History? Because it's Here!
  • Welcome to History? ...
  • Sing Along to the Spring Siren Song
  • Ohio Ghosts Whisper....
  • Major Archie Butt Had a Gift for Friendship, Even on the Titanic
  • A Love Story for Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
  • Valentine's Day Crossword
  • Titanic Headlines, Titanic Questions
  • Hoover Dam
  • Journalists in History
    • Ernie Pyle
    • Robert St. John
    • Joseph Morton
    • Robert Cromie
    • Agnes Meyer and Katherine Graham
    • Walter Cronkite
    • Sigrid Schultz
    • Jack Denton Scott
  • March is Women's History Month!
  • Alcohol in American History - John Barleycorn Tells Some of His Story
  • As Relevant As Today- The Past Connects with the Present
    • Ignoring History is Irrelevant
    • Honoring a Veteran: Veteran's Day, November 11, 2012
    • December 1, 1958: The Day Chicago Cried with Our Lady of the Angels
    • Remembering the Vietnam War - 37 Years Present
    • Rebellion, Murder, and Voting Rights in Rhode Island
  • Words and Remembrance-May 1970 at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi
  • Rub-a-dub-dub in Your Historical Bathtub!
  • The Freedom Summer Murders Changed American Racial Attitudes
  • To Beard Or Not To Beard - That is the Historical Question
  • Scarecrows Historically Speaking
  • Diversionary Thoughts for the Dentists Chair
  • Humans in History
    • Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo, Artists of Montmartre
    • Grandmother Clara Zetkin Speaks
    • High Stepping Ohio Horseman
    • Philip Teitelbaum Creates a Money Making Machine
    • The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake..
    • Poul le Cour
    • John Collier's Fight for Indian Rights and the First and Last Superintendent of Indian Affairs
    • Lt. Colonel Ely Parker, First Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, American, and Australian Story
    • The Murderer and the Museum Curator - Nathan Leopold and Kirtland's Warbler
    • Wilbur Carr, the State Department, and Immigration - 1920-1945
    • Billy Sunday Preached His Prayer Pennant Willing Baseball Story
    • William Alden Smith, Michigan's Titanic Senator
    • Helen and Dickinson Bishop Survive An Earthquake and the Titanic
    • Faster Than Flames: Locomotive Engineer James Root Races the Hinckley Fire
    • Three Hot and Contentious Weeks in July 1925 - The Scopes "Monkey " Trial
    • The Confederados Become Brazilian, but Honor Their American Southern Roots
    • Fascinating Footnote: The Goosedown Divorce
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, Australian, and American Story
    • The Molly Maguires - Trailblazers or Terrorists?
    • Lt. Uriah Phillips Levy Fights Prejudice and Saves Monticello
    • The Stavisky Affair - Sasha the Suave Scammer
    • General Santa Anna, Chicle, and Chewing Gum
    • James J. Metcalfe, Gangbuster, Reporter, Poet
  • Women Along the Historical Way
    • Lucena Brockway Adapts to Life in the Keweenaw Copper Mining Country of Lake Superior
    • Ida Tarbell- "Bachelor Soul." Transitional Woman, or Both?
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helped Her Survive the Titanic and Life Beyond
    • Clara Zetkin Speaks Against Hitler in the German Reichstag
    • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer
    • Lee Lawrence Ansberry - The Courage to Live
    • Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat
    • Margaret Fox Kane's Victorian Love Story
    • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
  • Acting History-History Plays
  • Practicing History
  • Classroom Clues
    • Power Point Pointers
    • Pieces of the World History Puzzle
    • Time Machine Tours
  • The Haunted Hollows of History
    • Does Columbus Haunt His Ships...
    • The Phantom Plowman
    • The Western Reserve and the Gilcher
    • The Ticonderoga's Haunted Bell
    • The Train Chaser
    • Mary Surratt
    • Farmer Brunett's Ghost Lantern
    • A Bicyclist Encounters a Phantom
  • Wading in Historical Waters
    • The Lady and the Patriot- The Fateful Voyage of Theodosia Burr Alston
    • Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk- Snatching Soldiers from the Fingers of the Nazis
    • Beaver Island - Mormon Kingdom, Fisherman's Paradise, Pirate Lair
    • Captain Jedediah Spinnet and His Sons Caught Fish and Pirates
    • Roman Emperor Caligula and His Legendary Lake Nemi Ships
    • Great Lakes Steamers and the Black Hawk War
