History from Deardoff

  James Oglethorpe died this day in 1785 after a life mostly devoted to others.   In 1722, like his father and brothers he become a Member of Parliament. While serving as an MP, one of his friends  was sentenced to debtor's prison; while there his friend contracted smallpox and died.  While in debtor's prison not only could you not work, but you had to provide for your own food and maintenance...obviously a no-win situation. This apparently inspired Oglethorpe to develop a plan for relief.  He and several colleagues explored the possibility of creating a new colony in America.  They believed that, given the chance, these debtors could be turned into farmers,, merchants and artisans and contribute to the wealth of the British Empire. Other than economic, there were military considerations which were perhaps more influential in persuading the crown to approve his project.  The Spanish were already in Florida and had an impressive fortification at St...

 On June 28 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife Sophie were assassinated by a young member of the Serbian "Black Hand", Gavrilo Princip. A Bosnian, Princip and his group were trying to bring attention to the cause of Pan-Slavic unity.  Bosnia had been absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908. The Archduke's marriage was considered "morganic", i.e. a  legally valid marriage  between a male member of a noble house and a woman of lesser birth or rank, with the provision that she shall not thereby accede to his rank and that the children of the marriage  shall not succeed to their father's hereditary dignities.  So at the royal court, Sophie could never stand by her husband, but was always relegated to the sidelines. June 28 was not only Armed Forces Day but their anniversary. Franz took advantage of the trip far away from Vienna to have Sophie participate in the festivities.  Thus she was also at his s...

Despite going to Catholic school from Kindergarten through 12th grade I was taught evolution and the heliocentric theory.  So I was only socially, not scientifically, maladjusted.  Maybe the nuns and Xavierian Brothers were just rebels.  Or maybe it was just because we were discouraged from actually reading the Bible and passages like this: Psalm 93:1, 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 - "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Psalm 104:5 - "the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Ecclesiastes 1:5 - "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place." On  June 22, 1633 t he astronomer Galileo Galilei was sentenced to three years in prison by the Roman Inquisition for teaching that the Earth revolves around the Sun.  Years earlier the church had ruled that any theory contradicting the Bible must not only be false, but heretical. Under threat of torture, Galileo recanted. After prison, he was sentenced to house arrest ...

 Was George Washington sterile? Today marks the 1731 birth of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, our first "First Lady", although the term was not in use at the time.  She married for the first time at age 19 to Daniel Parke Custis who was almost 20 years her senior.  During their seven year marriage which ended with his death, Martha gave birth to four children, two survived to adulthood. Custis' death left Martha a very wealthy widow.  On her own she managed five plantations that were left to her, with 300 slaves and the equivalent of $4,000,000 in today's money.  And she apparently negotiated with her British factors in an able manner. Unlike the matronly, frumpish image we have of Lady Washington today, contemporary accounts demonstrate the 28 year old whom Washington (and others) courted to be attractive and lively.  Since early colonial days, in New England love was considered to be a necessary prerequisite for marriage.  Not so in Virginia wher...

  Conjoined twins, Violet and Daisy Hilton. 1908 - 1969 From Wiki: The British sisters were born joined by their hips and buttocks; they shared blood circulation and were fused at the pelvis but shared no major organs. In the 1960's they were offered the chance to be separated, but said "We came into the world together and will go out the same way."   The Hilton sisters toured first in Britain in 1911 (aged 3) as "The United Twins". They toured through Germany, then to Australia, then in 1916 to the US. In true sideshow manner, their performance was accompanied by an imaginative "history". Their controllers kept all the money the sisters earned. In 1926,they joined Bob Hope who formed an act called the Dancemedians with the sisters, who had a tap-dancing routine Held mostly captive, the girls were beaten by their managers (a married couple)  if they did not do as wished. They kept the twins from public view for a while and trained them in jazz music....

I attended elementary school at St. Mary's in Dumont NJ.  The teaching staff were Sisters of Charity and I have always wondered what their actual qualifications were, other than being virgins. Art class consisted of Sister _____ distributing postcards of famous works for us to paste in a scrapbook, then she would dictate a paragraph about it for us to copy and also paste in.  That was it. Among all the paintings of Jesus and Mary was one by Edouard Manet of the 1864 sinking of the CSS Alabama by the USS Kearsarge. Built in an English shipyard and sold to the Confederates in 1861, the  Alabama  was a state-of-the-art ship—220 feet long, with a speed of up to 13 knots. The cruiser was equipped with a machine shop and could carry enough coal to steam for 18 days, but its sails could greatly extend that time. Under its captain, Raphael Semmes, the  Alabama  prowled the world for three years, capturing U.S. commercial ships. It sailed around the globe, usually...

