“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
We are now in completely uncharted territory as our very own President Donald J. Trump is forced to cancel live, in person campaign rallies, uh, protests against stupidity due to testing positive for the Wuhan Flu.
This evening he was supposed to be in Florida, and that just is not going to happen.
So, the rally will be virtual.
How exactly this is going to work is not quite clear as of this writing. Supposedly, it will be a sign up event via the Trump Campaign event website. When the link is available, I will add it.
Okay…venturing to the state that just slipped through President Trump’s Electoral Count grasp in 2016 for some shoring up, our very special genius is headed to one of the largest freshwater ports in North America.
Situated on the north shore of Lake Superior at the westernmost point of the Great Lakes, Duluth is the largest metropolitan area (and second-largest city) on the lake and is accessible to the Atlantic Ocean 2,300 miles (3,700 km) away via the Great Lakes Waterway and St. Lawrence Seaway.[6] The Port of Duluth is the world’s farthest inland port accessible to oceangoing ships,[7] and by far the largest and busiest port on the Great Lakes.[8] The port is ranked among the top 20 ports in the United States by tonnage. Commodities shipped from the Port of Duluth include coal, iron ore, grain, limestone, cement, salt, wood pulp, steel coil, and wind turbine components.
A tourist destination for the Midwest, Duluth features the United States’ only all-freshwater aquarium, the Great Lakes Aquarium; the Aerial Lift Bridge, which is adjacent to Canal Park and spans the Duluth Ship Canal into the Duluth–Superior harbor; and Minnesota Point (known locally as Park Point), the world’s longest freshwater baymouth bar, spanning 6 miles (10 km).[9] The city is also the starting point for vehicle trips touring the North Shore of Lake Superior toward Ontario, Canada.
Freshwater aquarium, huh. Wonder if they have any trout.
As for the background of the place, this is fairly common throughout the Native American history of the midwest:
The Ojibwe, sometimes referred to as the Chippewa, are clan members of the Anishinaabe, a group of culturally-related indigenous peoples including the Ojibwe who are resident in what are now Canada and the United States. The Ojibwe have a inhabited the Lake Superior region for more than 500 years. Already established as traders, after the arrival of Europeans, the Anishinaabe found a niche as the middlemen between the French fur traders and other Native peoples. They soon became the dominant Indian nation in the region, forcing out the Dakota Sioux and Fox and winning a victory against the Iroquois west of Sault Ste. Marie in 1662. By the mid-18th century, the Ojibwe occupied all of Lake Superior’s shores.[10][11][12] In 1745, they adopted guns from the British for use against the Dakota nation of the Sioux, whom they pushed farther to the south. The Ojibwe Nation was the first to set the agenda with European-Canadian leaders for signing more detailed treaties before many European settlers were allowed too far west.[13]
The Ojibwe are historically known for their crafting of birch bark canoes, use of copper arrow points, and cultivation of wild rice. The settlement in Ojibwe is Onigamiinsing (“at the little portage”), a reference to the small and easy portage across Minnesota Point between Lake Superior and western St. Louis Bay, which forms Duluth’s harbor.[14] For both the Ojibwe and the Dakota, interaction with Europeans during the contact period revolved around the fur trade and related activities.[15]
According to Ojibwe oral history, Spirit Island, near the Spirit Valley neighborhood, was the “Sixth Stopping Place”, where the northern and southern branches of the Ojibwe Nation came together and proceeded to their “Seventh Stopping Place” near the present city of La Pointe, Wisconsin. The “Stopping Places” were the places the Native Americans occupied during their westward migration as the Europeans overran their territory.[16]
Several factors brought fur traders to the Great Lakes in the early 17th century. The fashion for beaver hats in Europe generated demand for pelts. French trade for beaver in the lower St. Lawrence River had led to the depletion of the animals in that region by the late 1630s, so the French searched farther west for new resources and new routes, making alliances with the Native Americans along the way to trap and deliver their furs.
Étienne Brûlé is credited with the European discovery of Lake Superior before 1620. Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers explored the Duluth area, Fond du Lac (Bottom of the Lake) in 1654 and again in 1660. The French soon established fur posts near Duluth and in the far north where Grand Portage became a major trading center. The French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, whose name is sometimes anglicized as “DuLuth”, explored the St. Louis River in 1679.
After 1792 and the independence of the United States, the North West Company established several posts on Minnesota rivers and lakes, and in areas to the west and northwest, for trading with the Ojibwe, the Dakota, and other native tribes. The first post was where Superior, Wisconsin, later developed. Known as Fort St. Louis, the post became the headquarters for North West’s new Fond du Lac Department. It had stockaded walls, two houses of 40 feet (12 m) each, a shed of 60 feet (18 m), a large warehouse, and a canoe yard. Over time, Indian peoples and European Americans settled nearby, and a town gradually developed at this point.
