By the spring of 1937, the Ohio River had retreated to its banks, but the questions it left behind were harder to contain. Across the valley, local officials and federal administrators began asking what might happen if the same machinery that fed the stranded could be used to feed the poor.

That question found its first real test in Pittsburgh, a city still defined by its mills and smoke. In the months after the flood, the Red Cross and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) turned their emergency kitchens into an experiment. Instead of closing when the waters receded, they stayed open—serving families displaced not by water, but by chronic unemployment. The effort became known informally as the Pittsburgh “trial project.”

The idea spread quickly. Relief experiments cropped up in other cities—St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville—each adapting WPA labor and surplus commodities in its own way. None were as formally structured as Pittsburgh’s, but all were feeling their way toward a similar question: how do you feed people once the emergency ends?

But Pittsburgh stood out for its scale and precision. Backed by federal administrators who had cut their teeth on flood relief, the city developed a system for inventorying, storing, and distributing food that could function even when emergency funds dried up.

At its core, the project asked whether public welfare could operate with the efficiency of disaster relief. WPA clerks cataloged household needs; local grocers became distribution partners; surplus commodities from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—flour, beans, lard, canned fruit—were tracked, stored, and rationed according to family size. The Red Cross supplied social workers, and city officials provided warehouses and trucks. Together they built a prototype for what would later be called food security logistics.

The trial wasn’t perfect. Federal funding ebbed with each budget cycle, and the social stigma of “relief food” remained. But the administrative bones of the system—the inventories, supply chains, and coordination among civic and charitable agencies—became a model. The project didn’t design the Surplus Commodities Program, but it mirrored the same principles—standardized inventories, warehouse distribution, and coordinated logistics—that federal policymakers would embrace by 1939.

The Great Flood’s legacy, it turned out, wasn’t only the levees that kept rivers in check—it was the blueprint for a nation learning to feed itself in good times and bad.

And here’s a picture of Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, with Pittsburgh steelworkers in 1933.

Now that you’ve read about the Pittsburgh “trial project” and its sister cities, test what you know about how these experiments evolved into the modern food-bank system in this month’s quiz.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

It’s the rare person who can answer all ten trivia questions without any prep. I couldn’t answer them without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS:

Each question has one correct answer, found in the footnotes.

1. What made Pittsburgh the ideal testing ground for the “trial project?”1

A. It had strong labor unions and civic coordination
B. It had an existing network of flood-relief warehouses and staff
C. It was home to one of the nation’s largest steelworker populations
D. It was the operational capital of the New Deal’s relief agencies in the East

2. Which New Deal administrator was known for saying, “People don’t eat in the long run—they eat every day?”2

A. Harold Ickes
B. Eleanor Roosevelt
C. Harry Hopkins
D. Henry Wallace

3. Which prominent women helped shape Pittsburgh’s approach to relief work?3

A. Frances Perkins
B. Eleanor Roosevelt
C. Mary McLeod Bethune
D. All of the above

4. What immediate challenge did Pittsburgh face once the floodwaters receded?4

A. Contaminated food supplies
B. Unemployment in the mills
C. Housing shortages in the suburbs
D. Labor strikes in city services

5. Which local partner helped the WPA convert emergency kitchens into year-round distribution centers?5

A. The Heinz Company
B. The City Department of Public Welfare
C. Carnegie Steel
D. The Allegheny Conference on Community Development

6. What role did the Red Cross play in Pittsburgh’s trial project?6

A. Operated soup kitchens independently
B. Supplied social workers and coordinated volunteers
C. Focused solely on medical care
D. Distributed industrial food waste to the poor

7. What was unique about Pittsburgh’s data collection?7

A. It used punch-card tabulators from local mills
B. WPA clerks tracked every meal and household served
C. It relied on volunteer recordkeepers from churches
D. All records were destroyed after the project ended

8. What type of food filled Pittsburgh’s relief warehouses?8

A. Locally grown produce and dairy
B. Imported European goods
C. USDA surplus commodities
D. Restaurant leftovers donated by civic clubs

9. Why did some Pittsburgh residents resist the program?9

A. Fear of socialism and stigma around “relief food”
B. Dietary restrictions in immigrant communities
C. Disputes between union and non-union households
D. Concerns about federal control of local farms

10. What enduring lesson came from Pittsburgh’s “trial project?”10

A. Feeding systems could be industrialized like steel
B. Charity worked better than coordination
C. Flood control was more important than hunger relief
D. Relief should be handled only by private agencies

Up next in Part Three of Flood to Food Banks: How Did the U.S. Government End Up in the Grocery Business?

Intermission

Here’s a great documentary about the Great Flood of 1937 in Pittsburgh, which peaked at 46 feet.
The segment featured an interview with Dr. H. Ward Ewalt, a Pittsburgh optometrist who filmed the flood and the damage it created around the city. It includes footage of the flood in downtown Pittsburgh, the J&L mill in Hazelwood, Lawrenceville, Manchester, Etna, Turtle Creek, Bellevue and Millvale. Ewalt passed away in 1995 after a long career in optometry.

ANSWERS

This is Part One of “Flood to Food Banks,” a three-part exploration of how the Ohio River became America’s testing ground for social uplift.

With American hunger back in the national headlines, I’ve been thinking about how this story of hunger relief began. I was surprised to learn it wasn’t with pantries and food drives, but with the Ohio River’s most devastating flood at the start of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second term.

My own research on the topic started several years ago, when I visited the Blennerhassett Museum of Regional History in Parkersburg, West Virginia, during the summer of 2021. However, at the time, I wasn’t looking for the origins of the modern food bank system—I hadn’t even thought about it. It was just part of my general reconnaissance of the region and its many historical facets.

I bought an admission ticket and stepped into the first-floor gallery, where a black gauge climbs the white brick wall, ending past the landing of the second story balcony. It was like a ruler of reckoning showing flood levels from 1884, through 1964. If you look at the picture below, the scale begins at forty feet, because that’s the elevation of the museum floor above the river’s normal height. I tilted my head up, then back a little farther, squinting to see the highest line of its record crest: 55.4 feet, January 26, 1937.

The number is tidy, and the mark is exact, but the mind resists it without context, so here’s mine. At five-foot-one, I calculated it would take nearly eleven of me stacked head to toe to reach 55.4 feet. And yes, if you look closely in the mirror beside the gauge, you can see me in the reflection—small against a wall that once marked catastrophe.

Now, imagine the whole town underwater to understand what fifty-five feet really means in human terms.

What began here as an act of rescue in 1937—feeding, housing, and clothing the displaced—would teach government and charity alike how to manage hunger, and other human needs, long after the waters receded. It didn’t invent the modern food bank, but it changed how the nation understood feeding as logistics — a mindset federal agencies would soon build into national food programs.

Even before the river crested, the Red Cross was on the ground, issuing rations and setting up shelters in churches and schools. When the flood reached its peak, President Roosevelt declared a national emergency—one of the first in response to a natural disaster—and released ten million dollars for relief. In today’s dollars, we’re talking $220 – $250 million.

His order unlocked every corner of the New Deal: Works Progress Administration crews (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Red Cross all moving in a single rhythm.

Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s trusted advisor and briefly his Secretary of Commerce, oversaw the WPA’s seven divisions, from heavy construction to public service, education, and the women’s sewing and nursing projects that reached into every county. The WPA had begun as a jobs program employing more than 8.5 million people for an average monthly salary of about $41. Under Hopkins, the seven divisions moved as one—not only repairing infrastructure, but also delivering food, sewing blankets, and keeping disease at bay.1

Within a week of the crest, field kitchens were serving thousands of meals a day—a wartime scale of feeding in a peacetime disaster. The flood proved that compassion, when well organized, could act on a scale it had never attempted in peacetime.

Back at my tour of the Blennerhassat Museum, I walked into another exhibit hall featuring a wooden skiff resting beneath a photograph of a long-ago packet boat. It’s small, flat-bottomed, and open to the air—the kind of boat that Parkersburg’s police and firemen rowed to deliver food and evacuate families, scraping across flooded porches and telephone wires along the way. For weeks, the city was an archipelago of rooftops and rescue routes, as were sister cities for all 981 miles of the river.

But police and fire crews weren’t the only ones rowing skiffs. Younger men from the Civilian Conservation Corps were pulled from their usual duties—planting trees, building bridges, and breaking the ground—literally—on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

My grandfather was a “CC man,” as they called themselves, but wasn’t serving at the time of the flood. Had he been, he would have rowed a skiff through flooded streets, delivering food and medicine, and disinfecting the mud with lime and kerosene to prevent disease—plus anything else the relief effort required of him.

So yes, before America could build a system to feed its hungry, it had to learn how to feed its stranded. The Ohio River flood didn’t just reshape levees and zoning maps—it rewired the nation’s sense of how care could be organized.

By the spring of 1937, the Ohio was back in its banks, but the idea it unleashed kept flowing east. Relief workers and engineers carried their notebooks to Pittsburgh, where federal and local leaders began asking a new question: could the same system that fed the stranded be adapted to feed the poor?

That experiment—the Pittsburgh “trial project”—is where this story turns next week, and yes it will include trivia.

This essay is part of “Flood to Food Banks,” a three-part exploration of how the Ohio River corridor shaped America’s approach to organized care.

Here’s a documentary about the 1937 Flood, filmed in 1980, so it’s not Ken Burns-quality production values. But that doesn’t matter. Its focus is Evansville, Indiana and the Tri-State, with a panel of people who lived through it. Great stuff.

If you’re a youngster, you may have seen it on cable reruns: Boone as the all-around good guy and frontier hero, conducting surveys and expeditions around Boonesborough, running into both friendly and hostile Indians, before, during, and even after the Revolutionary War.

Of course, there’s the TV Boone and the historical one—the Boone who symbolized Virginia’s land policies more than he shaped them himself.

Multiple states claim Daniel Boone because of his travels across the frontier — Pennsylvania, where he was born; North Carolina, where he came of age; Kentucky, where he blazed the Wilderness Road and helped open the interior to settlers; and Missouri, where he lived out his final years.

Today, our focus is Kentucky: how Boone’s surveying and trail-blazing symbolized Virginia’s land policies, and how those policies paved the way for statehood in 1792.

The explanation begins in1609 when King James I granted the Virginia colony a charter that stretched “from sea to sea,” sweeping aside the French, the Spanish, and of course the Indigenous nations already here.

During the Revolution, Virginia organized Kentucky County (VA), and by the 1780s it was further divided into Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln Counties. Together these counties formed a distinct bloc that petitioned Congress for separation from Virginia again and again.

With over 70,000 settlers by 1790, Kentucky had the numbers and leverage to become a state in 1792 and added the counties of Nelson, Bourbon, Madison, Mercer, Mason, and Woodford. For comparison, Ohio didn’t qualify for statehood until 1802, and that was through an exception called The Enabling Act.

“Wasted Land”

The Virginians of 1790 often described Kentucky as “wasted land,” which is not a legal term. “Waste” in property law usually referred to land not in active agricultural use (unfenced, uncleared, unplowed). Colonists and early legislators often borrowed this language to justify dispossession.

Today, we can appreciate that just because the land wasn’t managed with European methods doesn’t mean it was not being managed at all. For centuries, Shawnee, Cherokee, Mingo, and other nations had hunted, farmed, and burned the forest here. They moved seasonally between river bottoms and uplands, and their claims overlapped, making Kentucky one of the most contested landscapes in eastern North America.

Virginia dismissed this history and parceled Kentucky out as if it were empty. This language laid the groundwork for legislation like Virginia’s Land Law of 1779, which opened “unpatented lands” in the Kentucky district to Revolutionary War veterans of the Virginia Line, through bounty warrants.

This swath of land is the Military District of Kentucky, shown in gray on the map below. Many veterans never came — selling their warrants to speculators — but the district shaped settlement patterns all the same.

The Land Law also legalized settlers’ preemption claims—squatters’ rights that gave anyone who had already built a cabin or cleared fields the first chance to buy land.

Encouraged by these policies, thousands funneled through the Cumberland Gap along Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road, transforming the region within a generation.

The Dodgy Deal Behind Boone’s Road

Boone became the symbolic scout, but in reality he was on the payroll of the Transylvania Company, a massive speculative land venture of dubious legality.

In 1775 its founder, Richard Henderson, tried to buy twenty million acres directly from the Cherokee at Sycamore Shoals, paying with trade goods. Boone, then living in North Carolina, was hired to blaze the Wilderness Road and help build Fort Boonesborough to anchor the claim.

But the Royal Proclamation of 1763 forbade private purchases of Indian land, and both Virginia and North Carolina dismissed Henderson’s colony as a usurpation of their authority (the treaty at Sycamore Shoals took place on land that was then part of North Carolina).

Congress also refused to recognize it. Virginia eventually voided the purchase, though it granted Henderson and his partners 200,000 acres in Kentucky as a consolation prize, while North Carolina compensated them with land in present-day Tennessee.

It was an audacious bit of what people used to call “frontier lawyering”—an illegal land grab dressed up as a colony whose backers walked away with hundreds of thousands of acres. Henderson wasn’t just any dreamer and schemer—he was a North Carolina judge, with the connections and confidence to push further than most men would dare. And if the playbook looks familiar, that’s because versions of it are still making headlines today.

Transylvania collapsed as a colony, but Boone wasn’t a shareholder or speculator — he was the hired scout. When Virginia voided the Transylvania Company’s deal, Boone lost nothing personally, and his service was rewarded with land rather than reproach.

His association with Henderson’s speculative scheme faded in popular memory, leaving behind the heroic figure of Boone the pathfinder—a symbol of Kentucky’s opening, even if the machinery of land policy mattered far more than one man’s ax and rifle.

Metes and Bounds

Unlike Ohio, with its tidy federal grid of townships and ranges, Kentucky land was surveyed the old Virginian way: metes and bounds. A deed might run “from a white oak to a creek bend, then along the ridge to a large boulder.” This irregular system produced overlapping claims, and lawsuits that shaped county borders and political fights for generations.

The questions that follow will trace how these land policies—from Boone’s trail to the Military District—helped Kentucky emerge as America’s fifteenth state.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

It’s the rare person who can answer all ten trivia questions without any prep. I couldn’t answer them without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes. I’ll tell you if there is more than one correct answer.

1. Why did Virginians in the 1790s describe Kentucky as “wasted land?” Only one answer is correct.1
(a) It lacked mineral resources.
(b) They didn’t recognize Indigenous land use methods like seasonal migration, controlled burns, and unfenced fields.
(c) Because it was too remote to govern effectively from Richmond.
(d) Because Native peoples had already abandoned it.

2. Which Native nations actively used and claimed Kentucky, making it one of the most contested landscapes in eastern North America? More than one answer applies.2
(a) Shawnee
(b) Cherokee
(c) Mingo
(d) Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)

3. What was Kentucky County, Virginia, and how did it pave the way for statehood? One correct answer.3
(a) A single super-county created in 1776 that was later subdivided, forming a political bloc for separation.
(b) A military district organized solely for veterans.
(c) A western extension of Fincastle County, created to manage the frontier.
(d) A territory directly administered by Congress.

