While several of our military branches can be justifiably proud of over 246 years of service to our nation, one component of the military goes back much further! The National Guard is the direct descendent of America’s first militias. The oldest regiments drilled for the first time on the village green in Salem, Massachusetts, on …
Continue reading “On December 13, 1636 our First “Citizen Soldier” were Mustered.”
On December 18, 1777, General George Washington’s army celebrated the first national Thanksgiving in Gulph Mills and on Rebel Hill. The celebration caused a one day delay in the army’s march to Valley Forge, which General Washington had decided a day earlier, was to be where the army would make its winter quarters. The purpose of …
We all think of Benjamin Franklin as a grandfatherly type who invented and published things, sort of that eccentric neighbor who was everyone’s friend, but there was a ruthless side to Franklin. In 1728, a printer named Samuel Keimer founded the Pennsylvania Gazette, the second newspaper ever printed in the colony. It did not do …
Continue reading “Dirty Business and Politics are Often Bedfellows”
Well, today we say goodbye to Daylight Savings time for 2021. I hope you all enjoyed your extra hour of sleep. Before the middle of the 19th Century, keeping time was more of an art than a science. Time pieces and clocks were available, even common in certain circles but they were notoriously inaccurate. However, …
Continue reading “Ben Franklin DID NOT Invent Daylight Savings Time!”
Catholicism in England was heavily repressed under Queen Elizabeth I, particularly after the pope excommunicated her in 1570. During her reign, dozens of priests were put to death, and Catholics could not even legally celebrate Mass or be married according to their own rites. When James I took the throne upon Elizabeth’s death in 1603, …
Continue reading “Remember, Remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot…”
Wall Street was not always just the New York Stock Exchange, in the 1600’s, it got its name because it WAS THE CITY WALL protecting the Dutch West India Company’s colony of New Amsterdam. In the 1600s, the English and the Dutch were major commercial rivals (Dutch West India Company vs English East India Company). …
Continue reading “That Insignificant Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam becomes New York City”
Catholicism in England was heavily repressed under Queen Elizabeth I, particularly after the pope excommunicated her in 1570. During her reign, dozens of priests were put to death, and Catholics could not even legally celebrate Mass or be married according to their own rites. When James I took the throne upon Elizabeth’s death in 1603, …
Continue reading “Remember, Remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot…”
Following defeats in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the American army was forced to flee into Westchester County, New York (AKA Sleepy Hollow) after having been routed by William Howe’s combined British and Hessian forces in New York City. General Howe has sailed a formidable force up the Hudson River and landed several thousand troops behind Washington’s …
Gulliver’s Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is Jonathan Swift’s best known work, and a classic of English literature but the Irish writer and clergyman didn’t write his “traveler’s tale” as a children’s book. Swift …
Continue reading ““Gulliver’s Travels” is first published on October 28th, 1726″
When people think of Philadelphia, images of Independence Hall, the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, come to mind. Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and for most of the 18th Century the third largest city in the British Empire. At the time of the American Revolution, it was clearly the …
Continue reading “Philadelphia is founded on October 27, 1682”
Michael Carver -- Historical Interpreter/Reenactor 