Regardless of your political affiliation, the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the first woman to be the acknowledged Presidential candidate by a major political party calls for a bit of historical reminiscence on the history of the women’s rights movement. Below is a piece distilled from chapter 15 of my book, The Yankee Road.…

Remember those old cowboy movies, with the ‘Butterfield’ stagecoach being chased through deserts and mountains by bandits or Indians? Well, that’s not quite the way it was. A Yankee entrepreneur, John Butterfield, was born near Albany NY in 1801. He had a love of horses and a flair for business, beginning as a Utica…

Deborah Sampson In the Revolution, there were many women who assisted the army directly, such as the story of Betsy Ross and the flag. Deborah Sampson, of Middleboro MA, however, was, at 22, the first woman to successfully pass herself to army recruiters as a male. After being found out and ejected form…

I have completed the drafts for the chapters that will go into The Yankee Road, Volume 2. Like Volume 1, the new chapters have interesting perspectives on a variety of topics and people. All of the chapters lever off locations on US 20, that is, the starting point is some place near or on…

In the late summer of 1886, 25-year old William Crapo Durant was an up-and coming businessman in Flint, Michigan. He was born in Boston, but came with his mother to her family in Flint when a baby. Billy, as he was called when grown, was the grandson of Henry Howland Crapo of New Bedford…

Every American knows, or should know, that the 4th of July marks the birthday of the United States. But the reality is different, as it is in many or most countries, and the actual beginning of the country is more complex and confused. The members of the Congress who met in Philadelphia decided on…

One of the biggest problems with settling the continent was just how large it is. We have to consider the size from the point of those who might be moving around on its surface. Southern North America has three major mountain zones, one running roughly north and south along the east coast and another…

Some Rough Travel Time Comparisons Something that seems to be left out of most accounts of travelling overland across the continent in the mid-1800s is a realization of how long it took, especially for those going west from the Mississippi River valley, and what the introduction of the railroad and then the automobile…

Last week, my wife Jane and I took a 5-day trip into New England for a short break. From Nova Scotia, the drive is a long one – some 500 miles into central Maine. Some Americans don’t realize that North America extends some 900-1000 miles east and north of the Maine border. Mostly rocks…

There is a reason so many old inns and B&Bs along the Atlantic coast proclaim ‘George Washington slept here’. One of the main differences between tourism in Europe and North America in the early 19th century was the development of hotels as a common place for tourists to reside in America. President Washington had…