Friday Photos

Photos and some nostalgia.

Not many photos this week and not real good quality but, oh well, here they are nonetheless. 

How did nonetheless become all one word? Never the less.. it is. Now we might need to look at never the less.

 

Leaving New York City and headed for home.

And back home:

Seagull couple on Honeymoon at the Bay

I'll have mine on the rocks, thank you.

The blue bay on a sunny day

I found a photo of my maternal great grandparents home.   It lead to a little study of the era in which she was born.

My great grandmother Hannah was born on July 4, 1854 in Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania.  Franklin Pierce was President of the United States in his first year in office.

President Franklin Pierce

This is President Franklin Pierce, elected at age 49 . Head of the New Hampshire Democrats. For his time he was extremely liberal.    He had run against General Winfield Scott of the Whig party.   Both were former generals, Scott was head general of the Army of the United States  during the Mexican American war/  Pierce was also a general in the war but of a lesser stature.

 At that time the Democrat party were strongly pro slavery while the Whigs were against it.  The South hated Scott because of his anti-slavery stance . So Scott's anti-slavery platform cost him the election.

     

 My great grandmother would have been a young girl during the Civil War which was already brewing in the 1850's.

It was the time of the Gadsden Purchase (Don't tread on Me) and of  Bleeding Kansas (bloody fighting of left vs right over slavery. Kansas democrats wanted to keep their slave as did the the south and many other states. )         Pierce inherited all of this nonsense.   

  In Pierce's first term he appointed Gadsden as minister to Mexico to oversee the buying 55,000 miles of land  in  Arizona and New Mexico from Santa Anna and make a treaty resolving problems with the Hidalgo treaty.

The US paid $15 million for the land.    Today that would be  about $700 million. 

This was the America she was born into.

My great grandparents owned this  home in Frackville, Pennsylvania.  They resided on the right side with the awnings.

 I would love to own this again or my late uncles house across town there.    I keep watching the listings to see if it becomes available.    

Only drawback is how close the neighbors are.

My maternal great grandparents house