    • Captain Harry Ward Cruised Gold Fields and Commanded a Slave Ship
    • "Father Put Me in the Boat-" The Story of the Northfleet
  • Catching Up with Clio's Creatures
    • Gertie the Duck, Black Bill, and the Muffled Memorial Day Parade
    • Verdun Belle Rescues a Shell-Shocked World War I Marine
    • Storks are the Stuff of Legend and Every Day Life
    • Susa White Gives Her Pet Lamb Nebby to Boston
    • Sergeant Stubby, the World War I Dog
    • Pistol Head, Cocker Spaniel, Combat Veteran
    • Sallie the Civil War Heroine
  • Creative History
    • World War II Photographs by Sandy Blakeman
    • Church Going is a Common Historical Experience
  • Musical Muse
    • Lydia Maria Child Writes and Explores Over the River and Through the Wood
    • Solomon Linda, Mbube, Wimoweh, The Lion Sleeps Tonight
    • Leroy Anderson Captures Fun and Feelings in His Music
    • Harry Barnhart Helped Soldiers Sing Their Way Through World War I >
      • Presidents in a Package-George Washington >
        • Mary Breckinridge, Circuit Riding Nurse and Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
        • George and Harry Washington Fight for Freedom
        • Charles Wedel Served on Manitowoc Submarines >
          • Navy Diver Frank Prebezich Remembered Pearl Harbor by Salvaging Battleships
          • Stan Valentine at Pearl Harbor
          • World War II - Serving Aboard the USS Enterpise
          • Michel Linovich-an Italian in Napoleon's Grand Army
          • Charles Whittlesey- Scholar, Soldier, Humanist
          • The Five Sullivan Brothers Stick Together...
          • Kentuckian James Andrews and the Yankee Bridge Burners
          • General Grant, General Babcock, General McDonald and Journalist Colony: A Study in Scandal and Friendship
          • The Dudman Family Lived the Meaning...
        • George Washington Travels French Creek to Fort Le Boeuf
        • Miracle in World War I - the Christmas
        • Presidents in a Package - Thomas Jefferson
        • President James Monroe Inspects Michigan Territory - 1817
        • President Grover Cleveland's Secret Surgery on the Steam Yacht Oneida
        • John Kissinger Volunteers to Get Yellow Fever
        • Mary Todd Lincoln Considered April Her "Season of Sadness"
        • Violets for Valor - Two Bereaved Fathers in the Civil War
      • Clarence and Mildred Beltmann - Persevering Through Hard Times
    • Singing Kumbayah- Harmonious in Hope, Discordant in Derision
    • James Bird - The Battle of Lake Erie, The Execution, The Ballad
    • PDF Musical Muse- Music History
    • Phil Ochs- A Musical Conscience of the 1960s and Beyond
    • Dan Fogelberg and His Music
    • Philip Paul Bliss and His Trunk of Songs
    • Riding with Private Andrew Malone: For All of those who didn't Make it Home
    • Do You Ken John Peel?
    • "Mind the Music and the Step-" Yankee Doodle Sings History
  • Back Water River and British Bluster
  • Soldier's Stories
  • September 11, 2001 is a "Mixed Feeling Day"
  • Memories of the Pearl Harbor Attack Haven't Faded with Time
    • Memories of Pearl Harbor
  • Light and Radiance - Figure Skater Laurence Owen and Her Team
  • Historic Halloween Tales
  • Thanksgiving Perspectives
    • Drive A Thanksgiving Turkey!
    • The Centerpiece of Thanksgiving Celebrations is Giving Thanks >
      • Presidents in a Package - Abraham Lincoln
      • Americans and Britons Celebrated Thanksgiving 1942 in War Weathered England
      • Writing a Gratitude Journal for Thanksgiving Day
      • "Do You Hear What I Hear?" >
        • Christmas Eve, 1941-A Sailor
        • Alfred Burt and Wihla Hutson
        • Milwaukee Soldiers and Sailors in World War II
        • History Sports Scenes >
          • Throwing Out the First Pitch - American Presidents On Opening Day
          • Kenesaw Mountain Landis
          • Jim Rice - A Big Time Coach in a Small Town
          • Playing Lucky Baseball with Lady Luck Sitting in the Catbird Seat
        • Silent Night Had Simple Beginnings >
          • The Angels Song - It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
          • Stuffing Stockings on St. Nicholas Day >
            • Mrs. Santa Claus- A Strong and Supportive
            • Katherine Davis-The Little Drummer Boy
        • Is There A Santa Claus? Virginia O'Hanlon and
        • Carols Silent Night and O Holy Night
        • Happy New Year
        • The Holocaust in History >
          • Carl von Ossietzky Wins a Nobel Prize While in a Nazi Concentration Camp
      • City Scapes

