It was neat driving up to Ohio to visit some family there. I recently finished a book called "The Frontiersman" (http://shorturl.at/amzK9) that talked about early American history on the frontier of Ohio and Kentucky and Indiana. And as we drove through the northern part of Kentucky up into Ohio I saw a couple of things that I knew what they meant from that book!
I saw signs that pointed the way to Paris, Kentucky. In the book the frontiersman the author talked about a group of French families that had been duped in France into paying a lot of money for land in the American frontier. When those French people got to northern Kentucky no land had been set aside for them and they didn't have anything to live on. The guy that was the frontiersman, Simon Kenton, helped find them a huge plot of unclaimed land and set them up so that they could build their camp and then eventually town that became Paris, Kentucky.
The other fun sign that I saw was for Transylvania University. From the book they talked about this guy that wanted to start his own kingdom in the new world. And he came over with a bunch of families and claimed a bunch of land in what was then far western Virginia but what became Kentucky. He named his kingdom Transylvania, which everybody thought was odd but since he was going to be the leader in that country or kingdom they just went with it. It was funny to see a sign saying this way to Transylvania University and knowing that little bit of history and that it survives even today.
I love reading books! I love reading good historical fiction that brings history to life. I don't like it to be dry and boring facts and all that, but when it's something like the frontiersman or some of the other books that I read about Bible times and the late 1800s and all that it's a lot of fun to then see it re-created in movies and even run across tidbits in real life like these signs that point back to what actually happened. And to have some level of knowledge about what drives things today.
Cool!
