Eighteen women voyaged with their husbands aboard the Mayflower in 1620. Only four were still alive a year later. I doubt any of them decided for themselves if they would go on that dangerous journey or remain behind, not knowing when – or if – they’d ever see their husbands again. We know very little about most of them; some not even their names. Seventeenth-century women had few choices or rights. Most went from the […]
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UNESCO World Heritage Sites
What do Independence Hall, Yosemite National Park, the Statue of Liberty, the San Antonio Missions, and the Ohio Hopewell Earthworks have in common? All are among the twenty-five UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United States. The Hopewell Earthworks are the latest addition to the list, being officially designated as a World Heritage Site on September 19, 2023, after 17 years on the tentative site list. Shawnee Chief Glenna Wallace delivered the keynote address at […]
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Land Grant Colleges Research
Research is dangerous. I learn things I’d rather not know. Such was the case recently when I was trying to track down information regarding a place I’m using as a setting for a current historical fiction story. The research took me to the history of land grant colleges and universities. There’s a plethora of information on the topic, yet I’ve managed to live many decades without bumping into any of it. Either it was never […]
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Rural Ohio, Circa 1900
Somehow, I inherited the position of family archivist. I’ve hauled boxes full of old photographs, slides, diaries, personal papers, and other items around the country for decades. One of the items I treasure is a simple spiral-bound notebook containing my grandmother’s handwritten recollections of her life growing up in rural southern Ohio. Corna Mae Trout was born in Deavertown, Ohio, in 1890, married George R. Ross in 1913, and died in Clermont, Florida in 1987. […]
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The Old Brewster Farmhouse
Some fifty years ago, my grandmother wanted to tour the places where she grew up. She and Grandpa grew up in rural Muskingum and Perry counties in Southeastern Ohio. This grandpa is one of the links in our family’s connection to William and Mary Brewster of Mayflower notoriety. My husband and I drove her around the places significant to her, stopping at the farmhouse pictured here. Grandma told us this house was where her mother-in-law’s […]
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