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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class dot Com. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast I'm Trade. Maybe I have

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Speaker 1: a story that spans a lot of United States history.

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Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Robert Small's, who was enslaved

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Speaker 1: in South Carolina and then escape from enslavement during the

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Speaker 1: United States Civil War in a particularly dramatic fashion. His

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Speaker 1: escape is really only the beginning of the story, though

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Speaker 1: from there he went on to serve in both houses

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Speaker 1: of the South Carolina Legislature as well as in the

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Speaker 1: United States House of Representatives. On top of having carried

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Speaker 1: out this heroic escape and then gone on to serve

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Speaker 1: in both the South Carolina and federal governments. You can

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Speaker 1: look at Robert Small's and his life as sort of

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Speaker 1: a microcosm of the world that he lived in because

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Speaker 1: of when and how he lived. His story is like

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Speaker 1: an overview of slavery in the American South and the

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Speaker 1: Civil War and re instruction and the rise of Jim Crow.

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Speaker 1: It's this enormous arc of American history that plays out

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Speaker 1: through one person's life. So for that reason, we're going

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Speaker 1: to look at this story in two parts, the first

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Speaker 1: covering Robert Small's childhood, his young, adulthood and his escape,

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Speaker 1: and then Part two will get into his Civil War

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Speaker 1: service to his postwar years in political life, and his

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Speaker 1: legacy today. Robert Smalls was born on April five, eight

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Speaker 1: thirty nine, in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother was named

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Speaker 1: Lydia Polite, and she was enslaved in the household of

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Speaker 1: the McKee family, where she worked as a nanny. She

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Speaker 1: had been owned by the McKee family since birth and

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Speaker 1: had worked in the McKee home since she was about

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Speaker 1: ten years old. Prior to that, she had been working

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Speaker 1: as a field hand when she was in her forties.

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Speaker 1: When Robert was born, he had one older brother who

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Speaker 1: was more than twenty years his senior. I want to

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Speaker 1: take a brief moment to say that if you were

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Speaker 1: from virtually anywhere besides South Carolina, and you know of

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Speaker 1: a place spelled b e a U f O RT,

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Speaker 1: probably you say it Beaufort, please do not write to

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Speaker 1: us say said it wrong. In South Carolina. For some reason,

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Speaker 1: it is Beaufort, even though most of these places that

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Speaker 1: most other people say Beaufort are named after the same

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Speaker 1: person who pronounced it Beaufort. I have no explanation for

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Speaker 1: why this pronunciation in South Carolina is different. Also unknown,

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Speaker 1: actually is the identity of Robert's father. Historians and biographers

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Speaker 1: have suggested several different candidates, but there's no real evidence

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Speaker 1: to support any of them. The most commonly suggested potential

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Speaker 1: father is Henry McKee, the patriarch of the McKee family

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Speaker 1: at the time. Much of this speculation is because Lydia

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Speaker 1: and Henry lived on the same property for many years,

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Speaker 1: including the years that surrounded Robert's birth, but Lydia actually

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Speaker 1: helped raise Henry, and none of the other women that

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Speaker 1: Henry owned are supposed to have had a child by him,

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Speaker 1: so even though he's sort of the most popular theorized father,

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Speaker 1: we don't actually know. And regardless, Henry McKee and the

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Speaker 1: rest of the McKee household treated Lydia and her son

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Speaker 1: with a degree of leniency and benevolence, including Lydia being

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Speaker 1: able to keep and raise him herself. Robert grew up

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Speaker 1: playing with Henry McKee's own children, since he and his

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Speaker 1: mother worked in the house rather than in the fields.

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Speaker 1: Their positions also came with certain privileges. Mother and son

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Speaker 1: were allowed to attend church and to visit Lydia's family

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Speaker 1: who were enslaved on the nearby Ashdale Plantation, a Sea

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Speaker 1: Island cotton plantation, and that was where Lydia herself had

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Speaker 1: worked before being moved to the house. However, even though

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Speaker 1: by all accounts Robert and his mother were treated with

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Speaker 1: some kindness and flexibility, Robert and his mother were still enslaved.