Ida Tarbell- "Bachelor Soul," Transitional Woman, or Both?

Picture
Ida Tarbell Library of Congress
 by Kathy Warnes

“A sound working imagination inspires a healthy contempt for copy-book lives. If we only had as young girls as much interest and good sense about life as about looks we would save ourselves many a mistake..”

Ida M. Tarbell

Many Twenty First Century women would consider Ida Minerva Tarbell’s views about women and their place in society quite old fashioned, yet her intellect ranged far ahead of her time. She saw potential and possibilities in her own life and acted upon them, but expanding her vision to the lives of other women seemed to be more difficult in practice for her than in theory. In fact, like most human beings, Ida Tarbell could be a bundle of intellectual and emotional contradictions at times.

Ida Tarbell, the “Bachelor” Soul” in a Female Body

Ida Minerva Tarbell once called herself “a bachelor soul” and in many ways her soul along with her intellect and career followed the masculine instead of the feminine expectations of late Nineteenth, early Twentieth century society. She said more than once that she preferred men to women and that women were too emotional to vote or function in the masculine world. Another remark that she made about women seems to express her contempt toward them. She said that the only reason she was glad that she was a woman was because “she wouldn’t have to marry one.”

Although Ida Tarbell’s “bachelor soul” helped her achieve much in the man’s world of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, she believed in the Cult of Domesticity tenets that said men and women had separate spheres and a woman’s place remained firmly in the home. A woman’s purpose was to make a home that served as a refugee for her bread winning husband, and a nursery and nurturer for her children. Ida Tarbell never married. Instead, against her societal norms, she became one of the foremost journalists and writers of her time.

Perhaps Ida Tarbell felt ambivalent in her attitude towards a woman’s place – home or workplace – because her grandmother believed woman should stay in the home and her mother was a suffragist.  Tarbell had a foot in both worlds, although at times her steps didn’t appear to rest firmly in either world.

Possibly with just a little tongue in cheek, Ida speculated about the direction of her mother’s life in different circumstances. “Had she never married, I feel sure she would have sought to ‘vindicate her sex’ by seeking a higher education, possibly a profession.” The woman’s suffrage fight “would have delighted her.”

In a March 30, 1913, New York Times interview, Ida Tarbell recalled crusaders for women’s rights being welcomed at her home.  “I remember best Mary Livermore and Frances Willard – not that either touched me, saw me; of this neglect I was acutely conscious…Men were nicer than women to me, I mentally noted.”

Unlike her mother, Ida Tarbell did not believe women should vote, although she disagreed with the anti-suffragists about three major points: economic independence, individual freedom for women, and the right of a woman to remain single and orchestrate her own life. Ida sought to maintain a balanced view about the balance of power between men and women. Addressing the claims of the woman’s movement, she believed that women were not the only gender in subjugation. As far as Ida was concerned, there were not only “down trodden women, but also henpecked men.” She believed that the major unfair treatment of women was that women who had to do the spending must ask for money or depend on charging. She thought that the two rights worth going after were the right to an education and the right to earn a living.

Ida Tarbell, Transitional Women

Her society and her environment also shaped Ida Tarbell’s views. She was born in a log farmhouse in Hatch Hollow, four miles south of Wattsburg in the rolling green hills of Erie County, Pennsylvania, on November 5, 1857. Her parents Franklin Sumner Tarbell and Esther Ann McCullough Tarbell had English and Scottish roots. Franklin was a teacher/carpenter with the proverbial pioneer itchy feet and Esther Ann Tarbell McCullough had taught school before she married.

The Tarbells had four children, and when Ida, the oldest was still a baby the family changed their plans to move to a farm in Iowa and moved instead to Rouseville, Pennsylvania. Erie and Crawford County Pennsylvania buzzed with oil strike excitement in towns like Pit Hole and Titusville and Franklin Tarbell started a business making wooden oil tanks. In 1870, he moved his family to Titusville and he and Esther converted from Presbyterianism to ardent Methodism.

