World War II had been underway a little more than two years when Japan’s savage attack at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, plunged America into the global conflict. Early the following year, Jesse Stuart, nearly 36 with a pregnant wife, tried to enlist in [...]
Jesse Stuart was born on August 8, 1906. To celebrate his birthday and his many contributions to life in eastern Kentucky, my next three articles will focus on Stuart’s life and works. The late Poet Laureate of Kentucky, Jesse Hilton Stuart, published 2,000 poems, [...]
Adventure story, biography, western, history, “Simon Kenton, Kentucky Scout” fits all these descriptions. Its vivid, intense language tells the story of Kentucky’s exploration and settlement through the life of the young frontiersman. Kenton was born April 3, 1755, in Fauquier County, Virginia, the son [...]
No small target at six-foot-two, young Sam Houston wasn’t thinking about getting hit. He was thinking about getting even. Running through a hail of musket balls, spears, and arrows, he and his fellow soldiers of the elite 39th U.S. infantry unit sprinted toward an [...]
For those who loved “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek,” author Kim Michele Richardson offers another fine evocation of the often cruel conditions of rural Appalachia in the last century and a powerful portrait of the courageous women there who fought against ignorance, misogyny, [...]
In the spring of 1781, during the American war for independence from Great Britain, redcoat troops arrived in upland Carolina and brought terror to Elizabeth Jackson and her sons. Elizabeth’s youngest son, Andrew, though barely fourteen years of age, hated their presence—and quickly learned [...]
Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, Americans were afflicted with a case of what John Steinbeck called “westering and westering.” During the early 1840s, two specific accounts focused the attention of restless Americans on the far West. John C. Fremont led a U.S. Army Survey [...]
From colonial beginnings until early in the twentieth century, one-room schools played an important role in Eastern Kentucky education. These tiny schools that dotted the hills and valleys were, collectively, a salvation to a region recovering from the Civil War and, later, the Great [...]
Greenup County, located in northeast Kentucky, lies approximately halfway between Ashland, Kentucky, and Portsmouth, Ohio. It is a land of wooded hills and clear, fast-moving streams that empty into the Ohio River, which forms the county’s northern border. The land surface ranges from rich [...]
In “The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, And The Kidnap That Shaped America,” Matthew Pearl explores the little-known true story of the kidnapping of the daughter of the legendary pioneer Daniel Boone and the dramatic aftermath that rippled across the nation. On [...]
