A few years ago, my husband Jonathan and I visited the Michigan Fireman’s Memorial in Roscommon, Michigan. I took the above photo at this memorial. I post it tonight in honor of the following dates:
September 29 – October 6, 2019: Light the Night for Fallen Firefighters
October 6 – October 12, 2019: Fire Prevention Week
October 8-10, 1871: Great Chicago Fire
October 8, 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin Fire
October 8, 1871: major fires in Holland, Manistee, and Port Huron, Michigan
October 9, 1871: major fire in Urbana, Illinois
October 12, 1871: major fire in Windsor, Ontario
In honor of Chicago and its firefighters, here is a photo that I took of a Chicago fire boat:
FIRE BOAT
Here’s a little story for you: I learned on Wikipedia that a town by the name of Singapore, Michigan ONCE existed on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Singapore became a ghost town as a result of the October 1871 fires, but it DIDN’T burn.
Singapore, MI was founded in 1836. The town included two sawmills. As one might expect of a town that has sawmills, a forest bordered Singapore.
Well, the fires produced such a great demand for lumber that the businessmen in Singapore deforested the area surrounding Singapore. With the trees gone, the town had no protection from Lake Michigan’s sand dunes. By 1875, the town was covered up by sand!
In my opinion, this is the premise of a Margaret Atwood story.
The English language is inane. I just Googled the capitalization rules from three different style books in order to type the title for this blog post. I’m still not sure if I have the capitalization correct. I couldn’t just Google the phrase itself because this phrase comes from a much longer sentence in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian.”
Anyway, the ancient Romans engineered arch bridges.
You can picnic underneath the pictured stone arch bridge at Tunnelview Historic Site in Western PA (near Saltsburg).
The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) built the stone arch bridge in 1907.
This bridge crosses the Conemaugh River on the side of Bow Ridge. This bridge replaced two other bridges and aqueducts at this river crossing. The bridge survived the Johnstown Flood of 1936. The Army Corps of Engineers built the Conemaugh Dam nearby in 1952 for flood control. This stone bridge no longer holds railroad tracks, but it now provides access to the dam’s east side.
The iron bridge that passes over the stone arch bridge IS a currently active railroad bridge. I took the above photo as a freight train carrying crude oil crossed the bridge and also crossed the Conemaugh River. Keep in mind that the Conemaugh feeds the Kiski River. The Kiski feeds the Allegheny River. The Allegheny feeds the Ohio River. The Ohio feeds the Mississippi River. Think about this as you watch a train full of crude oil traverse the Conemaugh.
Both of the bridges at Bow Ridge cross the Conemaugh River downstream from the dam.
If you cross the stone arch bridge to access Bow Ridge, you will see the remains of the Bow Ridge Tunnel. The ghost town of Livermore, Pennsylvania sits beyond this tunnel, on the other side of Bow Ridge. (The government partially flooded Livermore when they built the Conemaugh Dam and created Conemaugh Lake.)
If you access the Tunnelview Historic Site through the entrance to Conemaugh Lake National Recreation Area, you will see this fantastic sign:
Drunk Elephant
Here- at the Tunnelview Historic Site – you will find a small pavilion, primitive restroom, parking lot, and canoe put-in. You will also see remains of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal. This is where Jonathan and I put-in when we kayaked to Saltsburg twice.
Oh! I have to tell you about the FIRST time Jonathan and I kayaked from here:
We parked here at the Tunnelview Historic Site. We paddled downstream six miles, almost to Saltsburg. We stopped for lunch. It was June, and the current didn’t “seem” all that strong. As per our plan, we set off to paddle upstream back to our car.
Hey, I think that we have been paddling next to that same rock for the past ten minutes. What the – when did the current get that strong?
That’s right – we couldn’t paddle upstream. We portaged our kayaks upriver for a good part of the return trip. We smelled a dead animal rotting in the water. Jonathan didn’t tell me about the snakes that swam past us because snakes scare me. I worried that we wouldn’t get back to our car before the sun set, that we would have to spend the night in the woods, and that somebody would find our car and report us as missing on the river. As I pulled my kayak over the stones on the riverback, I fantasized about the search party that would be sent after us, about our faces all over the news. (We did get back to our car and get the kayaks loaded right before it got dark.)
