Useful Links for American History Teachers

I retired from teaching a decade ago but still take an interest in education. A few of my blog posts might interest history or social studies teachers.

I started writing my own materials my first year in a classroom, when I found the textbook our school used was almost never interesting to students. I always tried to humanize those we studied and read voraciously, looking for examples and stories that would intrigue students and illustrate important points.

You can find a few of these stories—and a couple of ideas for classroom control—if you check out the following links.

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Many teachers have said they like the reading list I compiled for my students. If you’re an avid reader yourself (and most social studies teachers are) see: A Reading List for American History.

Several hundred books are listed and briefly described.

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I am particularly proud of my post about 9/11, which has been viewed almost 24,000 times on my blog. This one I wrote after I retired. But I’m pretty sure, based on several decades dealing with teens, that it would interest students. It’s moving in the way I believe history should move people.

See: Who Were Those People Who Died on 9/11?

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The post on Jim Crow has been viewed more than 20,000 times. I had a reading similar to this, which I used in my classroom.

I know my students were always stunned by the variety of ways in which the races were segregated, spanning the spectrum of life, from cruelty to idiocy (no interracial checker playing!?!)

See: In Honor of Martin Luther King Jr.: 100 Examples of Jim Crow.

The Emperor of A, B, C and D also deals with the topic, from the perspective of how constraining standardized testing can be. You might get a couple of ideas on how to address the topic, however.

See also: The Emperor of A, B, C and D (Auxiliary Post), which is more popular on my blog than the original post.

Of interest: Sixty Years Ago: Brown v. Board of Education.

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My students always liked the story of Women in the Revolution. (I sell an updated and better version on my website at TpT, called “Remember the Ladies.” This reading worked perfectly as the basis for a full-period skit.

In fact, I tried hard to increase the focus on women in history. You might also like A Bride Goes West: A Woman’s View of Frontier Montana. I can attest that my classes always found Nannie Alderson’s story of ranching and raising a family on the frontier, starting in 1883, to be interesting.)

Your students might also be interested in You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, the story of the fight for women’s rights that began in the 1960s.

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The story of Thomas Jefferson’s Slave Son, Madison Hemings, might fill in an interesting piece when you cover slavery.

Oddly enough, I found using stories from Gone with the Wind helped students understand what slavery was really like. The author, Margaret Mitchell, was blind to reality, which helped make a critical point. See: Teaching About Slavery: A Novel Approach.

Another excellent resource, if you’ve never seen it, is A Former Slave Writes His Master.

For a few good ideas you might find value in you look at Teaching about Slavery.

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Another topic we covered in depth in my class was the Holocaust—and the whole horrible history of dehumanization (including by teens of other teens). You might find value in: Notes on Hitler and the Nazis (the opening quote, alone is useful, and always caught my students’ attention). If you’ve never read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from which many of the details come, I highly recommend it.

Light summer reading at a mere 1,136 pages!

See also: Holocaust Ideas for Teachers.

And, if you’ve never read Mein Kampf, I can spare you the pain: I Read Mein Kampf so You Don’t Have To.

I sometimes compared the ideals in the Declaration of Independence with the thinking of Adolf Hitler, with good result.

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My classes always liked the story of the Salem Witch Trials. In fact, I did the same lecture on the topic, six times a day, twenty-five years in succession, until I could have talked about the trials in my sleep.

Details on the trials and stories from women who traveled West by wagon and the picture of the sequoia tree branch always got students’ attention. See: A Few Good Ideas for American History.

You might also get some ideas about the Pilgrims from: The First Thanksgiving: What Your Third Grade Teacher Didn’t Tell You.

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The gold rush seemed easy to make interesting. The story of the gold nugget found in Brazil in 1985—the size of a briefcase—always sparked interest. The story of the S.S. Central America is also compelling. See: A Few Good Ideas for American History, Part II.

Photo from author's collection; not far from Jeffrey City, Wyoming (population 58)
My students were always interested in pioneer days and the idea of wide open spaces.
Wyoming, even today, has five people per square mile.

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If you’ve never had veterans talk to your students—and I mean really talk about what war is like—our school found it was easy to get them to come in and visit for a whole day. Joe Whitt’s story about the Battle of Savo Island made it hard to hold back tears. Some of our former students, who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan now visit my old school. It was one of the best days we had every year—and now that I’m retired that remains true with younger teachers taking over the program. See: The Veterans Come to Loveland Middle School. (We also found it relatively easy to set this up, so students heard a number of speakers all on the same day.)

