According to the 2020 census, the resident population of the United States as of April 1, 2020, was 331,449,281. This represents a 7.4% increase over the population according to the 2010 census.
Texas, the only state to gain more than one congressional seat, added nearly 4 million residents between 2010 and 2020, reaching 29,145,505.
The Alamo’s Davy Crockett is an American icon, and worth remembering.
He was a man of principle, and served his country with dignity. Crockett was a husband, father, frontiersman, soldier of multiple wars and battles, statesman, and patriot.
Crockett was very unique in the respect that he was not a party-line politician. He once said “I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgement dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me… Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!”
In today’s American politics, an elected official could not honestly make this statement; and that is a grave misfortune and a part of our modern political struggles.
Crockett aligned himself with the father of our country, George Washington, and his belief on the subject of political parties.
Washington said in his farewell address, published on September 19, 1796, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
President Donald J. Trump issued one of his last executive orders on January 18, 2021, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, for the construction of 250 statues in The National Garden.
“The National Garden will feature a roll call of heroes who deserve honor, recognition, and lasting tribute because of the battles they won, the ideas they championed, the diseases they cured, the lives they saved, the heights they achieved, and the hope they passed down to all of us — that united as one American people trusting in God, there is no challenge that cannot be overcome and no dream that is beyond our reach.”
“In Executive Order 13934 of July 3, 2020 (Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes), I made it the policy of the United States to establish a statuary park named the National Garden of American Heroes (National Garden),” President Trump wrote.
“Across this Nation, belief in the greatness and goodness of America has come under attack in recent months and years by a dangerous anti-American extremism that seeks to dismantle our country’s history, institutions, and very identity,” President Trump stated.”
“The heroes of 1776 have been desecrated, with statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin vandalized and toppled.”
“The dead who gave their lives to end slavery and save the Union during the Civil War have been dishonored, with monuments to Abraham Lincoln, Hans Christian Heg, and the courageous 54th Regiment left damaged and disfigured. The brave warriors who saved freedom from Nazi fascism have been disgraced with a memorial to World War II veterans defaced with the hammer and sickle of Soviet communism.”
“The National Garden is America’s answer to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values, and entire way of life. On its grounds, the devastation and discord of the moment will be overcome with abiding love of country and lasting patriotism. This is the American way.”
“When the forces of anti-Americanism have sought to burn, tear down, and destroy, patriots have built, rebuilt, and lifted up. That is our history.”
“America responded to the razing of the White House by building it back in the same place with unbroken resolve, to the murders of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., with a national temple and the Stone of Hope, and to the terrorism of 9/11 with a new Freedom Tower.”
“In keeping with this tradition, America is responding to the tragic toppling of monuments to our founding generation and the giants of our past by commencing a new national project for their restoration, veneration, and celebration.”
Even prominent American musicians such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Aretha Franklin will be featured. Other musicians and singers include Woodie Guthrie, Whitney Houston, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.
Photo by Jack Dennis
_________________________
The List of Statues
A-E
Ansel Adams, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Muhammad Ali, Luis Walter Alvarez, Susan B. Anthony, Hannah Arendt, Louis Armstrong, Neil Armstrong, Crispus Attucks, John James Audubon, Lauren Bacall, Clara Barton, Todd Beamer, Alexander Graham Bell, Roy Benavidez, Ingrid Bergman, Irving Berlin, Humphrey Bogart, Daniel Boone, Norman Borlaug, William Bradford, Herb Brooks, Kobe Bryant, William F. Buckley, Jr., Sitting Bull, Frank Capra, Andrew Carnegie, Charles Carroll, John Carroll, George Washington Carver, Johnny Cash, Joshua Chamberlain, Whittaker Chambers, Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman, Ray Charles, Julia Child, Gordon Chung-Hoon, William Clark, Henry Clay, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Roberto Clemente, Grover Cleveland, Red Cloud, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Nat King Cole, Samuel Colt, Christopher Columbus, Calvin Coolidge, James Fenimore Cooper, Davy Crockett, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Miles Davis, Dorothy Day, Joseph H. De Castro, Emily Dickinson, Walt Disney, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Jimmy Doolittle, Desmond Doss, Frederick Douglass, Herbert Henry Dow, Katharine Drexel, Peter Drucker, Amelia Earhart, Thomas Edison, Jonathan Edwards, Albert Einstein, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Duke Ellington, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Medgar Evers.
