What is the Bruton Parish Mystery?

Bruton Parish Church

     There exists a cache of hidden documents, the contents of which are so powerful, that their release could forever change the course of world civilization.  For centuries these documents have been protected by a secret society known as the Order of the Illumined, or the Illuminati.  These documents have been deemed so critical to mankind’s future that they have been called the Seventh Seal.  Interestingly, these keys to the future of mankind are buried in the cemetery of the Bruton Parish Episcopal Church in colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.  The Seventh Seal cache is said to be housed in a brick vault constructed by Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I.  Apparently some of Bacon’s papers were also left behind in the vault, including documentation proving his authorship of the Shakespearian plays, his original Tudor birth records showing him to be the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I, an unabridged version of the King James Version of the Bible, translated by Bacon, and more, including GOLD!

     On September 9, 1991, a group of New Age mystics did an unauthorized dig for the Bruton Vault in the dark hours of the night.  Their intention was to follow up on a dig performed in 1938 which uncovered the church’s original foundations, and to bring to the public’s attention knowledge of the precious hidden national treasure buried at Bruton Parish. Church elders were not happy with the midnight digging, and by court order, the New Age seekers were forbidden from returning to Virginia.

     In an attempt to put an end to this urban legend, Bruton Parish followed up on the midnight dig by commissioning archaeologists, including Colonial Williamsburg archaeologist Marley Brown, to retrace the steps of the 1938 excavation to answer a question that arose in 1985.  In 1985, surface tests using radar-like equipment indicated that there was something under the Bruton Parish cemetery different from untouched soil.  That something could be, the hidden Vault, a tree root, or surface dirt used to fill in the 1938 excavation.

     After seven days of once again uncovering the remains of the original church walls, workers looking for Sir Francis Bacon's vault dug about 9 feet deep and reportedly found an object with brass tacks in it. Church officials said it was a casket and would not allow them to dig further.  By August 1992 the archaeologists hired by the Parish concluded that there was no hidden Vault.  End of story.

     But this is a story that will never end because of the way it began.  New Age followers claim the 1992 church sponsored dig was bogus.  The Parish knowingly dug in the wrong places.  There may also be sinister forces at work to suppress the release of the great secret, according to some conspiracy theorists.  These sinister forces may include the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale University (of which George W. Bush is a member), as well as Colonial Williamsburg's benefactor, the Rockefeller family.

     So just how did this urban legend get started in the first place?   There was, of course, a Sir Francis Bacon.  Bacon was a well-known English philosopher, statesman, and scientist.  Bacon is regarded as the father of empiricism and the modern “scientific method”. Bacon's movement for the advancement of learning was connected with the German Rosicrucian movement. The Rosicrucians were and are a secret society built on esoteric truths of the ancient past, which, concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe and the spiritual realm.  Bacon's book New Atlantis portrays a land ruled by Rosicrucians. How did Francis Bacon, the Renaissance intellectual, become the center piece of an urban legend?  Enter one Manly Palmer Hall.

     A junior high school dropout from a broken home, Manly Palmer Hall, who had a photographic memory, became a one-stop scholar of ancient ideas.  In 1920, at the age of nineteen, the charismatic and movie star handsome Hall was running a church in Los Angeles. He delivered Sunday lectures about Rosicrucianism and Theosophy, the mystical philosophical system founded by Madame Helena Blavatsky; as well as other esoteric teachings. Alternative religious movements were busting out all over Southern California in the first half of the 20th century and the devastatingly handsome Manly Palmer Hall attracted many rich female followers, which allowed him to produce his masterwork, The Secret Teachings of All Ages.  Through his writings and endless lecturing, Manly Palmer Hall became one of the people principally responsible for the birth of the New Age religious movement in the United States, first in California, starting in the 1920s, and then beyond.