Ida attended high school in Titusville and developed an ardent interest in science. Microscopes fascinated her and initially she thought that she might attempt to solve life’s dilemmas using biology, until she discovered that science careers were not open to women in the 1870s. Like many girls of her generation, Ida’s youthful efforts to reconcile inherited religion with scientific revelation stripped her faith of dogma, clouded her ethical horizons, and expanded her life possibilities beyond the confining walls of home.

In 1876, Ida Tarbell entered Allegheny College, a Methodist college in Meadville. College intensified her desire for a career, but she found few career opportunities for independent women. When she graduated in 1880, she accepted a position as a principal at a seminary in Poland, Mahoning County, Ohio.

Exploring the country around Poland, Ida glimpsed the destruction of industry replacing farm country. She wrote about the destruction of beauty, the destruction of behavioral standards, social problems, increasing love of money above everything else, and instability of work. She later realized how much these factors shaped her future interests and thinking.

During her two years in Poland, Ohio, Ida experienced another revelation that profoundly influenced her intellectual career and her ideas about women and their place in society. In her book, All in A Day’s Work, she said that during a drive into the country around Poland she first saw what she believed to be proof that women are not inherently peaceful. As Ida put it, “I learned the meaning of Maenads, Furies, as we came upon a maddened, threatening crowd rushing towards the offices of the mills which had been shut down without warning. It was led by big robust shrieking women, their hair flying, their clothes disheveled.  It was a look into a world of which I knew nothing.”

Discovering that her teaching duties stifled her spirit, Ida left after two years in Poland, Ohio, and returned to Meadville. In Meadville, she found work as a writer-editor on the Chautauquan, a monthly magazine expressing the Chautauqua idea of self culture and self improvement. After eight years of social reform and self improvement, Ida collected her savings and left for Paris in 1891.

Ida Tarbell, Muckraking Journalist and Biographer

In Paris Ida lived with friends in the Latin Quarter and attended lectures at the Sorbonne. She researched the role of women in the French Revolution at the Bibliotheque Nationale and wrote articles for several American Midwestern newspapers. In 1892, Samuel.S. McClure, usually called S.S., a magazine editor, found Ida in Paris and convinced her to write some articles for him. Just a year later he published her article about Louis Pasteur, connecting her with McClure’s magazine for the next twelve years.

When she returned to America in 1894, McClure commissioned Ida Tarbell to write a serial biography of Napoleon Bonaparte which McClure’s Magazine’s readers eagerly read. Next, she wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln, whom she revered and continuously wrote about over the next forty years.

By 1901, Ida Tarbell had proven her journalistic skill and become an important staff member on the staff of McClure’s Magazine. At this point, S.S. McClure decided to devote his magazine to exposing the problems in American society and the group of journalists who wrote about these abuses came to be called Muckrakers.

In 1901, S.S. McClure gave Ida Tarbell her most important assignment to date, an expose of the oil interests of John D. Rockefeller. She had a unique perspective in writing her history and exposing Rockefeller’s campaign against the interests of oilmen like her father and brother. Her assignment began as a series of articles carefully exposing the oil trust and ended as a study of corporate arrogance, dishonesty, and greed. Her assignment lasted five years and came to encompass nineteenth articles in McClure’s Magazine. In1904,  it was published as the two volume The History of the Standard Oil Company.

The History of the Standard Oil Company gained Ida Tarbell national recognition. In 1905, she traveled to Kansas and Oklahoma to report the controversies that oil strikes created, and she soon became a reluctant champion of antimonopoly. In All in the Day’s Work she described herself as “fifty, fagged, wanting to go home while I collected trustworthy information for my articles.”

By the time the United States government brought an antitrust suit against Standard Oil in 1907, Ida no longer cared about Standard Oil and monopolies. In 1906, Samuel McClure’s managing style and personal behavior caused his staff at McClure’s Magazine to disintegrate and Ida Tarbell, John S. Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens resigned from his staff. Later, they and Finley Peter Dunne and William Allen White acquired control of the American Magazine. By the end of 1906, Ida had written another major series, this time against high tariffs, but she didn’t expanded her interest in tariffs to accept a place on Woodrow Wilson’s newly created federal Tariff Commission in 1916.