4. Why did Kentucky become a state in 1792 while northwestern Virginia counties had to wait until the Civil War to separate in 1863 (becoming West Virginia)? One correct answer.4
(a) Kentucky’s fertile farmland and central location drew migrants rapidly, giving it the numbers to press for statehood.
(b) Northwestern Virginia’s rugged mountains and poor transportation kept its population scattered and politically weak.
(c) Congress wanted to balance free and slave states, which helped Kentucky’s case.
(d) All of the above.

5. How did Virginia encourage migration into Kentucky? One correct answer.5
(a) By offering veterans bounty land warrants.
(b) By legalizing squatters’ “preemption claims.”
(c) By promoting migration through the Cumberland Gap and Boone’s Wilderness Road.
(d) All of the above.

6. Daniel Boone was celebrated as the heroic trailblazer of Kentucky, but in reality he was… One correct answer.6
(a) A contractor for the speculative Transylvania Company.
(b) A figurehead whose Wilderness Road became popular mainly because Virginia policy created courts, militias, and land offices on the other side.
(c) A wealthy land baron who accumulated thousands of acres and held them until his death.
(d) Both a and b.

7. Imagine you are a farmer in 1790s Kentucky. Your deed says your land runs “from a white oak tree to a bend in the creek, then along the ridge to a large boulder.” Your neighbor’s deed says nearly the same thing. What happens next under Virginia’s “metes and bounds” survey system? More than one answer is correct.7
(a) The two deeds overlap, and you end up in a lawsuit that could last for decades.
(b) The county court gets stronger, since everyone needs it to sort out overlapping claims.
(c) Speculators step in, buying up “disputed” land and reselling it to multiple buyers.
(d) The problem disappears once the federal survey grid reaches Kentucky.

8. Where was Kentucky’s Revolutionary War Military District located? One correct answer.8
(a) North of the Ohio River.
(b) South of the Green River in south-central Kentucky.
(c) Along the Cumberland Gap.
(d) In eastern Appalachia.

9. Why did many veterans never settle in the Kentucky Military District? One correct answer.9
(a) They sold their warrants to speculators.
(b) Some found the land too remote or already contested.
(c) Many preferred to remain in Virginia or move further west.
(d) All of the above.

10. How did Kentucky’s different settlement zones shape its antebellum identity? One correct answer.10
(a) The Bluegrass became a slaveholding plantation core.
(b) The Military District was a mix of small farms and speculative claims.
(c) The Appalachian east remained poor and isolated.
(d) All of the above.

Intermission

Here’s a list of pertinent books from our topic today:

• Steven A. Channing, Kentucky: A Bicentennial History—concise, thematic overview.

• Lowell H. Harrison & James C. Klotter, A New History of Kentucky—the standard survey.

• Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography—balanced, myth-busting Boone.

Here’s a Boone documentary by Kentucky’s PBS affiliate, KET. I couldn’t embed it here, so you’ll have to follow this link.

Want to get a jump on next month’s quiz? Read Steven Stoll, Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia — enclosure & the Appalachian commons. One of the most meaningful nonfiction books I’ve ever read.

ANSWERS

The BMW rallies I attend feel more like family reunions—the chance to connect with like-minded friends and swap stories about destinations, roads, motorcycle mishaps, and everything except politics and religion. Honestly, I can’t tell you what most of my riding friends do (or did) for their livelihoods. We’re too busy enjoying the one thing we have in common: a deep love of motorcycles and the road.

Many rallygoers camp on the grounds, which adds to the sense of community—and sometimes the humor. Case in point: this sign I spotted. If you don’t see the unintended humor, give it a minute.

I extended my time in Southeastern Ohio for another week so I could do deep research for the book I’m writing for the University of Illinois Press, tentatively titled, Along the Ohio: Stories the River Still Holds.

While in Marietta—a river city that was the first settlement in the Northwest Territory—I learned that one of the most respected makers of historical markers is headquartered there. This is the kind of serendipity that makes my pulse race.

Please treat yourself to this video about Sewah Studios, which includes scenes from each phase of the manufacturing process. I’ve watched it a couple of times now.

Evolution of a Late-Blooming History Buff

I didn’t study history in college, mostly because I wasn’t cut out for teaching (which is what I thought the field would necessarily lead to). Besides, my parents weren’t about to bankroll a degree without a solid career plan, so I majored in business. What’s funny is that the part of business that has always fascinated me is its role in cultural history. But that’s a story for another day.

Motorcycle travel became my history professor. Out on the road, I’ve picked up lessons in geology and paleontology (Wyoming is top-notch in that department), along with human and cultural history, and plenty of “what-happened-right-here” lessons. Despite my history education being scattershot—it’s more like postcards than a sequenced curriculum—those fragments taught me to look harder at what’s missing, as well as what’s been preserved in public memorials and commemorations.

Side note: my kids will someday have the joy of sorting through the 1,000+ postcards I’ve collected on my travels. I’m not doing Swedish Death Cleaning on that collection.

I spent the better part of a day in Special Collections at Marietta College poring over brittle papers and pamphlets from 100+ years ago, and it occurred to me that the wording on some of the historical markers didn’t line up with what I was reading. So which version should we believe—the plaques or the papers?

You’d think the archives would settle it, but there’s a counterargument to sticking with what’s held in any one collection. After all, history is collected in many different places, and hauled across rivers and seas by descendants of those who lived it.

Think about it: history isn’t set in stone. New stories—and new information about old ones—surface all the time: in journals used as insulation for an old home, in the margins of a family Bible, in overlooked archives. Women’s lives are often missing from “the record,” as are the histories of marginalized and ostracized people.

I’m enamored with discovering new angles on old stories I thought I knew—the narratives erased or ignored because they didn’t matter to those entrusted with recording the news at the time.

When I asked the Special Collections librarian what it takes to get a marker approved, she gave me a wry smile. “Anyone can put up a sign on their property and call it a historical marker”—distinguishing between informal commemorations and the formal program. She continued, “But if you want the official emblem, or to be included in recognized history trails, you have to apply to the sponsoring organization.”

She went on to explain that Ohio’s formal system—with the Ohio History Connection’s emblem and inclusion on official trails or registries—is distinct from whatever individuals might erect on their own property. In other words, there is an “official” class of markers in Ohio, and acceptance into the state program is what makes the difference.

Still, this doesn’t ensure an error-free or fulsome accounting of the historical place or event being marked.

Sometimes local history projects—whether a roadside plaque, a county museum, or a “heritage tourism” trail—are there to reassure the hometown crowd of their historical importance, or to entice visitors to come and spend a little money. They elevate local heroes, polish away contradictions, and speak in absolutes—”first,” “leader,” “freedom’s shore.”

What they sidestep is what remains contested, unknown, or uncomfortable. That’s one reason why you can’t count on a marker to tell the full story; the other is the small space available for telling it.

Markers are written in their own moment, reflecting the priorities—and blind spots—of the people and institutions that sponsored them. What counted as “the story” a century ago may not be the story we’d choose to tell today. They bear the stamp of their time, and they age quickly. What once read as civic pride can, in hindsight, read as erasure.

And that gap between pride and omission is exactly where I’ve been finding the stories worth telling.

Case In Point: Portsmouth, Ohio

While in Portsmouth, Ohio, I had the good fortune to interview Dr. Andrew Feight, a professor of history at Shawnee State University and a leading authority on the Underground Railroad in southern Ohio. He pointed me to a marker on Shawnee State’s campus and noted some of its shortcomings. Read it for yourself and see what you notice:

The marker isn’t technically false, but it is partially true.

Take, for instance, “loosely connected safe havens.” The phrase makes the Underground Railroad sound casual or ad hoc. In reality, it was highly organized in some places, with networks of Black and white activists, churches, and communities. Sure, there was the occasional solo actor, I grant you that.

Or consider the list of services rendered, “nursed, concealed, disguised, and instructed.” It implies a universal experience, when the level of assistance varied widely depending on place and circumstance. It wasn’t like the Red Cross with a mission statement and list of services.

And then there’s the claim that this was “one of America’s greatest social, moral, and humanitarian endeavors.” That’s boosterism. It elevates the moral heroism of Ohioans while glossing over contradictions like Ohio’s Black Laws, violent resistance to Black settlement, and the complicity of locals who aided slave catchers.

The Case of Hannah Putnam

Here’s a story from Marietta, Ohio worth considering. David Putnam Jr. was the town’s most outspoken abolitionist, a banker turned activist whose home became its best-known Underground Railroad stop. There’s even a marker on Fort Street in his honor. What’s not mentioned are the laws and neighbors who made his work so noteworthy, including the state’s Black Laws.

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Putnam is remembered in Marietta for his abolitionist zeal, but his entire family shared the danger. Hannah and the children lived with the constant risk that freedom seekers might be discovered under their roof. The children were so accustomed to the peril that they knew to close a door quickly and quietly if a stranger appeared, lest someone catch sight of a hidden guest.

One cold November night in 1844, Hannah went into labor as an angry mob gathered outside their house, riled by rumors that fugitives were being harbored there. David galloped across the Muskingum River for Dr. Cotton, leaving Hannah to wait while anti-abolitionists from Washington County, Ohio and from Wood County, Virginia (now West Virginia) threatened to storm the home and tear it down.

Neighbors stepped in to protect her. Dr. John McCoy, described in the press as a tall, swarthy man whose black cape and broad-brimmed hat gave him a forbidding silhouette, stood guard with other prominent citizens, including Caleb Emerson, Col. Augustus Stone, and Cortland Sheperd. They urged the mob to disperse, reminding them that no one had a warrant and no enslaved person had actually been seen inside.

Still, the night and Hannah’s labor dragged on. Hours passed as the mob pressed and muttered outside, until a cold rain began to fall. At last, even the Virginians admitted they would follow Dr. McCoy’s example and go home rather than endure the weather.

By the time Dr. Cotton returned, the danger had ebbed, and Hannah delivered her sixth child in safety.1

It was one of many nights when principle and peril shared the same roof—and one that ought to put Hannah’s name on a plaque alongside her husband’s

Her absence from David’s marker is exactly what I mean when I talk about the tension between boosterism and reckoning. Markers often tell a polished version of events, but the fuller story, the one that lingers in archives and family memory, reveals who’s been left out.

In summary: historical markers are useful starting points, but they rarely tell the whole story. The real work—and the real discovery—comes when you dig past the plaque. That’s what I’ve been doing here on The 981 Project and what I’ll show you when Along the Ohio is published.

Next time you see a marker, take a moment to look for grand pronouncements and ask what might be missing. Did the “great man” of history have a wife or partner? Wonder what her life was like?

When a marker says “the first ever,” ask yourself why it was the first ever—and what story lies behind the milestone. Those are the spaces my research keeps leading me into, whether I arrive by motorcycle or by way of an archive box.

Why did so many leave? Some were pulled northward by wartime jobs that could no longer be filled by low-wage immigrant workers. Others were pushed by violence, poverty, and political exclusion in the South. Trains heading to Pittsburgh or Chicago were often full of passengers carrying not much more than a suitcase and a lead from a cousin or neighbor who had gone before.

Isabel Wilkerson documents this on a national scale in The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), a deeply researched narrative history of the Great Migration that uses personal stories to illuminate what moved people, where they went, and what they left behind. The book won major awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Award. She also shared these insights in a widely viewed TED talk.

The reception in the Ohio Valley was complicated. Industries needed hands, but employers often confined newcomers to the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Middlemen cropped up, sometimes helping, sometimes exploiting. Housing was another battle: in Cincinnati, the West End became a crowded hub later targeted for “urban renewal”; in Pittsburgh, the Hill District thrived culturally even as city planners bulldozed blocks for highways and stadiums; in Louisville, Black families were steered into neighborhoods like Smoketown and the West End.

Migration also shifted the balance of political power. Where voting rights were less restricted, Black communities could organize, cast ballots, and even tip elections. That influence sparked new opportunities as well as new forms of resistance. We still see echoes of this today in debates over redistricting, representation, and voting rights — reminders that the Great Migration continues to shape American life.

From steel towns to stockyards, from church basements to union halls, the Great Migration reshaped the Ohio River valley in ways still visible today. The questions that follow will help you trace how work, politics, housing, and community life along the river were transformed by this movement of people.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Oh, and if you do, would you share the quiz with someone else?

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QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes.

1. Why did the Great Migration accelerate in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois during WWI?1

A. Northern industries recruited Black workers to replace European immigrants whose migration slowed
B. Southern states began subsidizing train fare north
C. Black newspapers advertised opportunities in Northern cities
D. Federal New Deal programs required quotas of Black workers

2. Who were “labor brokers” (also called “labor agents”) during the Great Migration, and why were they controversial?2

A. Recruiters hired by Northern industries to bring Southern Black workers north
B. Middlemen who sometimes exploited migrants by taking a cut of their wages or charging fees
C. Community leaders who voluntarily helped migrants find housing and jobs without pay
D. Organizers who tried to unionize Black workers as soon as they arrived

3. When Black Southerners arrived in Northern states, many employers assumed they would be best suited for which kinds of jobs?3

A. Domestic service and janitorial work
B. Stockyards and meatpacking plants
C. Foundries and steel mills
D. Agricultural and food-processing labor (e.g., canneries, sugar beet fields)

4.How did Black migration reshape politics in Ohio River states (PA, WV, KY, OH, IN, IL)?4

A. African Americans gained the right to vote without poll taxes and literacy tests
B. The Black vote began to swing elections in cities like Chicago and Cleveland
C. Both major political parties ignored Black voters until after WWII
D. Migration triggered white backlash and restrictive housing covenants

5.What role did the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) play in the Great Migration?5

A. It provided free rides north for Southern migrants
B. It hired thousands of Black workers as porters, track laborers, and dining car staff
C. It ran ads in Black newspapers promoting Pittsburgh and Philadelphia jobs
D. It lobbied Congress to restrict Black migration to control wages

6.By 1970, how had the Great Migration reshaped cities along the Ohio River?6

A. Louisville’s Black population grew as rural Kentuckians moved into the city for industrial and wartime jobs
B. Cincinnati’s West End became a major Black community before being decimated by urban renewal
C. Pittsburgh’s Hill District flourished culturally but faced job losses as steel began to decline
D. Cairo, Illinois, became a safe haven for Black migrants

7.How did U.S. Steel shape the Great Migration in Pittsburgh and other Ohio River steel towns?7

A. It recruited Black workers to fill labor shortages, especially during WWI and WWII
B. It smoothed the transition by giving Black workers a month of free housing in mill towns
C. It sometimes used Black workers as strikebreakers, straining relations with white immigrant labor
D. It helped fund Black newspapers to support migrant communities

8.What role did the meatpacking and stockyards of Louisville and Cincinnati play in the Great Migration?8

A. They hired Southern Black migrants into grueling, low-wage slaughterhouse and processing jobs
B. They provided pathways into stable union jobs from the very beginning
C. They became organizing grounds where Black workers later joined interracial CIO unions in the 1930s
D. They were entirely closed to Black labor until after WWII

9.How did Pullman porters influence Black migration and community life in Ohio River cities like Cincinnati and Louisville?9

A. They provided steady, respected work for Black men, though under harsh conditions and low pay
B. They carried The Chicago Defender and other Black newspapers south, spreading word about Northern opportunities
C. They organized one of the first national Black labor unions, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
D. They ensured that Black families in river cities were exempt from housing segregation

10.How did housing policies and practices affect Black migrants in Ohio River cities?10

A. Restrictive covenants and redlining confined Black families to segregated neighborhoods
B. Urban renewal projects displaced Black communities, often in the name of “slum clearance”
C. Federal housing programs after WWII encouraged integrated, mixed-race suburbs
D. Despite barriers, Black neighborhoods like Pittsburgh’s Hill District and Cincinnati’s West End fostered strong cultural and political life

If you’ve lived in or near these places — the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati’s West End, Smoketown in Louisville — what stories have come down in your family?

