My own work focuses primarily on issues of gender role formation within the nineteenth-century American household in particular regional contexts. In order to explore that issue, my book, Marriage on the Border, analyzes the construction of white marriages and marital roles in the border South, specifically portions of Kentucky and western/West Virginia, from the late antebellum period through the early years of Reconstruction. Much like other international and intranational borders, the region's position as a place of contact and exchange, as well as its mixture of economic, political, social, racial, and ethnic differences, helped create a uniquely blended culture and influenced residents' marital attitudes.
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" ... we will imagine this happy pair, united, while their pecuniary prospects were very limited, while indeed, their friends, thought it a very hazardous project still they had now become so entirely dependent on each other for mutual happiness, that they pledged the nuptial vow - We see the happy Norman, returning from his toilsome occupation, with a heart overflowing with love for his cherished partner, and the smiles and endearing fondness of Monimia serve as a compensation for his arduous labours ..." - Ellen Green, Henderson, Kentucky
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Quote to left: George W. Johnson to Ann Johnson, October 20, 1861, George W. Johnson Papers, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky, box 1, folder 5.
Quote to right: Ellen Green to Hector Green, November 8, 1833, Green Family Papers, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky, folder 12. |
"My dear Wife, I never knew till now how much you constituted as it were a part of my own life. How … dear are the pleasures of home, and the love of wife and children. When the passions of men or devils I hardly know which, disturb and convulse society, then come back to mind, pictures of the pleasures of Home, which delight the mind. How insignificant by the side of these, appear the ordinary pleasures of life – the pursuit of money or … of honour and fame." - George Johnson, Confederate Governor of Kentucky
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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
SELECTED BOOK REVIEWS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
- Marriage on the Border: Love, Mutuality, and Divorce in the Upper South during the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky (forthcoming).
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
- “Breaking Vows: Divorce and Separation in the Postrevolutionary United States of America,” in A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Enlightenment (1650-1800), ed. Edward Behrend-Martinez (London: Bloomsbury), forthcoming.
- “‘One Pillar of the Social Fabric May Still Stand Firm’: Bluegrass Marriage in the Emancipation Era” in Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom, eds. William A. Link and James Broomall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 93-118.
- “The View from the Border: West Virginia Republicans and Women’s Rights in the Age of Emancipation,” West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies 3:1 (Spring 2009), 57-80.
SELECTED BOOK REVIEWS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
- “Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk (review),” Journal of the Civil War Era (forthcoming).
- “Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (review),” The Journal of Southern History 84:1 (February 2018), 159-60.
- “Bonds of Union: Religion, Race, and Politics in a Civil War Borderland (review),” West Virginia History 10:2 (Fall 2016), 178-179.
- “Family, Law, and Inheritance in America: A Social and Legal History of Nineteenth-Century Kentucky (review),” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 113:4 (Autumn 2015), 721-23.
- “At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (review),” Southern Historian 33 (Spring 2012), 99.
- “In the Shadow of the Enemy: The Civil War Journal of Ida Powell Dulany (review),” West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies 6:1 (Spring 2012), 92-93.
- “Wanted – Correspondence: Women’s Letters to a Union Soldier (review),” Ohio Valley History 11:1 (Spring 2011), 86-87.
- “Waitman T. Willey,” Encyclopedia Virginia. (online)
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
Southern Association for Women Historians Conference
June 2018, Tuscaloosa, AL
“Two Communities, One Region: Comparing Urban and Rural Nineteenth-Century Appalachia Women”
The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities
June 2017, Hempstead, NY
“Broomstick Marriage on the Border: Enslaved Relationships in Antebellum Kentucky and Western Virginia”
Appalachian State “Warm up with the Humanities” Lecture Series
February 2017, Boone, NC
“Adultery as Legal Manipulation: Divorce in Antebellum Western Virginia”
Society of Appalachian Historians Annual Meeting
May 2016, Knoxville, TN
“The Trimble Case: Love, Anger, and Family Ties in Post-Civil War Wheeling”
Appalachian Studies Association Annual Conference
March 2015, Johnson City, TN
“‘By respectable people she was considered of a doubtful character’: A Working-Class Marriage in an Appalachian River City”
Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting
April 2013, San Francisco, CA
“‘Like in Yankeedom’: Marital Roles in a Nineteenth-Century Border City”
Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting
November 2012, Mobile, AL
“To Live No More Together as Man and Wife: Divorce in the Antebellum Border South”
Borders, Spaces, & Identities: Construction, Deconstruction, & Reconstruction from One Millennium to the Next (Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium)
April 2011, Gainesville, FL
“To Have and to Hold: Kinship, Courting, and Family Life in the Antebellum Border South”
British Association of American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Meeting
October 2010, Liverpool, UK
“Broken Unions: Divorce in the Reconstruction-era Border South”
Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Meeting
June 2010, Richmond, VA
“Redefining the Border: Married Women’s Property Law and Regional Diversity in the Upper South, 1840-1880”
Milbauer Seminar on the American South
March 2010, Gainesville, FL
“Between North & South: Gender, Regional Identity, & the Law in the Border South, 1840-1880”
Appalachian Studies Association Annual Conference
March 2008, Huntington, WV
“A Chance for Change: Republican Legislators and Married Women’s Property Rights in West Virginia during the Civil War”
June 2018, Tuscaloosa, AL
“Two Communities, One Region: Comparing Urban and Rural Nineteenth-Century Appalachia Women”
The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities
June 2017, Hempstead, NY
“Broomstick Marriage on the Border: Enslaved Relationships in Antebellum Kentucky and Western Virginia”
Appalachian State “Warm up with the Humanities” Lecture Series
February 2017, Boone, NC
“Adultery as Legal Manipulation: Divorce in Antebellum Western Virginia”
Society of Appalachian Historians Annual Meeting
May 2016, Knoxville, TN
“The Trimble Case: Love, Anger, and Family Ties in Post-Civil War Wheeling”
Appalachian Studies Association Annual Conference
March 2015, Johnson City, TN
“‘By respectable people she was considered of a doubtful character’: A Working-Class Marriage in an Appalachian River City”
Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting
April 2013, San Francisco, CA
“‘Like in Yankeedom’: Marital Roles in a Nineteenth-Century Border City”
Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting
November 2012, Mobile, AL
“To Live No More Together as Man and Wife: Divorce in the Antebellum Border South”
Borders, Spaces, & Identities: Construction, Deconstruction, & Reconstruction from One Millennium to the Next (Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium)
April 2011, Gainesville, FL
“To Have and to Hold: Kinship, Courting, and Family Life in the Antebellum Border South”
British Association of American Nineteenth Century Historians Annual Meeting
October 2010, Liverpool, UK
“Broken Unions: Divorce in the Reconstruction-era Border South”
Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Meeting
June 2010, Richmond, VA
“Redefining the Border: Married Women’s Property Law and Regional Diversity in the Upper South, 1840-1880”
Milbauer Seminar on the American South
March 2010, Gainesville, FL
“Between North & South: Gender, Regional Identity, & the Law in the Border South, 1840-1880”
Appalachian Studies Association Annual Conference
March 2008, Huntington, WV
“A Chance for Change: Republican Legislators and Married Women’s Property Rights in West Virginia during the Civil War”
