Amazing Americans: High-Interest Short Stories from America's Past

By Morrie Greenberg

Twenty-one high interest true short stories that feature exciting personalities from America’s past. Each personality made unique contributions to America, and their stories are recounted in exciting terms. Many are men or women unfamiliar to Americans today. Some are genuine heroes. Some are doctors, scientists, military figures, sports personalities, or pioneers in their fields. And, yes, some are unusual characters. Each story unfolds in ways certain to capture and hold the reader’s interest from beginning to end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morrie Greenberg
• Release date: Jun 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452404172

Book preview

Amazing Americans: High Interest True Short Stories from America’s Past

by Morrie Greenberg

Smashwords Edition

Published by

Brooke-Richards Press

Summerlin, Nevada

[e-mail]

Copyright 2012 by Morrie Greenberg

All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-9622652-7-6

OTHER BOOKS BY MORRIE GREENBERG

The Buck Stops Here, A Biography of Harry Truman, Macmillan

We the People (School history text, multistate adoptions), D.C. Heath

Survival in the Square, Brooke-Richards Press

American Adventures, Part 1 1770-1870, Brooke-Richards Press

American Adventures, Part 2 1870-Present, Brooke-Richards Press

American Heroes 1735-1900, Brooke-Richards Press

American Characters, They Marched To A Different Drummer, 1850-1950 Brooke-Richards Press

So you Like Short Stories, Brooke-Richards Press

CONTENTS

1. 1830 Joseph Palmer The Stubbornest Man in Town

2. 1838 John Cleaves Symes I Declare the Earth is Hollow

3. 1844 Horace Wells The Great Discovery

4. 1861 Clara Barton The Bravest Lady

5. 1881 Jane Addams A Call to Action

6. 1898 William Sidis The Smartest Child in America

7. 1901 Annie Edison Taylor No One Ought Ever Do That

8. 1906 William Schmidt The Tunnel to Nowhere

9. 1914 George Washington Goethals The Man Who Built the Panama Canal

10. 1914 Joseph Goldberger Doctor or Detective?

11. 1917 Garret Morgan To the Rescue

12. 1922 Philo Farnsworth Pictures That Could Fly

13. 1925 Alaska Mushers A Race Against Time

14. 1927 Charles Lindbergh The Lone Eagle

15. 1940 Wilma Rudolph The Girl Who Never Gave Up

16. 1942 Eddie Rickenbacker American Hero

17. 1944 Dwight Eisenhower From Farm Boy to General

18. 1953 George C. Marshall The Greatest of the Great

19. 1960 Chester F. Carlson America’s Unknown Inventor

20. 1986 Christa McAuliffe Teacher in Space

21. 1990s Weinmayer, Murden Heroes of the 1990s

#1

1830 Joseph Palmer: The Stubbornest Man In Town

The thump of rocks pounding against his house jolted Joseph out of his chair. Someone was throwing rocks at him! Joseph put down the cup of tea in his hand and rushed to the window. Too late! Whoever had thrown the rocks was gone.

The rock throwing was no surprise. It was just the latest in the insults aimed at Joseph Palmer since he left his farm weeks earlier to live in the small town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Something strange seemed to happen almost every day: Town merchants refused to wait on him. Women whispered to one another when he passed by, and the men in the town would not even return a hello.

Joseph took all of this calmly, but what happened the day after the rock-throwing incident surprised him. As he left his home that morning, he noticed four men standing nearby. When he drew closer to them, the men circled around him. Two of them grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

Get off me! Joseph yelled, but the men only tightened their grips around his arms. Joseph was in his early forties, but farming the rocky Massachusetts soil had kept his muscles strong. He grabbed the arm of one of the men and worked his way loose. He then stood up and kept swinging at his assailants until they ran off. Joseph dusted himself off, but if he thought it was the end of the incident he was mistaken.

Later that day the sheriff came by and took him to the town judge who accused Joseph of attacking the men. The judge ordered Joseph to pay a fine. When he refused to pay the fine—even though he could afford to do so—the judge sent him off to the town jail.

As he sat in the cramped jail, Joseph had time to think about all that had happened since he arrived in town. He was an honest, hard working farmer—certainly no criminal. Yet children threw rocks, merchants ignored him, women shunned him, men attacked him, and a judge sent him to jail. Why were all these things happening to him?

Joseph knew exactly why. If you lived in Fitchburg in 1830 you would understand. Yes, Joseph was an honest, hard working farmer, but he was different from every other man living in Fitchburg: Joseph Palmer had a long white beard that he refused to shave off. No man in all of Fitchburg had a beard. Citizens were not just about to let this newcomer, this stranger, be different. The men who attacked Joseph were not trying to rob him. They only wanted to cut off his beard!

True, many men before him wore beards. The early explorers—whether from Spain, France, Portugal or England—had beards. Many of the patriots who declared their independence from England in 1776 and gave us our Constitution in 1781 wore beards. However, by the time Joe Palmer arrived in Fitchburg in 1830, most Americans were no longer wearing beards.

Joseph could have easily stopped the citizens and the judge from persecuting or picking on him. All he had to do was take a scissors and razor in hand and shave his beard—but Joseph liked his beard! And, no matter what anyone else in town said, he was going to keep it. After all, Joseph claimed, a man had the right to wear a beard if he wanted to!

Before long, citizens throughout Massachusetts were reading about The Bearded Prisoner. Respected Americans—men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau—began speaking out against keeping Joseph in jail. When the news reached cities like Philadelphia and New York, more and more citizens began to argue that it was wrong to keep a man in jail simply because he wore a beard.

The sheriff and the judge of Fitchburg grew tired and embarrassed by all of the attention. The judge then ordered the jailer to release Joseph. Joseph however, was not about to leave. I won’t leave until you tell me that I have the right to wear a beard, he insisted. By now, the jailer had also had enough of Joseph Palmer. Together, the jailer and the sheriff lifted Joseph and his chair. They carried him outside, sat him down, then slammed the jail door behind him. Whether he wanted it or not,