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Recorded history isn't all that old where I live in Wyoming. I moved here 40 years ago and have known many who came with their parents or were born a few years after their parents homesteaded on the prairies around here. There are still sod homes or cabins with sod roofs standing on the prairies.
Last year was the centennial year for our county, so the local newspaper ran stories on local ranchers. It was very interesting reading, as most of the ranchers around here are on lands that were homesteaded by their parents or grandparents, so the feature articles were like reading history the first time it was published. One guy I know grew up on the ranch a few miles outside of town that his grandpa homesteaded and developed. He mentioned that two of his grandpa's first ranch hands were Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, aka "The Sundance Kid" -- seems they first met while working on his ranch. Harry picked up the Sundance Kid nickname after spending a year in the Sundance, WY jail -- an hour east of us.
The infamous Johnson County War took place in the adjoining county to the west of us -- cattlemen vs. homesteaders. That's also the home of the legendary "Hole-in-the-Wall Gang" that Butch and Sundance helped make famous. And it's the site of many skirmishes that the U.S. Cavalry had with Native Indians, as the Bozeman Trail cuts through our county and follows the eastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains into Montana... where Custer had his "Last Stand". The Indians had driven the Cavalry out once and shut down the Bozeman Trail, but only for a couple years.
One of our county commissioners who has a ranch north of town tells how her grandpa developed the ranch -- selling/trading horses to the Indians traveling through, then selling/trading to the Cavalry when it came through. He did very well.
If you enjoy Old West history, Wyoming is rich with it, as this area wasn't settled until the turn of the century. Indeed, the ruts from wagons on the Oregon Trail are still visible.
Interesting tale of historical doings in a different section of my home state, Goat! I'll have to get over there one of these days. I'm Episcopalian, and would LOVE to visit that church.
Not my home church, but near my home, and a few years younger than Old Swedes:
Since it was an "Anglican" church, patriots wanted to burn it, but it was decided to save it and the continental army used it for a headquarters. The church still has a piece of the original steeple, which has a Revolutionary War musket ball embedded in it. They also have the original deed from 1706 when the church fathers purchased the land on which the current church stands from a local Indian. The historic cemetery contains the remains of many early settlers, and on Old Monmouth Weekend, the "dead actors" dress in costume to represent some of the people buried there and tell their stories.
Same here with the "casting of the net". Monmouth Battlefield is not far, the site of the longest single day of fighting in the American Revolution.
MQ, it's a great church and very cool to tour. In the 1990's they did extensive rennovation and restoration work to prevent the building from collapsing. It was restored to its original condition and added to the register of historic sites. As part of that, they need to conduct regular public tours so you should see when they are doing them and take a tour, or perhaps stop in for a Sunday service. It's a very cool building with a ton of history. Adjoining the church is a cemetery that still contains the graves of many of the founders and early settlers, they also have a reproduction of one of the original "Swedish style" log cabins that used to serve as peoples homes. Some of the neater items:
The communion service set is silver and was smithed by Paul Revere's company. They only use it on high holidays though. The steeple/tower is built to the exact specifications as the one on Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The chief builder of the Independence Hall tower was from Swedesboro and had been baptized at "Old Swedes", the rumor is that he 'borrowed' a copy the plans for the tower and gave them to the church and perhaps even 'donated' some excess building supplies. The story seems to be reinforced because while they kept extensive records of everything else, the only thing it says about the tower is that, "we formed a committee to investigate building a tower". Then a year later there was a tower with nothing else mentioned in terms of plans, fundraising, or receipts for expenses, lol. The organ dates to the early-mid 1800's and is still used today.
If you do head down for a trip, you can spend some time strolling King's Highway through Swedesboro which is a nice little downtown. There are some antique stores, coffee shops, bakeries and a couple nice restaurants. One of the other historical places is a restaurant/bar and is currently being rennovated. It used to be called "Old Swedes Inn" and the building was an inn in the mid-1700's and the building has been in continuous use since then, even as a car dealership at one point. The current owners are renaming it "Tavro 13" but they are doing extensive work to bring the building back to be more inline with what it looked like in the past while doing some much needed updates.
There are also a plethora of farms and farmers markets in the area if you wanted to get a taste of what the area is really all about.
The very last portion of the Oregon Trail (on the last or second to last day before arriving in Oregon City,) ran through neighbor's back yards. You'd frequently hear of someone finding a broken wagon wheel.
Where I live is a Colonial American city and was the second largest city in the British Empire. It looks very, very diff here compared to cities in the Midwest or Western US. In certain neighborhoods you would think you were in the UK. Also, this city was very important in US history.
I live in the early Puritan settlement lands. Bands of early settlers had charters from the King and they came here and cleared the land and built crude shelters for themselves. How they survived the winters, I don't know; there was a huge death rate. March was starvation month because the provisions had run out and there hadn't been time to plant crops. The climate was different from that in England and the crops that could grow were different. They got along well with the native Americans, each helping the other, and the nastiness between them didn't start until a generation or two later.
It got even nastier when religion got carried too far and people accused women of being witches. A few times these women's lives were saved by the colonial governor but later on, women were executed. For nothing. There's a lot of history here, layer upon layer upon layer.
Victoria Texas makes a tolerable claim to be the oldest town in Texas, but Nacogoches appears to win out by most criteria by a couple of years. Victoria may have been the most successful place in Mexican Texas by 1820, when it was the capital of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande.
Named for the first president of Mexico, Victoria is the only US city to share its name with cities in both Canada and Mexico. It also shared its name with two "national" capitals: Seychelles and Hong Kong, as well as the territories of Labuan, Gozo, Tamaulipas and British Columbia, and by spelling variation, EspÃrito Santo.
Where I am now located is the Llano Estacado believed by some to have been named in the 1500s by Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado who, after encountering the towering cliffs of the Caprock Escarpment, named it because it appeared to be a impenetrable wall.
The area includes a lot of recent art and musical history including the city of Lubbock, Texas the hometown of Buddy Holly, Mac Davis, Lloyd Mains and daughter Natalie and a host of other musicians and songwriters, Littlefield, Texas the hometown of Waylon Jennings, Floydada, Texas the birthplace of Don Williams, O'Donnell, Texas the hometown of Dan Blocker, Plainview, Texas the hometown of Jimmy Dean and Turkey, Texas stomping grounds for Bob Wills.
Us Texans can't compare our history to that back east. I once visited a French and Indian War memorial in Pennsylvania. The memorial stone was erected before Texas became a state.
Henry Clay owned my backyard. Literally. Along with my front yard, and all of the acreage of my subdivision, which was developed in the 1930s from land previously owned by the Clay family as part of "Ashland", the family estate.
When I was growing up I lived in Germantown in Philadelphia. The British had an encampment 2 blocks from the future location of my home. George Washington spent the summer of 1793 at the Deshler Morris house a few blocks down Germantown Ave. Gilbert Stuart did his famous portrait of Washington a few blocks away in the other direction. The first American Abolition Society was founded up on our corner.
I was born in New Oreleans, and now live right outside of Philadelphia. I wouldn't no where to begin.
I was born in New Oreleans, and now live right outside of Philadelphia. I wouldn't no where to begin.
My intent here is to focus on events that occured in your current immediate surroundings, say within a reasonable walk from where you live.
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