German immigrant Johann Lotz moved to Franklin, Tennessee to open a carpentry business. However, as the Civil War ravaged the country Lotz’s home became ground zero for the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864. The battle ended with over 9,000 casualties, most of which took place in Lotz’s front yard. Now the Lotz House…
One of the most popular bars in the French Quarter has a checkered past with ties to fabled pirate Jean Lafitte! Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop was just that, a blacksmith shop in the 1800s. However, it was also a front to sell stolen goods. As legend has it Lafitte buried some of his treasure on the…
Before the Civil War New Albany was the largest city in Indiana due to its proximity to the Ohio River. During the war it was an important hub to both the Confederacy and especially the Union who set up hospitals there. After the war President Abraham Lincoln established a National Cemetery in New Albany, making…
After English raids in the 17th century the Spanish realized that their wooden forts would not hold up under attack. The Castillo de San Marcos was built in 1702 on the western shore of St Augustine鈥檚 Matanzas Bay and it turned away invaders during British forces in 1728 and 1740. According to legend the old…
While Dolly Parton was opening Dollywood and Opryland was becoming one of the most popular theme parks in the south Conway Twitty dipped his toe into the water as well. As one of the most popular country singers in the 1980s Twitty opened his own attraction called Twitty Citty in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Unfortunately after his…
After earning the first license to mix and dispense medicine in Louisiana Louis Dufilho Jr. opened a pharmacy in the French Quarter, even though he practiced primitive procedures like bloodletting and leeches Dufilho was a respected apothecary. However, Dr. Joseph Dupas, the man who bought his old building and opened up his own practice was…
Before the Civil War the son of a wealthy judge, John Overton Jr. bought a plot of land in downtown Nashville and began building a lavish hotel. Then when the Union army rolled into town the unfinished hotel became a prison where captured Confederate soldiers were held. After the war the hotel was finished and…
The Omni Parker House is one of the most historic hotels in Boston. It’s hosted every United States President since Ulysses S. Grant and was the meeting place for literary giants such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and other notable novelists, authors, and poets during the 1800s. But the hotel is…
Reverend Sherman M. Merrill may have founded the First United Methodist Church in Gallatin but he was also on the run from a past that wouldn’t stop chasing him. Adultery, insurance fraud and murder were all charges that Merrill tried to duck and dodge over the years. In addition to the scandalous preacher the old…
Built for wealthy cotton merchant Captain Aaron Churchill, the building that is now home to the Forsyth Park Inn. Mystery and legends surround the house and a shocking murder that allegedly took place in 1899? Did a little girl unknowingly kill her mother that she never knew? Across the street the beautiful Forsyth Park is…
