United States

  • Marie Laveau The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans

    When you think of New Orleans, Louisiana, most people automatically think of Jazz music, Great food, Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, but we can’t forget about Voodoo and the Voodoo Queen herself Marie Laveau. She is probably one of New Orleans greatest Historical figures and what we know about her life is very little. Let me explain about Voodoo a little first. I am not going to dwell on it to much right now, maybe in a later post. Voodoo was brought to French Louisiana during the colonial period by workers and slaves from West Africa and later by slaves and free people of colour who were among the refugees from…

  • Founding of New Orleans

    La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of French Louisiana Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha.The first known residents of the New Orleans area were the Native Americans of the Woodland and Mississippian cultures. The expeditions of De Soto and La Salle passed through the area, but there were few permanent non-native settlers before 1718.Louisiana was claimed for Fran [...]

  • Mountain Meadows Massacre

    On September 11th, 1857, a group of migrants travelling from Arkansas to their new home in California, were massacred in a valley in Utah known as Mountain Meadows, ostensibly by a group of Paiute Indians following a siege lasting several days. The Baker-Fancher group totalled around 140 members of an extended family or families. Quite well-off by standards of the day, they were making their way by wagon train with horses, mules and cattle to resettle from Arkansas. Led by Alexander Fancher, known as “Colonel” an experienced man on the migrant route, the train had started out with several smaller parties each from different counties in Arkansas, and had met…

  • The State of Franklin

    Following the American Revolutionary War there were 13 states that had been officially admitted to the Union. The 14th state to try their hand at joining the Union was a state originally called Frankland but later changed to Franklin. In April of 1784, North Carolina ceded an eastern part of their state between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains in what is today a part of Tennessee. When the war was over Congress was penniless and many states owed money to the government for war debts. As North Carolina could not afford to pay their debt in currency, the government agreed to the 29 million acres offered as payment…

  • The early and personal life of Dr. Seuss

    Theodor Robert Geisel and wife Henrietta gave birth to Theodor Seuss Geisel on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, MA. While the name Theodor Seuss Geisel may not sound familiar, it is the real name of Dr. Seuss, that is known the world over. Seuss’s father and grandfather owned and operated a brewery in Springfield that was highly successful and profitable allowing Seuss and his sister, Marnie, to have a happy and prosperous childhood. Prohibition did present setbacks to the family but never enough for concern as the family continued to prosper. According to Seuss himself, it was his mother who he gave credit to for his unique ability to rhyme…