Taverns had an important function in the 18th Century, not just as a place to eat and drink, but where one could collect one’s mail or have a stolen coat returned. A reporter working under the name “Correspondent at Washington” wrote that they were a place to “drink Toddy, and play cards” in an article in The […]
Gifts are well-intentioned efforts to be generous to other people and gift guides can be a lot of fun to write. This year, I am doing away with the pretense that it’s possible to put yourself in the shoes of anyone else but yourself: a good gift should be something you want to give to yourself in the […]
Hey there! You are not seeing double: There are two gift guide posts (or there will be once I publish the other one). We live in a pretty big neighborhood and I am just trying to highlight as many shopping options as I can before it’s too late. Are New Year’s gifts a thing? You […]
Today we will look at something that was lost not once, but twice: once on the battlefield, and again in the many renovations and rebuildings at the Washington Navy Yard. In the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, Captain Ulrich Dahlgren (pic) of the United States Army was patrolling Hagerstown, MD, when he was struck […]
One of the more… ahem, colorful people inhumed at Congressional Cemetery is Miss Mary Ann Hall, a noted Madam. I wrote about about her in my scandal book. Recently, I was contacted about a Mary Ann Hall who apparently ran a house of ill repute in New York in 1866, with the question as to […]