From 1855 to 1890, before Ellis Island opened, about 8 million immigrants were processed through Castle Garden. My book, “When He Was Gone,” includes the story of the Garraux family’s journey to America and their arrival at Castle Garden. It was originally a fort built to defend NY against the British in the War of…
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Death’s door
During the research for “When He Was Gone,” I stumbled across lots of interesting factoids, some a bit macabre. I learned that death was so much a part of life in the 1800s, wakes and funerals were typically held in the parlor of the home. Very old homes often have two front doors, one door…
A big family was even more extraordinary in the 1800s
Experts say that in the 1800s as many as one third of children failed to reach the age of five. That makes it even more amazing that Elizabeth and Frederick Garraux had ELEVEN children, all of whom lived to adulthood. Several of them lived out their lives in Greenville, three of them in the family…
The old stone house and the giant oak
Back in 2007, I had given notice at the ABC affiliate in Miami, and agreed to a start date three weeks later at the NBC affiliate in Greenville, giving us just two weekends to try to find a house. The weekend trips looking for housing were pretty much disastrous, filled with frustration as we looked…
Why Greenville?
I had worked as a journalist and news manager in television newsrooms in several cities around the country, including seven years in Miami — which is the equivalent of dog years, so my time working there felt like a half a century. After a particularly bad month in 2007 with too much body-count news, too…
A stitch in time …
In researching Elizabeth Garraux’s story, I sent an email to a person who had posted several pieces of information on Ancestry.com in a Garraux family tree. That chance email to a generic login ended up getting a response from Elizabeth’s great-great granddaughter, also named Elizabeth. She had been actively researching the family and fleshing out…
That’s a lot of kids
I have worked with a lot of young women who have babies and young children, and, having raised three children of my own, and watching my children raise their children, I know of the challenges and logistics of a busy household. Can you imagine that in 1867, shortly after the end of the Civil War,…