Plain Folk, Planters, and the Complexities of Southern Society

The book employs the story of one particular extended family network—the Browns, Sherrods, Mannings, Sprowls, and Williamses—to illustrate the powerful influence of kinship ties as a force mitigating lines of class distinction in the nineteenth-century American South.

It traces each family’s story from its earliest appearance in the historical record to the convergence of the family network, first taking shape in northeast Alabama and eventually reaching full-blown form in northwest Louisiana’s Red River Valley. There, both the plain folk and planters within the group demonstrated exceptional harmony and cooperation in constructing a flexible family network that left its mark on the area between the 1820s and 1870s.

The story of these five families reveals much about migratory patterns of that restless segment of early- to mid-nineteenth century Americans who hankered to exploit opportunities on the ever-expanding, westward-moving agricultural frontier.