      Manly Palmer Hall and his second wife Marie Bauer Hall (they were married in 1950) are the source of the Bruton Parish mystery.  While acting as a volunteer at Hall’s church in the 1930s, the then Marie Bauer, struck up a conversation with a visitor waiting to see Hall.  The visitor was a scholar who claimed to have deciphered codes hidden in Shakespeare’s plays that told of a treasure hidden by Sir Francis Bacon under a church in Virginia.  Marie Bauer, who said she was clairvoyant, felt an immediate connection between the lost treasure described by the visitor and Bruton Parish Church.  Bauer had once been given a tea towel from Williamsburg that included a picture of Bruton Parish Church.

     Marie took her finding to Manly Hall, and together they spent many happy hours deciphering hidden codes placed in various writings contemporary to Francis Bacon, including A Collection of Emblems (George Wither, 1635) and various Shakespearean plays, which demonstrated, at least to them, that a 10 ft. by 10 ft. brick vault was buried 20 ft. deep at the Bruton Parish Church, its exact location marked by certain, strategically placed encoded memorials in the Church cemetery.  In 1938, Marie Bauer initiated an excavation which revealed the foundations of the original Bruton Church, but no hidden vault.  Marie would have been happy to continue digging up the church graveyard, but further excavation was halted by Church officials.

Urban Legends of Virginia

The Cold War Museum

The Cold War Museum is dedicated to education, preservation, and research on the global, ideological, and political confrontations between East and West from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  The museum is located at the former Vint Hill Farm Station--a Cold War listening post near Warrenton, Virginia. (Directions on how to get there.)

The museum has a fascinating array of displays. One room is devoted to the former listening site that was active during the Cold War, and other rooms cover Strategic Air Command bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, and early recon satellites.

If you want a peek back into the 'secret lives' of what was happening when the world was really close to destroying itself, this is a place to see!

The following video is an interview with the curator of the museum on the frightening history of atomic bombs:

Nuclear War 1962 (AlternateHistory)

Glimpse what a nuclear war in 1962 and its aftermath would have looked like without radically departing from known historical facts. This short history of the American-Soviet nuclear war of 1962 is based on authoritative sources (footnoted), many of which have only recently been de-classified. The book frighteningly demonstrates that it would have required only minor variations in events or the temperaments of the key players to have set the history of the entire world on a radically different trajectory.

The Evolution of the House

The comforts of home have evolved over time in surprising and unexpected ways.  Watch this:

Time Travel 21 - Your portal to the Past, Present, and Future

 http://www.timetravel21.com/our_books

What Were the Wildest Presidential Elections?

If you think this election is wild...you don't know American history.
Watch this!

Time Travel 21 - Your portal to the Past, Present, and Future

 http://www.timetravel21.com/our_books

What if the North Seceded?

Northern Secessionist

Timothy Pickering

Decades before the American Civil War, New England contemplated seceding from the Union.  The so called Essex Junto, a group of businessmen and politicians based in Essex County, Massachusetts spearheaded a secessionist movement in the early 1800s, fearing the diminished influence of New England after the Louisiana Purchase. Timothy Pickering, who had served Secretary of State under George Washington, was one of the key figures of the movement. Pickering envisioned a new republic comprised of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Canada. The Essex Junto approached Alexander Hamilton, who was horrified by the plan.

The push for secession came primarily from the younger generation of Federalist leaders, who believed they needed to defend the principles of states' rights and self-government from an overbearing federal government. The northern secessionists believed that the South was gaining too much wealth, power, and influence, and was using that influence against New England politically.

The northern secessionists believed strongly that homogeneity of race, and “ethnic purity,” were essential ingredients of a successful republic. The New Englanders thought of themselves as “choice offspring of the choicest people, unpolluted by foreign blood.”

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

In 1860, disgruntled secessionists in the deep North rebel against the central government and plunge America into Civil War. Will the Kingdom survive? The land will run red with blood before peace comes again.

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Who Was the Worst General in History?

Success leaves clues.  So does failure.  Some of history’s best known commanders are remembered not for their brilliant victories but for their catastrophic blunders.  Here are history’s ten worst generals (in no particular order). 

