Creative History

  This grainy black and white photo with stacked rifles off to the side showing a man dressed in militaristic homespun garb not unlike a Confederate soldier from the American Civil War was taken in early 1862.  That year was one of the peak years of the War Between the States--a year that saw some of that war’s deadliest and most bloody battles; when the fate of the United States of America itself as a nation hung in the balance with every passing day.  And this photo does depict an American soldier--albeit a one-hundred year old American soldier--but what makes this Victorian Era photograph so remarkable is that it isn’t a photograph of a soldier serving in the Union or Confederate armies, but rather, it depicts a man who served under George Washington during America’s War for Independence. That man’s name was Nicholas Gerrit Veeder and just below you can see a colorized version that shows that Mr. Veeder proudly posed in his old blue Continental Army uniform.  Ni...

  When the Continental Congress convened to declare independence from Great Britain during the summer of 1776 things were not looking all that good for the newly minted United States of America. To most observers, both at home and abroad, it seemed as if the upstart Continental Army was about to crumble any day now.  New York City would soon fall to the British army in August and George Washington’s dwindling forces would, that very summer, be sent into headlong retreat across the embattled colony of New Jersey.  It could be said that when the delegates met in Philadelphia to declare independence that a sense of fatalism gripped them all.  It was the venerable and erstwhile Benjamin Franklin who legend has it joked about all of the American leaders ending their days swaying from the end of a British noose. Several hundred miles north of Philadelphia during that July of 1776 in upstate New York near the Canadian border, American General Benedict Arnold then consid...

  A maul is a war hammer.  It is traditionally thought of, in reference to European history anyway, as a medieval weapon.  However, well into the 18th century many of the indigenous peoples of North America used stone war hammers, mauls, to protect their homeland from white settlers and to terrorize their enemies.   In the unassuming suburban town of Wyoming, Pennsylvania in Luzerne County which sits along the banks of the Susquehanna River about five miles north of Wilkes-Barre is a large boulder known to posterity as “Queen Esther’s Rock” often simply called by locals “The Bloody Rock”. During the 1960’a monument with a plaque was erected on this site in the middle of town by local historians to commemorate the supposed massacre of fourteen Continental soldiers during the American Revolution that took place on or near that site by a vengeful maul-wielding Iroquois woman who sought retribution for what she perceived as the unjust murder of her son. The mo...

  On July 5, 1777 Philadelphia’s most widely read daily broadsheet The Pennsylvania Evening Post described the previous day’s Independence Day celebrations in the city as, “A demonstration of joy and festivities.” In an outpouring of patriotic fervor according to the Pennsylvania Evening Post , ship’s in the harbor along the banks of the Delaware River were said to be, “Dressed in the gayest manner with the colors of the United States and red, white and blue streamers displayed.” It was reported that day, that as the fittingly decorated ships approached the city--America’s newly minted first capital city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that thirteen cannon shots were fired--one cannon blast for each former British colony that had only the year before turned newly independent state, part of the loose confederation now known as the United States of America. That night thirteen fireworks were set off in the large green spaces known as the city commons of both Philadelphia, the nasc...