October 2 Cabrini Day October 9 Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples’ Day October 10 50th Anniversary of Spiro T. Agnew’s resignation as U.S. Vice President (1973) October 13 Congress establishes U.S. Navy (1775) October 19 Victory of Yorktown (1781) October 28 Grover Cleveland dedicates Statue of Liberty (1886)

By Barry Krause  Coal mining had been around since prehistoric times but it was best known during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries when coal-fired factories and eventually railroads and steamboats replaced muscle power in manufacturing and transport. Picks and shovels were the only tools of many 19th century coal miners, and genuine antique examples are choice […]

Jack H.T. Chang, M.D  Scrimshaw is defined by E. Norman Flayderman as “…the art of carving or otherwise fashioning useful or decorative articles as practiced primarily by whalemen, sailors, or others associated with nautical pursuits. The basic materials of the artifacts are from the whale. Other materials may be taken from various forms of sea life, shells, or diverse materials […]

By Robert Reed  For centuries the method of pulling loops of colored material through a mesh of open fabric was well known but the settlers who came to America enhanced it.  The enduring hooked rug was to be sure quite specifically a home craft of this country. “Rug hooking was a craft born of necessity,” notes Jessie A. Turbayne the […]