147 episodes

A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.

Unsung History Kelly Therese Pollock

    • History
    • 4.8 • 72 Ratings

A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.

    Eliza Scidmore

    Eliza Scidmore

    Journalist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore traveled the world in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, writing books and hundreds of articles about such places as Alaska, Japan, China, India, and helping shape the journal of the National Geographic Society into the photograph-heavy magazine it is today. Scidmore is perhaps best known today for her long-running and eventually successful campaign to bring Japanese cherry trees to Potomac Park in Washington, DC.

    Joining me in this episode is writer Diana Parsell, author of Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees.

    Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “My Cherry Blossom,” written by Ted Snyder and performed by Lanin’s Orchestra on May 12, 1921, in New York City; audio is in the public domain and is available via the Discography of American Historical Recordings. The episode image is "Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore [signature]," The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1895 - 1910. 

    Additional Sources:
    “Cherry blossoms’ champion, Eliza Scidmore, led a life of adventure,” by Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post, March 13, 2012.“Eliza Scidmore,” National Park Service.“Beyond the Cherry Trees: The Life and Times of Eliza Scidmore,” by Jennifer Pocock, National Geographic,March 27, 2012.“The Surprisingly Calamitous History of DC’s Cherry Blossoms,” by Hayley Garrison Phillips, Washingtonian, March 18, 2018.“Cherry Blossoms, Travel Logs, and Colonial Connections: Eliza Scidmore’s Contributions to the Smithsonian,” by Kasey Sease, Smithsonian Institution Archives, August 18, 2020.“Celebrating Eliza Scidmore: Nat Geo’s First Female Photographer,” by Kern Carter, Writers are Superstars, May 14, 2023.“The American Woman Who Reported On Japan’s Entry Into World War I,” By Diana Parsell, Doughboy Foundation, August 8, 2023.“The woman who shaped National Geographic,” National Geographic, February 22, 2017.“Photo lot 139, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore photographs relating to Japan and China,” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

    • 43 min
    Foreign Missionaries & American Diplomacy in the 19th Century

    Foreign Missionaries & American Diplomacy in the 19th Century

    In 1812, when the United States was still a young nation and its State Department was tiny, American citizens began heading around the world as Christian missionaries. Early in the 19th Century, the US government often saw missionaries as experts on the politics, culture, and language of regions like China and the Sandwich Islands, but as the State Department expanded its own global footprint, it became increasingly concerned about missionary troubles.

    Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz, Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University and author of Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations.

    Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Jesus, Love of My Soul,” written by Charles Wesley and performed by Simeon Butler March and Henry Burr on February 25, 1916; the audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is from the Jubilee Story of the China Inland Mission, Marshall Broomhall, Morgan & Scott, London, 1915; it is in the public domain.

    Additional Sources:
    “Were Christian missionaries ‘foundational’ to the United States?” by Emily Conroy-Krutz, The Washington Post, October 18, 2018.“Into All the World: the Story of Haystack [video,]” Chaplain Rick Spalding, Williams College, September 25, 2013.“American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions historical documents,” Global Ministries.“The life and letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL.D., missionary, diplomatist, Sinologue,” by Frederick Wells Williams, 1889.“Missionary Movement - Timeline Movement,” The Association of Religion Data Archives.“The Foreign Missionary Movement in the 19th and early 20th Centuries,” by Daniel H. Bays, National Humanities center.“A History of the United States Department of State, 1789-1996,” Released by the Office of the Historian, July 1996.“About,” United States Department of State.“In 200-year tradition, most Christian missionaries are American,” by Daniel Lovering, Reuters, February 20, 2012.

    • 43 min
    Tammany Hall, FDR & the Murder of Vivian Gordon

    Tammany Hall, FDR & the Murder of Vivian Gordon

    In 1931, Judge Samuel Seabury was leading an investigation for Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt into corruption in New York’s magistrate courts when a witness in the investigation named Vivian Gordon was found murdered in the Bronx. Because of the public demand for answers in this high-profile murder case, FDR could no longer keep his uneasy peace with Tammany Hall and expanded the scope of Seabury’s investigation. What Seabury’s team uncovered brought down Mayor Jimmy Walker and began to topple the Tammany Hall stranglehold on New York City politics.