Ida Tarbell, Activist and Capitalist

Even though women won the right to vote and voted in their first national election in 1920, Ida Tarbell still did not agree with women’s rights. She felt that suffragists, urban bosses and trade union leaders mistakenly relied on force to achieve their goals and advance human progress. She felt more sympathy for the settlement house work and peace activities of Jane Addams and the movement, but she personally didn’t join such humanitarian endeavors as the Ford Peace Ship.

Henry Ford did help convert Ida to a fresh dream  – welfare capitalism, or what she termed “The Golden Rule of Industry.” She traveled widely from 1912 to 1915, examining factory conditions and Henry Ford’s methods of mass production, wage policies, and his “sociological” treatment of his work force intrigued her. She also felt that Frederick W. Taylor’s ideas about scientific management and efficiency management were cures for strikes and unionization. Some of her muckraker friends thought that her new belief in corporate fairness was naive and shortsighted.

In 1915, comfortably settled in in Connecticut farmhouse, Ida Tarbell resigned from the American Magazine, but for the next twenty years she continued to be a prolific freelance writer and lecturer. She participated in government conferences about industrial problems and in 1919, went to France to report the effects of the war on that country and Europe in general. In 1926, she went to Italy to investigate Mussolini and his Fascist government.

Next, Ida wrote a biography of steel baron Elbert H. Gary. She turned to writing biography because the post World War I atmosphere at home and abroad depressed her and in 1925, she wrote a biography of steel baron Elbert H. Gary, praising what she believed to be his “ethical capitalism.” Her 1932 study of the career of American industrialist and found of RCA, lawyer, and diplomat Owen D. Young also stressed the positive works and contributions of capitalists. She praised Owen Young and Mussolini for their efforts at national industrial planning.

In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election revived Ida Tarbell’s hopes for the revival of the politics of democracy. She enthusiastically supported most of his New Deal Programs, although she had reservations about the New Deal administrators’ tendencies toward improvisation.

Tall, grave, and alert, Ida Tarbell retained her brisk, alert, and active mind into old age. On January 6, 1944, she died of pneumonia in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at age 87. She was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

References

Brady, Kathleen. Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker.  University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989.

Camhi, Jane Jerome. Women Against Women: American Anti-Suffragism. Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1994.

Weinberg, Steve. Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.

Ida Tarbell Online Books

A Few of the Books that Ida Tarbell Wrote

Madame Roland. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895.

The History of the Standard Oil Company. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan Co. 1904

He Knew Lincoln. New York:  Doubleday, Page and Co. 1909.

The Tariff in Our Times. New York: macmillan Co., 1911.

The Business of Being A Woman. New York: Macmillan Co., 1914.

Peacemakers-Blessed and Otherwise. New York: Macmillan Co., 1919.

The Rising of the Tide. New York: Macmillan Co., 1914.

In the Footsteps of the Lincolns. New York: Macmillan Co. 1924.

The Life of Elbert H. Gary. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1925.

Owen D. Young: A new Type of Industrial Leader. New York:  Macmillan Co., 1932.

The Nationalizing of Business, 1878-1989. New York: Macmillan Co., 1936.

All in the Day’s Work. New York:  Macmillan Co., 1939.

Madam Roland-1896

Napoleon with a  Sketch of Josephine- 1895

Life of Abraham Lincoln -1897

The History of the Standard Oil Company – 1903

Ida Tarbell Papers

Pelletier Library, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA.