Leave a comment

Intermission

I was recently in Cincinnati, getting to know more about Black History and the West End. This video includes much of what I discovered there:

ANSWERS

From our Airbnb on Mt. Washington, the whole city lay at our feet—426 bridges, mostly yellow, strung across rivers like necklaces, glass towers glinting where smokestacks once stood, and of course Point Park, headwaters of the Ohio River.

We boarded the Duquesne Incline, its wooden car polished by a century of hands and dungaree work pants. The pressed-tin ceiling gleamed like a copper penny, and an old lantern swung overhead as if it remembered gaslight. Even the lettering on the sign—Duquesne Incline Car #2 seemed to whisper history.

We rattled down the hillside toward the city, then hoofed it to PNC Park to watch the Pirates play the Reds in a river rivalry. The closer we got to the Clemente Bridge, the more fans we saw in yellow gear. Matt struck up a conversation with a couple wearing shirts that looked Hawaiian at first glance, but instead of hibiscus and palm fronds, the fabric was scattered with Pittsburgh’s own icons—bridges, skyline, maybe even a pierogi or two. It was the perfect welcome: playful, civic-proud, and just a little kitschy.

The woman tipped us off that it was Bucket Hat Night at the stadium, and I felt a silly rush of adrenaline at the thought of scoring fanwear just for walking through the gate.

This was my first night at a professional baseball game, and I suspect someone alerted the whole stadium staff because our section usher even finagled a photo opp for me with the Pirate Parrot.

I don’t know much about baseball, but I do know about people watching, and I got more than I bargained for that night. Little kids with their scorecards and ball mitts, camera kisses, and of course the “Great Pittsburgh Pierogy Race” sponsored by Mrs. T’s Pierogies.

Matt had to ask what a pierogi really is, since they were human-sized on the track surrounding the field. If you’re also in need of the information, it’s an Eastern European dumpling, usually stuffed with potatoes, cheese, or sauerkraut—comfort food carried here by the waves of Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian immigrants who once poured into the mills and mines. In Pittsburgh, it’s been elevated from kitchen staple to cultural mascot, and nowhere is that clearer than in the delirious spectacle of grown adults racing around the diamond in dumpling suits.

But not every story in Pittsburgh that week brought pep to my step. On August 7, ICE agents raided Emiliano’s, a Mexican restaurant chain, detaining 16 workers, leaving broken doors, trashed kitchens, and fear in their wake. Here’s an update on that story.

The ICE raid at Emiliano’s echoed an old Pittsburgh story. A century ago, the “new” immigrants bringing their dumplings from Poland, Slovakia, and Italy were branded as dangerous or unfit, their strikes met with state militias and Pinkertons, their very presence resented by nativists and the Ku Klux Klan.

Roughly a hundred years ago, nativist tensions boiled over in Carnegie, just a few miles from where Matt and I were staying. On August 25, 1923, thirty thousand Klansmen gathered in nearby Scott Township to initiate new members, then—against the warnings of local officials—marched into Carnegie, a borough known for its proud Irish Catholic community. As they crossed the Glendale Bridge, residents met them with rocks and clubs. Shots followed, leaving more than a hundred people injured and one Klansman dead.

In the aftermath Carnegie residents were charged, Klansmen were not, and the national Klan leader, Hiram Wesley Evans, used the death as propaganda to lure even more recruits. Yesterday’s “foreign” Catholics and Slavs, today’s Mexican restaurant workers—the names and cuisines change, but the scapegoating machinery looks hauntingly familiar.

Yet even in those dark chapters, people found ways to knit themselves together—through churches, clubs, and often through sport. Pittsburgh has long used games as a kind of glue, binding neighborhoods that outsiders tried to divide (as you learned in August Trivia).

I saw it again when Matt and I visited the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum inside the Heinz History Center, where the displays trace everything from mill league softball to the Steelers’ dynasty years.

If the Sports Museum showed how games helped Pittsburghers find belonging, the city’s native son and playwright August Wilson revealed the same search playing out in living rooms and backyards.

I’m not a theatah person, but everyone I know from Pittsburgh insisted I visit the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, which honors the city’s most famous playwright. Their pride was unmistakable: to Pittsburghers, Wilson is both neighbor and national treasure, their own Shakespeare whose words have traveled far beyond the Hill District streets—once called “Little Harlem” for their music and community. I went expecting to be dutiful, maybe polite. Instead, I was surprised at how deeply the exhibit pulled me into the Black experience.

The Writer’s Landscape is no ordinary museum gallery. It’s an immersive journey through Wilson’s American Century Cycle—ten rooms, each devoted to one of his plays, plus recreations of his office and a diner where he listened and wrote. The spaces are staged as acts—The Coffee Shop, The Office, The Street—and together they form a living map of the places, people, and rhythms that shaped his work.

The Hill District came alive for me not only in the exhibit but in a live production of Fences at Wilson’s childhood home. Watching it there—surrounded by the very streets and houses that inspired the play—drove home how rooted his work is in this place. If you can’t get to a stage performance, the film adaptation with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis carries much of the same power.

Our guide at The Writer’s Landscape, a retired University of Pittsburgh employee, told us she used to look down from her office window and see Wilson sitting on Pitt’s quad with his notebook. He wasn’t idling—he was listening, taking notes, watching the small dramas of everyday life. She also told us that in tenth grade, Wilson was accused of plagiarism when he turned in a 20-page paper on Napoleon. His teacher couldn’t believe a boy his age could produce such work. In truth, he had already been writing assignments for his older sister to help her graduate. Rather than defend him, the school pushed him out.

The exhibit underscored how Wilson turned exclusion into fuel for his art.

I often find myself the only white visitor at African American cultural sites, but that wasn’t the case here. Seeing other white tourists walk those rooms alongside me gave me hope that perhaps the maxim is sinking in: Black history is American history.

What I recognized in Wilson wasn’t just theater, it’s the fruits of what can happen when writers listen. When we sit still, gathering voices, and noticing how they fit into the larger story. It’s a practice I lean on too, although not as elegantly or prolifically as Wilson, whether I’m writing about roads, rivers, or the memories my own family carries.

If that kind of listening interests you, I’m exploring it more fully in Buckskin Rides Again, my weekly series about a 4,820-mile motorcycle journey through family, memory, and the American road.

You can catch up on past dispatches here, and claim your free subscription.

Industrial Culture Loved “Manly” Sports

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, steel mills, coal mines, and railroad yards weren't just workplaces—they were gritty proving grounds for “real men.”

• Baseball emphasized discipline, timing, and team cohesion—ideal traits for industrial workers.

• Football, especially in its early brutal form, was framed as a crucible of toughness and hierarchy. Company executives loved it for “character building.”

The captains of industry (cough-cough) started “works teams” not simply as morale boosters, but also as tools of corporate paternalism, offered up alongside housing, clinics, and “recreation grounds” to reduce turnover and, conveniently, undermine union organizing. I wrote about this in the Kentucky coal fields on my website because my maternal family experienced Henry Ford’s “largesse”.

Some players held nominal jobs—night watchman, messenger, or other make-work titles—but were effectively paid to win, not to work. By the early 1900s, companies like Carnegie Steel were recruiting ringers and paying salaries that rivaled the minor leagues, all while claiming amateur status.

Teams like the Youngstown Ohio Works and Homestead Library & Athletic Club dominated regional leagues and occasionally squared off against professional clubs in exhibition games. The line between amateur sport and industrial propaganda? Let’s just say it was easy to blur when the scoreboard looked good.

I was in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago at the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum and will give you a longer story in a future newsletter.

When Works Teams Became Controversial

First get to know The Ohio–Pennsylvania League (O–P League)

• Founded: 1905 and featured franchises based in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The league was founded by Charlie Morton and operated for eight seasons, with the Akron Champs winning four league championships.

• Level: The teams would be considered a Class C minor league by later standards, though such classifications weren’t fully formalized at the time.

• Region: Mostly small-to-mid-sized industrial cities along the Ohio River and its tributaries—including Youngstown, Niles, Canton, Akron, and New Castle, PA.

In the 1905 Ohio–Pennsylvania League season, the Youngstown Ohio Works—sponsored by Carnegie Steel—drew sharp criticism for paying its players nearly double the league average, despite claiming to be “amateur.” Local newspapers fretted that the team’s salaries threatened the entire league's viability by forcing smaller-town clubs to overspend or fold.

To make matters wilder, a riot broke out during a game in Niles, Ohio, triggered by a fight among fans that escalated into dozens flooding the field and interfering with play, revealing how tightly corporate ambition, sport, and public spectacle intertwined.

Works teams weren’t just mascots of industrial generosity—they were flashpoints for debates about fair play, regional pride, and the limits of corporate influence in civic space. And when fans stormed the field, they showed that sport still belonged to the community—not just the company.

From Works Teams to the Big Leagues

As the 20th century unfolded, the scrappy industrial teams of the Ohio River Valley gave way to the polished machinery of professional leagues. No longer rooted in a specific mill or factory, teams began to represent entire cities—and their fans. With that shift came new forces: advertising, syndication, star players, and spectacle. Sports were no longer just tools of corporate morale or community cohesion. They became business.

The relationship between fans and teams evolved too. Where once the pitcher might’ve been your neighbor or coworker, now he lived in a nicer part of town—or maybe another city altogether. But the ties didn’t break—they morphed. Media coverage, mascots, and radio broadcasts helped forge a new kind of loyalty, more symbolic than social. The rise of mass media didn’t just change the game; it changed who the game was for.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I had to do a significant amount of research before writing this. Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes. Good luck.

1. Which of the following are true about the Homestead Library & Athletic Club football team near Pittsburgh in the early 1900s? Select all that apply.1

   1. Its roster included multiple Ivy League All-Americans recruited by William Chase Temple with unusually high salaries.

   2. The team emerged after the Homestead Steel strike of 1892, partly as a reputational salve. Critics later argued that its star-studded roster was a public distraction from the brutal union-busting that preceded it.

   3. The payroll in 1901 was publicly disclosed at $25,000—an enormous sum that drew criticism as elitist spectacle.

   4. Labor unions accused the athletic club of serving as distraction from the harsh conditions inside Carnegie’s steel mills.

2. Why did industrial companies in Ohio River towns sponsor baseball and football teams after the Civil War, but not sports like badminton or basketball?
   Select all that apply.2

   A. Baseball and football aligned with masculine ideals prized by factory and mill culture.
   B. Badminton and basketball were seen as leisure or indoor sports, more associated with schools and churches.
   C. Outdoor team sports made better use of company-owned land and attracted large public crowds.
   D. Basketball’s origins in Canadian-American YMCA culture made it less aligned with factory-floor values.
   E. Football had a prestigious association with elite colleges, which company owners wanted to emulate.

3. Which statements about early company-sponsored or community-supported sports in Ohio River towns are true? Select all that apply.3

   A. Youngstown, OH, was known for company-backed baseball teams like the Ohio Works, which blurred the line between amateur play and professional recruitment.
   B. Homestead, PA, supported powerhouse football teams backed by Carnegie-linked institutions, drawing national talent under the guise of amateurism.
   C. Inspired by World War II-era efforts like the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, many companies in the Ohio River region began sponsoring women's sports to support wartime morale and workplace equity.
   D. Evansville, IN, had a robust boxing scene tied to its riverfront economy and immigrant labor population, though it wasn’t directly employer-sponsored.
   E. Public athletic programs for women lagged behind men's, reflecting the gender norms of industrial paternalism and limited corporate investment in female recreation.

4. Which of the following help explain how company-sponsored teams in Ohio River towns contributed to the rise of professional sports leagues in the U.S.?
   Select all that apply.4

   A. Companies began recruiting elite college athletes, which normalized the idea of paying players for performance—even while claiming "amateur" status.
   B. High-salary “works teams” created financial pressure on smaller clubs, accelerating the need for more formal league structures and revenue models.
   C. Factory teams pioneered rule changes like designated hitters and shorter innings to boost productivity at work.
   D. Local fan enthusiasm and press coverage helped build a media ecosystem that professional leagues would later rely on.
   E. Some “company men” who managed teams (like William Chase Temple) went on to shape or own professional franchises.

5. How did the rise of professional sports leagues in the early 20th century change the relationship between teams, fans, and media in Ohio River towns and beyond? Select all that apply.5

   A. Games were increasingly covered by regional and national newspapers, helping transform local teams into entertainment brands.
   B. Factory workers began traveling long distances to follow their favorite teams, sparking the earliest forms of organized sports tourism.
   C. As professional teams replaced works teams, fans lost some of their personal connection to the players, who no longer worked or lived in the same communities.
   D. Professionalization led to more women attending games, since the new stadiums were cleaner and marketed as family-friendly venues.
   E. Local radio broadcasts in the 1920s and '30s created a shared experience across class and geography, reinforcing fan loyalty and team identity.

6. Which of the following are true about the racial dynamics of early 20th-century works teams in Ohio River industrial towns? Select all that apply.6

   A. Most company-sponsored teams were white-only, even in racially mixed workplaces.
   B. Black athletes were sometimes invited to play if they could significantly improve the team’s performance.
   C. Black workers often formed their own teams through churches or Black civic organizations.
   D. Employers promoted Black participation in sports as a way to reduce racial tension in the workplace.
   E. Segregation in company sports mirrored the broader exclusion of Black workers from upward mobility and social visibility in factory culture.

7. Which of the following are true about Native American imagery in early 20th-century sports along the Ohio River and in its industrial towns? Select all that apply.7

   A. Many industrial or semi-pro teams in Ohio River towns used Native American names to project strength, bravery, and “warrior spirit”—values prized by factory owners and fans alike.
   B. Native-themed mascots were often introduced in towns where Indigenous communities still had a strong physical or political presence.
   C. The rise of Native imagery in Ohio River Valley sports coincided with federal Indian assimilation policies, such as Indian boarding schools and cultural bans.
   D. Teams often leaned into frontier myths, naming themselves after tribes who had historically lived—or fought—near the Ohio River.
   E. These team names reinforced ideals of manhood and toughness that paralleled factory labor expectations in mill towns like Wheeling, Cincinnati, and Evansville.