In 1808, the American Fur Company was organized by German-born John Jacob Astor. The company began trading at the Head of the Lakes in 1809. In 1817, it erected a new headquarters at present-day Fond du Lac on the St. Louis River. There, portages connected Lake Superior with Lake Vermillion to the north, and with the Mississippi River to the south. After creating a powerful monopoly, Astor got out of the business about 1830, as the trade was declining. But active trade was carried on until the failure of the fur trade in the 1840s. European fashions had changed and many American areas were getting over-trapped, with game declining.
In 1832 Henry Schoolcraft visited the Fond du Lac area and wrote of his experiences with the Ojibwe Indians there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based the Song of Hiawatha, his epic poem relating the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman, on Schoolcraft’s writings.[17]
Natives signed two Treaties of Fond du Lac with the United States in the present neighborhood of Fond du Lac in 1826 and 1847, in which the Ojibwe ceded land to the American government. As part of the Treaty of Washington (1854) with the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa, the United States set aside the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation upstream from Duluth near Cloquet, Minnesota.
Middletown was founded in 1755 along the left bank of the Susquehanna River and was incorporated as a borough in 1828 after a sudden boom in development and population occurred as a result of the construction of the Union Canal, connecting Lancaster to Middletown. Earlier in 1824 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania‘s legislature authorized and funded the canal construction as part of the broad sweeping commercial initiative called the Main Line of Public Works; a forward looking project designing to connect Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by canals and river navigations which projects would continue to allow Philadelphia to challenge New York City (and its Erie Canal) for emerging mid-western markets beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Middletown was selected as the western terminus of the Union Canal, and it was named from its location halfway[5] between Lancaster and Carlisle, where an ascent exists to a low pass allowing easier (wagon era) travel[6] among the barrier mountains of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians giving access into north-central Maryland and the valley of the Potomac River.[a] It is the oldest incorporated community in Dauphin County and is located within a rich agricultural area forming the western edge of Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
And for the boss’s latest interest in what’s ahead for America….
Middletown is located 3 miles (5 km) north of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. The Unit #2 reactor at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, causing then-Governor Richard “Dick” Thornburgh to order the evacuation of pregnant women and pre-school children from the area. Within days, 140,000 people had left the area.[8][9] President Jimmy Carter visited Middletown’s Community Building to calm the nerves of anxious residents.
Hmm. Well, what the news on Newport News. Let’s see:
During the 17th century, shortly after founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, English settlers explored and began settling the areas adjacent to Hampton Roads. In 1610, Sir Thomas Gates “took possession” of a nearby Native American village, which became known as Kecoughtan. At that time, settlers began clearing land along the James River (the navigable part of which was called Hampton Roads) for plantations, including the present area of Newport News.
By 1634, the English colony of Virginia consisted of a population of approximately 5,000 inhabitants. It was divided into eight shires of Virginia, which were renamed as counties shortly thereafter. The area of Newport News became part of Warwick River Shire, which became Warwick County in 1637. By 1810, the county seat was at Denbigh. For a short time in the mid-19th century, the county seat was moved to Newport News.[13]
Shires, huh. I’ve been in Virginia many a time and have yet to see a Hobbit there.
Newport News was a rural area of plantations and a small fishing village until after the American Civil War. Construction of the railroad and establishment of the great shipyard brought thousands of workers and associated development. It was one of only a few cities in Virginia to be newly established without earlier incorporation as a town. (Virginia has had an independent city political subdivision since 1871.) …
Huntington knew the railroad could transport coal eastbound from West Virginia’s untapped natural resources. His agents began acquiring land in Warwick County in 1865. In the 1880s, he oversaw extension of the C&O’s new Peninsula Subdivision, which extended from the Church Hill Tunnel in Richmond southeast down the peninsula through Williamsburg to Newport News, where the company developed coal piers on the harbor of Hampton Roads.[16]
His next project was to develop Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, which became the world’s largest shipyard. Opened as Chesapeake Dry Dock & Construction Company, the shipbuilding was intended to build boats to transition goods from the rails to the seas. With president Theodore Roosevelt‘s declaration to create a Great White Fleet, the company entered the warship business by building seven of the first sixteen warships.
