Equipping Saints • Engaging Culture • Examining Claims
Image: Enhanced and colorized photo from the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Photograph by E.L.Goff. (Public Domain). He Could Not Read His Warrants — and He Never Got the Wrong Man ❦ ❖ ❦ Prologue: A Tramp on the Red River Road On a worn road in the…
A storytelling history of the desert farmers who built the largest irrigation network in ancient North America — and of the descendants who never truly left. circa 200 – 1450 A.D. ❖ ◆ ❖ The City That Rose From Ashes In the winter of 1867, a Confederate veteran and sometime prospector named Jack Swilling reined…
The Tangled Life and Tall Tales of Raymond Hatfield Gardner — “Arizona Bill” (1845–1940) ❖ ————❖———— ❖ On a gray winter morning in 1940, an old man lay dying in the charity ward of a San Antonio hospital. He had no money, no verifiable family, and, the Army insisted, no record of ever having served….
The Improbable Life of Phoebe Couzins — Lawyer, Lawwoman, and the West’s Unlikeliest Pioneer 1842 – 1913 ❦ ❖ ❦ A Star Pinned to a Silent Blouse On a raw December morning in 1913, six mourners gathered at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis to bury a woman the nation had once strained to hear. Inside…
Image: Wanted poster, distributed June 1, 1924. Courtesy Southern Oregon Historical Society 1988.11-8.5, MS 672 (via Smithsonian) A Narrative History of the West’s Last Great Train Robbery ❖ ❖ ❖ On the morning of October 11, 1923, engineer Sidney Bates had exactly one day of work left in him. After a long career on the…
The True Story of the Hanging Judge Who Never Hanged Anyone A Saloon on the Edge of the Map Picture the place first, because the place explains the man. Three hundred miles of the Chihuahuan Desert lie between San Antonio and El Paso, and somewhere out in the middle of that emptiness, the Pecos River…
The True Story of John Wesley Hardin: A Narrative History (1853 ~ 1895) ✦ ✦ ✦ A Preacher’s Son in a Burning Land He was named for a man who spent his life trying to save souls, and he spent his own taking lives. The irony was not lost on the people of Texas, and…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — SIXTEENTH INSTALLMENT Cut Not Thy Hair: The Samson of Mormondom and the Cost of Misplaced Faith ❖ ❖ ❖ A Stranger at the Christmas Door On Christmas night in 1843, a gaunt and filthy stranger pushed his way into the Mansion House at Nauvoo, Illinois, where Joseph Smith and his family…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — FIFTEENTH INSTALLMENT Sampson Avard and the Education of a Holy Vengeance Introduction: A Man Looking at the Sky On the last day of October 1838, a tall, restless physician stood near the unfinished temple lot at Far West, Missouri, and turned his face toward heaven. The autumn light was hard and…
EARLY MORMON PERSONALITIES — INSTALLMENT XIII The Blunt Apostle Who Helped Build the Kingdom in the Mountains ❦ ❦ ❦ A Light in the Eastern Sky On a clear September night in 1827, in the rural quiet of Mendon, New York, a young potter was roused from his bed by a neighbor pounding at his…