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Speaker 1: They had no prospects were becoming free. By this point,

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Speaker 1: slavery in the United States had evolved into an institution

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Speaker 1: that was both hereditary and tied to race. Unless enslaved

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Speaker 1: people were that free by their owners, managed to purchase

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Speaker 1: themselves or managed to escape, they were held in bondage

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Speaker 1: for life, and any children who were born to any

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Speaker 1: enslaved person were enslaved as well. Henry McKee had inherited

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Speaker 1: Lydia from his father, and then Robert had been enslaved

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Speaker 1: from birth. So we're not talking about how they were

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Speaker 1: treated relatively kindly as a way to excuse the fact

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Speaker 1: that that enslavement was going on. Like that's the thing

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Speaker 1: that people bring up on the internet elite a lot,

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Speaker 1: like not all slave owners were awful. That doesn't excuse

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Speaker 1: the fact that they were enslaved for life with no

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Speaker 1: potential to be free. Because the institution of slavery in

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Speaker 1: the United States had become tied to race, a collection

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Speaker 1: of laws and social attitudes developed that were also based

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Speaker 1: on race, and they affected virtually all black people, whether

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Speaker 1: or not they were or ever had been enslaved. For example,

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Speaker 1: a number of fugitive slave laws allowed for the capture

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Speaker 1: and return of escaped slaves to their owners, and since

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Speaker 1: slavery was tied to race, all black people in the

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Speaker 1: United States were at a risk of being targeted by

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Speaker 1: these laws, regardless of whether they had ever been enslaved. Overwhelmingly,

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Speaker 1: free people of African descent were also explicitly denied a

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Speaker 1: number of legal rights and protections, including the right to vote.

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Speaker 1: So because his owners treated him comparatively gently in his childhood,

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Speaker 1: and because his mother's work in the house meant that

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Speaker 1: they were both afforded more privileges than many other slaves,

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Speaker 1: the young Robert Smalls was not really conscious of a

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Speaker 1: lot of these a lot of these realities. His mother,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, absolutely was. She was afraid that

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Speaker 1: Robert would grow into manhood when white society would view

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Speaker 1: him as being inherently threatening. Without understanding the realities of

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Speaker 1: enslavement and the risks that were inherent in having black skin,

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Speaker 1: especially in a slave state. She knew that if he

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Speaker 1: was sold to another family, one that might not be

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Speaker 1: as flexible or treat him as kindly. Without understanding these realities,

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Speaker 1: his well being and even his life could be in danger.

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Speaker 1: So as part of his education, she would take him

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Speaker 1: to Ashdale Plantation, where her family was still enslaved, to

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Speaker 1: see and experience what the lives of field hands were like.

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Speaker 1: The McKee family had long allowed Lydia to visit her

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Speaker 1: family at the plantation, and, probably unaware of her motive here,

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Speaker 1: they allowed her to take Robert with her when she visited.

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Speaker 1: She would also take him to the auction site to

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Speaker 1: see children, sometimes much younger than set himself, being bought

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Speaker 1: and sold. She'd also take him to the whipping post

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Speaker 1: in Bufort, where enslaved people were publicly whipped as a punishment,

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Speaker 1: to witness what happened to them there. In one case,

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Speaker 1: an enslaved woman who was being publicly whipped turned out,

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Speaker 1: unbeknownst to him, to be his friends Susan. While this

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Speaker 1: did certainly educate Smalls about the reality of slavery, it

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Speaker 1: also understandably made him really angry. A number of writers

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Speaker 1: historians describe his middle childhood as quote defiance. The curfew

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Speaker 1: for slaves was at sundown, and a bell would ring

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Speaker 1: every night to signal that it was time for the

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Speaker 1: enslaved people to all be at home. Smalls resented this curfew,

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Speaker 1: especially when he was out playing with white children who

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Speaker 1: didn't have to go home, so he started breaking curfew,

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Speaker 1: along with many of the other rules that governed the

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Speaker 1: minutia of the slaves lives. By the time his age

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Speaker 1: reached double digits, he was winding up in Beaufort jail

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Speaker 1: fairly often, with his owner having to bail him out.

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Speaker 1: Small's mother once again feared for his safety, so in

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, she asked that he'd be sent away

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Speaker 1: from Beaufort and instead rented out in Charleston. Renting out

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Speaker 1: an enslaved person's labor it was a pretty common practice

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Speaker 1: since it allowed owners to continue to profit from their

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Speaker 1: slaves labor even if they personally didn't have any work

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Speaker 1: for them to do right then. So McKee agreed, and

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Speaker 1: going to Charleston was a huge change in Small's life,

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Speaker 1: and the huge opportunity and We're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: the how and why of that after we pause for

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Speaker 1: a brief word from a sponsor. Going to Charleston gave

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Speaker 1: Robert Small's a lot more freedom of movement than he

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Speaker 1: had had in Bufort, as well as a lot more

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Speaker 1: opportunity to learn and to work. The black population of Charleston,

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Speaker 1: which included both free and enslaved people, often outnumbered its

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Speaker 1: white population, and its economy supported a lot of different

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Speaker 1: types of work. There were schools for free black children,

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Speaker 1: which Smalls couldn't personally attend, but he could learn from

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Speaker 1: people who went there. He was also able to attend

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Speaker 1: church and to participate in community organizations. He also joined

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Speaker 1: several secret charities that were meant to help Charleston's enslaved

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Speaker 1: population work toward freedom. His first jobs were suited to

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Speaker 1: his youth. He lit lamps, he waited in bus tables

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Speaker 1: at a restaurant, and he did odd jobs along the waterfront.

