Grievances (Social Satire)

Del Boca - Are We ThereYet? (A Social Satire)

     Trudy Grassmeade was bombarded by things that offended her.  It started when she stopped for coffee.  Washington, Jackson, Franklin.  Slave owners all.  What were they doing on our money? 

     Trudy carried a great many fives.  She could trust good old “Honest Abe”.  But even he had now fallen under suspicion.  She had recently read what Lincoln had said of a former girlfriend, “I knew she was called an 'old maid,' and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation; but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit its contracting in to wrinkles; but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head, that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy, and reached her present bulk in less than thirty five or forty years…”  As a former girlfriend herself (an experience she enjoyed on many occasions including the present one), Trudy could tell that Lincoln didn’t respect women.  She would have to look more closely into his record.  Maybe he didn’t deserve that big marble monument.  

     As Trudy walked down Thomas Jefferson (TJ) Avenue she made a note to ask the Neighbors and Friends Association why they named a street after the sexual harasser of underage girls.  This street should be named after the victim, Sally Hemings, not after someone who belonged on a register of sex offenders.  And then there was St. Anselm’s church.  She knew what was in there.  Stained glass windows depicting Roman soldiers walking cheerfully through the streets of Jerusalem on their way to the Crucifixion.  Roman soldiers!  The Roman Empire was a military tyranny that oppressed people for a thousand years and yet someone in that church thought it was a good idea to put their likenesses in the stained glass windows.  She could never go into a church that had depictions of Roman soldiers in the windows.  The thought made her cringe.  It may have been two thousand years since the Romans burned the ancestral village, but Trudy kept the memory green. Romans belonged in museums, not in church windows. 

     And so it continued as she made her way down TJ Avenue and up Poplar Street, getting angrier and angrier.  There was the post office sporting an American flag.  So militaristic.  All of that “rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air”, stuff.  Why couldn’t the country’s flag convey something more positive?  Maybe happy faces instead of stars, and multi-colored stripes instead of boring red and white.  There was that awful Porky’s Barbecue Pit, which sold sugary drinks that would make children obese.  And here up the street came that poor exploited rooster Machiavelli, who had to work for chicken feed while H.C. Clarke raked in who knew how much money because of Machiavelli’s efforts.  This walk was like Trudy’s own personal march to Calvary (minus the Romans of course).

     Finally she reached the Del Boca Medical Arts Center and the office of her therapist Dr. Humphrey Smothers.

     “I am so angry Doctor Smothers!” Trudy began.

     “Oh, I know, I know,” said the sympathetic Doctor Smothers, “shall we start where we left off last time.  You were telling me how angry you were because Turner Classic Movies had the effrontery to run the movie “The Littlest Rebel”, starring Shirley Temple.

     Trudy began spewing forth in a torrent all of the pent up outrage and anger of the previous week, occasionally interrupted by Dr. Smothers interjecting a sympathetic, “Tell me more,” or “I know, I know.”

     While doing no actual good Dr. Smothers, to his credit, was doing no actual harm.  He was performing the same sort of service that any friend would perform, he was being a good listener.  In his case, of course, he was being very well paid to listen.

     Dr. Smothers knew, that like many other people in Del Boca, Trudy Grassmeade actually enjoyed being wedded to her grievances.  She found comfort, purpose and identity in her righteous indignation.  What Dr. Smothers longed to say was, “Get a grip!  Opinions are like a**holes.  Everyone has one.  Yours are no more valid than anyone else’s !”  But then that would be killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  So instead he said, “Oh, I know, I know.”

      “So you see Doctor Smothers,” said Trudy, “if I am ever to be happy and know peace everyone else in the world is simply going to have to change!”

     “Oh, I know, I know,” said Doctor Smothers, nodding sagely, “but now I see our time is up. Shall we continue next time from the same place?”

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American Civil War Campfire Humor

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

Stories such as these were told around the campfire during the American Civil War:

A young soldier left home to join the army. He told his girl friend that he would write every day. After about six months, he received a letter from his girlfriend that she was marrying someone else. He wrote home to his family to find out who she married. The family wrote back and told him. It was the ....mailman.

A soldier announced to all the men in his company and surrounding companies that he was swearing off drinking and that all the other soldiers should do the same.  The other soldiers teased him and gave him whiskey to get him drunk.  Every night he ended up drunk, but every morning he would be back preaching about the evils of alcohol.  Finally one of his tent mates told him he should give up preaching about the evils of drink since he always ended up drink.  “What” he asked, “and give up all that free whiskey?”

Troops on both sides enjoyed a joke at the expense of officers.  One anecdote that made the rounds involved General Ambrose Burnside.  General Grant and his staff in Virginia stopped to rest at a plantation. Grant fell into conversation with the two women of the house, when the portly Ambrose Burnside rode up, made an exaggerated bow, and conversationally inquired as to whether the ladies had ever seen so many Yankee soldiers before.

“Not at liberty, sir,” one of the women snapped back.

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American Civil War Humor and Jokes

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries

A political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam arguing with a woman while a slave on the right tiptoes by the couple. Uncle Sam holds a newspaper marked "united", the woman has a newspaper behind her back marked "states".

Humor (even if somewhat grim) made its appearance early during the American Civil War.  When President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers in April 1861 to put down the rebellion, rebel jokers published advertisements for “75,000 Coffins Wanted.” Bill Arp, a popular Georgia humorist, wrote a letter to President Lincoln thoughtfully worrying that the Union’s military strategy might be, “too hard upon your burial squads and ambulance horses.” 

