I have a lot of respect for people who will not let anything stand in the way of making a living, or chasing a dream. This week, while working on Emmett’s chapter about his sojourn in Sterling, Illinois in 1906, I came across someone who Emmett probably knew — or, […]
As everyone knows (especially here in D.C.), whenever there is a change in presidential administration, there’s a big turnover in political staff jobs. A new president means lots of new job openings, new opportunities. Most of the time, the turnover has nothing to do with the ability of the staff […]
Question: If Emmett suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing that I would have to explain to him about life today, compared to life in the 1910s? Answer: I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. […]
Exactly one week ago, at 2 am, I came out of my writing cave after a few hours of solid writing to take a break, and investigate a strange sound coming out of the store room (which is right across the hall from my home office). I stepped into an […]
Look what came in the mail this week! It is the history of the first 100 years of Stetson University by Gilbert Lycan, a longtime professor of history at Stetson. The book is out of print, but I found a great copy via Amazon from a used book store for […]
For the past week, I’ve been working on the section of the book about Emmett’s graduation ceremony from Stetson University, and searching for Emmett’s valedictory speech. While the archive has a few things from 1904, such as Emmett’s commencement program, Emmett’s speech isn’t there — and unless his Elusive Scrapbooks […]
Earlier this week, we looked at a few of Emmett’s colleagues from his early days in Pensacola. Since then, I’ve had an update on Emmett’s uncle, Walker Anderson Maxwell, from the excellent Sue Tindel of the Jackson County (Florida) County Courthouse. Just to review, here’s the newspaper clip from the last post: […]
Yesterday, I came across this little article, nothing more than a little snippet from a news roundup about weekly goings-on in Washington, D.C. It was something easily overlooked, buried away on the second page of the paper. Actually, I found it about two years ago, when I was busily collecting […]
Yesterday, I visited historic Congressional Cemetery, located on E Street, Southeast, in Washington, D.C. I used to live only about five blocks from Congressional Cemetery when I first moved to D.C. back in the late 1980s. (I’d never visited when I lived on the Hill; I wasn’t into history back […]
We continue with the story of Emmett’s mother, Elizabeth Maxwell Wilson. In our last post, Emmett’s parents were living in Holly Springs, Mississippi, with six young children, renting a house next to Elizabeth’s sister, Lucy Maxwell Meade and her husband, Everard. The Wilsons has been married almost 10 years, with […]
Tell my story. 