Spooky Season Reads

The rich history of St. Clair County has been shaped by the colorful people of its past.

From the Kerley Lot to the City Flats Hotel, the corner of Military and Water Street in Port Huron is forever etched with the spirit of diverse and passionate citizens like Daniel B. Harrington and James W. Sanborn. The bankruptcy of John Johnston & Co. shaped the fortunes of a local family. Local lumbermen influenced the lumber industry not just in the county but across Michigan. The Radical Republicans contributed to the rise and fall of Congressman Omar D. Conger, and the controversial John P. Sanborn played an outsized role in local politics. Author Brenda L. Williams leads a historical journey into the captivating lives of early local luminaries.

An in-depth look at frontier life in Eastern Oklahoma. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of new arrivals began making their way into the rugged lands of Eastern Oklahoma. European settlers and the tribes who were forcibly relocated to the territory after 1830 established new lives alongside the Native Americans indigenous to the region. Their biographies make up an often untold story of two hundred years of Oklahoma history. From the origin of towns and commercial enterprises to profiles of pioneers both prominent and obscure, Ronald R. Switzer highlights the diversity and determination of the people who grappled for success in the early days of the Oklahoma frontier.

Author William Thibodeaux shares a bevy of Cajun Country tales.

From shocking one offs to delightful immersion into the quotidian lives of Cajuns long deceased, we find ourselves with a satisfying grab bag of Cajun history. A murder becomes a case that winds its all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A feud erupts into a shootout on election day 1924 with three dead and four injured. One ordinary Cajun is torn between two passion—photography and railroading. Another young man rises to the rank of postmaster. Cajun music is reborn in these pages, and the university in Lafayette is founded. The legality of the Louisiana Purchase comes under scrutiny here, and communities lost to the great floor of 1927 are remembered, as is the once unthinkable banning of the French language on public-school grounds. During the yellow fever epidemic, one town tries to save itself by banning all inbound trains from NOLA. Another city in the region is befallen by a curse placed on its boundaries.

Make a crossing of the storied Pecos River.

The arid Pecos River Country of Texas is rich with stories, the crooked path of its alkaline waters defining the lives of any who dared venture here. Native peoples, Spanish explorers, soldiers, travelers, cattlemen, wildcatters, and just plain folks, passed by, struggled, sojourned, and perished. From the oldest book in North America to the great rock of the Jumano, their traces remain in the ruins, the records and the earth itself. Native West Texan James Collett catalogues architectural masterpieces, lonely gravestones, fanciful cowboy tales and other bits of history caught in the currents of a legendary river.

Heartland stories of heroism, tragedy, mystery, and more

Decatur County, Indiana, may be small town America, but its history is exceptionally fascinating. Local luminary Will Cumback was not only a noted statesman but also a good friend to President Abraham Lincoln. The Underground Railroad ran through the county. The first tree on the Decatur County Courthouse Tower was seen in 1870, and a tree has grown there ever since. David Letterman's first broadcasting job was at WTRE in Greensburg, and the last no-hitter in the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was thrown by Burney's Janet Rumsey.

Join history teacher and Greensburg native John Pratt on a journey through the colorful history of Decatur County.

For over one hundred years people have been coming to Atlantic City to swim in the ocean, walk on the boardwalk, and get away from their day-to-day lives.....

Return to the halcyon days of the sand and sun as local writers and long-time locals present stories from Atlantic City's heartwarming past.

Organized in 1819, Meigs County rests in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio along the beautiful Ohio River.

The land’s deep reservoirs of coal and salt provided early residents work in mines and in shipping the goods via steamboat and railroad. Local communities also nurtured talented scholars like James McHenry Jones and poets and writers such as James Edwin Campbell and Ambrose Bierce, as well as Dr. Brewster Higley VI, whose poetry inspired the American classic “Home on the Range.” The county is home to Ohio’s oldest standing courthouse in Chester and to Pomeroy, the only town in America with no cross streets. Join historians Jordan and Calee Pickens as they recount times of prosperity and hardship that have been engrained on the timeline of Meigs County.

