Outbreak: A Brief History of Pandemics
With masks over their faces, members of the American Red Cross remove a victim of the Spanish Flu from a home in St. Louis, MO, one of the first cities struck by the virus. Courtesy St. Louis Dispatch. Illnesses have plagued humanity since the earliest days. Communicable diseases existed during humankind’s hunter-gatherer [...]
Job Requirement for 21st Century Archivist: Must read cursive writing!
“There’s an app for that.” Does that statement intimidate you? Probably not, if you are a millennial or younger. If your timeline is a lengthy one; if you remember where you were when Kennedy was assassinated; if you still write checks using cursive style, then digitization and the Ethernet might be a bit overwhelming. [...]
Railways, Founding Fathers, & Ticking Clocks: The Legacy of Daylight Saving Time
Map featuring William F. Allen's proposal in 1883 for the introduction of Standard Railway Time. The clocks show the time which the railways of the same color on the map should adopt. The person responsible for implementing Standard Railway Time was William F. Allen (1846-1915), an engineer by training and editor of the [...]
The Fall of Deer
LaGrange Daily News article clipping discusses the deer population in Troup County It’s autumn, and our woodlands are resplendent with yellow, gold, and red – and fluorescent orange. Yes, it’s deer season. The people of our region have sustained a long and complex relationship with Odocoileus virginianus, the white-tailed deer. Long before [...]
The Gridiron: the History of Football
We southerners have long loved our football, especially the SEC. But did you know that many cultures, including ancient Europeans, the early Romans, and even Native Americans, played games similar to modern American football? The Ancient Greeks played a similar sport called Episkyros where two teams of twelve men tried to throw a ball [...]
Troup County Press
The Monday, November 14, 1791 issue of the National Gazette. Image courtesy of Library of Congress Fake News, partisan reporting, selective publishing. Is this just a product of modern times or has the press always been biased? Going back to the early days of our Republic, the press leaned politically one way [...]
Photography in our History: Troup County’s Photographers
This panoramic image was taken by Snelson Davis at a picnic of the Dixie Cotton mills employees with their families on July 5, 1927. TCA Collections Recognizing that photographs are an integral part of our historical record, Troup County Archives first director, Faye Phillips, addressed the subject in an article published in [...]
Portraiture
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Pablo Picasso During an interview, Barbara Bush, former First Lady of the United States, was asked if she would sit for her son George W. to paint she replied “Absolutely not. As good as he is, it might look like me!” Portraiture [...]
