Hometown History

By Shane WatersSociety & Culture True Crime History

Hometown History episodes

May 19 Jacksonville, Florida: The 1888 Yellow Fever Epidemic That Built Public Health
In the sweltering summer of 1888, a Tampa saloon keeper named R.D. McCormick stepped off a train in Jacksonville, Florida, carrying something far deadlier than luggage. Within weeks, the disease known as Yellow Jack would transform America's booming winter playground into a quarantined city of the dead, sending refugees fleeing north only to be met with armed guards, locked gates, and threats of gunfire. Of the roughly fourteen thousand people who stayed, one in three would contract yellow fever. Four hundred and twenty-seven would never recover.
Jacksonville in 1888 was no ordinary Southern city. A progressive coalition of working-class whites and African Americans had swept the previous year's election, seating five Black council members, a Black municipal judge, and twenty-three Black police officers. The epidemic shattered that experiment in biracial governance. As elected officials fled, civilian leaders stepped forward. Colonel J.J. Daniel organized the Jacksonville Auxiliary Sanitary Association, hiring hundreds of doctors and nurses before the fever claimed his own life. Dr. Alexander Darnes, Jacksonville's first African American physician, stayed to treat patients from both communities. A woman known as Mrs. A.B. Anthony went house to house delivering milk to the sick at her own expense.
Timeline of Key Events
The 1888 Jacksonville yellow fever epidemic unfolded with terrifying speed across five months, from a single diagnosisto a city-wide catastrophe.
July 28, 1888: R.D. McCormick diagnosed as first confirmed yellow fever case
August 10, 1888: Board of Health officially declares epidemic; Jacksonville Auxiliary Sanitary Association formed
September 3, 1888: Acting Mayor J.W. Archibald evacuates the city
Late September 1888: Peak week, 944 new cases and 70 deaths in seven days
November 25, 1888: First hard frost kills mosquitoes and effectively ends the epidemic
December 15, 1888: National and state quarantines officially lifted
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history
Episode 201 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

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23 min
May 12 Bessemer City, North Carolina: The Ballad Singer the Mill Bosses Couldn't Silence
Bessemer City, North Carolina. September 14th, 1929. A flatbed truck kicks up Red Carolina dust on a back road outside Bessemer City. The boards rattle beneath 22 pairs of feet. No one in the truck bed carries a weapon. They are textile workers heading home from a roadblock that turned them around. They did what they were told. They turned back, and the cars behind them kept coming. In that truck bed, gripping the wooden side rails, a 29-year-old woman feels the September heat press against her skin.
TIMELINE
1927: By 1927, the Loray mill had introduced the stretch-out system, slashing its workforce from $3,500 to $2,200 while demanding the same output.
1929: On March 25, 1929, five workers at the Loray mill were fired for attending a union meeting.
1979: On September 14, 1979, the 50th anniversary of her death, a group of North Carolina women placed a permanent AFL-CIO marker on Ella May Wiggins' grave.
1986: In 1986, North Carolina proposed a historical marker near the Loray Mill.
2013: In 2013, after 27 years of resistance, a revised historical marker was approved.
2017: Wiley Cash, in his 2017 Southern Book Prize winning novel, The Last Ballad, brought Ella Mae's story to a generation that had never heard it.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Bessemer City is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 200 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 168 (Hickory, North Carolina)
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

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21 min
May 05 Forsyth County, Georgia: The Town Georgia Tried to Bury Twice
September, 1912, Forsyth County, Georgia, 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, farming country, red clay roads, pine forests thick enough to block out the afternoon sun. The air sits heavy. It smells like turned earth and wood smoke. More than a thousand black Americans live here. They own land. They go to church. William and Ida Bagley own 60 acres. Grant Smith preaches on Sunday. Children walk to school along dirt paths worn smooth by generations of feet.
TIMELINE
1912: September, 1912, Forsyth County, Georgia, 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, farming country, red clay roads, pine forests thick enough to block out the afternoon sun.
1913: In February 1913, a grand jury drops all charges against Tony Howell.
1920: The 1920 census recorded 30 black residents, where there had been more than a thousand.
1956: In 1956, the sluice gates close.
1987: By 1987, Forsyth County's population reached 40,000.
1994: In 1994, the invisible empire of the KKK is forced to dissolve.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Forsyth County is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 199 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

