The Steam Tug ‘Baltimore’

February 17, 2012

The current title picture for The Sun Rides High is an image of the tug boat ‘Baltimore’ taken just as a storm hit the harbor in 2011.

Built in 1906 to perform routine harbor duties the ‘Baltimore’ is the oldest operating steam-powered, coal-fired tugboat in the United States. Consisting of a riveted iron hull and wooden deck-house, this beautiful little tug has a single “scotch” boiler providing steam to its compound reciprocating engine 1.

Notably, in July 1916 (before the US entered WWI) the ‘Baltimore’ received the blockade running German U boat “Deutschland” (U-155) on its inaugural voyage. Coming just a month after a major defeat for the German Navy at the Battle of Jutland, the ability of the Deutschland’s crew to evade British and French Patrols as it made it’s way out of the English Channel and across the Atlantic was a significant event, which was duly celebrated on their arrival in Baltimore. U-155 subsequently went on to sink 42 allied ships 2. In this Wikimedia image the harbor quarantine tug ‘Thomas F. Timmins’ guides the “Deutschland” into a berth in Baltimore Harbor.

The ‘Baltimore’ represented the city at important maritime civic occasions such as vessel launching. During one such event in 1922 the launched vessel capsized on top of the ‘Baltimore’, damaging the pilothouse and smokestack. Baltimore City took the opportunity to repair the vessel and replace her boiler. Having been converted to oil in 1957 the ‘Baltimore’ was was sold several times during 1963 ending up with  Samuel F. and Joanna J. duPont who converted her into a non-commercial-use steam launch.

The duPonts used and maintained the boat until 1979 when she sank in 15′ of water due to the effects of freezing. She was eventually donated to the Baltimore Museum of Industrial History for the cost of raising and moving her to the museum site. After many years of extensive restoration the “Baltimore” is once again plowing the harbor waters, carrying visitors and steaming into the Chesapeake several times a year.

 You can find more about the ‘Baltimore’ here,  the ‘U-155′ here and the Baltimore Museum of Industrial History here


  1. The “Baltimore” Website ↩
  2. Wikipedia: German Submarine Deutschland ↩

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The House Where Blanche Lived

February 24, 2010

I have been trying out the Street View functionality in Google Maps and have found that it is very useful for locating and seeing places visited by family members, particularly if they lived in one of the big cities or towns. As an example I used an address for Blanche Burright, from a 1940′s diary kept by O.U. Burright. At the time Blanche was living in New York, close to Central Park. After a bit of fiddling around with the settings I was able to find the apartment in which she was living … Read More …


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Archiving our Family Diaries

February 19, 2010

Reba Burright 1944

Our family archives hold a collection of diaries kept by several members of the Burright and Legrand families. These primarily cover the early to mid 1900′s. One of the more conscientious diarists was Reba Burright who seems to have kept short daily notes throughout most of her life. Reba was very much a  woman of words. As well as keeping diaries she wrote a regular column for the St Jo Tribune in her role as a Home Demonstration Agent.

Reba’s diaries consist mainly of single line or short paragraph descriptions of the days events. Often these are day to day activities like “working in the office”, or maybe the days weather, but woven into the diaries are important events and people that she interacted with, including weddings and family visits. The beauty of the diaries is not that they give great insight to Reba’s deepest thoughts but that they are an interesting and consistent narrative from which to tell her story.

In addition to the diaries, our archive holds numerous letters, photos and written articles that Reba created. It is tying these artifacts into the narrative told by the diaries that will give our family’s researchers an opportunity to tell that story.

The key to unlocking the value of the diary collection is the digitization of its contents, enabling searching and cross referencing. I have avoided handling the diaries up to this point because several of them are very fragile and may not survive a lot of handling. I wanted to wait until I had found the right software solution in order to transcribe the diaries directly and then store originals safely away in our archive. That way the digital copy can be made available for research without compromising the originals.

It took a while to find the right software but a few weeks ago I stumbled on “The Journal” 1. I downloaded the trial version and was very pleased with what I had found. “The Journal” is a fully featured writers software. In terms of the diaries project the best features are that:

  • I can create a separate diary entity for each individual diary I transcribe. Within these I can then add the individual entries with their historic dates
  • I can search across all the individual diaries in order to cross reference diaries written by different individuals at the same time
  • I can create custom ‘Topics’ which can then be used to tag text within individual entries, improving searching. For instance, if I create a ‘Wedding’ topic, I can then tag any entries where a wedding is mentioned in any diary. Later on when I find myself researching the details of a specific wedding I can use the topic to narrow searches only to entries that have been tagged as mentioning weddings, saving time and effort.

