Florida has seen its share of outlaws, brigands, pirates, cutthroats, and smugglers, too. And I doubt few were as popular as Bill McCoy. Even today, old-timers who spent their life on or near the water remember hearing stories about him. Born in New York in 1877, William Frederick McCoy was the son of a man […]
Today we take our cell phones and e-mail for granted, but there was a time not too long ago when none of that was conceivable to most people. During my own youth, a telephone was something that hung on a wall or sat on a stand in the living room, connected to a cord. If […]
Note: This is a repost of a blog from 2014, about a visit to our favorite city. Miss Terry says I am head over heels in love with the beautiful city of Savannah, Georgia, but I think that’s an exaggeration. Enthralled? Yes. Enamored? Sure. But head over heels? Yeah, that’s an exaggeration. A tiny exaggeration […]
Free land! 160 acres of prime farmland to any man who wanted it! Who could resist such an offer? To millions of Americans stuck in crowded, dirty cities, many of them recent immigrants, it was the chance of a lifetime. The Homestead Act of 1862 has been called one of the most important pieces of […]
Judge Roy Bean, the famous Hanging Judge from Langtry, Texas, was a larger than life Old West figure, and it is sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction when talking about his adventures. This is further complicated because Bean was a shameless self-promoter who made up plenty of wild tales about his exploits, and then […]
Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth was a remarkable woman who threw off the shackles of oppression to become a leader in social reform in a time when any woman, let alone a black woman, had no business making a public statement. Named Isabella Baumfree when she was born near Kingston, New York in approximately 1797, […]
Montgomery, Alabama’s MOOseum offers a fun and interactive way for people of all ages to learn about Alabama’s beef cattle industry. Each year 10,000 school children and adults tour this unique hands-on educational museum, where they learn about the history of the beef cattle industry, the contributions the industry makes to society, and the many […]
Note – This is a repost of a blog from six years ago today. Whenever we are going to a new area I spend a lot of time researching places to visit that will be of interest to our readers and making contact with the various attractions to arrange visits. Here in southern Virginia, there […]
High on a hill overlooking Frankfort, Kentucky, are the remains of two little-known forts that time has almost forgotten. Life was difficult in Old Frankfort during the Civil War years. Trapped between the North and the South, Kentucky was divided, as was the state capital. These conflicting loyalties caused hardship and ill feelings not only […]
We love getting off the interstate highways and taking the two-lane roads whenever we can. As I have said many times before, a Denny’s or a chain hotel at an interstate exit in Kansas is no different than one in Michigan or California. But the two-lane roads will take you to the real America. Small […]
On one of our trips through Missouri, we discovered one of the most unusual state parks we ever visited, a narrow 225-mile long corridor that stretches across the state from east to west. Along the way, Missouri offers people of all ages and interests unique recreational opportunities. If you are a hiker, bicyclist, history buff, […]
Thank you, everyone, who congratulated me on my latest book, Big Lake Massacre, making it to #49 on Amazon’s Hot New Release list for mysteries Saturday night. The momentum kept on going all day yesterday, peaking at #16 on the list before dropping back down to #22 at 11 p.m. last night. I cannot tell […]
The days of our nation’s westward expansion fill the pages of history with stories of newfound wealth, people acquiring land that they could never have if they had not chosen the difficult and sometimes dangerous path West, and many times, tragedies. This is the story of one such tragedy. When a young woman from Elmore, […]
Not all Southerners believed in slavery before the Civil War, including many wealthy landowners who owned slaves themselves. One such was a prosperous widow named Hannah Coulter, who acquired the beautiful Chatham plantation, located across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the 1850s. Coulter specified in her will that upon her death her 92 […]
In a small church cemetery alongside a road in rural Middlesex County, Virginia, we came across the grave of a true American hero. Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller was a small-town boy who went on to become one of the most decorated United States Marines that ever lived. Puller was born and raised on the bank […]
Note: This story is from my book Highway History And Back Road Mystery II. A half-mile north of the Roosevelt Lake Bridge on Arizona State Route 188, a stone monument marks the spot where one of the Old West’s most colorful characters was killed. Even today, a hundred years later, there is much debate over […]
My Mama didn’t raise me this way, and I know my Dad must be very disappointed in me, but it turns out I’m a racist. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was in myself when I got the news yesterday. I honestly never knew. This apparently stems from yesterday’s blog, when I mentioned a […]
?Note: I spent most of yesterday making corrections to what I have already written in my new Big Lake book. Just as I was finishing with that, I did something wrong and scrambled about half of the document. Sentences and even blocks of paragraphs seemed to jump around, sometimes even showing up in different chapters. […]
In Richmond, Virginia we toured the home of a woman who truly lived before her time, a visionary who struggled to blaze a trail for generations who came after her to follow. Maggie L. Walker was born during the Civil War on July 15, 1864, in the Richmond home of Elizabeth Van Lew, where her […]
An outpost of westward expansion, Fort Laramie in eastern Wyoming was crucial in the transformation of the American West. The fort served as a fur trading post, military garrison, and as a way station for fur trappers, Indian traders, missionaries, and Oregon Trail emigrants for over 50 years during one of the most important time […]