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26 min
April 28 Carrollton, Mississippi: The 1886 Courthouse Massacre That History Forgot
January 1886, Carrollton, Mississippi, a Saturday afternoon. Two brothers are hauling jugs of molasses from a wagon into a saloon. Heavy earthenware vessels, maybe 20 pounds each, slick with condensation. Ed and Charlie Brown, part African American, part Native American, working men making a delivery. The doorways narrow, someone's coming out as they're going in. Bodies shift, a jug tilts, and thick brown molasses drips down a white man's sleeve. The brothers stop, apologize.
TIMELINE
1834: Founded in 1834 and named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland.
1860: By 1860, just before the Civil War, the county's population was about 22,000 people.
1865: Between 1865 and 1950, historians suggest there were dozens of mass racial terror events in the American South.
1880: By 1880, Carroll County was still roughly 56% black.
2019: In 2019, Mississippi Freedom Trail installed a historical marker on the courthouse square.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Carrollton is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 198 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
23 min
April 21 Dover, Delaware: The Poisoned Chocolates That Changed American Law
August 1898, Dover, Delaware. The heat of the day has broken, and the air smells of cut grass and warm earth. On the porch of the Pennington family home, Mary Elizabeth Dunning opens a package from the afternoon mail, a box of chocolate bonbons, a Cambric handkerchief, and a note. With love to yourself and baby, Miss C. She passes the candy around. Her sister Ida takes one. Her daughter takes one. Friends gathered on the porch reach in. The evening is warm. The chocolate is sweet.
TIMELINE
1887: From 1887 to 1891, and a former attorney general of Delaware, Pennington was one of the most respected men in Kent County.
1895: Around 1895, Dunning met Cordelia near Golden Gate Park.
1896: In 1896, Mary, devastated by the infidelity and financial ruin, packed up and returned to Dover with their young daughter to live with her father.
1898: Early 1898, the Spanish-American War was coming, and the Associated Press needed war correspondence.
1906: After the 1906 earthquake destroyed the county jail, Cordelia was transferred to San Quentin.
1907: John Preston Dunning, his career destroyed by the trial revelations, died in 1907 in Philadelphia, penniless, and at 43.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Dover is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 197 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
23 min
April 14 Brattleboro, Vermont: The Asylum Tower Holding a Century of Secrets
In the woods above Brattleboro, Vermont, a 65-foot stone tower has stood since the 1890s. It was not built by architects or hired masons. It was built by the patients of an insane asylum, stone by stone, under the direction of their doctors who believed that breaking rocks could fix broken minds. But some patients found another use for the tower they had built with their own hands. They climbed it one last time. In 1938, officials sealed the door shut. At the base of that tower sits a cemetery holding more than 650 burials, many marked only with numbers.
This is the story of Anna Hunt Marsh, the daughter of Vermont's Lieutenant Governor, who watched her husband's patient die from ice water submersion and forced opium comas in 1806. She spent twenty-eight years turning that grief into action. When she died in 1834, her will contained a single sentence that would change Brattleboro forever: ten thousand dollars left for the purpose of building a hospital for the insane in Windham County. She became the first woman in American history to found a mental health institution.

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
21 min
April 07 Waterbury, Vermont: The Asylum That Turned a Towns Name Into a Warning
You're standing on Route 100 in Waterbury, Vermont, in November 1891. The air smells like wood smoke and coming snow. Behind you, the last maples hold on to their copper leaves. Ahead on a hill that commands the entire valley, workers are laying the final stones on a building that will change everything. The Vermont State Asylum for the Insane. Four stories of red brick, 200 windows catching the afternoon light, italianate towers that look, from certain angles, almost welcoming.
TIMELINE
1891: The phrase sounds enlightened for 1891.
1925: From 1925 to 1936, the hospital participated in Vermont's eugenics program, sterilizing patients deemed unfit to reproduce.
1975: In 1975, the patient population drops below 600 for the first time in 50 years.
2013: In 2013, the University of Vermont's Eugenics Survey Project publishes new research on the Vermont State Hospital.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Waterbury is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 195 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 184 (East Montpelier, Vermont)
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
24 min
March 31 Riceville, Maine: The Ghost Town Whose Plague Never Happened
Riceville, Maine. Somewhere in the forest of eastern Maine, there's a town that no longer exists. It's a summer morning, sometime in the early 1900s. A traveler makes his way down a rutted logging road through dense strands of hemlock and spruce. He's headed for Riceville, a company town built around a tannery on Buffalo Stream. He knows the place. Maybe a hundred people live there. Workers, families, children who attend the schoolhouse at the north end of town. But when he arrives, something is wrong.
TIMELINE
1879: In 1879, a company called F. Shaw & Brothers established what they called a Bark Extract Works.
1880: By 1880, census records show just 10 people living there.
1883: In 1883 money, that's an almost incomprehensible sum.
1890: By 1890, Riceville had exploded to 136 residents.
1898: Two years later, in 1898, James Rice and his brothers Francis X and John took full control, forming the Hancock Leather Company.
1900: By 1900, census records painted a detailed picture.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Riceville is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 194 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
17 min
March 24 Prudence Island: The Keeper Who Relit the Light After Losing Everything
In a lighthouse keeper's cottage on Prudence Island, Rhode Island, six people huddle on the floor. It's September 21st, 1938. Outside, a wall of gray-green water is racing across Narragansett Bay, 16 feet of churning ocean pushed by winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. George Gustavus, the lighthouse keeper, stands with his wife Mabel, his 12-year-old son Edward, and three neighbors who came seeking shelter. They'd climbed upstairs when the water started rising.
TIMELINE
1869: New England had experienced no major hurricanes since 1869, 69 years earlier.
1905: Among them is Martin Thompson, the former keeper, a 70-year-old Norwegian immigrant who'd served at this ferry station from 1905 to 1933.
1961: The lighthouse was automated in 1961.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Prudence Island is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 193 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 192 (Watch Hill, Rhode Island)
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
19 min
March 17 Watch Hill, Rhode Island: The Fort Road Massacre That Killed 15
Watch Hill, Rhode Island. It's one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in September 1938. Miss John McKisson Camp is hosting a luncheon on the rocks at Weakapog, just east of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Her guests gather in their summer finest. Linen dresses, straw hats, the quiet elegance you'd expect from old money families who've summered here for generations. Someone mentions that the sea looks restless today. Another guest points to a strange yellow light hanging over the water.
TIMELINE
1938: By 1938, this exclusive summer retreat had catered to wealthy New York families for nearly half a century.
1945: In 1945, seven years after the hurricane, the Watch Hill Fire District purchased Napotree Point for $10,000.
1966: In 1966, Providence completed the Fox Point hurricane barrier.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The story of Watch Hill is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know.
Episode 192 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters
If you liked this: Episode 171 (Exeter, Rhode Island)
Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
20 min

About Hometown History

From the publisher's feed

Discover forgotten stories from small-town America that never made it into history books. Hometown History is the podcast uncovering hidden American history—overlooked events, local mysteries, and…