Here’s an interesting news story, via a blog devoted to John Brown, about an event attended by descendants of Brown and his followers. One of the attendees was Brown’s great-great-great granddaughter, Alice Keesey Mecoy of Allen, Texas.
For some reason the notion that I’m sharing the planet with John Brown’s great-great-great granddaughter struck me as pretty darn [...]
Archive for August, 2009
History in your veins
Posted in History on the Web, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Booker T. Washington, Davy Crockett, descendants of famous people, Frederick Douglass, genealogy, George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, John Brown, John Sevier, Mayflower, Pocahontas, Rutherford B. Hayes, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, William Howard Taft on August 31, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Lee’s virtual office
Posted in Civil War, History on the Web, Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Washington and Lee University, Robert E. Lee, Lee Chapel and Museum on August 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Lee Chapel & Museum has added a neat feature to their website. It’s a virtual tour of Lee’s office that allows you to examine each of its objects in detail, with explanations of how they fit into the larger story of his time at W&L.
Digging up one battlefield, tearing up another
Posted in Civil War, Historic Preservation, Tennessee History, tagged Civil War, Civil War Knoxville, Fort Sanders, historic archaeology, Historic Preservation, Wal-Mart, Wilderness Wal-Mart on August 25, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Here’s a story that ran on the NBC affiliate out of Knoxville last night. Archaeologists are excavating the site of Confederate works from the siege of Knoxville and assault on Ft. Sanders.
Here’s another one about the Orange County Board of Supervisors striking a blow for low-wage, dead-end retail jobs; corporate competition for locally-owned businesses; and even more [...]
The State of Franklin, lost and found
Posted in Historiography, Tennessee History, tagged Lost State of Franklin, Tennessee History on August 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Not too long ago I posted about a recently-published book I’d run across, Kevin T. Barksdale’s The Lost State of Franklin: America’s First Secession (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009). I’m always excited to see any new work on the Tennessee frontier, and I eagerly looked forward to reading it.
Franklin was a 1780’s separatist movement in [...]
Too much scope can be a bad thing
Posted in Teaching history, tagged college survey courses, Teaching history, world history on August 17, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to teach both specialized, upper-level college courses and introductory survey courses, and I’ve long maintained that doing the latter is much, much more challenging than doing the former. For one thing, in a survey class you’re going to be covering material that’s outside your comfort zone. For another, each student [...]
URGENT: Battlefield in trouble
Posted in American Revolution, Historic Preservation, Museums and Historic Sites, tagged American Revolution, Battle of Brandywine, Brandywine Battlefield, Revolutionary War on August 14, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Brandywine Battlefield, one of the most important Revolutionary War sites in the country, is in some serious trouble, and its supporters have set up a website where you can get information and offer your support.
Due to a loss of state funding, the park’s supporters are trying to raise enough money to keep the site running [...]
Unconventional warfare at its most ruthless
Posted in American Revolution, tagged Francis Marion, Swamp Fox on August 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Remember during the invasion of Panama, when Noriega was holed up in the Apostolci Nunciature, and the American troops set up loudspeakers and blasted rock music around the clock to try to break his will?
It might shed light on why the British finally evacuated South Carolina.
Incidentally, I had no idea until I saw the credits [...]
History via txt msg
Posted in Uncategorized on August 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
One of the nifty things about being into history is the fact that people text interesting questions to your cell phone. For example, on Saturday I got this one out of the blue, from a friend of mine named Amy: “Who was colonel joe cecil?”
I had no idea, but luckily I happened to be on [...]
Take a second to help a battlefield
Posted in Civil War, Historic Preservation, tagged Battle of Franklin, Civil War, Franklin, Historic Preservation on August 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If you’d like a quick, super-easy way to preserve a battlefield, then take a look at this post on Eric Wittenberg’s blog and follow the link there. All you have to do is type a few words into an online form, and it won’t cost you a dime—but it’ll help keep some important Civil War ground intact.
The economic cost of non-preservation
Posted in Civil War, Historic Preservation, tagged battlefield preservation, Historic Preservation, Wal-Mart, Wilderness Battlefield, Wilderness Wal-Mart on August 4, 2009 | 1 Comment »
In the ongoing controversy over the proposed Wal-Mart at the Wilderness battleground, as in so many similar disputes, it’s easy to get the impression that people who oppose development are standing in the way of the community’s economic well-being. Historic preservation, we’re told, comes at the expense of jobs and tax revenue. The implication is that historians hundreds [...]