In the 16th century, the beginning of the historical era, the region was inhabited by the Mocama, a coastal subgroup of the Timucua people. At the time of contact with Europeans, all Mocama villages in present-day Jacksonville were part of the powerful chiefdom known as the Saturiwa, centered around the mouth of the St. Johns River.[22] One early French map shows a village called Ossachite at the site of what is now downtown Jacksonville; this may be the earliest recorded name for that area.[23]
In 1562, French Huguenot explorer Jean Ribault charted the St. Johns River, calling it the River of May because that was the month of his discovery. Ribault erected a stone column at his landing site near the river’s mouth, claiming the newly discovered land for France.[24] In 1564, René Goulaine de Laudonnière established the first European settlement on the St. Johns River, Fort Caroline, near the main village of the Saturiwa.
Philip II of Spain ordered Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to protect the interests of Spain by attacking the French at Fort Caroline. On September 20, 1565, a Spanish force from the nearby Spanish settlement of St. Augustine attacked Fort Caroline, and killed nearly all the French soldiers defending it.[25] The Spanish renamed the fort as San Mateo and, following the expulsion of the French, St. Augustine became the most important European settlement in Florida. The location of Fort Caroline is subject to debate, but a reconstruction of the fort was established in 1964 along the St. Johns River.[26]Northeast Florida showing Cow Ford (center) from Bernard Romans‘ 1776 map of Florida
Spain ceded Florida to the British in 1763 after its victory against the French in the Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War on the North American front). The British soon constructed the King’s Road connecting St. Augustine to Georgia. The road crossed the St. Johns River at a narrow point, which the Seminole called Wacca Pilatka and the British called the Cow Ford; these names reflected the use of the ford for moving cattle across the river there.[27][28][29]
The British introduced the cultivation of sugar cane, indigo and fruits as commodity crops, in addition to exporting lumber. These crops were labor-intensive and the British imported more enslaved Africans to work the plantations that were developed. The planters in northeastern Florida began to prosper economically.[30]
After being defeated in the American Revolutionary War, Britain returned control of this territory to Spain in 1783. The settlement at the Cow Ford continued to grow.
So, how did the territory end up being American? Spain handed it to us a few decades later. Colonies can be expensive you know.
After Spain ceded the Florida Territory to the United States in 1821, American settlers on the north side of the Cow Ford decided to plan a town, laying out the streets and plats. They named the town Jacksonville, after celebrated war hero and first Territorial Governor (later U.S. President) Andrew Jackson. Led by Isaiah D. Hart, residents wrote a charter for a town government, which was approved by the Florida Legislative Council on February 9, 1832.
During the American Civil War, Jacksonville was a key supply point for hogs and cattle being shipped from Florida to feed the Confederate forces. The city was blockaded by Union forces, who gained control of nearby Fort Clinch. Though no battles were fought in Jacksonville proper, the city changed hands several times between Union and Confederate forces. In the Skirmish of the Brick Church in 1862, Confederates won their first victory in the state.[31] However, Union forces captured a Confederate position at the Battle of St. Johns Bluff, and occupied Jacksonville in 1862. Slaves escaped to freedom in Union lines. In February 1864 Union forces left Jacksonville and confronted a Confederate Army at the Battle of Olustee, going down to defeat.
Union forces retreated to Jacksonville and held the city for the remainder of the war. In March 1864 a Confederate cavalry confronted a Union expedition in the Battle of Cedar Creek. Warfare and the long occupation left the city disrupted after the war.[32]
During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, Jacksonville and nearby St. Augustine became popular winter resorts for the rich and famous. Visitors arrived by steamboat and later by railroad. President Grover Cleveland attended the Sub-Tropical Exposition in the city on February 22, 1888, during his trip to Florida.[33] This highlighted the visibility of the state as a worthy place for tourism. The city’s tourism, however, was dealt major blows in the late 19th century by yellow fever outbreaks. Extending the Florida East Coast Railway further south drew visitors to other areas. From 1893 to 1938, Jacksonville was the site of the Florida Old Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Home; it operated a nearby cemetery.[34]
Okay, enough of that. On to the rally, uh peaceful protest.
I’ll add live links to this post during the late afternoon as they become available.
Let’s see…Moon Township outside of Pittsburgh. Steel, coal and all that jazz.
The initial settlement of Moon Township was a direct result of the westward expansion of English settlers and traders who arrived in the Ohio Valley in the early to mid-18th century. During the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War), the Iroquois, who controlled the land for hunting grounds through right of conquest, ceded large parcels of southwestern Pennsylvania lands through treaty or abandonment to settlers. In some cases, the land was already occupied by squatters who were to be forced off the land.
In the face of this turmoil, Native American settlements of the south bank of the Ohio River typically relocated to more populous areas of the north bank in the current locales of Sewickley and Ambridge….