In hindsight, we should have paddled to Saltsburg, then hired the canoe outfitter in Saltsburg to take us upriver to our car. We talked about doing this when we realized that we couldn’t paddle against the current. Why didn’t we? Because we’re stubborn.
On our second trip, we parked in Saltsburg and let the outfitter drive us to the put-in at the Tunnelview Historic Site. Then we paddled downriver to our car. Much better.
Life is easier when we aren’t stubborn.
Here is the sign that SHOULD have tipped us off that the Conemaugh River’s current “might” be sorta strong at our put-in spot:
Here’s another important sign:
(Here is a close-up of the artist names:)
We haven’t picnicked at Tunnelview or kayaked on the Conemaugh River for a while because we’ve spent so much time this year with the “new” sailboat. However, I really think that you would enjoy your visit to Tunnelview.
As I noted, the remains of the canal and aqueduct at this site were part of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal, which worked in a system with the Allegheny Portage Railroad. From the 1830’s – 1850’s, this system hauled boats over the Allegheny Mountains. Pennsylvania paid to construct the entire thing. Then, after about only two decades, the system became obsolete! I WILL blog about this on some future day.
(This is a redux from the blog that I created with my husband Jonathan, www.jennyandjonathangetmarried.com. I will shortly pull more of my favorite stories out from the crypt. I want to share more of my favorite moments and places with you fantastic readers.)
On September 17, 1862, Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Arsenal exploded.
Most of the 78 arsenal employees killed were young females (teenage girls). The arsenal manufactured munitions for the United States for the American Civil War.
Here are the photos that I took of the marker in Allegheny Cemetery for these industrial accident casualties.
Blogger’s Note: I originally posted this on July 6, 2019. However, today (09/17/19) I learned of Cokie Robert’s passing. So, I present to you my redux of the blog post that Cokie Roberts inspired.
My husband Jonathan and I recently purchased a 35 foot sailboat.
I didn’t grow up in a “boating family.” Neither did my husband. We both grew up in middle-class families with multiple kids and multiple priorities. About once a summer or so, my own parents rented for me and my sisters paddle boats, a rowboat, or perhaps a canoe from a PA State Park boat concession. My dad eventually purchased a used canoe from a boat concession auction.
When Jonathan and I were on our honeymoon, he purchased a kite. He flew his new kite on the beach. He told me that wind power fascinated him. He later confessed to me that sailboats and sailing actually fascinated him since childhood but that he was too shy to mention this to his parents.
We took a few sailing lessons on a Flying Scot at Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park in Western PA. We borrowed my parents’ canoe once. We purchased our own canoe / kayak hybrids.
Jonathan monitored Facebook for postings about boat sales. I learned that prospective boat buyers have no problem finding boats for sale at the end of summer, before prospective boat sellers need to store their boats for the winter. So, on one October Friday, Jonathan drove through several counties to meet the man selling a Flying Scot. By the end of that day, we owned our first sailboat.
That weekend gave us “hot” October weather. We took our “new” Flying Scot to Lake Arthur that Saturday. We rigged our new boat in the parking lot of Moraine’s public boat launch. We sailed and sailed. We noted that the sun started to set and that other boaters headed to shore. We headed to shore. Then . . . the wind died down.
Did I mention that our Flying Scot had no motor? Yeah, this is important. The wind powered our boat. After the wind died, we sat in the middle of the lake.
We sat there for about an hour. Then, Jonathan grabbed the boat’s sole oar and “paddled” us to shore. In the twilight. Then, we had to de-rig our sailboat in the dark, assisted by one flashlight.
That next summer, we returned to Lake Arthur with our Flying Scot and rented a slip at the marina’s dry dock. We sailed again. And again, the wind died on us. We found ourselves becalmed on Lake Arthur, with no motor, again.
Except, this time the wind died due to a very impending, severe thunderstorm. We saw the lightning as we sat, stationary, on the lake. Mother Nature mocked us.
I said a few angry things to Jonathan. He grabbed the oar and, once again, paddled us back to shore.
The storm’s downdraft actually pushed us the last few feet to the dock. We jumped off of the boat and ran through the rain to our truck. Then, we realized that our truck keys were still on our boat! So, Jonathan had to run back to the boat before we found shelter inside of our truck.
Jonathan is very lucky that I sailed with him again after this.
This summer we now have a sailboat docked in Erie, PA, on Lake Erie. I sailed with Jonathan ON THE OPEN LAKE. I have the experience of sitting becalmed on Lake Erie, covered in bug spray and swatting at biting flies. Thank destiny that we now own a motored boat!