8. Which of the following are true about immigrant-sponsored sports teams in Ohio River towns during the industrial era? Select all that apply.8

   A. Teams were often organized around specific ethnic groups, such as Polish, Irish, or Italian communities.
   B. These teams played exclusively in private leagues and were banned from company-sponsored fields.
   C. Ethnic leagues sometimes competed against company teams in informal exhibition games or town tournaments.
   D. Some teams were sponsored by saloons, churches, or ethnic halls—serving as a point of pride for new arrivals.
   E. Industrialists encouraged ethnic leagues as a way to foster multiculturalism and racial equity.

9. How did “Blue Laws” affect early industrial sports culture in Ohio River towns?
   Select all that apply.9

   A. Some towns prohibited games on Sundays, the only rest day for many workers.
   B. Games played on Sundays were sometimes raided or fined by local authorities.
   C. Blue Laws were most strictly enforced in Catholic-majority towns.
   D. Labor unions and immigrant communities often pushed back against Blue Laws.
   E. Some industrialists supported Blue Laws to limit unruly gatherings of workers.

10. What role did railroads play in shaping company sports rivalries in the Ohio River Valley? Select all that apply.10

    A. Teams from different towns used rail lines to compete in regional tournaments and exhibition games.
    B. Some industrialists owned both railroad companies and sports teams, consolidating control of transportation and publicity.
    C. “Rail Series” games were common—where towns along the same rail corridor played annual grudge matches.
    D. Players were required to work on the railroad in the off-season to maintain amateur status.
    E. Traveling teams helped spread company propaganda and brand loyalty to nearby towns.

Intermission

I found a video that claims to be the oldest video of a football game from 1903, when Princeton played Yale. Enjoy.

ANSWERS

I know just a little more than nothing about the Gulf States’ history, but most of it came from reading T.E. Lawrence’s biography and watching Lawrence of Arabia. Steep learning curve ahead of me there. I’m excited about that!

Not much Fodder from Chautauqua—But…

My spouse and I are road-tripping from home in North Carolina to Chautauqua, with a two-day stop in Pittsburgh to include a Pirates–Reds game. The Reds are scrapping for a wild card spot; the Pirates… not so much. But that’s not really why I’m going. I’m going because Matt’s excited—and for the view: skyline on one side, river and bridges on the other, right at golden hour. Matt’s never seen the skyline and I can’t wait to see his response.

Bring on the Parrot and Pierogis

Then there’s the mascot sideshow, which I suspect will be the real show for me. Word is that a giant green parrot might break into dance or trip a human-sized pierogi during the mid-inning sprint. The Great Pierogi Race is apparently a fan favorite, and honestly? I’m here for it. If you need me during innings five and six, hold that text—I need to see whether Cheese Chester can finally take down Sauerkraut Saul.

Start Boning Up for August Trivia

I’m thinking about a sports-themed August Trivia, so start boning up—you’ve been forewarned.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on something much weightier.

I’ve Got a Book Deal—Now I Need a Title

NEWS FLASH: I’m writing a book for the University of Illinois Press! Would you help me find the perfect title? Here’s what it’s about:

For nearly a thousand miles, the Ohio River marked the line between slavery and freedom—a boundary drawn in water, and carried forward in memory, myth, and silence. Though often overshadowed by the Mason-Dixon Line or the Deep South, the Ohio remains America’s longest and only visible slavery border, its legacy still etched into the landscapes it divides.

In [TITLE], travel writer and narrative essayist Tamela Rich follows the river from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois, stopping at courthouses, riverfront parks, faded historical markers, and places where no sign remains at all. What emerges is not a neat chronology, but a mosaic of reckoning: towns shaped by what they choose to remember—and what they quietly forget.

With a motorcyclist’s eye for detail and a memoirist’s restraint, Rich explores how the river’s legacy lives on in tourism slogans, plantation reenactments, Underground Railroad memorials, and gaps in the public record. This is not a story of reconciliation, but of recognition: of how borders shape belief, and how history lingers even in the rearview mirror.

You can give me your opinion for a title HERE. Thanks so much!

Let’s Meet Up?

I’ll be back in the region over the Labor Day Weekend. If you’re anywhere near Athens or Marietta, Ohio, please get in touch. I’d love to meet you in person.

“Huh?”
Same here.

Lately I’ve been diving into railroad history, thanks to a few of my spring motorcycle stops out West. My father’s family worked for the Santa Fe (now part of BNSF) and in a fascinating twist, his family tree contains union men and union busters. I’ll be talking about that in my new series, “Buckskin Rides Again,” beginning July 20.

Here’s what you need to know to crush this month’s quiz.

In the summer of 1877, the nation’s railroads ground to a halt—not because of weather or mechanical failure, but because tens of thousands of workers had had enough. Sparked by wage cuts on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the Great Railroad Strike quickly spread across the industrial heartland, disrupting cities from Pittsburgh to Chicago.

It was the first major, national labor uprising in U.S. history—an unplanned but powerful response to mounting frustrations over low pay, dangerous conditions, and unchecked corporate power during the Gilded Age.

The roots of the strike stretched back four years to the Panic of 1873, a financial crisis that triggered a long and brutal depression. Railroads overbuilt during boom times and then collapsed into bankruptcy, responding with layoffs, wage cuts, and speedups that made a hard job even harder. With few labor protections and no social safety net, workers were left to fend for themselves in a climate of growing desperation.

This quiz will explore key moments, people, and places involved in the 1877 strike. Don’t worry if you’re not a historian—each question is designed to deepen your understanding while testing what you already know. Think of it as a whistle-stop tour through one of the most pivotal labor movements in American history.

Here’s a quick summary of how it affected states in our 981 Project.

The strike’s legacy in Kentucky is worth a note. In Louisville, where white railroad workers decided not to strike, these workers ended up avoiding pay cuts by siding with the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad against a general strike by Black workers.

Some white workers even formed their own militia to protect railroad property,” says Shannon M. Smith, a history professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University who has written about the 1877 strike in Louisville. “So rather than siding with other workers, they sided with the company.”

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I had to do a significant amount of research before writing this. Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes. Good luck.

1. How did the Panic of 1873 contribute to the conditions that sparked the Great Railroad Strike of 1877? (Select all that apply) 1

   A) It led to widespread railroad bankruptcies and aggressive cost-cutting
   B) It triggered a long economic depression, increasing unemployment and worker desperation
   C) It caused major public investment in rail infrastructure, raising expectations for worker benefits
   D) Railroad companies responded with repeated wage cuts and layoffs
   E) It hardened public opinion against organized labor and fueled anti-union sentiment

2. Why didn’t the hardships caused by the Panic of 1873 lead to meaningful protections for railroad workers before the 1877 strike? (Select all that apply)2

   A) The federal government had no established system of unemployment relief or labor regulation
   B) The Supreme Court prioritized contract rights and property over collective labor action
   C) Business leaders promoted the idea that free-market forces—not laws—should determine wages and conditions
   D) Most state governments remained neutral, refusing to intervene in labor disputes
   E) The idea of federal intervention in the economy or social welfare was still politically unpopular

3. What specific events in Martinsburg, West Virginia, triggered the beginning of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877? (Select all that apply)3

   A) The B&O Railroad announced another round of wage cuts during an ongoing economic depression
   B) Workers were outraged by the hiring of Chinese immigrant labor to replace striking crews
   C) Freight trains were made longer, increasing workload and danger without additional pay
   D) Local militia forces refused to use violence against the strikers, prompting calls for federal troops
   E) Strike leaders issued a coordinated call for national labor action from Martinsburg

4. Why were railroad companies able to maintain poor working conditions with little pushback before 1877? (Select all that apply)4

   A) There were few or no labor laws regulating work conditions
   B) Railroads had powerful allies in government and media
   C) Workers feared arrest or blacklisting if they organized
   D) Most legal decisions favored company property rights over worker protections
   E) The country was recovering from a financial panic and jobs were scarce

5. Which of the following accurately describes the leadership and ideology behind the Great Railroad Strike of 1877? (Select all that apply)5

   A) The strike was organized and led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
   B) European anarchist groups coordinated protests in multiple cities
   C) The strike was largely spontaneous, with no centralized leadership
   D) Local working-class communities often joined in, even if they weren’t railroad employees
   E) The strike laid early groundwork for future labor organizing in the U.S.

6. What were some of the longer-term effects of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 on labor organizing in the United States? (Select all that apply)6

   A) It led directly to the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
   B) It exposed the need for more coordinated labor action, spurring the growth of groups like the Knights of Labor
   C) It inspired future protests and strikes, including the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago
   D) It demonstrated that spontaneous uprisings could succeed without any formal organization or ideology
   E) It contributed to public fears of radicalism, prompting crackdowns on labor and immigrant communities

7. Which of the following are true about the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), the company at the center of the 1877 strike? (Select all that apply)7

   A) It was one of the earliest railroads in the U.S., created to help Baltimore compete with New York’s Erie Canal
   B) Its route followed the Ohio River to connect eastern cities with expanding markets in the Midwest
   C) It was financed in part by the city of Baltimore, which held early stock in the company
   D) The railroad carried both passengers and freight, including coal, grain, and manufactured goods
   E) It played a strategic role in the Civil War, carrying Union troops and supplies

8. Fraternal organizations (like the Freemasons, Odd Fellows, and Knights of Pythias) were everywhere in the 19th century and sometimes overlapped with working-class networks. Their mutual aid models later influenced the structure of labor unions and workers' benefit societies. What role did fraternal organizations (e.g., Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias) play in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877? (Select all that apply)8

   A) They organized secret meetings to plan strike actions across state lines
   B) They mostly stayed on the sidelines, focusing on charity and social order
   C) Their networks sometimes helped strikers quietly, but not officially
   D) Their emphasis on mutual aid influenced the structure of future labor unions
   E) They acted as formal mediators between railroad executives and strikers

9. Which of the following are true about the Knights of Labor, one of the earliest national labor organizations in the U.S.? (Select all that apply)9

   A) They accepted both skilled and unskilled workers, including women and Black workers
   B) They were a secret society at first, but later grew into a mass movement
   C) They limited membership to railroad workers only
   D) They played a major role in organizing during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
   E) They promoted the eight-hour workday and cooperative ownership of businesses

10. What made the violence in Pittsburgh during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 especially significant? (Select all that apply)10

    A) Local militia refused to take action, so the Pennsylvania National Guard was brought in from another city
    B) Troops opened fire on strikers and bystanders, killing at least 20 people
    C) Enraged citizens responded by setting fire to railroad property, including cars and roundhouses
    D) The city’s business leaders paid the militia directly for protection services
    E) The event exposed class divisions not only between workers and owners, but between different cities and communities

Movie Trailer Intermission

I’m going “off topic” here but stay with me. While I rarely go to theaters for movies these days, I made two exceptions over the holiday weekend.

First up, This is Spinal Tap, which I saw back in the day (1984). It’s where “turn it up to eleven” originated, kids. I believe it’s the first “mocumentary” but some call it a “rockumentary” because it follows an English rock-n-roll/heavy metal band on its American tour.

Matt and I were in a theater full of fellow grayhairs, laughing until we cried—while also cringing at the casual misogyny baked into the script and lyrics. It’s a weird emotional split, holding both the hilarity and the discomfort. But we humans are built for contradiction. We do it all the time. On limited release through August 7, just in time for the September release of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.

Next, F1, which is great storytelling. The only exception I take is the romance trope Hollywood can’t seem to resist. I can’t be giving anything away—it’s telescoped in the trailer, for heaven’t sake.

My personal update is short and sweet: I am now a mother-in-law. My eldest son tied the knot on June 6 in a lovely garden ceremony. Arizona-based family joined us in North Carolina and we played cards, had a cookout, and sorted through a big box of family photos. Oh, the memories—remembered and made!

Life is short, my friends. Give love the room it needs to overcome your fears.

June has always been a month of thresholds—marriages, migrations, and moments that ripple outward. One such moment happened fifty-six years ago, when a river caught fire and Americans could no longer look away.

On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire for at least the thirteenth time. That blaze gained national attention—especially after Time magazine published dramatic photos (actually from the 1952 fire) and highlighted it as a symbol of unchecked industrial pollution.

What does this have to do with the Ohio River? The Cuyahoga fire became a tipping point for public awareness. It wasn’t the largest fire, or the most destructive—but it was the one America saw. And it helped spark a movement that culminated in the Clean Water Act of 1972.

The Ohio River, running through the heart of the country’s manufacturing corridor, never made headlines for catching fire, but it was every bit as polluted. Its legacy was slow violence: toxic water, chronic illness, ecological collapse—and a long path toward repair.

This month’s quiz explores the murky legacy of Ohio River pollution.

But first, let’s go down Memory Lane with this SNL skit for Swill Water, with pitchman Bill Murray. (Swill is reputedly sourced from Lake Erie).

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes. Have fun (despite the subject matter)!

1. True or false? Matchbox once sold a Swill Water delivery truck toy.1

2. How did the environmental crises of the Cuyahoga and Ohio rivers differ in terms of public impact and perception? More than one applies.2

   1. The Cuyahoga River caught fire multiple times, becoming a national symbol of pollution.

   2. The Ohio River was less polluted than the Cuyahoga and received little attention.

   3. The Ohio River suffered chronic industrial and sewage pollution but lacked a dramatic event to trigger public outrage.

   4. Both rivers experienced visible and dangerous pollution, but only the Cuyahoga catalyzed federal environmental reform.

3. Which of the following factors help explain why the Cuyahoga River caught fire while the Ohio River did not, despite both suffering significant industrial pollution? More than one may apply.3

   1. The Cuyahoga's lower stretch is slow-moving and canal-like, allowing flammable substances to accumulate.

   2. The Ohio River's faster current and larger volume dispersed pollutants more effectively.

   3. The Cuyahoga passed directly through dense clusters of oil refineries and steel mills.

   4. The Ohio River was better regulated and kept cleaner during the industrial era.

4. Which of the following statements accurately describe historical and current restrictions on swimming in the Ohio River? Choose more than one answer.4

   1. In many industrial-era cities, swimming in the Ohio River was banned or strongly discouraged due to health risks.

   2. The Clean Water Act immediately made all sections of the Ohio River safe for recreational use.

   3. Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) still lead to modern-day swimming advisories after heavy rain.

   4. ORSANCO (The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission) and local agencies have continued to monitor bacteria levels and advise against swimming in certain areas.

