Biography Archives – Page 2 of 15

November 19, 2025November 20, 2025

Not Going Gentle (Part I): Mose Triplett

These are tough times. But we are a tough people, we humans. I came across a story last week about how strong people can be, how they can–as Faulkner said–endure the most extraordinary things. Sometimes we’re just too ornery to quit.

It was a rabbit hole, and I am infamous for not knowing when to stop. The rabbits multiplied in their little warren so much that this became two stories. If you like human interest stories, I promise this pays off.

The starting point was two weeks ago, when I failed a little history quiz. It was the Saturday Times Flashback test, the one where you have to put historical events in order. This ought to be my wheelhouse, but there’s always that one trick question that mars my perfect score and makes me curse the quiz-writer.

For this November 8th quiz, you had to guess the approximate date for when was “the last Civil War pension check distributed”? You had hints–it was either before or after 1957 and before or after 1823. I thought I had this one for sure! Definitely before 1957 but after 1823. A man was in the Civil War, let’s say as young as age 15, then his child maybe was born as late as 1880 and died in… NOPE! Not even close. She was born in 1930 and died in 2020. WTF?!? Yes, WTF indeed.

That was just the start of this intriguing story about the father Mose and the daughter Irene. Most of the info we have is about Mose, who fought in the Civil War–on both sides. Much of the legwork was laid out in a 2014 a Daily Mail story augmented by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael M. Phillips. Irene was tracked down by Lorraine Orton, a historian with the Women’s Relief Corps, and her husband Jerry, who found Irene after thirty years in a nursing home.

The news articles follow the journalist rules, laying out key known facts. But I find myself trying to understand the people. What kind of a person does THIS? What kind of a person could live through THAT? Today: “Uncle” Mose’s story. Tomorrow: Lydia and Irene’ story.

February 20, 2025February 21, 2025

Reading Between the Lines in the Life of Susie King Taylor

It’s hard to preserve history. The paper that holds the stories crumbles or sticks together, stored in damp basements or behind walls. Officials throw files away, burn them, or shove them into unlabelled boxes. People die without telling us what happened.

Yet at the same time, it’s not so simple to erase what happened, not with a wave of a wand or the stroke of an expensive pen. Stories once told take on a life of their own. Files are rediscovered; skeleton bones fall out of closets. History can’t simply be ripped off the wall. If you hadn’t heard, a school official recently took Harriet Tubman posters down in advance of a visit from Trump government officials. As if that would remove what Harriet Tubman was or what she did.

If we choose to remember, if we work to remember–dig underneath the bland encyclopedia entries to uncover what we must remember–then nothing will erase the real stories. February is still Black History Month, whether there are posters or not.

I came across the remarkable life of Susie King Taylor, looking for an appropriate subject to write about this month, somewhat discouraged about writing at all. You can read a few paragraphs about her on Wikipedia, at the Library of Congress, or via the National Park Service. She was the first African-American nurse in the Civil War, the first Black woman to teach at a school in a Union camp, the first woman to write about life in the camps. The “first” business doesn’t really matter. The point is that she did things and wrote her story, proving how important a task that is.

November 26, 2024November 26, 2024

The Mother of Thanksgiving

Author’s Note: This post is a few years old, but I can’t improve on the “true story” of Thanksgiving. Other than to say she apparently lobbied for pumpkin pie, but that’s another story.

Sarah Josepha Hale, engraving from Library of Congress

Mary had a turkey browned
From three hours in the oven
Her guests were drooling all the while
For gravy and the stuffin’
Hale’s famous poem, variation by kajmeister

Perhaps Americans would still have invented Thanksgiving without Sarah Josepha Hale. After all, proclamations of Thanksgiving had been declared by the Continental Congresses by Samuel Adams and John Hanson and the like:

It being the indispensable duty of all nations, not only to offer up their supplications to Almighty God, the giver of all good, for His gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner, to give Him praise for His goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of His Providence in their behalf; therefore, the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of Divine goodness to these States in the course of the important conflict, in which they have been so long engaged and so on and so forth etcetera etcetera etcetera…
November 1782, text for the Thanksgiving or National Prayer Day observation (Wikipedia)

That seems a rather dry plateful of harvest to start with, taking some 250 words until it even gets to the Thanksgiving part of the equation. Why, there’s hardly any gravy at all, although there does seem to be quite a bit of lard in it, so maybe the pies were flaky.