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A Brief Flicker of Glory

6/13/2018

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Jan Adkins
The Explainer General

Map by Jan Adkins

Before the Civil War, the United States was cut into three pieces: the east, far west California, and the middle piece. The middle was a problem. The “Great American Desert” west of the Mississippi was an enormous sea of grass with only a few rivers in the north, and the brutal Mojave (mo HAH vee) Desert in the south. West-bound wagon trains formed up in Missouri and rumbled for months across the dry prairie and wicked mountains. Folks in a hurry took Clipper ships from the East Coast, south around Cape Horn, and up to San Francisco—a miserable 3- to 5-month sea journey, and expensive ($100 to $300 then, $3000 to $9000 today).

A letter from Boston could take a year to arrive at San Francisco. Until the Pony Express! Businessmen in St. Joseph, Missouri, created fast east-west postal service to California. They invented a kind of relay race, positioning about 400 tough little horses (ponies) at 186 “swing stations” along the route.

Pony Express riders were special. An Express recruiting ad is apocryphal (never proven) but describes them well: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”

Each rider was given the precious mochilla, a kind of sit-on saddlebag with four pockets holding the letters. He would ride hard for 10 to 25 miles between stations, where he would jump off one horse, throw the mochilla across a fresh horse’s saddle, and gallop away. Each rider covered 80 to 100 miles before he was replaced by the next rider. The exhausted pony-boy would eat and sleep at the station, then take the next day’s ride going the opposite direction. They faced enormous dangers with nothing but a water bag and a pistol.

Pony Express charged $5 for a half-ounce letter (more than $130 today), but it arrived in 10 or 11 days! The Express was celebrated as a first step toward uniting far west California with the eastern states.

The pony boys rode for only 19 months. On October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line reached Salt Lake City, Utah, where existing lines ran to Sacramento and San Francisco. The Pony Express closed for business two days later. It had carried 35,000 letters but it was a financial disaster, losing $110,000 (about $3 million today) . Yet the heroic image of those young, wiry pony boys still seems fresh.

This illustrated map of the Pony Express mail route in 1860 was drawn by William Henry Jackson.
by William Henry Jackson
~ Courtesy the Library of Congress ~
The Pony Express mail route, April 3, 1860 – October 24, 1861; Reproduction of Jackson illustration issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Pony Express founding on April 3, 1960. Reproduction of Jackson's map issued by the Union Pacific Railroad Company.

Above: Pony Express postmark, westbound, 1860. Wikimedia Commons
Left: An 1851 Pony Express advertisement announcing that letters dropped off in New York will be forwarded to St. Joseph, Missouri to connect with the Pony Express

Adkins new book is about the first drive in an automobile. The wife of the inventor took her kids to see their grandparents. Learn more about it here.

He is also a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Adkins, Jan. "A Brief Flicker of Glory." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 13
June 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
A-Brief-Flicker-of-Glory.

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Mr. Irving: Literary Adventurer

6/12/2018

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Cheryl Harness
She's historical!

You’ve probably shivered over the tale of the headless horseman chasing Ichabod Crane through dark Sleepy Hollow. Maybe you’ve heard about Rip Van Winkle, falling asleep only to awaken twenty years later in a world all changed. You might even know that Washington Irving wrote those stories. But did you know that, when he was six, he shook hands with President George Washington? Well, he did, in 1789, in New York City, then the U.S. capital.

Did you know that young Mr. Irving traveled through Europe when Napoleon Bonaparte was Emperor of France? Well, he did, around 1805. And Irving survived an attack by pirates in the Mediterranean Sea!

And who originated the New York Knicks’ name? Washington Irving! His invented author, “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” wrote Irving’s history of New York, published in 1809. So New Yorkers and even their 1849 baseball team were called “Knickerbockers” or “Knicks.” In that history, Irving told about a stout, jolly St. Nicholas (patron saint of New York’s early Dutch settlers), who delivered children’s presents once a year. This inspired the famous 1823 poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by New Yorker Clement Clarke Moore.

In 1811, Mr. Irving visited the White House, met President James Madison, and danced with Dolley Madison, the beautiful First Lady. Then he wrote those stories I told you about and became the first celebrity author, famous in America and in Europe.

He was a U.S. diplomat too, in Spain. Did you know he lived in Alhambra, former castle-home of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who financed Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage to America? He did. He wrote a Columbus biography too, in 1828.

He also hunted buffalo in present-day Oklahoma, met William Clark, Meriwether Lewis’s old explorer-buddy, and wrote about his travels in the American West. Then he helped design “Sunnyside,” his wonderful house in Tarrytown, NY, where he kept a pet pig named “Fanny.”

In the 1840s, Washington Irving met U.S. President John Tyler and young Queen Victoria of England? He helped settle a war between the U.S. and Great Britain over the U.S.-Canada border. And when he died in November 1859, all the flags were lowered in New York City, a.k.a. “Gotham City,” particularly in Batman comics. Did you know Mr. Irving gave the city that nickname? Well he did.

Here is Cheryl Harness' illustration of the characters of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. You can visit his home in Tarrytown on the Hudson River. There is a velvet rope around his writing desk.

Cheryl Harness is a formidable storyteller in her own right and she's also an amazing artist. In this book, The Literary Adventures of Washington Irving, she pays tribute to America's first celebrity author.

MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "Mr. Irving: Literary Adventurer." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 12
June 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
Mr-Irving-Literary-Adventurer.

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A Brief Flicker of Glory

Mr. Irving: Literary Adventurer

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