5. What were typical forms of industrial waste discharged into the Ohio River before the 1970s? Choose as many as apply.5

   1. Heavy metals

   2. Oil and grease

   3. Plastic pellets

   4. Slaughterhouse refuse

6. How can pollution from a small industrial spill—like one near Union Carbide’s Institute, West Virginia plant in 1985—ultimately affect the Ohio River, even if toxins aren’t dumped directly into it? More than one applies.6

   1. The chemicals can travel through connected creeks and tributaries that feed the river

   2. Rainfall and groundwater flow can carry pollutants downstream over time

   3. Some pollutants may settle in soil or sediment but later remobilize during storms or floods

   4. The Ohio River watershed includes many smaller waterways that drain into it

7. You may have missed the 2019 film, Dark Waters. Based on a true story, the film follows Rob Bilott, a corporate defense attorney (played by Mark Ruffalo) who takes on an environmental lawsuit against DuPont. The case centers on decades of PFAS pollution in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where DuPont knowingly released toxic chemicals, evaded regulation, and spread PFAS globally—into drinking water, bloodstreams, and ecosystems. For the record, PFAS is the entire chemical family, while PFOA is one (very toxic and infamous) member. Which of the following elements depicted in the film Dark Waters are factually accurate? More than one applies.7

   1. DuPont classified PFOA as proprietary and did not inform regulators of its environmental impact

   2. The plant’s smokestacks regularly emitted PFOA-containing dust, contributing to air pollution downwind

   3. The EPA had already banned PFOA by the time Rob Bilott filed his lawsuit

   4. Blood testing revealed that nearly the entire local population had PFOA in their systems

8. Which pollution incident is generally regarded as the worst single environmental disaster on the Ohio River during the 20th century?8

   1. The 1964 barge explosion and oil spill near Owensboro, Kentucky

   2. The 1988 Ashland petroleum tank spill that contaminated the Ohio River and Pittsburgh’s drinking water

   3. The 1950s mass fish kill near Cincinnati due to raw industrial sewage discharges

   4. The 1977 toxic waste release from a chemical plant near Louisville, Kentucky, following a flood

9. Why does pollution in the Ohio River often spike after heavy rain? One of these answers is incorrect.9

   1. Combined sewer systems overflow and release untreated waste into the river

   2. Rainfall increases groundwater filtration, cleaning up the river

   3. Stormwater runoff carries agricultural chemicals and animal waste into the watershed

   4. Urban surfaces funnel oil, debris, and heavy metals into the river via storm drains

10. Which of the following factors contributed to the harmful algal bloom (HAB) that covered over 600 miles of the Ohio River in 2015? More than one is correct.10

    1. Excess fertilizer and manure runoff from farmland

    2. High summer temperatures and low river flow

    3. Industrial oil spills from upriver plants

    4. Heavy rainfall flushing nutrients into the river

Intermission (Good News!)

The Ohio River Way National Water Trail has been designated as a national water trail, joining the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail as part of the National Trails System.

The Ohio River Way is a 308-mile water trail spanning sections of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. The route takes paddlers—kayaks and canoes as well as motorized watercraft—past small river towns and metropolitan centers like Louisville. Falls of the Ohio and gateway communities Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany are an integral part of the Ohio River Way. Source.

ANSWERS

1

Absolutely true. Here it is on eBay.

Here’s a video overview of the Salado people who lived there between 1250 and 1450 CE.

Besh Ba Gowah made me realize how little I knew about native people in the Ohio River Valley, and that’s what inspired this month’s trivia quiz.

Did it ever occur to you that there are no Indian reservations in the Ohio River border states? Why is that?

Today, the absence of federally recognized reservations in the Ohio River border states is largely due to three factors: 1) historical displacement, 2) lack of territorial continuity leading to assimilation, and 3) the erosion of Native sovereignty through federal policies that led to economic control of these peoples by the U.S. government.

While some tribes in the region, like the Shawnee and Miami, have regained federal recognition in recent decades, they do not have large, contiguous reservations like those in the western U.S.

You might first think this happened as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which initiated a mass exodus of Native Americans, particularly from the southeastern U.S., to what is now Oklahoma, known as the Trail of Tears. While many tribes in the Ohio River border states were forcibly removed, some, like the Shawnee and Miami, were fragmented and dispersed across various regions. Those who remained were often not granted land rights or reservations.

However, the effort to erase Indian peoples and culture began much earlier than that Act. Land treaties and military conflict forced tribes in the Ohio Valley to cede large portions of their land. The Treaty of Greenville (1795), which followed the defeat of Native forces in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), is a notable example of such a land cession. Tribes were often coerced or manipulated into giving up their territories in exchange for meager concessions, setting the stage for further removal.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. government adopted policies of assimilation aimed at integrating Native Americans into mainstream American society. The Dawes Act of 1887, which sought to break up tribal lands into individual allotments, further weakened Native communities and prevented the establishment of reservations.

As a result of these policies, Native American populations in the Ohio River border states were marginalized, and many tribes lost federal recognition, making it difficult for them to claim land for reservations. Tribal members were often forced into state-controlled systems, which did not allow for the formation of reservations.

This website by the Chickasaw Nation is a treasure trove of video interviews and other resources.

Now on to the quiz!

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes. Have fun!

1. What was the primary effect of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, following the end of the French and Indian War, on Native American tribes living in the Ohio River Valley?1

   1. It granted Native Americans sovereignty over their lands

   2. It established new boundaries that restricted Native Americans to specific territories

   3. It allowed Native Americans to trade freely with European settlers

   4. It recognized Native American alliances with the French

2. The Treaty of Greenville (1795) was significant because it marked a major land cession by Native tribes in the Ohio River Valley. What did the U.S. government promise in exchange? More than one may apply.2

   1. Monetary compensation and trade goods for the land

   2. A formal apology for the destruction of Native villages

   3. Military support in protecting Native lands from further encroachment

   4. The return of some land taken by settlers

3. Which Native American leader, who fought to protect his people’s land from European encroachment in the Ohio River Valley, became well-known after his leadership during the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811?3

   1. Tecumseh

   2. Pontiac

   3. Blue Jacket

   4. Standing Bear

4. What were the main reasons for passing the Indian Removal Act of 1830? More than one applies.4

   1. To relocate Native American tribes to reservations in the western territories

   2. To provide land for European settlers to expand westward

   3. To grant Native American tribes sovereignty over their lands

   4. To forcibly assimilate Native Americans into European-American agricultural practices

5. The U.S. government created reservations for Native American tribes in the 19th century. Legislators didn’t come up with this concept on their own. What practices elsewhere inspired this policy? Yes, this is an essay question.5

6. Why were Native American tribes in the Ohio River border states (like the Shawnee and Miami) particularly vulnerable to displacement during the early 19th century? More than one may apply.6

   1. They had no alliances with other tribes

   2. Their lands were in the path of settlers moving westward

   3. They lacked military power to resist U.S. forces

   4. They had assimilated into European farming practices

7. Which of the following Native American tribes played a role in the resistance against European settlers in the Ohio River Valley during the 18th century? (Select all that apply)7

   1. Shawnee

   2. Miami

   3. Iroquois

   4. Cherokee

8. Which factor made the Dawes Act of 1887 particularly damaging to Native tribes in the Ohio River border states?8

   1. It forced Native Americans to abandon their communal way of life and adopt European-style farming practices.

   2. It granted Native American tribes full autonomy over their lands, allowing them to govern themselves.

   3. It divided tribal lands into individual allotments, causing a loss of collective control and leading to the sale of surplus lands to non-Native settlers.

   4. It created permanent reservations for Native tribes, offering them protection from further displacement by European settlers.

9. I can’t resist another Tecumseh question. The War of 1812 was a conflict between the United States and Great Britain, driven by issues such as trade restrictions, impressment of American sailors, and British support of Native American resistance to U.S. expansion. Which of the following statements about Tecumseh and his role in the War of 1812 are correct? Select all that apply.9

   1. Tecumseh fought alongside British forces against the United States during the War of 1812

   2. Tecumseh’s primary goal was to defeat the British and secure Native American sovereignty

   3. Tecumseh led the Shawnee and other Native American tribes in an alliance with the British to resist U.S. expansion

   4. Tecumseh was killed in the Battle of New Orleans, where he fought for the American cause.

10. Which of the following Native American tribes originally from the Ohio River Border States have gained federal recognition in recent years? More than one may apply.10

    1. Shawnee Tribe

    2. Miami Tribe of Oklahoma

    3. Delaware Tribe of Indians

    4. Pequot Tribe

ANSWERS

I wrote my last newsletter about the Covington flood wall murals, which have been doing strong work this spring, and I’m continuing the theme today with flood wall mural trivia.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Oh, and if you do, would you share the quiz with someone else?

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes.

1. Who painted the Covington flood wall murals?1
   a) Diego Rivera started them before his death. His large frescoes helped establish the mural movement.
   b) Robert Dafford painted them all. He’s an internationally acclaimed mural artist and blues enthusiast from Louisiana who has painted more than 400 murals in the United States and Europe.
   c) Thomas Hart Benton, a Missouri native who was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, sculpted figures showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States.
   d) Shepard Fairey, an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene.

2. What is the primary purpose of the murals? Only one applies.2
   a) To advertise local businesses
   b) To beautify the city with abstract art
   c) To depict and preserve the region’s layered history
   d) To showcase modern Kentucky life

3. What river(s) does the Covington flood wall protect against? More than one may apply.3
   a) Kentucky River
   b) Licking River
   c) Ohio River
   d) Sciota River

4. The mural that features the Roebling Suspension Bridge highlights a major architectural achievement linking Covington and Cincinnati. What role did this bridge play in regional commerce, and why was its construction significant for Covington’s identity? More than one answer may apply.4

   1. It facilitated the transport of goods between Covington and Cincinnati, strengthening the region’s role as a key industrial hub.

   2. Until the invention of the Model T, it was primarily a pedestrian bridge that connected two cultural districts in the region, boosting tourism and art exchange.

   3. Its engineering innovation—as the first major suspension bridge in the U.S. to use wire cables—made it an architectural marvel of its time while helping solidify Covington's identity by connecting it to the economic and cultural heart of Cincinnati.

   4. It was the first bridge to connect Covington to the rest of the United States, fostering a boom in agricultural exports.

5. The mural known as Resident Artists, features Frank Duveneck and John Farney. Which of the following is true of these artists? Choose wisely.5

   1. The inclusion of John Farney and Frank Duveneck suggests that Covington’s cultural history was primarily shaped by international art movements rather than local artists.

   2. The inclusion of Frank Duveneck and John Farney highlights Covington’s strong cultural and artistic legacy, which extended beyond its industrial growth in the late 19th century.

6. A mural depicting the Latonia Race Track shows a lively day at what was once one of the most prestigious Thoroughbred tracks in the country. Which of the following is true about the mural and what it represents, historically? Choose one.6

   1. In the mural, the jockey in red silks wears a badge with the initials “A.J.” This is widely understood to be a tribute to Alonzo “Lonnie” Clayton, one of the most successful Black jockeys in American horse racing history.

   2. The mural shows the grand reopening of the racetrack in the 1950s, after World War II prompted a decades-long closure.

   3. The jockeys in the mural are all modeled after famous Triple Crown winners, despite none ever racing at Latonia.

7. The mural known as Covington Churches features several of Covington’s historically and architecturally significant churches, depicting the city’s religious diversity. True or false: One of the houses of worship in that mural is a Jewish temple.7

8. Also depicted in that mural is the Western Baptist Theological Institute, founded in Covington in the 1840s. The seminary owned a large amount of land in the region. What happened to this land after the seminary dissolved over disagreements about whether ministers could enslave people?8

   a) The land was sold to local businesses for commercial development.
   b) It was repurposed as a public park and remains a popular site for community events.
   c) The land became part of Northern Kentucky University's original campus and other civic developments.
   d) The land was used to create a historic landmark to honor the seminary’s contributions to education.

9. The mural known as 1913: Federal Ball Park captures the energy of a baseball game in the early 20th-century with players, fans, and the iconic stadium in the background. True or false: Federal Ball Park was the home of the Cincinnati Reds before they moved to Crosley Field in 1912.9

10. Which of the following best describes the challenges and benefits of integrating more murals into Covington’s urban landscape, considering recent initiatives the development of immersive public art?10

    1. Mural expansion would likely face little resistance, with most community members favoring its aesthetic value and historical preservation benefits.

    2. Integrating more murals would enhance Covington’s cultural identity, but it could be challenged by concerns over historical accuracy, economic costs, and the preservation of existing architecture.

    3. Covington is committed to expanding its mural project as part of an effort to revitalize the city and attract tourists.

    4. The city of Covington is focused on creating new murals specifically to erase older, controversial historical representations.

    Share The 981 Project

INTERMISSION

Mark your calendars if you live between Portsmouth, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky. For the fifth year, paddlers will complete the Ohio River Way Challenge, an extraordinary expedition in 30-foot voyager canoes from May 5-15. Details here!

I can’t make it this year, but it’s on my calendar for 2026!

ANSWERS

Dafford’s murals are more than decorative—they’re acts of historical recovery. The Meeting at the Point initially seems like a typical scene of early American exploration, but a closer look reveals a Native American figure in the background—a silent witness to the coming displacement. Kennedy's Ferry and Landing celebrates economic prosperity, but if you zoom in, Dafford quietly acknowledges the labor of African-Americans powering the region’s boom. These subtle inclusions tell a fuller story—exactly the kinds now being scrubbed from classrooms, parks, and other public spaces.

This trend is not abstract. For example, in Florida and Texas, new curriculum laws restrict how teachers can address slavery, systemic racism, and the civil rights movement. Florida even blocked an Advanced Placement African American Studies course, declaring it “lacking in educational value.”

At the federal level, the National Park Service recently stripped Harriet Tubman and slavery from its Underground Railroad webpage, reframing the Underground Railroad not as a network for escape from slavery, but as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement” that “bridged the divides of race.” This effort to obscure the harsh realities of slavery and downplay the profound struggle for freedom reflects a broader trend: sanitizing painful aspects of history.

This erasure of difficult truths is even taking place in The U.S. Naval Academy, whose library removed hundreds of books on civil rights and the Holocaust under new guidelines targeting so-called “divisive” materials.

In Washington, D.C., the words “Black Lives Matter” have been scrubbed from the street outside the White House—wiped out not by the hands of vandals, but by city officials, likely in response to shifting political winds. What began as a powerful public statement now serves as a reminder of how quickly symbols of justice and accountability can be erased.

In today’s partisan political climate, with interest groups trying to reshape what version of history we pass down and how we understand our cultural roots, I sometimes wonder if these murals would even get the civic green light today. Would Dafford’s quiet insistence on including inconvenient truths survive a public meeting?

As a travel writer, my work often takes me on a journey through history, inspired by the places I visit and the people I encounter. A small historical marker can spark deep research as I unravel stories of where people lived, fought, or died. History feels more real to me when it’s tied to specific places and personalities, and the murals invite us to engage with history in the very places where it unfolded, offering a powerful, accessible form of education. They serve as a reminder that history is not just something to learn from books, but something we can experience firsthand—woven into the fabric of the spaces we inhabit. No admission fee. No curated exhibit. Just layers of story, waiting for someone to pause and take it in.

