Something that seems to be left out of most accounts of travelling overland across the continent is how long it took, especially for those going west from the Mississippi River valley, and what the introduction of the railroad and then the automobile meant to the traveller. For the wagon going to Oregon, or the Mormon… Continue reading Some Rough Travel Comparisons
Category: History
The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
With the publication of Volume 3 of The Yankee Road launching August 2020 (here's a bit of the story behind US 20, America's longest highway. US 20 stretches across the United States nearly 3400 miles, from Boston to Newport, Oregon. It is a designation connecting a number of largely pre-existing roads rather than a singular… Continue reading The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
John Deere’s Steel-Tipped Plow
The Rock River issues from a swamp in central Wisconsin and its waters flow south, crossing under US 20 in northern Illinois near the John Huy Addams (Jane Addams’ father) homestead. It then begins to flow southwesterly, passing Grand Detour and Dixon before joining the Mississippi at a rocky rapids/falls in what is informally called,… Continue reading John Deere’s Steel-Tipped Plow
Review of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’, The General in His Labyrinth
I meant to read this book many years ago, but never got around to it. In a way, I am glad of that, as it resonates more, I think, the older you get. I came away acknowledging that the author really deserved his Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel, The General in his Labyrinth is… Continue reading Review of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’, The General in His Labyrinth
The Medium of Writing and Dunbar’s Number
Writing provides a way to transmit messages accurately into the future, but it also has the side-effect of increasing social cohesion by homogenizing and stabilizing a ruling class, as well as by distinguishing one society from another. The medium of writing, according to the late Marshall McLuhan, has a greater effect simply by just being… Continue reading The Medium of Writing and Dunbar’s Number
The Unlucky Inventor
The oils from different coals require different treatment. The oils of Albert coal (ashphaltum) [New Brunswick, Canada], Boghead coal [Scotland] and Breckenridge coal [Kentucky] are easily purified, while the oils from ordinary American, English and Scotch cannels, require more skill….The author has made more than 2000 experiments in reference to the manufacture and purification of… Continue reading The Unlucky Inventor
Annie Wittenmyer
I ran across this tale while researching Annie Wittenmyer’s life in Iowa for my The Yankee Road trilogy. It is an interesting glimpse into army life in the American Civil War 160 years ago. Extract from: Annie Wittenmyer, UNDER THE GUNS: A WOMAN'S REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR, Boston: Stillings, 1895. A WOMAN WOUNDED IN BATTLE,… Continue reading Annie Wittenmyer
Retailing “Yankee Notions”
Every inhabited part of the United States is visited by these men. I have seen them on the peninsula of Cape Cod and in the Neighborhood of Lake Erie, distant from each other more than six hundred miles. They make their way to Detroit, four hundred miles farther, to Canada, to Kentucky, and, if I… Continue reading Retailing “Yankee Notions”
Amelia Jenks Bloomer: A Yankee Woman Goes to Iowa
Amelia Jenks was the daughter of Ananias Jenks, who was born in Yankee Rhode Island around 1786. He was a woolen clothmaker by trade who migrated, first to Oneida NY and then south to Homer, in Cortland County, on the eastern margins of the Finger Lakes. Here he operated a woolen mill and married Lucy… Continue reading Amelia Jenks Bloomer: A Yankee Woman Goes to Iowa
The Second Butterfield Stage (Sort Of)
When I was writing a chapter for the second volume of my book, The Yankee Road, I told the story of John Butterfield and his Overland Mail Company, which operated a stagecoach line between St. Louis and San Francisco between 1858 and 1861; its existence cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War. The… Continue reading The Second Butterfield Stage (Sort Of)
Old Professor by the Sea 