As the 18th century drew to a close, abandoned lands were taken up by new settlers who were drawn to the region by the fertility of the soil. This round of pioneers were, by and large, wealthier than their predecessors and had the means to develop the broken and hilly areas into plots suitable for farming.
Moon Township was created in 1788 as one of the original townships of the newly created Allegheny County.[4] In 1789 by an act of the legislature a portion of Washington County south of the Ohio River was transferred to Allegheny County.[5] The transferred area became part of Moon Township.[6]
At this time Moon Township occupied an enormous tract of land – possibly 145 square miles (380 km2). Some reports and, more often, legends of the time indicate that it would take one man on horseback two days to travel between the boundaries of the township. The sheer difficulty of settlers performing their civic duties (e.g., reporting to assigned polling places or attending jury trials) made it necessary for local governing authorities to parcel out the land into smaller municipalities. So, in 1790, the current Fayette Township was portioned off from Moon Township, to be followed by Findlay and Crescent townships, respectively.
In 1800 when Beaver County was created from Allegheny and Washington Counties that portion of Beaver County south of the Ohio River that it received from Allegheny County was in Moon Township. Upon the creation of Beaver County that portion of Moon Township that Allegheny County lost to Beaver County was divided into two new townships: First Moon and Second Moon Townships, Beaver County.[7]
In the heyday of steam power, Swanton was home to the A. D. Baker Company, a manufacturer of steam powered traction engines and road contractors’ equipment. It was at the Baker Company that an improved valve gear for steam engines was developed. A Baker employee named Gifford is credited with the initial idea, which was subsequently developed into the Baker valve gear and patented in 1903. Baker valve ear was eventually manufactured by The Pilliod Company, another Swanton business. Baker valve gear from Pilliod saw widespread use on U.S. steam locomotives for railroads in the first half of the 20th century.
On June 6, 2019, a vehicle left parked on the tracks next to the Main Street railroad crossing resulted in a derailment that knocked out power to the town and much of the surrounding area, and hampered traffic on one of the main rail lines linking the Midwest to the East Coast.[9]
And, as of this evening, the keepers of the wiki page can make another entry:
On Monday, September 21, 2020, President Donald J. Trump held a Make America Great Again protest against stupidity at the airport.
Swanton does, though, have a unique claim to fame.
Swanton Memorial Park is home to one of E. M. Viquesney‘s “Spirit of the American Doughboy” statues. The sculpture was one of several donated as a gift by France to U.S. cities that had lost many soldiers during World War I. It is described as a “Figure of a World War I infantryman advancing through the stumps and barbed wire of No Man’s Land. He holds a grenade in his raised proper right hand and a rifle in his proper left hand.”[13] The Smithsonian Institution Research Information System lists the statue as being installed in 1926, “administered by City of Swanton, Parks Division, Swanton, Ohio.”[14] Also according to the Smithsonian, the inscription on the statue reads as follows: “Spirit of the/American Doughboy”/copyrighted by E. M. Viquesney/Georgia (On stone base:) SWANTON REMEMBERS/TO THE MEMORY/OF THE/VALIANT SONS OF/SWANTON & COMMUNITY/WORLD WAR/1917-1918/THIS MEMORIAL IS/LOVINGLY DEDICATED/WE HOLD THEM IN OUR/GRATEFUL HEARTS WITH/REVERENCE AND HONOR/FOREVER/ERECTED 1926 unsigned.[13]
I’ll add live links to this post during the late afternoon as they become available.
The area of present-day Fayetteville was historically inhabited by various SiouanNative American peoples, such as the Eno, Shakori, Waccamaw, Keyauwee, and Cape Fear people. They followed successive cultures of other indigenous peoples in the area for more than 12,000 years.
After the violent upheavals of the Yamasee War and Tuscarora Wars during the second decade of the 18th century, the North Carolina colony encouraged English settlement along the upper Cape Fear River, the only navigable waterway entirely within the colony. Two inland settlements, Cross Creek and Campbellton, were established by Scots from Campbeltown, Argyll and Bute, Scotland.
Merchants in Wilmington wanted a town on the Cape Fear River to secure trade with the frontier country. They were afraid people would use the Pee Dee River and transport their goods to Charleston, South Carolina. The merchants bought land from Newberry in Cross Creek. Campbellton became a place where poor whites and free blacks lived, and gained a reputation for lawlessness.[citation needed]
In 1783, Cross Creek and Campbellton united, and the new town was incorporated as Fayetteville in honor of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a French military hero who significantly aided the American forces during the war.[8] Fayetteville was the first city to be named in his honor in the United States.
Downtown Fayetteville was the site of a skirmish, as Confederate Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton and his men surprised a cavalry patrol, killing 11 Union soldiers and capturing a dozen on March 11, 1865.