See also: Sham Standards: Governor Kasich and the Standardized Testing Fetish.

Scars from the Civil War and Scars Today might help you tie the experiences of soldiers in 1863 with soldiers today.

If you want one good story about what it was like to serve for four bloody years in the Confederate army, Sam Watkins’ tale is great. My student loved this reading; and we used it (and others on the war) to do a great skit. For the reading, see: A Rebel Soldier’s War. 

To understand how my students turned detailed readings into memorable presentations, see the ending to: The Yellow Brick Road to Nowhere.

For ideas about how to work really good skits into your own class, see: How I Worked Skits in My Class. My students performed marvelously when it came to this kind of activity.

Teaching about Gettysburg may also provide teachers with a few useful ideas.

Personally, I always tried to make sure my students knew war wasn’t glamorous. You might like: The Tenth Anniversary of the Start of the Iraq War.

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If you’d need good examples of why the fight for freedom mattered in the period from 1517 to 1689, see: The Battle for Freedom in England and America. The examples here might help students understand why the U.S. Constitution includes the guarantees of liberty it does.

I always enjoyed focusing on the Declaration of Independence. I explain how we approached that topic in Do You Know What the Declaration of Independence Means?

My students found the story of Watergate fascinating. See: An Affair Called Watergate.

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I had fun teaching about the Northwest Cultures, along the Pacific coast, and my students seemed to enjoy the lesson. See: Stefanie’s Astute Observation.

If you focus on Native American cultures, the story of the Chachapoya, who were crushed by the Incas, might be of passing interest. My students found it interesting to imagine that at a time the French and English were establishing their national boundaries, the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in South America, were doing the same. See: The Chachapoya of Peru (A. D. 650 to 1470).

 

Notes on Sitting Bull and the Sioux may also provide examples to use in your classes.

I found William Taylor’s account (he survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn) to be of great interest. I read his story after I retired. See: With Custer on the Little Big Horn. Again, you may be able to pick out details and work them into your own lessons.

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In honor of my father, I did a post comparing life in 1915, the year he was born, to life a century later. Teachers might find some of the examples interesting. See: What a Difference a Century Makes.

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The tragic story of three sailors trapped alive inside the sunken battleship West Virginia, after the attack on Pearl Harbor is chilling and sad. See: A Particular Tragedy at Pearl Harbor.

If you’d like a reading about the attack itself, see: The Story of Pearl Harbor. My students found this interesting.

The story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is also compelling.

General Interest: Classroom Management

I highly recommend this seating chart, which students liked and also allowed for improved classroom control—a winning combination! Not that any of us ever have to worry about classroom control: The Best Seating Chart Ever.

I did come up with a creative way to use writing “punishments.” See: Elvis’ Belly Button Lint. Or: “Stupid Essays” as a Creative Punishment. These two posts are a bit duplicative, I’m afraid.

I had good success posting interesting quotes on my classroom walls. See: A Few Quotes that Still Matter.

If you’d like to read about a few errors to avoid as a young teacher (or an old one, for that matter), you might enjoy “Snowballs” Fly in History Class and Other Mistakes.

The Case of the Missing Homework might amuse you, as my students played a trick on me with great success.

I’m sure every middle school teacher in history has had to deal with the problem of students being bullied. I explain my approach: Bullies in Middle School.

I do sell my best writing for students at my TpT website: Middle School History and Tips for Teachers.

A Bride Goes West: A Woman's View of Frontier Montana

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I used to write my own materials for my classes because textbooks had a deadening effect on student interest. 

My students enjoyed the story of Nannie Alderson, who settled with her husband in Montana in 1883, at a time when it was a frontier territory. She saw whites and blacks flooding in and Native Americans forced to give ground.

This selection is adapted from a book called A Bride Goes West, written in 1942. The author, Helena Huntington Smith sat down with Alderson in 1941, and spoke with her at length. 

The full text can also be found online for free.)

Montana winters came be brutally cold.

A Bride Goes West

     When Nannie Alderson was 81, she sat down with a young writer named Helena Smith and laid out her life history. Nannie was born September 14, 1860, in Virginia. Her father, Hugh Tiffany, died at the Battle of Bull Run, before she was a year old. Nannie’s mother remarried three years later.

     Typical of most young ladies of her era, Nannie never finished high school. When she was fifteen she and a stepsister ended their education. “My stepfather decided Betty and I had reached the stage where we had boys in our heads,” she recalled. “It was a waste of money to pay for any more schooling for us.” 

