
Author: Bill Burton


Wee Kirk o’ the Heather – and the Ballad of Annie Laurie
Bill Burton
Wee Kirk o’ the Heather
and the Ballad of Annie Laurie
The Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, a part of metropolitan Los Angeles, was not the first cemetery in the area. That is probably the City Cemetery, a joint venture of several fraternal organizations including the IOOF (Independent

Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?
Bill Burton
Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?
On March 10, 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln officially named Ulysses S. Grant to take charge of the entire Union Army against the Confederate military of Robert E. Lee, he had hopes that the choice would end the string of ineffective leaders of

The World’s Champion Cotton-Picking Contest
Bill Burton
The World’s Champion
Cotton Picking Contest

The New Town Experiment at Greenbelt, Maryland
Bill Burton
The New Town Experiment
at Greenbelt, Maryland
The discovery of gold and silver in the American West led to tens of thousands of men arriving to seek their fortunes. Their living conditions were appalling — they camped in tents or worse, dumped their sewage into the same water

Hires Root Beer – The First American Carbonated Drink
Bill Burton
Hires Root Beer
The First American Carbonated Drink

You can’t find Hires Root Beer anywhere, anymore, no matter how hard you look. The company that now owns the brand name has effectively retired it to push its A & W brand.
In its time, though, Hires Root Beer

The Steamer President Warfield and the Exodus 1947
Bill Burton
The Steamer President Warfield
and
the Exodus 1947
Born from the competition for delivering freight and passengers between the City of Baltimore and points along the Virginia side of the Chesapeake Bay (Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Old Port Comfort), the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was created in 1840 from

Coral-Lee – The First Lady of Postcard Publishing
Bill Burton
Coral-Lee
The First Lady of Postcard Publishing
In the November-December 1977 issue of American Postcard Journal, editor Roy Nuhn wrote a full-page article titled “Coral-Lee First Lady of Postcard Publishing.” The first two sentences sum up his admiration: “Out in California there is a wonderful energetic lady

Peter Wolf Toth and His Trail of Whispering Giants
Bill Burton
Peter Wolf Toth
and His Trail of Whispering Giants
While Toth was born in Hungary in 1947, his family left there during the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956 and eventually settled in Akron, Ohio. In 1971 at age 24, Toth carved a statue of a native American (locally dubbed
