Between the Lines: Family History and Quirky Stories From Our Forgotten Past

  A woman with a washing machine like the one in this 1866 ad probably felt fortunate. She was expected to confine all her interests to her home and family.  Why don’t I write more stories about women ancestors? I know they led lives as full and interesting as men’s lives. The people I write about are people I can find information about - information beyond census records and (when available), birth, marriage and death records.      Even today, most of us, men and women, don’t make the news very often, if at all. But women in Victorian and Edwardian days were supposed to be “invisible,” to “disappear” behind a man. This was her proper role in the prevailing Cult of Domesticity and “Separate spheres” theory that people believed was handed down by God. A woman was supposed to stay home, to make no waves, to be retiring, passive, demure, totally devoted to home and family, with no outside interests, though promotion of Christianity was a given. Wo...

  It was a grand day, the kind that lives long in memories. Jacob Albert Banta, Company B, marched down the streets of Fort Wayne in proud formation with the 1,047 men of the 44th Indiana Infantry Regiment. It was November 23, 1861, and thousands lined the streets of downtown. The crowd included not just Fort Wayne folks, but families from several northern Indiana counties from which the recruits came. Jacob’s wife Mary Magdalena and children were probably there from the little town of Pierceton.       “The Regiment never made a better display of the pageantry of war than on that day,” wrote Dr. John Rerick, the regiment’s surgeon in a later history. The uniforms and equipment were pristine in a way that they never would be again. Jacob held the position of hospital steward, a non-commissioned officer. As such, he had a thick crimson stripe down the seam of his pants versus the sky-blue of the enlisted men, and a green half chevron on his arm. On ...