Two weeks ago, the realization that it was time to accept things I cannot change arrived at the door, around 11:15, courtesy of our mail carrier Jesse, of the United States Postal Service. My dear friend Nancy’s cousin had written earlier that week, asking for my address, because […]
I haven’t been much in the mood to write over the past few weeks. It has something to do with it being August and the feeling of things coming to an end, as it always does to me at this time each year. For most folks, the feeling of Auld […]
The annual Congressional Baseball Game was played last night at the Washington Nationals stadium. I know Emmett Wilson loved the game — he played baseball for his college team (West Florida Seminary, now Florida State University), and for his town baseball team (the Red, White and Blues of Chipley). But […]
Emmett’s best friend, Paul Carter, was the original valedictorian of the Stetson University Law School Class of 1904. But fate — a job opportunity as private secretary to U.S. Congressman William Bailey Lamar — intervened. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for a smart, ambitious 23-year-old not even out […]
I’ve been reviewing the documents for Emmett’s will for several days, going over all of the names mentioned in the file. Almost all of them are familiar. After four years of doing this project, I thought I had a complete list of the folks Emmett was closest to in his […]
One hundred years ago today, almost exactly a year to his death, Emmett wrote his will. I have a copy of Emmett’s original will; the document was typewritten by Emmett himself, on old Banking and Currency Committee stationery that he had saved from his tenure as a U.S. Congressman. Emmett […]
On Tuesday, I posted final grades for the spring semester of my classes. Typically, I take the week in between spring and summer semesters to clean out files, finish last minute prep work, and and prepare for the next set of classes. In addition, I decided to do some Emmett […]
Here is a fantastic, new-to-me, resource that I stumbled upon this morning! What’s nice is that this directory fills in some information spaces between censuses and city directory publications. It lists a lot important folks Emmett ran with (i.e., people who would pay to have their names listed, plus advertising), […]
As promised, I’m following up on the earlier post about the folks at the Smithwick luncheon. I’ll start with information about the host, John H. Smithwick: Farmer, attorney, U.S. congressman, accused check kiter, and survivor of the Knickerbocker theater disaster. When the 1907 article was published, Smithwick was Walter Kehoe’s […]
Tell my story. 