Carol Buchanan's Blog

De facto, I ended this blog about a year ago, but in the back of my mind, I thought I’d start it up again. I’ve decided to discontinue it instead. For the last few years I’ve been re-tooling as an author, pivoting more toward the early history of Montana. Spring semester 2021, I started teaching […]

The post Why I'm Ending This Blog first appeared on Montana's Storied Past.

Backtracking a little from my previous post, “In the Beginning,” by early fall of 1862, the little settlement of Hell Gate had been established as a trading stop for travelers heading east or west along the Mullan Road. The wagon train led by James Liberty Fisk stopped there on the way from Minnesota to the […]

The post Hell Gate first appeared on Montana's Storied Past.

In the beginning of Montana, there was no Montana. The eastern slope of the northern Rocky Mountains was geographically included in the Pacific Northwest, an enormous region without political divisions. In 1846, the United States and Great Britain agreed to divide North America at the 49th parallel, despite a belligerent American campaign slogan: “54-40 or […]

The post In the Beginning of Montana ... first appeared on Montana's Storied Past.

When I watch the news on social media and TV, sometimes my heartbeat increases. It went pitty-pat during this past week as Congress hassled over the coronavirus relief bill, which has now passed and President Trump has signed. The fierce arguments in the Senate reminded me of an attack on Senator Charles Sumner in 1856. […]

A few months ago, I ran into another repetition of an old revisionist claim about the Vigilantes of Montana. A Western blogger wrote a post titled “Hanging the Sheriff.” In it, he recycled a shallow claim that the Vigilantes were a gang of thugs who lynched a duly elected sheriff named Henry Plummer. It gave […]

Today, February 20, 2019, I’m starting this blog over again. My last post was eight months ago, on May 25, 2018. I think I owe an explanation to any readers who are still with me. You may notice differences in the look and feel of this blog. It’s powered by WordPress and grafted onto my […]

We need our fathers and grandfathers, our brothers, our sons — in short, we need our men because they are not like us women. They have admirable qualities we don’t, and yes, they have less admirable ones, too. But so do we. We are all in this human condition thing together. Most of the time, […]

Depending on the source, perhaps in North Carolina, or more likely in Jonesboro, TN, a baby girl was born in slavery. Given the conditions in which slaves were maintained, it is not difficult to understand why the child’s birthplace is so difficult to establish. Her parents may not have been allowed to marry; in some […]

Virginia City had a water problem. You might not think that would be the case, considering that Bill Fairweather, Henry Cover, and their friends discovered gold right in Alder Creek on May 26, 1863. Within days a gold rush was on. A gold camp sprang up on its banks, and within a few months became […]

I missed church a couple of weeks ago, so just this afternoon I thought I’d read the sermon for that Sunday on the church website. I don’t know why I decided to do that at 1:15 p.m. on February 8, 2018, except that I’ve been struggling with how to write a simple mission statement for […]