These are just a few of the useful features of the software. Once I have been using it for a while I will write a more in-depth review of “The Journal”. For now it is sufficient to say that I have finally started a big transcription project that has been ‘pending’ for some time.

Thus far I have finished transcribing Reba’s diary entries for 1946. A year in which she moved from Cheyenne to Perry, Oklahoma. Drove to Spavinaw to fish and spent the night in a cabin, and saw a bunch of the latest movies including “Blue Skies” and “The Postman Always Knocks Twice”.

  1. You can find out more about “The Journal” by clicking here ↩

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Wordless Wednesday (‘Blanche & Friends at Pond Creek’, OK. circa 1910)

October 7, 2009

"Blanche and Friends at Poncreek", Oklahoma. abt 1910

abt 1910


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Camels in the Holy Land

September 25, 2009

This postcard of two camels resting in a scene from the Holy Land is one of several that my grandfather Arthur Muller took home to England in the 1920′s. Having joined the Somerset Light Infantry on 22 February 1917, he fought in the front lines in France before being shipped out to Palestine arriving there on the 1st February 1920. Click on images for higher quality scans.

Post card of Ancient City of Samaria

Post card of Ancient City of Samaria

Post card of Ancient City of Samaria (Reverse)

Post card of Ancient City of Samaria (Reverse)

The card is described on the reverse side as: ‘The Site of the Ancient City of Samaria. The remains of the ancient city are on the olive-clad hill to the left, the modern village with minarets marking the site of the ruined Church of St. John the Baptist (12th Century). It is seen on the lower slope of the hill to the right”

The card is clearly marked as an official publication with the Royal Coat of Arms appearing near the top left. Printed in England, it can be assumed that the cards were mass produced in the UK and then shipped to the Holy Land for consumption by the large numbers of military personnel stationed there at the time. Having served some time in Palestine, Arthur was moved to Cairo and then on to India where he was stationed for two years, returning to the UK and civilian life in 1922.

Some seventy seven years later a friend and I took a trip to Cyprus which included a whistle stop, weekend cruise, first to Egypt and then to Israel. We spent a day in each country, visiting the cities of Cairo, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Seeing these places and being able to match photographs I took at the time against some of these 1920′s postcards of my grandfathers was fascinating and gave me a connection to a man who died while I was very young and that I only have faint memories of.


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‘Many must fall’ – US Civil War Memoirs

September 23, 2009

I have spent some time looking for records of Joseph Burright’s time in Andersonville prison of war camp during the US Civil War.  This is where the book ‘The Sun Rides High’ 1 puts him after the battle at Shiloh. I figured that there ought to be some official documents somewhere listing prisoners but unfortunately didn’t get anywhere. There are a few places on the web which list prisoners at Andersonville but Joseph did not appear on any of them.

A few months ago, I received an email from a lady who said I should get a copy of ‘Soldier Life – Many Must Fall’ 2, the memoirs of two members of G Company, 14th Iowa Regiment. This is the same company that the Burright brothers, Cornelius, Joseph and Stewart joined in 1861. In the first half of the book B.F. Thomas recalls his wartime service and at one point briefly mentions ‘Joe Burright’ during his incarceration at a prisoner of war camp in Macon. So, the likely conclusion is that Joseph never was at Andersonville but at Camp Oglethorpe, Macon. In ‘The Sun Rides High’ Orrin Ulysses Burright gives a description of his fathers time as a prisoner of war and mixes personal anecdotes about the conditions of the camp with events that occurred at Andersonville. Macon is listed as a Confederate prison in the account but does not mention Oglethorpe specifically. This information should open up some new lines of inquiry.

The book ‘Soldier Life – Many Must Fall’ is an interesting and worthwhile read, although I have not fully completed it yet. There was only one small mention of the Burright’s in the first set of memoirs so I am hoping there will be more in the second set. I’ll post a full review of the book when I have finished it.