Segregation, of course, was part of life there, and it is adjacent to Fort Bragg.
Its name derives from the OjibweBuh-mid-ji-ga-maug (Double-Vowel orthography: bemijigamaag),[6] meaning “a lake with crossing waters”. On occasion, in Ojibwe, Bemidji is called Wabigamaang (“at the lake channel/narrows”), because part of the city is situated on the Lakes Bemidji/Irving narrows, on the south end of Lake Bemidji, and extends to the eastern shore of Lake Irving. Some sources say that Chief Bemidji, an Ojibwe leader, is the namesake.[7]
Bemidji Township was surveyed by European Americans in 1874. It was organized in 1896, 24 days after the village of Bemidji was chartered, and is the oldest township in the county. In 1897, the county attorney declared the original Bemidji township organization illegal (no reason given) and the township reorganized on June 26, 1897.[8]
About 50 Leech Lake Indians lived along the south shore of the lake prior to the 1880s. They called the lake Bemidjigumaug, meaning “river or route flowing crosswise”. Freeman and Besty Doud claimed 160 acres west of and including present-day Diamond Point; they were Bemidji’s first homesteaders.
Art Lee created the story that the folkloric figure Paul Bunyan came from the Northwoods. Tales about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox led to public sculptures of them in the 1930s.[citation needed] According to Discover America, the Paul and Babe statues are “the second most photographed statues in America,” surpassed only by Mount Rushmore.[9] The Rotarians of Bemidji commissioned the statue of Paul Bunyan during the Great Depression as a tourist attraction. It was unveiled on January 15, 1937, to kick off a Winter Carnival that drew more than 10,000 visitors.
Hey, every place has to have a claim to fame, right?
Today Bemidji is an important educational, governmental, trade and medical center for north central Minnesota. The wood industry is still a significant part of the local economy, with Georgia-Pacific, Potlatch, and Northwood Panelboard all having waferboard plants in the local area. They use wood species that were once classified as waste trees.[10]
The traditional inhabitants of the area were the Ojibwe, the Potawatomi and the Menominee.[5] However, the name is the Hochunk Mōsį́nį, the “Cold Country,” from mō, an old form of mą, meaning “earth, ground, land, country”; and sį́nį, “cold.”[6] The Ojibwe ceded the territory to the United States in 1837 when they sold most of their land in what would become Wisconsin, though they were guaranteed the right to continue hunting, fishing, and gathering wild rice on the ceded lands.[7] Similarly, the Potawatomi gave up their land claims in Wisconsin in 1833, and the Menominee ceded territory in this area in the 1836 Treaty of the Cedars.[8][9] These treaties coincided with the establishment of the first sawmill in the area by a white settler, John L. Moore, in 1836, and enabled white settlement to begin in the area. Lumber quickly became the most important industry and drew other businesses and settlers to the town, which at the time was known as Little Bull Falls. After the closing of Fort Winnebago in 1845, a number of Métis families moved to Little Bull Falls, and in 1857 the town was renamed in honor of an Ojibwe chief from the Wisconsin River Band. Deforestation led to the collapse of the lumber industry in the early 20th century, but it was quickly replaced by the paper industry.[10] In the neighboring Menominee language the town is called Mōsāpnīw, “he dwells alone there”, which is likely a close approximation of the eponymous chief’s name.[11]
On May 1, 1950, local residents acting as Communist invaders seized control of Mosinee.[12][13]
The action was a part of an elaborate pageant organized by the Wisconsin Department of the American Legion. The “Communists” dragged Mayor Ralph E. Kronenwetter and Police Chief Carl Gewiss out of their beds. Mayor Kronenwetter surrendered at 10:15 AM in the town’s new “Red Square” with a pistol to his back. The police chief was reported to have resisted and was “liquidated”.
Roadblocks were set up around Mosinee, the library was “purged”, prices of goods were inflated for the duration of the coup, and local restaurants served Russian black bread and potato soup for lunch.[14]
As he arrived at a rally to restore democracy to the community the night of May 1 Mayor Kronenwetter suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. He died five days later on May 6, 1950 at age 49. The mayor’s doctor said the excitement and exertion probably contributed to his collapse.
Franklin Baker, commander of the local American Legion post, said, “It was a terrible coincidence.”[15]
Local minister Will La Brew Bennett, 72, who, during the Communist invasion, demonstrated to the media how he would hide his Bible in the church organ if the Communists really invaded and was herded with other residents into a barbed-wire ringed “concentration camp” near “Red Square”, was found dead in his bed hours after the mayor’s death on May 7, 1950.[16]
