Review: The Wright Brothers

Gehio is 7 years old today. Here's a short book review of one of my favorite authors!

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I opted for the audiobook in 2016 because what more could I want? It's David McCullough reading a David McCullough book! Bonus: It tells the story of two great Ohioans whose name is familiar to many. I happened to be driving to Dayton during part of this and it made it all that much better seeing all the Wright references.
One thing I came away with about this book had nothing to do with airplanes. It was the technological jump made by the safety bicycle (vs the cumbersome penny-farthing). For the first time, people could travel great distances without the need of much money or expertise. It was a huge technological jump that often gets overlooked.
What's fascinating about the invention of powered sustainable air flight is the fact that so many people who had heard of all the dismal failures thought this was simply unobtainable and the Wright Brothers were big fat liars. In fact, a beekeepers magazine was the only periodical to run a story about the Huffman Praire flights near Dayton in 1904.
It is also so amazing that Orville lived until 1948 through bicycles to simple powered flight and finally seeing jet engines and the breaking of the sound barrier. Wilbur died in 1912 of typhoid.
McCullough's voice is sounding his age a bit but as usual, another great work from a great historian.

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Oxbows, Books, and Geocaches

This update has all the things that named my blog  "Gehio", Geocaching+History+Ohio

Thanks to the person who got me into geocaching, Mark Fischer, I was invited to speak at the Oxbow Tuesday Lecture on October 9th to discuss a local history subject of my choosing. The Oxbow is a wildlife conservation group in SE Indiana. Mark recently did a lecture on Geocaching which I attended. My name got mentioned as a local early area history expert for possible upcoming topics.  I haven’t firmed up my material yet but it will be in some way shape or form about William Henry Harrison regarding some myths and legends about his life and ties to the area. I'm going to have to brush up on some public speaking skills!

My reading has slowed down as the weather warmed up. I typically read on my lunch breaks and to be honest there have been lots of new geocaches near my office, so I’ve been indulging in that instead. I’m currently about 3/4 into an interesting book from the 1980s on Tekamthi called God Gave Us This Country. I ran across it by accident at the library.  Who the hell is Tekamthi??? The author insists on using what is believed to be Tecumseh’s Shawnee name before it became anglicized. The Shawnee language is actually a bit lispy and European speakers would remove this from the pronunciation as being somewhat effeminate. Ironic since the Shawnee were pretty fierce. One thing that is a bit jarring is the author insists on using the term “reds” and “red men” throughout the book. These are terms all considered dated and a bit derogatory to modern ears. Otherwise, despite the terrible cover and title, it’s a great read and well-sourced book that was previously unknown to me. In fact, I went ahead and bought a copy of my own just for the source notes. I've already made note of some Harrison info I wasn't aware of that will come in handy for the aforementioned lecture.

On my to-do list is another book I recently became aware of called The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. I guess it could be titled “Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About the Whigs But Were Afraid To Ask”. It’s 1300 pages! Oh, and the print is tiny. At the rate I read it may take me as long as the Whig party existed to finish it. So far, everyone I know that has this book never read the whole thing. Regardless, this doorstop will at least serve well as reference material. Oh and a tip to used book buyers.

I also picked up an interesting old title called The Intimate Letters of John Cleves Symmes and His Family. I've seen reference to this early 20th-century book many times where Cleves is mentioned. Don't get too excited. These aren't like the Harding letters. "Intimate" in this case just means "personal". No extensive bio of this important man to the history of the Ohio Valley exists due to most of his letters and journals being burned in a fire. Some say it was arson. There were many lawsuits against the man due to his questionable land business dealings.  The letters that do exist were compiled here from some of his recipient's collections that survived. It sort of humanizes a person that tends to be just a static character in the story of others without any idea of his personal thoughts. One weird thing I learned. Cleves kept referring to a daughter he called "Nancy". He only had one daughter named "Anna" (who married William Henry Harrison) so that was confusing. It turns out "Nancy" was originally a nickname for "Anna". I never knew that.
I got this and the Whigs Tecumseh from AbeBooks for just a few dollars each with free shipping. Ironically I've learned this has been owned by Amazon since 2008 but Amazon's used prices were very high for each of these. I'll be shopping there more often for good used book deals!