    Joining me in this episode is writer Michael Wolraich, author of The Bishop And The Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age.

    Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is by Daniel Carlton on Pixabay and is available for use via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Mid-town Manhattan, looking northeast toward Chrysler Building,” photographed by William Frange, ca. 1931; there are no known restrictions on publication and the image is available via the Library of Congress.

    Additional Sources:
    “The Politics and Iconography of Tammany in the Early American Republic,” by Keith Muchowski, Journal of the American Revolution, August 19, 2021“Boss Tweed’s Rise and Downfall | New York: A Documentary Film [video],” PBS.“The corrupt N.Y. congressman who was sentenced to prison — and escaped,” by George Bass, The Washington post, July 2, 2023.“The Case For Tammany Hall Being On The Right Side Of History,” NPR Fresh Air, March 5, 2014.“How an Unlikely Alliance Saved the Democrats 100 Years Ago,” by Terry Golway, Politico Magazine, September 17, 2018.“Franklin D. Roosevelt: Life Before the Presidency,” by William E. Leuchtenburg, UVA Miller Center.“Samuel Seabury,” Historical Society of the New York Courts.“The Insane 1930s Graft Investigation That Took Down New York’s Mayor—and Then Tammany Hall,” by Erin Blakemore, History.com, Originally posted April 17, 2019, and updated April 22, 2019.“The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor,” by Rachel Shteir, Smithsonian Magazine, February 25, 2013.“Jimmy Walker May Have Been NYC's Most Corrupt Mayor, but Damn Was He Fun,” Avenue Magazine, December 2, 2021.“Jazz Age Mayor and Villager, Jimmy Walker,” by Sarah Bean Apmann, Off the Grid, June 18, 2020.

    • 40 min
    The Combahee River Raid of 1863

    The Combahee River Raid of 1863

    Starting in November 1861, the Union Army held the city of Beaufort, South Carolina, using the Sea Islands as a southern base of operations in the Civil War. Harriet Tubman joined the Army there, debriefing freedom seekers who fled enslavement in nearby regions and ran to seek the Union Army’s protection in Beaufort. With the intelligence Tubman gathered, she and Colonel James Montgomery led 150 Black soldiers on a daring raid along the Combahee RIver in June 1863, destroying seven rice plantations in the heart of the Confederate breadbasket, causing $6 million worth of damages and liberating 756 people from enslavement on the rice fields.

    Joining me in this episode is Dr. Edda Fields-Black, Associate Professor of HIstory at Carnegie Mellon University and author of COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.

    Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Dangerous," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. The episode image is Mcpherson & Oliver, photographer. “2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment raid on rice plantation, Combahee, South Carolina,” by Mcpherson and Oliver, published in Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

    Additional Sources:
    “Port Royal, Battle of,” by Stephen R. Wise, Encyclopedia of South Carolina, Originally published June 20, 2016, and updated August 22, 2022.“Nov. 7, 1861: The Port Royal Experiment Initiated,” Zinn Education Project.“The Port Royal Experiment,” The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI).“Port Royal Experiment: Reconstruction Era in Beaufort, South Carolina with Park Ranger Chris Barr [video],” National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), August 23, 2022.“Life on the Sea Islands (Part I),” by Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Atlantic, May 1864.“Life on the Sea Islands (Part II),” by Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Atlantic, June 1864.“Harriet Tubman’s Great Raid,” by Paul Donnelly, The New York Times, June 7, 2013.“After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid,” by Alexis Clark, History.com, Originally published November 1, 2019, and updated August 29, 2023.

    • 46 min
    The History of Ice in the United States

    The History of Ice in the United States

    Today, Americans consume 400 pounds of ice a year, each. That would have been unfathomable to people in the 18th century, but a number of innovators and ice barons in the 19th and 20th centuries changed the way we think about the slippery substance. Joining me in this episode is writer Dr. Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks–A Cool History of a Hot Commodity.

    Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “All She Gets from the Iceman is Ice,” written by Arthur J. Lamb and Alfred Solman and performed by Ada Jones in 1908; the song is in the public domain and is available via the Internet Archive. The episode image is: “Girls deliver ice. Heavy work that formerly belonged to men only is being done by girls. The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the partriotic ambition to help," taken on September 16, 1918; image is in the public domain and is available via the National Archives (NAID: 533758; Local ID: 165-WW-595A(3)).

    Additional Sources:
    “The Stubborn American Who Brought Ice to the World,” By Reid Mitenbuler, The Atlantic, February 5, 2013.“Tracing the History of New England’s Ice Trade,” by Devin Hahn and Amy Laskowski, The Brink: Pioneering Research from Boston University, February 4, 2022.“The Bizarre But True Story of America's Obsession With Ice Cubes,” by Reid Mitenbuler, Epicurious, September 26, 2016.“The Surprisingly Cool History of Ice, by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, Mental Floss, February 10, 2016.“Keeping your (food) cool: From ice harvesting to electric refrigeration,” by Emma Grahn, National Museum of American History, April 29, 2015.“When Everyone Wanted to Be the Iceman,” by Kelly Robinson, Atlas Obscura, August 23, 2019.“The History of Human-Made Ice,” by Amy Brady, Discover Magazine, December 2, 2023.“The Dawn of New York's Ice Age,” by Edward T. O'Donnell, The New York Times, July 21, 2005.“The History of the Refrigerator,” by Mary Bellis, ThoughtCo, Updated on October 31, 2019.“A Chilling History: on the science and technology of portable coolers,” by Laura Prewitt, Science History Institute, July 24, 2023.No chill: A closer look at America’s obsession with ice,” by Haley Chouinard, Business of Home, December 23, 2020.“Climate-Friendly Cocktail Recipes Go Light on Ice,” by Amy Brady, Scientific American, July 1, 2023.

    • 43 min
    The History of Blue Jeans

    The History of Blue Jeans

    If you’re like most Americans – or most people on earth – you have a pair of jeans, or maybe five, in your wardrobe. There’s a decent chance you’re wearing jeans right now. These humble pants were invented by a Reno tailor in the 1870s in response to a frustrated customer whose husband kept wearing through his pants too quickly. How, then, did they become a global phenomenon expected to exceed $100 billion in sales by 2025? Joining me to help answer that question is historian, writer, and screenwriter, Dr. Carolyn Purnell, author of Blue Jeans.

    Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Blue Jeans,” composed by Josef Pasternack and performed by the Peerless Quartet in 1921; audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Five Idaho farmers, members of Ola self-help sawmill co-op, in the woods standing against a load of logs ready to go down to their mill about three miles away,” photographed by Dorothea Lange in Gem County, Idaho, in October 1939 for the Farm Security Administration; the image is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress.

    Additional Sources:
    “The Origin of Blue Jeans,” by Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian Magazine, September 26, 2011.“The History of Denim,” Levi Strauss & Co., July 4, 2019.“Riveted: The History of Jeans [video],” PBS American Experience Season 34, Episode 1, February 7, 2022. “Durable and enduring, blue jeans turn 150,” by Jessica Green, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, May 23, 2023.“Behind 150 years of the world’s most famous denim jeans,” by Gordon Ng, Vogue Singapore, May 3, 2023.“How Denim Became a Political Symbol of the 1960s,” by Brandon Tensley, Smithsonian Magazine, December 2020.“Throwback Thursday: Levi’s — Right For School?” Levi Strauss & Co., September 24, 2015.

    • 41 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
72 Ratings

72 Ratings

Kacky07 ,

What You Need To Know

Excellent Podcast! I’m really enjoying learning so many things about our History. TY for creating this space!

her half of history ,

Great Topics

I loved learning about women and events that were completely left out of my education like Patsy Mink and the National Women's Conference.

Loganfool ,

Thanks Beans

This is great. Right up my alley!

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