1.     John Armstrong Jr.’s incompetence was responsible for the burning of Washington during the War of 1812.

2.     Oreste Baratieri was an Italian general responsible for the most crushing defeat ever suffered by a colonial European power by native forces in Africa.

3.     Edward Braddock’s army made so much noise the enemy always knew where he was, but Braddock didn’t have a clue where the enemy was until he was ambushed.

4.     Roman General Marcus Crassus stood his ground and hoped the enemy would run out of arrows before he ran out of men.  They didn’t.

5.     George Armstrong Custer announced to his men, “We’ve caught them napping!”, just before suffering the most stunning defeat of the Indian Wars.

6.     British Major General William Elphinstone is considered by some military historians to be “the most incompetent soldier who ever became a general”, possessed of “the leadership qualities of a sheep.”

7.     Brigadier General William Hull is the only American general to have ever been sentenced to death by a court-martial.

8.     Francisco Solano Lopez was responsible for the deaths of half of his fellow countrymen.

9.     Sir Charles MacCarthy forgot to take the ammunition and wound up having his skull used as a drinking cup at the annual Yam Festival.

10.  Alexander Samsonov didn’t feed the troops and ended up shooting himself on the battlefield.

History's Ten Worst Generals

Victorian Cemeteries

Those who conceived the idea of the modern cemetery anticipated the movement for public parks.  Cemeteries provided the public with beautiful outdoor gathering spaces during a time when parks were scarce. Out of the movement to beautify cemeteries arose a custom of gathering in these new public spaces. Families picnicked near gravesites, and children played there. Somewhere along the way, this practice fell by the wayside.  The appreciation of cemeteries has made a comeback in the digital age.  Many genealogists have been using the Internet and GPS systems to locate the graves of long lost ancestors.  This renewed interest in cemeteries has spread to an interest in photographing tombstones, the growth of in-depth historical research, and even cemetery tourism.

Historic cemeteries are a treasure trove of art, biography and philosophy, one’s last chance to shout out to posterity “This is who I was, this is what was important to me”.  Art, symbols and inscriptions are called upon to succinctly capture the essence of life in a beautiful and meaningful way.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

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U.S. History of Arresting Dangerous Immigrants

America entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Un-naturalized Germans and even first and second generation naturalized German immigrants were widely seen as the “enemy within”.

Surveillance operations, conducted by such government agencies as the Alien Enemy Bureau, led to over 10,000 arrests.  Some 8,500 arrests were conducted under presidential warrants. Most of those arrested were released after a brief period of investigation.  Almost twenty five per cent of those detained, however, were found to be “dangerous enemy aliens” and interned in two camps set up by the War Department.  In the spring of 1918, the government began interning female enemy aliens suspected of aiding the enemy.  Scores of women were arrested, but only fifteen were held indefinitely

German-speaking communities were largely erased by the war and the anti-German feeling it created.  This was done through aggressive assimilation by hitherto self-identifying German-speaking communities.

American Domestic Propaganda in World War I

A brief look at the changing historical views (1920 to the present) on the uses and abuses of American domestic propaganda during World War I. Was this a necessary evil or a gross infringement of civil liberties? How, when, and why has opinion changed?

Union and Confederate veterans and Memorial Day

Established in 1866, The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) was a fraternal organization of Union veterans.  After the Civil War many local communities organized days of remembrance for the dead.  In 1868, Union veterans adopted May 30 “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country.” Many southern states recognized Confederate Memorial Day on a different date, reflecting lingering sectional bitterness.

Many veterans groups sprang up in the South after the war.  In 1889 a national organization called the United Confederate Veterans was formed.  The purpose of the group was not to stir up old hatreds but to foster “social, literary, historical, and benevolent” ends.  The United Confederate Veterans (U.C.V.) grew rapidly throughout the 1890s.  Some 1,555 local organizations (called camps) were represented at the 1898 reunion. In 1911 an estimated crowd of 106,000 members and guests attended one re-union.  Meetings continued until 1950 when only one member could attend.

