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...
1Thomas Scott was about to be one step closer to his ultimate dream. The President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Scott had an ambition to build a second transcontinental railroad, and even though he would never achieve this dream on Oct. 30 1873 talks began on a deal that would hand over the rights of the California and Texas Railway Company to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. For 10...
The Louisville Central Colored School was the first “black' school built under the direction of the Louisville Board of Trustees of the Public Schools. The new three-story structure, which cost 23,000 and was funded by taxpayers and the new Kentucky public educational system, also responded to a genuine desire of the black community to provide what the local paper called a “sound common...
As a result of the costs of rebuilding after the Civil War and the depression during the 1870s, many farmers saw falling production and prices for their crops, with cotton dropping nearly fifty percent between 1872 and 1877. Other crops formerly produced by slave labor (tobacco, sugar, and rice) also saw steep declines in their prices. In the heavily agricultural South, especially Black Belt and...
“Father has not yet returned. We are a little interested to know whether he had any money in the hands of Clews & Co. whom we hear failed yesterday, or I should say, suspended, but I suppose it amounts to the same thing.” As Blanche Butler Ames wrote his brother in September 1873, he had no idea of the economic downfall to come. The failure of Jay Cooke & Co, one of...
The Virginius was a former Confederate blockade runner which had been captured by the Union during the American Civil War. A Northerner, John Patterson, purchased the Virginius from the government, and, unbeknownst to the New York Customs House, planned to use the ship to take supplies and men to Cuban insurgents fighting the Ten Years' War with Spain. The Ten Years' War was the Cuban...
Representative Horace Maynard of Tennessee presented the investigation into the contested election between Republican Louis Tillman and Democrat C .A Sheafe before the United States House of Representatives. Republicans charged that the Ku Klux Klan intimidated both white and black voters on behalf of the Democratic Party. In that election, C.A Sheafe won close election 44176 to 3810, but the...
A stranger preaching on the steps of their courthouse interrupted the daily chores of the citizens of Staunton on Thursday. Andrew Jackson Kearney, supposedly of Loudon County, had been drifting from city to city, traveling from Harrisonburg to Staunton to spread his religious fervor. A curious crowd gathered to hear the sermon that followed his public singing and praying, eloquently speaking...
As the first Confederate state readmitted to the Union on July 23, 1866 Tennessee never experienced Federal military occupation. As a result, Tennessee was able to get through Reconstruction with relatively few changes to its state constitution. In 1873, a majority-white legislature passed a new public school law mandating separate but equal for black students and teachers, supported by property...
On September 25, the Louisville Courier Journal wrote, “The most interesting campaign now in progress in any state is on the boards in Mississippi.' Why? First, there was no Democratic candidate in a Deep South State, and second, there were two Republicans , one a scalawag, the other a carpetbagger , running for the position. In August of 1873, Adelbert Ames was nominated for governor...