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In the teeth of near defeat, Gen. George Washington pulled out miraculous mid-winter victories
In December 18, 1776, the American Revolution was near collapse. The commander in chief of its forces, George Washington, warned his brothers in Virginia that "I think the game is pretty near up," unless a new army were instantly recruited, which was not happening. Read more >>
A hundred boardwalks, gone but not quite dead, await a new dawn
A New Jersey seaside resort struggles to save the architecture—and the memories—of the Eisenhower years
THOMAS EDISON’S GIFT TO THE SEASON
Hoboken’s hardworking history exudes an undeniable gritty charm—and its view of Manhattan is incomparable.
On September 26, 1918, the Meuse-Argonne offensive began. The attack on the German lines in France lasted for 47 days, until the war’s end, and remains the longest battle in American history. During the assault, Gen. John J. Read more >>
Consigned to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s “Garbage Run,” they fought their own war on the home front, and they helped shape a victory as surely as their brothers and husbands did overseas
All the new lady brakemen on the Pennsylvania Railroad were put to work on what was officially known as the Jersey Coast Extra List. Read more >>
America looked good to a high school senior then, and that year looks wonderfully safe to us now, but it was a time of tumult for all that, and there were plenty of shadows along with the sunshine
It was a very good year. Certainly it was if you were seventeen. I was a senior in high school in 1954, a member of the class of January 1955, at Lincoln High School in Jersey City, New Jersey. Read more >>
You can rise fast and far in America, but sometimes the cost of the journey is hard to tally
FOR A LONG TIME I HAVE WANTED TO write about a vision of my father I experienced on a New York City subway train riding downtown to a literary meeting. As a historian I am skeptical of visions. I pride myself on my rationality, I rely on facts. Read more >>
The Secret Service considered Emanuel Ninger a common counterfeiter. He saw himself as an American master of the impressionist school.
THE MOST PRESUMPTUOUS counterfeiter in American history was a blue-eyed, sandy-bearded, German sign painter named Emanuel Ninger. As a sign painter he was adequate; as an impressionist, a historic master. And a soaring egotist. Read more >>
When the Norwegian artist Lauritz Larsen Mossige emigrated to America in the early 1880’s, he settled in Deckertown—now Sussex—New Jersey, and changed his name to Louis Larsen. Read more >>
Besides being a bigot, a fop, and a thief, the British governor Lord Cornbury, had some peculiar fetishes
Despite their many differences, Queen Anne’s North American colonies all shared a decent respect for propriety—or at least the appearance thereof. Read more >>
Under duress in a British prison, Richard Stockton of New Jersey had the singular misfortune to become
Various legends linger around the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the circumstances of the signing. Read more >>
She was eighteen—pretty and sensitive, to judge by her photograph, taken in 1863. For many another girl, that age would have represented a new chapter in life in the form of a husband, children, a home of her own. Read more >>
Fourth in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE
American spirits were at a low ebb as the year 1776 drew to a close. Read more >>