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.
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...
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