Speaking of geocaching, the reason so many new caches are getting published around town and my reading has slowed is that a major Geocaching event called GeoWoodstock 2018 will be held May 26th, 2018 at Coney Island in Cincinnati. This event is expected to bring over 5000 geocachers from all over the world. In fact, a geocacher from France contacted me about carpooling from their Airbnb since I have a cache near the event. I had to politely decline as I don’t really know my full schedule for that day, but I will be attending! How could I not be with "my people" that day?

In personal geocaching news, I'm currently sitting at find 6,408 and have had some interesting cache runs lately. Lot’s of new FTF’s (First To Finds), including a Wherigo (a first FTF of this type if you will). That makes FTF 101 for me. Mark Fisher and I hit not one or two, but three “tunnel” caches in so many weeks. These are caches where you go into a large drainage tunnel, usually with a flashlight. The photo to the left is (eventually) 400' into a tunnel and about that many feet below I-74. I used to be pretty adverse to doing these. In one of them, I was ankle deep in water. Those were some fun adventures!

See you in June!

Review: The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull

The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull by Robert M. Utley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had a paperback copy of this book in my possession for a couple of years. I picked it up second hand somewhere but never got around to reading it.
I actually haven't even finished the book but I'm on the last chapter and I felt compelled to write a quick review. This book is an amazing account not just of Sitting Bull and his times but of his way of thinking and the Sioux way of doing things. Popular culture has diluted this man and created a caricature of him that's hard to shake but the author does a good job, warts and all. The book is packed full of detail but it is easy to read and heavily sourced. I do however wish the author included more about his time with Cody's Wild West Show.
Near the end, I learned of his friendship with Indian advocate Catherine Weldon and discovered there is a book about her and a movie based on that book has just been released in September 2012 but I'm having trouble locating the 2002 book Woman Walking Ahead by Eileen Pollack at a reasonable price. It also seems like the movie is currently seeking US distribution.
This is one of those books I'll be sad when it ends! Will we ever get a proper movie biopic of Sitting Bull?

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Update to the review posted to Goodreads: I finished this book in October 2017 and did end up reading the informative Weldon book. The movie should be out in 2018.

Review: Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In 2016 I was delighted to learn of the third book from New York Times best-selling author Candice Millard. Her first book Destiny of the Republic, about President Garfield's death, is one of my favorites. Ohio, an obscure President. That's right up my alley. Her second book River of Doubt on Teddy Roosevelt's post Presidential exploration of a river in the Amazon rainforest was like an adventure novel.
I just love her writing style. She really brings history to life in a highly readable fashion. If more teachers taught like she writes, we would have more students interested in how the world came to be, which to me is one of the major points of studying the past.

I will admit I was a bit hesitant to read the new book as the topic is outside my normal historical focus. It definitely has nothing to do with Ohio. It's not American or Presidential and it takes place at the turn of the 20th century. Hmmm.
Based on my love of her first two books I ended up getting the Kindle version and also checked out the audiobook from the library to listen to on my work commute.

This book turned out not to be just a biography on Churchill as a young man, it's also a primer on a war I suspect most people outside England or South Africa don't know anything about, the Second Boer War which implies there was a First I also never heard of. I didn't even know what a Boer was before I read this book. It turns out they are descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of southern Africa. They grew to hate British rule and also treated the indigenous people such as the Zulu terribly. All of this tension resulted in armed conflict with all of those groups. As a student of American history, this sounds familiar.
Given my interests, I saw some parallels. The Boers as the Americans, the British as...well the British imperialists trying to retain a colony, and the Native Africans as the Native Americans caught in the middle trying to hang on to what they had before the Europeans showed up.

Churchill arrived in South Africa in 1899 at age 29 as a war reporter and was captured by the Boer after two weeks during a train ambush. This was a setback for a man who was convinced greatness was his destiny. He remained a Boer prisoner for several months always observing and plotting his escape. It was amazing to me that POWs like Winston and captured officers unlike the average captured soldier here were allowed quite a few luxuries by their captors. They had access to haircuts, a camp store, decent food, and a degree of freedom within the camp. As the book states, this was more due to the Boers trying to show the world that they were not the curs the British made them out to be. They wanted respect in the eyes of the world. This desire certainly was an enabling factor in Churchill's successful escape. Millard covers in exciting detail how young Winston would make that escape alone over hundreds of miles in a hostile land with only a few meager provisions, his wits, and a few sympathetic South Africans.

