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Printed Aug 1775, London |
06/22/2025 -
Sponsored by the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc.
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Printed Aug 1775, London |
06/22/2025 -
TL;DR -- Harvard goes back 400 as does our focus. Of late, they have free courses that are pertinent to current technological events. We appreciate that. But, we also call attention to the 250th and remind of Rev. John Wise who was the inspiration of the Declaration of Independence.
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I wonder how many students at Harvard know that the money to move the institution from a clergy-focused mode to work in the emerging senses of science and engineering came from a Loyalist who went over to the older realms and used his talents: thermodynamics; system engineering; ... Count Rumford (our blog post) will be in focus from time to time. Of course, Harvard did the legal side of things early, as well.
And, early? We're involved since the beginning: The Hebraist. But, lots and lots of the family went to Harvard over the years; lots and lots did not. So, we will provide a balanced view of 400 years that led to that which we will be commemorating: The 250th.
Now, technology will be a huge focus. The GenAI/LLM mischief of late is an example of things that could have been (were) forseen. How was it missed? We have a good story to tell there. Meanwhile, to change subject somewhat, Harvard is providing free access to courses dealing with AI and related.
Now switching gears, of the 250th, we have not even reached the point of the real split, yet. That will happen next year where July 4th is one known day every year celebrated. That we have eight years to look at the turmoil and rhetoric and activities and more in a new vein, brought by the internet, is daunting to think about.
We will look at parallel events, such as the 200th and 300th of New England (which was huge in impact on the culture) of the U.S. Here's an example, dealing with Rev. John Wise. His pamphlet was republished when the fever of independence was starting to grow after the French, Indian affair.
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Ipswich: John Wise |
06/21/2025 -
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Braddock's route from Alexandria, VA to Braddock, PA |
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Braddock's route from Cumberland, MD to Braddock, PA |
06/12/2025 -
- The first entry is from 24 Mar 1774 which was the Boston Port Act. Our post: Boston Tea Party.
- The next entry from 20 May 1774 is for the Massachusetts Government Act.
- Then, there is an entry from 19 Apr 1775 for the Lexington & Concord incident. Our post: Where was Salem?
Other 250th sites:
We have been in the 250th mindset for a long while, from before this post on Real daughters who were children of Patriots and members of D.A.R. Also, D.A.R. had an initiative related to tracking lineage from a Patriot back to the Mayflower whose 400th was in 2020. We took that and adapted it to Cape Ann to Patriot.
Remarks: Modified: 06/10/2025
06/10/2025 -
TL;DR -- The Arkansas River ought to get some attention. Hernando de Soto saw the river. The French saw it back in the 1500s on their journey out of the northern regions through the Great Lakes and then the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. Cattle drivers saw the river on their way from Texas to the railroad yards of Kansas for shipment of their product to the eastern markets.
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The Arkansas River has been mentioned a few times so we need to look at it specifically. Hence, this post will spawn many others. One early mention was about the French crew who came down from the Great Lakes but turned around when they got close enough to the Gulf to see the Natives having goods from Spain. Then, we looked at Zebulon Pike's journey and work in the early 1800s with respect to him passing through the area of the Osage Mission of southeast Kansas. Jedediah Strong Smith was killed in the Arkansas River basin in southwest Kansas.
As an aside, Hernando de Soto saw the river in his exploration of the area.
Since we have more than 250 years to cover, we thought that we would look at cattle and its influence. The drives from Texas up to the rails had to cross the Arkansas River. Let's let the FB group, Be Texas Proud, be our source for material about things cattle, ranch, and more.
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Chisholm Trail (brown) bifurcates, twice courtesty of Be Texas Proud |
On This Day in Texas History – May 27, 1870The Kansas Daily Commonwealth made the earliest known printed reference to the Chisholm Trail, the now-legendary cattle route that helped shape Texas and the American West.
Named after trader Jesse Chisholm, who originally blazed parts of the route for wagons and trade—not cattle—the trail became the backbone of a booming cattle drive era. Between 1867 and the early 1880s, millions of Texas longhorns were herded up this trail to railheads in Abilene, Ellsworth, and Dodge City, where they were loaded onto trains bound for eastern cities.
There were several "ford" areas for the Arkansas River in or near Wichita, KS. Depending upon the weather, the water was low enough for easy crossing. However, storms could raise the water level very quickly.
Quoting the The Chisholm Trail – Herding the Cattle:
The long trips up the trail from Texas were hazardous for the cattle and the cowboys. The trip took two to three months as the drives crossed significant rivers, including the Arkansas and Red Rivers, and traveled through canyons and low mountain ranges. In addition, the drovers also had to be concerned about Indian attacks, outlaw cattle rustlers, and cattle stampedes.
06/03/2025 -
In 2020, restrictions changed our activity. Like most, we did computer work over the time of the pandemic but had been doing such work anyway. What was different was the focus.
We looked more at local issues. But, we had anyway (to wit, our post of Flyover country). By 2021, we were rolling along and did more posts. Part 1 looks at those from Jan through Jun. Now, we'll pick up with posts from Jul through Dec.
