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Stories of the people, the land and the water.

More than 160 years ago, the early settlers of La Cebolla Valley arrived and put down roots that would flourish into a lasting legacy. Freight wagons and travelers passed through the land, an integral piece of the Mora–Las Vegas Trail, bringing with them cultures and traditions that lived on in the people who stayed. Through perseverance and dedication, they built the Acequia de San José and the Acequia de La Isla, which have known nearly two centuries of use, and transformed a small natural pond into Morphy Lake.

With the help of the documents in the Agapito Abeyta Sr. Collection, a windfall discovered in a barn, historian Virginia Sánchez brings to light the cultural heritage of La Cebolla Valley’s inhabitants.

“This Great Hospital Fight” – Dr. Drake

At the height of racial and political tensions in early twentieth-century Houston, two unlikely figures became allies. Dr. William M. Drake, a pioneering surgeon and Black community leader, and Joseph Cullinan, a white oil magnate and founder of the company that became Texaco, united in a desperate effort to save a hospital that symbolized hope. The Houston Negro Hospital was born from America’s Black hospital movement. Dedicated on Juneteenth 1926, it embodied a bold experiment to bring dignity and health care access to a community that was systematically denied both in the Jim Crow South.

Journalist and storyteller Carlton Houston—whose ancestors played a role in this remarkable heritage—reveals the untold, human drama behind the institution that would become Riverside General. Discover the vision, conflict, and resilience that shaped a century of health care through the struggle of those determined to save lives.

A Harrowing Heritage of Resilience

Beginning in the 1820s, Indian removal saw scores of families of African descent forced west alongside the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations all brought their own slaves on the arduous, obligatory journey. These tribes demonstrated shared patterns—including Native women enslavers—as well as important distinctions. Seminole records more frequently preserved the names of their enslaved, reflecting resistance to removal and the central role of Black Seminoles. But enslaved people were present at every stage of removal, even when misclassified or omitted entirely from official records. Power operated differently within each tribe. Gender shaped vulnerability and authority. Enslavement and forced migration reconfigured tribal societies during one of the most traumatic periods in their histories. Drawing on oral accounts and extensive documentation, Terry J. Ligon’s unique scholarship restores voice and lineage to the remarkable survival of those carried west in bondage on the Trail of Tears. 

A vivid portrait of power, privilege, and peril in colonial Charleston.

Eighteenth Century Charleston was a city built on water, wealth, and whispers—where the harbor brimmed with merchant ships and war vessels, and status was measured in wharves, wine cellars, imported porcelain, and family names that could open every door. This is colonial Charleston at its peak: a thriving Atlantic port fueled by rice and indigo, shaped by transatlantic trade, and held together by tightly woven kinship networks that blurred the line between commerce and political power.

At the center is Rebecca Brewton Motte—born into privilege, married into influence, and forced by fire, disease, and revolution to become far more than a genteel figure in a drawing room. Through the interconnected worlds of the Brewtons, Mottes, Pinckneys, and their allies, the story reveals how South Carolina’s elite built fortunes, constructed iconic townhouses, navigated epidemics and natural disasters, and managed sprawling plantations with enslaved labor powering every “luxury” detail.

But this is not a postcard version of the past. Alongside elegant architecture and consumer culture sits the raw reality of colonial life: malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, hurricanes, legal constraints on women, and the destabilizing pressure of war and British occupation. Moving from Charleston’s grand streets to backcountry plantations, this biography-driven history shows how one woman’s life illuminates the larger machinery of colonial South Carolina, the American Revolution, and the fragile world that made—and nearly unmade—an Atlantic empire. Historian and author Alexia Helsley details this remarkable history. 

A vivid portrait of power, privilege, and peril in colonial Charleston.

Eighteenth-century Charleston was a city built on water, wealth, and whispers—where the harbor brimmed with merchant ships and war vessels and status was measured in wharves, wine cellars, imported porcelain, and family names that could open every door. This is colonial Charleston at its peak: a thriving Atlantic port fueled by rice and indigo, shaped by transatlantic trade, and held together by tightly woven kinship networks that blurred the line between commerce and political power.

At the center is Rebecca Brewton Motte—born into privilege, married into influence, and forced by fire, disease, and revolution to become far more than a genteel figure in a drawing room. Through the interconnected worlds of the Brewtons, Mottes, Pinckneys, and their allies, the story reveals how South Carolina’s elite built fortunes, constructed iconic townhouses, navigated epidemics and natural disasters, and managed sprawling plantations with enslaved labor powering every “luxury” detail.

But this is not a postcard version of the past. Alongside elegant architecture and consumer culture sits the raw reality of colonial life: malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, hurricanes, legal constraints on women, and the destabilizing pressure of war and British occupation. Moving from Charleston’s grand streets to backcountry plantations, this biography-driven history shows how one woman’s life illuminates the larger machinery of colonial South Carolina, the American Revolution, and the fragile world that made—and nearly unmade—an Atlantic empire. Historian and author Alexia Helsley details this remarkable history. 

Across the high plains and rugged mountain passes of the Oregon Trail came thousands of settlers seeking a new life, and for many, the burgeoning city of Eugene became their new home.

The newcomers were fur traders and farmers, physicians and soldiers, teachers and hoteliers—each of them adding a new facet to the region’s character and identity. Among them were Norton E. Winnard, a frontier doctor and a founder of the Eugene Hospital, and Judge J.J. Walton, who helped establish the University of Oregon.

Many of them found their final resting place at the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery, a Civil War–era burial ground that stands as a testament to the time they lived in, and the lingering influence of those first arrivals. Set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century’s great upheavals, this collection brings to life the intertwined destinies of pioneers, immigrants and Native people in the Pacific Northwest.

Drawing from archival photographs, letters, and public records, author C.J. Lake illuminates the human stories behind Oregon’s extraordinary everyday pioneers.

A Harrowing Heritage of Resilience

During the era of Indian Removal, scores of men, women and children of African descent were forced west alongside the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations.