Four miles southeast of the village of Matfield Green in Chase County, Kansas--the heart of the Flint Hills--lies the abandoned settlement of Thurman. At the turn of the century Thurman was a prosperous farming and ranching settlement with fifty-one households, a post office, two general stores, a blacksmith shop, five schools, and a church. Today, only the ruins of Thurman remain. Joseph Hickey uses Thurman to explore the settlement form of social organization, which--along with the village, hamlet, and small town--was a ...
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Four miles southeast of the village of Matfield Green in Chase County, Kansas--the heart of the Flint Hills--lies the abandoned settlement of Thurman. At the turn of the century Thurman was a prosperous farming and ranching settlement with fifty-one households, a post office, two general stores, a blacksmith shop, five schools, and a church. Today, only the ruins of Thurman remain. Joseph Hickey uses Thurman to explore the settlement form of social organization, which--along with the village, hamlet, and small town--was a dominant feature of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American life. He traces Thurman's birth in 1874, its shallow rises and falls, and its demise in 1944. Akin to what William Least Heat-Moon did for Chase County in PrairyErth , Hickey provides a "deep map" for one post-office community and, consequently, tells us a great deal about America's rural past. Describing the shifting relationships between Thurmanites and their Matfield Green neighbors, Hickey details how social forces set in motion by the American ideal of individualism and the machinations of capitalist entrepreneurs produced a Darwinian struggle between Thurman stock raisers and Flint Hills "cattle barons" that ultimately doomed Thurman. Central to the story are the concept of "ordinary entrepreneurship" and the profoundly capitalist attitudes of the farmers who settled Thurman and thousands of other communities dotting the American landscape. Hickey's account of Thurman's social organization and disintegration provides a new perspective on what happened when the cattle drives from Texas and the Southwest shifted in the 1880s from the Kansas cowtowns to the Flint Hills. Moreover, he punctures numerous myths about the Flint Hills, including those that cattle dominated because the land is too rocky to farm or that Indians refused to farm because of traditional beliefs. Like many other small rural communities, Hickey argues, Thurman during its seventy-year history was actually several different settlements. A product of changing social conditions, each one resulted from shifting memberships and boundaries that reflected the efforts of local entrepreneurs to use country schools, churches, and other forms of "social capital" to gain advantages over their competitors. In the end, Thurman succumbed to the impact of agribusiness, which had the effect of transforming social capital from an asset into a liability. Ultimately, Hickey shows, the settlement's fate echoed the decline of rural community throughout America.
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Add this copy of Ghost Settlement on the Prairie: a Biography of Thurman to cart. $35.00, like new condition, Sold by Lloyd Zimmer Books & Maps rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Chanute, KS, UNITED STATES, published 1995 by University Press of Kansas.
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Fine in Near Fine jacket. Signed. Association Inscription Copyright is 1995. 320 pages. Personal warm inscription from the author to Mr. & Mrs. Houser, thanking them for their contributions and assistance in making the book a reality, " dated 1-27-95. Bright and clean dust jacket shows light handling creases. Jacket is now in a clear Brodart protective sleeve.
Add this copy of Ghost Settlement on the Prairie: a Biography of Thurman to cart. $49.59, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1995 by University Press of Kansas.
Add this copy of Ghost Settlement on the Prairie: A Biography of Thurman to cart. $59.04, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 1995 by University Press of Kansas.
Add this copy of Ghost Settlement on the Prairie: A Biography of Thurman to cart. $78.40, new condition, Sold by Ria Christie Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Uxbridge, MIDDLESEX, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1995 by University Press of Kansas.
Add this copy of Ghost Settlement on the Prairie: a Biography of Thurman to cart. $154.09, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1995 by University Press of Kansas.
