Category: History

This was the sign describing the first exhibit of the Car and Carriage Museum at Luray Caverns. It is a free side attraction (the cavern is pretty cool), but has a surprisingly rich collection of early twentieth century automobiles.

NewMexiKen was disappointed, however, to see that the “first true wheel” was simply a reproduction.

or read it, you will remember the harrowing story Quint (Robert Shaw) tells of surviving the sinking of the cruiser Indianapolis. It was on this date 60 years ago that the ship, which had carried the Hiroshima atomic bomb, was torpedoed by the Japanese. According to the U.S. Navy:

The ship capsized and sank in twelve minutes. Survivors were spotted by a patrol aircraft on 2 August. All air and surface units capable of rescue operations were dispatched to the scene at once, and the surrounding waters were thoroughly searched for survivors. Upon completion of the day and night search on 8 August, 316 men were rescued out of the crew of 1,199.

Shark attacks began with sunrise of the first day and continued until the survivors were removed from the water almost five days later.

The Navy web site includes oral histories with Indianapolis Captain McVay and Japanese submarine Captain Hashimoto. The Discovery Channel has a wealth of material.

The site dedicated to the Indianapolis is perhaps the best source.

It is said that Paul Revere absent-mindedly forgot his spurs and sent his faithful dog trotting home with a note pinned to his collar. A few minutes later the dog returned. The note was gone, and a pair of spurs was in its place.

As Fischer adds, “The reader may judge the truth of this legend.”

The horse Revere rode that night was Brown Beauty, a mare belonging to Charlestown resident John Larkin.

Revere, upon arriving in Lexington, did not say, “The British are coming!” as we all learned. Most people residing in America thought of themselves as British too.

What he said was, “The Regulars are coming out!”

Source: David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride.

Paul Revere had 16 children (eight each with two wives) and, though only six lived beyond early adulthood, he had at least 52 grandchildren. So many Sweeties!

And for all you “freedom fries” people, consider that the father of ultimate American patriot Paul Revere was named Apollos Rivoire. He came to Massachusetts from France as a 13-year-old. Rivoire changed his name to Revere, as his son put it, “on account that the bumpkins pronouce it easier.”

Source: David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride.

Sixty-one years ago today, German military officers failed in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb in a briefcase. Four were killed but Hitler, though wounded, was saved by the heavy wooden table on which he was reviewing maps. This from the BBC —

Adolf Hitler has escaped death after a bomb exploded at 1242 local time at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia.

The German News Agency broke the news from Hitler’s headquarters, known as the “wolf’s lair”, his command post for the Eastern Front.

A senior officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, has been blamed for planting the bomb at a meeting at which Hitler and other senior members of the General Staff were present.

Hitler has sustained minor burns and concussion but, according to the news agency, managed to keep his appointment with Italian leader Benito Mussolini.

…

Von Stauffenberg was arrested the same day and shot. The rest of the conspirators were tried and hanged or offered the chance to commit suicide.

Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.

It was, of course, on this date 36 years ago that man first walked on the moon. Here’s The New York Times report (from July 21, 1969).

On July 20, 1591, Anne Marbury was baptized in Alford, England. America’s first female religious leader, Anne Marbury Hutchinson was the daughter of an outspoken clergyman silenced for criticizing the Church of England. Better educated than most men of the day, she spent her youth immersed in her father’s library.

At twenty-one, Anne Marbury married Will Hutchinson and began bearing the first of their fifteen children. She became an adherent of the preaching and teachings of John Cotton, a Puritan minister who left England for America. In 1634, the Hutchinson family followed Cotton to New England.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Anne began meeting with other women for prayer and religious discussion. Her charisma and intelligence also drew men, including ministers and magistrates, to her gatherings. Soon, she surpassed even Cotton in her emphasis on the individual’s relationship with God, stressing personal revelation over institutionalized observances. By 1637, Hutchinson’s views challenged religious orthodoxy, while her growing power as a female spiritual leader threatened established gender roles.