The above photograph shows Union veterans marching at the 36^th National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) in Washington, D.C. on October, 1902. The organization disbanded in 1956 with the death of the last Union veteran.

The last Union veteran, Willard Woolson died in 1956 at the age of 106. Woolson was a drummer boy.  The last Union combat soldier, James Hard, died in 1953 at the age of 109. Claims and counter-claims swirl around the age and status of the last veterans, both Union and Confederate. The last verifiable Confederate veteran is thought to have been Pleasant Riggs Crump (1847-1951), although several men subsequently claimed to be the “oldest” Confederate soldier.  Crump was from Alabama and served at the Siege of Petersburg.  

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

Pet Emergencies!

Who was Wilmer McLean (1861-1865) ?

Wilmer McLean

Wilmer McLean was born in 1814, was orphaned before he was nine, was raised by relatives in Alexandria, Virginia and became a prosperous food merchant in Alexandria.  In 1853 he married Virginia Hooe Mason a wealthy widow, with extensive real estate holdings and other property. She owned Yorkshire plantation in Prince William County, Virginia, estimated to have some 1200 acres; a tract of 330 acres in Fairfax County, and two other tracts containing 500 acres in Prince William County. She also owned fourteen slaves. There were two daughters by the first marriage, Maria (born 1844) and Osceola (born 1845). Both girls lived with the Wilmer McLeans at Manassas and were described by Confederate officers as McLean’s “two pretty daughters.” Two other children were born of the McLean marriage, Wilmer McLean, Jr. (born 1854) and Lucretia Virginia (born 1857).

Following the First Battle of Manassas, Mrs. McLean and the children left the area. Wilmer McLean, however, worked diligently as a civilian with the Confederate Quartermaster Department. He worked to expedite the flow of food supplies to the troops in camp near Manassas. There was a time when the troops were down to one day’s rations. McLean’s experience as a wholesale merchant was invaluable in solving the purchasing of supplies in the fertile country around Manassas.

McLean’s most valuable contribution to the Confederacy was agreeing to let the army take over the buildings of the family plantation, “Yorkshire”, for use as a military hospital. The barn was a hospital and the dwellings and outbuildings were used as living quarters of surgeons and hospital attendants from July 17, 1861 until February 28, 1862. McLean gave his full cooperation to the establishment of this hospital. By 1862, however, he was completely disenchanted by the misconduct of soldiers and hospital personnel at Yorkshire. Large quantities of wine and whiskey were consumed by the hospital attendants. Sanitation was woefully lacking, flies covered the faces of patients. The dwellings were grossly mistreated while occupied by surgeons and attendants.

Further evidence of his disillusionment was his growing price demands on the Quartermaster. McLean apparently purchased candles and other scarce items in Richmond, had them shipped to Manassas, and then sold them to the Confederate Quartermaster for the highest price he could get.

Wilmer McLean had left the area in March 1862 as the Army retreated. From his experience as a merchant he knew that a long war would cause the price of commodities to rise higher and higher. He began to speculate in sugar and made a tidy income during the war. McLean moved his family to the quiet village of Appomattox Court House to escape the fury of war. But fate once again took a hand. The war which had virtually begun in McLean’s kitchen in Manassas, when a Union artillery shell exploded in the cookhouse at Yorkshire, ended in his front parlor in Appomattox Court House where General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant.

The McLeans left their rented house in Appomattox and returned to the Manassas area, virtually penniless. McLean still owned many hundreds of acres of land in Prince William County, but the land was virtually worthless for resale and McLean was heavily in debt.

Eventually the ever practical McLean turned his attention to politics, joined the Yankee Republican party, supported Grant in the election of 1872 and was rewarded by an appointment to a U.S. Treasury job.  Wilmer McLean died on June 5, 1882 and is buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery in Alexandria.  

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

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Quantico National Cemetery

   Told to expand its training capabilities during World War I, the Marine Corps began inspecting promising sites in the spring of 1917.  Some five thousand acres along Quantico Creek were leased. In 1918 a permanent Marine base was established at Quantico. 

