Tell about the small things in history in your area and how it is now,

I love history, geographie and all of the like so if you could tell about your area that would be great. Mine is in Kentucky. I live in a very small town only 400 people. Its kind of a sleepy little town and the town nearst me isn't too small but is pretty sleepy too. Mostly farms and such in my town. Lots of fields and cows which I couldn't be happier with I love cows and miss my own cows. The biggest thing to do around here is going to the movies or maybe to a small restraunt not a dressy one but not a mc donalds either even though we do have one of them. Well its in our county seat. I can go fishing anytime I want and our crime rate is pretty low. Although do to the lack of things to do we have alot of kids doing drugs and I hate that about my area but every area has good and bad points. My closest neighbor is two miles away. And I can't hear them but the wind carries the sound of their dogs in the winter. We can sit out and listen to the coyotes all night. Once I had a vistor come out here and flip out because of the coyotes. We used to have big mineral springs in the next town over and had saloons and everything there it was a big town in the old days but after the hotel burned it slowed down. The nursing home I work at is on the grounds of the old hotel. I guess that's why lots of people say its haunted. And we had a big train depot in it and my dad watched the hotel burn down. When he was a kid and he's only 67 they still mostly traveled by horse and wagon and foot in this area. He used to sneak on train cars to get to other towns. I guess that's why we loved trains growing up because he did but we didn't know it till we got a bit older.

Do you have any interesting little known facts about your area. Please tell even ghost stories.

Little known facts about my area, huh?

I can see the downtown of Columbus from my bedroom window. On holidays the buildings' lights change color. The building a block north of me is usually thought to be Section-8 housing, but it is actually an apartment building where they give free rent to homeless alcoholics and drug addicts, because it is cheaper than paying their hospital bills (a lot of them do, in fact, overcome their addictions and get jobs and start paying some of their rent).

There are ghost stories about just about every single building on campus though. My friend lived in one of the towers and swears it was haunted by a guy who committed suicide three years earlier. Sadly, a freshman died earlier this year from being crushed by an elevator, and ghost stories have begun about that as well.

There is also a rumor that part of this area was actually built on an "indian burial ground" though I am not sure how accurate that statement is.

My favorite park in my old town was actually hallowed ground where they did an archaeological dig and found bodies... but it was memorialized, not had a bar on top.

But my favorite fact ever is about my hometown, which was almost called "Nutt Plantation". The name would have been very apt.

Well, there was this fire....

I can't think of any little things off the top of my head, although if you've ever read Devil in the White City, you know this place is just full of intruinging little facts. I'll post something when G'sA isn't on!

The town that I was born in is the site of the last fatal duel faught in Canada. You can actualy go on a tour of all the places that the participants lived and died.

I live in one of the older neighbourhoods in my city. It originally was a village, but as the city grew it got absorbed. The area is filled with Victorian homes built around 1875, some tall and thin row homes or attached. Some in the south end are huge mansions. A lot of these mansions were demolished over the years to make way for a cluster of high rises which now are a bit of an eyesore.
The area has had it's ups and downs over the years. It started as a place where rich types could live in mansions slightly removed from city life. When the depression hit, these mansions were converted to rooming houses. Then the high rises were built. The high rises were so tightly packed that thier popularity in the 50s did not last long and they soon became low-rent dwellings. These combined with the mansion rooming houses turned the area into a dangerous one.
In the past 10 years the area has been improving and becoming safer. Many have found it one of the few central city zones where purchasing a home is actually affordable. Artists have moved in over the past 20 years as the rents were lower. As a result, many of the Victorian homes are now being renovated and new stores and restaurants are moving in. There are a lot of small studio spaces around, as well as young families.
The high-rise zone still hosts some dodgy characters and activity, but it's somewhat contained. The big asset of the high-rises is that many recently immigrated families have moved into them (many Tibetans!) due to the affordable rent. There has been an increase in yummy restaurants and cultural activity in the hood!
I live in a three bedroom victorian row house (1877) which was originally was built by the Canadian railway company. My home and the two attached on either side were purchased by a man who owned a factory across the street. This factory has recently been converted into condo lofts and studio spaces.
The man who owned my house and the two others, left them when he died to his only child, a daughter. This was a big deal at the time supposedly as women at the turn of the century rarely owned property. This daughter lived in my house until she died and rented the other two to friend's families. My street name is her last name.
The wierd thing is that these three homes have always been owned by unmarried women since i have lived here, even after a resale next door. I bought my home from a married couple, but it was very clear that the woman was the brains and the bread-winner in the family.
Incidentally, my family immigrated from Ireland at the turn of the century and lived about 1/4 mile west of my present place for many years. My great, great uncle worked as a contractor at the time and built many of the post-victorian homes just north-west of me, including his sister's (my great grandmother who immigrated shortly after him). Neat, eh?
I love my neighbourhood and all it's history. I'm very happy to have moved closer to my roots in the city, after my grandparents and parents chose to live further north for many years.
Thanks for starting such a cool thread! I love neighbourhood history.

