The Train Wreck That Inspired Country Music’s First Hit

The wreck of the Fast Mail not only inspired the song, but this dramatic painting by regionalist master Thomas Hart Benton. There seems to be something about a train wreck that inspires a song.  Just

Thomas Hart Benton Baldwin locomotive David C. George Fast Mail Fred Jackson Lewey Joseph A. Broady Southern Railroad The Wreck of the Ol' 97 Vernon Dalhart Charles Noell Spencer North Carolina

Intrigue and Betrayal in Saigon—The Surprising First American Death in Vietnam

OSS Lt. Col Peter Dewey as a captain.  The dashing and well connected young officer accidently became the first American casualty in Vietnam.   Lt. Col. Albert Dewey cut a dashing figure and had disti

Vietnam French colony Gen Douglas Gracey Ho Chi Minh Lt. Colonel Albert Dewey OSS Saigon Viet Minh

A Prophet Gets the Word on Polygamy—Latter Day Saints Conform to Protestant Morality

Church of the Latter Day Saints President and Prophet Wilford Woodruff said God told him to do it. On September 25, 1890 Wilford Woodruff, President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter

Brigham Young Church of the Latter Day Saints Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 Great Raid John D. Lee Joseph Smith Manifesto on Polygamy Mormon War polygamy Sister Wives Wilford Woodruff

Devils Tower—Native Holy Site Becomes First National Monument

   A 1950's era National Park Service poster promoted visits to Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. My old home state of Wyoming has a lot of memorable, iconic sights—the Yellowstone geyser Old

Native Americans Theodore Roosevelt Wyoming National Park Service Steven Spielberg bear legend Close Encounters of the Third Kind Devils Tower National Monument

Speaking Up for Themselves at the First National Negro Convention in 1830

An early Negro National Convention. As ever, it was hard—dangerous and hard—to be Black in early 19th Century America for Freemen as well as for slaves .   Take the Northern state of Ohio, for instanc

Philadelphia African Methodist Episcopal Church American Colonization Society American Society for Free Persons of Color Cincinnati James Forten Mother Bethel Negro National Convention Richard Allen