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
Genealogy has a way of taking us places we never expected to go. I’ve spent years researching my Manley ancestors, tracing them from the early Massachusetts colonies through their migrations to New York and eventually, Lenawee County, Michigan. Along the way I’ve uncovered the details that bring a family history to life – where they… Continue reading
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
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
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
