by Sharon Hall | Jan 7, 2014 | Tombstone Tuesday
Marmaduke Norfleet Bell (III) was born in 1836 to parents Marmaduke Norfleet Bell, Jr. and Mary “Polly” Landing (or Landen) Bell. Marmaduke and Polly were married on February 23, 1826 and had seven children listed in the 1850 United States Census. That year,...
by Sharon Hall | Jan 6, 2014 | Military History Monday
The Ladies Hollywood Memorial Association was founded at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on May 3, 1866 and chartered on January 19, 1891. The group’s primary duties were to care for and honor the graves of the Confederate soldiers buried in Richmond’s Hollywood...
by Sharon Hall | Jan 4, 2014 | Surname Saturday
It appears the first Harpending in America immigrated from Neuenhaus, Netherlands and his name was Gerrit Hargerinck. Gerritt arrived in America with his two sons in June of 1662 on the immigrant ship Hope. Other iterations of the surname were perhaps Harbendinck...
by Sharon Hall | Jan 3, 2014 | Far-Out Friday
This story, without a doubt, has to be one of the most cunning and crafty hoaxes ever perpetrated on a group of learned men which included bankers, financiers and mining engineers. It reads more like a Hollywood script than actual fact, but it’s all true and quite...
by Sharon Hall | Jan 1, 2014 | Digging History Magazine, Ghost Town Wednesday
The story goes that this Route 66 ghost town got its name in 1883 when the Southern Pacific Railroad named the station after Baghdad, Iraq (sans the “h”) because of its similar inhospitable climate. Curiously, the railroad named two other nearby towns “Siberia” and...