  1. The Sun Rides High.  compiled by Ora Blanche.  1976 ↩
  2. Soldier Life – Many Must Fall, Camp Pope Bookshop ↩

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The First Murder Trial in Van Wert County, Ohio

August 18, 2009

Reproduced with permission from the www.FamilySearch.org

Reproduced with permission from the www.FamilySearch.org

We know where Orrin Burright and his brother Ashbell [Asabel] were in 1840 because according to The History of Van Wert County 1 they were members of the Indicting Jury, in the first murder trial in the county.  I recently discovered this snippet of our family history whilst searching the Historical Books section of the LDS Family Search website.

The text first lists the primary judges for the trial and then goes on to say …

“The grand jury that indicted was composed of Josiah Foster, William R. Kear, Jacob M. Harpster, Peter Bullenbaugher, David Major, William Johns, Lyman S. Wells, Asabell Burright, James Major, William Glenn, George Leslie, Daniel M. Beard, Joseph D. Moore, Orrin Burright and Samuel Moore.”

From various family records we already know that Orrin spent time in Ohio before moving to Illinois in the mid 1800′s.  His son Joseph Warren Burright was born in Washington Township in 18332.  It was only after some in-depth research of land purchase evidence in Illinois, that I realized Orrin had several brothers and sisters, including Ashball, so discovering a story that included both brothers was a great find.

According to The History of Van Wert County, on January 10, 1840, a Wyandot Indian called Tawohesackwaugh inflicted a wound in the neck of a fellow Wyandot named Sacheewaugh, who died from the wound four days later.  At the subsequent trial, May 1840,  Tawohesackwaugh was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in a Penitentiary.  He was later pardoned so that he could go West with his tribe.

There must have been a lot of interest in the trial as there were reportedly ‘over 100 Indians’ at the trial and the trial itself was contentious. Many white people didn’t think that the trial should be held and wanted the defendant handed over to the Wyandot tribe to be dealt with. That having been said the author of the book says that Tawohesackwaugh’s wife and mother visited his house after the trial saying they were glad Tawohesackwaugh had been sent to the penitentiary and that he would be a good Indian when he was set free.

Read the full text of the event click here (note that this is a pdf file and will open in your default pdf reader)

  1. The History of Van Wert County, Ohio and Representative Citizens.  Edited & Compiled by Thaddeus S. Gilliland.  1906 ↩
  2. The Sun Rides High.  compiled by Ora Blanche.  1976 ↩

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This week at The Sun Rides High

June 13, 2009

Not a lot of work on the website lately, much of my time has been spent decorating and looking after my son, but I did move forward with background research on several history/genealogy projects:

Observing D.Leach
Not much luck in finding Mr Leach yet (see here for full story) but I have found some great sources for Canadian aircraft histories.  First, R.W. (Bill) Walker was able to give me some basic details for each of the named aircraft that D.Leach flew during training in Quebec.  Bill’s website has a well researched and detailed list of RCAF aircraft serial numbers and information, it can be found here.  It will be hard to find full histories for all of the aircraft mentioned in Mr Leach’s log book but I am hopeful about finding the history of Anson V, serial number 11745, which was sold to Austin Airways in 1946.  For more on this I turned to Larry Millberry of CANAV books, who published a history of Austin Airways and who was able to give me a strategy for researching the specific Ansons I am interested in.

Anson V (12590) similar to those used by D.Leach

Anson V (12590) similar to those used by D.Leach

I also made progress researching the Airbase where D.Leach was training in 1945.  I spent some time looking for a St Johns airbase in Quebec but only found patchy references to it.  During my research I stumbled on a website of RCAF insignia; on emailing the site owner JF Chalifou, he advised me that the correct name for the airbase is St Jean (St John being the anglicized version of this).  He also suggested researching french language sites for information.  Using this new information I was able to find various websites about the St Jean airbase and hope to distill them into a potted history for the D.Leach story.

Off to the races
Bringing the research back to our family genealogy for a moment, I occasionally bring up the eBay website and enter search terms relating to our genealogy in the hopes of finding something interesting.  Recently a search on one of our family names (Burright) brought up an auction for a Cart Racing Program at a meet in Chicago, 1951.  The program included the names Harry and ‘Ma’ Burright.  I hadn’t come across these names before, or heard anything about links to Cart Racing in the family but started digging a little bit to see what I could find.  In a fairly short time period, one link led to another and I am now fairly confident that these Burright’s are indeed distant relatives of my wife.  This story fits really well with the character of several Burright women who proved pioneers in their own fields, so once I have confirmed some of the details I intend to post the story of ‘Ma’ Burright and her racing family.

