Mason's Haven

  Henry Ford was perhaps the most influential entrepreneur of the early twentieth century. Raised on a farm near Detroit, Michigan, Ford disliked farm work and went to work as a machinist in his teens. In the 1870s, Ford began experimenting with steam engines and by the mid-1880s was working on early internal combustion engines. 1887 saw the completion of a four-cycle engine of his own design. This was followed by a two-cylinder motor in 1890. Ford, in his autobiography, said he completed his first automobile in 1892. It was powered by a two-cylinder, four horsepower engine and could travel at speeds up to twenty miles per hour. It rode on four bicycle wheels with rubber tires and was dubbed the “quadricycle.” He eventually built three of these vehicles, each an improvement upon its predecessor. Ford had gone to work for Thomas Edison’s Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit in 1891 as an engineer. He became chief engineer in 1893 and his work with powered automobiles drew Edison...

              The coal industry, embattled as it is in the twenty-first century, was a vital part of American industrialization and expansion in the century after the Civil War. Prior to the war, coal was essentially a cottage industry run by small, independent operators in support of the emerging railroad companies and only beginning to supplant timber as heating and industrial fuel.                The war itself created a huge demand for coal as the iron and steel industries ramped up in response to the needs of the war industries, especially in the North. Coal not only fired weapons production, but also railroads, whose construction and use exploded in the war years. With the expansion of railroads came the ability to transport coal in large amounts, not only to the factories, but to the urban centers themselves, allowing for cheaper, more efficient fuel for everyone.      ...

As a military historian, I have long been interested in my family’s role in America’s wars, and there have been many of them. The most fascinating of these, however, are my Civil War ancestors, for the simple reason that I can visit the battlefields where they fought and, in some cases, retrace their steps. I’ve done this on several occasions, at Manassas, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania. I have also located the graves of three of my ancestors, and am currently in the process, with my brother, of marking one of them. Fortunately, that one unmarked grave lies in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery, whose excellent records allowed us to pinpoint his exact resting place. The ancestor for whom I have the most available information is Captain Milton Hall Harman of Montgomery County, Virginia. Born in 1838, Milton was 22 years old when he enlisted in the Confederate Army on April 17, 1861. He was assigned to Company G, the “Liberty Hall Volunteers,” of the 4th Virginia Infantry Re...

                  “…Then shall the fair fabric of universal Liberty rise upon the durable foundation of social equality, and the long-expected era of human felicity, which has been announced by prophetic inspiration, and described in the most enraptured language of the Muses, shall commence its splendid progress…”             So stated John Quincy Adams in his stirring address to the citizens of Boston on July 4, 1793. The future President of the United States was referring to the spread of the ideals unleashed by the American Revolution throughout Europe and the world, but his Biblical framing of the notion of “universal Liberty” should not be overlooked. “The long-expected era of human felicity” undoubtedly refers to the idea of the second coming of Christ and the thousand years of His benevolent rule. The reference to “prophetic inspiration” is a cl...