After I first sailed, I collected the sailing mishaps noted in historical fiction AND nonfiction.
For instance, Aaron Burr’s only child, Theodosia Burr Alston, boarded the schooner Patriot in 1812. The ship sailed from South Carolina. It never arrived in New York City. History noted Theodosia Burr Alston as “disappeared” or “lost at sea.” Theories and folkore (see Wikipedia) abounded on the fate of “Dear Theodosia.” One famous legend involved pirates. In fact, one storyteller described Theodosia walking the plank to her death.
Now, for the promised 1779 sailing mishap, here is a passage from Chapter Five of “Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation” by Cokie Roberts. This recounts John Jay and his wife Sally’s voyage to Spain after Congress named John Jay as Minister to Spain during the Revolutionary War:
“ Two months later, still aboard the ship and nowhere near Spain, Sally recounted their adventures to her mother. After being at sea a couple of weeks, she heard a terrible noise on the deck in the middle of the night: “We had been deprived of nothing less than our bow-spirit, main-mast and missen-mast . . . however our misfortunes were only begun, the injury received by our rudder the next morning served to complete them.” The ship was dismasted and rudderless, the seas were high, and winter was on the way. A council of ship’s officers concluded tht there was no way to reach Europe under those conditions, so they set course for the island of Martinique. It took a couple of weeks for the winds to get them going in the right direction, but, Sally cheerfully reported, “we are now in smooth seas having the advantage of trade winds which blow directly for the island . . . while our American friends are amusing themselves by a cheerful fireside, are we sitting under an awning comforting ourselves with the expectation of being soon refreshed by some fine southern fruits.” . . . What she didn’t tell her mother was that she was pregnant. Stranded at sea, Sally and John threw a party, surprising and delighting fellow passengers. Finally, at the end of December, the ship limped into port in Martinique, where Sally was able to send off her letter home.”
Cokie Roberts, “Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.”
Just imagine drifting around for several weeks on the ocean in a ship that lost most of its sails. And its rudder. Just hoping that the trade winds would blow the ship to Martinique before winter. With a navigation system from the late 1700’s. And no motor!
Maybe, if this happened in 2019, Sally Jay would tweet a selfie of herself on the disabled ship. “Can’t believe where I ended up. LOL.” Followed by an interview with Anderson Cooper. (Or Cokie Roberts.)
This is the main chandelier that sits above the Benedum’s balcony. I took this photo after the Benedum staff lowered the chandeliers for cleaning.
The Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Pittsburgh opened in 1928 as the Stanley Theater.
Every year or so, the Benedum staff lowers the chandeliers for cleaning. Last month, Jonathan and I attended a theater “open house” held during such a cleaning. We saw the chandeliers up close!
The Benedum staff treated us to a short history talk at their open house.
This spring, author Jennifer Chiaverini released Resistance Women, a novel about the German Resistance in World War II. The protagonists in this novel included Mildred Fish Harnack, a Wisconsin native whom the Nazis arrested for spying. Adolf Hitler personally ordered Harnack’s execution. Resistance Women reached bestselling lists and garnered accolades this summer.
I didn’t read Resistance Women (yet). Instead, I read Chiaverini’s 2016 historical fiction Fates and Traitors: A Novel of John Wilkes Booth.
In case you’re not an American, actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, in April 1865.
“Fates and Traitors” told the story of Booth and these four women who “loved” him (according to the book jacket):
1.) his mother Mary Ann Booth;
2.) his sister Asia Booth Clarke;
3.) his secret fiancée Lucy Hale (the daughter of an abolitionist Republican senator from New Hampshire); and
4.) boardinghouse owner Mary Surratt. The United States government executed Surratt over her alleged role in the Lincoln assassination.
Now, before I get into too much detail about Fates and Traitors, I want to use Chiaverini’s work to explain one reason that I love historical fiction so much.
Chiaverini’s published historical fiction highlighted these families (among others): the Booths, the Lincolns, the Chases (Salmon P. Chase and daughter Kate Chase Sprague), the Grants, and the Byrons (Lord Byron and daughter Ada Lovelace).
The historical characters in Chiaverini books discussed the characters from other books.
