Charles Hilan Craig (1901-1970)

Author, Magician & Performer, Newspaper Reporter, Editor, & Publisher, Radio News Director, Congressional Aid 

Born December 23, 1901, Madison, Nebraska
Died June 21, 1970, North Platte, Nebraska

Charles Hilan "Charley" Craig, also called "Hi" Craig, was born on December 23, 1901, in Madison, Nebraska, and grew up in Morrill on the opposite end of the state. His parents were Charles C. Craig and Chrissie M. Craig, and he had two brothers and two sisters. Although he was known later in life as a newspaperman, Craig began as an author of fiction. It's pretty early in this biography to write of obituaries, but here's an account of Craig's start as a writer from his obituary:

     He once calculated that his writing career began in 1915, at the age of 13 when he purchased for a penny his first copy of "Lone Scout" in the community of Morrill where he was raised.

     "Discarded were my ambitions to become a lawyer, astronomer, policeman, locomotive engineer, millionaire, postmaster or train robber," he would say later in telling of his first by-line.

     "Instead I was going to write."

     And write he did.

From: "Charley Craig, former Telegraph editor, dies," in the North Platte Telegraph, June 22, 1970, page 1, the same source as the photograph below.

The Lone Scout was the national publication of the Lone Scouts of America, an early scouting organization designed for boys who lived in rural areas of the country. For The Lone Scout, Craig wrote a football story, "Fighting for Bradley," and a second serial called "The Spell of Sahara." The former won him a Quill award from the magazine. The latter was called by a historian of the Lone Scouts "probably the finest individual narrative to appear in Lone Scout." (Source: "'The Golden Years' of Lone Scouts," part two of a four-part series by Lucien W. Emerson, published in Southern Utah News, August 13, 1959, page 1+.) Craig prized his membership in the Elbeetian Legion, an association for former Lone Scouts of America. I have written before about the Lone Scouts in my mini-biographies of Ralph Allen Lang (1906-1987) and Merlin Moore Taylor (1886-1939). Click on their names to find your way to them.

Charles H. Craig attended Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. He was editor of the Hastings Collegian in 1922-23. On August 16, 1928, he married Rose Nellie Cecil in Castle Rock, Colorado. Craig had previously performed as a magician named Aladdin on on the Chautauqua and Lyceum Circuits. After their marriage, they performed together. They had a son, David Alan Craig, a railroad worker, angler, woodworker, and hobbyist, and a daughter, Diane R. Craig.

Charles Craig worked as a newspaperman for most of his life. A summary of his career: publisher, Morrill Mail (three years); editor, Bridgeport News Blade (three years); reporter, North Platte Daily Bulletin (three years); editor of the same paper (1943-1946); news director, KODY radio, North Platte (1946-1956); with the North Platte Telegraph Bulletin before leaving to become an administrative assistant to U.S. Representative A.L. Miller in Washington, D.C. (1956-1958); news staff, North Platte Telegraph Bulletin (1958-1961); editor of the same paper from 1961 until his retirement in 1967. Craig was also involved in his community, and he considered North Platte to be home, even though he had lived in far-flung and perhaps more exciting places.

Charles Hilan Craig wrote under his own name during his career as a pulp-fiction author. He had eight stories in Weird Tales and one in its companion title, Detective Tales, as well as one in its successor, Real Detective Tales. From The FictionMags Index: 

• "Old Man Davis Goes Home," in Detective Tales (Nov. 16/Dec. 15, 1922)
• "The Wanderer," in The Black Mask (Dec. 15, 1923)
• Letter in The Black Mask (Dec. 15, 1923)
• "The River," in Real Detective Tales (May 1924)
• "Damned," in Weird Tales (May 1925)
• "Darkness," in Weird Tales (Sept. 1925)
• "Stealer of Souls," in Weird Tales (Jan. 1926)
• "The Curse," in Weird Tales (Mar. 1926)
• "The Ruler of Destiny," in Weird Tales (Apr. 1927)
• "The Gray Rider," in Weird Tales (Nov. 1927)
• "The Man Who Walked Upon the Air," in Weird Tales (July 1930)
• "The Red Sail," in Weird Tales (Oct. 1931)

Those are enough to make a collection if anyone had the mind to put one out. Notice that one of his stories is in the category of "The Man Who . . .".

