wiregrass

"…the Wiregrass region of southeastern Alabama.  The long nutritious grass that furnished the region its name grew on the floor of extensive pine forests, providing abundant fodder for foraging livestock.  Its sandy soil, though ideal for pine trees and wire grass, was not well-suited to agriculture.  Settlers grew corn and other food crops for local consumption but little cotton.   Called variously the piney woods (for its trees), the pine barrens (for its sparse population), or cow country (fort its heavy economic dependence on livestock grazing), the region encompassed four southeastern Alabama counties in 1860 (Henry, Dale, Coffee, and Covington).  … Though not as renowned for family feuds and violence as mountain people, physical conflict seems to have been just as pervasive.  The same frontier conditions, the slow development of stabilizing institutions such as schools, churches, and towns, and extensive consumption of whiskey all contributed to this atmosphere. ... Slaves constituted only 19.63 of the population of the four counties, which totaled only 43,207.  Less than 15 percent of the white families owned any slaves.  ... One sample of 1,218 heads of families found 77 percent female heads, a phenomenally high statistic.  The rate of illiteracy was high, slightly more than 20 percent, but many illiterates owned land.  Among illiterates, 15 persons owned property worth $2,100 to $3,000;  28, $1,000 to $2,000; 36, $600 to $100; 126, $1 to $500; and only 6 owned no property at all."

from Poor But Proud, Alabama's Poor Whites by Wayne Flynt