Some sobering thoughts, wry toasts, and dry humor inspired by the golden anniversary of Repeal
The Adams Chronicles. President John Quincy Adams cashed in his accumulated investment of $9,000 in government bonds to bankroll his brother-in-law’s new business, a gristmill on Rock Creek. President Adams lost his shirt in the venture. Crime Didn’t Pay Then, Either. In the earliest days of Rock Creek Park, many of its roads and bridges were built by chain
ON THE GROUNDS of the Laytonsville Public Golf Course, nestled in the gently rolling land of northern Montgomery County, stands an old wooden springhouse, roughly eight feet by twelve feet, that in an earlier era supplied water for the Dorsey farm. Crystal-clear spring water still bubbles up over a stone slab on the floor, seeps out, and nourishes a
When cartoonist Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly laid pen to paper in the spring of 1874, it no longer was poised to savagely ridicule William Marcy “Boss” Tweed. Three years earlier, after a long reign as the crooked kingpin of New York’s Tammany Ring, Tweed had been convicted of larceny and forgery and put behind bars. Nast’s cartoons had