In 1789, Louis XVI of France lost his grip upon the monarchy which he had inherited. Famine, indecisive decision-making, and unsuccessful policy reforms had created an environment in which the so-called “third estate,” the estate of the middle class commoners, struggled to survive. The mood in Europe, especially following the American Revolutionary War which France […]
There’s something about the seafaring life of the pirate which elevates them from simple criminal to roguish antihero in our collective memories. While real pirate’s could be anything from petty thieves with outsized criminal ambitions to former royal navy men with a chip on their shoulder, the common thread between them is a life of […]
Rachel Schmidt was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in around 1760. Very little is known about her upbringing except that her family was Presbyterian and that she seems to have been largely unsatisfied with the life that she grew up into. At the age of about sixteen, Rachel began sneaking away to the sea. She felt […]
