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Celia Hayes's Blog – March 2009 Archive (4)

Frontier Surgeon

The practice of medicine in these United (and for the period 1861-1865, somewhat disunited) States was for most of the 19th century a pretty hit or miss proposition, both in practice and by training. That many sensible people possessed pretty extensive kits of medicines – the modern equivalents of which are administered as prescriptions or under the care of a licensed medical professional – might tend to indicate that the qualifications required to hang out a shingle and practice medicine were… Continue

Added by Celia Hayes on March 18, 2009 at 7:30am — 2 Comments

A Deep-Dyed Villian

He really was a black hat, this particular villain; he was known and recognized throughout the district – around Fredericksburg and the German settlements in Gillespie County – by a fine, black beaver hat. Which was not furry, as people might tend to picture immediately – but made of felt, felt manufactured from the hair scraped from beaver pelts. This had been the fashion early in the 19th century, and made a fortune for those who sent trappers and mountain-men into the far, far west, hunting… Continue

Added by Celia Hayes on March 15, 2009 at 5:00pm — 2 Comments

My Name on the Marquee

All righty, then - I was on the marquee two weeks ago at the felicitously named Butt Holdsworth Memorial Library, to give a talk about the German settlements in the Hill Country. On Sunday, I will be at the old German Free School in Austin, to do another. Three PM - the address is 507 East 10th Street, in Austin.

Learn more than you ever thought possible about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country - and cookies and lemonade… Continue

Added by Celia Hayes on March 13, 2009 at 4:54pm — No Comments

Bidwell-Bartleson, 1841

The westward movement of Americans rolled west of the Appalachians and hung up for a decade or two on the barrier of the Mississippi-Missouri. It was almost an interior sea-coast, the barrier between the settled lands, and the un-peopled and tree-less desert beyond, populated by wild Indians. To be sure, there were scattered enclaves, as far-distant as the stars in the age of “shanks’ mare” and team animals hitched to wagons, or led in a pack-train: far California, equally distant Oregon, the… Continue

Added by Celia Hayes on March 8, 2009 at 8:16am — No Comments

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