The Erisman Grocery Company
Growing up in Ft. Worth, Texas, I was vaguely aware that my great-great-grandfather, Richard Y. Erisman, had once run a grocery store in the city. As a child, I supposed it was like the grocery stores I knew, where you navigated aisles of food and other products with a grocery cart and took your purchases to the cashier for checkout.
The Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Washakie
I can’t remember when I first learned about the Buffalo Soldiers. As I discussed in my last post, my great-great-grandfather John S. Loud had a thirty-year career as an officer with the 9th Cavalry. I did an 8th grade history fair project on his wife, Kate Mifflin Loud, some of whose experiences I described in an earlier post. My parents even had a painting from artist Burl Washington’s Buffalo Soldier series hanging in their living room. Stories of the Buffalo Soldiers were always a part of my world. And those stories are something everyone should hear.
The Real McCoy
When you’re working with Civil War pension files at the National Archives, you never really know what you’re going to get. A soldier’s file could be a few pages or a few hundred. It could include a simple rejection or repeated special investigations. If you’re lucky, it might include something like a photograph or an original marriage certificate. I’ve looked at a lot of pension files over the years and know to expect the unexpected, but nothing could have prepared me for Lewis McCoy. As this photo shows, it was a monster.
The Only Thing You Can Do Is Refuse To Forget
Guest post by Kathleen M. O'Brien
When I was about 12 years old, my father pulled an old magazine out of a closet and showed it to me. He explained that an article in there described something awful, but it was true and was something I should know about. This was my introduction to an atrocity.