These murals stand in sharp contrast to the ongoing debate over Confederate monuments. I’ve had many conversations with people who argue that these statues should remain—not as celebrations of the Confederacy, but as tools for teaching history. They view them as reminders of a painful past, something we shouldn’t forget or remove from public gaze. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. How can we learn from history if we don’t confront it?

But here’s the problem: Confederate monuments don’t just teach history—they glorify a past rooted in white supremacy and the brutal exploitation of human beings. These statues were often erected not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, but decades later, during the height of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, as assertions of white dominance. They are not neutral. They were designed to send a message—and they still do.

Removing Confederate monuments has nothing to do with erasing history—and everything to do with refusing to honor a legacy of inhumanity.

If our goal is education, there are better ways. Germany offers a powerful example. The country teaches the history of the Holocaust in depth and with gravity, but you won’t find statues of Hitler or Goebbels in public squares. Instead, you’ll find memorials to the victims—stumbling stones set into sidewalks, museums, and plaques that acknowledge the horror without glorifying its architects. The Germans chose to remember without revering.

That distinction matters. We can and must preserve history, even the darkest parts. But we don’t need to place the dark stories on pedestals—literally or figuratively. That’s why I find Dafford’s murals so powerful. They don’t scold or preach. They don’t demand a single takeaway. Instead, they offer layered stories—some easy to spot, others tucked into the background—waiting for a curious eye to catch the Native figure or the Black laborers on Kennedy’s dock.

One mural in particular, The Flight of the Garner Family depicts a quiet moment: Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman, crossing the frozen Ohio River with her family in 1856, fleeing toward freedom. It’s a tense and quiet scene: bundled figures on the ice, with Covington in the distance. Dafford doesn’t portray the tragic aftermath—Garner’s desperate act to prevent her daughter from being returned to slavery by taking the girl’s life. By illustrating the moment of flight, he invites viewers into a fuller, more complicated narrative.

As we grapple with what should be preserved in our public spaces, the murals in Covington remind us that history is more complex than we often admit. It’s not always about celebrating heroes; it’s about giving voice to the forgotten, the marginalized, and those whose stories have been silenced. By doing so, we learn not just about the past, but about who we are and who we want to be.

Stories of real people make abstract lessons tangible and relatable. They allow us to emotionally connect with history, see ourselves in the past, and better understand the world we live in today.

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Here’s a video explaining the history and nuances of all the murals by author and historian Karl Lietzenmayer. Enjoy!

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For my personal update, I’ve been working with Joan Lunden on her legacy memoir, which will be published in March of 2026. Joan was the longest-running female host ever on early morning television, and her post-Good Morning America career has been equally fascinating and full. I’ll let you know when she settles on a title and cover design.

Next week, I’m headed out on my motorcycle to visit family in Arizona. I'm thinking of stopping in Roswell, New Mexico, because I am a connoisseur of roadside kitsch and conspiracy theories. The weather should be splendid. I’ll post the occasional picture on Instagram if you’re interested.

I’ll be back on the Ohio River in late August/early September for a BMW motorcycle rally in Athens, Ohio. If you’d like to get together, please reach out. I’d love to meet you in person.

Alright, on to the quiz. If you’ve read The Ghosts of Eden Park, you’re familiar with the role of the Ohio River in bootlegging, but it’s been used for lots of other illicit businesses over the years. Let’s see how you do with these ten questions.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new.

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes. Have fun!

1. Going back to the 18th and early 19th centuries, Ohio River criminal syndicates capitalized on the river's ever-growing traffic to evade taxes or to smuggle contraband humans and goods. We’ll come back to the trafficking of humans in a later question. What goods were the basis for most of the criminal activity along the river? More than one may apply.1

   1. Tobacco and alcohol

   2. Counterfeit currency

   3. Everyday goods like textiles and grains

2. Newport, Kentucky, became a major hub for organized crime in the 1940s and 1950s while neighboring Covington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, did not. Which of the following reasons best explains Newport’s “success” as a crime town? More than one applies.2

   1. It was small enough that local law enforcement could be easily influenced, but close enough to a major city (Cincinnati) to draw in big-money gambling customers.

   2. Figures like Newport Police Chief Frank "Screw" Andrews openly worked with crime bosses rather than against them.

   3. Unlike Ohio, Kentucky had looser gambling laws, creating a gray area where illegal casinos could flourish with little state interference.

   4. Newport had a history of vice industries dating back to the 1800s, including brothels and saloons that made illegal activity feel like "business as usual."

   5. Las Vegas-style casino operators, like Moe Dalitz (who later helped develop the Vegas Strip), used Newport as a testing ground before heading west.

3. Newport, Kentucky, was known as a mini Las Vegas due to its numerous illegal casinos. Which famous mob family was heavily involved in running these operations? Hint: It’s the oldest of the “Five Families” that dominate the New York and New Jersey region.3
   a) The Genovese Family
   b) The Gambino Family
   c) The Dalitz Family

4. Which Ohio River city was used as a stand-in for New York City to film the recent gangster movie, The Alto Knights, starring Robert De Niro?4

   1. Pittsburgh

   2. Cincinnati

   3. Louisville

5. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 effectively criminalized freedom for escaped enslaved people, which was a major force in Ohio River border states. While it didn’t classify freedom seekers as criminals by legal definition, it subjected them to punishment, forced capture, and denial of rights in ways that mirrored criminal prosecution—without any of the legal protections given to actual criminals. Which of the following is true of this Act? More than one applies.5

   1. Unlike other legal systems where crimes have statutes of limitations, a fugitive slave could be hunted for life—even if they had lived freely for decades.

   2. Anyone who helped a fugitive slave—whether by providing shelter, food, or transportation—could face fines of up to $1,000 (roughly $35,000 today) and six months in prison.

   3. Slavery was legal under U.S. law at the time, so escaping from bondage was considered a violation of property law, similar to stealing a horse—except the “stolen property” was the person’s own body.

   4. Freedom seekers were subject to hot metal branding, known as the “scar-based identification system.” This was believed to deter repeat escape attempts.

6. Blackbirding is the nickname for kidnapping free Black people and illegally selling them into slavery. If you watched the movie or read the book, Ten Years a Slave you will know about this history. Which of the following statements best describes how blackbirding networks operated north of the Ohio River before the Civil War? Choose one.6

   1. They were loosely organized groups of bounty hunters who only targeted escaped enslaved people.

   2. They were well-organized operations involving kidnappers, corrupt officials, and Southern enslavers who conspired to abduct free Black people.

   3. They were illegal and faced harsh prosecution in free states like Indiana and Ohio.

   4. They were primarily based in the Deep South and had no real influence in the Midwest.

7. A final question on human trafficking. What’s the difference between trafficking and smuggling human beings? Yes, this is an essay question.7

8. The 1962 film, How the West Was Won, featured Jimmy Stewart as a mountain man floating down the Ohio River with a group. Along the way, they stop at Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, where they meet a group of pirates led by Walter Brennan's character, Alabama Colonel Hawkins. Hawkins’ character was based on a real pirate who led a gang of outlaws there after the Revolutionary War. What was the name of the notorious gang at Cave-In-Rock?8

   

   
   a) The James-Younger Gang (as in Jesse James)
   b) The Harpe Brothers
   c) The Exterminators
   d) The Mason Gang

9. Which Ohio River city’s police chief was a Prohibition-Era bootlegger?9
   a) Newport, Kentucky
   b) Madison, Indiana
   c) Evansville, Indiana
   d) Paducah, Kentucky

10. How did Kentucky, the heart of American bourbon production, handle Prohibition? Yes, this is an essay question, but I have faith in you.10

INTERMISSION

Did you watch the Ken Burns documentary Prohibition? Here’s the trailer.

ANSWERS

I don’t often share personal news here, but exceptional times call for exceptional correspondence. As I mentioned in my other newsletter, I’m taking comfort in simple pleasures these days, including knitting and crocheting while binge listening to the Thursday Murder Club series. The movie adaptation is coming out on Netflix this year.

Here’s an afghan I finished (left) and another that I’m making for my son’s birthday in March (right). I’m sprinting to the finish with that one!

I hope you are able to find something to do with your hands or body to balance some of the negativity that’s relentlessly assaulting our heads and hearts.

Now, on to the quiz! This (loosely) ties Ohio River towns and culture with that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. I’m told Gladiator II was a stinker, and if you skipped it, I don’t think your quiz score will suffer. Good luck!

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Oh, and would you share it with someone else?

Share

QUESTIONS

Answers in the footnotes.

1. Which Kentucky city along the Ohio River is named after the first emperor of Rome?1

   1. Nero

   2. Augusta

   3. Julius

   4. Hadrian

2. What Indiana town takes its name from the famous site that marked the end of Sparta’s dominance in the Greek world?2

   1. Marathon

   2. Troy

   3. Thermopylae

   4. Delphi

3. The word “Sparta” reminds me of the 1960 movie Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas. Stay with me as I get you to an Ohio River connection. Spartacus (the book and movie) is about the historic slave revolt of 73 BCE. Spartacus's rebellion was the largest slave revolt in Roman history. The screenplay was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, who served time in a federal prison after being found in contempt of Congress in 1950. In which Ohio River city did Trumbo serve his federal sentence?3

   1. Ashland, Kentucky

   2. Cincinnati, Ohio

   3. Marion, Illinois

   4. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

      

4. I’m not going to give you the obvious question about Cincinnatus being the namesake of Cincinnati. Instead, I’ll tell you that the city was was originally named "Losantiville." Now, can you tell me why?4

   1. The Losant family was first to settle the area. Their land lies across from the Licking River where it empties into the Ohio.

   2. It was supposed to be named Loganville, but the signmaker’s apprentice screwed up the letter “g” and it looked like an “s.” The town’s fathers let it slide after the signmaker said he would donate the sign.

   3. It’s a portmanteau combining

      1. L, for Licking River

      2. os, Greek for mouth

      3. anti, Latin for opposite

      4. ville, French for town

5. In which state would you find the Ohio River town of Rome? More than one may apply.5

   1. Ohio

   2. Kentucky

   3. Indiana

   4. Illinois

6. What famous Roman phrase associated with Julius Caesar means "I came, I saw, I conquered," and could describe early settlers’ ambitions along the Ohio River?6

   1. Alea Iacta Est

   2. Carpe Diem

   3. Sic Semper Tyrannis

   4. Veni, Vidi, Vici

7. The term "Athenaeum" derives its name from Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and refers to institutions dedicated to education, arts, or culture. What states have Athenaeums located near the Ohio River? More than one may apply7

   1. Illinois

   2. Indiana

   3. Kentucky

   4. Ohio

   5. Pennsylvania

   6. West Virginia

8. How many American states have cities, towns, counties, villages, townships and boroughs named “Athens?” 8

   1. Surprisingly, only 8

   2. At least 13 (a baker’s dozen)

   3. 27, which is more than half

9. Are any Ohio River cities named for Roman deities? C’mon, this is a 50/50 opportunity to gain a point.9

10. Several schools and universities in the river area have mascots inspired by Greek and Roman figures. Which of the following mascots is NEITHER Greek nor Roman?10

    1. Argonaut

    2. Gorlock

    3. Hoplite

    4. Minotaur

INTERMISSION

Pittsburgh in 50 Maps, is a book right up the 981 Project’s alley.

Whether you call it the Steel City, the City of Bridges, City of Champions, Hell with the Lid Off, or even the Paris of Appalachia, Pittsburgh’s distinctive character is undeniable. Pittsburgh in 50 Maps considers the boundaries of the city’s 90 distinct neighborhoods (plus Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood), the legacy of the steel industry, and how immigration continues to shape the city. You’ll also find the areas with the highest concentrations of bike lanes, supermarkets, tree cover, and fiberglass dinosaurs. Each colorful map offers a new perspective on one of America’s most consistently surprising cities and the people who live here.

ANSWERS

9

YES! Named for the goddess of the dawn in Roman mythology, Aurora, Indiana, was platted in 1819 and formally incorporated in 1845. The town prospered as a river port, with its prime location between Cincinnati and Louisville. Here’s Aurora, as painted by Evelyn De Morgan.

10

The Gorlock (b), is a fabricated mythological creature created for Webster University, headquartered in St. Louis, MO. According to the school’s website, it has the paws of a speeding cheetah, the horns of a fierce buffalo and the face of a dependable Saint Bernard. “The myth of the Gorlok represents the high standards, atmosphere of fairness and good conduct that are so important to Webster University.”

The weather forecast called for frigid conditions and heavy snowfall, but I tell you, when I saw LIGHTNING and heard THUNDER in the middle of that storm, I thought doomsday had arrived.

Before you dismiss my observation as fanciful, this phenomenon is known as thundersnow. Watch Jim Cantore do the thundersnow dance here!

Okay, if you want to call it a “winter thunderstorm,” that’s an acceptable answer for TV Jeopardy contestants, but you’re gonna hafta accept being called a spoil sport or a kill joy by the rest of us. Your choice.

Another thing I recall is that Mom’s tropical fish aquarium froze. No, not like a block of ice, more like a slurry of the consistency we got from the old Icee Drink machines at Sears stores. I was pretty sad about the little angelfish and tetras suspended there as if Samantha on Bewitched had put a spell on them, but here’s the real miracle: those fish survived! No kidding. I think we were out of power for a good week, but once we got it back, the slurry melted and the fish swam around like nothing had happened.

With that, it’s time for January Trivia, focused on the history, pop culture, and earth science behind winter weather in the region. This should be fun!

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Oh, and would you share it with someone else?

QUESTIONS

I’m going for quality over quantity this month using these nine questions. Answers in the footnotes.

1. What conditions produce thundersnow? Choose one.1

   1. Exactly the same conditions that produce thunderstorms. Duh! That’s to say, when there is moisture, static electricity/instability, and a lifting mechanism in the atmosphere (known as convection).

   2. Basically the same conditions that produce thunderstorms, with the addition of snowflakes and sleet pellets that collide in the clouds, creating static charges. The static builds up until it's discharged as lightning. The lightning generates intense heat, which causes the air to rapidly expand and produce thunder.

2. Where is thundersnow most common in the United States? More than one may apply.2

   1. The Great Lakes region

   2. Around the Great Salt Lake

   3. The Northeast during nor'easters

3. The entire length of the Ohio River froze during the winter of 1917-1918. What happened as a result? More than one may apply.3

   1. As temperatures dropped, ice flows formed and sharp ice pierced ship hulls or piled on decks, weighing down and sinking 36 boats.

   2. The Great Ice Gorge of the Ohio River formed and finally broke on February 12, after holding firm for 58 days.

   3. More than 100 coal barges were lost and coal yards along the river were flooded. The shortage of coal almost shut down the power plant that supplied heat and light to Cincinnati.

   4. The harbor and the canal at Louisville were kept open by breaking the ice with dynamite because the ice boats weren’t up to the task.

