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 […]
I love trivia and finding out oddball facts, especially about some of the places where we travel. So today, just for fun, I thought I’d share 5 Weird Things You Never Knew. Mount Rushmore, polygamy and the KKK – There are few things that make a statement about America’s power and glory more than Mount […]
It’s a long way from where he held office in Washington, D.C., or from his humble beginnings in Kentucky and Illinois, to Redlands, California. But in this friendly city that is regarded as the “Jewel of the Inland Empire,” we discovered a memorial to one of America’s most beloved presidents. Though Abraham Lincoln never visited […]
Note: This article appeared in the November-December 2003 issue of the Gypsy Journal. It may not be the largest or most well-known monument in Washington, D.C., but the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial is certainly a moving tribute to the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their communities. In America, a […]
We got wrapped up in some projects that have delayed our departure for a bit, but with most of the things wrapped up that we wanted to get done before we leave northern Indiana, we hope to be on the road by the weekend. Now we just have to decide where we’re going, and how […]
Everywhere you turn in the last week somebody is talking about the latest crisis. This time it’s the swine flu pandemic. Oops, that’s the H1N1 Influenza A outbreak. Somebody apparently decided that we can’t call it swine flu, because pigs (or pig farmers) were getting upset. Somebody e-mailed to ask me if we were still […]