History

Here we bring you the fascinating world of history, U.S. history, archeological history, anthropological, natural, and historical figures. To know where we’re going we must first understand where we’ve been.

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What Spurred the South to Join the American Revolution?

Andrew Lawler / Special Report / Smithsonian MAGAZINE

Everyone knows how the redcoats clashed with patriots at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, sparking the American Revolution. Yet often forgotten is an incident that took place two days later and some 500 miles to the south, an event that proved nearly as significant to the cause of independence as the bloodshed in Massachusetts. It was the moment when the South was finally roused against the British, and its main participants were some of the nation’s most famous founders.  

It began after Patrick Henry convinced the conservative tobacco planters of Virginia—the largest, most populous and richest of the Thirteen Colonies—to organize a militia. That decision put Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, in a bind. Appointed by George III in 1771, the gregarious Scottish earl had purchased plantations, bought enslaved Africans and schemed with his friend, a gentleman farmer named George Washington, to obtain vast tracts of Indigenous land in the distant Ohio Valley. Among Dunmore’s neighbors in the capital of Williamsburg was Peyton Randolph, then serving as the first president of the Continental Congress. 

As patriots thrilled to Henry’s stirring words—“Give me liberty, or give me death!”—and…Read more here.

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Archaeologists Unearth Rare Reminder of Britain’s Brief Reign Over the ‘Nation’s Oldest City’

Eli Wizevich – smithsonianmag.com

When a house is slated to be built in the historic districts of St. Augustine, Florida, the city requires that archaeologists conduct a survey—and, if need be, an excavation—of the site prior to construction.

The aim of this rule, unusual in a state undergoing a population and development boom, is to salvage and document whatever remnants of the past might lie beneath the topsoil of the city that bills itself as “the nation’s oldest.”

Last month, city archaeologists were called in to examine the proposed site of a single-family home in Lincolnville, a neighborhood that was once home to a Native American village, an orange grove plantation and a prominent historically Black community.

As part of initial testing, the archaeologists dug 1-foot-by-1-foot holes across the the vacant lot. Immediately, the site showed signs of intrigue.

“The soil just looked odd,” recalls city archaeologist Andrea White on the “Break Room,”…Read more here.

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The Nation’s First Black Female Doctor Blazed a Path for Women in Medicine. But She Was Left Out of the Story for Decades

Ella Jeffries / Smithsonian MAGAZINE

In 1864, newspapers in Boston noted a milestone: The latest students to receive degrees from the New England Female Medical College included a “colored graduate,” one Rebecca Lee Crumpler. It was a brief mention, almost an afterthought, but what it marked was monumental: Crumpler had just become the first Black woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. Yet for decades, her name faded from public memory.

Born in 1831 in Christiana, Delaware, Crumpler was raised by an aunt in Pennsylvania who worked as a nurse and community healer. It was this early exposure to caregiving, she later wrote in A Book of Medical Discourses: In Two Parts, that inspired her to pursue a life in medicine. Published in 1883, Crumpler’s book was part medical text, part memoir—an effort to share both clinical advice and her experience as a Black woman physician. “Having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to be in a position to relieve sufferings of others,” Crumpler wrote.

Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician and medical historian at George Washington University, says Crumpler’s story is part of a lineage of Black healers dating back to the time of slavery….Read more here.

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Archaeologists Discover Forgotten Foods Hidden in 15,000-Year-Old Kitchens

University of Utah – SciTechDaily

Microscopic plant residues found on bedrock metates offer new insights into the diets and cultural practices of ancient Indigenous communities in the American West.

The mortar, pestle, and cutting board in your kitchen are modern descendants of ancient tools known as manos and metates, which have been found at archaeological sites across the globe. A mano is a handheld stone used in combination with a metate, a large, flat stone or a naturally worn depression in bedrock, to grind and process food from plants and animals. These bedrock versions, often called open-air metates, are especially common in archaeological contexts, with some dating back as far as 15,500 years.

Now, researchers at the Natural History Museum of Utah are applying advanced techniques to recover microscopic plant residues trapped in the tiny cracks of these ancient grinding surfaces. Their work is shedding new light on the diets and practices of the people who once used these tools. The team’s latest discoveries were recently published in the journal American Antiquity. Read more here.

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