     In 1877, she traveled to Kansas by rail, where she met Walt Alderson. They married six years later and moved to Montana. Mr. Alderson had just started a cattle business.

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     The young bride had spirit and a sense of humor, but not much else to help her in her new life. “Before I left Union [her home in Virginia],” she said, “a dear old lady taught me how to make hot rolls. Except for that...I knew no more of cooking than I did of Greek. Hot rolls, plus a vague understanding that petticoats [women’s undergarments] ought to be plain, were my whole equipment for conquering the West.”   

     What follows is her story, recorded in conversations with Smith in 1939. We begin with her arrival in 1883, in the rough frontier town of Miles City, Montana:

I had been prepared for Miles City...so I was not surprised by the horses hitched to rails along the store fronts, the wooden sidewalks and unpaved streets. Nor was I surprised that every other building was a saloon. Mr. Alderson had told me it was a pretty hoorah [wild] place. He didn’t want me to go out alone, even in daytime—not that I wouldn’t be perfectly safe, but I might run into a drunken cowboy or a fight.

     After a brief stop in town the newlyweds crossed a hundred miles of unsettled land to reach their ranch. In the dry stretches of Montana, Mrs. Alderson noticed, “Rivers, like women, were few.” Her new home offered surprises good and bad. The house was nothing more than a “dirt-roofed cabin, hardly any taller than a man, with one door and only one window.” Still, she was happy to see Mr. Alderson’s cowboys had already prepared supper. It was, she remembered, one of the best she ever ate. “That men could cook was something new under the sun to me.” “These hardy [tough] Western men were nearly all bachelors,” she laughed, “and so cooked in self-defense.”

     Montana’s natural beauty impressed her from the start. But she was miles from a town and had to adjust how she lived.

As it was I was a hundred horse-and-buggy miles from a loaf of baker’s bread or a paper [pack] of pins...There was no clothesline, so one of the [cow]boys stretched a lariat[1] in the yard. There were no clothespins either, and when a wind came up it blew down half of the wash.

  Every single necessity [except for a few foods] came from Miles City. Once a year when the men went in to ship their cattle [to market] they laid in supplies—hundred-pound sacks of flour and sugar, huge tins of coffee, sides of bacon, evaporated [dried] fruits, and canned goods by the case. What you forgot you did without.

    Flour sacks were turned into dish towels. Jelly and jam were preserved in any container Nannie could find. Once she used an old teapot with the spout broken off. Walt came to her with an old gray blanket and asked her to turn the material into a pair of pants. An empty wine bottle served as a rolling pin when she made cookies. It was a trick she learned from the cowboys. 

     Doctors were few, and when the boys got hurt it was tough:

It wasn’t uncommon for a man’s horse to fall with him, and he could lie out for a night with crushed ribs or a broken leg before he was found, sometimes in the dead of winter...All the ranches kept surgeon’s plaster [for casts] with which to bind up a broken limb, and so save as much suffering as possible on the long, jolting journey [to town]. But that was about the only thing we knew in the way of first aid.

     Her own clothes were poorly suited for life in a frontier cabin. Her dresses:

...all had long trains [like the long end of a wedding dress], and I trailed them around over my dirt floors, which became very dusty as the summer wore on... The dust just couldn’t be kept down. I sprinkled it, and swept it, and even scooped it up with a shovel. I did pin up my skirts to work in, and I wore aprons, but still nothing more...impractical [difficult to use] can be imagined...After that I just wore what I had until I wore them out.

  

     Seven years earlier, General Custer and his men had been wiped out not far from where the Alderson ranch stood. Montana was wild when Nannie settled there.

I heard from mother and Grandmother [by letter] too, but both of them seemed to feel that they were writing to Mars...There were Indians all around us. Hardly a day passed that they didn’t visit us and beg for food. Often the shack would grow suddenly dark, and I would look up, to see the blanketed form of an Indian blocking the window, shading his eyes with his robe to peer in. It never dawned on me in that first year to be afraid of them, largely because I didn't know enough.

     She later learned enough to worry and sometimes had trouble relaxing. “There is nothing a woman left alone on a ranch can’t imagine when she is afraid,” she would say. In 1889 she visited the site of Custer’s Last Stand. Thirteen years after the battle bones littered the ground.

…The rains had washed them [out] and coyotes disturbed them, and in many places they were lying on top of the ground, all scattered about. I picked up a little bone from a hand one day, and a link of backbone…I remember seeing the gold filling in a tooth in one skull.