4. Now it’s time to talk about the blizzard of 1977, which was caused by a strong blocking high over the Arctic Ocean that brought Arctic air into the central and eastern United States. The cold air combined with a build-up of precipitation and wind to create a severe blizzard. Which of the following is true? More than one applies.4

   1. January 18, 1977 the temperature in the Cincinnati area was -25°F, the coldest day in that city’s history since the National Weather Service began keeping official records in the nineteenth century.

   2. Louisville saw significant snowfall, compounded by high winds that created drifts several feet deep. Some rural areas nearby were completely cut off. The city opened emergency shelters in schools and other public buildings.

   3. Indiana farmers lost livestock due to the extreme cold and inability to transport feed.

   4. Huntington, West Virginia, experienced issues with frozen water mains, leading to water shortages.

5. True or false: The Ohio River became a “frozen highway” in 1977 from Huntington, West Virginia, to Evansville, Indiana, because the ice could support the weight of a person and in limited areas, even motor vehicles.5

6. Let’s compare the ‘77 and ‘78 storms. The Blizzard of 1977 was caused by a combination of extreme cold (from Arctic air) and high winds, with snow already on the ground due to prolonged cold weather prior to the storm. The Great Blizzard of 1978 was different in which key ways? More than one is correct.6

   1. The storm was caused by an explosive low-pressure system comparable to a Category 3 hurricane.

   2. Wind gusts reached up to 70 mph, causing severe drifting and whiteouts.

   3. Wind chills of -40°F (compared to -60°F in 1977).

7. Which of the following were “breakthroughs” after these two storms? Choose as many as apply.7

   1. The National Weather Service (NWS) recognized the need for more accurate weather prediction models, including increased reliance on satellite imagery.

   2. Automobile manufacturers began incorporating features such as heated seats and rear defrosters.

   3. Cities developed and implemented snow emergency routes and plans to ensure more efficient snow removal and emergency response in future storms.

   4. The North Face, Columbia Sportswear, and Patagonia intensified their focus on developing high-performance outerwear, incorporating advanced insulation materials to provide better protection against extreme cold.

8. Okay, sports fans. Did either blizzard affect the Cincinnati Bengals football schedules? 8

9. In the 1970s, the freezing of the Ohio River was a rare event, but it was not uncommon in the mid-19th century. There are several accounts of enslaved people crossing “ice bridges” over the river from Kentucky in search of freedom. Their stories, reported in newspapers and fictionalized, made up an important component of the public discourse in advance of the US Civil War. Which of the stories below is based in fact?9

   1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Eliza Harris, who crossed the partially frozen Ohio River with her child to reach freedom in Ohio.

   2. Beloved embellishes the story of Margaret Garner, who crossed the icy river with her family into Cincinnati, where she killed her daughter, claiming it was better for her go home to God than back to slavery.

   3. The Price of Freedom tells the story of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and centers the people of Oberlin, Ohio, who sheltered Kentuckians John and Frank after they rode stolen horses across the frozen river. Found guilty of violating the Fugitive Slave Act, 37 townsmen were sentenced to three months in prison.

ANSWERS

The devastating event took place at rush hour, on a bridge built in 1928 when Model Ts were in use, not the heavier cars that followed. Two cars avoided plunging into the river, but 46 people died, and 9 bodies were never recovered.

My great-grandmother lived on the Ohio side of the bridge and we crossed it several times visiting family before its collapse—yes, I’m “that” old. This month, we’ll explore bridge construction techniques, the disaster itself, the folklore and history of the Mothman, and a good bit more within ten questions.

Note to my fantastic new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.

QUESTIONS

1. The Silver Bridge was named for:1

   1. Beloved local architect John H. Silver, who was born in Point Pleasant, but died one month before the bridge opened in 1928.

   2. It was the first bridge in the United States to use eyebar chain suspension, a design that relied on a series of metal links (eyebars) to support the structure. Its shiny aluminum paint was innovative for the time, so the locals disregarded its official name.

   3. Both.

2. We often tell our children that the weakest link in a chain determines its fate. This is also true of the Silver bridge collapse because…2

   1. A tiny crack developed in the lower part of eyebar 330 due to stress corrosion cracking. When the crack grew, it caused a sudden brittle fracture of the eyebar, leading to the rapid failure of the suspension chain and the subsequent collapse of the entire bridge.

   2. In 1968, a junior-level bridge inspector noticed the stress on eyebar 330 and reported it to his supervisor. Instead of placing the issue on a list of items to re-inspect, the boss hid the report. Only after the bridge collapsed did the junior inspector come forward, but since he didn’t keep his own copy of the report, and the official copy of the file had been “temporarily misplaced,” the federal inspectors with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wrote him off as a glory seeker until he was vindicated in 1997 when the file was found.

   3. Both.

3. The eyebar chain system was considered innovative because it used fewer materials compared to traditional suspension cables. Which of the following is true about bridge design? More than one may apply.3

   1. The eyebar design's failure mode is non-redundant, meaning that if one key component fails, the entire structure can collapse.

   2. Today, bridges typically use cable-stayed or suspension systems with wire cables, which are more robust and offer multiple lines of support.

   3. Most existing bridges with similar designs to the Silver Bridge have either been retrofitted or replaced to meet modern safety standards.

4. A cryptid is an animal or creature that is said to exist but has never been proven to do so. Cryptids are often featured in folklore and other accounts, and the list includes Mothman. What other creatures are considered to be cryptids? More than one may apply.4

   1. Bigfoot/Sasquatch

   2. The Loch Ness Monster

   3. The Jackalope

   4. The Flatwoods Monster aka “Braxie”

5. For a year prior to the collapse of the Silver Bridge, the Mothman was sighted in the area, leading to the hypothesis that Mothman either caused or prophesied the accident. Which of the following characteristics were described by people who claimed to see the Mothman? More than one may apply.5

   1. Height between 6 to 7 feet with a humanoid form.

   2. Wingspan 10 to 15 feet, resembling those of a bat or bird.

   3. Large, glowing red eyes said to shine or glow in the dark.

   4. The creature’s head seemed small or nonexistent, with the eyes appearing to be set directly into its shoulders or chest area.

6. What do skeptics of Mothman believe the sightings misidentified? More than one may apply.6

   1. Barn owls, barred owls and snowy owls.

   2. Herons, or sandhill cranes.

   3. An extra-dimensional spirit monster heralding the Age of Aquarius.

7. Richard Gere and Laura Linney starred in a 2002 movie about the Silver Bridge collapse. The Mothman Prophesies is a supernatural thriller about a journalist (Gere) whose wife sees the Mothman before she dies in a car accident. Two years later, he finds himself in Point Pleasant. Were any TV shows/episodes based on the Mothman? If so, name the show(s).7

8. The 2002 movie kicked up interest in the Silver Bridge collapse and all things Mothman. Unveiled a year later, in 2003, Point Pleasant West Virginia, has its own Mothman statue made of stainless steel. How did artist Bob Roach land on the final design? 8

   1. Interviewing witnesses.

   2. Frank Frazetta's 1980 painting (as featured on the cover art for a paperback edition of John A. Keel's book, The Mothman Prophecies, which was used by screenwriters of the movie of that name).

   3. He modified the original Mothman statue in Fryburg, Germany, where miners saw a headless winged creature with red eyes at the entrance of a mine in 1978. They evacuated immediately. The creature became known as the "Freiburg Shrieker," and had the physique of a body builder with wings.

9. What can visitors see at the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia?9

   1. Eyewitness accounts and newspaper clippings about the original Mothman sightings.

   2. Props and costumes from the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies.

   3. Artifacts and exhibits related to the Silver Bridge collapse of 1967.

   4. A taxidermic Sandhill crane made to look like Mothman.

10. True or false? In June 2020, a petition on Change.org was initiated to replace Confederate statues in the United States with statues of Mothman. By July 2020, the petition had garnered over 22,000 signatures.10

Intermission

There’s a good podcast about the collapse of the Silver Bridge and Mothman here at Ohio Mysteries. Click through for newspaper clips and such, but you’ll have to ignore the incorrect pronunciation of Gallipolis. Trust me on this—I say it like the locals.

A quick search revealed other podcasts, so please let me know if any are worthwhile.

ANSWERS

4

All four are considered cryptids, with both the Mothman and Braxie being indiginous to West Virginia. Here’s a pic of me with a Jackalope in the official city of its birth, Douglas, Wyoming. I believed jackalopes were real as a kid because I saw them on display on our annual trips to California.

Thanks to everyone who reached out about October ‘24 Trivia. I love knowing that something I’ve written has made you ponder. In case you missed it or would like to share it (please do!) click the link below.

Note to my fabulous new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the term for the total amount of water flowing past a given point in a river over a specified period?1
   a) Water Table
   b) Discharge
   c) Runoff

2. What is one primary purpose of constructing a dam on a river?2
   a) To increase sediment transport
   b) To increase biodiversity
   c) To generate hydroelectric power
   d) To prevent aquatic life migration

3. What is the function of a lock in river navigation?3
   a) To stop water from flowing downstream
   b) To raise or lower ships between sections of a river with different water levels
   c) To prevent fish from migrating upstream

4. What is a common purpose of dredging in river management?4
   a) To decrease sedimentation in reservoirs
   b) To remove sediment and maintain navigation channels

   c) To build dams
   d) To create artificial lakes

5. What is a common method used to reduce the impact of river flooding in urban areas?5
   a) Channelization
   b) Dredging
   c) Levees and floodwalls
   d) Water diversion tunnels

6. In the Ohio River region, certain species have experienced conservation success and are no longer listed as endangered. One notable example was removed from Ohio's endangered species list in 2012 after substantial population recovery efforts. Its resurgence is attributed to habitat protection, environmental regulations like the banning of DDT, and ongoing conservation programs. What species is this?6

   1. Bald eagle

   2. Longheaded darter fish

   3. Red-tailed hawk

   4. Scioto madtom

7. The Great Flood of 1937, also known as the Ohio River flood, was a catastrophic flood that occurred in late January and February of 1937. How many people were known to be killed in that cataclysmic event?7

   1. 189

   2. 248

   3. 385

8. Which of the following cities was 95% submerged during that flood?8

   1. Louisville, Kentucky

   2. Jeffersonville, Indiana

   3. Paducah, Kentucky

9. Yes or no to each option: did Franklin Delano Roosevelt visit this city in the wake of the flood?9

   1. Cincinnati, Ohio

   2. Louisville, Kentucky

   3. Evansville, Indiana

   4. Paducah, Kentucky

10. The Flood Control Act of 1938 authorized extensive federal investments in dams, levees, and other flood control structures. Which of the following is/are true about the Act and its outcomes?10

    1. By constricting rivers with levees, areas on either side of the levees can see higher water levels and more destructive flooding.

    2. The focus on structural solutions often neglected the natural functions of floodplains, leading to habitat loss and disruption of ecosystems.

    3. The Act primarily targeted major river basins, leaving smaller communities and tributaries vulnerable to flooding.

8

c) Paducah. It makes sense that Paducah would have been so inundated since it’s so far downriver and at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee with the Mississippi just 30 miles west. As the Mississippi spilled over its banks, tributary rivers like the Ohio experienced surges of water since the increase of water in the Mississippi decreased the release of tributary water into the mother river. Louisville was 70% submerged and Jeffersonville was 90%. Here’s a picture of a Paducah car dealership, courtesy of the McCracken County Public Library.

10

All three are true. If you’re a true river rat, consider reading Holding Back the River by Tyler J. Kelley, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/ E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. From the back cover: America’s great rivers are the very lifeblood of our country. We need them for nourishing crops, for cheap bulk transportation, for hydroelectric power, and for fresh drinking water. Rivers are also part of our mythology, our collective soul; they are Mark Twain, the Delta blues, and Led Zeppelin. But as infrastructure across the nation fails and climate change pushes rivers and seas to new heights, we’ve arrived at a critical moment in our battle to tame these often-destructive forces of nature.

I asked, “Was Kentucky a Union or Confederate state?”

I could tell by the way her eyebrows shot up that the question surprised her. “Let me think while I run your credit card,” she said.

As I would have done at her age, she got it wrong. Kentucky never seceded from the Union. I just checked the Kentucky Academic Standards and it looks like my waitress would have studied the Civil War in eighth grade, which might explain her leaky memory, but it seems like the kind of thing that would have stuck in the way that you don’t need fingers to remember that 2+2=4. I’m not putting my waitress down or dismissing the quality of her education. In many ways, Kentucky presents itself to the world as a former Confederate state. As an aside, is eighth grade a bit early to study the complexities of the Civil War? Does it do any good to give eighth graders a survey course on something that still divides our country today? I’d love your thoughts.

This brings me to the subject of this month’s trivia: Kentucky and the Civil War. The quiz will lean heavily on research and analysis by the scholar Ann E. Marshall in her book, Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State. That’s where I found this 1926 quote from E. Merton Coulter, who observed that Kentuckians “…waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union.”

Dr. Marshall reminds us that Kentucky’s white population identified as both Union and Confederate before and after the war, and that African-Americans, who identified with and fought for the Union, were eager to draw upon the Union victory to claim what had been promised to “all men” in the Constitution. That “emancipation narrative” never resonated with the majority of white Kentuckians, no matter their partisan affiliation. In the words of historian Patrick Lewis, Ph.D., “Kentuckians imagined themselves as the last remaining spokespeople with political power for a defeated South.”

With that, it’s time for the quiz.

Note to my fabulous new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.

QUESTIONS

The first four questions will help ground us in Kentucky’s economics and culture before the Civil War. Then we’ll move to the war years, and finally, the aftermath.

1. The African slave trade was outlawed by Congress in 1808, consequently raising the price of enslaved workers born into what’s known as the domestic slave trade. With proximity to the Ohio River, Lexington and Louisville became major slave markets. When the cotton gin created a cotton boom in the deep South, the average value of an enslaved worker sold in New Orleans rose from $500-1800 between 1800-1860. At the peak of the cotton boom (1850-60) how many enslaved people did Kentucky sell into the cotton belt?1

   1. Over 37,000, making it the fourth highest state in the domestic slave trade.

   2. At least 54,000, making it second only to Virginia.

2. The Commonwealth of Kentucky taxed enslaved workers as property, eventually assessing owners 22 cents per $100 of value. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, with 250,000 enslaved workers in residence, what percentage of Kentucky’s tax revenue was based in human bondage/trafficking?2

   1. 10%

   2. 20%

   3. 35%

3. During Kentucky’s constitutional convention of 1849-1850, delegates debated the possibility of gradual, compensated emancipation. Proslavery forces in the state quashed all hopes of that. What did they accomplish instead?3

   1. Section three in the 1850 constitution bill of rights strengthened owners rights, saying, “The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave, and its increase, is the same, and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.”

   2. They chartered The Kentucky Colonization Society and allocated money to purchase land for freed slaves to settle in Liberia. The colony was called “Kentucky in Africa.”

   3. They repealed Kentucky's Nonimportation Act of 1833 to remove a significant barrier to a profitable domestic slave trade. The goal was increased tax revenue for the state.

