Thoughts & Musings from James McNiven
Almost 158 years ago, on the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, as he watched a play. It could have been different. In March of 1858, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was reorganized as the Seneca Oil Company, with New Haven CT banker James Townsend becoming President… Continue reading A Petroleum Strike Might Have Saved Lincoln
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
There is a notion, common in human history, that it is acceptable to force some people to labor for their sustenance alone, while others make use of the difference between the value of the forced laborers’ production and their sustenance. Reasons for justifying this involuntary servitude include national necessity, the fate of captives in war,… Continue reading Involuntary Servitude
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
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
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)
When US 20 leaves the western bounds of Yellowstone Park, it passes through the small southern tip of Montana for about ten miles. Montana therefore deserves a spot of recognition in this tale. Let’s focus on the gold rush to Montana during the Civil War, and on two Yankees and a Georgia Unionist who played… Continue reading A Unionist and Two Yankees in Montana
We will remain out of the Union a hundred years, rather than come in without our women [voters]! - Message about Acquiring Statehood from the Wyoming Legislature to the US Congress, 1890. In 1869, The Union Pacific (UP), commonly called ‘the transcontinental railroad’, was about to join up with the Central Pacific Railroad (CPR) in… Continue reading Wyoming: More Ladies, Please
This is the second in a two-part piece on the early 19th Century Yankee contribution to healthy lifestyles (you can read of Part 1 here). The parallels with today’s pandemic are most interesting. The material comes from a chapter in Volume 2 of my book, The Yankee Road. By 1840, Massachusetts school reformer Horace Mann… Continue reading Those Healthy Yankees Part 2: Joel Shew, Mary Gove Nichols and the Water Cure
Old Professor by the Sea 