Rewriting the frontier

Abstract

This dissertation explores the dynamics of white settlement at Tuscaloosa, Alabama and the role of settlers’ written words in mythologizing the nineteenth-century, American frontier. The lived experiences of settlers, captured in individuals’ letters, diaries, deeds, wills, poems and books, tell how they transformed a frontier into the Old South. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, generations of migrants, storytellers and local writers also blended historical accounts, memories, Native legends and fiction, thereby contributing to the creation of the myths of the American frontier and the early formations of southern identity.