Edmund Ruffin wrapped himself in a Confederate flag and blew his brains out on June 18, 1865.  Sometimes credited with firing the first shot of the ACW at Fort Sumter, he also fired one of the last. Ruffin's early reputation was that of an agricultural scientist.  Tobacco production had depleted the soil of Virginia.   Ruffin experimented with the use of marl, an earthy deposit consisting of clay and calcium carbonate. Marl countered the depletion of lime, and thus neutralized soil acidity. Ruffin’s trials met with success, and he publicized his findings.  Increasingly Ruffin was drawn into politics.   By the 1850s, Ruffin had come to embody Southern planters’ investment in, and dependence on, chattel slavery. Ruffin’s family held more than two hundred enslaved African Americans in 1860, and he became convinced that the South would eventually have to secede in order to maintain its social and economic structure. John Brown’s raid on the Federal arsenal...

 In "Braveheart" the antagonist is Edward I.  He's the king who throws his son's gay lover from a window (actually he just exiled him) and eventually had William Wallace executed.  Today is his 1239 birthday.  While he is pictured as a villain, a movie could easily have been made with Edward as progagonist.   During his father's reign, he pacified yet another revolt by the barons (their third since Magna Carta) and, while participating in the Ninth Crusade, learned that his father had died.  He was crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1274.   During his reign the Welsh people revolted and Edward responded with sufficient force to crush the rebellion and incorporate Wales entirely into England.  If you visit Wales today, all the castles that have become tourist destinations were erected during Edward's reign.  He also moved large number of the English people to populate the area around these castles. As the "Hammer of Scotland" he ad...

Nathan "Shanks" Evans was an early hero of the Confederacy during the American Civil War.  Born in South Carolina, he was a graduate of West Point in the class of 1848, which included John Buford and "Grumble" Jones.  Evans nickname was given at West Point because of his spindly legs. At the First Battle of Manassas, his vastly outnumbered brigade held McDowell's flanking attack until General Johnston was able to move troops to his support.  Near Leesburg, Virginia, on October 21, 1861, Evans bested a Union force at Ball's Bluff, inflicting a humiliating defeat on McClellan. On June 16 of the following year, again outnumbered, Evans defeated a Union effort to take Charleston, South Carolina.   According to the American Battlefield Trust: During the final two years of the War, Evans’s often contentious personality, added to a reputation for injudicious consumption of alcohol, created strained relationships with some of his superiors, peers, and subordinates, ...

 By June 15 of 1943 certain Nazi leaders already began to see the possibility of defeat.  Worried that their "final solution" would be discovered, they gave SS Commander Paul Blobel the task of eliminating evidence of the atrocities committed. Blobel had already been active in the extermination of Jews, Soviet POWs and "inferior races". In August of 1941 he was ordered to kill the entire Jewish population of the Ukraine.  This is testimony from the post-war trial: " The Wehrmacht had already dug a grave. The children were brought along in a tractor. The Ukrainians were standing around trembling. The children were taken down from the tractor. They were lined up along the top of the grave and shot so that they fell into it. The Ukrainians did not aim at any particular part of the body. ... The wailing was indescribable." Later Blobel organized the Babi Yar Massacre  killing 33,771 Jews. From other testimony: "  ... we were driving past a long ravine. I ...

  On June 15, 2006, on the island of Spitsbergen halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland lay the ceremonial first stone of the Global Seed Vault. Sometimes called the "doomsday vault," the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is seen as humanity's last hope against extinction after a world crisis. Though its mission is to keep the world's seeds safe, its creation wasn't meant as a way to reseed the world after a world-scale catastrophe. Assuming that there is a world-wide catastrophe and you and I are the last people left on Earth...how do we get to a remote island in the Arctic Circle to access the seeds and rebuild the world?

 Today in 1215, King John of England, under duress, had his seal attached to the Magna Carta. John was the brother of Richard the Lion-Hearted who died childless.  Which left the throne to his brother, Prince John.  Yes, this is the same evil Prince John of the Robin Hood tales.  As monarch his nature did not change. King John’s reign was characterized by failure. He lost Normandy to the French and lost a campaign to win it back. To pay for his military misadventures, the nobles were heavily taxed and John sold titles and church offices.  He took over the traditional role of "matchmaker" from the fathers of available noble maidens.  These and other foibles caused the barons to unite and demand his approval of the "Magna Carta" (literally "big piece of paper").  This provided the nobles with a say in their taxation, demanded nobles could only be tried by a jury of their peers (i.e. other nobles)  ...  and a bunch of other stuff which mean...

