Schools these days are less and less likely to be named for historical figures, but on May 23 the school board of Ogden, Utah approved naming a new elementary school: James A. Madison Elementary School. Trouble is, James Madison didn't have an "A" for his middle initial. He didn't even have a middle name to be initialized. A history teacher pointed out the error before the school's sign was completed.
The full story is here.
Peace
..._
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
20 August 2007
26 July 2007
Kennesaw Mountain, GA
I took a long hike at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park on Wednesday (from the visitor center over Big and Little Kennesaw Mountain down to Burnt Hickory Grove and back to the visitor center around the base of the mountain). If you live in/near Atlanta and haven't been there, you must take a half of a day to explore it. I snuck away by telling my wife that I am teaching a Civil War class and need to scout locations (visions of field trips are dancing in my head). I have written about a previous visit to KM here.
While there I couldn't help but buy a couple of things in the bookstore. Many of the items can be found at virtually any local historical site. I got two reproductions of Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization ($2.00 each). One is dated April 27, 1861 and the other July 23, 1864. I didn't get them for their articles or illustrations but for the ads on the last two pages. I will be working them into lessons on advertising, primary sources, and the Civil War. In some ways, the ads reveal that little has changed: get rich quick schemes, balding prevention, magical medicines, new technologies, testimonials, etc. The change in ad content from 1861 (the very beginning of the Civil War) to July of 1864 (when war weariness was beginning to weigh on the coming presidential election) is also very suggestive.
What follows is a selection of the 1861 Harper's Weekly ads. Others I left out include pianos, muslin shirts, paper ties, horse medicine, a patent baby-tender, a ladies' fashion book, and other similar items (my comments in italics):
Premature Loss of the Hair,
Which is so common now-a-days, may be entirely prevented by the use of Burnett's Cocoaine. It has been used in thousands of cases where the hair was coming out in handfuls, and has never failed to arrest its decay, and to promote a healthy and vigorous growth. It is, at the same time, unrivaled as a dressing for the hair. A single application will render it soft and glossy for several days.
For several days? Does this mean they didn't wash their hair for...several days? Even if users continue to lose hair, I am sure they feel much better about themselves after using Burnett's Cocoaine.
"Matrimony made Easy."--A new work, showing how either sex may be suitably married, irrespective of age or appearance, which can not fail--free for 25 cents. Address T. Williams & Co., Publishers, Box 2300, Philad.
I love it: free for 25 cents! The rest of this ad speaks for itself.
$5,000 REWARD--TO ANY SOBER energetic man who fails to make $2,000 a year. Business easy, honest and at home. For full particulars, inclose a stamp for return, and address
A.D.F., Box 78, P.O., Wellsburg, Va.
I wonder if it involves stuffing envelopes?
6000 AGENTS wanted, to sell SIX NEW INVENTIONS--two very recent, and of great value to families; all pay great profit to Agents. Send four stamps and get 80 pages particulars. EPHRAIM BROWN, Lowell, Mass.
What do you think: Amway or Tupperware?
SANDS' SARSPARILLA--The best Spring Alternative. It will purify the blood, promote a vigorous circulation and thoroughly renovate the system. For sale by A.B. & D. SANDS, 100 Fulton St., N.Y.
Wheeler & Wilson's Sewing Machings At reduced prices, with Glass Cloth Presser, Improved Loop-Check, New Style Hammer, Binder, Corder, etc. Office No. 595 Broadway, New York.
"This Machine makes the 'LOCK STITCH,' and ranks highest, on account of the elasticity, permanence, beauty, and general desirableness of the stitching when done, and the wide range of its application." [Report of the American Institute, New York.
5,000 Men Wanted To Sell LLOYD'S NEW POLITCAL CHART FOR THE TIMES, containing large, new, colored Portraits of PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET, GEN. SCOTT, GEN. WOOL, MAJ. ANDERSON, AND LIEUT. SLEMMER, with a sketch of the life of each. A MAP OF OUR COUNTRY, showing, in different colors, the FREE STATES, BORDER SLAVE STATES, SECEDED STATES, and TERRITORIES.
Also, accurate Election and Census Returns for 1860, with much other valuable information.
Finely colored on excellent paper, 28X36 inches in size.
Mailed, pre-paid, for 25 cents. (Stamps received.)
A RARE CHANCE FOR AGENTS.
Published by H.H. LLOYD & CO'S,
Agents' General Depot for BOOKS, MAPS, AND STATIONARY PACKAGES, No. 25 Howard Street, New York.
Capitalism always finds a way to make good on national crises.
General Scott's Infantry Tactics; or, Rules for the Exercise and Maneuvres of the United States Infantry. 3 vols. 24mo, Muslin, #2 50. Published by Authority.