Drake Well Museum, Titusville, PA

The Sophia Smith Library, Smith College, Northampton, MA



Copyright Notice

All of the material on this website is copyrighted.  You are free to link to any of the articles and to download any of the PDF books to read and use as long as you credit me as the author. I fully hope and expect the classroom activities to be freely used.      kathywarnes@gmail.com
Picture
Sunset on Lake Michigan in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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  • Welcome to History? ...
  • Sing Along to the Spring Siren Song
  • Ohio Ghosts Whisper....
  • Major Archie Butt Had a Gift for Friendship, Even on the Titanic
  • A Love Story for Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
  • Valentine's Day Crossword
  • Titanic Headlines, Titanic Questions
  • Hoover Dam
  • Journalists in History
    • Ernie Pyle
    • Robert St. John
    • Joseph Morton
    • Robert Cromie
    • Agnes Meyer and Katherine Graham
    • Walter Cronkite
    • Sigrid Schultz
    • Jack Denton Scott
  • March is Women's History Month!
  • Alcohol in American History - John Barleycorn Tells Some of His Story
  • As Relevant As Today- The Past Connects with the Present
    • Ignoring History is Irrelevant
    • Honoring a Veteran: Veteran's Day, November 11, 2012
    • December 1, 1958: The Day Chicago Cried with Our Lady of the Angels
    • Remembering the Vietnam War - 37 Years Present
    • Rebellion, Murder, and Voting Rights in Rhode Island
  • Words and Remembrance-May 1970 at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi
  • Rub-a-dub-dub in Your Historical Bathtub!
  • The Freedom Summer Murders Changed American Racial Attitudes
  • To Beard Or Not To Beard - That is the Historical Question
  • Scarecrows Historically Speaking
  • Diversionary Thoughts for the Dentists Chair
  • Humans in History
    • Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo, Artists of Montmartre
    • Grandmother Clara Zetkin Speaks
    • High Stepping Ohio Horseman
    • Philip Teitelbaum Creates a Money Making Machine
    • The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake..
    • Poul le Cour
    • John Collier's Fight for Indian Rights and the First and Last Superintendent of Indian Affairs
    • Lt. Colonel Ely Parker, First Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, American, and Australian Story
    • The Murderer and the Museum Curator - Nathan Leopold and Kirtland's Warbler
    • Wilbur Carr, the State Department, and Immigration - 1920-1945
    • Billy Sunday Preached His Prayer Pennant Willing Baseball Story
    • William Alden Smith, Michigan's Titanic Senator
    • Helen and Dickinson Bishop Survive An Earthquake and the Titanic
    • Faster Than Flames: Locomotive Engineer James Root Races the Hinckley Fire
    • Three Hot and Contentious Weeks in July 1925 - The Scopes "Monkey " Trial
    • The Confederados Become Brazilian, but Honor Their American Southern Roots
    • Fascinating Footnote: The Goosedown Divorce
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, Australian, and American Story
    • The Molly Maguires - Trailblazers or Terrorists?
    • Lt. Uriah Phillips Levy Fights Prejudice and Saves Monticello
    • The Stavisky Affair - Sasha the Suave Scammer
    • General Santa Anna, Chicle, and Chewing Gum
    • James J. Metcalfe, Gangbuster, Reporter, Poet
  • Women Along the Historical Way
    • Lucena Brockway Adapts to Life in the Keweenaw Copper Mining Country of Lake Superior
    • Ida Tarbell- "Bachelor Soul." Transitional Woman, or Both?
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helped Her Survive the Titanic and Life Beyond
    • Clara Zetkin Speaks Against Hitler in the German Reichstag
    • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer
    • Lee Lawrence Ansberry - The Courage to Live
    • Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat
    • Margaret Fox Kane's Victorian Love Story
    • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
  • Acting History-History Plays
  • Practicing History
  • Classroom Clues
    • Power Point Pointers
    • Pieces of the World History Puzzle
    • Time Machine Tours
  • The Haunted Hollows of History
    • Does Columbus Haunt His Ships...
    • The Phantom Plowman
    • The Western Reserve and the Gilcher
    • The Ticonderoga's Haunted Bell
    • The Train Chaser
    • Mary Surratt
    • Farmer Brunett's Ghost Lantern
    • A Bicyclist Encounters a Phantom
  • Wading in Historical Waters
    • The Lady and the Patriot- The Fateful Voyage of Theodosia Burr Alston
    • Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk- Snatching Soldiers from the Fingers of the Nazis
