Pinckney’s Treaty: The Agreement That Opened the Mississippi
PinckneysTreaty For American settlers living west of the Appalachian Mountains in the 1790s, the Mississippi River was more than a geographical landmark. It was a commercial lifeline. Farmers in...
Jim Beckwourth: The Mountain Man Who Became a Legend of the American West
Jim Beckwourth Few figures in the history of the American West lived a life quite like Jim Beckwourth. Born into slavery around 1800, Beckwourth eventually became a fur trapper, trader, scout,...
September 23, 1806: The Lewis & Clark Expedition Returns to St. Louis
One of the watershed events in American history was the famed Lewis & Clark Expedition, a 2+ year exploration of the western territories acquired by the United States from France under the terms...
Remembering Admiral Francois Joseph Paul de Grasse: Hero of the American Revolution
We’ve written about the famous “Battle of the Chesapeake” that took place on September 5, 1781, in which a French fleet defeated a smaller British fleet in a fierce sea battle that took place...
Remembering Euthanasia Sherman Meade, Frontier Physician and Niece of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
When we think of courageous women of the 19th century, among the top ten would be Clara Barton, the Civil War-era nurse who served on the battlefields of the “war between the States,” and who...
September 7, 1857: The Mountain Meadows Massacre Takes Place, A Black Mark on the History of the American West
The history of the American West is replete with stories of atrocities committed by Native-Americans against white settlers, and vice-versa. There is no escaping that our U.S. government failed to...
September 5, 1781: The French Navy Defeats the British Navy in the Battle of the Chesapeake, Setting Up the American Victory at Yorktown
Most Americans know that the battle that effectively ended the American Revolution was the Battle of Yorktown, pitting British General Cornwallis against General George Washington and his French...
August 1876: Thomas Edison Receives the First Patent for “Automatic Printing,” the Precursor of the Mimeograph, and the Business World is Transformed
This month we commemorate the 150th anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of an “automatic pen,” which historians credit as the first step toward the invention of the mimeograph machine....
Wingfield’s War Reshapes Nevada Mining Industry, Following Labor Strife at the Goldfield Mines
Founded in 1902, the town of Goldfield, Nevada experienced a meteoric rise over the next five years to become a center of the mining industry In the United States. By the winter of 1907, Goldfield...
Collis P. Huntington: One of the Big Four” Tycoons of the Western Railroad Industry
Collis P. Huntington was an important American businessman and railroad leader during the 1800s – one of the “Big Four” tycoons of the western railroad industry. He was born in 1821 in...