About Me

Acadia Roher

Barnard College 2010

I am currently a senior at Barnard College in New York City, but I proudly call Arkansas home. The Williams Woods Project in Madison County brings me great pleasure. It is well worth the inconvenient commute! This project ties in well with my Environmental Policy major, which seeks to cross interdisciplinary boundaries and prepare students for a society in which environmental issues are paramount.

The science (surveying, mapping, recommendations) involved in this project will make up my senior thesis. As a Centennial Scholar, I plan to give the project more breadth by tying in the historical context. I will address other areas of interest, including: women in Ozark culture, the stories and spirits of things left behind, and the ever-intriguiging human-nature relationship.

History of the Williams Woods Project

A camping trip with my mother during spring break of 2007 brought me to Williams Woods for the first time. The forest, the mountains, and the abandoned homesteads immediately intrigued us.

The semester after that first encounter with the property, I used Williams Woods as the main case study for a research paper on multi-disciplinary conservation. My research opened many interesting doors into Ozark vernacular architecture, historic preservation, and natural resource conservation.

The following summer I reached out to two historic preservationists from Little Rock who graciously brought me on their trips around the state to survey different historical buildings. The two preservationists and a professor from Columbia encouraged me to feed my curiosity through a survey of the buildings and material artifacts.

In August 2007 I spent a few weeks cataloguing and photographing items found in the Williams House, a log cabin on the National Register of Historic Places. This project provided me with a digital library of the letters, photographs, books, and other items. I also visited the Shiloh Museum in Springdale, Arkansas and catalogued the items they have from the Williams property. I did genealogical research at the Huntsville Historical Society and delved into the real estate records at the Huntsville courthouse.