President James K. Polk And The Stealing Of The Southwest

 

President James K. Polk (Munsey's Magazine. January 1897)

James K. Polk was probably the most unsociable, drab, stick-in-the-mud ever elected president. Fun was a four-letter word in his book. Sports, drinking, dancing, and anything to do with being around people didn’t make his A-list. Instead, he was short, scholarly, lived for his work, and avoided face-to-face conversations and confrontations.

The only thing Polk had going for him was his friendship with Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s support pushed Polk into the White House. The general ensured Polk understood his presidency’s two critical goals: annexing Texas and Oregon.

Four years, a war, and several treaties later, Polk would accomplish it all.

After Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, most of the Lone Star State’s citizens favored annexation by the United States. However, Americans weren’t as sure about the idea. President Martin Van Buren worried the move could trigger a war with Mexico. In addition, the Democrats and Whigs feared it could cause a split in Congress over slavery in the new territory. As a result, annexation was a moot point until President John Tyler raised the issue in 1844.

The Senate voted annexation down in June 1844. Tyler brought the issue before Congress again in early 1845. It passed on March 1, and Texas became a state on December 29.

Amerigo's Land: How America Got Its Name

 

Amerigo Vespucci (Scribner's Magazine. June 1876)

Naming a continent is a funny thing.

One man is the acknowledged discoverer of a new world, yet it gets named after another by pure chance.

History tells us Martin Waldseemüller, a German cartographer, scribbled America over Brazil on a new map he made in 1507. He’d read Vespucci’s account of his discoveries and decided it was a good way to honor the navigator and discoverer of that area.

“I see no reason,” said Waldseemüller, “why anyone should justly object to calling this part America, after Amerigo [Vespucci] its discoverer, a man of great ability.”

Over time, the name stuck.

In 1538, the famed mapmaker Gerardus Mercator extended the name to North and South America. Amerigo Vespucci’s Novus Mundo, or the new world, would bear his name from then on.

Norse Discoveries in Greenland, Iceland, And Newfoundland

 

A Viking ship at sea under oars. (The Century Magazine. 1905)

Legend has it that the Vikings established colonies in North America, but there was no hard evidence until 1960. That year, archaeologists uncovered a Norse settlement on the Northern tip of Newfoundland at L’Anse Aux Meadows.

Archaeologists say L’Anse Aux Meadows wasn’t the Vinland settlement founded by Leif Eriksson around 1,000 AD. Instead, L’Anse was more likely a stopping-off point for travelers and traders headed from Greenland to the North American continent.

L’Anse Aux Meadows comprised three Norse longhouses, several workshops, an iron forge, and an iron smelter. It would have housed around 75 inhabitants. Archeologists think it was a temporary settlement used for just a few years. They point out that no garbage dumps or burial sites were discovered there as evidence to support this.

The Norse settlers in Greenland and Newfoundland weren’t the typical blood and guts type Vikings you usually think of. They were livestock farmers who raised sheep and goats because the land was not suited for growing grain.

Archeological evidence suggests they didn’t sail the classic Norse longboats used by Viking raiders. They voyaged there in the Knarr. The Knarr was a seaworthy vessel used by the Vikings on longer voyages. It had a wider hull and was smaller than the Viking longboat. As a result, it could carry more cargo and required a smaller crew.

Joahnn Hoch, The Chicago Bluebeard

 

Johann Hoch (The Herald. February 22, 1905)

The Chicago police suspected Johann Otto Hoch of killing between fifteen and fifty women in the ten years between 1895 and 1905. If that were true, he was a conman extraordinaire, with a foolproof method to keep his victims from talking. He married them, and then he snuck off, killing the ones who might talk. 

Johann Hoch, real name John Schmidt, was born near Horweiler, Bingen, Germany, in 1860. He started life as a wine merchant, married and had three kids. And then, something inside must have snapped. He turned to petty theft, swindling, and various schemes to make a quick buck. Hoch left Germany in 1895 to escape charges of embezzlement and common swindling.

He landed in New York, made his way to Chicago, and ran a saloon at 1108 Western Avenue for a year before taking up a newer, more deadly method of employment.

 

Hoch kept himself busy in 1895 and 1896 as he perfected his new trade.

He married Mary Steinbucher in 1895. Four months later, she was dead. But before she died, Mary told several people she’d been poisoned. Unfortunately, no one believed her because she had been delirious much of the time. Hoch made a $4,000 profit selling her property.

He married Mary Rankin the same year, then disappeared the next day, taking all her money. In April 1896, he hooked up with Martha Hertzfied. Four months later, Hoch took off with all her money. He married another woman in November 1896, then ran off the next day after clearing out her bank accounts. 

A Wild Canary Or A Vampire

 

Nellie Higgs (Chicago Tribune. September 22, 1914)

Nellie Higgs shot her lover in 1914

The Sacramento Star summed the case up best, saying, “Nellie Higgs is on trial for the murder of the man she hated—after ruining the life of the man she loved.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot since that night when something here at my heart snapped, and I shot William Willis, the man who ruined my life,” said Nellie Higgs. “I was never given much to thinking before. I was the innocent kind of girl who never knew good from bad. They [her parents?] brought me up that way.”

She married a 28-year-old man when she was 17. Then she met her neighbor, William Willis. They were all friends—his wife and children and her husband.

“He paid me lots of attention, and I suppose I rather liked it, [because], so few men had ever noticed me. I didn’t know any better. I let him go on giving me presents and being nice to me.”

I Got Me A Great Big Gun And Killed Him

 

Josephine Amore (The Star & Newark Advertiser. August 17, 1908)

Someone murdered Michael Martelle in his second-floor flat at 16 Drift Street in Newark, New Jersey, on August 5, 1908. His wife told detectives she heard gunshots after her husband walked toward the back of the house. He staggered back through the hallway and fell dead on the floor.

The police quickly arrested his next-door neighbor, Carmine Amore, and charged him with the crime even though many people testified Amore was playing cards at a bar across the street. Then, just as quickly, the case against Amore fell apart as his pretty young wife confessed to the crime.

Michael Martelle “bothered the life out of me to elope with him,” said Josephine Amore, “and threatened to kill me if I refused. He, a father of five children, would have deserted them all and had me desert mine. He insisted that I get $500 from my husband and then, with all my jewelry, go away with him.”

What to do? What to do? Finally, the young woman decided on a course of action.

 

“He did not scare me. I got me a great big gun and hid it,” said Josephine. “He said I must kiss him, so I got my revolver and killed him. That is all. He is dead. I am glad.”

She thought it was best to take care of Martelle before her husband found out and “perhaps commit some great crime.”

The Car Barn Bandits Were Chicago's Worst Nightmare

 

(Gustave Marx. Buffalo Times. November 23, 1923)

The car barn bandits were every Chicagoan’s worst nightmare. Four bored boys, armed and out for thrills and let the consequences be damned.

A string of robberies had plagued the city since early March 1903. Then, in July, the bandits killed two men while robbing Benjamin La Gross’s saloon on North Ashland Avenue.

Toward the end of August, three boy bandits raided the city’s car barns, killing two men before escaping with almost $2300. Since then, the police had beaten the streets for nearly two months with no results.

Detectives had dug up a few leads, but nothing they could sink their teeth into.

The first actual break in the case came in late November when detectives captured Gustave Marx.