F-I
David Farragut, the Marquis de La Fayette, Mary Fields, Henry Ford, George Fox, Aretha Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Milton Friedman, Robert Frost, Gabby Gabreski, Bernardo de Gálvez, Lou Gehrig, Theodor Seuss Geisel, Cass Gilbert, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Glenn, Barry Goldwater, Samuel Gompers, Alexander Goode, Carl Gorman, Billy Graham, Ulysses S. Grant, Nellie Gray, Nathanael Greene, Woody Guthrie, Nathan Hale, William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr., Alexander Hamilton, Ira Hayes, Hans Christian Heg, Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Henry, Charlton Heston, Alfred Hitchcock, Billie Holiday, Bob Hope, Johns Hopkins, Grace Hopper, Sam Houston, Whitney Houston, Julia Ward Howe, Edwin Hubble, Daniel Inouye.
J-L
Andrew Jackson, Robert H. Jackson, Mary Jackson, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Steve Jobs, Katherine Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Chief Joseph, Elia Kazan, Helen Keller, John F. Kennedy, Francis Scott Key, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr., Russell Kirk, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Henry Knox, Tadeusz Kościuszko, Harper Lee, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, Meriwether Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, Vince Lombardi, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Clare Boothe Luce.
M-P
Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, George Marshall, Thurgood Marshall, William Mayo, Christa McAuliffe, William McKinley, Louise McManus, Herman Melville, Thomas Merton, George P. Mitchell, Maria Mitchell, William “Billy” Mitchell, Samuel Morse, Lucretia Mott, John Muir, Audie Murphy, Edward Murrow, John Neumann, Annie Oakley, Jesse Owens, Rosa Parks, George S. Patton, Jr., Charles Willson Peale, William Penn, Oliver Hazard Perry, John J. Pershing, Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Poling, John Russell Pope, Elvis Presley.
R-S
Jeannette Rankin, Ronald Reagan, Walter Reed, William Rehnquist, Paul Revere, Henry Hobson Richardson, Hyman Rickover, Sally Ride, Matthew Ridgway, Jackie Robinson, Norman Rockwell, Caesar Rodney, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Betsy Ross, Babe Ruth, Sacagawea, Jonas Salk, John Singer Sargent, Antonin Scalia, Norman Schwarzkopf, Junípero Serra, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Robert Gould Shaw, Fulton Sheen, Alan Shepard, Frank Sinatra, Margaret Chase Smith, Bessie Smith, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Jimmy Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilbert Stuart, Anne Sullivan.
T-Z
William Howard Taft, Maria Tallchief, Maxwell Taylor, Tecumseh, Kateri Tekakwitha, Shirley Temple, Nikola Tesla, Jefferson Thomas, Henry David Thoreau, Jim Thorpe, Augustus Tolton, Alex Trebek, Harry S. Truman, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Dorothy Vaughan, C. T. Vivian, John von Neumann, Thomas Ustick Walter, Sam Walton, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, John Washington, John Wayne, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Roger Williams, John Winthrop, Frank Lloyd Wright, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Alvin C. York, Cy Young, Lorenzo de Zavala.
____________________________
“To begin the process of building this new monument to our country’s greatness, I established the Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes (Task Force) and directed its members to plan for construction of the National Garden.”
“The Task Force has advised me it has completed the first phase of its work and is prepared to move forward. This order revises Executive Order 13934 and provides additional direction for the Task Force.”