For instance, several of the historical figures from Chiaverini’s other books (including Abraham Lincoln) went to see the Booth brothers perform prior to the Lincoln assassination. Several of the historical figures from these books enjoyed reading Lord Byron’s poetry. Several of the historical figures from these books gossiped about Kate Chase Sprague’s political ambitions for her father. Several of the historical figures from these books observed Mary Lincoln’s fine wardrobe. In Fates and Traitors, John Wilkes Booth stalked both the Lincolns and the Grants prior to the Lincoln assassination. In another Chiaverini book, Mrs. Grant observed John Wilkes Booth stalking her.
I learned from my reading that nobody’s family dynamics are perfect.
I personally enjoyed Fates and Traitors. However, the first part of the book moved slowly. I learned about the large Booth family. Family patriarch Junius Brutus Booth Sr. was named after one of the assassins in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Junius Sr. established a highly successful Shakespearean stage acting career in London and Europe. Junius Sr. and Mary Ann fled to the United States to avoid a scandal. Junius Sr. reestablished his acting career in America to great fanfare and acclaim.
The Booth family struggled with one family crisis after another. (Pardon the cliché, but the Booth family created a lot of family drama!)
Three of Junius Sr.’s sons (Junius Jr., Edwin, and John Wilkes) followed their father into acting. I’m under the impression that historians considered Edwin to be a more accomplished actor than his famous father.
Asia raised her own large family and also established herself as a writer and poet. She produced several memoirs about the Booths.
I recommend this book to readers of Civil War historical fiction.
I promise you that I actually blogged today about a woman writer and history. However, if you wanted to read straight history right now, you could just go to Wikipedia or something. So today, I took a page from Sarah Vowell’s playbook and wrote about myself for a few paragraphs before I got to my actual topic.
I grew up without internet access as a country girl in Somerset County, PA. At some point, I got the idea that everyone from Fox Chapel (a Pittsburgh suburb) was rich and sophisticated. When I was in high school, I met this guy who actually lived in Fox Chapel. I thought that the guy was All That because he came from Fox Chapel. (Looking back, he was probably just trying to get by in teenage life, like me.) Anyway, one day he and I and a bunch of other people our age had a discussion about how to keep in touch. The Fox Chapel Guy said something to the effect of, “And of course, there’s always email.” Well, I had never before heard of email. However, I didn’t want to look like a bumpkin. So, I didn’t say, “What’s email?”
In the years since high school, I changed from the girl who had never heard of email to the woman who felt betrayed whenever Technology did not behave the exact way that she expected Technology to behave.
Case in point: my mother-in-law passed away in 2016, and then my own mother passed away in 2018. Both losses devastated me. I announced both deaths on Social Media shortly after they each happened. I felt betrayed by Social Media when I decided that the Social Media reaction to my mother’s death was not as strong as the Social Media reaction to my mother-in-law’s death.
Here’s another example of how Technology let me down: I don’t use Twitter extremely often. However, I thought that I was brilliant because I curated my Twitter feed to follow the PA Turnpike, the National Weather Service, the Pittsburgh Port Authority (since I take public transit to Pittsburgh for work), the local emergency management office, etc. (Also, whenever we travelled through Ohio, I followed the Ohio Turnpike’s Twitter feed that day.) However, on the day that we had a major flash flooding event and I depended on Twitter to plan my trip home, Twitter broke.
(Technology doesn’t always betray me. I’m shy, so I hated it whenever I showed up for a social event and I didn’t see anybody that I knew extremely well. I used to sit alone and feel like a loser. Now that I own a smartphone, I can sit alone, play on my smartphone, and not feel like a loser.)
When I read about history now, especially history from the Industrial Revolution, I pay a little bit of attention to the ways that Technology changed the story. Especially communication-related Technology.
I read part of “The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant).” Julia Dent Grant (JDG) was born in 1826. In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the United State’s first telegram over a wire from Washington to Baltimore. (Congress partially funded this.) In 1845, JDG’s father, Frederick Dent, travelled from their home in St. Louis to Washington for business. He sent a telegraph to Baltimore. JDG wrote that her father received an answer within an hour and that “it savored of magic.” The event was such a big deal that Frederick Dent brought the telegraph repeater tape back home to St. Louis to show the family.
