clair057

I was taught early on in grammar school the Liberty Bell was one of our most important symbols.  I'm certain that you were taught that as well since it is considered to be one of our most important symbols and represents what the United States is all about. I really don't dispute the idea that the bell represents freedom, however, I do dispute how it became our symbol of liberty. I would imagine if I sent out a quick little survey to folks nine out of ten would tell me the bell we refer to as the Liberty Bell became famous and became etched into our collective memory when it was rung to announce the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Nice story. It does evoke certain patriotic stirrings, doesn't it? The story is false. It didn't happen. While bells were used to mark the reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 there is no definitive proof the Liberty Bell rang.  In fact, most historians today refute the claim mainly due to the fact that the Second Co...

Claudius Smith's exploits are the perfect subject matter for me to share here at History Is Elementary.  He's a true figure in American history yet he is wrapped in many myths.  For every story you find out about him there are naysayers.  What most agree upon is he lived, he died and somewhere in the middle he robbed a few folks.  Another reason why he's a perfect candidate for me to write about is he represents a segment of history that is mentioned but rarely examined closely. Smith lived in Smith's Clove...an area of New York more than likely named for his family.  The area is known  for its ponds, streams and mountain gorges making up what is also referred to as the Ramapo Valley.  Today the area falls under the jurisdiction of Orange County, New York and the county seat is Monroe - named for President Monroe.  The area also has the distinction of being the birthplace of Velveeta cheese. No joke. During the American Revolution the Smith's Clov...

I've had military memorials on the brain this week.   Perhaps it's because my high school Homecoming was this past weekend.  My last three years of school was spent on a campus heavily laden with military memorials pointing back to the time my school, Woodward Academy, operated as a military school.  Even today there are heavy auras of miltary attitude as you walk across the campus. Most certainly my military mindset derives from a  recent outpouring of support and grief for a local family who lost their son in Afghanistan.  Many citizens of my small town turned out to support the Harper family as they brought their son home.  During the last few days since the touching procession my thoughts turned to how we recognize fallen soldiers and my mind settled on a local park named for an Air Force pilot who lost his life during a bombing mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.  That particular military man, Robert G. "Jerry" Hunter, was a graduate of...

Mammy's little baby loves shot'nin', short'nin', Mammy's little baby loves short'nin' bread... If those lyrics don't immediately bring the song to mind, you can here a version here . It's one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano many, many moons ago. Most people believe this to be a song sung by slaves on the plantation, but it was actually first published with the lyrics I mention above in 1915.  It is considered to be a folk song. James Whitcomb Riley  is credited with creating an even earlier version in 1900. Shortening Bread is a  wonderful mixture of cornmeal, flour, hot water, eggs, baking powder, milk and shortening and instead of baking it you serve it fried.   Shortening is used to make various types of pastry and used for frying foods.  One of my favorite uses that I try to stay away from as much as possible is frosting such as the type of frosting on wedding cakes. Oh my!   What a wicked little pleasure that stuff is.... D...

Sometimes historians can group together a series of events and tag them with an overall identifying name that connects all of the events together such as the Civil War or the American Revolution, but certain events just stand out and beg to be treated special because they serve as pivot points such as the firing on Ft. Sumter or the Battle of Saratoga. Then there are certain events that might not be pivotal but shouldn’t be ignored in the classroom simply because they touch upon so many different instructional moments such as the Mussel Slough Tragedy.  Westward expansion, growth of the railroad including the impact on settlement, muckrakers and their role in the Progressive Era, perspective and accuracy regarding the historical record and even a bit of vocabulary instruction regarding geographic landforms can be handled by examining this little known event in California history. First of all….what the heck is a slough?   On the west coast of North America a slough is def...

I discovered early on in my teaching career that I couldn’t get my point across to students without a map.    I had pull-down maps in my classroom, but I rarely used them because they were mounted over my white boards, and they would cover up other information students needed access to    The mounted maps rarely had the information I needed to show students at the time as well, so I would just draw a quick outline of the United States on the board, fill the map in with whatever I was teaching at the time, and then move on. Recently, I ran across a map source I was unaware of – a resource used by historical researchers, city planners, preservationist, genealogists, and even sociologists. I’m speaking of Sanborn Maps – maps that were created from 1867 to 1970 detailing town and building information for approximately 12,000 towns and cities in the United States. The Sanborn Company was founded by Daniel A. Sanborn in 1867.   The original purpose of the maps was fo...

This past week I performed a little experiment. I threw the word “history” out to various people–friends, waitresses, store clerks, even a couple of surprised strangers–and asked them to tell me what immediately popped into their minds. Various words were thrown back to me– events, dates, maps, wars, battles –and the list goes on. None of the responses really surprised me, but there are other words to parallel with the word history. Words like preservation, remember, and trust come to mind and unfortunately, the words failure, greed, demolish, surrender, neglect, and ignore are on the flipside as I continue examining the winding path of history a cotton mill where I live has taken. I shared the story over at Douglasville Patch last week where I have a weekly column regarding how Douglasville ended up with the cotton mill and how important the mill was to our economic health over most of the last century. You can see my column from last week here . Now I want to share the rest of the...