At a speaking engagement this weekend somebody asked me whether I believe Abraham Lincoln was born in North Carolina. I don’t.
The story is that Lincoln’s biological father was a North Carolinian named Abraham Enloe (or Enlow, depending on who’s doing the telling). After Enloe fathered a child with Nancy Hanks, he passed her and the kid off to [...]
Archive for June, 2009
Yep, he was born in Kentucky
Posted in Abraham Lincoln, tagged Abraham Enloe, Abraham Enlow, Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln birthplace, Abraham Lincoln's paternity, Nancy Hanks, Thomas Lincoln on June 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Digging up Meriwether Lewis
Posted in History on the Web, Tennessee History, tagged Lewis and Clark, Meriwther Lewis on June 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I ran across an interesting story via The Posterity Project. Relatives of Meriwether Lewis are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to exhume his remains, so they can settle the mystery of whether foul play was involved in his supposed suicide. Here’s the website they’ve set up. So far, the Park Service has blocked it, [...]
Two Virginia stories from small museums
Posted in Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Historic Buckingham, Peter Francisco, Rockbridge Historical Society, Virginia history on June 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Just after the American Revolution, Shawnee Indians raiding along the Virginia frontier kidnapped a young girl named Mary Moore. Mary spent five years in captivity before ending up back home, where she grew up, married, and had children. As an adult she had persistent trouble sleeping, perhaps because of what she had endured as a [...]
Hanging out at the Hermitage
Posted in Museums and Historic Sites, Tennessee History, tagged Andrew Jackson, The Hermitage on June 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve always had a soft spot for Andrew Jackson. Sure, he was about as politically incorrect as you can get: a slaveowner, a great foe of the Indians, and a guy with a notoriously bad temper. But he also had an unwavering faith in and devotion to the common man and to democracy. It’s fitting that [...]
Scoping out the Wilderness Wal-Mart location
Posted in Civil War, Historic Preservation, Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Historic Preservation, Wilderness Battlefield, Wilderness Wal-Mart on June 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If you’ve been wondering exactly where the contested Wilderness Wal-Mart location sits in relation to the battlefield, maybe Wikimapia can help. This satellite view shows the general area of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania battlefields. The spot Wal-Mart wants is on the upper left corner of the big rectangle in the center that’s marked “Chancellorsville/Wilderness Battlefield Park.”
As you can [...]
General Grey makes a cameo
Posted in American Revolution, tagged Anthony Wayne, Banastre Tarleton, Duchess of Devonshire, General Charles Grey, Paoli Massacre, The Duchess on June 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Historical connections pop up in weird places. The other night I indulged in a repeat viewing of The Duchess, an eighteenth-century romantic biopic about Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
I made a point of seeing The Duchess when it hit theaters last year, for three reasons. First, it’s based on Amanda Foreman’s bestselling biography of Georgiana. This is one [...]
Part shrine, part museum
Posted in Museums and Historic Sites, tagged George Washington, Lee Chapel & Museum, Robert E. Lee, Washington and Lee University on June 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Regular readers of this blog (God bless ‘em) know that for the past few months I’ve been in the habit of posting brief reviews of the museums and historic sites I visit. I debated long and hard whether to take a crack at Lee Chapel & Museum, located on the campus of Washington and Lee University [...]
Stonewall slept here
Posted in Civil War, Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Stonewall Jackson, Stonewall Jackson House on June 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Historic house museums are tricky places to manage. You’re not just dealing with the conservation and interpretation of a collection of artifacts within a controlled environment—the whole building is an artifact that has to be maintained and interpreted. This presents some considerable challenges. The Stonewall Jackson House in Lexington, VA is a first-rate example of how to overcome them successfully.
The first thing I [...]
Tombstones and TomToms
Posted in Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Stonewall Jackson, TomTom on June 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In the wee hours of this morning I got back from a two-day trip to Virginia, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Loyal readers of this blog will know what that means—there’ll be a few of my always-handy historic site reviews coming over the next few days. Right now, though, I’d like to add a brief follow-up [...]
Did the Civil War cause itself?
Posted in Civil War, tagged Civil War, secession on June 3, 2009 | 12 Comments »
A recent guest post by Douglas Harper at Old Virginia Blog challenges the notions “that the Southern Confederacy was a nation based on, and fighting for, slavery,” and that “the Civil War was ‘about’ slavery.” The Upper South, as he notes, ”was willing to stay, till it saw the course of the Lincoln Administration with regard to force, [...]
