A Fashionable Tour Through The Great Lakes And Upper Mississippi

In 1850s America it was extremely uncommon, if not unheard of, for a woman to travel without an escort for her own pleasure. Railroads did not yet reach the Mississippi, rapids barred ships from Lake Superior, and American Indians still inhabited the frontier. Traveling from New York City to Lake Superior's shores, the Mississippi River, and the newly created Minnesota Territory was most definitely not the ideal vacation - or was it? A Fashionable Tour through the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi is the complete daily journal written by Juliette Star Dana, a 35-year-old wife and mother, during her nine-week pleasure tour over three thousand miles of the United States in the summer of 1852. Traveling the frontier roads of rivers and lakes with only a female companion and her teenage son, Juliette sought the scenic water-falls and shorelines along with such man-made sights as copper and lead mines, factories, military posts, and a prison. Juliette chronicles these places and the people therein - American Indians, soldiers, lawyers, and politicians - with engrossing detail and also describes the journey's numerous hardships of accidents, vermin, sickness, and disease. This one-of-a

The story of how Great Lakes Indians survived the early reservation years

Archival images and biographical sketches of common sailors on both sides of the conflict reveal the human side of the Civil War. During the American Civil War, more than one hundred thousand men fought on ships at sea or on one of America’s great inland rivers. There were no large-scale fleet engagements, yet the navies, particularly the Union Navy, did much to define the character of the war and affect its length. The first hostile shots roared from rebel artillery at Charleston Harbor. Along the Mississippi River and other inland waterways across the South, Union gunboats were often the first to arrive in deadly enemy territory. In the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic seaboard, blockaders in blue floated within earshot of gray garrisons that guarded vital ports. And on the open seas, rebel raiders wreaked havoc on civilian shipping. In Faces of the Civil War Navies, renowned researcher and Civil War photograph collector Ronald S. Coddington focuses his considerable skills on the Union and Confederate navies. Using identifiable cartes de visite of common sailors on both sides of the war, many of them never before published, Coddington uncovers the personal histories of each individual who looked into the eye of the primitive camera. These unique narratives are drawn from military and pension records, letters, diaries, period newspapers, and other primary sources. In addition to presenting the personal stories of seventy-seven intrepid volunteers, Coddington also focuses on the momentous naval events that ushered in an era of ironclad ships and other technical innovations. The fourth volume in Coddington’s series on Civil War soldiers, this microhistory will appeal to anyone with an interest in the Civil War, social history, or photography. The narratives and photographs in Faces of the Civil War Navies shed new light on a lesser-known part of our American story. Taken collectively, these “snapshots” remind us that the history of war is not merely a chronicle of campaigns won and lost, it is the collective personal odysseys of thousands of individual life stories.

An account of the famous American author’s visit to a New England retreat. “Anyone who loves the Berkshires will love this book.” —Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author What drew Nathaniel Hawthorne to a remote village deep in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts in 1850? Slip into the fascinating social scene he encountered in the drawing rooms and on the croquet lawns of Lenox’s country retreats. Here, under the benevolent spell of the Sedgwick family, the separate worlds of high-minded Bostonians and high-powered New Yorkers were stitched together by conversation, recreation and even marriage. Nurturing the lively exchange of ideas on everything from art to abolition, Lenox’s cottages played host to a community that enlightened a nation. Luminaries such as Caroline Sturgis Tappan and Oliver Wendell Holmes resume their vibrant lives through the rare photographs and engaging sketches of everyday life in Hawthorne’s Lenox: The Tanglewood Circle, which also includes a delightful retrospective visit from Henry James and Edith Wharton.

The St. Croix River, the free-flowing boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota, is a federally protected National Scenic Riverway. The area’s first recorded human inhabitants were the Dakota Indians, whose lands were transformed by fur trade empires and the loggers who called it the “river of pine.” A patchwork of farms, cultivated by immigrants from many countries, followed the cutover forests. Today, the St. Croix River Valley is a tourist haven in the land of sky-blue waters and a peaceful escape for residents of the bustling Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan region. North Woods River is a thoughtful biography of the river over the course of more than three hundred years. Eileen McMahon and Theodore Karamanski track the river’s social and environmental transformation as newcomers changed the river basin and, in turn, were changed by it. The history of the St. Croix revealed here offers larger lessons about the future management of beautiful and fragile wild waters.