SITE AND ANTECEDENTS In the middle of the seventeenth century when the English King, Charles II, was generously settling Virginia land upon loyal subjects, what is now the port of Alexandria was part of six thousand acres granted by the Royal Governor, Sir William Berkeley, in the name of His Majesty, to Robert Howsing. The grant was made in 1669 as a reward for bringing into the colony one hundred and twenty persons "to inhabit." Howsing did... more...

A Gold Hunter's Experience Early in the summer of 1860 I had a bad attack of gold fever. In Chicago the conditions for such a malady were all favorable. Since the panic of 1857 there had been three years of general depression, money was scarce, there was little activity in business, the outlook was discouraging, and I, like hundreds of others, felt blue. Gold had been discovered in the fall of 1858 in the vicinity of Pike's Peak, by a party of... more...

MY DEAR GRANDCHILDREN: We are reminded daily of the uncertainty of human life: for the young and the old, the gay and the grave, the good and the wicked, are subject to death. Young people do not realize this, but it is nevertheless true, and before you are old enough, my children, to understand and lay to heart all that your mother would tell you of her dearly beloved father, she may be asleep with grandma, close beside him in Bellefontaine. An... more...