The Boy Company

Parker's Battery 1864

This site seems remote from Richmond, but Confederate defenses extended well beyond the city. From mid-June 1864 a unit of artillerymen called Parker’s Battery manned these earthworks.

Despite the proximity of a large enemy force, this line was quiet ...

The Route of the Hiawatha- Bumps on the Milwaukee Road

In 1925, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company suffered the largest business failure in the history of the United States up to that time.

The bankruptcy resulted from a combination of problems related to the construction of its ...

This Monument Marks The Old Natchez Trace

over which pioneers traveled through Lawrence County, Tennessee, which was organized Oct. 21, 1817.

The county seat, Lawrenceburg, was created on Nov. 23, 1819, and named in honor of Capt. James Lawrence, naval hero of the War of 1812.

Erected May 15, ...

The First Methodist Meeting House

The first Methodist Meeting House in Petersburg was a theatre on West Old Street near the river rented by Gressett Davis. Robert Williams, a follower of John Wesley, came to Petersburg to preach in 1773 at the invitation of Davis ...

The Peabody-Williams School

Petersburg, Virginia

Disrupted by the convulsions of the First World War, efforts to replace the increasingly inadequate Peabody School on Fillmore Street stretched out from 1913 until 1920, when the new Peabody-Williams School opened on Jones Street. Charles Robinson, who designed ...

The Birthplace of George McDuffie

From these humble and obscure Georgia pinelands, assisted by the plantation-owning South Carolina Calhouns, George McDuffie rose to become Congressman, Senator, and Governor of South Carolina.

McDuffie's political prominence involved him in a renowned political dispute when his loyalty to John ...

The Route of the Hiawatha- Smooth as Silk

“Highballing” fast freight trains..

…known as “Silks”, sped raw Asian silk from west coast seaports across the United States for processing into finished garments.

The silks had the right-of-way over freight and passenger trains alike. They rushed their multimillion dollar cargo across ...

Meriwether Lewis

1774-1809

Beneath this monument erected under Legislative Act by the State of Tennessee, A.D., 1848, reposes the dust of Meriwether Lewis, a Captain in the United States Army, Private Secretary to President Jefferson, Senior Commander of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, ...

The Route of the Hiawatha- Little in Name Only

[Cyrillic text]

(Little Joes, The Locomotives Big Joe Stalin Never Got!)

Made for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, the United States embargoed these magnificent locomotives as strategic material at the start of the “Cold War”.

The Milwaukee Road bought twelve of these 586,00 pound ...

Freight on the Move

Central Pacific Railroad

Since the days of Sutter’s Fort, Sacramento was the trading center for much of the Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada and points beyond. As the railroad network around the capital city expanded, Sacramento merchants were able to market ...