Now I’m going to skip ahead in the memoirs to 1851. At this point in the memoirs, JDG is married to Ulysses S. Grant and they have an infant son. Julia visited family in St. Louis while her husband was stationed at Sackets Harbor, near Watertown, in New York State. JDG planned to telegraph her husband from St. Louis, and then travel with her nurse to Detroit. Then, she would release her nurse and meet her husband in Detroit. Finally, she would travel with her husband from Detroit to Sackets Harbor. I am under the impression that the trip from St. Louis to Detroit to Watertown was all by train.
Well, JDG telegraphed her husband in St. Louis per the plan. She left St. Louis and travelled with her nurse to Detroit. She dismissed her nurse and waited for her husband in Detroit. Her husband never showed up. JDG eventually travelled alone with her baby to Buffalo, hoping to meet her husband there. Her husband wasn’t in Buffalo, so she continued on the train to Watertown. From Watertown, she had to hire a carriage (the Uber of the 1800’s), and travel to Madison Barracks, the military installation at Sackets Harbor. The entrance to Madison Barracks was closed, so she had to yell to get a sentry’s attention.
The telegram that JDG sent to her husband from St. Louis arrived at Sackets Harbor IN THE NEXT DAY’S MAIL.
That’s right – at some point in the journey, the telegram failed to perform its basic function as a telegram. The telegram became snail mail.
After JDG’s husband was promoted during the Civil War, he travelled with his very own personal telegraph operator. (In fact, the Grants learned about President Lincoln’s assassination through a personal telegraph received by the personal telegraph operator.)
By the end of the Civl War, the Grants had come a long way since their days of “snail-mail telegrams.”
Other people have actually written entire books about how telegraphs and semaphores affected the Civl War.
Here’s one of my favorite parts of JDG’s memoirs: At one point during the war, JDG asked her father, Frederick Grant, why the country didn’t “make a new Constitution since this is such an enigma – one to suit the times, you know. It is so different now. We have steamers, railroads, telegraphs, etc.“
I just find this so fascinating because JDG witnessed her country’s tremendous changes that resulted from Technology. She wondered how all of these Technology changes affected her country.
I, personally, spend a lot of time wondering about how Communication Technology in general – the telegraph, the internet, whatever – changed our national culture and also changed each of us as people.
This month, I committed to “inundating” my blog with posts about women writers before I had a complete list of blog subjects.
I have certain women that I will name by the end of the month.
In the meantime, I brainstormed a list of places and events that interest me so that I can develop more blog post topics for you readers.
I wrote on this list “Oregon Trail.”
The Oregon Trail existed in the 1800’s to connect Missouri to Oregon. The over 2,000-mile trail served wagon travelers as they journey from the American Midwest to the Pacific Northwest.
Now, once upon a time, developers created a computer game titled . . . The Oregon Trail. This game intended to teach school students about the real Oregon Trail. From what I understand, developers released several versions of this game.
Now, keep in mind that when I was a kid, I didn’t know anybody who had internet access in their own homes. My own family owned no video gaming system or computer except for a Texas Instrument TI 99/4A.
My dad taught high school. Each summer, he brought home the Apple IIc from his classroom. He permitted us kids to “work” on this computer.
Well, my sisters and I spent hours using this Apple for two particular programs . . . Print Shop and The Oregon Trail.
(I shall henceforth refer to The Oregon Trail computer game as “OC.”)
Here’s a brief explanation of OC for those not familiar with the game:
From what I remember, OC competitors played as a fictional family traveling in a Conestoga wagon from Missouri to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. At the beginning of the journey, the family received a budget of “points” and used these points to purchase supplies. The family made decisions on when to cross rivers (such as the Burnt River) based on river depth, and how fast to travel based on family health. Incorrect decisions could result in family members dying on the trail. If the competitors didn’t reach Oregon by winter, the family faced starvation in the mountains. Incorrect decisions resulted in the deaths of family members.Family members could die from cholera, snakebite, typhoid fever, dysentery, diptheria, measles, and broken bones. Competitors could purchase more food at such places as Fort Laramie and Fort Walla Walla. Competitors attempted to leave Missouri in the spring and reach Oregon before December.
If we competitors lost every single family member before the wagon reached Oregon, then we got to create a tombstone for our family along the trail. During future game attempts, we could travel past the tombstones that we created during prior games.
We played OC so often that we learned how to get our entire family to Oregon alive, and receive high final scores. We played OC so often that I got bored with bringing my entire family to Oregon alive.
