What I Have Developed To Contribute To The Park Project

Since the visit to the park, I have helped with the geocache project. Stefan and I made a trip to the park and roughly mapped out the places where we want to put the geocache boxes. I have also done some work on my project about the R.A. Josey Scout Lodge. I have found several sources on the internet, the archives in the Newton Gresham Library, and the Thomason room. I have also talked to Mac Woodward who knows a lot about Boy Scouts here in Huntsville, being an Eagle Scout himself. He gave me the number to the scout master of local Troop 114, Larry Fusaro. I am planning on attending a Boy Scout meeting and taking pictures of the lodge and the meeting itself.

First Class Trip to The Huntsville State Park

This was not the first time I've been to the park, but it's been a while and it was nice to go back. First, I had no idea how nice the view of the lake was from the back of the lodge. I didn't even know that the lodge was there, which is a very beautiful place to hold any event. I had never done geocacheing, and that was a lot of fun. It's fun to go hiking on the trails looking for something hidden, even if its hidden 45 feet out in the thick brush....kind of! Also, I learned how to use a GPS unit, which was pretty interesting. I learned not to pick the pretty purple berries, called American Beauty berries, because their poisonous and it's against the law to take anything from a state park. I also didn't know that you could rent canoes out there. It was a fun class and I'm glad I was able to visit the park again, it had been about a year since the last time I went.

Courthouse Deed Room: James Gillespie

When our class met in the Deeds Room in the Walker County Courthouse, I was given a person to look up in the probate records. That person was James Gillespie, who wrote his will on October 18, 1861, presumably before he went off to fight for the Confederate Army in the the American Civil War. The will was probated on December 31, 1867. In it he willed his estate to his wife Susan Gillespie, giving her full authority to sell any tract of land, town land and slave if need be. She is the executor of the will.

Constitution Day Lecture

The U.S. Constitution Day is on September 17, and this year I was able to attend a lecture by Dr. John Domino, a professor of political science here at Sam Houston State University. The topic of his lecture was civil rights and liberties how since about the 1960's the Supreme Court of the United States has acted as a tribunal in cultural issues. One example he used was the issue of the 2nd amendment and gun control laws, this issue is an example of a "culture war" as he put it, pitting conservatives against liberals, democrats against republicans, and the urban population against rural. This issue can't be solved in the political sphere, therefore it is up to the Supreme Court to make rulings, forcing it to pick sides, either one way or another. But the S.C. does not like to do this, and he explains the idea of "split the difference" decisions, where the court tries not to please one side or the other. One example he uses of this is that it was ruled unconstitutional to meet racial quotas in public schools, but on the other hand was ruled okay to let race be a factor when applying for colleges. Other issues that he considered to be cultural divides are religion in public, religion in policy, non-assimilation, homosexuality, affirmative action, and hate speech as part of a 1st amendment right. His lecture was very interesting and gave me a new perspective on how the Supreme Court effects our lives as citizens of this country.

The Great Storm of 1900

A Review: AMan, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

On September 8, 1900 an unanticipated, category 4 hurricane hit the shores of Galveston Island, and was and still is to this date the deadliest natural disaster in the history of The United States, with a death toll at about 8,000. The storm devastated the emerging city, which at the time was a bustling city of 42,000 and one of the fastest growing ports in the South with a bright and promising future. A lack of technology, little understanding of how storms worked, the climate and geography of Galveston Island at the time, in part with the inflated hubris of The United States Weather Bureau, who refused to accept any foreign meteorological intelligence, all were major reasons of the significant death toll and devastation of the 1900 storm.
The film tells the story of Isaac Cline, the chief meteorologist at the Galveston U.S. Weather Bureau office from 1889-1901, who was an integral figure in the storm of 1900. Cline was born 1861 in Tennessee, and had a passion for nature and the emerging science and technologies of the time. He excelled in college and was well versed in a variety of topics and held two degrees and a doctorate. After that, he joined the newly formed U.S. Weather Bureau, and rose in the ranks through hard work and diligent observations. Later he was assigned to head the U.S. Weather Bureau office in Galveston. He believed that Galveston was impervious to any storm, and stood firm in this belief, even building his home near the beach. This belief would be his downfall in preparing for the Great Storm of 1900.
The technology of predicting storms at the time was not very precise, and the predictions of the Weather Bureau were notoriously wrong. Cline had no idea what was causing the peculiar weather prior to the storm, but seemed to just brush it off. Also the refusal to accept any intelligence from the experienced Cuban observers during the middle of hurricane season was a grave mistake for the Bureau. Little concern was placed on the tropical storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Weather Bureau predicted it to make a turn northward. The Cuban observers thought otherwise, predicting that it would slam into the Texas coast, and sadly they were proved right. The extremely warm waters of the gulf facilitated the increasing power of the storm. Galveston being a barrier island was only 8.5 ft. above sea level at the highest point of the town. There was no kind of wall or barrier to the sea at the time of the storm. Since the storm was building in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, they had no idea of the ferocity of the rising storm since there was no technology for communication from ship to land.
When the storm made landfall, the townspeople were very unprepared, mostly due to the delayed reaction of Cline and the Weather Bureau office. Evacuation was impossible due to the bridge being inoperable at the time of the storm. Ironically, many townspeople gathered at Cline’s house, thinking it was a safe place since he was a weatherman. They were completely wrong, his house was devastated by the storm surge which drown the whole city and took the house off it’s foundation. In the aftermath of the storm, a moving picture camera surveyed the devastation, while workers searched through the wreckage to find survivors, while nothing was able to record the stench of death reported to be smelt from miles away. Cline claimed to have rode along the beach, like Paul Revere, warning of the approaching storm. This is assumed to be false, but maybe it was his way of trying to cope with the fact that he lost his wife and many fellow citizens due to his failure to warn of the hurricane. Galveston would never fully recover to the vigor it once had prior to the storm.
Since then, Galveston has built a sea wall and raised the whole island higher above sea level, but will never forget the devastation of the Great Storm of 1900. A combination of factors made this storm the worst in American history, and many lessons are to be learned from it. Even now, though we have better technologies to monitor and prepare for storms, we are still at the mercy of Mother Nature.

The Diary of John Felix Kelly

I found a copy of John Felix Kelly at the Newton Gresham Library, and this will be a great source for my project on the town of Cincinnati. He was born in Ireland 1845 on August 31(the same as me!) and immigrated to The United States at age 19. He arrived in New York in 1865 and traveled throughout New England for a while and then found himself in Galveston. From there he made his way into the interior of the state and set up a shop in Cincinnati. Cincinnati was a prosperous and growing town at the time with a post office, numerous saloons, bowling alley, hotel, Masonic Lodge, ferry, tanyard, blacksmith, school and church, saddle shop, and a woodyard where the steamboats could refuel. In his diary he talks about the weather a lot, and with that the fluctuating water levels of the river that affect trade in the area. He keeps record of the different steamships that come up the Trinity River for various goods including cotton and cord wood. He was a devout Catholic and thinks of his church as infallible. Throughout his diary he talked of his longing for a wife and the character of the women in the town, but he kept a place in his heart for his future wife, Miss Kate. He told of the work ethic of the people in the town, and complains of their slowness in paying back credit. He survived the yellow fever epidemic that hit the town in the Fall of 1853, and went on to operate a lumber company. His diary keeps records from January to late April. This gives me good insight into what life was like in the town of Cincinnati.