Southern Memories

South’s greatest bear hunter helps Roosevelt finally bag a bear

Judd Hambrick — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:22:35 +0000

For the past two weeks, our own Holt Collier, 59, one-time slave, Confederate soldier, sharpshooter, spy, and scout, and, now, the greatest bear hunter in the south, has been tracking bear on horseback with President Teddy Roosevelt and his entourage in the canebrakes and marshes of the northeast Louisiana delta, along the Tensas River.

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Former musketeer gambles fortune on sugar

Judd Hambrick — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:59:44 +0000

New Orleans, Louisiana, November 12, 1794: Wealthy local plantation owner and former French musketeer in the services of Louis XV of France, Etienne de Bore, 53, has given up his drought stricken, bug infested indigo crop and is gambling all he owns on a crop he has never raised and knows little about—sugar cane.

De Bore recognizes that indigo is a valuable dye plant and has meant so much to our local livelihoods most of this century. But, de Bore insists that indigo has faded dramatically as a means of making a living because of our “current two year drought in Louisiana and those exasperating insects that have feasted on our indigo plants for the past several years and have stripped our crops absolutely naked.”

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Freed slave gold miner murdered in California gold rush

Judd Hambrick — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:35:26 +0000

Dahlonega, Georgia, July, 28, 1850: Wealthy freed slave, gold miner, store owner and industrious entrepreneur, here, for twenty years, Jim Boisclair, 46, has been killed in a gun fight east of Sacramento in California Territory.

Based on his incredible string of good luck mining for gold, here in north Georgia, “Free Jim,” as he is known in these parts, headed for California in the Gold Rush of ’49. Free Jim’s luck finally played out on a mountain slope at sunset in the windswept foothills of the High Sierra in an argument over a gold claim. He died at the hands of an unknown miner who was faster with a gun and much meaner than the deeply religious Free Jim.

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American Contract Bridge League moves headquarters to Memphis

Judd Hambrick — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:25:13 +0000

Memphis, Tennessee, November 28, 1972: The prestigious American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) officially moved its North American headquarters from way up north in Greenwich, Connecticut, to way down south in Memphis, Tennessee, at 2200 Democrat Road. ACBL opened its offices, here yesterday, near the airport.

The decision to move did not come easily for the 44 year old card playing organization, especially from the standpoint of maintaining its rather stable—if not stodgy-- historical tradition.

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Aaron Burr’s daughter disappears: Pirates suspected

Judd Hambrick — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:57:45 +0000

New York, New York, January 16, 1813: Former US Vice President Aaron Burr’s extraordinarily talented daughter, Theodosia, 29, who is also the wife of the current Governor of South Carolina, Joseph Alston, has vanished, along with the crew and all the passenger aboard the schooner Patriot, apparently off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. After nearly two weeks of waiting and searching for them, all on board the Patriot are, now, presumed dead.

The Patriot set sail for New York from Georgetown, South Carolina, at noon on December 30th, last. The trip ordinarily takes five or six days. It has now been 18 days.

Theodosia was on her way to see her father who had been in Europe for the past four years.

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