“The chronicles of our history show that America is a land of heroes,” Trump penned. “As I announced during my address at Mount Rushmore, the gates of a beautiful new garden will soon open to the public where the legends of America’s past will be remembered.”
“The National Garden will be built to reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism. It will be a place where citizens, young and old, can renew their vision of greatness and take up the challenge that I gave every American in my first address to Congress, to “[b]elieve in yourselves, believe in your future, and believe, once more, in America.”
“The National Garden will draw together and fix in the soil of a single place what Abraham Lincoln called “[t]he mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart.” In the peace and harmony of this vast outdoor park, visitors will come and learn the amazing stories of some of the greatest Americans who have ever lived.”
Photo by Jack Dennis
“In short, each individual has been chosen for embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love. Astounding the world by the sheer power of their example, each one of them has contributed indispensably to America’s noble history, the best chapters of which are still to come.”
“The Secretary, in consultation with the Task Force, shall identify a site suitable for the establishment of the National Garden. The Secretary shall proceed with construction of the National Garden at that site, to the extent consistent with the Secretary’s existing authorities or authority later provided by the Congress.”
We left the Texas Hill Country on June 19th on a roadtrip through the South. On our 28th day (We’re in Oklahoma City), we sharing some interesting facts about each state we’ve learned along the way.
Louisiana
Louisiana has the longest coastline (15,000 miles) of any other state in the U.S.
Louisiana makes up approximately 41% of the wetlands in the U.S.
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway at 23.83 miles in Metairie is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed and killed (Bonnie struck 53 times and Clyde struck 51 times) by Louisiana and Texas state police near Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Bonnie was married to another man and never divorced him. The Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, Louisiana, is located a few miles away from their death site.
In 1977, Luisa Harris, the only woman in U.S. history to officially be drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA), was drafted by the New Orleans Jazz basketball team.
In 2010, the world’s record for the largest pot of gumbo was set by award-winning chef, John David Folse. The pot served 10,000 people. It contained 50 pounds of white crab meat, 85 pounds of oysters, 100 pounds of crab claws, 200 pounds of alligator meat, 450 pounds of catfish, and 750 pounds of shrimp.
Mississippi
In 1963 the University of Mississippi Medical Center accomplished the world’s first human lung transplant and, on January 23, 1964, Dr. James D. Hardy performed the world’s first heart transplant surgery.
In 1902 while on a hunting expedition in Sharkey County, President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured bear. This act resulted in the creation of the world-famous teddy bear.
In 1884 the concept of selling shoes in boxes in pairs (right foot and left foot) occurred in Vicksburg at Phil Gilbert’s Shoe Parlor on Washington Street.
Guy Bush of Tupelo was one of the most valuable players with the Chicago Cubs. He was on the 1929 World Series team and Babe Ruth hit his last home run off a ball pitched by Bush.
Root beer was invented in Biloxi in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.
Tennessee
There are more horses per capita in Shelby County than any other county in the United States.
Davy Crockett was not born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, as the song says. He was born on the banks of Limestone Creek near Greeneville, where a replica of the Crockett’s log cabin stands today.
David Crockett
The capitol building was designed by noted architect William Strickland, who died during its construction and is buried within its walls.
Tennessee ranks number one among other states in the total number of soldiers who fought in the War Between the States.
The name “Tennessee” originated from the old Yuchi Indian word, “Tana-see,” meaning “The Meeting Place.”
Coca-Cola was first bottle in 1899 at a plant on Patten Parkway in downtown Chattanooga after two local attorneys purchased the bottling rights to the drink for $l.00.
Cumberland University, located in Lebanon, lost a football game to Georgia Tech on October 7, 1916 by a score of 222 to 0. The Georgia Tech coach was George Heisman for whom the Heisman Trophy is named.
Alabama
In 2004, Chad Fell of Haleyville was certified by the Guinness World Records for blowing the World’s Largest Bubblegum Bubble, Unassisted (without use of his hands) at Double Springs High School in Winston County. He used three pieces of Dubble Bubble gum.
