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For Five Dollars a Day: The Dogs Used to Hunt Human Beings
Sometimes the smallest pieces of the historical record are the hardest to look at. While listening to the audiobook “The Calamity Club” by Kathryn Stockett, I encountered a reference to dogs used to track enslaved people who attempted to escape. I knew about slave catchers, of course, but had never given much thought to the… Continue reading
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The Day I Accidentally Found Barack Obama in My Family Tree
In genealogy research, you never quite know where a perfectly ordinary internet search is going to take you. I certainly wasn’t looking for Presidents the day I Googled the name of my 6X great grandfather, Samuel Dunham (1742-1824). I was simply doing what genealogists do – looking for anything I could find about another long-dead… Continue reading
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The Pilgrims Weren’t Exactly Great Neighbors
Most of us learned a fairly tidy version of the Mayflower story in school. A ship full of Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic in 1620 in search of religious freedom, landed in a strange new wilderness, struggled through a terrible first winter, and – with the help of the Native people they encountered – managed to… Continue reading
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A Family Obituary, a Famous Inventor, and One Very Unexpected Connection
If you’ve ever wondered how much trouble two parents could cause a genealogist nearly 200 years later, allow me to introduce twin brothers, Leman and Lyman Smith. Same (very common) surname, nearly identical first names living in the same place at the same time. One of the twins, Leman Smith (1806-1888) is my 4X great… Continue reading
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Want to Join the Union Army? Open Wide.
Imagine showing up to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War and being told to open your mouth. The Army wanted to see your teeth. And not just because they were concerned about whether you could chew your dinner. Civil War soldiers carried ammunition in paper cartridges. To load a rifle-musket, a soldier… Continue reading
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One Week in Charleston: 118 Deaths in 1836
Sometimes I find history when I’m not looking for it. While searching old newspaper archives for something entirely unrelated, I came across this report published in The Charleston Daily Courier on October 4, 1836. It is a mortality report from the Charleston (South Carolina) Board of Health, and what gave me pause was not simply… Continue reading
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Greenfield Village: Where History is Still Happening
There are places where you go to learn about history, and then there are places where you can walk straight into it. Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan is very much the latter. Spread across 80 acres, adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, the village is filled with historic homes, workshops, farms, businesses,… Continue reading
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An 11-Year Old Almon Hunt and a Hanging in Norwalk
Sometimes the most interesting pieces of family history are hiding in a single sentence. While searching old newspapers, I came across an article in the September 8, 1894, Sandusky Register about Huron County, Ohio. Near the end, the wandering correspondent stopped to mention a familiar name: “Almon Hunt is the oldest man here; he is… Continue reading
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Varina Davis, Mary Bowser, and a Very Revealing Letter: Life Thoughts After the Civil War
A few years ago I came across the story of Mary Bowser, a formerly enslaved woman who became a Union spy in Richmond during the Civil War. Bowser reportedly worked inside the Confederate White House, where Jefferson Davis lived with his wife, Varina, and passed information she gathered there to the Union. Naturally, that sent… Continue reading
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The Crowd at John Brown’s Hanging
John Brown remains one of the most complicated figures in American history. A fierce abolitionist who came to believe slavery would never be destroyed peacefully, Brown was willing to use violence against those who defended it. In 1856, during the bloody conflict over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state,… Continue reading
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A Family Obituary, a Famous Inventor, and One Very Unexpected Connection
If you’ve ever wondered how much trouble two parents could cause a genealogist nearly 200 years later, allow me to introduce twin brothers, Leman and Lyman Smith. Same (very common) surname, nearly identical first names living in the same place at the same time. One of the twins, Leman Smith (1806-1888) is my 4X great… Continue reading
Tiny Acorns & Mighty Oaks 