The forest wilderness

ImageMarch 31, 2020October 21, 2026 macdowelltaylor1 Comment

When we last left Comfort (in Welcome to Indiana Territory), she had just disembarked from a flatboat in company with her guide, Alexander Potins, and was headed north on the Red Banks Trail towards her father’s homestead, when they met with danger.

Welcome to Indiana Territory

ImageMarch 3, 2020October 21, 2026 macdowelltaylor3 Comments

When I try to imagine traveling to Indiana Territory, the first thing I see is one of those big signs we have today at state lines: Welcome to Indiana Territory. Of course, there were no signs. No advertisements “Come live in Indiana Territory.” No real estate agents (at least not in today’s sense of the […]

Banking Panic

February 6, 2019October 20, 2026 macdowelltaylor2 Comments

I’ve been considering bank closings, and the panics that ensued,¹ and how that would have manifested itself in the small town where Rose and Harold lived?

We’ve seen pictures of the mobs that rushed banks in New York after the big stock crash in ’29. But stories about smaller crowds, smaller towns, smaller banks, are harder to find.²

Fire!

February 16, 2017October 19, 2026 macdowelltaylor2 Comments

Feb 15, 1930

Nice day. Got colder in PM and eve and snowed some. Twenty below about 8AM but warmed up a lot during the day. Rex Ward’s house burned about 10AM and Mon and the boys went up there. They saved the things that were downstairs but lost what was upstairs and down cellar. The folks got back here about 11 and then we went up home for dinner and spent the PM. Snowed quite a little in the night.
from The Diaries of Lottie Price, 1914-1986

Until I’d read Lottie’s account of this February fire, I had never considered that Rose might worry about fire. Wanting to protect her (but, do I, really?), I started looking for information on fire trucks and firefighting in the 1920s.

Let’s just say that Rose’s best hope is to not have a fire. (Well, that would be true of all of us, wouldn’t it? 🙂 )

Boy Loses Thumb

ImageJanuary 31, 2017October 19, 2026 macdowelltaylor1 Comment

I ran across this article in a rural newspaper published on this day in 1930: Harry Hansen … had the misfortune to lose the thumb of his right hand Wednesday afternoon when his hand was caught in a corn sheller. Mr. Hansen was helping with corn shelling … when the accident occurred. The article really […]