19th Century

Last night I finished Ghost Stories of the Old West by Dan Asfar. Other than several editing mistakes (spelling, grammar, etc), the book was actually quite good. You always hear about legends and myths from Europe about haunted castles and so on, but to read the legends of some of America’s own haunted places is … more »

So I decided to take a break from reading non-fiction and treat myself to a book full of short ghost stories of the old west. The book I found is appropriately titled Ghost Stories of the Old West and is by Dan Asfar. I really haven’t gotten very far into it at all; only a … more »

As you’ve already read from the last post, I recently returned from a trip to Missouri. I saw the houses of the James brothers and I also took a day trip down to Springfield, MO and visited the Wilson’s Creek battlefield where one of the first large battles of the Civil War took place. The … more »

I recently returned from a trip to Missouri to visit the family farm. It is always incredibly interesting going back there because my grandmother is really interested in our family history and the history of the area in general. As part of this most recent visit, we visited the houses of the James brothers near … more »

I read an interesting article on 9news.com yesterday that I thought I would share here. For those of you who don’t know what 9news is, it’s one of Denver’s news channels (NBC). The article is about a new poster that was found dating back to 1887 promoting Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The poster was … more »

I don’t think I’ve really said a whole lot about my fiction writing, but as a hobby, I enjoy writing fiction. I have mainly written short horror stories, but I’ve decided to try something different this time. I am going to try my hand at writing a short western. The story of course needs a … more »

CNN is running an interesting article with seven little-known trivia facts about the Civil War. I will list the seven facts below, but for more details about them, take a look at CNN’s article. Lincoln’s first solution to slavery was a fiasco Hungry ladies effectively mugged Jefferson Davis The Union used hot air balloons and … more »

Today I stumbled upon a website with quite a large collection of old photos from the 19th century and really early 20th century. The site contains several collections, including a Civil War collection and an Old West collection. A couple of my favorites come from the Civil War collection and are posted below: I really … more »

In my previous post about the online role playing game called “The West,” I stated that I hadn’t found an English version of it, but thanks to one of my readers, Jeff Smith, I now have a link to an English version for you. And here it is: http://www.the-west.net.

A little while ago I ran across an interesting text and image based online role playing game with an old American ‘wild west’ theme. I debated about whether or not to write about it here on History Rhymes as the game is unfortunately in German, but in the end, I decided to go ahead and … more »