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This page is designed to keep the stories told by Uncle Remus alive. Uncle Remus was a slave in Georgia who attended to his slave owner's farm which contained cotton, tobacco and corn. The cabin where he lived had only one room where he cooked, slept and smoked his corn cobbed pipe. Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) is famous for his creation of Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear and other characters as in Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (1880), Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), The Tar Baby (1904), Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit (1906); edited Uncle Remus's Magazine (1907-08). Other works included Mingo, and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884), Free Joe and Other Georgia Sketches (1887), Gabriel Tolliver (1902). Harris, who had grown up in Georgia during the Civil War, spent a lifetime compiling and publishing the tales told to him by former slaves. These stories - many of which Harris learned from an old black man he called "Uncle George" - were first published as columns in "The Atlanta Constitution" and were later syndicated nationwide and published in book form. Harris's Uncle Remus was a fictitious old slave and philosopher who told entertaining fables about Br'er Rabbit and other woodland creatures in a Southern black dialect.
Joel Chandler Harris and a National Historic Landmark. To Joel Chandler Harris
White House, Oct. 12, 1901.
MY DEAR HARRIS:
It is worth while being President when one's small daughter receives that kind of an autograph gift. When I was younger than she is, my Aunt Annie Bulloch, of Georgia, used to tell me some of the brer rabbit stories, especially brer rabbit and the tar baby. But fond though I am of the brer rabbit stories I think I am even fonder of your other writings. I doubt if there is a more genuinely pathetic tale in all our literature than "Free Joe." Moreover I have felt that all that you write serves to bring our people closer together. I know, of course, the ordinary talk is that an artist should be judged purely by his art; but I am rather a Philistine and like to feel that the art serves a good purpose. Your art is not only an art addition to our sum of national achievement, but it has also always been an addition to the forces that tell for decency, and above all for the blotting out of sectional antagonism.
Theodore Roosevelt
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The marker contains the following inscription: IN HONOR OF
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
1848 - 1908
"UNCLE REMUS"
MOST DISTINGUISHED SON OF
PUTNAM COUNTY
AND BELOVED
OF ALL THE WORLD
BORN AT EATONTON, GA.
DECEMBER 9, 1848
ERECTED BY SAMUEL REID CHAPTER
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1923
¬ BROTHER RABBIT CHINTZ (The name of the pattern) Designed by William Morris, 1882. The Brother Rabbit pattern was inspired, according to May Morris, by the 'Uncle Remus' stories which her father was reading to the family at their Hammersmith home, Kelmscott House. It was one of the first textiles to be printed at Merton Abbey, where Morris & Co. moved its workshop premises at the end of 1881. If you know of more historical places or landmarks that involve Joel Chandler Harris or Uncle Remus. Please E-Mail me the information and I will add it to this page. E-Mail: uncleremus@uncleremuspages.com
Song of the South Petition |
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