Paul Revere's Ride

During 1775, the year the American Revolution began, tensions rose between the American colonist and the British army. The situation was most explosive in Massachusetts, where the Patriots were organizing to oppose British rule. In April, 1775, the British general in Boston decided to march his troops to the villages of Lexington and Concord to seize the Patriot leaders and capture their weapons.

Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith learned of the British plans. On the night of April 18, Revere set out on horseback for Lexington and Concord to warn the Patriots. Through the moonlit night Revere galloped, spreading the alarm. “In Medford, I awaked the Captain of the Minute Men,” Revere said, “and after that, I alarmed almost every House, until I got to Lexington.” There Revere warned two important Patriot leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that the British were coming; the two escaped.

Later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made Paul Revere’s ride famous in a poem known by every American schoolchild:

Listen my children, and you shall hear,

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere……

Paul Revere would be famous even if his midnight ride had never happened. He was a superb silversmith, and today his silver bowls and other works may be seen in leading museums.

This website has several images of Revere silver including this one:

It’s a silver tea set that was made in 1799, and presented to Edmund Hart who was the man who constructed the ship Boston. The tea service can be seen at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston

The Donner Party

In July, 1846, a group of 87 westward-bound pioneers made a bold decision. They would take a new shortcut to California instead of using the Oregon Trail. Named for its leader, George Donner, the Donner party was seeking a new life in a new land. Instead, it found disaster.

The new trail turned out to be no shortcut. The trip was hard and slow, and some families had to abandon their supply wagons. The party also had to travel west across Utah’s  Salt Desert. Food was scarce when the party reached the Sierra Nevada mountains in October, much later than it had planned.

The trail the Donner party followed  was called Hastings Cutoff. It was named for Lansford Hastings, a well, known western guide. A book by Hastings praising the shortcut helped convince the Donner party to take the trail.

An early blizzard trapped the Donner party in the mountains. The settlers hoped the weather  would improve, but more snow fell. In December, some party members left on snowshoes to find help. The rest ate their animals and then the animals’ hides. Some of the settlers starved to death. Some survived by eating the flesh of their dead comrades. Only 40 people survived the terrible winter in the mountains.

You can access a teacher’s guide and some other information here and find diary entries here.

John Wesley Powell

John Wesley Powell was one of the most daring explorers of the American West. In 1869, he personally financed and launched a bold expedition to study the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Powell’s four-boat flotilla completed the perilous 900-mile journey down the Green and Colorado rivers in 14 days.

The expedition was so successful that the U.S. government financed a second trip in 1871. This time, the party included photographers, and the images they captured gave most Americans their first look at the splendors of the West. Later, as a member of the U.S. Geological Survey, Powell made more than 30 trips through Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. His detailed reports and precise maps set the standard for generations of geographers.

In 1878, Powell had turned his attention to preserving the land he knew so well. He sought government protection for natural resources and lobbied against irrigation, which he predicted would disrupt the fragile ecology. Powell also worked to preserve the culture of vanishing Native American tribes. He created the first classification system for Indian languages and, in 1878, became the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.

While Powell is remembered for his exploration and preservation exploits it is not as well known that during the Civil War he served in the Union army and lost an arm at Shiloh.

1849

In 1849, Zachary Taylor began his term as President of the United States.   Elizabeth Blackwell became America’s first woman doctor.  Stagecoach service began between independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe in the Southwest.  And the steamship California arrived in San Francisco with the first gold seekers from the East.  

The great California gold rush was onl

Actually the precioius metal had been first discovered in California a year earlier on January 24, 1848.   At John Sutter’s sawmill on the American River, a worker named James Marshall found a yellow nugget of what he thought was gold.  He showed it to Sutter, who said, “Well, it lks like gold.  Let us test it.”   The nugget passed all the tests.   There was gold in California =- mre  gold than anyone had ever imagined.

The news was slow to reach the rest of the US, but by 1849 people by the thousands were hurrying to California from every corner of the country.     They came by ship and they came by wagon train, and they were called forty-niners.  Gold was found all thrugh the mountains and many forty-niners     Gold was found all through the mountains and many forty-niners became rich.   But not James Marshall.  His search for more gold failed and he died a poor man. 

In 1849, when the gold rush began, there were 14,000 people in California.  Three eyars later there were 250,000.

Edgar Allan Poe

“Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

That line from Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Raven” is one of the most famous in American poetry.  Poe is also well known for his short stories, many of them tales of terror and suspense.  He has been called the father of modern mystery and horror stories.

Poe led a short and tragic life.   Orphaned before he was three, he was raised in Virginia by foster parents.  His failure to complete his education and his self-destructive behavior infuriated his foster father, who disowned him.  Penniless, Poe eaked out a meager living as a writer and magazine editor.   In 1836, he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm.  He was devoted to her, but their life was a constant struggle for survivial. 

In the 1840s, Poe won recognition for poems such as “The Raven,” the story of a lost love, and for chilling stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

“The Murders in the rue Morgue” was the forerunner of later detective tales.  But despite his growing reputation, Poe earned little.  After his wrife died in 1847, he was plagued by depression and ill health.  He died when only 40 years old. 

To earn money, Poe editied a gossip column for a woman’s magazine in 1846.

Peter Cooper's Steam Locomotive

On September 16, 1830, a crowd gathered in Baltimore, Maryland, to watch a most unusual race.  A spirited gray horse was pitted against a tiny steam locomotive, the Tom Thumb.  The owners of a stagecoach line had challenged the locomotive’s maker, Peter Cooper, to prove his “iron horse” could pull passengers as well as a real horse could. 

Cooper was an inventor from New York.  He had built Tom Thumb to convince officials of the Baltimore and Ohio Railraod that steam locomotives were practical.   Iron pipe was not available in the US so he used old musket barrels for boiler tubing.   A mechanical blower ssupplied air to the fire that boiled water and produced steam.  The locomotive weighed one ton, but had less hosepower than most modern lawn mowers.

In a preliminary demonstration, Tom Thumb pulled a car with 36 passengers over a 13 –mile  track at an average speed of 10 miles an hour.  Then came the actual race.  The horse was fastest off the mark, but the little locomotive soon took the lead.  Victory seemed assured – until the boiler developed a leak.   Tom Thumb chugged to a halt as the horse galloped ahead.  Nevertheless, Peter Cooper’s demonstration concvinced the railroad officials that steam locomotives were practical, as the railroads began to prepare for the Age of Steam.

Among Cooper’s inventions were a washing machine and a a compressed-air engine for ferryboa

The Miss America Pageant

It began in 1921 as a gimmick to attract tourists to Atlantic City, New Jersey, at the end of the summer season. 

Today, it is a national institution.  Millions watch on television each year as the judges’ decision is announced, a winner is crowned, and a tearful but radiant young woman walks down the runway to the strains of a familiar song, “Here she is, Miss America…”

The first Miss America, Margaret Gorman was just 16 years old when she won the contest in 1921.  In the early  days, the contestants often represented cities rather than states.  Not until 1959 was there a contestant from each state.  Originally just a swimsuit contest, the pageant later added a talent contest and interviews designed to reveal  the personalities and opinions of the women.

Beginning in 1945, winners received college scholarships along with other prizes.  The pageant became a truly national even in 1954, when television first beamed the show across the country. 

The Miss America Pageant has been criticized by people who feel that beauty contest are insulting to  women.   But supporters point out that the contest stresses intelligence and talent as well as beauty.  And the pageant  has survived the criticisims to win a lasting place in American popular culture.

The use of live animals in the Miss America talent competition was banned in 1940, afer Miss Montana and her horse almost fell off the stage.