Anne Marie Boyce attended church at least once every Sunday. She often went to prayer meetings on Wednesday night. She regularly cooked dinner for ministers. She was steadfast in her faith. But when this “invalid” woman who suffered from Bright’s disease was screaming out in agony during the birth of her 10th child, God was a […]
Cobourg Graveyard Romp Turns Up Few Clues, Just Buried Tombstones
The lawn beside the old St. Peter’s Church in Cobourg, Ontario, is so rough it would be easy to turn an ankle. The cause can’t be roots—only a few forlorn pines and maples ring the periphery. Even so, the forces of erosion haven’t worked their magic to create a level lawn. That’s because the side yard is full of sunken […]
William Thompson Remembered for Strong Personality Flaws
William Thompson was a very practical, honest, hard-working man. But he also had some some annoying personality quirks, friends and acquaintances weren’t impressed with his looks, and his children were scared to death of him. That’s the very mixed portrait of this great American pioneer that emerges from interviews done 80-odd years ago with the people who knew him. The sometimes snarky reminiscences […]
Colonel Boyce Thompson Dressed Down in Senate Hearing
Called before a Senate Committee investigating campaign financing in 1920, Colonel William Boyce Thompson accused Democratic presidential candidate James D. Cox of “making his millions” on Wall Street. “Don’t forget that your candidate has his millions, and he got it on Wall Street,” the Colonel alleged, according to a September 23, 1920 article in the New York Times. At […]
Marie Rose Pickering Thought Her Housekeeper Was the Better Person
Marie Rose Pickering wrote in a Brisbane, Australia newspaper in the late 1930s that her black housekeeper, who came once a week to polish floors, was way ahead of her “in the development of character and personality.” Marie admired how hard her housekeeper, Daisy, worked after walking five miles from the “blacks’ camp.” Marie Pickering went to Australia after her husband, Julius […]
Newspapers Speculated on Mysterious Woman at Ernest Kruttschnitt’s Funeral
Of all the people who attended the viewing of Ernest B. Kruttschnitt’s corpse, none was more shaken than an unknown woman, bent with age, who sobbed uncontrollably at his casket. A report in the Daily Picayune on April 18th, 1906, failed to identify this woman, though it did say she had acted as his mentor. “She stood at […]