     

     She also learned that the Indians were ordinary human beings, not much different from those she loved. Two Moons, an old chief, often visited the Alderson cabin. His English was not good:

...seemingly limited to “How,” “Yes,” and “No,” but when he came for a meal he would always ask in signs how many horses my husband would take for me [to sell her]. Once when Mr. Alderson held up one finger, Two Moons laughed long and loud...We concluded he had a sense of humor, and that he asked the question more as flattery than with a serious view [desire] to trade. Next time he asked for my prices in horses my husband began opening and shutting both hands very rapidly. Two Moons counted up to fifty or so and then said disgustedly, “God d---, too many.” It was his longest English sentence.

  

     Certainly, life was never dull. Nannie enjoyed many chances to ride. It was, she said, like “having a Wild West show in one’s back yard.”

Gentle horses, as the term is understood in more civilized parts, were almost as rare in Montana as kangaroos. Therefore it was routine operation, when I was going riding, for one of the boys to get on the horse first with my side saddle and skirt[2] and “take the buck out of him,” after which I would get on and ride off.

  

     Other creatures were no so welcome. Walt warned her about rattlesnakes. One day, while working in the cabin, she heard a noise:

Turning, I saw two great snakes...crawling over the [fireplace] hearth toward me. I was up and out of the house like a shot, calling my husband. He came and shot them both from the doorway—only to find they were harmless bull snakes. I felt rather foolish for raising the alarm. But my skin still crawled whenever I went near the fireplace, and I continued to think that snakes, no matter how mild their...[tempers], are not ideal company around the house.

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     Snakes were common. Female companionship was not. There were no other women living anywhere for miles. Once, Nannie enjoyed a talk with a woman whose family wagon broke down crossing a river nearby. “I believe she, too, was hungry to see one of her own sex. We spoke of each other as neighbors, though we knew we should see each other rarely, for thirty miles separated us.” On a rare trip to Miles City, Mrs. Alderson met a storekeeper’s daughter. She was, said Nannie, “the only unmarried lady within a radius of a hundred miles.” When dances were organized, she laughed, available females were “danced half to death.”

     Fortunately, the young wife enjoyed the cowboys who worked for her husband. She found them good-hearted and appreciated how careful they were about swearing in her presence. She also came to see that their lives were not as exciting as we usually imagine. “Packsaddle Jack” had a colorful nickname and a “reputation.” Nannie discovered that he was a gray-haired fellow who rarely carried a gun. Another cowboy made her mad with his lack of manners: “We had one...who always licked the spout of the syrup jug, after pouring the syrup on his hot cakes every morning.”  

     Worst of all was the boys’ behavior when they went to town:

Their first idea was to get drunk and make a lot of noise. Their next was to squander [waste] their money...Nice people in Miles City would as soon have thought of inviting a rattlesnake into their homes as a cowboy. The only places that made them welcome were the house of prostitution and the saloon.

  

     Mrs. Alderson particularly liked a young cowhand named Hal. But it was not long before his sense of humor led to serious trouble. One day an Indian named Black Wolf came begging for food. Hal saw a chance for fun when the native sat down near the cabin to eat. He told a friend:

     “I’ll bet you five dollars I can put a hole through that old Indian’s hat without touching his head.”

     The other man of course replied, “I bet you can’t.”

     Hal drew his six-shooter and fired, just nicking the Indian’s scalp. Black Wolf of course was furious; he could not and would not believe Hal had not meant to kill him.

  

Soon after, while Nannie was in Miles City giving birth to her first child, Indians burned down the ranch.

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     Most of the time, Mrs. Alderson found the natives friendly and ready to help. One woman she called “Granny” would sit in Nannie’s home for hours. The old lady rarely spoke more than a few words. But when Nannie spanked her little girl one day her visitor shouted at her in Cheyenne [her language], and pulled the child away. In her culture physical punishment of children was unacceptable. 

     Another red friend was the warrior Little Wolf. Nannie recalled:

I always felt as though I had a nurse for the children the day he came. He would look around through the rocks for snakes before he would let the children sit down and play; and together they would climb the hills to hunt for pretty rocks for their play houses...Years after this when I was a widow...Little Wolf would come twenty-five or thirty miles to visit me and my children every fall.

  

    The winter of 1885-86 was legendary for blizzards and bitter cold. Snow blanketed everything and smothered the railroad at Miles City. Travelers knew they had reached town only when they spotted roofs poking through huge drifts. Ranchers suffered heavy losses. Nannie saw places where cattle had crowded together for shelter and died in frozen heaps.

