History

Excerpts from History Articles

The 19th Century Country Store (History Magazine, and available on Amazon Kindle)

“Smokers and Chewers will please spit on each other and not on the stove.”
Sign in a Country Store

At the turn of the 19th Century, American pioneer families pushed West as quickly as explorers mapped new territory.  Forests were cleared and  farms sprung up.  As rough trails developed into dusty crossroads, frontier merchants sat up shop, supplying goods to the agrarian population.  No matter how remote the locale, the little country stores thrived.

The farm economy was a simple one.  Farmers were self-sufficient to a large degree, producing fruit, vegetables, hay, grain, milk, cream, butter and cheese.  Pigs and cows were butchered for meat, and seasonally, wild berries and grapes were gathered.   What the farm couldn’t produce was purchased at the country store.

Pioneer familles brought excess grain, salt port or other crops to the store and traded  for cooking staples, salt, molasses and tea. Barter was the rule, and little hard cash changed hands.  Merchants weren’t required to offer much in return, as the farmer had no where else to take his goods  The usual markup was 100%., with a nickel spool of thread selling for a dime.  Often, goods had three prices—the  low cash price, the higher barter price and the even higher price for items bought on credit.  Usually merchants were honest, but occasional stories are told about the unscrupulous ones  who painted regular beans black and sold them as coffee, or who added sawdust to oatmeal. . .

They Came Like Buzzards (available on Amazon Kindle)

“Home from their last adventure came the tattered Cavaliers. . . Grimly they came hobbling back to the desolation that had once been a land of grace and plenty, and with them came another invader. . . more cruel and vicious than any they had fought . . . the Carpetbaggers.”
Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Although Gone With the Wind painted a romantic version of the antebellum South, it did accurately capture the hatred post-Civil War Southerners had for Carpetbaggers—the Northerners who came South after the war, seeking political or financial gain.  The Carpetbaggers were the archvillains of Reconstruction, seen as scheming, money-hungry paupers who carried all of their belongings  in one bag made of carpeting.

Mitchell’s heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, faced the same difficulties as real post-War plantation owners—they were land rich, cash poor, and at the mercy of Carpetbagger tax collectors and their scalawag friends—Southerners who supported Northern rule.

Disenfranchised, the real Scarlett’s and their families scratched a hard living from their native soil, or lost their plantations to back taxes.  Their husbands, impotent to stop corrupt lawmakers, vented their frustration by joining “law and order” societies.  These “society” men rode in the night, beating or lynching blacks and anyone who dared help them—especially Carpetbaggers.   To them, Carpetbaggers were far more villainous than blacks, as most Southerners considered blacks as hapless children being led astray by unscrupulous Northerners. . .

The Tower of London (History Magazine, available on Kindle)

In Shakespeare’s King Richard III, a young Edward V asked about the origin of the Tower of London.   “Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?”  The Duke of Buckingham replied,  “He did, my gracious lord, begin that place; which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.”

Although the thought of a Roman Emperor helping build one of London’s most famous landmarks must have appealed to the Bard of Avon, his  poetic license was far off the mark.

Construction of the Tower of London was begun  shortly after Christmas Day 1066, by William,  Duke of Normandy, who had recently been crowned King of England.  Almost immediately following his coronation, William ordered the construction of a fort to be strategically located to command  the River Thames.  Ten years later, William  began transforming his fort to a great stone tower which would  serve as a fortress for his center of power—London . . .