On the short trip from Utica to Niagara Falls, we found license plates from Maryland, New York, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, California, Texas, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, Arizona, Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Ontario. Akalena easily found them all on the map except Massachusetts, which was labeled Mass. We…
A full day at the archives of Fort Ticonderoga, interrupted only by a downpour outside and a lightning strike that hit the maintenance building and exit gate, interrupting electric service for a short time and the internet server for the rest of the day. I got answers to many of my questions about St. Clair’s…
On Sunday we drove upf Mount Defiance, where the British placed cannons that could lob cannonballs into Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Independence, precipitating the departure of the American forces there. From the mountain I was able to get a better idea of the layout of the forts, thanks to the labeled illustrations, as well as…
Today we visited Fort Ticonderoga to get the lay of the land. Every year they focus on a specific year in the history of the fort. This year it is 1774, two years before St. Clair arrived. Although relations were tense between the colonies and the British, there was no war and only a few…
We have spent the past three days discovering the places and events of St. Clair’s adulthood. He lived in Western Pennsylvania from the age of twenty-six until he was forty, then again when he was sixty-nine until his death at eighty-one. It was here that he gained and lost thousands of acres of property, served…
Today, Father’s Day, Akalena’s birthday, and the longest day of the year, we went back in time to 18th century Hannas Town, We learned about lacemaking, the clothes children wore, complete with lead lines to pull them back from the fire or other dangers. Girls’ dresses came with laces and growth pleats so they could…
After the sweltering heatwave in the midwest, we had to turn on the heat to warm up when we arrived at our condominium in Pennsylvania in the pouring rain. We left Cincinnati in a rainstorm, saw a little sun in eastern Ohio, then drove back into the rain near the Pennsylvania state line. We’re at…
First stop this morning was the Evergreen cemetery, where we discovered that the weathered gravestone we thought was Elizabeth Doxon’s was actually for her son William’s. It had a CSA 1861 -1865 on the stone, but I have found no record that he was a confederate soldier. I did find a record of William G….
We all spent the morning in the Cincinnati History Museum. The current main exhibit is transportation in Cincinnati, with a fantastic scale model of the streetcars in the city of the 1940s. In my soon-to-be-released book Ninety Day Wonder, Gene Sinclair passes through Cincinnati, is delayed, and watches a baseball game at the stadium close…
First thing this morning we drove to the Evergreen Cemetary in Newport Kentucky to locate the grave of Elizabeth Nolan Doxon, my great, great, great grandmother. Her oldest son married Arthur St. Clair’s great, great-granddaughter, her oldest daughter married George Washington’s great, grand nephew of George Washington, yet we have been unable to find her…
