Category: Book

Book

The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore

Becky

Though in the midst of reading a book about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, I went to the online offerings of my local library to see if there was anything that could interest me. I discovered “The Woman They Could Not Silence” by Kate Moore and became sucked in immediately.

Elizabeth Packard

The book is the story of housewife, Elizabeth Packard. She was the wife of minister Theophilus Packard, who was a bit more of a free spirit compared to his more conservative religious views. Elizabeth, having been a teacher before marrying Theophilus, felt that women were equal to men. Trouble was this was 1860 and not too many others felt this way.

So Theophilus did what many men were doing in 1860, he began making a case that Elizabeth was insane. Soon he had a majority of the town stating the same, and on 18 June 1860 Elizabeth was carried from her home to the train station where her husband then accompanied her to Jacksonville, Illinois where the Illinois State Hospital was, leaving her six children behind (Theophilus III, aka Toffey, Isaac, Samuel, Libby, George, and Arthur).

What Elizabeth discovered once she was settled in the asylum were many women who had been admitted by their husbands who were perfectly sane. Dr. McFarland, the superintendent of the Jacksonville asylum initially thought her sane, but as Elizabeth began to despise her husband for locking her up, this is when McFarland began to view her has mad, how could she be angry at her husband? I’ve scratched my head many times as this was referenced repeatedly in the book, trying to figure out how obtuse a person could be to not see why she would hate her husband for locking her up.

Life in the asylum goes from bad to worse as she is moved to a harsher Ward. One of the ways that Elizabeth kept her sanity in the asylum was by writing. And it was also the way McFarland found to punish her, he’d take her paper away. She still found ways to write, often hiding her pages within her linings of her clothes, trunks, and even in the back of her mirror. She recorded the things she had seen and heard.

Life After the Asylum

Elizabeth is finally released by the trustees 18 June 1863, being considered “incurable”. Her husband didn’t allow her to return home, taking her to her cousin’s home to live. Theophilus told her she was not to return to her family. Initially she listens and stays with her cousin Angeline, but then after four months opts to defy her husband.

On 20 October 1863 Elizabeth returns home to Manteno, to be with her children. As I read this I remember becoming full of dread, the only way I can describe it is like when you’re reading a Nicholas Spark’s novel and you just sit there waiting for the bad things to happen. This is the same way I felt when I read Elizabeth was returning to her home. You see, before she left the asylum there were rumors that Theophilus was going to send her to a far worse hospital located in Massachusetts, so why would she risk it? Well, easy, a woman loves her babies.

And though it took a while, eventually Theophilus locked her in her room again, without heat, hoping to once again commit her. But Elizabeth outsmarted him with her “four meddlesome friends” as he called them, by obtaining a “writ of habeas corpus” where a person being held prisoner was to be brought before a judge and have a reason to be held hostage in her own home. Theophilus tried to once again convince the judge that Elizabeth was insane. But there was one huge difference this time, the judge made him prove it.

My Summary

Elizabeth Packard was an eloquent woman who made it her life’s mission to prevent women from being incarcerated in insane asylums for no reason. She made it so each woman would have a trial before being committed and truly made a difference. Though her name is not as common as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she did create legislation that helped women all across the United States.

If you are looking for a book that will have you rooting for the underdog and wanting a positive ending, look no further. I’ve tried to highlight Elizabeth’s story but didn’t want to go into details and give it away. The book was nicely done using quotes from many of Elizabeth’s books that she wrote that she initially used “crowdfunding” to produce. Drawings within the book showed you what Elizabeth looked like, her husband and children, along with their house in Manteno.

In the future I plan on reading Kate Moore’s other popular book, “Radium Girls”.

Book

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

Becky

A great way to learn about history is to read. I just recently finished reading the book “Mayflower” by Nathaniel Philbrick for two reasons: I wanted to learn what really happened back in 1620, and I potentially have Mayflower ancestors, so it was a way to read a little bit about my connection (he was hardly mentioned, but in the grand scheme of things, that is good).

From the opening pages of “Mayflower” I realized that Mr. Philbrick did a great deal of research on the book, the number of pages that are dedicated to the Notes section alone testify to that. The book was also not a fast read. Where many books I can read in just a few days, with all the different Indian tribes mentioned in the book from the New England area over the span of 60 years, along with all the key players, it was easy to just slow down the reading just trying to say all the names properly in my head (and who knows if I was anywhere near being correct).

The book highlighted names we were taught in history class, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Squanto, to name a few off the top of my head. But there was so much more that I was not aware of until reading this book, things that I had read about in my genealogy groups in reference to how life in Plymouth Colony really went down as opposed to the sunshine, lollipops and rainbows we learned about in grade school, you know the tale, that Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to survive that first year and that the Pilgrims and the Indians had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast together.

