Why Reindeer?
A few years ago while going through a scrapbook put together by my great-grandmother, I found an odd photo. It showed people dressed in fur, some sleds, and what appeared to be a large herd of reindeer.
Brave Women
Late last year, the Austin Chronicle published a short Texas history trivia quiz. One of the questions was as follows:
Q: After statehood in 1845, the U.S. built a series of around three dozen frontier forts along a boundary that kept shifting westward. Native Americans only attacked one. Which one?
Down the Ohio River
In July 2017, my parents and I went on a cruise down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, near where the Ohio meets the Mississippi…What I didn't realize was that, in making this journey from Pittsburgh down the Ohio River, I was actually replicating—although in a considerably different style—a trip made by the family of my five times great-grandfather, Thomas Longley.