Wealthy Americans were aware of the attractions of the European Grand Tour, which had been an institution amongst the European aristocracy for most of the 18th Century. Similar ventures in North America had to wait until the end of the Revolutionary War and the expansion of settlement. The advent of ‘The Fashionable Tour’ came…

My wife and I have visited Cooperstown at least four times, primarily to view the Baseball Hall of Fame. The “downtown” of today’s village of two thousand people is a standard tourist trap: an attraction surrounded by a large number of related souvenir shops and restaurants. In the 1930s, the baseball establishment accepted Cooperstown…

This piece of the Yankee Road story takes place just off US 20, a little west and north of Boston. Walden Pond lies about 5 miles north of US 20 in the western suburbs of Boston. It is definitely a “pond” (61 acres) to those who are used to living near “lakes”, though…

George M. Pullman was born in 1831 in Brocton, New York, a village located on US 20 in Chautauqua County, a few miles southwest of Dunkirk, the original western terminus of the Erie Railroad.i Brocton was called Salem Corners by its early Yankee settlers, but later renamed in honor of prominent local families the…

In 1902, Henry Ford, having been pushed out of his company by the shareholders because he followed his own instincts and not theirs, built what was his second racer, the ‘999’. He hired a daredevil motorcyclist, Barney Oldfield, to drive it in a big race in October of that year. Oldfield had a week…

I recently received a question from a reader about a piece I wrote on the history of the US – Canada border. I share my reply, below. You may find it useful to pull out a map to follow this. You had queried why I felt the border between the US and Canada…

Boston’s professional basketball team is naturally called the Celtics. The great wave of Irish emigrants forced out of their homes by the famine of 1846–50 hit all the East Coast ports, but nowhere harder than Halifax and Saint John, and especially Boston, which became almost half Irish in a very short time, with long-lasting…

Ida was a thirtyish writer and editor, who had left western Pennsylvania in1890 to go to Paris to write about the life of a hero of hers, a woman who had perished in the French ‘Terror’ of the 1790s. She also wrote articles for American publications about life in Paris that were well-received. In…

George Washington’s experiences in the wars against the French taught him the value of irregular tactics in wilderness areas, but his relationships with British officers also taught him that regular army organization was superior in settled areas. In the aftermath of Bunker Hill, when American optimism was at its peak, he was fearful about…

A few years ago, we were traveling in rural Wales and we visited a friend of my wife’s who was living in this little village. One afternoon, she wanted to take her dog for a walk, so I volunteered to accompany her. We went down the road a couple of miles and then onto…