In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
Citizens of Staunton, Virginia came together June 15, 1819 to navigate the pitfalls of the antebellum economy. Their official business was to take into consideration the depreciation of the notes of certain banks, for the economy was at the bottom of a large dip - the Panic of 1819. The citizens decided that the notes of the State Bank of North Carolina should no longer be received at normal value,...
John Woods, a boy of less than 18 years, was a member of General Andrew Jackson's army during the First Seminole War in Georgia and Florida. One morning during the war, Woods was standing guard as a picket. As the sun rose, one of his fellow soldiers kindly offered to fill his post, while the hungry Woods made breakfast for himself. While he was cooking, an officer approached him and asked him...
In 1818, Estwick Evans wrote an account of his 4,000 mile long journey from New Hampshire to the recently-established city of Detroit. In his descriptions of the Michigan Territory, he includes references to the state of affairs in terms of the academics, agriculture, tourism, aesthetics, and health of the Territory itself. He also reports on the relative health and sanitary conditions of the...
On July 9, 1819, a Negro man violently attacked and brutally wounded the wife of his master, a Mr. John M. Smith of Alexandria, Louisiana, with the intention to kill her. On the same day as the attack, the slave, whose name was not given, was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. By the next day he was dead.
The relationship between slave and owner teetered on a precarious balance. On one...
On the 22nd of April, 1819, I. Darnet wrote a detailed letter to Dr. Henry Jackson, of Athens, Georgia, describing the Americans named in European appointments. Within his letter, he explained that with the advice and consent of the Senate, the President had assigned Henry Preble to the position of consul of the United States for Palermo, Italy. Additionally, Darnet voiced his opinion that he believed...
Upon hearing rumors that the Seminoles were gathering en masse in Pensacola, Florida, General Andrew Jackson and his army invaded and took control of the town, dispersing the Seminole gathering in the process. After the war, General Jackson faced much criticism for his actions in the war, both in the press and in a formal investigation conducted by the Senate; his seizure of Pensacola was not exempt...
Dr. Henry Jackson graduated from the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1802. However, after he tried his hand at medicine and was unhappy as a physician, he became professor of sciences and mathematics at Franklin College in Athens within Clarke County. He set up a science laboratory at the blossoming academy. In the late 1810's and early 1820's, he continued his strong relationships that...
On June 21, 1819, newspapers on the East coast began to report on the men of Rapides Parish, in the town of Alexandria, who had begun to mobilize for war against the Spanish controlling the province of Texas on Louisiana's western border. The only trouble was that the United States government had not declared war against Spain. In fact, the governments of the United States and Spain were currently...
Thomas Jefferson's dream of a truly public university for Virginia came a step closer to being realized when the appointed commissioners of the yet-to-be built university met at Rockfish Gap, in Augusta County Virginia, on August 1, 1818. The purpose of the meeting was to pick a location for the university from three different choices: Lexington in Rockbridge County, Staunton in Augusta, or...