Mary Lincoln’s Neckline Heads South

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Mary Todd Lincoln slavishly followed the fashion lead of the Empress Eugénie, Empress Consort of France (1853-1871), the wife of Napoléon III, Emperor of the French. The empress’ style was reported in detail by the Vogue magazine of the day, Godey’s Lady’s Book. In 1860, age 32, the Empress Eugénie [...]

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Mary Todd Lincoln Had the “Gimmies”

When Mary and Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House in 1861, Mary was 43 years old, a time when women her age dressed in somber grays, dull browns, and boring blues. But not Mary Todd Lincoln. For her, expensive clothes were a mark of importance, of breeding. She proceeded to dress like a peacock, [...]

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The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Mary Surratt & the 7 Hoods

After the assassination of Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton doggedly pursued the apprehension and prosecution of the conspirators. From the beginning, he knew that actor John Wilkes Booth had murdered the president. Booth was hunted down and killed on April 26, 1865, only eleven [...]

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Abraham Lincoln: “That D____d Long Armed Ape!”

Much has been made of Democratic President Obama’s attempt to incorporate a Republican into his cabinet, a move that today’s political pundits liken to an overture made by the President Lincoln when, in 1862, he appointed Democrat Edwin Stanton as secretary of war in his Republican administration. Stanton was not just Lincoln’s political opponent, he was one [...]

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The Lincoln Assassination: Uncle Sam’s Menagerie

Issued in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, the political cartoon, “Uncle Sam’s Menagerie,” conveys the Northern hostility toward the conspirators, whom the public associated with former president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis. Uncle Sam stands before a cage in which a hyena with the bonneted head of Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), president of the Confederacy, claws [...]

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Eva Peron’s Restless Corpse Part 1 of 2

At 8:52 p.m. on the night of July 26, 1952, all radio broadcasts in Argentina were interrupted for an emergency announcement: First Lady Eva Peron – “the Spiritual Leader of the Nation” – was dead of cancer at 33. All activity came to an abrupt halt. Movies stopped playing. Shops closed. Restaurants were emptied of [...]

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Roy Rogers and Trigger

It was 1938 and Leonard Slye needed a horse. Not just any horse. His horse had to be fast, well-trained, and handsome. You see, Leonard was a singing cowboy who had just gotten his first leading role in a western movie called “Under Western Stars.” He needed a horse to ride in the movie. Several [...]

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The Scalping of Robert McGee 1864

In my last post, I wrote about the scalping of Texas settler, Josiah Wilbarger, who lived to tell the tale. I’ve come across another scalping survivor account, that of teamster Robert McGee, who agreed with Josiah Wilbarger who said the scalping sounded like “distant thunder. The following is excerpted from the blog, The Road to [...]

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The Scalping of Josiah Wilbarger 1844

  The following is an excerpt from my book, Get Along, Little Dogies: The Chisholm Trail Diary of Hallie Lou Wells. Although it is fiction, the book is historically authentic, and the event it recounts really did happen in August, 1844, outside Austin, Texas, near Pecan Springs. The narrator is a young woman named Hallie Wells who is [...]

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King George’s Giraffe

In my last two posts, I wrote about Charles Dickens and his pet raven, Grip. Upon Grip’s death in 1841, Charles Dickens couldn’t bear to part with his beloved pet so he had him stuffed and mounted in a glass case to display in his study. Dickens was one of many Brits caught up in the pet [...]

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Grip the Raven

In yesterday’s post , I mentioned Grip the Raven, author Charles Dickens’ pet bird that was the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven.” Dickens’ children loved the bird Grip although he did bite their ankles. At his children’s request, Dickens included Grip as a character in one of his books, Barnaby Rudge (1841). Dickens had [...]

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Body

Philadelphia wants the body of Edgar Allan Poe but Baltimore isn’t giving it up. Poe didn’t live in Baltimore long, but ever since he died and was buried there in 1849, the city has claimed him for its own. Not fair, says Edward Pettit, a Poe scholar in Philadelphia. He argues that Philadelphia was Poe’s true home, seeing [...]

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Annabel Lee

Written the year of Edgar Allan Poe’s death, ”Annabel Lee” is generally considered to be the last poem Poe wrote. We celebrated the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth last month, as he and Abraham Lincoln were both born in 1809. Poe’s most famous works are arguably his macabre stories such as “Murders in the Rue Morgue” [...]

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Mama and Daddy Remember World War II

My mother underwent a hip replacement last week. While waiting for Mom to be wheeled off to surgery, I had an opportunity to talk with both Mama (Carolyn) and Daddy (John) about their growing-up years in the thirties and forties. Carolyn:You want to remember that in the 30s and later, the iceman brought ice to [...]

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III. Nellie Bly Lands in Egypt

When we last left Nellie Bly, it was November 14, 1889 (see blog entries for Feb. 11 and 12) and she had just departed New York  for Southhampton, England, on an ocean steamer. In the next thirteen days, Nellie crossed the Atlantic, took a train to London, a boat across the English Channel to Calais, France, and [...]

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