In October of 1989, residents of Fort Payne built a cake to celebrate the city’s centennial. The 12-layer cake was 32 feet wide and 80 feet long and weighed 128,238 pounds. It was certified by Guinness World Records as the World’s Largest Cake.
The country’s first 911 call was made on February 16, 1968, in Haleyville. Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite went to City Hall and called U.S. Representative Tom Bevill, who was at the local police station. The red phone used is on display in City Hall.
The actors who portrayed Goober and Gomer, fictional cousins on the Andy Griffith Show, were both born in Alabama. Jim Nabors, “Gomer,” was born in 1930 in Sylacauga. He died Nov. 30, 2017. George Lindsey, “Goober,” was born in 1928 in Fairfield. He died in 2012.
Virginia
About 1/2 of all the people in the United States live within a 500 mile radius of the Capital of Virginia.
Over 1/2 the battles fought in the civil war were fought in Virginia. Over 2,200 of the 4,000 battles.
The first Thanksgiving in North America was held in Virginia in 1619.
Yorktown is the site of the final victory of the American Revolution.
The first English colony in America was located on Roanoke Island. Walter Raleigh founded it. The colony mysteriously vanished with no trace except for the word “Croatoan” scrawled on a nearby tree.
Mount Mitchell in the Blue Ridge Mountains is the highest peak east of the Mississippi. It towers 6,684 feet above sea level.
Washington D.C.
Herbert Hoover and John Quincy Adams had pet alligators in the White House.
To date, nobody has beat Jimmy Carter’s record of watching 480 movies in the White House movie theater.
Washington DC is missing “J” Street. It uses letters for streets traveling east to west. But numbers are also used for streets. I was told it’s because “J” and “I” look too similar on street signs.
There’s a crypt under the Capitol building that was made for George Washington. Although he was not buried there, the crypt still exists; they also had a viewing chamber built so people could go by and see him.
John Adams was actually the first president to live in the White House. George Washington never lived there; it was built after he died.
There are 35 bathrooms in the White House. There are also 132 rooms and 6 levels in the residence. Even more staggering are the 412 doors, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases and 3 elevators.
There’s only one U.S. president buried in Washington D.C. Woodrow Wilson is entombed at Washington National Cathedral.
Missouri
The first successful parachute jump to be made from a moving airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, in 1912.
The most destructive tornado on record occurred in Annapolis. In 3 hours, it tore through the town on March 18, 1925 leaving a 980-foot wide trail of demolished buildings, uprooted trees, and overturned cars. It left 823 people dead and almost 3,000 injured.
At the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, Richard Blechyden, served tea with ice and invented iced tea.
Also, at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, the ice cream cone was invented. An ice cream vendor ran out of cups and asked a waffle vendor to help by rolling up waffles to hold ice cream.
The Arch has foundations sunken 60 feet into the ground, and is built to withstand earthquakes and high winds. It sways up to one inch in a 20 mph wind, and is built to sway up to 18 inches.
The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811, centered in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away.
During Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat named Valentine Tapley from Pike County, Missouri, swore that he would never shave again if Abe were elected. Tapley kept his word and his chin whiskers went unshorn from November 1860 until he died in 1910, attaining a length of twelve feet six inches.
Situated within a day’s drive of 50% of the U.S. population, Branson and the Tri-Lakes area serves up to 65,000 visitors daily. Branson has been a “rubber tire” destination with the vast majority of tourists arriving by vehicles, RVs and tour buses. Branson has also become one of America’s top motor coach vacation destinations with an estimated 4,000 buses arriving each year.
Indiana
The first professional baseball game was played in Fort Wayne on May 4, 1871.
Santa Claus, Indiana receives over one half million letters and requests at Christmas time.
Deep below the earth in Southern Indiana is a sea of limestone that is one of the richest deposits of top-quality limestone found anywhere on earth. New York City’s Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center as well as the Pentagon, the U.S. Treasury, a dozen other government buildings in Washington D.C. as well as 14 state capitols around the nation are built from this sturdy, beautiful Indiana limestone.
