Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia are the sisters, and Massachusetts is their home state. The sisters are born between 1804 and 1809, and all led interesting, if not remarkable, lives. In addition to living through the Civil War, two of the sisters married well-known men (and in that era, women were usually more known for who Read More
Geneature
Homesteading the Plains, Toward a New History, by Richard Edwards, Jacob K Friefeld, & Rebecca S Wingo
Since two of the three authors teach history at the college level, this book is what you might call a scholarly work. It is still accessible for the casual historian, and very informative if your ancestor was actually a homesteader. While they focus their deepest analysis on Nebraska, they look at data from other plains Read More
The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini, by Joe Posnanski
Everyone has heard of Houdini; his name is almost synonymous with magic. That is a point this author makes a number of times in his book. And there have been a couple of popular movies about him, with variable accuracy. This book tries to get at the real story. One important part of Houdini’s story Read More
Encountering Ellis Island, by Ronald H Bayor
This slim book is part of the “How Things Worked” series, and is subtitled “How European Immigrants Entered America”. However, the author describes not only Ellis Island and its predecessor Castle Garden, but also compares Angel Island, the West Coast entry point for many Asian immigrants. When I first started working on my family tree, Read More
Liar Temptress Soldier Spy, by Karen Abbot
These are the true stories of four women who all felt compelled to take action at the outbreak of the Civil War. Two worked to help the Union, two were loyal to the Confederacy. All risked their reputation, fortune, and/or life, and all paid a price for their dedication to their cause. But after reading Read More
Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson
This fictional story of a teenage slave girl is set during the British occupation of New York in the American Revolution. When their mistress dies, Isabel and her younger sister Ruth are sold to a Loyalist couple, and end up in New York City, not long before the invasion of British troops. Isabel’s urge to Read More
Sod Busting by David B Danbom
The subtitle of this slim book is “How Families Made Farms on the Nineteenth-Century Plains”, and is part of a series of books called “How Things Worked”. The focus of this book is mainly Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota, between about 1862 and 1900. And the author does not describe just how farms Read More
Fourteenth Colony, by Mike Bunn
The subtitle of this book is “The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America’s Revolutionary Era”. We have all heard about the original thirteen colonies of the northeast and eastern coast, but we forget that West Florida was occupied by the British at this point in time, as well. While residents of this colony Read More
The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah
If you read “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan, then part of this book will be familiar to you. It details the struggle of a fictional, though representative, Texas farm family, not far from Dalhart, Texas. The second part of the book details what happens to this family when they flee the Dust Bowl, Read More
The Maid’s Version, by Daniel Woodrell
This book tells, eventually, the story of what happened on the night of the explosion at the dance hall in a small, southwest Missouri town. The narrator is the grand-nephew of a woman killed in the blast, and he learns about the incident, and about many of the people in the town, during the summer Read More