I think any of us would be happy to have the writing career he had, especially beginning as it did when he was a child and full of dreams.

Charley Craig died on June 21, 1970, in North Platte, Nebraska, after a long illness. He was sixty-eight years old. 

As you can see, Craig's first story in Weird Tales was published in May 1925, one hundred years ago now. He is the last of the authors in that May issue about whom I will write for now. Next I'll write about June.

Charles Hilan Craig's Stories in Weird Tales
See the list above.

Further Reading
See the sources cited in this biography and other newspaper articles, too.

Here's a very early item on the contribution of a local author to Weird Tales magazine, from the Hastings [Nebraska] Daily Tribune, December 2, 1925, page 7.

That newspaper item refers to Charles Hilan Craig's long short story "Stealer of Souls," which was the cover story and lead story of the January 1926 issue of Weird Tales. The cover artist was Andrew Brosnatch.

Charles Hilan Craig (1901-1970).

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Susan Andrews Rice (1865-1938)

Author, Poet, Teacher of Music & Voice
Born September 1865, New York State, possibly in Croghan
Died October 5, 1938, at home, Washington, D.C.

Susan Andrews Rice was born in September 1865, possibly in Croghan, New York. Some sources give her birth year as 1866, but the U.S. census of 1870 indicates 1865 as the actual year. Her parents were Yale Rice, a farmer, and Helen Marie (Curtis) Rice. She had three sisters and a brother. The family moved from New York State to Falls Church, Virginia, in the 1870s or '80s.

Susan A. Rice studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was a pupil of Lyman Wheeler (1837-1900). She taught vocal culture in Washington, D.C., and wrote articles on music. She was also the author of poems and short stories. Her credits include:

• "Music in America," article in The National Tribune (Washington, D.C.) (June 9, 1892)
• "To Write or Not to Write," article in The Writer (1892)
• "How to Entertain," article (syndicated) (1893)
• "All Saints Day," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Jan. 2, 1896)
• "Patty Jasper's Idea," short story (syndicated, including in The Independent [New York, New York]) (Aug. 20, 1896) 
• "A Missionary Story," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (ca. Nov. 1897)
• "The One Who Knows Me Not," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Feb. 13, 1901)
• "His Particular Detestation," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Nov. 3, 1901)
• "Delia Duty's Defection," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Oct. 22, 1911)
• "The Girl in the Wheeling-Chair," short story in Harper’s Bazaar (June 1913)
• Letter in All-Story Weekly (July 27, 1918)
• "The Ghost Farm," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
• "A Day in the Life of Aurelia Durant," short story (syndicated) (Oct. 1925)

Thanks to The FictionMags Index for some of these credits.

Her story for Weird Tales, entitled "The Ghost Farm," is short but good, I think, and memorable. I like the tone and the sentiment. It's an example of why weird fiction should come also from women and from writers outside the realms of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It was reprinted in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories (1993), even if it isn't ghastly at all. "The Ghost Farm" has as its background the many losses of the Great War. That an unavoidable theme and subject of many stories and poems in Weird Tales during the 1920s.

Susan Andrews Rice died at home in Washington, D.C., on October 5, 1938, at age seventy-three. She was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Falls Church, Virginia, where her family had lived for many years.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

James C. Bardin (1887-1959)-Part Two

Following are some of the writing credits of James C. Bardin, first from from The FictionMags Index:

• "Blue Shade," poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine (Mar. 1911)
• "The Watcher," poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine (Aug. 1911)
• "In the Magnolia Gardens," poem in The Smart Set (Sept. 1912)
• "The Strange Philanthropy of Juan Del Coronado," short story in Snappy Stories (1st, Jan. 1916)
• "Tiger-Lily," poem in Snappy Stories (2nd, Aug. 1916)
• "The Construction Gang," poem in Railroad Man's Magazine (Nov. 1916)
• "The Philanthropist," short story in People's (Nov. 1916)
• "Barren Sands," short story in Sea Stories Magazine (Feb. 1925)
• "Death," article in Weird Tales (Feb. 1925)
• "The Sobbing Bell," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
• "The Golden Fleece," short story in The Golden West Magazine (Jan. 1928)