In 1934 Chicago Gangster John Dillinger escaped the Lake Country Jail in Crown Point by using a “pistol” he had carved from a wooden block.
Comedian Red Skelton, who created such characters as Clem Kadiddlehopper, and Freddie the Freeloader, was born in Vincennes.
Arkansas
Alma claims to be the Spinach Capital of the World, but Texas knows Crystal City really is.
A person from Arkansas is called an Arkansan.
The state contains six national park sites, two-and-a half million acres of national forests, seven national scenic byways, three state scenic byways, and 50 state parks.
North Carolina
The Venus Fly-Trap is native to Hampstead.
The first miniature golf course was built in Fayetteville.
Babe Ruth hit his first home run in Fayetteville on March 7, 1914.
North Carolina has the largest state-maintained highway system in the United States. The state’s highway system currently has 77,400 miles of roads.
West Virginia
On January 26, 1960 Danny Heater, a student from Burnsville, scored 135 points in a high school basketball game earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Nearly 75% of West Virginia is covered by forests.
Outdoor advertising had its origin in Wheeling about 1908 when the Block Brothers Tobacco Company painted bridges and barns with the wording: “Treat Yourself to the Best, Chew Mail Pouch.”
Bailey Brown, the first Union solider killed in the Civil War, died on May 22, 1861, at Fetterman, Taylor County.
The first brick street in the world was laid in Charleston, West Virginia, on October 23, 1870, on Summers Street, between Kanawha and Virginia Streets.
Oklahoma
Boise City, Oklahoma was the only city in the United States to be bombed during World War II. On Monday night, July 5, 1943, at approximately 12:30 a.m., a B-17 Bomber based at Dalhart Army Air Base (50 miles to the south of Boise City) dropped six practice bombs on the sleeping town.
Sooners is the name given to settlers who entered the Unassigned Lands in what is now the state of Oklahoma before the official start of the Land Rush of 1889.
The world’s first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City, on July 16, 1935. Carl C. Magee, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is generally credited with originating the parking meter. He filed for a patent for a “coin controlled parking meter” on May 13, 1935.
During a tornado in Ponca City, a man and his wife were carried aloft in their house by a tornado. The walls and roof were blown away. But the floor remained intact and eventually glided downward, setting the couple safely back on the ground.
Bob Dunn a musician from Beggs invented the first electric guitar in 1935.
Oklahoma has more man-made lakes than any other state, with over one million surface acres of water.
Kentucky
Cheeseburgers were first served in 1934 at Kaolin’s restaurant in Louisville.
Chevrolet Corvettes are manufactured in Bowling Green.
Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest cave and was first promoted in 1816, making it the second oldest tourist attraction in the United States. Niagara Falls, New York is first.
The song “Happy Birthday to You” was the creation of two Louisville sisters in 1893.
Daniel Boone and his wife Rebecca are buried in the Frankfort Cemetery. Their son Isaac is buried at Blue Licks Battlefield near Carlisle, where he was killed in the last battle of the Revolutionary War fought in Kentucky.
Boone Gravesite
The public saw an electric light for the first time in Louisville. Thomas Edison introduced his incandescent light bulb to crowds at the Southern Exposition in 1883.
The radio was invented by a Kentuckian named Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray in 1892. It was three years before Marconi made his claim to the invention.
Joe Bowen holds the world record for stilt walking endurance. He walked 3,008 miles on stilts between Bowen, Kentucky to Los Angeles, California.
Miscellaneous
The most fun Dodie and I have experienced so far was riding the mile long Branson Sawmill Coaster. We were able to control the speed of our individual coaster pods.
After spending the 244th birthday of America in Washington on July 4th, we traveled on towards West Virginia and Kentucky.
Ironically, 244 years to the day, July 5th, 1776, Indians captured Daniel Boone’s daughter Jemima and two of her companions in Boonsborough, Kentucky. Boone quickly staged an ambush and rescued the girls, inspiring the historical novel, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.