 ‘You damned Yankee sons of bitches have killed our old Gen. Polk.’ Leonidas Polk and Jefferson Davis were friends at West Point.  Shortly after graduation in 1827, Polk resigned his commission to enter the priesthood.  By 1860 he was the Episcopal Bishop of New Orleans. At the beginning of the ACW, Davis appointed Polk a general...Davis needed as many friends as he could get in his countries military.  However, Polk did not live up to expectations.  It was his entry into Missouri which caused that neutral state to side with the Union.  His tardiness and lack of drive resulted in the failure of a number of Confederate efforts in the western theater. However, like Braxton Bragg, his friendship with Davis kept him in a position of importance long after he had demonstrated his incompetence. On June 14, 1864, Polk became perhaps the only general to be killed directly by the orders of an opposing general. During the Atlanta Campaign, Generals Joseph Johnston, Wi...

Happy Birthday, Margaret Bourke-White (1904), American photographer whose work included the first cover of Life magazine. Obviously a woman in that profession was regarded as an anomaly of the time.  But her work documenting Soviet industrial production, the Great Depression, World War II , the Korean War and more firmly established her  legacy. In the spring of 1945, she traveled throughout a collapsing Germany with General George Patton . She arrived at Buchenwald  and later said, "Using a camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." After the war, she produced a book entitled  Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly , a project that helped her come to grips with the brutality she had witnessed during and after the war. In the 1950's NASA agreed to reserve a spot for Bourke-White on a future space flight.   However, in 1953, Bourke-White developed her first symptoms of Parkinson's Disease.   She was...

Today in 1982, t he surrender of the large Argentine garrison at Port Stanley to the British military concluded the Falkland Island War . As I recall the original invasion of the Falklands was an attempt by the Argentine government to bolster support among their population.  Their loss caused the collapse of military rule after a ten year period and democratic elections in 1983. You can easily find details online. I have always wondered about American support for Britain. U.S. Secretary of State Haig announced that the United States would prohibit arms sales to Argentina and provide material support for British operations. Both houses of Congress passed resolutions supporting the U.S. action siding with the United Kingdom. The U.S. provided the United Kingdom with 200 Sidewinder missiles for use by the Harrier jets, eight Stinger surface to air missile systems Harpoon anti-ship missiles and mortar bombs.  The United States also supplied over two m...

  Many years ago I was taking a Sociology class in college. The professor played a tape he had recorded of an interview with an elderly woman raised in Victorian times. She related that she had never learned anything about sex prior to her marriage. On her wedding night she was traumatized by her new husband's desires and never allowed him in her bed again. Although, the traditional Victorian marital advice to brides was: "Close your eyes and think of England."

1890 Michigan Buggy Co. Concord, MI Cutter is  the name for a light sleigh with a single seat board. It appears to have been first used about 1800.

  From “Obituaries of Benton County, Arkansas” by Barbara P. Easley "Gertie Gramling, July 10, 1902 Miss Gertie Gramling of Avoca committed suicide last Thursday night by drinking Carbolic Acid and death occurred within half an hour. Miss Gramling was only sixteen-years-old and the suicide is supposed to have been the result a quarrel an hour or two previous with her sweetheart. She was in Rogers Thursday but went home on the evening train. Her father clerks in Hunter Peel’s store at Avoca.: She was actually 15-years old.

  On June 14, 1801, Benedict Arnold died in London at age 60. Arnold was an early hero of the American Revolution.  He participated in the siege of Boston and with Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga.  After leading part of the invasion force of Canada in 1776, he created a naval force on Lake Champlain that turned back British forces in 1776. The next year he was principally responsible for ending Barry St. Leger's threat against Albany.  Returning to the Northern Army he again turned the tide at Saratoga.  However a jealous Horatio Gates claimed all the credit for himself, neglecting mention of Arnold who was severely wounded during the battle.  (Gates himself never went anywhere near the front) Thus his leadership against staggering odds secured for America the independence he would later try to betray. For detailed information see the Smithsonian Institute article below. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/benedict-arnold-turned-traitor-american-re...

OTD in 1807, President Thomas Jefferson received a subpoena to produce documents that might lead to Aaron Burr being exonerated in his Richmond Virginia treason trial. Periodically people online will ask what historical figures would you like to meet.  For me it is always the rogues of history who would provide the best conversation.  Give me an Arnold or Burr any day rather than a Washington or Jefferson. Burr was quite the controversial figure by this time.  Perhaps the first machine politician in our history, he had turned New York away from the Federalist Party and for this was rewarded with the Democratic-Republican nomination for vice-president in 1800.   Famously this election was an electoral tie which had to be decided by the House of Representatives where Federalists still held power during a lame duck session.  The Federalists attempted to have the election bypass Jefferson; how much Burr contributed to this effort is still a matter of debate....