Bardin's contributions to Virginia Quarterly Review, from the website of that journal:

• "The Last Available 'Place in the Sun'" (Autumn 1926)
• "The Hate of Those Ye Guard" (Spring 1927)
• "Lawrence" (Summer 1927)
• "Before Columbus" (Spring 1928)
• "Black Valley and the Tree of Life" (Autumn 1928) 
• "Gongorism? -- What of It?" (Summer 1929)
• "Mexico--And Indianismo" (Spring 1932)
• "The Mexican Revolution" (Winter 1934)
• "Thunder Over Latin America" (Winter 1939)

In Scientific American:

• "The Amazingly Accurate Calendar System of the Maya Indians" (Nov. 1925)

In The Bulletin of the Pan American Union:

• "A Song from Sor Juana" (1942) 

I have also found that Bardin wrote at least two stage plays:

• Penningtons, Too: A Play in One Act
• Second Samuel

I'm sure he had other writing credits, too.

James C. Bardin's Article & Short Story in Weird Tales
"Death" (Feb. 1925)
"The Sobbing Bell" (May 1925)

Further Reading
Numerous newspaper articles and, if you can find them, Bardin's own works.

Scientific American, November 1925, in which James C. Bardin's article on the Mayan calendar appeared. I don't know the name of the artist, but change the dress of the men in this illustration to something futuristic and it could easily have been on the cover of a science fiction magazine of the 1920s and '30s. This was when science was done in buildings that looked like barns by men and women who were true scientists. Now supposed "science" is carried out in multi-million-dollar facilities by people who believe in pseudoscience, anti-science, non-science, or simple nonsense. I can't tell what the two objects on the table are supposed to be, but they remind me of the Trylon and Perisphere at the New York World's Fair of 1939.

Acknowledgments to The FictionMags Index and the websites of Virginia Quarterly Review and Scientific American.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

James C. Bardin (1887-1959)-Part One

Author, Poet, Playwright, Book Reviewer, Translator, Military Officer, Explorer, Medical Doctor, University Professor, Public Speaker
Born September 25, 1887, Augusta, Georgia
Died October 13, 1959, Veterans Administration Hospital, Salisbury, North Carolina

James Cook Bardin had one essay and one short story in Weird Tales, both in 1925. He was born on September 25, 1887, in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Henry Clay Bardin and Mary Ella (Cook) Bardin. He appears to have attended Harvard University, graduating in 1908, and he attended the University of Virginia, there receiving his medical degree in 1909. Young Dr. Bardin was on the staff of Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, for one year before beginning as a teacher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Central State Hospital was a hospital for mentally ill black people, the first of its kind in the United States.

James C. Bardin taught Romance languages and history at the University of Virginia for forty-four years, from 1910 until his retirement. He had an admirable career not only as a university professor but also as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as verse, stage plays, and book reviews. Bardin had short stories in the lowly pulps as well as non-fiction articles in Scientific American, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Raven Club, as well as societies in Latin America, where he often traveled. 

The Raven Club, which I think was also called the Raven Society, was a scholastic society at the University of Virginia. A newspaper article from 1909 lets us know at this late date that it was a "society made up of students who [had] distinguished themselves in literary work." That article, "Paying Tribute to Poe's Genius" (The Portsmouth [Virginia] Star, Jan. 18, 1909, page 1) makes it pretty clear that the "Raven" in Raven Club refers to the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The article also gives details on the celebration of the centenary of Poe's birth at the university. Poe of course attended the University of Virginia, as did Captain Luke Leary Stevens (1878-1944), teacher of J.C. Henneberger, later co-founder of Weird Tales magazine.

On June 19, 1915, Bardin married Sally Norvell Nelson (1891-1969) in Charlottesville. She was a watercolorist and a volunteer librarian, among other things. They had a son, Captain James Nelson Bardin (1926-2008) of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was also a writer, of non-fiction on aviation and handguns.

