stories of america
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Wild Frontier: The Kidnapping of Jemima Boone and the Fight for Kentucky
As I am always on the hunt for good historical books that don’t read like dry and overly-complicated textbooks, I was excited to discover The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America by Matthew Pearl. Listening to the audiobook version, I am amazed at how little I knew… Continue reading
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Witchcraft in the Family Tree: My Ancestral Connection to the Salem Witch Trials
The Reverend Samuel Parris, the girls whose accusations ignited a witchcraft panic, and the Manley connection that brought this history to my doorstep. Every family tree has its share of surprises. Some ancestors leave behind remarkable achievements, others lead ordinary lives that history has largely forgotten, and occasionally, one turns up whose name is forever… Continue reading
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A Date With Destiny: The Steamboat Disaster That Nearly Erased a Family Line
When I began researching Captain George Holmes Ghriest (1834-1917) for my husband’s family tree, I was shocked to discover just how much a seemingly insignificant decision made more than a century ago could have had an extraordinary impact on generations yet to be born. Such is the life of my husband’s second great-grandfather, Captain George… Continue reading
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The Family Landscape: William Coventry Wall and a Brush with Pittsburgh History.
One of the many things I love about genealogy is discovering that an ancestor was more than a name tucked into a census record. Every once in a while, somebody steps right out of the family tree and leaves behind something amazingly tangible. For my husband, one of these people is his 3X maternal great… Continue reading
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Pa Ingalls, a Murdered Neighbor, and the Bloody Benders of Kansas
A few years ago, we drove 730 miles west to Kansas to attend a family wedding. In anticipation of the trip, I was scoping out historical sights to which I could drag my non-history-loving husband, when I stumbled across the Bender Homestead in Labette County, Kansas. For those of you who have never heard of… Continue reading
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Andersonville: The Dead Line
During the Civil War, few places have become more infamous than Andersonville, the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia. Built in 1864 to hold roughly 10,000 Union prisoners, it eventually confined more than 40,000 men. Nearly 13,000 died there, primarily from disease, malnutrition, overcrowding and exposure. Inside the stockade ran a simple rail several yards from… Continue reading
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Way Down South in the Land of Dixie
Personally for me, one of the most interesting periods of American history is the Civil War (1861-1865) and its aftermath. Recently I wondered, what exactly happened to the former Confederate leaders after the Confederacy was defeated by the Union? Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) who became President after Lincoln’s assassination, favored a remarkably lenient approach toward the… Continue reading
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Sherman’s Neckties: When the Union Tied Railroads in Knots
During the Civil War, Union troops under General William Tecumseh Sherman had a particularly effective way of making Southern railroads useless. Soldiers tore up the tracks, piled the wooden railroad ties together and set them on fire. Once the rails became red-hot and softened, the men wrapped them around trees, poles, and other large objects.… Continue reading
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The Racist in the Family Tree: John H. Van Evrie and Sophia Colman
Every once in a while genealogy hands me a discovery that makes me stop and say “What the heck did I just find?” This was definitely one of those times. Dr. John H. Van Evrie (1814-1896) married my 4X cousin Sophia Elizabeth Colman (1821-1845) in 1842. Van Evrie would later become a physician, writer, newspaper… Continue reading
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Two Tablecloths and a Dinner in the Antebellum South
Every once in a while, I come across a small historical detail that lodges itself permanently in my brain. I first read this one years ago in Kelley Fanto Deetz’s Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine, and for whatever reason, I have never forgotten it. Deetz describes the elaborate… Continue reading