Here is a scanned photo of my mom infront of her grandparents house! (houses behind are more of an example of post victorian 1910's style)

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Originally Posted by Sibohan2005

The town that I was born in is the site of the last fatal duel faught in Canada. You can actualy go on a tour of all the places that the participants lived and died.

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What town is that? What constitutes a duel? Very curious. Like a gun duel?

My smallish city is famous for all sorts of criminal activity. There's boozing and gambling and bad women galore. Shootouts in the streets and wild horse rides through town. It's either kill or be killed, every day an extreme adventure.
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None of the above is true (that I know of) but I figure no one's going to read it so I'm doing fiction. Actually, a famous cattle drive trail goes right through my smallish city. There's a herd of cattle including cowboys and the chuck wagon all in place on the trail. (life-size sculptures). Honest.

Well, Moose Jaw is in southern Saskatchewan and we have a little less than 33,000 people. We have a giant moose statue outside of town. We're also known for the Temple Gardens Spa, Crescent Park, and the underground Tunnels of Moose Jaw. Moose Jaw was a swinging city in the '20s, with booze smuggling, prostitution, gambling, and Al Capone. The KKK was also here for a while in the 1930s. There are many haunted places here. Each Halloween there is a ghost tour that takes you around town and you get to learn about ghost stories.

There's plenty more... I know too much about my city.

Oww everyones got goodies about their city!

let see...
Milwaukee is divided by "sides" north east, and south. west being where the lake is. North is mostly black, hispanics on the south side and east side is for college students and now yuppies with whites mixed in between. The north and south sides are divided by viadocks, which at one point helped consider us one of the top most racially divided city. which i believe we still are.
We take pride in our lake front but its mostly a mess and its unsafe to swim in. our public schools are not the greatest,but I went to a public school so naa! Our roads our bad but the city is really getting on fixing out roads and our hosptials here are great.
well thats about it.

Originally Posted by Fred&Nermal

What town is that? What constitutes a duel? Very curious. Like a gun duel?

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The town is Perth Ontario and it was a pistol duel, thery actually still have the pistols in a case at the museum in town

Tavia I think your in my town..lol.

Well mine is really small. We have about 2 thousand or so people. We are centrally located between Lexington & Louisville making it a popular area to settle down and buy real estate. That's pretty much how people make their money here. We have a couple of factories but one is laying off people so there will be even more citizens going outside of our town to work.

The newest commercial building here is a Superwalmart. Which sucks because they have like 10 people total running it at night. And they didn't put in the self checkouts. So lines are always long.

We have about 5 banks and their building another for some ungodly reason. And the only food offered here is the fast kind. If you want a sit down dinner you have to go to Frankfort or Lexington. The reason good restaurants will not come here is because our town does not sell liquor on Sundays and we have a law about not selling liquor by the drink. Until those laws are taken off the restaurants will never agree to come here.

Right now the community is screaming for something fun; like a community pool. However funds are not available for it so their trying to raise donations.

I live in town, however my mother lives 9 miles out of town. She also can hear the coyotes and every evening she sees deer in her pasture. Speaking of the country, all country roads are one lane and are never cleared in the winter. So if you live out there you had better have a 4-wheel drive and a guardian angel in the winter.

Sibohan2005,
I went to a wedding there last autumn. I froze my butt off in a city park in a sleeve-less dress for the bridesmaid photos!
The couple had a really nice service at an old mansion inn owned by two gay men. Great food, cute little chapel! Really nice wedding. However, I wish the photos were indoors!
We stayed at another old mansion B&B down the street with the rest of the wedding party.
My friend's mom and husband live in a cabin on the river/lake about 10min drive away, hence why the ceremony was in Perth.

Kingston certainly had the rep. you're talking about. Supposedly more pubs and brothels than anywhere else, in a small town. So your stories of Perth are probably not far off in the past.
It's a beautiful town!!

Originally Posted by SalemWitchChild

Tavia I think your in my town..lol.

We have about 5 banks and their building another for some ungodly reason. And the only food offered here is the fast kind. If you want a sit down dinner you have to go to Frankfort or Lexington. The reason good restaurants will not come here is because our town does not sell liquor on Sundays and we have a law about not selling liquor by the drink. Until those laws are taken off the restaurants will never agree to come here.

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Nope I live futher west than that actually alot futher west. I live near the Ft Campbell Army base.

And as far as the town not allowing liquor sold on Sundays that's a statewide law always has been Kentucky is pretty conservative on some areas. But some restraunts do it anyway.

Originally Posted by Tavia'smom

Nope I live futher west than that actually alot futher west. I live near the Ft Campbell Army base.

