Columnist

Mines, miner's rights, and mining accidents - all of these topics weigh very heavily in the history of our area. Let's leap ahead to the “gay 90's” to see if they were really all so “gay.”
One reason that we are skipping to 1897, is that written sources for the years 1886 - 1897, such as newspapers do not exist. Wilmington papers end at January 1887 and do not pick up again until March of 1904. Most of the previous history has come from that source. I have found one Joliet paper that kept track of news in the coal fields, but unfortunately those papers start in 1897.

It's in Wesley, it's in Wilmington, Florence and more. California gold is in the ground. Don't go running out for picks and shovels just yet though. What I mean will be made clear in the following paragraphs. Set the way back machine for January 24, 1848, location - the American River near Sacramento, California.
On that day James Marshall found shiny metal in the tailrace of Sutter's mill. It turned out to be gold. It wasn't until August 19, 1848 that the news was published in the East. The rush was immediate.

I can hear the music in my head, from PBS's TV show - The History Detectives. It happens to me every time I feel like I have a puzzle to figure out. I'm putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat, come Watson the game is afoot.
I recently reviewed the photos I have of people and organizations in Braidwood history. Two photos caught my interest, and I realized that they represented the very violent history of Braidwood. We know little about who these people were, but we do know they were “packing.”