James C. Bardin entered the U.S. Army in 1918 as a first lieutenant and eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in the medical corps at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, and Camp Cody, New Mexico, in late 1918. Later he was a reserve officer in the geographic division of the Military Intelligence Service. And he served again during World War II. Bardin had been in Paris at the outbreak of the Great War, but he made it back stateside in one way or another. He traveled often and to many different countries. He was a student of the Mayan civilization and its languages. In 1929, he criticized Charles A. Lindbergh's flights over Mayan ruins, a photographic expedition, as being "worthless to science," according to a contemporaneous newspaper article. The current website of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has a different opinion.

Bardin retired to the coastal counties of North Carolina (as Captain Stevens had before him). James C. Bardin, M.D., Ph.D., died on October 13, 1959, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salisbury, North Carolina, after a very long stay. He was seventy-two years old. His death came in the same month of the year as Poe's and just six days after that anniversary, the 110th. Bardin was buried at Manteo Cemetery, Dare County, North Carolina.

To be concluded . . .

Dr. James Cook Bardin (1887-1959), from the Waynesboro [Virginia] News-Virginian, December 6, 1938, page 5, on the occasion of a talk Bardin gave on the Spanish Civil War.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

The Curse of Tut-Ankh-Amen

The first story by Donald Edward Keyhoe in Weird Tales was "The Grim Passenger," published in April 1925, one hundred years before I began writing this series. My move and other events have intervened. That one-hundred year anniversary isn't so timely now. But I'll complete this series today.

"The Grim Passenger" is a story of Egypt and mummies. It begins with a reference to "the opening of the tomb of King Tut-Ankh-Amen," which took place in February 1923 but was still pretty fresh in the minds of the reading public two years later. Weird Tales had had plenty of content related to Egypt, pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, and King Tut-Ankh-Amen, most notably in its first-anniversary issue of May-June-July 1924. There would be more.

Keyhoe's story is one of a curse. Its author was clever enough to connect the idea of an ancient Egyptian curse to a more recent historical event. I won't give away his twist ending. There are those who believe in what they call the Curse of King Tut. Still there are those who believe these things. Even as late as the one-hundred-year anniversary issue of Weird Tales, published in 2023, there seems to have been belief, this expressed in Tim Lebbon's story "Laid to Rest." I will quote a newspaper article from one hundred years before: "It is really remarkable that otherwise intelligent persons should give credence to stories of this character [. . .] ." And yet they do. (Source: "Spirits and Lord Carnarvon," in The (San Francisco) Recorder, April 7, 1923, page 6.)

The concept of an ancient Egyptian curse visited upon those who disturb ancient tombs and graves is an old one. Like so much in our popular culture, it appears to date from the nineteenth century. The originators of the living mummy and a mummy's curse appear to have been three women, plus an anonymous author. They were Jane C. Loudon, Jane G. Austin, Louisa May Alcott, and, of course, Anonymous. You can read more about that on Wikipedia, the website that knows everything, including many things the rest of us know as lies.

There is a pharaonic curse in the work of another author. He was H. Rider Haggard. In Cleopatra: Being an Account of the Fall and Vengeance of Harmarchis (1889), Haggard wrote of how Harmarchis robs the tomb of the pharaoh Men-kau-ra and how "the 'Ka,' or the spirit of the dead Pharaoh, brought about the degradation and death of both Harmarchis and Cleopatra for their impious deed." (Same source as the above quote.) In February 1923, Haggard in fact protested against "desecrating the tombs at Luxor," asking, "'What would England think if the great dead in Westminster Abbey were exhumed and treated this way?'" (Source: "H. Rider Haggard Flays Desecration," in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 20, 1923, page 2.) Haggard is about to come up again.

The idea that there is a Curse of King Tut seems to have originated with the sickness and death of Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the explorations at the tomb of Tutankhamen. The first use of that phrase--"the Curse of King Tut"--that I have found in an American newspaper is from March 20, 1923. Lord Carnarvon had fallen ill the previous day from an infected mosquito bite. He died on April 5, 1923, in Cairo, and his body was returned to his native land for burial. I feel certain it has remained undisturbed since then. In any case, "the Curse of King Tut" and Weird Tales magazine are, as you can see, of the same vintage, for both got their start in March 1923. I don't know who came up with the idea of the curse. The newspaper article, shown below, is unsigned. But its anonymous author wrote it as if Haggard were in his place, and I find that noteworthy. It's also fascinating to realize that the writing lives of the early Weird Tales authors overlapped with that of H. Rider Haggard.

