by Sharon Hall | Apr 20, 2015 | Military History Monday
The Upper East Side is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York City and once referred to as the “Silk Stocking District”. Within its boundaries lies some of the most expensive real estate in the country, home to some of the wealthiest people in the world. ...
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...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 31, 2015 | Tombstone Tuesday
I came across an interesting story while researching my sister-in-law’s ancestors. Benjamin F. Cooley is her great-great-great grandfather, one of the early settlers of Grayson County, Virginia, and at the time one of the finest clock makers in the country. Here is...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 27, 2015 | Feisty Females
I ran across an article published in the January 13, 1878 issue of the Chicago Tribune entitled “The Women of the Hills” and written by a correspondent for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. The correspondent wrote his thoughts on some of the more “colorful” women of the...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 25, 2015 | Ghost Town Wednesday
While many of Colorado’s ghost towns were formerly booming mining towns, this one east of the Black Forest near Colorado Springs was an agricultural community. The area began to be settled in 1872 and was first called Easton when a post office was established at...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 24, 2015 | Tombstone Tuesday
Charles H. Cheese was born on February 22, 1856 in Illinois to parents George and Elizabeth Cheese. George, born in England around 1823, arrived in America on April 27, 1830 with his parents Edmund and Ann Cheese. The Cheese family were farmers in Cook County,...
