Founded in 1642 as Great Harbor, Edgartown is the oldest of Martha's Vineyard's six townships. It has been a shire town and a center of learning, a whaling port and a fishing village, a manufacturing center and a mecca for sportsmen. Its gleaming captain's houses and majestic public buildings are a testament to the wealth that whaling brought to the island in the mid-1800s, but the end of New England whaling was far from the end of its story. Faced...

Suwannee County is filled with forgotten echoes of its lost past, from demolished pioneer homes to defunct railroads to lost forts from the Seminole Wars. In the 1830s, ecotourism arrived. Local sulfur springs, with their grand hotels and health resorts, drew travelers from around the world for a dip in the same healing waters of the Suwannee River traversed by steamboats. Thundering iron horses brought citizens and industry into the county, making...

The Latino presence in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area has diverse roots and a rich history. The earlier residents were relatively small in number, but the Latino population increased dramatically in the late 20th century. Today, this unique Latino community is the 12th largest in the nation. While people of Salvadoran origin are the most numerous, this area is also home to those who hail from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican...

When it was first published in 1935, On the Border with Mackenzie, or Winning West Texas from the Comanches quickly became known as the most complete account of the Indian Wars on the Texas frontier during the 1870s, and remains one of the most exhaustive histories ever written by an actual participant in the Texas Indian Wars. The author, Capt. Robert G. Carter, a Union Army veteran and West Point graduate, was appointed in 1870 to serve as second...

Long before the Montgomery bus boycott ushered in the modern civil rights movement, black and white southerners struggled to forge interracial democracy in America. This innovative book examines the most successful interracial coalition in the nineteenth-century South, Virginia's Readjuster Party, and uncovers a surprising degree of fluidity in postemancipation southern politics. Melding social, cultural, and political history, Jane Dailey chronicles...

On November 23, 1887, white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families during a spree lasting more than two hours. The violence erupted due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane plantations. Fear, rumor and white supremacist ideals clashed with an unprecedented labor action to create an epic tragedy. A future member of the U.S. House of Representatives was among the leaders of a mob that routed black men from houses and forced them...

A major novel of the Indian wars in the far West, told from both points of view-the Apache's and the white man's. Anna Stillman was on her way to Tucson to marry Lieutenant Linus Degnan, the son of the commandant of the U.S. fort there, when she was captured by an Apache raiding party. It was 1870, and the Apaches were making a fierce last stand against the white men who were driving them from their land. The Degnans, father and son, soon realized...

Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the Massachusetts State House as the "Hub of the Universe." In Boston: A Historic Walking Tour, readers are guided on a series of downtown walking tours that radiate out from this Boston landmark. Featuring different excursions that explore Boston's prominent neighborhoods and districts, visitors and natives alike will see how this city has become one of the country's oldest cultural destinations. Boston's growth and development...

The little-known story of the South Carolina military raid-led by a Union colonel aided by Harriet Tubman-that freed hundreds of slaves. In 1863, the Union was unable to adequately fill its black regiments. In an attempt to remedy that, Colonel James Montgomery led a raid up the Combahee River on June 2 to gather recruits and punish the plantations. Aiding him was an expert at freeing slaves-famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The remarkable effort...

The history of Tombstone, Arizona and the surrounding area, as recalled by Sarah Grace Bakarich. This small volume tells the story of the sensational aspects of the town of Tombstone in the 1880's. It focuses on Wyatt Earp and his brothers, the Clantons, and other gunmen and characters of the town. This book has become a minor classic for collectors of stories of the Old West.