     As her family grew, Mrs. Alderson appreciated her life more and more:

There was an old saying out west, to the effect that this was a great country for men and horses, but hell on women and cattle...I would like to amend the first part. It was a great country for men and children. Especially for children.

 They had more freedom than many modern children...and children thrive on freedom. Most of the time they were outdoors and away from me, living and learning for themselves. For hours they roamed at will, out of range of “don’ts.”

  My children had so little human companionship that their world was peopled with animals. Fay [her first daughter] thought of nothing but horses, and had a herd of stick horses on which she galloped around from morning to night...The stick horses had to be rounded up daily, corralled, driven to water, and fed on little piles of grass.

            

     Other pets included two wolf pups, “snarling balls of gray fur,” and a captured fawn [baby deer]. At first, the fawn drank out of a baby bottle. As it grew it became more dangerous. When it butted little Fay the Aldersons got rid of their unruly pet.

     Christmas was a special time. Each year the Alderson children studied the catalogues and made their wishes:

...their order was ready by the time their father went to Chicago [by rail] with the cattle [to sell]. Then he...bought a cheap packing trunk, and patiently filled every child’s order; then brought the trunk back with him...What a time when the trunk was opened!

  On Christmas Eve we had a tree. The few store-bought ornaments were a thrill, but there was still the more pleasant excitement attached to the cookie horses...which the children cut out, baked, and branded in our brands with colored icing.

     Mrs. Alderson had a terrible scare once, when Fay was four and “disappeared.”   The mother searched all the likely places. Then she looked:

...in all the ones I didn’t like to think about. I looked down the well, and in the stallion’s box stalls...I roamed over the place, calling, calling, calling, and wondering as I did so if some Indians had passed through the ranch that afternoon and picked her up.

  ...All this time Fay had been hiding in a patch of big high thistles and ragweeds at the corner of the pigpen, where we could have touched her. She had a naughty...habit of not answering when I called. Just as Mabel [the oldest sister] finished her prayer [for Fay’s safety], a bumble bee, which had been dining off a thistle, flew down and stung Fay’s face. She let out the most piercing war whoop ever heard.

    

The relief was great, but I spanked her anyway.

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     After several bad years, Mr. Alderson switched from raising cattle to horses. The family sold the ranch and moved to Miles City. There Nannie’s husband was killed when a horse kicked him in the head. The country began to “fill up.” By 1902 the mail came twice a week. Fay began attending high school. Sometimes she and a few girlfriends organized dances at the Alderson home:

The five or six girls would draw all the unattached boys from up and down the river and over the divides [mountains]. Often there would be fifty or sixty horses tied up to the hitching rack...The dances were held in our living room, and there were always so many extra boys that some of them would have to tie handkerchiefs around their arms and take the girls’ parts in the square dance.

           

     Alderson and her four children tried raising cattle again after her husband died. Her young son—and one daughter—helped most.

[He] ...started punching cows [herding cattle] at the age of eleven...[and] by the time he was thirteen was a full-fledged cowpuncher drawing a man’s wages. He ran the ranches [in the] winters...but most of the man’s work was done by Patty, who rode and roped, fixed fences and pitched hay. As her brother said, “She was the best hand on a horse I ever saw for a lady.”

     In 1919 a run of bad weather and poor beef prices ended Nannie’s ranching days. For the next twenty years she lived with her daughter, Patty, and her son-in-law. These two decades were easy, she said, when relating her story. Otherwise, “My friends tell me I led a hard life.”

    “Perhaps,” Nannie Alderson added, “but I don’t think an easy one is ever half so full.”

  

One way of life vanished and another flourished.

Your work:

1. Give five examples where the people Nannie describes sound like us. For instance: why did her stepfather take her out of school?

2. In what ways does her life on the Montana frontier sound hard?

3. Describe the Alderson’s relations with Indians. How were they good? How were they cause for concern?

4. Why might you want to live in Montana, as it was when Nannie first settled there?

5. What evidence do we have that women were rare in Montana in the days of the cowboys?

I do have similar readings for sale at my TpT site, Middle School History and Tips for Teachers. 

I own the rights to all of those.

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[1] A rope, usually made of leather, used to corral cattle.

[2] By “dressing” as a woman and using a woman’s saddle, the cowboy prepared the horse to accept Mrs. Alderson as a rider.