And as far as the town not allowing liquor sold on Sundays that's a statewide law always has been Kentucky is pretty conservative on some areas. But some restraunts do it anyway.

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I know the Sunday thing is statewide. But not selling liquor by the drink is a county law. You can get beer by the drink but anything else and you can't get it.

Yeah they are a bit conservative in their laws in both the individual counties and statewide. Some of the counties are still dry counties and don't allow the selling of alchol period. The next county over from me is a dry one. Which is a bit funny because they have alot of drug busts in that county it would look like they would choose the greater of the two evils as they call them. But we have alot of silly laws in Kentucky used to be a law against saying a woman was pregnant in front of the women because it was considered to be swearing.

There are TONS of underground railroad sites throughout SE Michigan...actually many more if you include lower Michigan.

Detroit was a main portal for slaves to escape to Canada.

we're also known from Jimmy Hoffa and the mystery to his location (if there is a location anymore). If you head up North you can learn a lot about the Native Americans and the early Michigan settlers. Fort Michilimackinaw and Fort Mackinac are 2 examples.

As for ghost stories, there is a really good book written by a reverand out of Albion, MI. I forget his name. Supposedly he's a ghost hunter as sort of hobby and collects stories.

Allie - don't forget about the Mobs in Chicago!! Al Capone for example. Also check out a ghost book by Ursula umm...can't remember her last name. She writes ghost stories and lores about the Chicago area. Some are really good and some are just speculative.

Cornwall on Hudson, NY is our village. We're 50 miles north of NYC, so we have a lot of commuters. West Point is 5 miles south over the mountain. General Petraeus, the new general in Iraq was raised here. Donald Trump went to a military academy prep school that's still here.
There is bandstand in the village square that has concerts every Tuesday in the summer, bring your lawn chair. Across from it, on top of a restaurant, they drop a lighted ball on New Years Eve. It's our version of Time square, a few hundred people show up and the the ball is pretty jiggly coming down. The 4th of July parade through the village and into the Town of Cornwall is a big deal, with marching bands, floats, fire companies, you name it, ending up at the town park with fireworks.
It's a nice place to live, you always see people out walking , with the kids or walking the pets, at all hours of the day.

One important thing happened here environmentally. Con Ed wanted to put up a hydroelectric plant on top of Storm King mountain, here in the village. They met fierce opposition and as a result it prompted Congress to pass the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, which requires an environmental impact study on all major projects needing an OK from the federal government.

"Where Lincoln Learned The Law" is the motto of our county seat. He lived in the county just east, but walked here to borrow law books from a lawyer.

Remnants of The Wabash-Erie Canal (connecting Lake Erie to the Ohio River) passes through the western part of the county and is how one paternal ancestor got here in the 1840s. The railroad soon made it extinct.

A highly publicized murder occurred here in 1900 - where a distant cousin on one family tree murdered a distant cousin from another family tree! The gentleman murdered the niece of a gg grandmother. Seems he was married and having an affair with her. After killing her, he dumped her body in a secluded well but later retrieved the body and dumped in a creek in the county west of us. There she was found.

A reporter at the trial wrote a book about it and the news went all over the US. The gent was hanged at the state penitentiary and brought back for burial here. Oh, he even tried to implicate a distant cousin from another family tree because "he wasn't the only man sneaking in her window at night". And the well was on property once owned by a ggg uncle from yet another family tree. (Most of my paternal ancestors have been here since statehood in 1816.)

During WWII LSTs (boats) and P-49s (planes) were built here. There is a restored LST docked on the Ohio as a museum.

We also had several major auto plants and furniture factories. My Dad was at work (tool and die company) when the factory across the street went up in flames. He said he was on the roof of his employment with a hose to water the roof down.

While where I live is not as rural as it used to be, you can still see deer and coyotes. A family friend who has land just southeast of us (about a mile away) has the state's 2nd largest private water source (he sold the coal and kept the strip mined land) and has beaver and bobcats.

Originally Posted by Tavia'smom

Yeah they are a bit conservative in their laws in both the individual counties and statewide. Some of the counties are still dry counties and don't allow the selling of alchol period. The next county over from me is a dry one. Which is a bit funny because they have alot of drug busts in that county it would look like they would choose the greater of the two evils as they call them.

But we have alot of silly laws in Kentucky used to be a law against saying a woman was pregnant in front of the women because it was considered to be swearing.

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Oh my goodness that is funny. Never heard that one. I think on one side of our county it begins to go dry for like 60 miles. They have a big sign that says no more liquor for 60 miles. Of course it's an add for one of our 3 liquor stores.

Too much to tell about MY city.

There are many books at the library on Salem, LOL...

You'll just have to come for a visit.

As it used to say on the billboards: Salem. Stop by for a spell.