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...
Early in his career, Tom Watson was influenced by many leaders of the Confederacy, and he was drawn to local politics. After attending the Convention of 1800, he was determined to run for legislature. He appealed to Georgians as a defender of the old way of life and he was first elected to the state legislation representing McDuffie County in 1882. <br />During the campaign, he discovered...
Liquor, as Edward Ayers explains, took a heavy toll on the South, especially since alcohol became much easier to get as the numbers of towns and stores increased. Often, churches went on the offensive, trying to reform what they saw as the “greatest threats to their moral standards.' In the New South, women had an increasingly important role on church committees, and thousands of younger...
The rapid expansion of the United States westward created a need for postal routes, which were known as “star routes.' Yet, the “very nature' of the western postal service, as Martin Klotsche says, “opened the way for numerous frauds.' The vast distance of the nation kept the star routes hidden from government inspection. The Grand Jury charged the defendants, leading...
In 1882, Oliver Chapman and Loring Chase, founders of Winter Park, erected a 30x65 foot store making it the third building in Winter Park at this time. Both Chapman and Chase decided they would rent it out to Washington D.C. natives, John R. Ergood and Robert White Jr., officially opening the store to the small public of Winter Park in September of that same year. Located at the corner of North...
Oscar Wilde began his American Tour in New York on January 7, 1882 and ended it in Richmond, VA on July 11, 1882. He gave lectures across the nation about aestheticism and his philosophy. Montgomery Hyde points out that although Wilde had received elocution lessons before leaving London, he did not have oratory skills and some reporters even stated that his voice sounded unnatural. <br />The...
Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, was hung on June 30, 1882 and for many days after the newspapers reported his last days, his pre-death speech, his hanging and burial. Many newspapers were waiting for the results of the examination of his brain wondering if he was indeed mentally insane. At the time of his death, he still believed that he was sent by God to assassin President...
Danville was only one of the many places that experienced the development of a newly mechanized and more highly capitalized cotton-processing business. As mentioned in the Promise of the New South, a prominent mill owner recalled that “every city and town and village wanted a cotton mill.' Furthermore, towns took pride in their new water works, which first were established in major cities...
Surrounded by the rushing waters of the Detroit River, Belle Isle is no stranger to the enjoyment people can find from water recreation. The original development of Belle Isle Park's rivers and boating areas is discussed in a report by Frederick Law Olmsted, then America's premiere landscape architect, in his proposal for Detroit in November of 1882. In his original plan for Belle Isle, Olmsted...
In 1882, Frederick Law Olmstead, a landscape architect and designer of fifteen previous parks, was invited to take a look at a newly purchased property in Detroit, MI. As the designer of the first municipal park in America, he is considered the father of landscape architecture. With his pioneering expertise cultivated through years of follow-up work, Olmstead wrote an explanation for future planning...