Monthly Archives: March 2023

Washington mural rediscovered

06 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by in American Revolutionary War memory

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I’m always a sucker for a good lost-and-found story. What makes them so great is that by definition they come as a surprise. This winter something really special resurfaced: a 1921 mural commissioned for a Trenton, New Jersey opera house of George Washington Crossing the Delaware. Funds are now being raised for conservation work, and if all goes as planned the mural will hang in the new visitor center being built at Washington Crossing State Park for the semiquincentennial in 2026. Here was see the mural as it appeared in volume one of the 1932 five-volume “History of the George Washington Bicentennial Celebration.”

Commemorating the Boston Massacre before the Revolution

05 Sunday Mar 2023

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image via “Paul Revere and his Engraving” by William Loring Andrews (1901)

One thing that came up repeatedly during both the dedications and small talk at Morristown National Historical Park yesterday was the upcoming anniversaries in the next few years. 2024 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Washington Association of New Jersey, who came into being in 1874 after purchasing the Ford Mansion. It was the WANJ who gave the house to the NPS in 1933. They were present yesterday participating in the events. Next year also brings the 200th anniversary of Lafayette’s 1824-25 tour of America, which I intend to write about quite a bit over the next two years. In April 2025 comes the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord. And of course in July 2026 is the Big One: the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. When I was researching at the Society of the Cincinnati last July I had talks with several people saying speakers were already being lined up, there and elsewhere, for all these things. I say all this because today is the 253rd anniversary of the Redcoats’ shooting of Bostonians on King Street. As we see from the broadsheet above, people were marking the anniversary of what we today call the Boston Massacre already in the years immediately after the incident. Dr. Church’s oration was three years after the massacre and nine months before the Boston Tea Party, which took place in December 1773.

Remembering Patsy Cline

05 Sunday Mar 2023

Posted by in Country & Western, Those we remember

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It was sixty years ago today that Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and others died in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee. The first time I listened to Patsy in a serious way was one summer in the mid-1990s when, going through a tough stretch, I played one of the many anthology cd’s over and over each morning and evening after work. I have never cared for the countrypolitan style in vogue during her recording lifetime in which the labels added lush strings, backup voices, and other touches to slick the music up and make it more palatable to the respectable crowd now buying records to play on their new living room hi-fi sets. Her voice was so transcendent, however, that it rose above whatever white noise the producers surrounded it with. When one listens to Patsy Cline, the voice is all that matters. I can only imagine what it was like when she was on the road with a small band in front of an intimate audience and everything was working.

A quick internet search as I have my Sunday morning coffee shows that this sixtieth anniversary of the plane crash that took the lives of too many too soon is very much in the news. Because her most well-known songs get overplayed, here is one of her more obscure numbers.

Morristown National Historical Park turns 90

04 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by in George Washington, National Park Service

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Morristown National Historical Park ninetieth anniversary celebration, March 4, 2023

I had a good time in New Jersey today at the ninetieth anniversary celebration of Morristown National Historical Park. Although we usually associate Franklin Roosevelt with the shifting focus on the national parks from the West to the East, it was actually Herbert Hoover who began the process. The lame duck executive signed the enabling legislation creating the first national historical park on March 2, 1933 in the waning days of his presidency. MORR is one of the gems in Park Service system, and spread across several locations as it is has something for everyone. Above we see the ribbon cutting that took place after this afternoon’s keynote address. The historical park is having a number of events throughout the year. In fact, on Saturday June 17 a guy with my initials will be giving a talk in the museum behind the Ford Mansion. The topic is based on an article I recently wrote about a project undertaken for a decade in the 1910s and 1920s sponsored by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in cooperation with the National Park Service.