Wonderful stories! Reblogged on giffordmacshane.com
In today’s post I will be sharing some letters from women homesteaders in the United States at the beginning of the 1900s. The Homestead Act allowed adults to work land out west in order to own it after a period of time. Their stories are inspiring and enlightening.
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Thanks to the movies and mid-20th century TV, when we think of men's underwear in the Old West, we usually picture the union suit, a garment that looked like a cross between a onesie and today's longjohns, with buttons up the front and a flap in the back to accommodate nature's needs. But union suits weren't … Continue reading Western Trivia: Union Suits & Linens
June 25, 1876. Not quite the “massacre” we learned about in school. So many myths surround this battle, not the least of which is that all of the US Cavalrymen died, George Armstrong Custer among them, and that only Custer's horse survived. Most of the misconceptions are based on wife Elizabeth Custer's memoirs, which painted quite a different picture … Continue reading Western Trivia: Little Bighorn
So you've left your home somewhere in the east and staked out your forty acres on the plains. The government is gonna give you a mule. And all of a sudden, you're a farmer, living off the bounty of the land. Sounds like a great life, right? What you might not have realized before you … Continue reading Western Trivia: The Sod Shanty
In 1492, when Columbus "discovered" America, the estimated number of Native Americans in what would become the United States was between 5 and 18 million. Historians estimate that up to 80% of population loss was due to diseases like smallpox and influenza, to which the aboriginals had no immunity. A 20% survival rate of the … Continue reading Native American Trivia: Population Decimation
Warning! This post examines the history of feeding tubes; if you're easily grossed out, it might not be for you! In one of my novels, a woman falls into a coma after the birth of her child. I needed to know what specific methods there were in the 1880s for nourishing a comatose patient. What … Continue reading Western Trivia: Patient Sustenance
Every fan of Western lore is familiar with the Old Chisholm Trail. The Chisholm Trail originally ran from the Red River in Texas north to Kansas City, Kansas. It was established by Jesse Chisholm, a mixed-blood Cherokee trader, who scouted to find the best locations for his trading posts. Jesse Chisholm The trail’s fame, however, … Continue reading Western Trivia: The Chisolm Trail
When we think of the Pony Express, this iconic picture of a horse and rider is usually what comes to mind. But there’s a serious flaw in that thinking. The bag slung over the rider’s shoulder would have flapped in the wind, and could have panicked a horse. The Pony Express “bag” was actually a … Continue reading Western Trivia: The Pony Express
Billy the Kid (born William Henry McCarty, alias Henry Antrim, Kid Antrim, & William H. Bonney) has often been referred to as The Left-Handed Gun. In 1958, a movie with that title was made and starred the inimitable Paul Newman. The myth began with the publication of this ferrotype: It seems to show that Billy … Continue reading Western Trivia: The Left-Handed Gun
Today’s trivia is a little nugget about the FAST GUN. In spite of what we’ve seen in TV or movie Westerns, gunslingers in the Old West were few and far between. And even fewer of them were cowboys. Most cowboys did carry a pistol or two, as well as a rifle. But a cowboy’s main … Continue reading Western Trivia: The Fast Gun
Gifford MacShane, Author 