"The Curse of King Tut! Egyptians Insist Avenger Has Struck Invader of Tomb." From The Cleveland Press, March 20, 1923, page 1. The author is anonymous, but the art is signed. Unfortunately, I can't read the artist's last name, only his first--Paul. The account reads like a weird tale, and the illustration of a man in a pith helmet and jodhpurs, fleeing from a giant insect, could easily have appeared in "The Unique Magazine" of the 1920s.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

From Irvington to the Stars

We lived and grew up in Irvington. Once its own town, Irvington was annexed by the city of Indianapolis in 1902. Irvington is and was a cultured place. Its streets were named for prominent authors and artists of the nineteenth century, including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Hoosier poetess Sarah Bolton, and John James Audubon. Butler University got its start in Irvington before moving to the north side of Indianapolis. The Disciples of Christ had a prominent place in our neighborhood for decades. We walked past the Christian Church on our way to school. As much as anything, Irvington is now known for its annual Halloween Festival.

The painter William Forsyth lived in Irvington, as did caricaturist Kin Hubbard, creator of Abe Martin. Bill Shirley, the original Prince Charming, was from Irvington. Marjorie Main--Ma Kettle--lived there for a time. So did C.L. Moore (1911-1987). One of the homes in which she and her family lived was around the corner from that of the Cornelius family, who saved Weird Tales from extinction in the 1920s. On the opposite end of the social order, H.H. Holmes murdered and hid the remains of young Howard Pitezel in a house in Irvington in October 1894. Holmes poisoned Pitezel with drugs he had purchased at a local pharmacy. That small fact will come into play shortly. We never heard of Holmes and knew nothing about those events from the distant past. Holmes and everything he did seems to have been forgotten after his execution in 1896.

When we were kids, we walked to a lot of local businesses, many of which were in a Tudor-style block of buildings on the north side of the National Road, U.S. Highway 40, which, in Indianapolis, is called Washington Street. One of those businesses was Peacher Drugs, located at the northwest corner of Washington Street and North Audubon Road.* The pharmacist was Rex Peacher (1913-1983). Only today did I learn his name or anything about him. Peacher started his business in 1956 after having worked for Haag Drugs and probably in other places. He seems to have been destined to become a pharmacist, for if you take away the 'e' from his Christian name, you're left with Rx. Peacher sold everything at auction in September 1975 and retired in 1976. Like Howard Pitezel, he died in October.

Rex Peacher attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. One of his classmates was Robert Padgett Moore (1913-1973), who also became a businessman. If you look back two paragraphs, you will see again the surname Moore. In this world of strange coincidences, Rex Peacher's high school classmate was first C.L. Moore's younger brother. Peacher's drugstore was just one block east of the Moores' childhood home, though those two places were separated by decades. Remember that she used the surname Padgett, her grandmother's maiden name, as a shared pseudonym with her husband Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) in their writing lives. Robert Moore was buried out of Shirley Brothers mortuary, run by the family of Bill Shirley.

I don't know whether there was a pharmacy on the site of Rex Peacher's drugstore before he set up shop in 1956. I don't know where in 1894 H.H. Holmes might have bought his killing drugs. But the house in which he committed his crimes was on Julian Avenue, only about four blocks east of the site of Peacher's drugstore. That house is supposed to exist still. Sometime in the twentieth century, though, it was turned to Good.

The entrance to Peacher Drugs, or Peacher's as we called it, sat at a slant facing the street corner. Upon entering the store, if you turned to the right and went all the way to the rear, you would find a shelf upon which plastic model kits were set up for sale. We didn't have much money when we were kids. Revell models were the high-end brand and were mostly out of reach for us. Monogram models were more affordable. Very often, though, we could afford only models from the Lindberg Line, which sold for $1.25 apiece.