Reba’s Journey to Chicago
In keeping with the broad theme of The Sun Rides High, that being travel and genealogy, I am also working on a story based on a train journey Reba Burright made from Mulhall, Oklahoma, to Chicago in the 1920′s.  In her diary she lists all the major towns she passed through and other details of her two day trip.  I hope it will give me more insight into the heyday of the steam train, as automobiles began to take to the road.

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Saul Shreeve Biography

May 31, 2009

Been busy doing research on several new stories but have found time to add the first draft of Saul Shreeves biography. Saul was born in Norfolk, travelled to Canada with his family, ending up in Missouri. There is more to add to this entry but this is a good start. See Sauls details here

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Observing D.Leach: Part 2 of a Royal Canadian Air Force Puzzle

May 19, 2009

The Evidence

In my first post in this series I described the basics of my interest in Observer D. Leach.  In this post I will layout the evidence I have to work from.  That single piece of hard evidence is a sight log book, purchased in a charity shop in Fareham, Hampshire, England.  Sometime in the late 1990′s.

dleachfrntcvr

Clearly the Log Sight Book was published for use by the Royal Canadian Air Force. In the top right corner are some official markings:

R.C.A.F.  R.213
27M-1-44 (3803)
H.Q. 885-R-213
K.P. 99320

At this point in time I have no idea what these markings mean.  The “44″ could relate to the year the book was published and I would guess that H.Q. stands for Head Quarters but I need to do more research to find out if these markings will be useful to my research or are just general stationary references.

The front cover bears the name Leach. D., the subject of the article.

Inside the book there are a number of sets of observations, some ground, some air. The dates of these observations range from 14th Dec to 16th Mar 1945.  Readings taken whilst flying have the specific aircraft identified.

D. Leach Observations

Using a sextant an observer can determine his location by reading the angle between the sun (or moon), and the horizon.  By cross referencing his readings with the time they were taken, he can use an almanac to determine his exact location.

In this sample page “Sun Air” indicates that D.Leach was flying and using the Sun to make his observations.  We can see the date and time the readings were taken.  Note that the dates are in the English format rather than American i.e. day/month/year rather).

The next column indicates the type of aircraft and its serial number.  The Anson was a popular training aircraft during WWII and saw service in many countries including Canada and Australia.  The serial numbers recorded in the log book are: 11745, 12152, 12215, 12227, 12297.  These are significant as they may enable me to find the history of some of the aircraft that D.Leach flew in.

The sextant model is noted next, the latitude and longitude in degrees and minutes and the body used to make observations (in this case the sun).

The next three columns relate to the actual observations D.Leach took.  The first is the angle between the horizon and the sun, from his location and the next two columns are corrections of some sort.

The last column is a remarks column for qualifying the observation. At the bottom of this page the remark ‘Single Shot’ is made.  More than likely this means that D.Leach only had one chance to take a reading for that point, whereas on the others he may have taken more in order to get a more accurate location.

dleachstampThe final piece of evidence in the log book is a certification stamp printed next to the last set of observations in the book.  It is signed by an F/L (probably Flight Lieutenant) on behalf of the “C.S.O. No.9 Air Observer School, St. Johns, Que”.

The first name in the hand written signature is “Marcel”. The second name is a little harder to decipher.  After researching french surnames and reviewing my rather rusty cursive lettering skills, I determined that the surname is probably “Hout” (although I would be open to suggestions on this). The french sounding name fits well with St. Johns, Quebec being in the French influenced part of Canada.

So there you have it. Two names, two locations and a handful of flight training observations.  Is Observer Leach still alive? Did he see action in WWII? What is his story?   The task is made a little more challenging by the fact that D.Leach may still alive or may have died since the late 1990′s, therefore any official records relating to Mr Leach are probably largely still under various privacy and secrecy acts.  I’m not exactly sure were this is going to lead but it will be fun seeing.

If you have any insights on this topic please leave a comment or contact me at paul@thesunrideshigh.com


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