Called before the General Court of Massachusetts in November 1637, Hutchinson ably defended herself against charges she defamed the colony’s ministers. Her extensive knowledge of Scripture allowed Hutchinson to debate her position on equal ground with her accusers. Yet, her eloquence and intelligence merely rankled judges, who were offended that a woman dared teach and lead men.

After two days on the stand, Hutchinson claimed direct revelation from God. As a result, Puritan authorities banished her from the colony on theological grounds. Refusing to recant, Hutchinson accepted exile and migrated with her family to Roger Williams’ colony of Rhode Island. After her husband died Hutchinson moved to Dutch territory (to an area now known as Co-op City along New York’s Hutchinson River Parkway). There Hutchinson and all but one of her children were killed by Wampage Indians [1643]. “Proud Jezebel has at last been cast down,” wrote Hutchinson’s nemesis, Puritan minister and Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop.

Library of Congress

NewMexiKen sees from USATODAY that the Descendants of Jefferson, Hemings hold Ohio reunion. Seems like a good time to sum up that whole business.

1. Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, died in 1782.

2. Sally Hemings was possibly Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson’s half-sister (that is, Martha and Sally may have had the same father).

3. The 1998 DNA test proved that a Jefferson male fathered at least one of Sally Hemings’ children. There were nine Jefferson males with proximity to Sally Hemings during the years her children were born.

4. In January 2000, a committee formed by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation reported that:

the weight of all known evidence – from the DNA study, original documents, written and oral historical accounts, and statistical data – indicated a high probability that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and that he was perhaps the father of all six of Sally Hemings’ children listed in Monticello records – Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808). (Monticello.org)

5. According to Monticello.org, “Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings’ children: Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson’s 1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other nuclear slave family.”

6. The Hemings family claims Jefferson but is unwilling to permit DNA matching with the remains of a grandson of Sally Hemings.

7. Monticello.org concludes:

Although the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been for many years, and will surely continue to be, a subject of intense interest to historians and the public, the evidence is not definitive, and the complete story may never be known. The Foundation encourages its visitors and patrons, based on what evidence does exist, to make up their own minds as to the true nature of the relationship.

Dave MacPherson won’t be at Disneyland’s 50th anniversary. He wasn’t invited, even though he holds lifetime privileges to Disney parks and a special honor: “First Paying Guest.”

MacPherson, 72, will mark Sunday’s celebration in Anaheim, Calif., from 750 miles away at his southern Utah home, but he holds no grudge and proclaims himself Disneyland’s biggest fan.

“The first of 515 million visitors,” the retired journalist said with pride by phone from Monticello, Utah.

…

He drove his Simplex motorbike to Anaheim, arriving shortly before 1 a.m. to take his place in line an hour before anyone else showed up. Workers still were putting finishing touches on the park and testing jungle noises on speakers.

The crowd steadily grew overnight to about 6,000 people, and MacPherson made sure no one got in front of him. When the admission booth opened, a photographer for the Long Beach Press-Telegram captured him buying the first ticket.

…

Turning around to campus for a class, MacPherson didn’t have time for even one ride. Instead, he visited the restroom and left without as much as a souvenir. A few weeks later his mail produced a lifetime pass for four to Disneyland and other Disney parks as they opened.

San Diego Union Tribune

While reading Rivers of Gold (see below) NewMexiKen checked out the genealogy in the appendices. This was the most remarkable find:

King Manuel of Portugal (b. 1469, d. 1521) first married Isabel of Aragon, daughter of Queen Isabel and King Fernando. She died in childbirth in 1498.

So then King Manuel married her 16-year-old sister, Maria of Aragon. She died in 1517.

He then married Leonor, the daughter of Juana, the oldest of Fernando and Isabel’s daughters (that is, his niece by two marriages).

He had children with all three. What a guy.

NewMexiKen remembers learning that Amerigo Vespucci was just a mapmaker who got America named after him by mistake. Not entirely true.

Vespucci, a native of Florence, settled in Seville in 1492, after a career as a private secretary for various diplomats. He was nearing 40. In 1499, he sailed with one of the first non-Columbian expeditions and explored the north coast of South America, Trinidad, Curaçao and Aruba. Initially, Vespucci agreed with Columbus that these lands were extensions of Asia. By the time he returned to Europe in 1500 though, he thought they were a new continent. Vespucci wrote most enthusiastically about the women he had encountered, which no doubt helped make his reports widely read.