I have always liked airplanes, and when I was a kid I usually bought only airplane models. (I made an exception for Aurora monster models, later for the AMT Gigantics series.) I remember building a Grumman Hellcat, one of my favorites, and a Messerschmitt Bf 109. I remember my older brother had an Me 262. Like kids did in those days, we hung our airplane models from the bedroom ceiling. Airplane models hung from the ceiling of the day room in our barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, too. On our last night there, late into the night, I built a C-119 Flying Boxcar to add to the collection. The next day, I slept almost the whole way on the bus to Sheppard Air Force Base. That's where I learned to work on the real thing, in my case the F-16 Fighting Falcon, sometimes in places far from the Irvington of my childhood, including in two war zones.

When I was a kid, I thought the Lindberg Line models were named after Charles Lindbergh. That seemed logical enough: he was a famous airplane pilot, the Lindberg Line were airplane models, and so the models were named in his honor. Only later did I find out that the Lindberg Line was named for the founder of the company, Paul Lindberg (1904-1988). Again, Lindberg models were cheaper than most other brands. The box art wasn't as good and there were fewer parts and fewer decals. But there were enough parts to put wings on a dream. 

I have been writing about Charles Lindbergh and Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988). Like Lindbergh, Keyhoe was an aviator. Born in Iowa, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1919 and became a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Keyhoe was injured in a plane crash in Guam in 1922 and later discharged. In his convalescence, he began writing. He wrote about aviation for magazines and newspapers, but he also wrote pulp fiction, including early stories for Weird Tales. Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) also graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He, too, was discharged for medical reasons and became a writer of pulp fiction. Both men died in the same year, 1988, nigh on forty years ago. Heinlein of course won a far wider fame.

One of the ideas that came out of the Flying Saucer Era is that Earth was visited in ancient times by people from other planets. Although he wrote mostly on the flying saucers of the present, Keyhoe also touched upon this ancient astronaut hypothesis. Modern-day researchers have traced the origins of the ancient astronaut hypothesis to the works of another pulp-fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), especially to "The Call of Cthulhu" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1928) and At the Mountains of Madness (Astounding Stories, Feb.-Mar.-Apr. 1936). I have a feeling the idea goes back farther than that, though perhaps not very much farther. I wonder what, if anything, Charles Fort had to say about the whole matter.

Flying saucers were one of two major religious belief systems to come out of science fiction. The other, Dianetics/Scientology, also draws on the ancient astronaut hypothesis. The story is that a long time ago, in a galactic empire far, far away, an alien named Xenu packed his people into spacecraft that looked like the Douglas DC-8 and proceeded to bring them to Earth. I have seen online images of a Lindberg Line model of the DC-8. One of these bears the Pan Am logo. Remember that in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), there are spacecraft with the same logo. These are shown after a long, wordless opening sequence in which ancient astronauts influence pre-men into becoming men. They do this using a monolith that hums because they don't yet know the words. Anyway, there weren't any parts to make Xenu attached to the sprue of those old Lindberg Line models. If you had wanted him, you would have had to build him from scratch, just as his creator did in the dark depths of his twisted mind. By the way, L. Ron Hubbard served in the U.S. Navy, too, and styled himself a hero. Instead I think he was more or less a nincompoop and a far, far cry from Lindbergh, Keyhoe, and Heinlein.

 Next: More on Keyhoe and then an end.

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For my younger brother, whom we have lost and whose birthday was last week.

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*One street was named for a Federalist, the other for a Romantic, both frontiersman. George Washington never set foot in what is now Indiana, but John James Audubon almost certainly did. By the way, the grandmother of my classmate Mary, named Jean Brown Wagoner (1896-1996), was also an Irvingtonian and also an author. She wrote a biography, Martha Washington: Girl of Old Virginia (1947), among others in the Childhood of Famous Americans series published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis. She came to talk to us and answer questions when we were in grade school. Her father was Hilton U. Brown (1859-1958) of the Indianapolis News, Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc., Butler University, and the Disciples of Christ Church. If I have this right, he lived across the street from the painter William Forsyth.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Update After a Long Absence

I haven't written since May 19. That's the longest pause in my writing, I think, since I began this blog. The reason is that I have moved. Most of my things are now in storage. I think I can keep going with my research and writing, but things will be different for me, at least for a while. I will pick up again where I left off, with Donald Keyhoe and his connections to Weird Tales and flying saucers.

Thanks for hanging in there with me and continuing to read my blog during my absence. Last month there were nearly 67,000 visits here. I hope that most of those were real people and not robots or AI.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley