One of my favorite pastimes is reading oral histories of World War II. There are many great books by a lot of good writers, but my favorites are the books by noted World War II historian, Stephen Ambrose.
It must have been a muggy night in the Chesapeake; the air thick with gunpowder that fogged the streaks and bursts of cannonfire fired from the British Royal Navy upon Fort McHenry. Blasts and roaring booms broke taut moments of silence, and American patriot Francis Scott Key watched from a distance, not knowing if the United States had survived the day long offensive. It was September 14, 1814, and the future of the United States was in the gravest of dangers. How could he have felt, knowing that his country, still in its infancy, clung to the hope that the soldiers
As an avid genealogist, I have always been fascinated with the history of the towns where my ancestors lived. What was life like for them? Where was the land they lived on? Why/how did they arrive at that particular destination? There are many reasons why your ancestors settled where they did. Sometimes, it was convenience - that’s where the trains stopped or the boats docked. Other times, it was your relatives moved to the places where others they knew from the “Old Country” had already immigrated. I have traveled to many locations wher
Jackson County History: Slavery, Border Wars, and Civil War
There is no way of discussing the Border Wars in a blog without gross oversimplification, so I am going to get out of the way and leave it to Ann Everett. On September 9th at 7 p.m., Ann Everett will be doing a multi-media presentation on Jackson County from 1850-1865 at the South Independence Branch.
Here are a couple of quotes along with a short list of titles on the subject:
MCPL is sponsoring NPR’s StoryCorps MobileBooth, which will record interviews in Kansas City from September 9—October 2, 2010. These stories are being sent to the Library of Congress and will eventually be available online. To learn about recording your own story, a Recording Oral Histories workshop will be held at the Midwest Genealogy Center on Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 1:30 p.m . The speaker, Mark Meisenheimer, is a professional producer of recorded family histories and will teach participants techniques for taping their own oral history.
Dearborn Area History Has Been Gathered By Mrs. Lu Durham
The Dearborn Branch has a unique collection of information on area families gathered by Mrs. Lu Durham. A number of the genealogies start with early residents of the area, as long ago as the 1840s. These are organized into notebooks with the families in alphabetical order.
I was literally double checking the scores, wrapping the library in cellophane for the official Millard Fillmore award presentation when out of nowhere, username Tracy dropped this bomb:
Have you ever found an old metal photograph and wondered what it was? Recently, I found myself in possession of several of these old pictures from my family history. These types of photos are called tintypes. Tintypes, also known as ferrotypes, began showing up in the 1850’s, and stayed around until the early 1900’s. Unlike the name implies, no tin was used, but rather iron. They were popular for several reasons; they were cheaper, faster, easier to create, and more durable than other types of photographs. The pictured tintype is of my great-great-great-grandparents and their family.
Do you know who Horatio Nelson Jackson is? Until recently, I’d never heard of him either – though, I probably saw his car sitting in the Smithsonian Institute and paid no attention to it. But, I should have. This 1903 Winton Automobile, nicknamed the Vermont by Nelson, would drive into history, and unknowingly usher in countless adventures.