4. In the 1860 national election, Abraham Lincoln took 40 percent of the country’s vote. What percentage of Kentucky’s presidential vote went to its native son?4

   1. 28%

   2. 12%

   3. 1%

5. With Kentuckians’ divided in loyalty between Union and Confederacy, the legislature adopted a policy of neutrality at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Simultaneously, both sides began to build fortifications along the Ohio River border and rival factions organized militias—Confederate sympathizers called themselves the State Guards, while Unionists became the Home Guards. Sounds like a powder keg to me. What caused the legislature to break its neutrality policy?5

   1. One month after Governor Magoffin proclaimed neutrality, Kentuckians chose Unionists for nine out 10 of the state’s congressional seats. Later, on August 5, Unionists also won control of the state legislature and affirmed allegiance to the Union.

   2. On September 4, Confederate General Polk ordered the occupation of Columbus, Kentucky, a strategic location in the state’s southwest near Tennessee. The Kentucky legislature appealed for Federal troops to repel the invaders, and General Ulysses Grant answered the call.

   3. On November 18, when a self-constituted group of Confederate sympathizers and delegates from Kentucky counties passed an Ordinance of Secession and established Confederate Kentucky; the following December it was admitted to the Confederacy as its 13th state.

6. Although most white men did not fight for either army, Confederate sympathizers in the eastern part of the state fought “citizen warfare” in the form of guerrilla attacks on Union supply and communication lines, and Union sympathizers themselves. African-Americans who attempted to enlist in the Federal army were tortured and killed. By 1862, Kentucky became a police state in the hands of Union generals, who wouldn’t allow suspected Confederate partisans to do which of the following activities? More than one applies.6

   1. Hold elected office

   2. Teach school

   3. Minister to a church

   4. Serve as a juror

   5. Run a newspaper

7. By July 4, 1865, the war was over. How did most white Kentuckians celebrate this federal holiday?7

   1. They displayed fireworks, cheered marching bands, and even suffered from heat stroke while listening to orators regale the crowds with patriotic speeches. Black Kentuckians were not permitted to celebrate with them.

   2. They let the day pass un-marked.

8. Between 1865-1885, “Kentucky emerged as one of the most lawless states in America…(with) vigilantism, mob violence, and lynching on an unprecedented scale.” (Creating a Confederate Kentucky p 56.) Most experts agree that this lawlessness arose because Kentucky sat outside the “framework of federal Reconstruction.” Why wasn’t Kentucky subject to Reconstruction? After all, it was a slave state. All the hints are in the intro and answers to preceding questions.8

9. In Fairview, Kentucky, roughly 17 miles from the Tennessee state line, lies an historic site maintained by the state park system. The site's focal point is a 351-foot concrete obelisk that commemorates the birthplace of a Confederate leader who was born there in 1808. Construction began in 1917, stopped in 1918 during World War I, and resumed in January 1922. When finished in 1924 at a cost of $200,000, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross from the top of the monument. Kentucky is obviously committed to this site; the state closed the obelisk to the public from 1999 until May 2004 for renovations and construction of a new visitor center. Whose birthplace is commemorated here? Your options are in alphabetical order.9

   1. John C. Breckinridge

   2. Jefferson Davis

   3. John Hunt Morgan

   4. Gustavus Woodson Smith

10. What is the legal status of slavery in Kentucky law today?10

    1. The first Kentucky constitution of 1792 protected the right to own slaves. The Kentucky constitution still protects this right “as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

    2. In 2022, Kentucky joined the states of Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont, and Oregon in passing laws that say "slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited."

Intermission

Chances are, some of the answers to these questions surprised you. Here’s a podcast series I’ve listened to twice now, and plan to listen again. “The Reckoning” is a public radio and podcast series which traces the history and lasting impact of slavery in America by looking at how the institution unfolded in Kentucky. Here’s an interview with the producer and lead interviewer, Dan Gediman.

ANSWERS

5

I want to briefly address how in the world a state could declare neutrality in a civil war. The answer is that it suited everyone to keep Kentucky neutral, at least for a while. For the Confederates, Kentucky was a barrier protecting Tennessee, at least as long as the Union respected Kentucky's neutrality. For the Union, it was important not to violate Kentucky's neutrality in order to avoid having Kentucky join the Confederacy.

All three answers are listed in the order they occurred, and the actual event that broke the neutrality was b., the taking of Columbus by Confederate forces.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky remained a Union state. Here’s the seal of the provisional Confederate government of Kentucky. I have no idea what this provisional government actually “did” because they certainly didn’t run schools or deliver the mail while they were traveling under the protection of the Army of Tennessee.

9

The only correct answer is b., Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederate States of America. Two-thirds the size of the Washington Monument, Davis’ obelisk was meant to be the crown jewel of “The Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway” that would ferry auto tourists from one Confederate monument to another.

In the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, the Kentucky Historic Properties Advisory Commission voted 11-to-1 to immediately remove a 12-foot marble statue of Davis from the Kentucky Capitol rotunda in Frankfort and send it across the state to the museum at the Davis birth site. It has not yet been displayed. The legislature has not let the matter rest.

The Fairview area was once pro-Union. But according to the Director of Collections and Research at The Filson Society, Patrick Lewis, Ph.D., it was after the war that Kentuckians rushed to embrace the Confederacy out of fear of what the postwar racial order would bring. “Kentuckians imagined themselves as the last remaining spokespeople with political power for a defeated South,” Lewis said. Source. I took this picture of an article written about Davis’ birthplace on a recent trip to the Filson:

Did you know we’re in a bicentennial year? From now until September, 2025, historical sites in the nation’s first 24 states will be commemorating the Marquis de Lafayette’s Farewell Tour. Planned as a three-month tour, Lafayette was celebrated by all as the “Nation’s Guest” for 13 months. Honestly, it amazes me how Lafayette Fever swept the nation in the 1800s, with crowds thronging to catch a glimpse of the French nobleman who aided the American cause against Great Britain. For comparison’s sake, 4000 people greeted The Beatles in NYC but 80,000 turned out for Lafayette there!

I’ve come across a few theories to explain this phenomenon, which took place fifty years after the Revolution. One says that Lafayette was the swashbuckling symbol of France’s role in securing independence, and Americans were still deeply grateful. Another holds that Lafayette basked in the American reverence for George Washington as his de facto adopted son. (Lafayette even named his son Georges Louis Gilbert Washington de Motier Marquis de Lafayette).

The theory that rings most true for me is that Lafayette’s farewell tour coincided with the vitriolic presidential election of 1824, in which, for the first time, no founding father was running. Perhaps the country was demonstrating a nostalgia and reverence for the past and nervousness about the future, as author Sarah Vowel stated in an interview.

If you’re like me, Lafayette’s place in our history is more legendary than factual. The opening paragraph a New Yorker story from 2021 summed up my sketchy understanding:

Lafayette, like Betsy Ross and Johnny Appleseed, is so neatly fixed in the American imagination that it is hard to see him as a human being. Betsy sews stars, Johnny plants trees, Lafayette brings French élan to the American Revolution. He is, in the collective imagination, little more than a wooden soldier with a white plume on his cocked hat. In the original production of “Hamilton,” Daveed Diggs portrayed him affectionately, with a comically heavy French accent and an amorous manner—a hero, yes, but of the cartoon kind, a near relation of Pepé le Pew.

Allison Epstein wrote a most entertaining sketch of the marquis in her hilarious newsletter, Dirtbags Through the Ages. When Allison can’t criticize someone, take note.

I must leave you to dig into Lafayette’s extraordinary international escapades on your own while we focus on his stops along the Ohio River in this month’s trivia.

Note to my fabulous new subscribers:

Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test. Only the rare person can answer all ten trivia questions without any prep. I couldn’t answer them without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.

QUESTIONS

1. When Lafayette visited Old Shawneetown, Illinois, it was simply called Shawneetown. Why do we call it Old Shawneetown today?1

   1. Remember Illinois’ salt industry from last month’s trivia? When Congress granted the salines to Illinois, the state ran the operation using the unpaid labor of enslaved workers who lived in what was then-Shawneetown. After the Emancipation Proclamation, these workers fled, making it a ghost town that eventually came to be called Old Shawneetown.

   2. After a 15-foot flood in 1937, only 20 of Shawneetown’s 400 homes were habitable. Most Shawneetown residents moved three miles inland from the Ohio River, and took the name with them. The remaining section of the original settlement was incorporated as Old Shawneetown in 1956. The town operates several historic sites to this day.

2. As we’ve discussed before, Marietta, Ohio, was named for Queen Marie Antoinette. Did Lafayette personally know her? Choose the BEST answer.2

   1. Lafayette’s relationship with the queen was fodder for the French Revolution. The political club known as the Jacobins advocated for the violent overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. There were two factions of Jacobins, and the The Montagnards were the most radical. Their leader, Maximillian Robespierre, published “proof” of a long-running affair between Lafayette and the queen in a series of illustrated pamphlets.

   2. In 1789, revolutionary fever was spreading throughout France. Lafayette was named the commander of the National Guard. On October 5, a hungry Parisian mob descended on the palace of Versailles, demanding bread. As the crowd shouted angrily at the unpopular queen, Lafayette kissed her hand on a balcony. Lafayette's charm may well have saved the king and queen on that day, though they would not, of course, survive the revolution.

   3. Lafayette named his youngest daughter Marie Antoinette Virginie to honor both the French queen and the state of Virginia. He did so at the behest of Thomas Jefferson.

3. Lafayette’s Farewell Tour included a visit to Marietta on May 8, 1825. Which is true about that visit? More than one may apply.3

   1. It was not on his original itinerary.

   2. A boat he used on the Ohio River, The Mechanic, was built by John Mitchell on the Little Muskingum River. Lafayette planned the stop in Marietta to thank Mitchell personally for his craftsmanship.

   3. Wealthy landowner Nahum Ward, who had visited Lafayette in Paris a few years earlier, hosted him in his magnificent Putnam Street home. Long lines of people gathered; Lafayette greeted each personally. A list of Revolutionary War officers who settled at Marietta was read to Lafayette, who responded, “I know them all. I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave.”

4. Perry County, Indiana, has been named in several treasure hunting books and websites with a story about Lafayette’s lost $8,000 in gold. People are still arguing over the details of the night in May, 1825, when The Mechanic struck either a rock or log in the Ohio River and sank near what is now known as Rock Island. No one disputes that Lafayette’s carriage, papers, and gold also sank with the ship, along with a snuffbox that contained a portrait of Washington. What became of Lafayette’s gold?4

   1. A couple of coins were recovered, enough to forge The Washington-Lafayette Cincinnati Medal. This gold medal was given to Lafayette by George Washington's family after Washington’s death.

   2. If anyone recovered any of it, they never went public with the news.

5. The Washington-Lafayette Cincinnati Medal is associated with the Cincinnati Society for Revolutionary War officers’ descendants. The Society originated in the dark days of 1783 when a group of American officers contemplated a military coup known as the Newburgh Conspiracy because they were not being paid for their services. The Cincinnati order was formed by Washington and a few officers, including Lafayette, to ensure that the ideals of the Revolution would not die after one generation. What events led to the Newburgh Conspiracy? More than one may apply.5

   1. Without the power to tax under the Articles of Confederation, Congress relied on irregular, voluntary payments from the states known as requisitions to raise revenue. The states' slipshod record of compliance forced Congress to struggle to support the army throughout the war. Officers and soldiers alike were not being paid regularly, and the army was often forced to requisition supplies from citizens.

   2. In 1780, Congress passed a resolution providing half-pay for retired soldiers. However, as of 1783 the states had yet to comply with Congress’s request for the needed funds. The following year a group of nationalists supported an amendment to the Articles of Confederation that would allow Congress to raise revenue through taxes to support the army and pay its foreign loans. However, the state legislatures rejected the impost amendment.

   3. The Continental Congress sold land to the Ohio Company of Associates, a group of former Revolutionary War soldiers and officers, in several transactions over many years. The land was intended for veterans to either sell or live on, but the funds never met the true needs of the veterans.

6. In 2007, the The Washington-Lafayette Cincinnati Medal sold for $5.3 million to which entity? 6

   1. George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens in Virginia.

   2. The American Numismatic Society in Manhattan.

   3. The Fondation Josée et René de Chambrun at the Château La Grange, Lafayette’s historic home 60 miles east of Paris.

7. When The Mechanic sank en route to Louisville, Lafayette’s itinerary was delayed by three days. He would nevertheless visit Louisville, Shelbyville, Frankfort, Lexington, Georgetown, Covington, and Maysville. While in Lexington, on May 16, 1825, Lafayette bowed to Lewis Hayden. What is the significance of this gesture?7

   1. Hayden was an enslaved boy who would later travel the Underground Railroad to find his freedom in Boston, and eventually become an abolitionist who helped others achieve freedom.

   2. Hayden was the first graduate of Transylvania University in Lexington and stood beside President Horace Holley on the dais as he conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws to Lafayette.

8. Which former or future president did Lafayette meet during his visit to Cincinnati?8

   1. William Henry Harrison

   2. Martin Van Buren

   3. Andrew Jackson

9. At least two oil portraits were painted while Lafayette was on his farewell tour, one by Matthew Harris Jouett, and another by Samuel Morse. Which one was paid for by The Kentucky General Assembly and is now on display in the old Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort?9

   1. 

      b

      

10. After a two-day visit in Pittsburgh, Lafayette traveled roughly 35 miles to Butler, Pennsylvania, on the regular stagecoach route between Pittsburgh and Erie, escorted by the Pittsburgh City Light Troop of Cavalry. After a meal in the small town of 500, he walked among the wide-eyed and shook hands with not fewer than 400, including speaking to many men who had fought during the Revolution and the Battle of Brandywine. He recognized some of their faces as the old soldiers stood in review, conversing in detail about the events of the battle, which had nearly taken his life. Fast forward 99 years, what has Butler become infamous for? Yes, this is an essay question.10

Intermission

I’ve recommended The Road To Now podcast several times, and these two episodes are in keeping with our theme. First, an interview with a Frenchman who established The Lafayette Trail—mapping each of Lafayette’s stops. Check out his videos following in the footsteps of the Frenchman.

Second, meet a Franco-American historical interpreter of both Lafayette and Napoleon Bonaparte. A short child with a prominent nose, Mark Schneider’s wise mother told him he was born to portray European nobility, and he’s been doing so for 25 years. He seems to know everything about Lafayette.

ANSWERS

2

Both b. and c. are true, but you must agree that b. is the strongest answer. Here is a depiction of the hand-kissing scene from an 18th century engraving:

A good bit of Jacobin propaganda alleged an affair between the Lafayette and the queen as part of the Revolution, including some racy NSFW pamphlets. Reputable historians assure us that the rumors were untrue.

4

It’s not a romantic answer, but b. is correct. However, The Washington-Lafayette Cincinnati Medal is indeed a gold medal that was given to Lafayette by George Washington's family and has been exhibited publicly a few times, including in Chicago in 1893 and in France in 1976. I made up the part about Lafayette’s gold being part of the medal. Here’s a picture of the medal.