeannie M. Whayne

Title
Chair, Department of History

Institution
University of Arkansas

Current Project
I'm finishing a book on the Lee Wilson plantation of Mississippi County in northeastern Arkansas. At 60,000 acres in 1933, at the time of the original owners death, it was one of the largest cotton plantations in the South. Lee Wilson inherited a few hundred heavily forested acres from his father in 1870, most of it in swamps, and preceded to cut the timber from the land he inherited, acquire additional land, and then lobbied heavily for drainage districts to "reclaim" the land and turn it to agricultural purposes. Lying along the Mississippi River, it was subject to periodic inundation and, essentially, was a drainage field for the Mississippi River and its tributaries. This is an environmental, social, and economic history of one plantation over a hundred and fifty year period.

The first chapter, "The Shaping of the Land," looks at preconditions, examining this so-called floodplain from the 16th century Indian civilization that thrived there before a hundred year drought decimated them. They "disappeared" and for two hundred years the land became overgrown and thickly forested. In 1811-1812 the New Madrid earthquakes created havoc, damaging the land and "sinking" thousands of acres, making reclamation all the more difficult. The second chapter, "The Making of the Man," focuses on Lee Wilson rise to power in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The third chapter, "The Reshaping of the Land," focuses on the massive drainage enterprises engaged in during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The fourth, fifth, and six chapters focus on how he organized capital, the coming of the Great Depression and his ability to influence federal programs, and, finally, the way his heirs did (or did not) carry on his legacy after his death in 1933.

Best Place for an Agricultural History Conference
Anywhere it is below 100 degrees in June

Hobbies
Reading, gardening, walking on the beach in Port Townsend,
Washington, where we have a cabin.

Favorite Historical Figure
Abraham Lincoln

Favorite Agricultural/Rural Movie
"Places in the Heart"

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