Ask McGehee
Generations of visitors to the Port City's signature antebellum museum home have been told that the little white house, above, was once a detached kitchen or that it...
Ask McGehee
Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont was known internationally during her long lifetime. Her first husband, William K. Vanderbilt, was one of the wealthiest men in the world,...
Steamboatin' on Mobile River
Steamboats were the defining objects of antebellum Mobile. According to one contemporary list, there were 50 of them working the local waterways. They ranged in size from...
The Stakes: 1814
In the late summer of 1814, a year after the massacre at Fort Mims and five months after the Creek defeat at Horseshoe Bend, Gen. Andrew...
Ask McGehee
Known as the Guesnard House, the brick Italianate structure has occupied that corner since 1859. Its architect was Scottish-born David Cumming Jr., whose sister, Kate,...
Ask McGehee
James Conning was a New York-born jeweler who had established himself on Dauphin Street in the 1840s. Early advertisements assured customers of a “large and elegant assortment of...
French Plantation Life on the Mobile River
Throughout the Port City’s long colonial century (1702 - 1813), there were plantations all around the Bay area. These were not like the enormous cotton farms of...
Big Stage, Big Names
The Civic Center Arena, originally named Municipal Auditorium, has hosted some of the most legendary musicians and groups in the nation. Keeping with the spirit of...
The Mississippian Period
Long before Europeans first trod these shores, Native Americans were here. In the beginning, they were simple hunter-gatherers, subsisting on what they could take from...
An Independent Woman
For all the delights of my first trip to New York City in 1964, the summer I turned 11, none was greater than having my big...