At first jokes in camp were relatively tame. Some soldiers wondered how many court-martials a barrel of rum held. Others joked that draft exemptions were only open to, “dead men who can establish proof of their demise by two reliable witnesses.”  Spirits were high and men engaged in practical jokes.  In the winter, one of the favorite tricks that the soldiers would play on the bugler was to put water in his bugle at night and let it freeze. The next morning the bugler would be unable to blow reveille until he thawed out his bugle.

Civil War Humor

Gifts for Dogs

The Importance of Historical Perspective

     The men and women who lived a hundred plus years ago possessed the same passions, strengths and weaknesses that we possess today.  Being born, struggling for food and shelter, mating, dying; the basic rhythms of life remain the same from century to century.  The ordering of these rhythms of life by social custom and political institutions depends largely on technology and the prevailing ideology of the day.  Can we ever judge if the ordering was right?  Should we even try?  History is a kaleidoscope, the view changes with the values of each succeeding generation.  What was moral and right in 1861 is today unacceptable.  What is moral and right today will be unacceptable tomorrow.

    What history can give us is perspective.  History shows that this moment is not the only moment, but rather is part of a continuum.  Without perspective life becomes self-absorbed, and degenerates into either solemn and stressful or frivolous and trivial.  Hopefully, with perspective, we can find balance.

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Fifers and Drummers in the American Revolution

The Spirit of 76

Artist Archibald Willard made fifers and drummers an American icon when he painted, “The Spirit of 76” in 1875.  Willard’s father Samuel was the model for the drummer.  The painting was originally known as “Yankee Doodle”.

Don Francisco - Fifer

During the American Revolution, armies used music to communicate over long distances.  In infantry units, the fife was used because of its high pitched sound and the drum because of its low pitched sound. Both instruments can be easily heard at great distances even through the din of battle. Music gave instructions for advance or retreat and helped keep order on the battlefield.  Drummers would play beatings telling soldiers to turn right or left as well as to load and fire their muskets. There was a tune called “Cease Fire” that fifers and drummers played to instructs troops to stop firing.  Fifers and drummers were used to help regulate camp life as well. Fife and drum calls signaled the commencement of daily tasks such as waking up, eating meals, and performing camp chores.

Each company in an American infantry regiment during the Revolution (a full strength company was made up of 40 privates, 3 corporals, 1 ensign, 1 Lieutenant, and a Captain) would have had 1-2 fifers and 1-2 drummers.

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th Century Customs 

Neither Martha Washington nor the women of the South’s leading families were marble statues, they had the same strengths and weaknesses, passions and problems, joys and sorrows, as the women of any age.  So just how did they live?

Murder in Colonial Virginia

A quick historical look at murder most foul in the Virginia of colonial times and the early Republic. Behind the facade of graceful mansions and quaint cobblestone streets evil lurks.

How many soldiers died of wounds in the Civil War?

     Approximately 110,000 Union and 94,000 Confederate soldiers died of battle wounds.  Most of the wounded were treated within the first forty eight hours.  Emergency medical care on the battlefield consisted of bandaging a soldier’s wounds as fast possible, and giving him whiskey and morphine, if necessary, for pain. Primary care took place in field hospitals.  Those who survived were then transported in overcrowded ambulance wagons to rail lines where they were put on box cars and rushed to nearby cities and towns, where doctors and nurses did their best to care for them in makeshift hospitals.

The most common battlefield operation was the amputation of arms and legs.  Amputation was a quick and reliable answer to the severe wounds created by the .58 caliber Minie ball used during the war.  This heavy bullet of soft lead caused large gaping wounds that filled with dirt and pieces of clothing.  It shattered bone.  Surgeons usually chose amputation over trying to save the limb.  Heavy doses of chloroform were administered and some seventy five percent of all soldiers survived the operation.  The poet Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse in the Union army at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, recounted seeing, “a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc, a full load for a one-horse cart.”

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.

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.

How did George Washington travel?

Washington's carriage

Road travel in the eighteenth century was nasty, brutish and slow.  Those vehicles, most often slow moving stage coaches, that did venture out on the roads were covered with mud or dust from top to wheel, rattled along uncomfortably, sometimes overturned and frequently sank into bogs.  Large rivers were difficult to bridge.  Ferries were used instead.  The ferry was either a barge or a raft and was pulled across by work horses or oxen on shore.  Since they were skittish, horses were prone to cause accidents.  George Washington recounted a typical road mishap, “In attempting to cross the ferry at Colchester with the four horses harnessed to the chariot…one of the leaders got overboard when the boat was in swimming water and fifty yards from the shore….His struggling frightened the (other horses) in such a manner that one after another and in quick succession they all got overboard…and with the utmost difficulty they were saved (and) the carriage escaped being dragged after them.”

Early colonists used a network of paths made long before by Indians and wild animals to shape the earliest pattern of roads. The first turnpike in the country began construction in Virginia in 1785 running from Alexandria into the lower Shenandoah Valley.  This wide, comfortable, toll road only spanned thirty four miles and took twenty six years to complete, being completed in 1811.  It was a marvel to travelers.  In some cases local governments built new roads, but more frequently private corporations were set up for the purpose, and a profit of twenty percent earned from tolls was not uncommon. Notwithstanding these efforts, Virginia’s roads had not improved much by the 1860s.  No less a personage than General Robert E. Lee complained, “It has been raining a great deal . . . making the roads horrid and embarrassing our operations.”  Army wagons simply broke down on the roads because of the mud and rocks.

How Martha Washington Lived

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

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What Were the Wildest Presidential Elections?

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

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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.