Well, that’s not really what happened at all. Squanto helped, seeing as he had already been enslaved by the English and had traveled to Europe he was able to speak to the Pilgrims when they arrived in Plymouth. The Native Americans did assist in helping the Pilgrims plant their first successful harvest during their first year, and the Pilgrims did celebrate with a feast, but it wasn’t the hand in hand big dinner as we think, it was amongst themselves.

You go on to learn that agreements the original Pilgrims made with the various tribes in the New England area seemed to fade as the next generation took over. This happened on both sides, with the various Native American tribes as well as the Englishmen. They began thinking the Native Americans were evil, so much so, that they would ship them to the Caribbean and into slavery.

As a person who has been working on their genealogy, I’ll confess that I have always been relieved that I have no southern ancestors simply because I dodge the bullet of slavery. But this is no longer the case. I have no concrete proof yet. but I am fairly certain I will eventually find Mayflower lineage in my family tree. But knowing that they could still be embroiled into sending others into slavery has me quite disheartened. I know I am not responsible, but it’s not exactly the thrilling story to tell the others around the holiday table. Especially when it’s something that has been somewhat glazed over in the past 400 years of history.

Mr. Philbrick goes on to write about Prince Philip’s War which was another feature of our history I hadn’t been aware of, which has mainly been taught in the New England area of the United States.

The book really is a good and I recommend if you aren’t familiar with what is more than likely the true story of how the United States began. This book has made me want to read more about the earlier portions of our history to discover the true basis of our country.

The book is still available to be purchased on many online stores as well available in your local library.

Book

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

Becky

They claim when doing your genealogy you should do your best to learn about the history of the area, and that was one of my primary reasons to read “The Johnstown Flood” by David McCullough, his very first book.

Mr. McCullough was able to provide a good amount of history of Cambria County as he began his book by giving background of the area, which fittingly for me was 1850. Andrew and Susanna Blair are living in Cambria County in the 1850 Census with their 2 oldest children (at least known anyhow) Sarah and William. Though they have moved to Bedford County and have most likely passed by the Johnstown Flood of 1889, I learned that the city where my Grandmother (Anna Maria Morgart) grew up, Saint Michael, is located where the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club once stood.

What I Learned

Cambria County in Pennsylvania was created from “Mother Bedford” in 1804 that was a simple trading center until the 1830’s when the canal came to be. By 1835, Johnstown had a “drugstore, newspaper, Presbyterian church, and a distillery”. By 1840 the population was 3,000. By 1850 the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Cambria Iron Works had been established and “everything changed”.

According to the book –
“By the start of the 1880’s Johnstown and its neighboring boroughs had a total population of about 15,000. Within the next nine years the population doubled. On the afternoon of May 31, 1889, there were nearly 30,000 people living in the valley”.

The South Fork Hunting & Fishing Club

The South Fork Hunting & Fishing Club was a “resort” built near Lake Conemaugh (or the South Fork Dam) that had 50 extremely wealthy members (the likes of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Philander C. Knox, and Andrew Mellon, to name a few). The Club was an escape for these men of industry, a place for them to get away and fish, hunt, sail (one of the chapters was called “Sailboats on the Mountain” because Lake Conemaugh, aka the South Fork Dam, was so big they could sail in it).

The Club was chartered on 15 November 1879 in the Court of Common Pleas in Allegheny County, with everyone ignoring the provision that the law stated that they needed to register in the county where business was to take place (which in this case is Cambria County).

The Flood

2,209 people lost their lives over something that could have been avoided. For years people wondered when South Fork Dam was going to break. It wasn’t an if, it was a when. And even just hours before the dam did overflow and “break” someone could have made it so that much less damage could have occurred.

But what if it didn’t overflow? Or break? That is why John Parke, Jr. did not cut a hole in another area of the spillway so the water could have flowed out more safely. It was too bold of a decision, because if the worst case scenario didn’t happen, it would have been the end of Lake Conemaugh, and it was just too risky to go ahead and do.

On 30 May 1889 unprecedented heavy rains began in the area around 11pm, coming from Kansas and Nebraska where they began two days before, washing out roads and flattening farms across the way as tornado-like winds killed several people. But it was an odd storm, where 5 inches rained down at the South Fork Hunting & Fishing Club, only 1.5 inches was recorded for the same period of time at Pittsburgh, just 65 miles away.

But the rain continued to come and despite warnings of what was happening, they were ignored or unable to go through and the worst case scenario happened: 20 million tons of water began hurling down upon the city of Johnstown when the dam failed.

