250 and Counting

White Plains, New York, has the feel of a suburban town that urbanized when nobody was looking. A little over 60,000 people live there, but during the day it’s estimated to have about a quarter million people working there. Nevertheless, they haven’t forgotten their place in American history, and there is a space that marks where much of the Battle of White Plains took place in 1776. It’s a very suburban zone dropped between two urban zones, with a series of retail stores stretching for about a

I do enjoy it when coincidental stories come together. We did mention a couple of days ago that this was a period of relative lawlessness in the downstate New York area, and the murder of Reverend Ephraim Avery is a definitive example of this. Avery’s murder was never solved, but apparently it was the stuff of much gossip and speculation. I actually learned about this incident while looking for something else and I stumbled over the story of the dedication and Evensong event which marks the 25

The curious thing about Matthew Thornton’s being the last person to sign the Declaration of Independence isn’t why it took so long for him to get it done. He wasn’t appointed to the position until after all the debate had taken place, so it was rather gracious of the Continental Congress to let him sign in the first place. But, they were holding that “all-in” attitude, so he may not have had a choice. And because of all the doings and goings-on in the New York area, travel from New England to

Before I get into the Maryland Declaration of Rights, can I please just note that the State Flag of Maryland is probably the coolest of all 50 state flags? And remember, I’m not native to this state. In fact, not only is it cool, it’s aggressively cool. I should also mention that if you happen to notice that there appears to be Christmas music playing in the background of today’s episode, you’re not entirely wrong. It’s a recording of Maryland’s state song, which is set to the tune of “O Tannen

William Demont was a traitor in much the same way that Benedict Arnold was, but Washington chose to keep this story a little quieter, largely for morale reasons. So how does he make it into an episode of Scooby Doo? It’s worth remembering that as we approached the Bicentennial, America was absolutely immersed in the whole Spirit of ’76 and showed great interest in that era. (Frankly it’s sort of what we were hoping would happen again when we first came up with this show. Anyway.) The American

Every day you learn something new if you pay attention, and today I learned that there is more than one Mission San Juan Capistrano. I went looking for a photo of the mission on Wikipedia, since most images there are in the public domain, and I found one in an article about the mission but the map was all wrong. This mission was in Texas; mine is supposed to be in California! It took me a second to notice the line at the top of the article: “For the mission of the same name in California, clic