Happy Birthday (1786) to Winfield Scott, General of the Armies of the United States, born at his father's farm near Petersburg, Virginia. It's really a shame that the only photographs we have of General Scott were taken after his glory days on the battlefield - all we see today is an obese old man who needed a block and tackle to simply mount a horse. But he was the premier American soldier during the first half of the 19th Century.  At Lundy's Lane during the War of 1812 he was twice wounded while halting a British attack.  He was the acknowledged genius of the Mexican War launching a campaign that began with an amphibious assault and culminating with the capture of Mexico City. In the 1859 "Pig War", Scott traveled to the San Juan Islands in Washington Territory to avert war with England.  A young officer in command there, George Pickett, apparently believed a common enemy would unite our country which was on the brink of dissolution. By the time of our civil wa...

One of the world's greatest military generals, Alexander, King of Macedonia, created a vast empire that stretched from Macedonia to Egypt and from Greece to part of India. This allowed for Hellenistic culture to become widespread. In fifteen years of fighting, Alexander the Great never lost a battle, conquering  Greece, Illyria, Thrace, Danube Delta, Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Persia, Sogdia, Bactria, Afghanistan, Taxila, India, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Turkey.  Quite an impressive record for someone who died at age 33! He died OTD in 323 BC.  I found this online: Alexander, after conquering many kingdoms, was returning home. On the way, he fell ill and it took him to his death bed. With death staring him in his face, Alexander realized how his conquests, his great army, his sharp sword and all his wealth were of no consequence. He now longed to reach home to see his mother's face and bid her his last adieu. But, he had to accept...

It's the anniversary of the 1966 SCOTUS ruling in favor of Ernesto Miranda in Miranda v. Arizona . Miranda was arrested at his home and taken in custody to a police station where he was identified by the complaining witness. He was then interrogated by two police officers for two hours, which resulted in a signed, written confession. At trial, the oral and written confessions were presented to the jury. Miranda was found guilty of kidnapping and rape and was sentenced to 20-30 years imprisonment on each count.  His complaint that these actions violated the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination were dismissed by the Arizona Supreme Court, but on appeal SCOTUS ruled: “the prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination. By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning ini...

6/13/1971 - The NY Times began publishing the “ Pentagon Papers ”—a series of articles based on a study of the U.S. role in Indochina from WWII  until May 1968.  Like the revelations of Edward Snowden in the 21st Century, these papers demonstrated that the government approved version of events was far from the truth.  Indeed by 1968 many military experts already had concluded the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. Although the revelations concerned events that preceded his administration, Nixon went all out in an attempt to suppress them.  Eventually the Supreme Court will side with the Times as protected by the First Amendment. I graduated college in June of 1971...when I called the draft board and asked when my notice would be sent out they told me it already had.  Before receiving it I applied for and (after a bit of a struggle) was enlisted in the Coast Guard.  On the way to boot camp the following month I began reading the Pentagon Papers. F...

I'm currently reading Pete Dexter's "Deadwood" which I at first thought would be about wild Bill Hickok.  And it mostly is, except that he gets killed halfway through.   About 30+ years ago the boys and I stopped in Deadwood on our way to Glacier National Park - which we never got to because we ran out of money.  But we got to pan for gold and do other tourist stuff there. According to the caption, these are stagecoaches near Deadwood in 1889.  In an attempt to mitigate the bumps along the road, the coaches had leather straps attached to the chassis which allowed the coach to sway rather than bump along.  Unless you were a child used to swing sets (or a trapeze artist), this caused motion sickness for the passengers. Supposedly for every passenger killed by natives or outlaws, two were killed by their fellow passengers - sometimes for vomiting on each other.

During the 1930s, farmers and ranchers across the Great Plains suffered from an extended dry spell similar to the present-day severe drought affecting states from North Dakota to California. When heavy rains finally did arrive, the result was often dangerous flash flooding. Beginning in the mid-1930’s, the Farm Security Administration—a New Deal federal agency—organized the construction of countless stock-watering dams across dry stream beds. The program employed thousands of idle farmers and ranchers. Hundreds of small dams detained surface water runoff from rain and snow melt that would otherwise be lost downstream, often contributing to flash floods. The resulting ponds became primary water sources for livestock. Dozens of these dams can be seen today on Google Maps. Search for Dawes County, Nebraska and use “satellite view” to explore the area near the South Dakota border. Zoom-in to inspect one of the numerous tadpole-shaped impoundment ponds…and eureka! The earthen dam is reveale...

  A young Victoria (1837):