History – His Smile Lit Up a Room and Other Things to Say at My Funeral

The Real Winner of the Battle of Antietam

On Thursday, I took the cousins and Graham to the Antietam National Battlefield, and oh boy. Before we went, I looked up some family ancestry. We picked someone from the Laws family tree and someone from the Settle family tree. Eli’s job was to learn all he could about Charles Foster Settle and the 5thContinue reading “The Real Winner of the Battle of Antietam”

The Revolution Is Here

I collect Civil War, Revolutionary War, and Colonial-era ephemera—nothing too exotic, just old soldiers’ letters, tax receipts, ship manifests, that sort of thing. (Don’t come rob my house, stalkers—I’ve never paid more than $100 for anything.) I had to work this morning before taking the afternoon off to take the cousins to Lexington and Concord.Continue reading “The Revolution Is Here”

Among the Dead I Have Known

This is a series of life sketches and is not part of the daily short stories I have been posting. Lewis McSpadden was born into slavery in a year he could not recall, on a Tennessee farm he didn’t remember to a mother he would not know long. She was from Virginia; the documents sayContinue reading “Among the Dead I Have Known”

The Friendship Quilt

This is a deceptively simple fictional rendering of a story in my family history. It’s meant to be coupled with the “The Littlest Nurse,” and then for further perspectives, you can learn far more at my page on Sadie Bushman. You might wish to read the actual primary sources, as well. It’s worthwhile to thinkContinue reading “The Friendship Quilt”

The Littlest Nurse of Gettysburg

This is a deceptively simple fictional rendering of a story in my family history. It’s meant to be coupled with the “The Friendship Quilt,” and then for further perspectives, you can learn far more at my page on Sadie Bushman. You might wish to read the actual primary sources, as well. The Rebels came throughContinue reading “The Littlest Nurse of Gettysburg”

The Tomb Is Empty

*This is not a short-short. It’s pretty long. Just fair warning. Patience with this, as well. It may read, at points, like a sermon or a polemic. It’s not. Down the hill and up the trail from Otis and Mercy Warren’s plot is a row of headstones, one of which the man notices because ofContinue reading “The Tomb Is Empty”