    In 1977, the Marine Corps donated 725 acres of land to establish the Quantico National Cemetery.  The cemetery was formally dedicated on May 15, 1983.  The land has been used by the military for over two hundred years. First, around 1775 by the Commonwealth of Virginia for Navy operations, and later, as a blockade point for the Confederate army during the Civil War. 

     In 1989, a monument to Edson’s Raiders was the first memorial dedicated on the memorial pathway at Quantico National Cemetery. It is dedicated to the 800 members of the First Marine Raider Battalion, which from August 1942 to October 1943, played a key role in helping the greatly outnumbered American forces push back Japanese troops in the Solomon Islands.  The Purple Heart Memorial was dedicated August 7, 1990, in honor of Purple Heart medal recipients interred at the cemetery. Additional memorials honor: Colonel William "Rich" Higgins, who was held hostage in Lebanon; the Fourth Marine Division Memorial; the Commonwealth of Virginia Memorial dedicated to honor all of the nation’s veterans; the First Marine Division Memorial; the Sixth Marine Division Memorial to honor the division that won the Presidential Unit Citation for its actions in Okinawa during World War II. 

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

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Is There a Rape Crisis? "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town"-Book Review

Missoula:Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

By John Krakauer

Missoula is not Krakauer’s best effort.  This is an advocacy piece relating to the rape “crisis” on American college campuses.  Disappointingly, Krakauer never connects the dots between the campus culture of binge drinking and substance abuse, which he dismisses as “a right of passage”, and the traumatized lives of both victims and perpetrators. 

In Into the Wild, Krakauer deals with a man who engages is risky behavior with grizzly bears.  Unsurprisingly, the man is eventually mauled by a bear.  In Missoula, Krakauer describes multiple instances of college students drunk to the point of blackout or memory loss, engaging in risky behavior.  Unsurprisingly, bad things happen. 

Perhaps the take away from these books is to be responsible for your own behavior and not to expect predators to be other than predatory.

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What Was the Washington UFO Flap of 1952?

The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, also known as the “Washington Flap”, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 13 to July 29, 1952, over Washington D.C. and the neighboring vicinity. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19 & 20 and July 26 & 27. Radar picked the objects up over the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

On July 22, 1952 The Washington Post reported. “The Air Force disclosed last night it has received reports of an eerie visitation by unidentified aerial objects - perhaps a new type of ‘flying saucer’ - over the vicinity of the Nation's Capital. For the first time, so far as known, the objects were picked up by radar - indicating actual substance rather than mere light.” The article went on to report, “The airport traffic control center said [a] Capital-National Airlines Flight 610, reported observing a light following it from Herndon, Va. about 20 airline miles from Washington, to within four miles of National Airport.”

On July 28, 1952 the headlines of the Alexandria Gazette read, “Jet Fighters Outdistanced By ‘Flying Saucers’ Over Mt. Vernon And Potomac”.

The sightings prompted President Harry S. Truman to call the Air Force demanding explanations.

Urban Legends of Virginia

Mind bending stories from the Old Dominion. A collection of Virginia’s most notable Urban Legends, many include the true stories behind them.

The First Woman to Win The Congressional Medal of Honor

The first woman POW was taken in the Civil War. Union army contract surgeon Dr. Mary E. Walker was captured on April 10, 1864. She was imprisoned in the military prison in Richmond, Virginia known as "Castle Thunder". She was released on August 12, 1864, in a prisoner exchange.

Dr. Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor for her service as a surgeon during the Civil War, “without regard to her own health and safety”. She is the only woman to have received the Medal of Honor. When the criteria for awarding the medal changed in 1917, Dr. Walker’s medal was rescinded along with 900 others. In 1977 the Army Board of Corrections reviewed the case and reversed the 1917 decision, restoring the Medal of Honor to Dr. Walker.

