by Sharon Hall | Apr 17, 2015 | Feisty Females
When Amelia Earhart wanted to learn how to fly an airplane, the deal she struck with her parents required she be taught by a woman pilot. That pilot, Neta Snook, was a woman of many “firsts” – one of the first female aviators, she was the first woman accepted into a...
by Sharon Hall | Apr 14, 2015 | Tombstone Tuesday
Ezekiel William Pettit was born in 1837 to parents Samuel and Polly Pettit in the province of Ontario, Canada, not far from the United States border in the township of Townsend. One source indicates that his parents were actually United States citizens, but there are...
by Sharon Hall | Apr 10, 2015 | Far-Out Friday
A friend forwarded a story to me recently from Retro Indy (Indianapolis) about a device invented in the late eighteenth century, which led me to explore a bizarre series of patents granted from the 1840’s through the early twentieth century. The September 20,...
by Sharon Hall | Apr 8, 2015 | Ghost Town Wednesday
It would be more appropriate to call today’s ghost town a “ghost commune”, established by Ernest Valeton de Boissère in 1869. He was a wealthy Frenchman, born into a Bordeaux aristocratic family in 1810. When Napoleon III came into power after the Third French...
by Sharon Hall | Apr 1, 2015 | Ghost Town Wednesday
After Ellis County, Kansas was formed on February 26, 1867, the county’s first town site began to take shape in May when the Lull brothers of Salina opened a general store strategically close to where the Kansas Pacific Railroad track would lay. They called the...