My overall impression of Churchill from this book was that he was a blue-blooded overly confident and sometimes reckless and selfish man. We see this a lot in history. Men doing things for honor to gain a better station in life. We still see it but now but it's hardly ever at the risk of one's own life in war. He was a product of his time and heritage. Churchill's world would soon need a fearless leader like this. Those unrefined traits were sharpened during this period and came in handy later in helping win WWII.

I have an interesting takeaway mentioned in the epilogue, I had no idea that the term "concentration camp" was introduced by this war. Thousands of homeless Boer civilians perished in horrible conditions after their farms and towns were burned as part of a systematic British scorched Earth policy. It reminded me a bit of the regretful Trail of Tears in the US as well as the horrors of US Civil War campaigns such as Sherman's March. Regretfully we sometimes repeat the worst of history as we would also find out in Nazi Germany in WWII.

Millard really did it again with Hero of the Empire, another New York Times bestseller and a riveting page-turner on how a legendary historical figure got to be that way.

According to her Twitter account @candice_millard, the next book is about the discovery of the source of the Nile. Anything she writes is pretty great so I am definitely looking forward to it from the author of Amazon’s number one history book of 2016.

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Review: Last Stand

Last Stand by Michael Punke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A story of greed, survival, and redemption in America. Punke tells us how mankind can have a devastating impact on the environment and how one man helped turn it around.

This is more than just a book about how American thirst for land nearly destroyed the buffalo and how one man led a cause to halt it. Once again I am reminded of the way movies and cartoonish history books have shaped our views of the past and make everything seem so clean and noble. Most Americans likely believe that mere rugged individuals set out and tamed the wild west in a quest for adventure. Yee haw..the end. That sentiment is partly true but it is not even close to the whole story. Oftentimes history and its cast of characters can be a paradox.

In the late 19th century the West was tamed, or plundered if you will, in part by the robber barons and railroad men of the Eastern US who held great influence over Congress. The frontier men doing the dirty work were generally Army deserters, fugitives, and men who could make more money poaching and panning for gold vs Army life, mining or ranching. Both groups of people knew that protection laws and Native American treaties barely had a penalty and rarely enforced if they could be enforced at all. The robber barons made sure of that via their lobbyists in Washington during the scandalous Grant Administration. I find it ironic that the US Army was sent to patrol Yellowstone and prevent the further demise of the buffalo when just a few years earlier they were the very ones sent to help wipe out the Plains Indian in part by destroying the buffalo which they relied on for almost every need. That policy forced American Indians into the reservation system.

George Bird Grinnell witnessed this all first hand. He was born into a privileged class and could have been another robber baron but instead became a naturalist, author, and editor of Forest and Stream, the leading natural history magazine in the US during a time of wanton greed and reckless over-hunting. Many of the characters such as Grinnell, Teddy Roosevelt and William Tecumseh Sherman, like Daniel Boone before them, would come to lament the passing of the wild frontier and the near extinction of the buffalo, something which they helped cause.

Like all history, context is important and it is difficult to judge the zeitgeist of the past by today's standards but there were people then who found some of these policies and ideas unjust and worked to change conventional wisdom and in some cases redeemed themselves from a deplorable past. To me people such as this are the true heroes of history yet Grinnell, who later founded the Audubon Society, savior of Yellowstone and the buffalo, among other great successes, was a man the NY Times called in 1938 the "father of American conservationism" remains an obscure historical figure.

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Review: Arthur St. Clair: The Invisible Patriot

How do you celebrate Gehio's 6th anniversary? With a review of a book on my favorite frontier General. I wish it was a regular blog post vs a review but June was a busy month.

