Dear Bill: The old red blood count has not gone up yet so still have to stay in bed so another laugh for you if you can find it. Your Uncle Will [William Boyce Thompson] and I put on our skis at the old Boulder Chief mine to go to the Basin to spend Xmas […]
Archives for December 2011
William Thompson Confirmed That the Pope Didn’t Have Horns
Late in his life, while traveling through Italy, William Thompson (1838-1900) sought a meeting with Pope Leo XIII. “I thought he and I might sit down and have a confidential chat,” the former mayor of Butte (1895-1897) wrote in a February 20, 1898 letter to the Montana Standard, “but I wasn’t even invited to sit down.” Instead, […]
Bernard Kock Colonized Cow Island With Freed Slaves
History has been brutally unkind to Bernard Kock, my third great-grandfather. Historians use all sorts of pejoratives to describe him — swindler, scoundrel, opportunist — and perhaps with good reason. But at least some of the hostility toward Kock is rooted in the fact that he made Abraham Lincoln look like a hypocrite. Kock convinced […]
The Colonel’s Large Specimens Steal the Show at the American Museum of Natural History
There are no signs to identify the donor of the minerals and ornamental rock carvings left to the American Museum of National History by William Boyce Thompson. Which is too bad, because the Colonel’s collection dominates the cave-like mineral room in the New York museum. He would steal the show. That much was clear when […]
Francis Libby Rowed George Washington Across the Hudson–for Booze
Here’s a story that Francis Libby probably repeatedly told his children. While a soldier in the Revolutionary War, he rowed General George Washington across the Hudson River and back. He received a drink of liquor for his service. Francis Libby, whose grandfather, John Libby, came to America in 1637, wasn’t very old when he partook […]