Historium Unearthia: Unearthing History's Lost and Untold Stories

Slow as molasses in January is a common American idiom for something that is painfully slow. The history of this expression dates to the turn of the twentieth century and to one very specific event. On an unseasonably warm winter day in 1919, only a few weeks into the new year, Boston, Massachusetts suffered one of history's strangest disasters. Have you ever heard of the Great Boston Molasses Flood? DOWNLOAD NOW Credit: For this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Stephen Puleo, historian, public speaker, and author of Dark Tide, and Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer turned science communicator who runs a Tumblr blog on fluid dynamics. Sources: Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919; Puleo, Stephen; Beacon Press; 2004; Reprinted 100th Anniversary Edition, January 2019. Incredible physics behind the deadly 1919 Boston Molasses Flood; Ouellette, Jennifer; NewScientist; November 24, 2016. The Great Molasses Flood of 1919; Andrews, Evan; History; January 13, 2017. The Great Molasses Flood; Stanly, Robert; New England Today; January 15, 2018. Remembering Boston's Great Molasses Flood of 1919; Trex, Ethan; Mental Floss; January 15, 2018. Eric Postpischil’s Molasses Disaster Pages; Mason, John; Yankee Magazine; August 27, 2015. Great Molasses Flood of 1919: Why This Deluge of Goo Was So Deadly; Choi, Charles; LiveScience; November 21, 2016.

This trailblazer became the most successful and significant black woman writer of the first half of the 20th century. In the 1970s, during the second wave of feminism, Alice Walker helped revive interest in this pioneer’s writings, bringing them back to public attention. Have you ever heard of Zora Neale Hurston?

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Credit:

It was a deep honor and absolute pleasure to speak with Valerie Boyd, author of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, and DaMaris Hill, a professor at the University of Kentucky and author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, for this episode.

Sources:

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston; Boyd, Valerie; Scribner; February 3, 2004.

Dust Tracks on a Road; Hurston, Zora Neale; Harpers; 1942, updated 2017.

A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland; Hill, DeMaris; Bloomsbury Publishing; January 15, 2019.

Zora Neale Hurston; Official Website; Maintained by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust; Retrieved February 2019.

Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography; Hemenway, Robert; University of Illinois Press, September 1, 1980.

In the US, doctors are held in high esteem. But that wasn’t always the case. There was time when the medical field was riddled with controversy and public scrutiny. Tensions between the world of medicine and society reached a boiling point in New York City during April of 1788, when resurrection, the common practice of grave robbing, came under scrutiny.

Have you ever heard of the New York Doctors Riot?

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Credit:

I want to give a special thanks to Andrea Janes, owner and founder of Boroughs of the Dead LLC, a boutique tour company dedicated to dark and unusual walking tours of New York City, and Bess Lovejoy, journalist and author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses.

Sources:

The Gory New York City Riot that Shaped American Medicine; Lovejoy, Bess; Smithsonian Magazine; June 17, 2014.

Doctors' riot, New York, 1788; Bell, Whitefield J.; American Association for the History of Medicine; December 1971.

Grave Robbing And The Doctors Riot of 1788; Hernandez, Miguel; The New York History Blog; December 20, 2016.

The Doctors’ Riot of 1788; Ancestry.com; Retrieved February 2019.

American resurrection and the 1788 New York doctors' riot’; de Costa, Caroline and Miller, Francesca; Perspectives, The Art of Medicine; January 22, 2011.

Prelude and Aftermath of the Doctors' Riot of 1788: A Religious Interpretation of White and Black Reaction to Grave Robbing; Swan, Robert J.; New York History, Fenimore Art Museum; Vol. 81, No. 4 (October 2000), pp. 417-456.

American Heritage Book Selection: The Body Snatchers; Gallagher, Thomas; American Heritage Magazine; June 1967.

In the days before modern medicine, the sick, injured, and expecting often relied on community healers to perform the services of doctors and midwives. Women largely fulfilled these roles. Whether their practices were rooted in scripture, nature, or common sense, there’s no denying their quintessential place in the history of medicine. Have you ever heard of the Ozarks’ Granny Women?

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Credit

Janet Allured, a professor of history and the Director of Women’s Studies at McNeese University in Louisiana, and Vincent Anderson, historian and author of multiple books on the Ozarks’ region.

Sources

Granny Women: Healing and Magic in Appalachia; Burns, Phyllis Doyle; RemedyGrove; March 11, 2018.

Women’s Healing Art: Domestic Medicine in the Turn-of-the-Century Ozarks; Allured, Janet L.; Gateway Heritage, Spring 1992, Vol. 12, No. 4; Missouri Historical Society; Retrieved January 2019.

The “Granny-Woman” in the Ozarks; Rayburn, Otto Ernest; Midwest Folklore, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn, 1959), pp. 145-148, Indiana University Press; Retrieved January 2019.

Last of the Ozark Granny Women; Shannon Country Coordinators; Shannon County, Missouri GenWeb; Retrieved January 2019.

Mozark Moments: Tales of Granny Women and Yarb Doctors; Johns, Paul; CCHeadliner.com; March 20, 2011.

Lake Okeechobee, also known as Florida's Inland Sea, or as the locals like to call it, Lake O, is the largest freshwater lake in the state of Florida and the third largest freshwater lake wholly within the country. Resting at the northern edge of the Everglades and rimming the western edge of Palm Beach County, the lake is a remnant of the prehistoric Pamlico Sea and appropriately carries the Seminole word for “big water.” Although it’s a major tourist destination and a favorite among those who live in the area, most people have no idea what lingers below the surface of this majestic lake. Have you ever heard of the mysteries surrounding Lake Okeechobee? DOWNLOAD NOW Credit: This episode would not have been complete without the brilliant insight of Chris Davenport, Palm Beach County’s Historic Preservation Officer and Archaeologist. I also spoke with Victor Thompson, a Professor of Archaeology and the Director of the Center for Archaeological Sciences at the University of Georgia, and Matt Colvin, an anthropologist and doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia. Both have worked extensively at Fort Center, an archaeological site in Glades County, Florida, just a few miles northwest of Lake Okeechobee. Sources: Lake Okeechobee; Fodors; Retrieved February 2018. Lake Okeechobee; The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica; Encyclopedia Britannica; Retrieved February 2018. Most People Have No Idea There’s An Underwater Ghost Town Hiding In Florida; Marisa Roman; Only In Your State; January 11, 2018. Florida's Water: A Fragile Resource in a Vulnerable State; Tom Swihart; RFF Press, 2011. Archaic; Illinois State Museum; Retrieved February 2018. Seminoles and Miccosukees; Palm Beach County History Online; Retrieved February 2018. Lake Okeechobee Watery Graves; Weird U.S.; Retrieved February 2018. Florida Drought Exposes Old Debris in Lake Okeechobee; Associated Press; June 5, 2007. The Native American History of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee Basin; Dennis N. Partridge; Access Geneaology; September 21, 2016. PHOTO: Representation, not an actual depiction of Florida, Lake Okeechobee, or the human remains found at the bottom of the lake