by Sharon Hall | Oct 3, 2014 | Feisty Females
Ida Bell Wells was the oldest daughter of James and Lizzie Wells, born in slavery (temporarily) on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Less than six months later, all slaves were set free by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. James was a master carpenter...
by Sharon Hall | Oct 1, 2014 | Digging History Magazine, Ghost Town Wednesday
“It isn’t likely that a tourist will ever see the old Reagan County Courthouse at Stiles unless he is looking for it, or just flat lost.” That’s what a contributor on the Ghost Towns web site had to say about Stiles, Texas. It’s a bit off the beaten track these...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 29, 2014 | Mothers of Invention
Today’s “mother of invention” article features another “parent-friendly” product (last week it was disposable diapers). As you will see, she could also be characterized as a “feisty female”. Patsy O’Connell Sherman was born on September 15, 1930 in Minneapolis,...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 26, 2014 | Surname Saturday
Most sources agree that today’s surname is of occupational origins, perhaps referring to someone who was a mender of pots and pans (“tinner”). The earliest individuals bearing a particular surname, especially an occupational one, were usually employed in that...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 24, 2014 | Digging History Magazine, Ghost Town Wednesday
Some historians credit Joseph S. “Buckskin Joe” Works, a Texas land promoter, with the founding of today’s ghost town around 1887. Another historian, Dr. Edward Everett Dale who was a research professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, wrote in 1946 that the...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 23, 2014 | Tombstone Tuesday
Nathaniel Bowditch arrived at Hilton Head and discovered the temperature to be 120 degrees in the shade! NOTE: If you missed Part One of this story, you can read it here. His regiment was ordered to Aquia Creek on August 25 and he was resigned to the inevitability...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 22, 2014 | Mothers of Invention
Parents around the world can thank today’s “mother of invention” every time they pick up a Pampers®, Huggies® or Luvs® to change their little one’s diaper. Although her ideas were considered impractical at the time, they eventually led to the first truly...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 20, 2014 | Surname Saturday
Bowditch This unique surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, believed to have derived from an estate in Dorsetshire (pre-Norman Conquest of 1066) and seen as well in the southern counties of Somerset and Devonshire. The place name in Devon was derived from an Olde English...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 17, 2014 | Digging History Magazine, Ghost Town Wednesday
This county in northwestern Kansas had been home to buffalo-hunting Native Americans and was named for General William Tecumseh Sherman of Civil War fame by the Kansas legislature in 1873. Cattle and sheep ranches were established in the early 1880’s on land...
by Sharon Hall | Sep 16, 2014 | Tombstone Tuesday
Nathaniel Bowditch (pronounced bau-ditch) was born to parents Dr. Henry Ingersoll and Olivia Jane Yardley Bowditch on December 6, 1839. As noted in the memoir written by his father, Memorial of Nathaniel Bowditch, he “received his grandsire’s name because he was the...