In 1501-1502, Vespucci sailed along the Brazilian coast as far south as the Rio Plata on a commission from the King of Portugal. This was too far south to be Asia. Vespucci wrote, “We arrived at a new land which, for many reasons…we observed to be a continent.” In 1502, the Portugese published a new map showing the new continent with another ocean between it and Asia. In contrast, Columbus continued to believe, until his death in 1506, that he had discovered an extension of Asia.

By this time, because Vespucci had become so well known, two additional letters of his appeared. These have since proven to be forgeries, probably written for fun and profit. They were accepted at the time however, and, ironically, it was one of these that was widely circulated and relied upon by geographer Martin Waldseemüller in his new edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia. In his introduction Waldseemüller wrote: “And since Europe and Asia have received the names of women, I see no reason why we should not call this other place Amerige, that is the land of Amerigo, or America, after the wise man who discovered it.” It was in this publication in 1507 where the new hemisphere was named “America” for the first time. Needless to say, the name stuck.

Meanwhile Vespucci was appointed piloto mayor by Spain, the chief geographer and cartographer for all expeditions to the new world. He died in 1512.

Source: Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, a book that, while interesting, is burdened with so many trivial details about each and every participant, and so many reversals of chronology, that the story is made tedious.

Following up on the Cuban cigar item below, here’s what Pierre Salinger wrote about the Cuban cigar embargo:

Shortly after I entered the White House in 1961, a series of dramatic events occurred. In April 1961, the United States went through the disastrous error of the Bay of Pigs, in which Cuban exiles with the help of the U. S. government tried to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Several months later, the president called me into his office in the early evening.

“Pierre, I need some help,” he said solemnly.

“I’ll be glad to do anything I can, Mr. President,” I replied.

“I need a lot of cigars.”

“How many, Mr. President?”

“About 1,000 Petit Upmanns.”

I shuddered a bit, although I kept my reaction to myself. “And, when do you need them, Mr. President?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

I walked out of the office wondering if I would succeed. But since I was now a solid Cuban cigar smoker, I knew a lot of stores, and I worked on the problem late into the evening.

The next morning, I walked into my White House office at about 8 a.m., and the direct line from the president’s office was already ringing. He asked me to come in immediately.

“How did you do, Pierre?” he asked, as I walked through the door.

“Very well,” I answered. In fact, I’d gotten 1,200 cigars. Kennedy smiled, and opened up his desk. He took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.

Isabel of Castile was born in 1451. Fernando of Aragon was born in 1452. He was Isabel’s second cousin and it took a dispensation from the Pope for them to be married in October 1469 (with the not yet 17-year-old Fernando’s two illegitimate children present).

Isabel succeeded her half-brother Enrique IV as Queen of Castile in 1475. Fernando succeeded his father as King of Aragon in 1477. By signed agreement they reigned jointly.

The King and Queen of Aragon and Castile committed to support Columbus’ expedition on April 17, 1492. The cost was about 2 million maravedis; a good royal wedding in those days cost about 30 times as much. Isabel did not have to hock the crown jewels to fund Columbus’ trip, though she did offer to do so. (In fact, some were already hocked to pay for the war against the Muslims.)

About half the money needed for Columbus was collected from the profit on religious indulgences in just one province. The Nina (Girl) and Pinta (Painted Lady) were provided by the town of Palos as a penalty owed the crown for a crime. The rest was raised by Columbus himself and he bought the largest of the three ships, the Santa Maria, which was shipwrecked off Haiti on Christmas Eve 1492.

Source: Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Emprire from Columbus to Magellan

Animated Atlas: Growth of a Nation. Nothing new, but well done. Takes about 10 minutes to see the whole thing.

Link via kottke.org.

In the 18th century, the British fought France and its Indian allies for possession of what was to become Canada during the French and Indian Wars (1754-63). At the time of the Pontiac rebellion in 1763, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America, wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet: “Could it not be contrived to send smallpox among these disaffected tribes of Indians? We must use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.” The colonel replied: “I will try to inoculate the [Native American tribe] with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.” Smallpox decimated the Native Americans, who had never been exposed to the disease before and had no immunity.