So, then I purposely played OC with the sole intent of killing off my OC family as quickly and efficiently as possible. I created a series of tombstones along the trail on my dad’s classroom copy of The Oregon Trail.
Since I have such fond memories of playing OC, I decided to see if I could discover any women writers who actually travelled on the real Oregon Trail.
So this week, I Googled “Oregon Trail,” “woman,” and “writer.”
I found . . . Abigail Scott Duniway.
Duniway was born Abigail Scott in Illinois in 1834. In March 1852, when Duniway was a teenager, she travelled with her parents and eight siblings along the real Oregon Trail. Her mother died of cholera near Fort Laramie. Her younger brother, three-year-old Willie, died along the Burnt River. Duniway’s remaining family reached the Willamette Valley in October.
Duniway’s Oregon Trail diary now resides with the University of Oregon. Duniway later wrote several fiction novels about pioneers, including pioneer women.
Duniway married Benjamin Duniway. Through a series of misfortunes, Abigail Duniway ended up as the breadwinner in a family that included her disabled husband and several children. She learned the struggles of trying to make ends meet on an uneven playing field. She published her own weekly newspaper, The New Northwest, that addressed women’s issues, including women’s suffrage.
Now, Duniway’s own brother, Harvey W. Scott, worked as the editorialist for The Oregonian newspaper. I learned that the brother and sister butted heads through their respective newspapers on the issue of women’s suffrage.
“Writing always was our forte,” Abigail Duniway announced in her first issue of The New Northwest. “If we had been a man,” she added, “we’d have had an editor’s position and handsome salary at twenty-one.”
Touche.
I’m sure that students in Oregon know all about Abigail Scott Duniway. However, I’m from Pennsylvania. I just learned about Duniway this week.
I’m glad that I did a five minute Google search to learn about a woman who actually lived The Oregon Trail!
This blog has kept me motivated ever since I learned last summer that my mom was sick. I’m glad that you readers have reached out to me with kind words. Please continue to reach out.
I read today that a New York City-based organization is going to erect a statue of Nellie Bly on Roosevelt Island.
Have you ever heard of Nellie Bly? This was the pen name for investigative journalist Elizabeth Cochran. Bly was born in Armstrong County, PA, in 1864. Bly started her journalism career in Pittsburgh in the 1880’s. She got bored with her Pittsburgh gig, moved to New York City, and begged Joseph Pulitzer to give her a job at the New York World.
In 1887, Bly convinced law enforcement officers that she suffered from a mental illness in order to gain admittance to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) in New York. Bly remained as a patient there for ten days. She reported on the institution’s abhorrent conditions in an expose for the World.
Bly also travelled around the actual world as a reporter for the World.
Here’s a link to the Washington Post story that I read today about Nellie Bly’s investigative work, and on her pending statue.
Even though Bly was a pioneering woman from Western PA, I didn’t learn about her at my own school in Western PA. I found out about her by accident when I was about ten or twelve and I read one of my mom’s old junior high textbooks from the 1960’s.
Years later, my husband and I travelled to Apollo, PA, to see the Victorian house where Jimmy Stuart’s maternal grandparents once lived. By coincidence, we parked along the street in front of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker for Nellie Bly. The marker commemorated Bly’s own childhood home.
You can read all about Bly and her remarkable career on Wikipedia.
Here’s the thing that first caught my attention about Nellie Bly when I was a kid: Bly was born into relative privilege. Her father was a successful merchant and community leader. Bly received an elite education for a woman of that time. However, when Bly’s father passed away, Bly and her mother struggled financially. Bly and her mother couldn’t easily go out and get their own jobs.
Now, I know of people who claim on Facebook that women didn’t work outside of the house in the “olden days.” Women certainly did work outside of the house in the 1800’s. Women earned their own incomes doing sewing, housekeeping, domestic work, laundry, childcare, nursing, teaching, acting, agricultural work, factory work, sex work, etc. (And of course, enslaved women worked for no compensation!) However, “privileged” women of a high social status had very few options for earning their own incomes without being ostracized by their networks.
(In fact, I read that after Dolley Madison’s first husband, a lawyer, died in Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 but before she married James Madison a year later, she had to take in sewing in order to buy food for herself and her young son.)
Nellie Bly talked (or wrote) her way into a Pittsburgh reporting job. Then, she gave it up at a great risk so that she could talk (or write) her way into a New York reporting job.
