Pioneers, Preachers, and Privateers
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Pioneers, Preachers, and Privateers
@pioneerspreachers.bsky.social
15 followers 43 following 35 posts
Looking at history through the lives of our ancestors
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At Home in the Arctic — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Some time ago, I wrote about my great-grandfather’s cousin Ethel Barnhart and her husband William Van Valin, who in 1911 became teachers in a school for Alaskan Natives run by the U.S. government. Aft...
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December 8, 2025 at 10:01 PM
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Heresy, Whaling, and Coffee — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Any of my friends will tell you that I love Starbucks coffee. I’m a coffee fanatic, in general, but I’ve always particularly enjoyed Starbucks. While in Seattle one time, I even visited the original l...
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December 1, 2025 at 9:03 PM
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Wide Awake in 1860 — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
In 1860, my four-times great-uncle, Servetus Longley, invented and patented a street-sweeping machine. It’s an ingenious device, with brushes attached at an angle to a set of wheels so that the machin...
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November 7, 2025 at 10:16 PM
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Sir Knight — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
I stumbled into exploring the world of Freemasonry somewhat by accident. My aunt mentioned that her grandfather had been a Knight Templer. I found this baffling because the only Knights Templar I knew...
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October 31, 2025 at 10:24 PM
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It Was a Most Thrilling Sight! — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
As I have written in a previous post, my great-grandmother Dorothy (Dollie) Loud grew up on cavalry posts across the western United States and, for high school, attended boarding school in Omaha, Nebr...
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October 10, 2025 at 6:09 PM
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Jack Dempsey’s Rolex — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
When I was a child, my parents always received a cheesecake from Jack Dempsey’s Broadway Restaurant at Christmas. I didn’t really understand who Jack Dempsey was or why he sent us a cheesecake every y...
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September 30, 2025 at 9:12 PM
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The Erisman Grocery Company — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Growing up in Ft. Worth, Texas, I was vaguely aware that my great-great-grandfather, Richard Y. Erisman, had once run a grocery store in the city. As a child, I supposed it was like the grocery stores...
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September 21, 2025 at 7:23 PM
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The Life of an Officer’s Wife — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
I’ve written before about my great-great grandmother Kate Mifflin Loud and her adventures as an army officer’s wife on the 19th century western frontier. We know quite a bit about what life was like f...
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August 23, 2025 at 10:18 PM
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The Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Washakie — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
I can’t remember when I first learned about the Buffalo Soldiers. As I discussed in my last post, my great-great-grandfather John S. Loud had a thirty-year career as an officer with the 9th Cavalry. I...
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August 23, 2025 at 10:17 PM
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The Road to Fort Washakie — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
One of my family’s most treasured heirlooms is a scrapbook containing photos taken between 1895 and 1897 at Fort Washakie, Wyoming. At that time, my great-great-grandfather John S. Loud was stationed ...
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August 23, 2025 at 10:17 PM
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The Real McCoy — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
When you’re working with Civil War pension files at the National Archives, you never really know what you’re going to get. A soldier’s file could be a few pages or a few hundred. It could include a si...
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July 11, 2025 at 11:31 PM
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She Has Always Exercised and Enjoyed Those Rights — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
As I said in my last post, my three times great-granduncle Elias Longley and his wife Margaret Vater Longley were idealists. Among Elias’s many publishing ventures was a newspaper, The Type of the ...
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July 4, 2025 at 5:13 PM
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Fonetic Speliŋ — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
I’ve written quite a bit already about my Longley relatives, including Thomas, who spoke out against slavery in Kentucky in 1805, and Abner, who joined a utopian socialist community in 1844. I joke so...
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June 13, 2025 at 5:21 PM
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A Well-Known Furniture Manufacturer — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
My mother owned quite a few antiques although she wasn’t really a collector. She only occasionally purchased antiques herself, but she had many objects that she had inherited from family members. When...
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June 1, 2025 at 11:58 PM
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A Manifest Incongruity — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Because my family has lived in America for a very long time, I am eligible to join many of the lineage societies that limit their membership to the descendants of early settlers or men who served in v...
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June 1, 2025 at 11:58 PM
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The Only Thing You Can Do Is Refuse To Forget — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
When I was about 12 years old, my father pulled an old magazine out of a closet and showed it to me. He explained that an article in there described something awful, but it was true and was something ...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:47 AM
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When Uncle Sam Was Ready, Things Moved Fast — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
My great-grandfather, Francis Fielding (Frank) Longley, was a civil engineer who specialized in water treatment systems. Clean and readily available water is one of those things that it’s easy to take...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:46 AM
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Occupation: Legislator — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
I'm running behind on blog posts because I spent the last several weeks in Washington. DC. working in the National Archives on a project related to the 66th U.S. Colored Infantry (USCI) regiment. In (...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:46 AM
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The First English Settlers in New England — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Until recently, if you had asked me what colony was established by the English in North America in 1607, I would have said Jamestown, and I would have been right, but only partially.  In fact, th...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:45 AM
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Friends of Humanity — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Some time ago, I wrote about my five-times great-grandfather Thomas Longley, who moved his family from New York City down the Ohio River to Kentucky in 1788. Thomas was a Baptist. I don’t know if he w...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:45 AM
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Airship Dreams — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
It seems like many of my ideas for blog posts come from finding mysterious family photos that, once researched, yield insight into things I knew very little about. Today’s post originated with a photo...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:45 AM
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Every Family Has a Maverick, Part 2 — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
When we last left our intrepid protagonist, John Jones, the Civil War veteran formerly known as Walter W. Collins, he had been honorably discharged from the army in February 1866 in Little Rock, Arkan...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:44 AM
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Every Family Has a Maverick, Part 1 — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
Every family has a maverick (or two), and one of my family’s mavericks was my great-great-great-grandfather Walter White Collins.  Walter was born in Guernsey County, Ohio, in 1838 and moved with...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:44 AM
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Nettie’s Story — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
My family was surprised when I told them that my great-grandmother, Florence Roberts, had three siblings. They only knew of one, her older brother Walter. The explanation for one of these missing sibl...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:43 AM
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Who Needs the Mason-Dixon Line? — Pioneers, Preachers, & Privateers
In reading about Pennsylvania, as I have been doing a lot lately, I have come across many references to the Mason-Dixon line, the southern boundary of the colony and eventually the state. We’re all fa...
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May 3, 2025 at 2:43 AM