The famous phrase “Go West, young man,” was first published in an 1851 editorial and later popularized by Horace Greeley to encourage westward expansion. Yet the words never would have been expressed so successfully without an important and farsighted directive issued six decades earlier by the Confederation Congress: The Northwest Ordinance. In “An Ordinance for…
On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain officially launching the War of 1812. In the 200 years since, it has become a forgotten war, perhaps best remembered by school children as when The Star-Spangled Banner was written. Yet, the War of 1812 was strategically important to the future of American…
If you search the Final Payment Vouchers Index for Military Pensions, 1818-1864 and discover Revolutionary War pensioners living in Delaware or Georgia, you now have a way to quickly access their final pension papers—on Fold3. The files may fill in some missing gaps in your family history. In the index, Francis Freeman’s slip indicates that…
President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. It was “an act to secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain,” and increased westward expansion through settlement of surveyed government lands in thirty states. The law allowed a homesteader to receive up to 160 acres by applying for a claim, improving the…
When the boiler exploded aboard the steamer Sultana on April 27, 1865, more than 1,700 people lost their lives. Most of those aboard were recently released Union prisoners from Confederate prisons in Cahaba, Alabama, and Andersonville, Georgia. They were en route from Camp Fiske in Mississippi to Camp Chase, Ohio, but the explosion occurred only…
When the RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, the disaster altered the world on many levels. Even now, 100 years later, the legacy of the Titanic still fascinates. The stories of those who survived and those who perished continue to be revealed. At least four male survivors of a certain age (15-35 years old…
It reads like a story taken from a best-selling crime novel, yet it is a true criminal case of a jewel heist staged in a castle in the 1940s, starring U.S. military officers, German royalty, and $2.5 million in treasure. The tale is rife with deception, conspiracy, and international intrigue. The records are on Fold3….