Histed, E. W., photographer. (ca. 1889) View of the broken dam looking from bed of lake, Johnstown Flood, May 31st . Pennsylvania Johnstown, ca. 1889. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2008675504/.
Histed, E. W., photographer. (ca. 1889) Bed of lake looking from top of broken dam, Johnstown flood, May 31st. Pennsylvania Johnstown, ca. 1889. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/92509962/.

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(ca. 1889) The Johnstown flood, looking west on Main Street. , ca. 1889. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2002707062/.

The Johnstown Flood was the first disaster for Clara Barton and the very new American Red Cross.

(1889) Clara Barton’s headquarters, Johnstown, Pa. flood. , 1889. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2002707084/.

The book went into great detail about what happened. Mr. McCullough did his due diligence and did an incredible amount of research on the topic, interviewing many who had witnessed the horror of that day.

In the back of the book all 2,209 names of the people who are known to have perished in the flood are listed and where they are buried. Such a sad event that could have been so much less had people listened.

Book

Book Review: A Race Against Time

Becky

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Recently I was in the mood to read a book, but where my first choice is usually of the chick-lit variety, on this day I wanted to read something with substance.  Not finding anything on my Nook, I opted to go to the e-book choices at my local library to see what they had for me to be able to download on the spot (it was a Saturday night and the “real” library was closed).

The first book listed was “A Race Against Time: A Reporter Re-Opens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era” by Jerry Mitchell.  I instantly downloaded it.  This book blew me away.  So many stories that I remember learning in my high school history class that I thought were solved, weren’t.

This fact astounded me.

The Cases

There were basically 4-cases that were discussed throughout the book and finally brought to trial.  It began with the case of Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.  They were murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for registering African-American’s to vote.  They were killed in Meridian, Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964.  They were shot and thrown into a dam and buried 15 feet in the ground. In the mid-to-late 1980’s Jerry Mitchell, a writer for the Clarion-Ledger began writing about the wrongs done to these 3-men hoping to be able to bring their killers to justice. However, due to a lack of “hard” evidence, they were unable to take it to trial.  Eventually enough evidence is found to convict Edgar Ray Killen who planned and directed the murders of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney.  Killen was found guilty in 2004 and he lived behind bars until he died in 2018.

Since initially the above murders are not able to be prosecuted, the book put it on the back burner and began focusing on the Medgar Evers trial.  Medgar Evers was a black man working for the NAACP, working tirelessly to get African-American’s registered to vote in the South in the 1960’s.  But on June 12, 1963 at about 12:30am, Byron De La Beckwith shot him in the back with a rifle.  De La Beckwith was tried twice, once in 1963 and again in 1964 and both ended in a hung jury.  But in 1994 the case was re-opened and ended in a guilty verdict.  He died in 2001 at the age of 80.

The third case that was brought was for Vernon Dahmer (pronounced DAY-mer) who was another NAACP leader who was killed by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for registering African-Americans to vote (are you beginning to notice a trend?). His house was caught on fire and while he tried to keep the KKK at bay while his wife and children escaped the blaze, he was died of severe burns from the waist up.  His murder was signed off by the Imperial Wizard himself, Sam Bowers, and though 4-different trials ended in a mis-trial due to Sam Bowers invoking the 5th Amendment, in 1998 he was finally found guilty.  He was in jail until he died in 2006 at age 82.

The only Alabama case that was mentioned in the book was that of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963 where 4-young-African American girls were killed whit 20 more wounded.  In 2002 Bobby Frank Cherry was finally convicted of setting the bomb.  He died in 2004.

Why I Was Mad

Why was I so livid when I discovered that these men were put to justice after 20-40 years?  Because I thought they had been punished for their crimes when it happened in the 1960’s.  I never dreamed that these people were allowed to roam free and have lives.  When I read about Medgar Evers death in my history book I had no inkling that his killer wouldn’t be brought to justice until I was a sophomore in college (to put this in a better perspective, a crime committed 10 years before I was born wasn’t prosecuted until I was 21 years old).

The sad part is that white supremacists still roam the earth today.  Just within the past 2 years we had a man walk into a black church and do the exact same thing.  Granted, he has been tried and found guilty, but that is the only difference.  You would think that after all this time that color would no longer be an issue to fill people with so much anger.  But it’s alive and well today.

I Highly Recommend It

If you like history you will appreciate this book.  It is very well written, I like a book that is able to describe the scene in detail so I feel like I am there.  I truly felt transported back to the 1960’s South as the relatives of these men told the stories of each of their lives.

Jerry Mitchell, the author, speaks to the widows of these men who just tried to give everyone the basic American right to vote.  Something to think about as we head into a presidential election year, appreciate your right.