The Southern Advocate

Welcome to The Southern Advocate, a blog for my musings on Southern history and genealogy. Here I plan to write on a variety of topics stemming from both my academic studies in Southern history and my personal passion for local and family history. I have a great love for the characters, events, and relics of the Southern past, and I hope to share them with you. I will post brief historical and genealogical sketches, book reviews, accounts of my adventures in research, musings on the craft and heart of history and genealogy, and more, all with a Southern flavor.

I am a student of Southern history, on the verge of graduating with my undergraduate and planning to pursue graduate studies. I have deep roots in the South, and a passion for the history, beauty, and culture of my region.

The original Southern Advocate, and the source of my title and banner, was a newspaper published here in Huntsville, Alabama between 1825 and 1881. For most of its run, it was published by William B. Figures, a figure I hope to write on, and in the 1850s it was a voice of moderation against secession fever in the escalation to the Civil War. I have been fascinated by this paper and have loved reading it at the Alabama Department of Archives and History; it gives an alternate voice to the one of the extremists and secessionists that is still so dominant in history even today, drowning out every other voice. I have a passion for uncovering these forgotten, unknown voices in history. I, too, consider myself a moderate voice. And I consider myself truly a Southern Advocate — an advocate for Southern history and culture. I believe that even today, the South is a unique and distinct region, with a rich history that is valuable and fascinating in its own right, and a culture that continues, despite the forces of homogenization, to hold the South's glory and charm and its independent spirit.