Whig Hill

Whirlwind tour

Left New Hampshire yesterday and began a quick tour of the Burnt-over district. Started at William Miller’s house and chapel. You know, the Seventh-Day Adventists. Highlight there is the rock upon which the Great Disappointment took place.

A quick stop in Canajoharie revealed nothing new, but I did pass the old Palatine church. The ancestors likely worshipped there.

This morning saw the Oriskany battle site. A few of the same ancestors showed up there and one of them was killed—perhaps by an Indian (since Mohawks made up the majority of the opposing forces there.) I am not kidding. This would be number three, but it’s impossible to tell.

In Auburn I saw William H. Seward’s house and grave. Unfortunately, I could not find Harriet Tubman’s resting place, but there is no missing the memorial to Logan.

The Seneca Falls NPS site is pretty neat. Just as neat is the LDS site at Hill Cumorah.

An old friend works at the Genesee Country Village so I visited him there. What a great site.

Now I am at the annual meeting of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic in Rochester. Your jealous of my life, aren't you?

Documented on the Flickr page.

Shorter answer

Dear Mark,

Sorry about that rambling, boring response to your question about the shift in American politics. A satisfactory answer would take three days just to lay out, but I should stop acting like I’m in my comprehensive exams. The answer should include everyone from Charles Sumner to George Wallace, but I’ll just say that if you want a short response about how and why Democrats and Republicans redefined themselves as liberals and conservatives in the last 150 years, the critical moment is the New Deal, FDR, and the post-World War II concept of the abundant society. This set the stage the modern American ideals about individual liberty and rights, government power, and commercial society that we roughly recognize today as the issues over which liberals/Democrats and conservatives/Republicans define themselves.

Anyhow, the best book on this political moment (and it is a short and very rewarding read) is Alan Brinkley’s The End of Reform.

Zealand Falls

Zealand Falls
Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

Another list of what we’ve done today:

Hiked the trail to Zealand Falls.

Saw a moose and a bear. Neither one seemed all that interested in entertaining tourists, they just sat in the shade grazing on grass and berries. Boooorriiiiiiiiing.

On the hike, I learned a few valuable lessons about my body, physical exertion and endurance, and having the diabetes.

Managed to turn some folks on to Squidbillies, a documentary I occasionally watch, about life in Georgia.

No report

Yesterday went kayaking on the Saco River, slid down a zip line, went to a movie, and probably some other things I can't recall. I'm exhausted and having a great time.

Views from Mt. Washington

Here are a few things I noticed while hiking Mt. Washington today.

It is very tall.

Upon arriving at the visitor center on the summit, you are greeted with a Catalogue of Deaths on the mountain, from the first white man to perish up until last year. Even better is the 1858 map of Mt. Washington that highlights the death sites of unfortunate visitors, including woodcut images of their mangled bodies. We did the Ammonoosuc trail and I can rather understand dying on the way up after ascending some 4,000 feet in three miles…all of it straight up. Listen…I sit in libraries and read books all day. My body wasn’t ready for it. Thanks to the cousins for constantly lying about how near the summit is…I would never have made it without you.

Mt. Washington is very pretty.

I would, however, dispute the “Worst Weather in the World” tagline. Obviously, some New Hampshireites have never been to the Southern coastal plain in July. Just sayin’.

It pleases me very much that Henry Clay has a named peak in the Presidential Range.

From the trail, you can see the site of the most consequential post-WWII treaty you have likely never heard of.

Northern climes

Here I am in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the temperature is higher than in North Carolina. How does this happen? At least it’s not humid.

Anyhow, I’m visiting with cousins in North Conway. On the way up I thought I’d investigate the blue-blooded side of my dad’s family in Peterborough, New Hampshire. And I found them! McNee/Nay is the family. Nay was my dad’s middle name, and its my sister’s, too. The McNees moved into southern NH in the 1750s, or thereabouts, and prospered. My branch removed to Massachusetts and Connecticut at the turn of the Twentieth Century. I did find that a different branch of Nays were caught up in the Latter Day Saints in Joseph Smith’s day—which is historically interesting—and explains why the genealogy is so well done already. But not my branch; whew. Also found that an ancestor lost a leg in a barn-raising accident (loosing limbs in barn and carpentry accidents runs in my dad’s family, it seems.) And found another ancestor killed by Indians in the F&I War. This makes the second one. I thought maybe reparations are in order, but my uncle works at a famous Indian casino and they feed him for free every day, so—even, or whatever.

The best part is discovering that my ancestors are buried right next to Samuel Eliot Morison’s ancestors.

Cemetery-hunting in New Hampshire is weird. I mean, in North Carolina, we bury folks in church graveyards. Here they don’t do that, but put everyone in town cemeteries. Their churches have no graveyards. Let me repeat that: their churches have no graveyards. For someone who has spent the last five months reading a countryside by its church graveyards, this has thrown off my orientation real bad. I’m sure there is an interesting social-historical reason for this if I thought about it, but—vacation.

Some things for history dorks

• The North Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau ("Road Scholars") has some really great historians this year. If you run a cultural institution in N.C., you should check it out. They're free
• This historical county map thing looks interesting, and maybe even useful.
• Though I don't think "structural onsite interpretation" will go away as fast as Hennessy suggests here, if I were still working for Historic Sites I'd be advocating hard for a Historic Sites iPhone and Droid app right now.
• Empire Books on Friendly out by Guilford College is the best used book store in Greensboro, particularly if you are looking for academic history books. Way better than the more famous used book store in town. I almost always find something I must have.