Minnesota, Nicollet County, near Fairfax
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The army believed that routine promoted discipline. Soldiers were on duty six days a week from daybreak to dusk. Garrison life consisted of roll calls, inspections, parades, guard duty, weapons training, drills, and daily chores called fatigues. Every call, inspection, drill, or fatigue was preceded by a distinct piece of music. The tune "Molly Put the Kettle On," for example, meant breakfast.
Soldiers were kept so busy as carpenters, blacksmiths, construction workers, farmers, and woodcutters that officers bemoaned their limited opportunities to drill and train the men in military duties.
Freshening Up the Barracks
Private Samuel Bloomer, who lived in the barracks here in 1861, described a day filled with chores:
After breakfast we were ordered to clean out our quarters. We carried our bedding out onto the parade ground to sun. We brushed down the walls, and washed the woodwork, windows, and floors thoroughly, so that we made it a general cleaning day. In consequence we had no drills except dress parade at sundown.
Minnesota Historical Society
Fort Ridgely
(Forts, Castles) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
The army believed that routine promoted discipline. Soldiers were on duty six days a week from daybreak to dusk. Garrison life consisted of roll calls, inspections, parades, guard duty, weapons training, drills, and daily chores called fatigues. Every call, inspection, drill, or fatigue was preceded by a distinct piece of music. The tune "Molly Put the Kettle On," for example, meant breakfast.
Soldiers were kept so busy as carpenters, blacksmiths, construction workers, farmers, and woodcutters that officers bemoaned their limited opportunities to drill and train the men in military duties.
Freshening Up the Barracks
Private Samuel Bloomer, who lived in the barracks here in 1861, described a day filled with chores:
After breakfast we were ordered to clean out our quarters. We carried our bedding out onto the parade ground to sun. We brushed down the walls, and washed the woodwork, windows, and floors thoroughly, so that we made it a general cleaning day. In consequence we had no drills except dress parade at sundown.
Minnesota Historical Society
Fort Ridgely
(Forts, Castles) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
A part of Stephen F. Austin's
A college for women. Fostered creative spirit,independent thinking and intellectual curiosity. Founded 1965, merged with Hamilton College 1978.
Some 100 or 150 years ago, the watchman was protected from the weather by the shed that sat at the post road crossing of the north/southeast coast Washington to New York Highway, later known as route 7. When the crossing was closed the small building was rescued by Vic Fowler. The Aberdeen Heritage Trust wishes to acknowledge the following for donations towards restoration of the "Watchman's Shed" benefactors: Aberdeen Heritage Trust, The Aberdeen Room, Beaver's Auto Body, Bill & Charlotte Cronin, Don & Marcia Cullum, Glassman Construction, Judy Hinch & Horne Concrete Construction.
Samuel Bloomer, 
Miss Georgia Washington founded the Peoples Village School for black students on this site in 1893. Georgia Washington was born a slave November 23, 1851 in Virginia. As a student at Hampton Institute, Virginia, she met Dr. Booker T. Washington who later recruited her to teach here in Mt. Meigs. The first year the enrollment grew from four to 100 students. She retired in 1936, after 43 years of service, and the school was deeded to Montgomery County. A new school building was dedicated in February 1950 and was named Georgia Washington School. She died October 5, 1952 and is buried here on the grounds of her beloved school.
Organized on June 5, 1818, the Antioch Baptist Church at Mt. Meigs was the first church of any denomination established in Montgomery County. Rev. James McLemore was its founder and first pastor. Antioch, like most churches in the county, had both white and black members before the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Antioch was officially incorporated in May of 1911 under a 9-man board of trustees. In 1919, the Antioch congregation built a new church building on land adjoining the Peoples Village School using material from the old church building; it was bricked and rededicated in 1980. In 1989, classrooms and a fellowship hall were added and a larger sanctuary with a capacity for 1,500 worshipers followed in 1999. The public road leading to the church is designated “Antioch Lane” in recognition of the role Antioch has played in the surrounding communities.
In the late 1850s the cluster of Episcopal families around Mt. Meigs undertook to build a church and engaged Pennsylvania architect Joseph W. Pierson to prepare the plans. The plans were submitted in April 1861, but due to the hardships caused by the Civil War and its aftermath, it was over 30 years before the church was actually built. Finally becoming a reality in 1893, Grace Church was constructed according to Pierson's original plans in the “Gothic Revival” style popular for rural Episcopal churches all across the South during the 1850s. The auxiliary buildings and the church gardens are of a much more recent construction to reflect the style of the original sanctuary.
John W. Ray, his wife, Martha; their infant son; and her fifteen-year-old brother, James R. Conyers, moved to Mt. Meigs from Greene County, Georgia. He and his older brother, Isaac Ray, owned extensive landholdings along Vaughn and Taylor Roads. These early settlers were devout Missionary Baptists. John W. Ray assisted in organizing Antioch Baptist Church, the first church of any denomination organized in Montgomery County, in 1818 at Mt. Meigs. John W. Ray, James R. Conyers, and members of the Ray, Conyers, Nicholson, Handey, and Relfe families are buried here. Among them are veterans of four wars: Dr. John C. Nicholson, Surgeon I AL Calvalry Regt, Civil War; his uncle, Vincent Cogburn, veteran of the Mexican War; Mason Handey, Navy, World War I; and John Robert Relfe, Captain, US Army, World War II.
House built ca. 1830s by Alexander Carter on small land holding. Increasing fortunes led to a 1780-acre diversified and innovative plantation. Oak trees planted on either side of front drive led to its name. During WWII, an auxiliary landing strip, called Mt. Meigs Field, was built on the land by Army Corps of Engineers, and was used for training by American, French, and British aviation cadets from Gunter Field, as well as by “Tuskegee Airmen” from Moton Field. Prominent families who owned The Oaks included those of Edward Pierce, E.T. Davis, William Nicrosi, Price McLemore, Tine Davis, Wayne Dawson.
The Founders of The Waters relocated and restored this historic cemetery in May 2005. The original cemetery site, located along the Old Federal Road beyond the boundary of the Creek Indian lands at Line Creek, had fallen into ruin due to years of neglect. The Lucas Hill Cemetery is the final resting place for some of the earliest settlers who established plantations and farmsteads along the Mount Meigs Terrace now present day eastern Montgomery County, Alabama.
Montgomery's first military flying installation was established 200 yards south of this spot in November of 1917. The facility was named for Captain Ralph L. Taylor, who was killed in an airplane crash at Mineola Field, New York in August of 1917. The primary flying school here included 16 hangers, repair shops, warehouses, quarters, a hospital, and nearly 200 JN-4 and DH-4 aircraft on its 800 acres. One hundred and thirty-nine fledgling pilots completed the eight-week course and some served in France during the First World War. Taylor Field closed in April of 1919 and reopened as Gunter Auxiliary Air Field No. 5 during World War II. It was closed again in July of 1946.
Montgomery County's first school to consolidate rural, one-room school houses into grades one through twelve opened November 11, 1918. The school was built by the Montgomery County Board of Education on 30 acres of land at a cost of $40,000 with monies loaned and donated by families from surrounding settlements. Hailed by the U.S. Commissioner of Education when it was featured in the Alabama Exhibit at the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, the school subsequently attracted foreign educators from Europe and South America interested in observing the system. The last graduating class was in 1945; the school remained a junior high school until its closing in May 1970.
Dedicated