clair055

  Do you know what these are? If you guessed dental tools you would be correct? Now, who owned them? None other than America’s silversmith and favorite son of Liberty who rode the countryside warning the folks that the British were coming.   No…not William Dawes, but that other one.   Yes, old what’s his name? Yes!   Paul Revere! Following the French and Indian War the economy in the colonies had been what is described by some today as an economic downturn. Actually, folks were really hurting financially. Not only did the colonies take a hit with the French and Indian War there was something called the Stamp Act that severely impacted Paul Revere’s business. With creditors after his property and no orders coming in for his metal working Revere turned towards dentistry. Seems logical. Right? A surgeon staying with a mutual friend taught Revere some of the tricks of the trade. Yes, five years before his midnight ride the following ad appeared in the Boston G...

Over on the Facebook page for this blog I’ve been posting a series of pictures this week I’ve simply sourced as “Library of Congress”, but the source goes much deeper than that.   The pictures are wonderful depictions of world scenes beginning in the 1890s through the 1930s. I’ve featured some here. The collection was put together by Frank and Frances Carpenter, a father-daughter team, during their world travels. The photos were used to illustrate his writings regarding travel and his world geography textbooks. I love to snap pictures myself. Over the last five years I’ve taken approximately ten thousand photos, myself, but over his lifetime no telling how many photographs Frank Carter produced. The Library of Congress collection contains 5,400 photos in albums, 10,400 loose photos, and 7,000 glass and film negatives.     Frank Carpenter was a journalist whose assignments took him many interesting places.   Being a writing myself, I love the fact that he took his...