Women Doctors in the Civil War

A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

Slave Marriage Laws Before the Civil War

In pre-Civil War America, slave marriages were not recognized in the state codes. No state legislature ever considered encroaching upon a master’s property rights by legalizing slave marriage. Marriage was, “voluntary on the part of the slaves and permissive on that of the master.”

Slave marriages were regulated by whatever laws the owners saw fit to enforce. Some masters arbitrarily assigned husbands to women who had reached the “breeding age”. Ordinarily slaves picked their own mates, but were required to ask the master for permission to marry. Most owners refused to allow slaves to marry away from home. Men who married away from home were frequently absent and thus exposed “to temptations”.

Having obtained the masters consent, the couple might begin living together without further formality, or their masters might pronounce vows. Ceremonies conducted by slave preachers or white clergymen, were not uncommon even for field hands and were customary for the domestic servants. No slave marriage, however, was ever safe from the caprice of the master who could end the marriage by selling one or both of the partners. Thus, a slave preacher in Kentucky united couples in wedlock, “until death or distance do you part.”

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

The Civil War Wedding

The Civil War Wedding, an entertaining look at the customs and superstitions of weddings during the Civil War era.

The Strange Case of Montgomery Meigs and Robert E. Lee

Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs (above), commander of the garrison at Arlington House and Quartermaster General of the Union Army, who may have had a grudge against Robert E. Lee, was tasked with finding additional burial grounds for battle casualties.  Meigs and Lee had served together many years earlier as military engineers on the Mississippi River.  Lee was a 1^st Lieutenant and Meigs his subordinate, a 2^nd Lieutenant.  Did Meigs bear Lee a personal grudge?  Some historians think so, or perhaps he was just embittered by the war itself, or by Lee’s defection from the Union army.  Meigs wrote to the Secretary of War stating that “the grounds about the mansion are admirably suited to such a use.” Meigs reported his “grim satisfaction” of ordering twenty six Union dead to be buried near Mrs. Lee’s rose garden in June, 1864. 

Meigs had graves dug right up to the entrance to the house.  This was malicious.  Meigs intended to prevent the Lee family from ever again inhabiting the house.  More than 16,000 Union soldiers were buried on the estate’s grounds. Ironically, Meigs’ own son was sent to Arlington Cemetery for burial.                                                                             

Neither Robert E. Lee nor his wife ever set foot in Arlington House again. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court returned the property to the Lee family, stating that it had been confiscated without due process. General Lee's son sold the house and land to the government for its’ fair market value. 

Read more: Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

Women Doctors in the Civil War

A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

Gifts for Dog Lovers

Who Were the Child Soldiers of the Confederacy?

Sergeant William T. Biedler

Sergeant William T. Biedler, 16 years old, of Company C, Mosby's Virginia Cavalry Regiment is pictured above.   Many of Mosby’s soldiers were too young to join the regular army.  Mosby favored these young troopers. “They haven’t sense enough to know danger when they see it, and will fight anything I tell them to,” he once said.

Charles Biedler was born November 9, 1847, and in his teens served with Mosby's Rangers. At one time, while guarding a squad of Federal prisoners in a barn, he, singlehandedly, foiled their attempted escape. One of the prisoners, whose life Biedler spared, presented his youthful captor with a golden trinket as a mark of gratitude.  Biedlar had this gift fashioned into his wife's wedding ring. Charles E. Biedler died in Baltimore, Md., on October 11, 1926.

Women Doctors in the Civil War

In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

The 1865 Fall of Richmond in Pictures

The last death agonies of the Confederacy captured in pictures.

Gifts for Dog Lovers

Disputed American Elections

In virtually every American presidential election, candidates vilify and demonize their opponents. The meme in the last several elections has been "Hitler", with everyone from  George W. Bush and Barack Obama to Hillary ("Hitlery") Clinton and Donald Trump being compared to the evil German dictator.

Historically, American presidential campaigns have always been messy, loud, and controversial. Here are some of the worst.

Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America - Book Review

Custer'sTrials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

by T.J. Stiles

    Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history.  For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values.  Since his death along the bluffs overlooking the Little Bighorn River, in Montana, on June 25, 1876, over five hundred books have been written about the life and career of George Armstrong Custer, this book ranks among the worst.