United States Army Regulations. Approved by the President of the United States, and Printed under the directions of the Secretary of War. 12 mo, Muslin, $1 50.
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York.
I shall post the ads from 1864 tomorrow. Until then, some pictures:
One of the few monuments at Kennesaw (compared, say, to Chickamauga). The inscription reads:
We sleep here in obedience to law:
When duty called, we came,
When country called, we died.
How may students will see in this inscription an echo of the Spartan memorial at Thermopylae: Go, stranger, and tell the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their laws.
View from the top looking north to the North Georgia Mountains.
View from the top looking south to the Atlanta hazeline. Usually one can see Stone Mountain but the haze was too bad.
Gun emplacements at Fort McBride on top of Little Kennesaw Mountain.
Peace
..._
While there I couldn't help but buy a couple of things in the bookstore. Many of the items can be found at virtually any local historical site. I got two reproductions of Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization ($2.00 each). One is dated April 27, 1861 and the other July 23, 1864. I didn't get them for their articles or illustrations but for the ads on the last two pages. I will be working them into lessons on advertising, primary sources, and the Civil War. In some ways, the ads reveal that little has changed: get rich quick schemes, balding prevention, magical medicines, new technologies, testimonials, etc. The change in ad content from 1861 (the very beginning of the Civil War) to July of 1864 (when war weariness was beginning to weigh on the coming presidential election) is also very suggestive.
What follows is a selection of the 1861 Harper's Weekly ads. Others I left out include pianos, muslin shirts, paper ties, horse medicine, a patent baby-tender, a ladies' fashion book, and other similar items (my comments in italics):
Premature Loss of the Hair,
Which is so common now-a-days, may be entirely prevented by the use of Burnett's Cocoaine. It has been used in thousands of cases where the hair was coming out in handfuls, and has never failed to arrest its decay, and to promote a healthy and vigorous growth. It is, at the same time, unrivaled as a dressing for the hair. A single application will render it soft and glossy for several days.
For several days? Does this mean they didn't wash their hair for...several days? Even if users continue to lose hair, I am sure they feel much better about themselves after using Burnett's Cocoaine.
"Matrimony made Easy."--A new work, showing how either sex may be suitably married, irrespective of age or appearance, which can not fail--free for 25 cents. Address T. Williams & Co., Publishers, Box 2300, Philad.
I love it: free for 25 cents! The rest of this ad speaks for itself.
$5,000 REWARD--TO ANY SOBER energetic man who fails to make $2,000 a year. Business easy, honest and at home. For full particulars, inclose a stamp for return, and address
A.D.F., Box 78, P.O., Wellsburg, Va.
I wonder if it involves stuffing envelopes?
6000 AGENTS wanted, to sell SIX NEW INVENTIONS--two very recent, and of great value to families; all pay great profit to Agents. Send four stamps and get 80 pages particulars. EPHRAIM BROWN, Lowell, Mass.
What do you think: Amway or Tupperware?
SANDS' SARSPARILLA--The best Spring Alternative. It will purify the blood, promote a vigorous circulation and thoroughly renovate the system. For sale by A.B. & D. SANDS, 100 Fulton St., N.Y.
Wheeler & Wilson's Sewing Machings At reduced prices, with Glass Cloth Presser, Improved Loop-Check, New Style Hammer, Binder, Corder, etc. Office No. 595 Broadway, New York.
"This Machine makes the 'LOCK STITCH,' and ranks highest, on account of the elasticity, permanence, beauty, and general desirableness of the stitching when done, and the wide range of its application." [Report of the American Institute, New York.
5,000 Men Wanted To Sell LLOYD'S NEW POLITCAL CHART FOR THE TIMES, containing large, new, colored Portraits of PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET, GEN. SCOTT, GEN. WOOL, MAJ. ANDERSON, AND LIEUT. SLEMMER, with a sketch of the life of each. A MAP OF OUR COUNTRY, showing, in different colors, the FREE STATES, BORDER SLAVE STATES, SECEDED STATES, and TERRITORIES.
Also, accurate Election and Census Returns for 1860, with much other valuable information.
Finely colored on excellent paper, 28X36 inches in size.
Mailed, pre-paid, for 25 cents. (Stamps received.)
A RARE CHANCE FOR AGENTS.
Published by H.H. LLOYD & CO'S,
Agents' General Depot for BOOKS, MAPS, AND STATIONARY PACKAGES, No. 25 Howard Street, New York.
Capitalism always finds a way to make good on national crises.
General Scott's Infantry Tactics; or, Rules for the Exercise and Maneuvres of the United States Infantry. 3 vols. 24mo, Muslin, #2 50. Published by Authority.
United States Army Regulations. Approved by the President of the United States, and Printed under the directions of the Secretary of War. 12 mo, Muslin, $1 50.
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York.
I shall post the ads from 1864 tomorrow. Until then, some pictures:
One of the few monuments at Kennesaw (compared, say, to Chickamauga). The inscription reads:
We sleep here in obedience to law:
When duty called, we came,
When country called, we died.
How may students will see in this inscription an echo of the Spartan memorial at Thermopylae: Go, stranger, and tell the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their laws.
View from the top looking north to the North Georgia Mountains.
View from the top looking south to the Atlanta hazeline. Usually one can see Stone Mountain but the haze was too bad.
Gun emplacements at Fort McBride on top of Little Kennesaw Mountain.
Peace
..._
01 January 2007
Monday Miscellany: The Living and the Dead
The first morn of the new year saw the sun rise bright and shiny after several days of overcast and rain. After being restricted to indoor activities for several days, I needed a long walk to clear my head. So I struck out with a determination to walk down at least one road that I had never walked down before.
The world was still wet, and the debris of the previous night’s bacchanalities was scattered about the neighborhood: the shattered paper casings of fireworks, broken liquor bottles, beer cans, and an unfired 9mm hollow point bullet. The sight of the bullet brought my walk to a sudden pause. The bullet lay in the street feet from where my son normally stands to wait for the bus. The neighborhood has shown some troubling signs of late. The police have been at the neighbor’s house at least three times in the last four months. They were there at least once with guns drawn. During a walk last summer, I found a knife in the grass only twenty yards from where I found the bullet.
Unsure what the exact protocol was for finding an undischarged bullet, I pocketed the bullet and continued my walk. I moved my camera and keys to the other pocket when the irrational story line flashed through my imagination, “Teacher maimed by bullet accidentally set off by camera in pocket.”
I am not sure what drew me into the cemeteries on this day. On a day of celebration for the possibilities of a new year, I ended up meditating on those lost to the past. I visited two cemeteries over the course of my perambulation.
One is ancient (by local standards) and has been ostensibly adopted by the county police department as a part of the county “adopt a cemetery” program. It sits long out of use, neglected and overgrown, sandwiched between a suburban neighborhood and a church. The cemetery is quite small and cars roar past on the four-lane road bearing drivers oblivious that the little copse of trees houses the eternal resting place of the remains of a few dozen souls.
The other cemetery is nearly as old but is still in use. That is, fresh bodies are still being added. The further one walks into it, the older the remains one comes across until one finally comes to an area of unfinished and uninscribed stones. Simple rocks rise from the grass where they were placed with care over a hundred years ago. Some have fallen over, never to rise again. A few family plots are still well maintained. A handful of headstones have been filled out with all but the date of death and the body to be added. Plastic flowers look to have been recently added to several graves and not so recently to several others.
I have an odd fascination with cemeteries. My interest is part historical curiosity and part fear of mortality. The inscriptions, the dates, the names, and the groupings tell a story that moves me to melancholy. An incomplete story, but a story made all the more tragic by the fact that all of the principal characters are dead and no one remembers their tales. One is struck by ironic headstones claiming, "Gone, but not forgotten" while crumbling with neglect and standing over sunken graves. I am stirred by the challenge to interpret the little information I am given into the semblance of a narrative that will honor those buried beneath me.
I came across the grave of a Korean War veteran and his wife. They (or someone) chose to add the date of their marriage to their headstone); that date was 1953. One can guess that he came home from the war and got quickly married.
Every male in the very large Rogers family served in the Coast Guard during World War II (I think I counted six of them).
One comes across heartbreaking tragedy. Beside one couple’s headstone were five miniature headstones; each was for a child that died in infancy and was a reminder of the precarious nature of life a hundred years ago.
I was startled to come across a couple that shares my family name. Edward H. lived from 1903-1953 and Ethel M from 1903-1986. I have a fairly unique surname. I wonder if they are related to me somehow. I shall probably never know.
On my way out I came across three headstones that still have me wondering. The one for Sarah Frances Green first got my attention.
The simple inscription, “Our loved one”, drew me in for a second look. She was only twelve when she died. Her parents are buried right next to her. Her father was a Mason. There are no other family graves. The inscription "Our loved one" seems to imply she was an only child. What tragedy took her? Illness or an accident? Perhaps a mishap with one of the new motorcars? How many times did her mother travel to her daughter's grave over the fifty-three years ensuing years before she herself was laid to rest between her loved one and her husband, or was the pain too strong to bear?
Standing over their graves, the feeling that overwhelms me is not sadness in Sarah Frances' death, but the very loss of her memory. Mostly likely, no one alive today knows why she died. What is on that tombstone is probably the only record of her that survives that anyone is likely to see or read. No one lives who remembers her laugh, or her voice, or the color of her hair. No one can tell me what it was about her that made her “Our loved one.”