Discover the Beautiful Valley's Harrowing Past/

Genesee County has seen trials, tribulations and triumphs throughout its storied history as national events have been brought to its doorstep. Cold War anxiety was on full display in the preparedness drills of the 1950s and the effect those had on Batavia's studnets. Too often overlooked, the scourge of racism has reared its ugly head in the region, as the Ku Klux Klan once had a presence in the county. Locals were rocked by the assassinations of MLK and John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. Genesee women from acitivists to farmers have left an indelible mark on the county's past. Join author and historian Michael Eula as he reveals historic chronicles of Genesee County.

In addition to its well-known associations with doctors and diagnoses, the city of Rochester offers a string of curiosities to those willing to look closely.

How did a secret bomber mission to Moscow during World War II lead to thousands of fighter planes flying through Rochester and the subsequent construction of a giant IBM manufacturing plant here? What was Rochester's contribution to the 1980 Olympic Hockey "Miracle on Ice"? Who was dubbed the “Greatest Doctor in the World”, and why? Who were the regular folks without whom the great Mayo Clinic might never have become a medical mecca?

Rochester Stories: A Med City History Paul Scanlon answers these and other questions in this enlightening and sometimes humorous study of Rochester’s past.

New York's Harlem Valley, with the last stops on the Metro-North train line from Manhattan, has an incredibly eclectic history for a predominantly agricultural region .

A Victorian utopian community claiming to see fairies settled in Wassaic, attracting Japanese samurai and remaking the townscape of Amenia. An early version of the “Borscht Belt” began on the shores of Lake Amenia, where a once-thriving resort community vanished along with the lake itself. Amidst a crisis of dwindling membership, the NAACP was brought together at major conferences held at Amenia’s Troutbeck estate, owned by Joel Spingarn, the organization’s first Jewish president. Young graduates from the Rhode Island School of design and other art schools launched the Wassaic Project, a festival and art residency using a converted agricultural grain elevator as their venue. 

Author Tonia Shoumatoff presents these and other fascinating stories from Life at the End of the Line in the Harlem Valley.

Accept an invitation to the boundary-pushing heritage of the Texas Plains, from the first American Thanksgiving feast in the 1500s to Amarillo’s iconic seventy-two-ounce steak challenge five hundred years later. Even the limitless horizons of the Panhandle couldn’t contain the notes of musical pioneers like Mac Davis, Bobby Keys and the Velvets. Take a dip in Lubbock’s oldest swimming hole or share a sip with Pinkie Roden, the benevolent bootlegger of West Texas. Keep an eye out for longballs from Justiceburg’s “Stormin’ Norman” Cash and stray bats in Doodlebug Line’s Clarity Tunnel. Join Chuck Lanehart as he tracks the long-standing traditions and unexpected twists of life on the Texas Plains.

Legends of LIC

Long Island City may be one of New York’s fastest growing neighborhoods, but it already has an incredible history within the Big Apple. DeWitt Clinton lived in a mansion off Newtown Creek and is credited with bringing the “Inland Empire” to the “Empire City” by spearheading the construction of the Erie canal, connecting America’s heartland to New York’s economic hub. William Steinway saw Astoria as the perfect blank canvas to build his groundbreaking “Steinway Settlement,” including a waterfront park, public bathhouse, housing, a family mansion and a new factory to build his world-renowned pianos. The neighborhood has been a center of innovation, with Chester Carlson’s lab as the site of the first photocopy. And the Sony company launched dozens of pioneering transistor-based products from Sunnyside’s Van Dam street.

Join the Greater Astoria Historical Society as they present historic tales from Long Island City.

Erma Mary Bergmann was a generation ahead of her time. She was born in a cold-water flat over a shoe store on South Broadway in St. Louis's Soulard area. Restrained by the Great Depression and the minority status of women in the 1930s and '40s, she hoped someday to climb out of poverty. When she was recruited to play baseball with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, her life changed. She pitched a no-hitter in 1947. She parlayed her natural athletic ability into two successful careers, baseball and policing. She spent twenty-five years as a policewoman, serving on the dangerous Decoy Squad. Author Patricia Treacy details the history of a pioneering woman.