What's In the Bone: The Deep History of a Domino Set
The Curious Story of a Simple Antique Game
ancestry
Emalyn Smith Burney: An Endling
can’t go on. I’ll go on. — Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air Emalyn first came to my attention in a sensational newspaper article from the Berlin News Records, April 26, 1913 (now Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): He Died Again but Shock Killed his Grandmother Butte, California, April 26,
John Collier: Florida Pioneer, Cracker and Polygamist
John Collier Sr. was certainly a fascinating man. A true Florida pioneer, he was the personification of a “cracker” — but in the positive historical sense (more on the “cracker” origin story follows). As we shall see, his personal relationships are legion and deeply tangled. Let’s call him “John” from
Cooksville Creek: A History of Saul’s Creek and the Saul Family in Port Credit
We now know it as Cooksville Creek, but from the 1800s to the 1960s it was known as Saul’s Creek. A lively little waterway, it meandered through lands owned by Hugh W. Saul. The creek runs 16 km from near Bristol Road to Lake Ontario. This watershed has been
Something Wicked This Way Came
In the mid-1990s my family and I were vacationing on the Island of Saint Kitts. The choice of Saint Kitts was largely mine. My 6th great-grandfather Robert Choppin (died 1688) arrived in Saint Kitts in 1629 as part of the fleet of Sir Thomas Warner (who was one
Michael Who Chose Not to Be
Recently my 8-year-old granddaughter asked why I don’t have any brothers or sisters. An easy or difficult question to answer, depending on how philosophical or “historically” accurate you choose to be. In truth, I might have had an older brother, or at least for a very brief