The 250th came more into focus. We also spent a little time looking at S.A.R. which is the sons version of what the daughters did with D.A.R. But, AI started to come into focus after almost a decade of making headway (according to some views - the jury is still out) and claiming attention: Jeopardy win; Go win; modeling complicated lab work (Google had several of these); ...
But, we had a post (Carving the land) which was motivated by our study of the activities out of St. Louis which was a hub for land management of the U.S and its west. At the same time, Gloucester was approaching its 400th. We had an interest in that as the Dorchester crew came into that area in 1623. But, the great northwest? Michigan was approaching its 200th.
Another twist was diving into the history of Harvard starting with an introduction to James Bryan Conant. He was a chemist and professor. He had wanted the Rumford chair. But, ended up in Europe and came back to become a Head of Harvard. At the same time, we decided that the long reach of New England was a theme of interest, as we had settled on All Things Gardner (22 Aug 1485) with respect to the many families with the name.
Oh yes, AI was proposed for genealogy work. Again, that is an ongoing bit of study. But, we started to look at the genealogy of Harvard Heads. Many were of old New England families. D.A.R. found an interest in the 400th as well by starting work on identifying Patriot to Passenger (in this case, Mayflower) families. We took on Cape Ann to Patriot.
Houses? While looking at the Dudley family, we got into houses of note. There were two in New Hampshire of interest. Both were built by relatives of descendants of Thomas and Margaret. One is now associated with the Society of Cincinatti. That brings up the other side of a coin. We honor the Loyalists of the family. Count Rumford mentioned above was a Loyalist who found success in Europe and left money to Harvard.
06/01/2025 -
TL;DR -- The pandemic started. Life was restricted. We did local things. And, worked on the web/cloud in various modes. 2021 culminated in the most posts that we had since our start with topics that cover a very wide range. Knowing the U.S. and its history is one motivation.
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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2).
In 2020, we found out about the coming restrictions after being in one of the cities where the disease was reported and said to be related to someone returning from overseas. Then, we endured the restrictive period with access to the outdoors as well keeping busy with "web/cloud" activity along several lines of research.
Our focus on technology was one line of study for the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. The next year, 2021, had the most, 105, posts published since the start of our work. Below, we provide a list by month of the titles of the posts. As can be noted, the topics varied greatly which we will comment on below.
First, here is a list of the topics for the first six months.
A subject of lots of focus was the travel of folks from the east to the west through the middle. Of course, looking further at the west coast got our attention to New Spain. The rivers of the interior were of particular interest as the Missouri River starts out in the far western mountains, closer to the Pacific than to the Mississippi River which it joins at St. Louis. Not far from there, the Ohio River comes in from the distant east having started in Pennsylvania. But, there is more. The Arkansas is a little south of that area and had eastern visitors from (what became) Canada early on. That exploratory group from New France headed back up north when they started to see evidence of New Spain.In work related to family history and genealogies, we decided that there was a frontier century which is observant now with respect to missing documents. St. Louis was a hub of movement. The U.S.Government was early there with land management. Think of the time of Daniel Boone who was out, with his family, to western Missouri (Kansas City area) as a settler. But, he also ventured further out past the Rockies. Other federal activity was military: Fort Larned, KS.
Speaking of which, there was a stage line that ran from St. Louis to San Francisco. Not across the middle of the country. No, this one went south and joined regular movement from Texas to Los Angeles through Tucson in Arizona. In Los Angeles, the activity was in the Bunker Hill West area which has a long history that we have written about (Mirror building). Of course, then we had to look at mail and freight. Too, newspapers were delivered.
We didn't forget the sea as the California cities were largely populated by ship in the beginning. Once the internal trails were established there was a huge flow across the middle. The Pony Express carried mail and small material. Several stage lines carried people and freight. We looked closely at the Butterfield Express.
Why? All of this activity was seriously associated with, or driven by, New England influences. In fact, Kansas was a Massachusetts project with its University being founded by a group that included women who came to set up a free State. We have a lot more to write of that.
Everywhere in the unmapped territory, we had trappers. Some were even venturing down from New France and Canada. Then, the next phase was trader as folks moved across the country, many of them stopping at locations that exist today having been started by the pioneers.
Along came the railroads which have a special interest due to family involvement. That facilitated one of the major memes of the west, driving cattle to the markets. So, rancher/farmer would be the next phase continuing today, in the flyover country (had to menton that - it's from an earlier post).
Next up, we'll look at the second half of 2021 in terms of posts. These posts cover the U.S. and its history. Interspersed are posts on technology, which increased with the release of OpenAI's GenAI/LLM.
06/03/2025 - Clarify that the journey on the Fox to the Mississippi starts at the Great Lakes and runs upstream in IL to a point where the Fox is close enough to the Wisconsin for a reasonable portage. The Wisconsin then runs down, and connects, to the Mississippi. In the reverse, the journey goes up the Wisconsin to the portage and down the Fox to the Great Lakes. Modern technology has improved that route with locks allowing the height changes to be managed.