Baby Boomers like me grew up with heroes like The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. It was a natural bucket list choice to visit Boone country.
Actor Fess Parker played the movie and television roles of both Crockett and Boone, American explorers and frontiersmen. It was Boone who blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap, providing access to America’s western frontier.
Because of Parker, the Coonskin Cap became a national craze in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He starred in the TV series Daniel Boone from September 24, 1964, to May 7, 1970, on NBC for 165 episodes.
Fess Parker and Ed Ames as Boone and Mingo.
Ed Ames co-starred as Mingo, Boone’s Cherokee friend, for the first four seasons of the series. Even Country Western singer (“Big Bad John”) Jimmy Dean was a featured actor as Josh Clements during the 1968–1970 seasons. Actor and former NFL football player Rosie Grier made regular appearances as Gabe Cooper in the 1969 to 1970 season.
When Boone founded the colony of Boonsborough, Indian attacks were common causing many settlers to eventually leave Kentucky. But Boone brought his family to live.
In February 1778, Shawnee Chief Blackfish captured Boone and adopted him as his own son. But Boone escaped four months later and helped Boonsborough defeat the Shawnee at the Siege of Boonsborough.
Boonsborough
After establishing the settlement of Boone Station in December 1779, he relocated to present-day West Virginia and served in the Virginia legislature.
When elected as a representative in the Virginia legislature, he shouldered his pack, took his gun, and walked the entire trip to Richmond and return on foot. Boone served in the legislature with George Clendennin, the founder of Charleston.
He became a resident of a valley that resulted in Boone County, WV being named for him. About 1795 there was a family of Flinns living on Cabin Creek. The Flinn home was attacked by Indians. The mother and father were killed and a daughter named Cloe Flinn was taken prisoner.
When Boone learned of the tragedy, he knew the location of the Indians and succeeded in rescuing her from their camp. Now being an orphan, Boone took the girl into his own home and her a member of the family.
When he moved to Missouri, he became a respected leader and in 1807 was appointed a justice of Femme Osage township by Meriweather Lewis, famed leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who at the time was serving as governor of the region.
At the age of 78, Boone volunteered for the War of 1812 but was denied admission. In 1817, the lifelong outdoorsman went on a final hunt into his beloved wilderness.
He lived the last years of his life in Missouri, where he died of natural causes on September 26, 1820, at the age of 85.
Some years later, a proposal came before the Virginia legislature to form two counties from Logan County. St. Clair Ballard, a grandson of the Cloe Flinn who was rescued by Daniel Boone, was a member of this legislature from Logan county.
When the time came to give the new county a name, Mr. Ballard told the story of his grandmother’s rescue by Boone and moved by way of acknowledgment to Boone’s services, that the county be given his name. The motion was unanimously passed. When Boone died in the Femme Osage River Valley in Missouri, he was buried beside his wife, Rebecca, on the farm of his daughter, Jemima.
In 1845, the Boones were disinterred and their remains were moved to Frankfort, Kentucky.
Charleston, WV was granted a charter to the community in 1794 under the name Charles Town. It was shortened to Charleston in 1818. Booker T. Washington grew up in nearby Malden, then known as Kanawha Salines.
In 1834, James Craik, grandson of George Washington’s personal physician, built a house on the east side of Charleston.
Craik-Patton House, Charleston, WV
It was sold in 1859 to the wife of George Smith Patton, who had come to the Kanawha Valley to practice law. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Patton organized the Kanawha Riflemen and fought for the Confederacy. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Winchester. His great-grandson was General George S. Patton, Jr., a hero of World War II. The Craik-Patton House is now a historic landmark.
The state is just beautiful…almost Heaven.
John Denver performed it best:
Almost heaven, West Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River Life is old there, older than the trees Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong West Virginia, Mountain Mama Take me home, country roads
Clever Journeys 