An old Indian sat there and when we came in, said, “How you do?” and extended his hand. Quite polite to give his sole English.

White Thunder was on the bed. He was not very cordial toward me, I thought. We all sat on chairs. He brought out his papers, the Treaty concerning the Ponca Band, the list of articles to be issued at the Rosebud Agency for 1881 and 1882. I copied this in Book II –
Several other Indians there, two young men and an old man. Swift Bear came in and stayed.

While we sat there, White Thunder’s wife began to cook. She made bread and baked it, wretched stuff, heavy and poor. Coffee and some sort of stripped and dried meat boiled with pork. A cloth was put on the floor between White Thunder’s bed and the stove and the meal served on china plates and cups and saucers. At the back of the chief’s bed was a bed spread on the floor, back of this was stored the various packs all covered with beads, I think four or five of them. There were trunks and valises and bags.

A pair of paddles lay on a few nails like brackets. Don’t know what they are. A doll, French, was dressed with a necklace, whereon 10 cent pieces were strung. She was put in one of the baby hoods. This is a long bag open at one side. The back is a plain strip the sides joined to it, at the top a little ornamental flap. Sometimes the end is trimmed with little brass sleigh bells – these about the baby’s face. The baby is laid in there and carried in the mother’s arms. The doll belonged to her daughter, a girl of ten or twelve. She had her hair in braids with beads at the end a tassel of brass beads.

The girl wore a blanket most of the time. The mother wore the usual dress, calico, red. She was painted, bright red cheeks, her hair part being red. A young comely girl came in, brought in meat and looked bright and pleasing. This was the wife’s younger sister, had been at Carlisle school. She is about eighteen years old.

I understand that White Thunder wants to marry this girl as his second wife. She declines. It is rather startling and unpleasant to contemplate this woman’s future. I hope she will hold out.

a wind has blown the rain away and blown
the sky away and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand. I think i too have known
autumn too long

(and what have you to say,
wind wind wind—did you love somebody
and have you the petal of somewhere in your heart
pinched from dumb summer?
O crazy daddy
of death dance cruelly for us and start

the last leaf whirling in the final brain
of air!)Let us as we have seen see
doom’s integration………a wind has blown the rain

away and the leaves and the sky and the
trees stand:
the trees stand. The trees,
suddenly wait against the moon’s face.

Was there ever such cruel newspaper abuse lavished upon an unoffending woman as has been showered upon my devoted head? The people of this ungrateful country are like the ‘dogs in the manger;’ will neither do anything themselves, nor allow me to improve my own condition. What a Government we have! All their abuse lavished upon me only lowers themselves in the estimation of all true–hearted people.

The Springfield Journal had an editorial a few days since, with the important information that Mrs. Lincoln had been known to be deranged for years, and should be pitied for all her strange acts. I should have been all right if I had allowed them to take possession of the White House. In the comfortable stealings by contracts from the Government, these low creatures are allowed to hurl their malicious wrath at me, with no one to defend me or protect me, if I should starve. These people injure themselves far more than they could do me, by their lies and villany. Their aim is to prevent my goods being sold, or anything being done for me. In this, I very much fear, they have succeeded…

Two weeks ago, dear Lizzie, we were in that den of discomfort and dirt. Now we are far asunder. Every other day, for the past week, I have had a chill, brought on by excitement and suffering of mind. In the midst of it I have moved into my winter quarters, and am now very comfortably situated. My parlor and bedroom are very sweetly furnished. I am lodged in a handsome house, a very kind, good, quiet family, and their meals are excellent. I consider myself fortunate in all this. I feel assured that the Republicans, who, to cover up their own perfidy and neglect, have used every villanous falsehood in their power to injure me—I fear they have more than succeeded, but if their day of reckoning does not come in this world, it will surely in the next…

Saturday.—I have determined to shed no more tears over all their cruel falsehoods, yet, just now, I feel almost forsaken by God and man—except by the latter to be vilified. Write me all that Keyes and Brady think of the result. For myself, after such abuse, I expect nothing. Oh! that I could see you.

Write me, dear Lizzie, if only a line; I cannot understand your silence. Hereafter direct your letters to Mrs. A. Lincoln, 460 West Washington street, Chicago, Ill., care of D. Cole. Remember 460. I am always so anxious to hear from you, I am feeling so friendless in the world.

I remain always your affectionate friend.
M. L.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as anyone else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.

The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.

Sam McCulloch settled on land along the Lavaca River in present-day Jackson County, Texas in 1835, just before the Texas Revolution broke out. He was a free black man, and eager to protect his liberty.

He joined the Matagorda Volunteer Company, and on October 9 his company headed out to storm the Mexican officers’ quarters in Goliad. It wasn’t a huge battle, but Sam was slammed by a musket ball that shattered his right shoulder, which earned him a proud place in history as the first casualty of the Texas Revolution.

His status as a free African American disabled war veteran also quickly became a thorny issue for the young Texas government. Since Sam Jr. had arrived in Texas before it became an independent republic, he was considered a free Mexican citizen and therefore entitled to land. As an honored and disabled military veteran of the Republic of Texas, he was also entitled to land, regardless of his race.

However, due to the recently passed “Act Concerning Free Persons of Color”, the law said that Sam had to leave the state, petition for an exemption, or be sold into slavery.

McCulloch’s June 1837 petition to the Texas Congress made clear his rock-and-a-hard place situation:

“Sam McCulloch unhappily finds that the Laws of the Country for the Independence of which he has fought and bled…he is deprived of the privileges of citizenship by reason of an unfortunate admixture of African blood…nor can he, without the beneficent action of Congress, receive the lands to which he was entitled under the Mexican government. Your petitioner [Samuel McCulloch] further asks…that he and his children be allowed to enjoy the privileges of citizenship in this Republic.”

