My 4th Of July Projects

First a patriotic history quiz:

Everyone knows that Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen led his Green Mountain Boys against the British in the battle of Fort Ticonderoga in May, 1775 -- but can you name Ethan Allen’s most famous conquest?

My answer is at the end of this posting.

Yesterday I met one of my goals for my website: I wanted to post a series of 50 historic photographs from my hometown’s earlier days by the 4^th of July.

I fear the loss of such materials and I feel they should be preserved.

Every year the Jacksonville Library culls its collections of out of date material and offers these at a book sale. Ginny and I have attended these sales for years and years. The sales offer over a hundred thousand books and items either donated to the library or culled from the shelves.

As a local history buff, I keep an eye out for things related to Jacksonville history and a couple of years ago during one of the sales I acquired this plastic bag filled with old sepia photographs of Jacksonville homes and buildings. The 50 photographs are much older than the bag they came in and the captions are not always correct because many of the buildings shown have been moved or torn down.

After many hours of scanning, resizing, re-naming files and making thumbnails, yesterday I finally managed to post these 50 photographs.

I’m proud of me.

John Cowart, King of the Geriatric Geeks!

You can see the Old Photographs of Jacksonville at the top of left-hand column at www.cowart.info

Here’s a sample:

During the afternoon I also scanned in 180 pages of a hitherto unpublished diary of a Civil War soldier. That will not be ready to show for a couple of months, but I’ve got a good start on it now. Here’s a sample page:

Yes, the 4^th of July awakens my spirit of patriotism and as I worked on the photo thumbnails yesterday I thought about appreciating having the right to vote.

I have voted in every election, national, state and local, since I turned 21 (that was the legal voting age back then).

As I recall, only one time has the guy I voted for won the election.

Yes, in 1972, at the height of the Viet Nam War, I actually voted for Richard Nixon.

And he won.

I don’t think anyone else I ever voted for has won an election.

My vote for Tricky Dickey was based on a political slogan I read on the wall of a men’s room at a truck stop in Phoenix, Arizona. The graffiti read:

Don’t Change Dicks In The Middle Of A Screw,
Vote for Nixon In ’72!

Yes, on such profundities as that is democracy based.

God does bless America! Otherwise, voters like me would run the place.

Oh yes, the history quiz:

Can you name Ethan Allen’s most famous conquest?

Betsy Ross!

That joke breaks me up!

I know. I’m wicked. Truly wicked. Really, really wicked — but I have fun.