     To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, the book is both good and original. Unfortunately, the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.  The good parts involve the author’s heavy use of secondary sources such as the writings of Robert Utley, and James Donovan when actually talking about Custer’s career.  The original parts, including the author’s peculiar decision to virtually ignore the Battle of the Little Big Horn while spending page after page on Custer’s finances, are very bad indeed.

     The author meanders tediously through 19th century American politics, finance, and racial affairs, writing in a self- indulgent, turgid academic style.  Stiles can simply not forgive Custer, his wife Elizabeth, or the people of 19th century America, for being, well…19th century Americans, living in the 19th century and having 19th century attitudes toward race, feminism, sexuality, and nationalism.  These people should obviously have had the foresight to have been born in the enlightened 21st century.

     If you like your history with heavy, self-righteous lashings of 21st century political correctness, you will love this book.  If not, you may wish to spare yourself this pompous lecturing.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Gifts for Dog Lovers

Love, Sex and Marriage in Victorian Times

Queen Victoria reigned over the British Empire, the largest and most diverse empire the world has ever known, from 1837-1901, and gave her name to the age. Among other things the Victorian Age has become known for its sexual prudery. In many things, including social customs, the United States mirrored what was happening across the sea in Britain. Women were allotted a subsidiary role, with patience and self-sacrifice the prime feminine virtues. Motherhood was idealized, alongside virginal innocence. The ideal of purity in sexual behavior became sacrosanct, at least in public

Love,Sex and Marriage in Victorian America

We think we know the Victorians, but do we? The same passions, strengths and weaknesses that exist now, existed then, but people organized themselves very differently.

The Pentagon in 1861

Fort Runyon, named after Brig. Gen. Theodore Runyon, was located astride the important junction of the Washington Alexandria and Columbia Turnpikes, a half-mile south of the Long Bridge. The fort was built in July 1861 on the land of a Washington building contractor.  The largest fort in the defenses of Washington, it covered 12 acres and had a perimeter of 1,484 yards. Construction began on May 24, 1861 and was completed in seven weeks. Fort Albany was built on the high ground to protect the rear of Fort Runyon .  Fort Runyon was a pentagonal earth and timber fort, and was approximately the same size, and shape as the modern day Pentagon (built from 1941-1943).  Interestingly, the Pentagon now stands on almost the exact location of Fort Runyon.  A history marker now identifies where the fort once stood.  

Women Doctors in the Civil War

A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

Liberty Is Not Anarchy

U.S. Has History of Banning Dangerous Immigrants

     In the early part of the 20^th century an increasing number of Americans grew concerned about violent immigrants from Eastern Europe who harbored messianic beliefs about anarchism and communism.  This fear was inflamed when an anarchist (Leon Frank Czolgosz, a home grown terrorist whose parents had immigrated to Ohio) assassinated President William McKinley in 1901.

     After World War I, with a devastated Europe suffering economic and social upheaval, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Eastern Europe headed for America.  It is said that there were over 150,000 anarchists and communists in the United States by 1919 (which represented only 0.1% of the overall population, a small but dangerous minority).

     A series of bomb explosions in 1919, including a failed attempt to blow up the Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, lead to a vigorous campaign against the communists. On New Year’s Day, 1920, over 6,000 people were arrested and put in prison.  In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 which severely restricted immigration (new immigrants admitted fell from 805,000 in 1920 to 309,000 in 1921-22).  The 1921 act was made even tougher by the Immigration Act of 1924.  The purpose of this act was “to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity,” and, among other things, outright banned the immigration of Arabs.

     These tough immigration acts lasted until 1965 when they were replaced during the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Secrets of American History

A brief look at the often overlooked stories of American history from colonial times to modern times, stories such as, the original Emancipation Proclamations, the plot to kill Martha Washington, terrorism in the Civil War, America’s plan to invade Canada in 1930, a planned coup against the president, and many others hidden tales.