Americana and History Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

Former first ladies — Beautiful, brilliant, crazy

By John Silveira Issue #30 • November/December, 1994 (This is a four-part series. Click the links to navigate to parts one, two, three, and four.) (When we left off last issue, O. E. MacDougal and John Silveira...

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 4 — Cunning, vindictive, and one may have...

By John Silveira Issue #35 • September/October, 1995 (This is a four-part series. Click the links to navigate to parts one, two, three, and four.) Do you think we'll ever have a woman as President?" I asked....

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

By O.E. MacDougal November/December 2016, Backwoods Home I could spend all day coming up with interesting trivia about the Presidents and those who surround them — wives, children, assassins, etc. I could literally fill this magazine...

Biological and chemical weapons through history

By John Silveira Issue #81 • May/June, 2003 The weather here on the coast of Oregon is nice almost all year-round, and there almost always seems to be some kind of fishingsalmon or winter steelhead running...

Emancipation Proclamation by Historical Document

By the President of the United States of America: A PROCLAMATIONWhereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the...

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 3

By John Silveira Issue #34 • July/August, 1995 (This is a four-part series. Click the links to navigate to parts one, two, three, and four.) Do I have to stay and help you?" my 12-year old son...

The time-travel ad

By John Silveira Issue #125 • September/October, 2010 It's become a minor Internet phenomenon. The ad reads: It's also been read by Jay Leno on his late night TV show, on National Public Radio more than once...

The Great Depression — A reminiscence

By Alice B. Yeager and James O. Yeager Issue #115 • January/February, 2009 I was a girl of 8 when the stock market crashed in 1929. It was the Great Depression, and unless you were living...

Catfish Biscuits

By Danny Fulks Issue #87 • May/June, 2004 Danny Fulks, 71, grew up in southern Ohio where his parents worked the land and milked cows, and his tightly written stories paint a vivid picture of life...

Remembering what grandma used

By Marjorie Burris Issue #57 • May/June, 1999 My grandmother, Mary Etta Dillman Graham, was one of those frontier women who took life as it came; extremely practical, resourceful and inventive, she was always, always ready...

Constitution of the united States of America

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of...

Quilts — Masterpieces of the heart and windows into women’s history

By Marlene Parkin Issue #22 • July/August, 1993 Many of the quilts of yesterday took a lifetime to make. Perhaps the mystical part of quiltsthe aspect that makes them almost humanis the countless hours of work...

The greatest American who was never President

By John Silveira Issue #60a • November/December, 1999 "The election's next year, right?" I asked. Dave Duffy, the publisher of Backwoods Home Magazine, was editing a rather lengthy article on water. I don't know if he didn't...

Declaration of Independence: The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776 When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume...

The vanishing outhouse

By Tom Kovach Issue #79 • January/February, 2003 A person recently wrote to a large Midwest newspapers' advice column asking for information about outdoor privies. It seems that this person's family inherited a log cabin from...

President George Washington’s Farewell Address

Friends and Fellow Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen, to administer the executive government of the United States, being not far distant, and the time actually arrived, when your thoughts...