Arthur St. Clair: The Invisible Patriot by R.W. Dick Phillips
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm very interested in the time period and the subject, so I was excited to find this book. I gave it one star only because I could not give it zero stars. I read through the beginning and was very disappointed. It doesn't appear to be researched well. Phillips goes to great lengths to inform us of St. Clairs lineage and great deeds in order to remind us he shouldn't only be known for his infamous defeat but the author gets loose and repetitious with the facts right off the bat. That didn't instill confidence. Another reviewer mentions the misleading blurb about St. Clair being "President when the U.S. Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance were drafted." and "was America’s first and last foreign-born President". This should read that he was "President of the Continental Congress"... of which there were 14 men, including John Hancock, from 1774 until 1788. The author also asserts that one of St Clair's ancestors built Newport Tower in a pre-Columbian voyage to the New World. That's a fringe theory that's been debunked many times over. A quick internet search shows that carbon dating & other 19th & 20th-century investigation of the mortar dates it to the mid-1600s. It was probably built by Benedict Arnold. No not THAT Arnold but an ancestor, the first Governor of Rhode Island. I thought that was a bit ironic. Stealing the glory of the ancestor of America's most infamous traitor and trying to give it to the ancestor of the General in charge of the worst American military defeat.

So I'm sorry Art, it was my hope...but this is not the modern bio we've been waiting for. Your legacy is still mostly St. Clair's Defeat with the footnote that you re-named Losantiville to Cincinnati. I suppose it's better to be remembered for something than nothing at all.

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Review: A Child of the Revolution: William Henry Harrison and His World, 1773-1798

A short book review on a biography I read in 2014 of William Henry Harrison on the anniversary of his death in 1841.


A Child of the Revolution: William Henry Harrison and His World, 1773-1798 by Hendrik Booraem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book's subtitle makes it clear that this is not a full biography of William Henry Harrison. It just covers the first 25 of his 68 years. Most books about Harrison cover his better-documented life after 1798 such as his second military career and/or his later political life through his Trivial Pursuit worthy death in 1841, so this is a nice addition. The author notes that there is scant primary source material on Harrison's early days. Therefore, much of what is in the book is somewhat speculative at times yet Booraem provides ample evidence to support those assumptions.

What little records there are of Harrison's life before 1798 are obtained from a variety of sources and then compared with Harrison's own accounts written decades later as he was ramping up for a Presidential run. Much like today, folks running for political office like to fluff up the old résumé a bit and cast a better light on some of their more youthful indiscretions. Harrison was no different so we must take his words from the 1830s with some caution as most autobiographical accounts should. For those early gaps, Booraem takes Harrison's words, known events, customs and other evidence of the period and constructs educated theories of some of Harrison's early life and whereabouts. He does a fine job at it.

Any student of William Henry Harrison's life or the early American Republic should consider this required reading to better understand how the son of a well-off slave owning Anglican Virginian planter who signed the Declaration of Independence can be transformed into an abolitionist, a military man, and a politician.

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Review: A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians

A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians by Larry Nelson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't believe I just got around to reading this book that I've seen sourced in other history books many times. I've read a few other captivity narratives but this one is right up my alley in that it mostly happened in Madison County Ohio near Columbus. In fact, when I was in the middle of reading it, I happened to be off work for Christmas break so I took advantage of that timing and combined my hobby of geocaching and made the 90-minute drive to visit some of the places mentioned, including Alder's 210-year-old cabin and final resting place. It's always great when history becomes a hands-on experience.

Alder's 1806 cabin in Madison County

Since Indians in that period had no written language we have to rely on what was told to Europeans and Americans regarding day to day life. Many times that is filtered through misinterpretation, misunderstandings, or prejudice. Alder was captured by Shawnee in Virginia and adopted by Mingo at eight years of age in 1781. He assimilated and was treated well so I think we get a pretty accurate look at his experiences, good and bad. Nelson's version denotes other versions and additions of the story by others in an italic font to what the author believes is the truest account of Alder's life. The actual story of Alder's story is a bit complicated and the author explains this in the introduction.

Alder voluntarily left his adopted Mingo family in 1805 as white settlers arrived after the Treaty of Greenville. He reunited with his birth family in Virginia and returned to Ohio with them and his new wife 1806. He served as a Captain in the War of 1812. After the war, he became a farmer and befriended the famous pioneer Simon Kenton. Alder lived out his days in Madison County Ohio until his death in 1849.

We learn so much about regular life as an Indian in Ohio in the early 19th century from Alder's excellent narrative. Nelson also provides additional footnotes throughout the story that details further what Alder was referring to at times or what he meant when in the vernacular. Definitely, do not skip out on those notes if you get this version of the book.