It has been alleged that smallpox was also used as a weapon during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). During the winter of 1775-76, American forces were attempting to free Quebec from British control. After capturing Montreal, it looked as if they might succeed. But in December 1775, the British fort commander reportedly had civilians immunised against the disease and then deliberately sent out to infect the American troops. A few weeks later a major smallpox epidemic broke out in the American ranks, affecting about half of the 10,000 soldiers. They retreated in chaos after burying their dead in mass graves.

BBC

A good short essay on the impact during the War of Independence is the Common-place review of Pox Americana.

Offhand NewMexiKen knows of no other instances in American history where smallpox was used as a weapon. The disease did enough damage on its own. (My own step-grandmother survived it as a child.)

A daughter, now a mom, visits Gettsyburg, an essay all who’ve been to the town and battlefield will enjoy.

At 7, Danny knows the basics of the Civil War. He is mightily impressed with Abraham Lincoln, and anyplace with cannons and something called Devil’s Den has a lot going for it from a kid’s standpoint.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on this date in 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration; Adams, with Benjamin Franklin, was also key in its development.

Adams and Jefferson were colleagues during the Revolution, but fell apart over political differences during their terms as president (Adams 1797-1801, Jefferson 1801-1809). After Jefferson left office they resumed a remarkable correspondence that lasted until their deaths.

Also, on that same day in 1826, Stephen Foster, the first great American songwriter, was born. “His melodies are so much a part of American history and culture that most people think they’re folk tunes. All in all he composed some 200 songs, including ‘Oh! Susanna’ ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,’ and ‘Camptown Races.'” [American Experience]

And “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River),” “My Old Kentucky Home” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Image of first page of Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence with edits.

It was Franklin who changed Jefferson’s original “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” You can see Franklin’s cross-outs on the draft.

Jefferson thought the much more extensive changes made to his draft by the Continental Congress on July 3rd and 4th were “mutilations.”

Although the section of the Lee Resolution dealing with independence was not adopted until July 2, Congress appointed on June 10 a committee of five to draft a statement of independence for the colonies. The committee included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, with the actual writing delegated to Jefferson.

Jefferson drafted the statement between June 11 and 28, submitted drafts to Adams and Franklin who made some changes, and then presented the draft to the Congress following the July 2nd adoption of the independence section of the Lee Resolution. The congressional revision process took all of July 3rd and most of July 4th. Finally, in the afternoon of July 4th, the Declaration was adopted.

Under the supervision of the Jefferson committee, the approved Declaration was printed on July 5th and a copy was attached to the “rough journal of the Continental Congress for July 4th.” These printed copies, bearing only the names of John Hancock, President, and Charles Thomson, secretary, were distributed to state assemblies, conventions, committees of safety, and commanding officers of the Continental troops.

On July 19th, Congress ordered that the Declaration be engrossed on parchment with a new title, “the unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America,” and “that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.” Engrossing is the process of copying an official document in a large hand. The engrosser of the Declaration was probably Timothy Matlock, an assistant to Charles Thomson, secretary to the Congress.

On August 2nd John Hancock, the President of the Congress, signed the engrossed copy with a bold signature. The other delegates, following custom, signed beginning at the right with the signatures arranged by states from northernmost New Hampshire to southernmost Georgia. Although all delegates were not present on August 2nd, 56 delegates eventually signed the document. Late signers were Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Wolcott, Lewis Morris, Thomas McKean, and Matthew Thornton, who was unable to place his signature with the other New Hampshire delegates due to a lack of space. Some delegates, including Robert R. Livingston of New York, a member of the drafting committee, never signed the Declaration.

The National Archives

If you saw the film National Treasure then you are, of course, curious about the treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Here, from the National Archives, is an image of the back of Our National Treasure.

National Treasure is not a bad film for its genre. The most unbelievable thing was Harvey Keitel as an FBI agent. Well, that and an archvist who looks like Diane Kruger.

According to the National Archives, “A reproduction of the Declaration of Independence was used in filming the movie.”