    • Beaver Island - Mormon Kingdom, Fisherman's Paradise, Pirate Lair
    • Captain Jedediah Spinnet and His Sons Caught Fish and Pirates
    • Roman Emperor Caligula and His Legendary Lake Nemi Ships
    • Great Lakes Steamers and the Black Hawk War
    • Captain Harry Ward Cruised Gold Fields and Commanded a Slave Ship
    • "Father Put Me in the Boat-" The Story of the Northfleet
  • Catching Up with Clio's Creatures
    • Gertie the Duck, Black Bill, and the Muffled Memorial Day Parade
    • Verdun Belle Rescues a Shell-Shocked World War I Marine
    • Storks are the Stuff of Legend and Every Day Life
    • Susa White Gives Her Pet Lamb Nebby to Boston
    • Sergeant Stubby, the World War I Dog
    • Pistol Head, Cocker Spaniel, Combat Veteran
    • Sallie the Civil War Heroine
  • Creative History
    • World War II Photographs by Sandy Blakeman
    • Church Going is a Common Historical Experience
  • Musical Muse
    • Lydia Maria Child Writes and Explores Over the River and Through the Wood
    • Solomon Linda, Mbube, Wimoweh, The Lion Sleeps Tonight
    • Leroy Anderson Captures Fun and Feelings in His Music
    • Harry Barnhart Helped Soldiers Sing Their Way Through World War I >
      • Presidents in a Package-George Washington >
        • Mary Breckinridge, Circuit Riding Nurse and Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
        • George and Harry Washington Fight for Freedom
        • Charles Wedel Served on Manitowoc Submarines >
          • Navy Diver Frank Prebezich Remembered Pearl Harbor by Salvaging Battleships
          • Stan Valentine at Pearl Harbor
          • World War II - Serving Aboard the USS Enterpise
          • Michel Linovich-an Italian in Napoleon's Grand Army
          • Charles Whittlesey- Scholar, Soldier, Humanist
          • The Five Sullivan Brothers Stick Together...
          • Kentuckian James Andrews and the Yankee Bridge Burners
          • General Grant, General Babcock, General McDonald and Journalist Colony: A Study in Scandal and Friendship
          • The Dudman Family Lived the Meaning...
        • George Washington Travels French Creek to Fort Le Boeuf
        • Miracle in World War I - the Christmas
        • Presidents in a Package - Thomas Jefferson
        • President James Monroe Inspects Michigan Territory - 1817
        • President Grover Cleveland's Secret Surgery on the Steam Yacht Oneida
        • John Kissinger Volunteers to Get Yellow Fever
        • Mary Todd Lincoln Considered April Her "Season of Sadness"
        • Violets for Valor - Two Bereaved Fathers in the Civil War
      • Clarence and Mildred Beltmann - Persevering Through Hard Times
    • Singing Kumbayah- Harmonious in Hope, Discordant in Derision
    • James Bird - The Battle of Lake Erie, The Execution, The Ballad
    • PDF Musical Muse- Music History
    • Phil Ochs- A Musical Conscience of the 1960s and Beyond
    • Dan Fogelberg and His Music
    • Philip Paul Bliss and His Trunk of Songs
    • Riding with Private Andrew Malone: For All of those who didn't Make it Home
    • Do You Ken John Peel?
    • "Mind the Music and the Step-" Yankee Doodle Sings History
  • Back Water River and British Bluster
  • Soldier's Stories
  • September 11, 2001 is a "Mixed Feeling Day"
  • Memories of the Pearl Harbor Attack Haven't Faded with Time
    • Memories of Pearl Harbor
  • Light and Radiance - Figure Skater Laurence Owen and Her Team
  • Historic Halloween Tales
  • Thanksgiving Perspectives
    • Drive A Thanksgiving Turkey!
    • The Centerpiece of Thanksgiving Celebrations is Giving Thanks >
      • Presidents in a Package - Abraham Lincoln
      • Americans and Britons Celebrated Thanksgiving 1942 in War Weathered England
      • Writing a Gratitude Journal for Thanksgiving Day
      • "Do You Hear What I Hear?" >
        • Christmas Eve, 1941-A Sailor
        • Alfred Burt and Wihla Hutson
        • Milwaukee Soldiers and Sailors in World War II
        • History Sports Scenes >
          • Throwing Out the First Pitch - American Presidents On Opening Day
          • Kenesaw Mountain Landis
          • Jim Rice - A Big Time Coach in a Small Town
          • Playing Lucky Baseball with Lady Luck Sitting in the Catbird Seat
        • Silent Night Had Simple Beginnings >
          • The Angels Song - It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
          • Stuffing Stockings on St. Nicholas Day >
            • Mrs. Santa Claus- A Strong and Supportive
            • Katherine Davis-The Little Drummer Boy
        • Is There A Santa Claus? Virginia O'Hanlon and
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        • Happy New Year
        • The Holocaust in History >
          • Carl von Ossietzky Wins a Nobel Prize While in a Nazi Concentration Camp
      • City Scapes