African-American Union soldiers are shown at Dutch Gap, Virginia, in November 1864 wearing typical Union uniforms and wielding the 1853 Enfield rifles used by U.S. Colored Troops.[U.S. Library of Congress]

Archeologists discover suspected graves of massacred Black Civil War unit

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

In January 1865, just over three months before the U.S. Civil War ended, the 80 men of Company ‘E,’ 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry, were ordered to drive 900 cattle 140 kilometres west from their base at Camp Nelson in Kentucky to Louisville.

Louisville was a Union stronghold and operations base for the war’s western theatre—the centre of planning, supply, recruiting and transportation for numerous campaigns throughout the four-year struggle between the states. The beef was destined to help feed the city and its 100,000 blue-coated troops.

The men, most of whom had escaped slavery to enlist, spread out over a large area, driving the animals across the cold, snow-covered Kentucky countryside. Then, on Jan. 25, those at the rear of the herd—known in cowboy parlance as drag riders, or “drags”—were attacked by Confederate guerrillas just outside Simpsonville.

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One in Six Million is the third, and most serious, book by author Amy Fish. [https://amyfishwrites.com/]

Author Amy Fish Talks Canadian Altruism for a Holocaust survivor

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

Canadian author Amy Fish is first to acknowledge “I usually write funny books,” from The Art of Complaining Effectively to I Wanted Fries with That. Her latest tome, however, is seemingly anything but humorous, charting the exploits of a Holocaust survivor as she finally learns the truth behind her lost familial roots.

The newly released book is entitled One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity, while the man it refers to is a Canadian ceiling salesman-turned-genealogist willing to lend a hand.

This is the story of Maria and Stanley, told by their Montreal-based biographer.

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Lesions identified as lion bite marks are shown on the left iliac spine of the gladiator 6DT19.
[T.J.U. Thompson et al]

Bites on Roman gladiator’s skeleton first hard proof of combat with lion

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Archeologists say puncture wounds and other bite marks on an 1,800-year-old skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in England are the first hard evidence that gladiators fought animals—in this case a lion—in Europe.

The evidence suggests the man was killed during a gladiator show or execution, and that the big cat gnawed on his pelvis or was dragging him across the arena about the time he died. The hapless gladiator was also decapitated, indicating he was put “out of his misery at the point of death.”

His skeleton, found in a roadside cemetery called Driffield Terrace, is believed to have been buried between 200-300 AD near the Roman city of Eboracum, now York. He was 26-35 years old.

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Author Bonnie Sitter was searching through old family photographs when she found a black-and-white image of a group of young women, with the caption, “Farmerettes 1946.” [welendahand.ca/]

Documentary highlights Canada’s WW II farmerettes

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

For Bonnie Sitter, it began with two old photos; for Colin Field, a banjo.

After her husband passed away in 2016, Sitter had been sifting through items when she unearthed black-and-white images of three girls. Scrawled on the back of each was “Farmerettes,” the name bestowed upon Canadian teenagers who, throughout much of the Second World War and beyond, worked in market gardens, orchards and canneries to help maintain food production for the broader Allied war effort.

The pictured farmerettes, three of an estimated 40,000 in Ontario alone, had served on her late spouse’s family farm. Inspired to uncover more, Sitter collaborated on a book with Shirleyan English—herself a postwar-era farmerette—leading to Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of Ontario Farmerettes, published in 2019.

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