San Augustine has been called the �Eastern Gateway into Texas� for more than three centuries. Many immigrants crossed the Sabine River and followed El Camino Real to the little settlement nestled on each side of this ancient roadway. Alamo-bound David Crockett wrote his last letter to his daughter Margaret from San Augustine on January 9, 1836. Davy�s words echoed the favorable impressions expressed by new arrivals to Texas: �I am hailed with hearty welcome to this country . . . The cannon...

Updated With The Latest Facts And Photos"A Black history buff's dream." --EbonyFrom ground-breaking achievements to awe-inspiring feats of excellence, this definitive resource reveals over 450 "firsts" by African Americans in fields as diverse as government, entertainment, education, science, medicine, law, the military, and the business world. Discover the first doctor to perform open heart surgery and the youngest person to fly solo around the wo...

Though he never reached the lead actor status he labored so relentlessly to achieve, Warren Oates (1928–1982) is one of the most memorable and skilled character actors of the 1970s. With his rugged looks and measured demeanor, Oates crafted complex characters who were at once brazen and thoughtful, wild and subdued. Friends remember the hard-living, hard-drinking actor as kind and caring, but also sometimes as mean as a blue-eyed devil. Married four times, partial to road trips in his RV a...

The Tragedy at the Loomis Street Crossing After five years of intense research, Author Chuck Spinner has written the definitive story of the Naperville Train Wreck of April 25, 1946. He has uncovered the histories of the 45 victims of the tragedy, interviewed two surviving eye witnesses of the event, and talked with survivors and helpers at the scene. His family lived just a block from the crossing where the accident occurred. Spinner was born at St. Charles Hospital in Aurora, Illinois on...

Located near the convergence of the Choccolocco Creek, the Blue Eye Creek, and the Coosa River, whose Native American names pay tribute to the Muskogee who once populated the town, Lincoln attracted early settlers after the Cusseta Treaty was signed with the Creek Indians on March 24, 1832. Andrew Jackson passed through Lincoln on his way to the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, when the town was still known as Kingsville and before it was renamed in 1856 for a famous soldier who fought in the War...

Thomas White spins a beguiling yarn with tales that reach from the misty hollows of the Alleghenies to the lost islands of Pittsburgh. Oppaymolleah's Curse. General Braddock's buried gold. The original man of steel, Joe Magarac. Such legends have found a home among the rich folklore of Western Pennsylvania. White invites readers to learn the truth behind the urban legend of the Green Man, speculate on the conspiracy surrounding the lost B-25 bomber of Monongahela and shiver over the ghostl...

This book is about Greek Americans who have lived or live in Essex County, New Jersey. Greeks first started to immigrate to the United States in large numbers after 1900. This book gives the stories of individual Greek American families. It gives a cross section of the Greek immigrants who come to America between 1900 and 1930. And it gives a cross section of the children of these immigrants.A Greek American community is synonomous with a parish of the Orthodox Church. In Essex Cou...

With Hicksville, local historians Richard and Anne Evers take us on a journey back in time from the area�s 1648 land purchase from Native Americans and associations with Elias Hicks, the Jericho antislavery leader, to its transformation into a thriving twentieth-century Long Island suburb of New York City. Through evocative images and insightful text, we learn how the Long Island Railroad was dead-ended here in the Panic of 1837 and how German immigrants created a village and vacation spa ...

Mount Pleasant has deep American roots going back to the Revolutionary War, when local tenant farmers filled the ranks of General Washington�s Continental army. For years, travel to New York City was difficult, until the arrival of the railroad in 1846 allowed easy transportation to lower Manhattan. In 1893, John D. Rockefeller Sr. began buying land in Pocantico and built his classic Georgian mansion. The massive Kensico Dam in Valhalla was completed in 1917 to satisfy the growing thirst o...

The history of York College of Pennsylvania begins shortly after the Revolutionary War. The college traces its lineage directly to three ancestral schools. The foundation was York County Academy, an English classical school chartered in 1787. The academy merged in 1929 with York Collegiate Institute, founded in 1873. Under one roof, both schools survived the Great Depression. In 1941, the charter was amended to allow two years of college-level courses and the institution became York Junior...

Influx into the Choctaw Nation in the late nineteenth century included the development of a town that began when a wheel-less boxcar was left beside the KATY railroad tracks. That town is Durant. The Catholic Church received a visible, permanent status in Durant with the establishment of Saint Catherines Mission. The mission became a parish in 1912 with the assignment of a resident pastor. By the middle of the twentieth century, new facilities were necessary and, when a new church was buil...

New Paltz was established in 1678 by a small group of Huguenot refugees and their families. These pioneers settled into the fertile Wallkill River Valley with the majestic Hudson River to the east and the Shawangunk Mountains defining the western border. These families endured what today would be insurmountable odds, yet for generations they survived and constantly improved their quality of life. The homesteads of these patentee families still stand along historic Huguenot Street and are t...