Alder's grave in Madison County

All in all, this is a very easy read and should be required reading for any student of the history of the early United States and the old Northwest Territory.

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Review: Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero

As previously stated, I've decided to post some of my short Goodreads reviews of 4 or 5-star history books I've read over the last several years. Why? Well for one the work is half done and I don't have to edit them that much. Also, it's a good way to showcase how captivating history can be by praising great history authors and their books.

The first post of 2017 has nothing to do with Ohio history although Ohio played a vital role in the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement during the 19th century.

Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I decided to read this book in May 2016 when it was announced that Harriet Tubman's likeness would share the $20 bill with Andrew Jackson. I really didn't know much about her other than the typical abolition stories most of us get from a grade school history class.

Much of Harriet's story had only been told orally by Tubman and exaggerated by others over the years. Thus, the book is peppered with speculative adverbs such as maybe, possibly, perhaps, etc. I find this to be understandable since Tubman was illiterate, and Larson backs her assertions up with other writers words and letters along with other good source material to fill out the narrative.  The author also debunks some of the long-held beliefs such as putting her number of trips at 13 and 70 slaves feed vs 19 trips and 300 slaves freed. An amazing feat nonetheless. I feel this is a truthful, captivating, and well-written biography, but it's much more than that. It's a story told in context.
Kate Clifford Larson fills in some of the gaps in Harriet's story with explanations of how the class and social system operated in 19th century America. This is crucial in order to understand how enslaved people were able to move about and operate on the Underground Railroad undetected. I think most of us envision the plantation system in the deep South, like Roots. But in Maryland, slaves could be hired out to work on other farms and were even allowed to visit extended family unsupervised for periods of time. Slaves were even permitted to marry free blacks. This wasn't done out of sheer kindness. The children of a slave/freeman marriage still belonged to the slave master. This act was more or less an investment. They knew that if a slave had a strong extended family, they were less likely to run away. If slaves caused trouble, they might be sold to a much crueler master in the deep South away from their family.
As if the moral problems of legal slavery were not bad enough, some slave owners cheated the system as they saw their livelihood slowly disappearing. As abolitionists made progress with Americans on the idea of emancipation, at a certain point selling your own slaves in Northern states became illegal. Instead of freeing or manumitting them at a certain age as the law dictated, some masters would simply sell them to illegal Southern slave dealers and claim they ran away. It was rare for a slave owner to be prosecuted for this.

It is unfortunate that despite Tubman's heroic accomplishments assisting slaves to freedom and later working for the Union Army, she was still quite poor and struggled in her final days and even dismissed by others after her death due to her race and social status. Tubman was a brave courageous woman who did much to help make this country truly "equal". One of America's greatest sins was kicking the can of slavery down the road until finally the lives 600,000 Americans would be sacrificed to end that system.

From what I've read about Jackson, he wouldn't like this one bit, but being famously anti-bank, one wonders how he made it on the $20 bill himself. In fact, you likely would have to get into the second half of the 20th century before you would find a US President who would have been OK with this. Maybe Kennedy, but not with the Jim Crow South in the 1960s. Times and attitudes change and I'll be glad to see Tubman on the $20 bill, even if it is over 100 years after her death.
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Review: The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army

I've decided to post some of my short Goodreads reviews of 4 or 5-star history books I've read over the last several years. I finished this book in November 2014. This seemed like a good one to start with as you will see why...

The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army by Colin G. Calloway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was excited to see a new book on one of my favorite periods of US history. I've read many accounts of this battle and events which were included in other books, as well as "Wabash 1791: St Clair's defeat" by John Winkler that came out in 2012. Both are fantastic and worthy reads on this overlooked era of American expansionism but I feel that Colin G. Calloway's book captures a better understanding of the political and societal background issues in the US at that time while Winkler's 2012 book delves more into the details of the military campaign itself which in my opinion is correctly identified by Calloway as an "American Invasion".

On a personal note, I thought it was interesting that I decided to read and then finish this book exactly 223 years to the day of St. Clair's Defeat on November 4th, 1791. I also just now realized the first book I read on the Shawnee was Calloway's "The Shawnees and the War for America" four years ago. I guess I will be checking out more of his books!

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