Two years later, on December 15, 1840, the leaders of Texas signed an exemption to An Act Concerning Free Persons of Color and allowed Sam and his family to remain in the Republic.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas…That Samuel McCulloch, jr., and his three sisters…Jane, Harriet and Mahaly, and their descendants, better known as the free children of Samuel McCulloch, senr., now in the Republic of Texas… be…exempted from all provisions of “an act concerning free persons of color.”

“Be it further enacted, that the previously mentioned free persons…are permitted and allowed to continue their residence within the bounds of the Republic of Texas.

(signed)
David S. Kaufman, Speaker of the House;
Anson Jones, Senate President Pro Tem;
David G. Burnet, Acting President

Rose F. Fitzgerald was the 24 year old daughter of the ex-Mayor of Boston, John F. Fitzgerald.

Joseph P. Kennedy was a recent Harvard grad who had just taken control of the Columbia Trust Bank and become the youngest bank president in America.

Rose and Joe had first met at Old Orchard Beach in Maine, vacationing as children. They met again as teenagers and romance quickly blossomed into dating. Now their wedding was front page news, the wedding of the season for the “Lace Curtain” Boston Irish.

Cardinal O’Connell officiated in the chapel of his residence in Kenmore Square while the parents of the couple beamed in approval. Agnes Fitzgerald served as maid of honor for the bride, while another sister, Eunice looked on. Joseph Donovan, a close friend and Harvard classmate served as best man.

Following the ceremony, the couple posed for newsmen who gathered outside the Cardinal’s residence. The couple smiled heartily for the occasion and then returned to the Fitzgerald family home in Dorchester for a reception. Then they took off for a two week honeymoon at White Sulphur Springs in Virginia.

Nine months later the children started arriving, with Joseph (1915), then John (1917), Rosemary (1918), Kathleen (1920), Eunice (1921), Patricia (1924), Robert (1925), Jean (1928) and finally Ted (1932).

Joe would make his mark in the stock market, as a bootlegger, as Ambassador, but most notably as the progenitor of a most remarkable dynasty. Rose was the rock of the family – she never missed Sunday mass.

Their marriage off 55 years ended when Joe passed away on November 18, 1969 in Hyannis; he was 81. Rose would live on for another twenty-five years; she outlived four of her children and passed away on January 18, 1995 at the age of 104.

It wasn’t just Chicago that went up in flames.

October  started out unusually hot and dry, after an already unusually hot and dry summer in the Midwest.

The booming lumber industry hadn’t always bothered to burn away the brush they cleared. Sparks from passing trains could ignite small fires, and with the long drought, small wildfires had become just another part of life in the region.

When a massive cold front hit on October 8th, strong winds fanned the flames across Wisconsin and Northern Illinois and across Michigan and suddenly connected all the little wildfires into an immense firestorm, large enough to sustain its own wind system and even generate tornadoes.

The fires in Michigan claimed over 1000 lives, but the worst fires were in Wisconsin:

A local minister, Reverend Peter Pernin, described the chaos:

“The air was no longer fit to breathe, full as it was of sand, dust, ashes, cinders, sparks, smoke, and fire. It was almost impossible to keep one’s eyes unclosed, to distinguish the road, or to recognize people, though the way was crowded with pedestrians, as well as vehicles crossing and crashing against each other in the general flight. Some were hastening toward the river, others from it, whilst all were struggling alike in the grasp of the hurricane. A thousand discordant deafening noises rose on the air together. The neighing of horses, falling of chimneys, crashing of uprooted trees, roaring and whistling of the wind, crackling of fire as it ran with lightning-like rapidity from house to house—all sounds were there save that of human voice. People seemed stricken dumb by terror. They jostled each other without exchanging look, word, or counsel. The silence of the tomb reigned among the living; nature alone lifted up its voice and spoke.”

The Peshtigo Fire covered an area about twice the size of Rhode Island, and claimed twelve rural communities before burning itself out. Well over a thousand people in the frontier town of Peshtigo perished on October 8, victims of either the fire itself or from drowning or succumbing to hypothermia while taking refuge in the frigid water of the river.

The Great Chicago Fire remains the most famous fire of that day, but the firestorm known as the Great Peshtigo Fire was the most lethal.

From 1876 to 1945, The Chicago Cubs were one of the most successful baseball teams in the country. They had 51 winning seasons, 16 first place finishes, 16 pennants and two World Series titles.

On October 6th 1945 the Cubs entered game four of the World Series leading the Detroit Tigers 2 games to 1. They only needed to win two of the next four games played at Wrigley Field to win another series.

A local Greek, William “Billy Goat” Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern and a Cubs fan, bought two tickets to Game four. Hoping to bring his team good luck he brought his pet goat, Murphy, along with him to the game.

At the entrance to the park, the ushers stopped Billy from entering saying that no animals were allowed in the park. Billy Goat, frustrated, cried out in appeal to the owner of the Cubs, P.K. Wrigley.

Wrigley replied, “Let Billy in, but not the goat.”

Billy asked, “Why not the goat?”

Wrigley answered, “Because the goat stinks.”

Then Billy threw up his arms and exclaimed, “The Cubs ain’t gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field.”

The Cubs lost game four, and the next two games as well, and lost the World Series.

Billy Goat promptly sent a telegram to P.K. Wrigley, stating, “Who stinks now?”

For the rest of “Billy Goat” Sianis’s life the Cubs would finish each season at 5th place or lower.

The World Series faded into a dream, and “wait ’til next year” became the team’s motto.

From 1946 to today, the Cubs have posted a dismal .466 record and finish an average 21 games behind their division leader, and the Cubs are still looking for a way to reverse the “Billy Goat” curse.