I bet that we can all name sports “heros” who were born in Western PA. So why isn’t “Nellie Bly” a household name in Western PA?
Thank you for sticking with me as I flesh out some of my thoughts about a woman who demanded her own seat at the table! Stay in touch for my upcoming sailing updates and stories from history.
You are all fantastic for reading my blog! I’ve had several readers reach out to me in the past month. I appreciate you all for taking precious time out of your full lives to digest my stories. I don’t want to let you down.
I will tell you a little bit more about our brief sailing adventures on Lake Erie. First, let me tell you about Misery Bay and Graveyard Pond.
The “Greater Erie, PA” region sits on the south shore of Lake Erie, and also on the south shore of Presque Isle Bay. Presque Isle Bay’s west and north boundaries exist due to a Peninsula that extends into Lake Erie.
To the west and the north of Presque Isle Bay is a peninsula that extends into Lake Erie. (On this peninsula now sits Presque Isle State Park. )
The Native Americans known as the “Eriez Nation” inhabited this area hundreds of years ago. The Iroquois defeated the Eriez in the 1600’s.
If you leave from Erie and head toward the open lake, then Erie (the city) will be on your starboard side and the peninsula will be on your port side.
You will travel past a monument to Commander Oliver Hazard Perry at Presque Isle State Park. Then, you will travel past Misery Bay.
Monument to Commander Oliver Hazard Perry
Then, you will travel through a shipping channel. Finally, you will pass the North Pier Lighthouse. Congratulations. You are on the open lake.
Perry commanded the U.S.’s Lake Erie naval fleet in 1813. This was during the War of 1812, the United States’ second war against the British. This U.S. naval fleet was at Presque Isle Bay when Perry took command. Perry’s forces broke a British blockade at Presque Isle. Then they defeated the British off of the Ohio coast at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813.
Perry then returned to Presque Isle Bay.
Do you remember when I wrote that the bay next to the Perry monument is called “Misery Bay?” Well, the bay earned its name from what happened after the Battle of Lake Erie. Many returning sailors contracted smallpox and died in quarantine. They died aboard ships harbored in Misery Bay. The ones who didn’t get sick buried these sailors in the pond next to Misery Bay. Then, sailors who got sick but hadn’t yet died also got “buried” in the pond.
Local storytellers renamed the pond “Graveyard Pond.”
The navy sunk the hulls of two of their ships, the USS Lawrence and the USS Niagara, in Misery Bay for preservation.
In 1875, preservationists raised the Lawrence. They shipped her to Philadelphia. Exhibitors displayed the Lawrence at the U.S. Centennial International Exhibition of 1876. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the Lawrence at that same exhibition.
Preservationists raised and rebuilt the USS Niagara in 1913, then rebuilt her again in 1988. Thereconstructed USS Niagara now sails regularly from her dock in Erie, past Misery Bay, on her way to the open lake.
Flagship Niagara Passes Fishermen on the North Pier
My husband, Jonathan, and I purchased our sailboat, S/V Pinniped, last autumn from the original owners, P. and M. In fact, P. built the boat himself from a set of plans. P. told us to be careful to stay away from Misery Bay when we travelled through the channel. Misery Bay is shallow, compared to the shipping channel. P. admitted that he actually grounded Pinniped on various sandbars in Misery Bay.
So of course, when we returned to the bay from our first sail together on the open lake, we accidentally steered into Misery Bay.
Misery Bay at that particular spot has a datum depth of four feet. Pinniped drafts five a half feet.
Fortunately for us, Lake Erie is high this summer. So, the actual depth on that spot on that day was seven and a half feet. We lucked out!
A week later, we again sailed onto the open lake. We sailed past a docked freighter before we left the bay.
Freighter
We sailed about one third of the way across Lake Erie.
And . . . we avoided steering into Misery Bay on the way back!
However, after several hours of sailing, the wind died and the flies appeared. Lots of flies. We motored for over an hour, covered in flies, to reach our slip at our marina. (For the record, we sprayed ourselves generously with bug spray. We still received fly bites.)
Despite Misery Bay and the flies, we both had positive experiences on both sailing trips. Stay tuned for more sailing adventures and more stories from history.
Edit, August 31, 2020: My husband, Jonathan, has recently blogged about our summer 2020 sailing adventures on our joint blog, www.jennyandjonathangetmarried.com. Here is Jonathan’s most recent post about sailing in Erie, Pennsylvania.