It is prospect of discovering stories that draw me into cemeteries. It was stories that drew me into the history profession. One day, I hope to bring a group of students to a cemetery on the first day of class to get them thinking about the creation of stories from evidence and the tragedy of forgotten history. The way I see it, a cemetery is a great big primary source. Until then, I shall wonder where this bullet in my pocket came from.
Peace
The world was still wet, and the debris of the previous night’s bacchanalities was scattered about the neighborhood: the shattered paper casings of fireworks, broken liquor bottles, beer cans, and an unfired 9mm hollow point bullet. The sight of the bullet brought my walk to a sudden pause. The bullet lay in the street feet from where my son normally stands to wait for the bus. The neighborhood has shown some troubling signs of late. The police have been at the neighbor’s house at least three times in the last four months. They were there at least once with guns drawn. During a walk last summer, I found a knife in the grass only twenty yards from where I found the bullet.
Unsure what the exact protocol was for finding an undischarged bullet, I pocketed the bullet and continued my walk. I moved my camera and keys to the other pocket when the irrational story line flashed through my imagination, “Teacher maimed by bullet accidentally set off by camera in pocket.”
I am not sure what drew me into the cemeteries on this day. On a day of celebration for the possibilities of a new year, I ended up meditating on those lost to the past. I visited two cemeteries over the course of my perambulation.
One is ancient (by local standards) and has been ostensibly adopted by the county police department as a part of the county “adopt a cemetery” program. It sits long out of use, neglected and overgrown, sandwiched between a suburban neighborhood and a church. The cemetery is quite small and cars roar past on the four-lane road bearing drivers oblivious that the little copse of trees houses the eternal resting place of the remains of a few dozen souls.
The other cemetery is nearly as old but is still in use. That is, fresh bodies are still being added. The further one walks into it, the older the remains one comes across until one finally comes to an area of unfinished and uninscribed stones. Simple rocks rise from the grass where they were placed with care over a hundred years ago. Some have fallen over, never to rise again. A few family plots are still well maintained. A handful of headstones have been filled out with all but the date of death and the body to be added. Plastic flowers look to have been recently added to several graves and not so recently to several others.
I have an odd fascination with cemeteries. My interest is part historical curiosity and part fear of mortality. The inscriptions, the dates, the names, and the groupings tell a story that moves me to melancholy. An incomplete story, but a story made all the more tragic by the fact that all of the principal characters are dead and no one remembers their tales. One is struck by ironic headstones claiming, "Gone, but not forgotten" while crumbling with neglect and standing over sunken graves. I am stirred by the challenge to interpret the little information I am given into the semblance of a narrative that will honor those buried beneath me.
I came across the grave of a Korean War veteran and his wife. They (or someone) chose to add the date of their marriage to their headstone); that date was 1953. One can guess that he came home from the war and got quickly married.
Every male in the very large Rogers family served in the Coast Guard during World War II (I think I counted six of them).
One comes across heartbreaking tragedy. Beside one couple’s headstone were five miniature headstones; each was for a child that died in infancy and was a reminder of the precarious nature of life a hundred years ago.
I was startled to come across a couple that shares my family name. Edward H. lived from 1903-1953 and Ethel M from 1903-1986. I have a fairly unique surname. I wonder if they are related to me somehow. I shall probably never know.
On my way out I came across three headstones that still have me wondering. The one for Sarah Frances Green first got my attention.
The simple inscription, “Our loved one”, drew me in for a second look. She was only twelve when she died. Her parents are buried right next to her. Her father was a Mason. There are no other family graves. The inscription "Our loved one" seems to imply she was an only child. What tragedy took her? Illness or an accident? Perhaps a mishap with one of the new motorcars? How many times did her mother travel to her daughter's grave over the fifty-three years ensuing years before she herself was laid to rest between her loved one and her husband, or was the pain too strong to bear?
Standing over their graves, the feeling that overwhelms me is not sadness in Sarah Frances' death, but the very loss of her memory. Mostly likely, no one alive today knows why she died. What is on that tombstone is probably the only record of her that survives that anyone is likely to see or read. No one lives who remembers her laugh, or her voice, or the color of her hair. No one can tell me what it was about her that made her “Our loved one.”
It is prospect of discovering stories that draw me into cemeteries. It was stories that drew me into the history profession. One day, I hope to bring a group of students to a cemetery on the first day of class to get them thinking about the creation of stories from evidence and the tragedy of forgotten history. The way I see it, a cemetery is a great big primary source. Until then, I shall wonder where this bullet in my pocket came from.
Peace
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