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Speaker 1: He also made a little extra money by buying cheap

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Speaker 1: tobacco and candy and reselling them for a higher price. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: he went to work with a man named John Simmons,

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Speaker 1: where he started getting extremely valuable experience in all sorts

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Speaker 1: of jobs and trades related to the water. He learned

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Speaker 1: to be a stevedore, a sailmaker, a rigger, and a sailor.

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Speaker 1: He became an expert at navigating the complex waterways around

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Speaker 1: the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. Eventually he was making

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Speaker 1: sixteen dollars a month, a dollar of which he was

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Speaker 1: allowed to keep when he turned the rest of his

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Speaker 1: pay back over to Henry McKee. When Smalls was sixteen,

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Speaker 1: he meant Hannah Jones, who was aged thirty who worked

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Speaker 1: as a hotel mate in Charleston. She was being hired

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Speaker 1: out to the hotel by her owners, the Kingman family.

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Speaker 1: She had two daughters, Clara and Charlotte, whose father is unknown,

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Speaker 1: and they all lived together behind the Kingman family home.

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Speaker 1: Soon Robert and Hannah were spending most of their free

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Speaker 1: hours together, which was mostly Saturday nights and then on

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Speaker 1: Sundays when they went to church. Within a couple of years,

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Speaker 1: Robert and Hannah wanted to get married, and they also

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Speaker 1: wanted to live together as white couples and free black

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Speaker 1: couples were allowed to do. Enslaved people, on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: were generally required to live in quarters provided by their owners,

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Speaker 1: which were usually separate regardless of their marital status, so

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Speaker 1: before getting married, they first got permission from the Kingman's

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Speaker 1: and the McKees to live together as a couple. That

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Speaker 1: was actually the easy part, and both sets of owners agreed,

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Speaker 1: But the harder part is that Robert and Hannah didn't

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Speaker 1: just want to live together in slave quarters behind somebody's house.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to live together in their own home. So

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Speaker 1: they each also had to get their owners to agree

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Speaker 1: to allow them to do extra work beyond what they

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Speaker 1: were hired out to do, and then keep some of

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Speaker 1: the profits so that they could afford the rent and

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Speaker 1: living expenses that would come with their own place. Eventually

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Speaker 1: both owners agreed, the couple was married at the McKee

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Speaker 1: home on December fifty six, with Henry McKee pronouncing them married.

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Speaker 1: When they returned to Charleston, they lived over some stables,

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Speaker 1: and Robert arranged to pay the rent and ex change

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Speaker 1: for keeping the stables clean, meaning they got to keep

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Speaker 1: the money they had negotiated with the mckeys and the

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Speaker 1: Kingman's as needed for their rent. Even though living above

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Speaker 1: the stables gave them a greater amount of independence and

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Speaker 1: autonomy than most enslaved couples, their marriage did not offer

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Speaker 1: them any personal or legal protections. Marriages between enslaved people

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Speaker 1: basically had no legal standing. Smalls knew that if they chose,

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Speaker 1: the Kingman's could sell Hannah somewhere else, or they could

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Speaker 1: hire her labor away from Charleston. The possibility of her

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Speaker 1: being sold or otherwise moved away from him became increasingly

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Speaker 1: threatening as they had children together over the next few years.

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Speaker 1: So Robert first asked his owner if he might have

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Speaker 1: permission to buy his wife and children, and once that

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Speaker 1: was secured, in spite of the fact that it was

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Speaker 1: illegal for slaves to own other slaves, he asked the

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Speaker 1: Kingman's if he could buy Hannah and their children, and Mr.

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Speaker 1: Kingman said yes for eight hundred dollars. Smalls only had

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Speaker 1: one hundred dollars Kingman agreed to accept as a down payment.

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Speaker 1: From that point on, Smalls and his wife put all

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Speaker 1: their resources into saving up the additional seven hundred dollars.

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Speaker 1: They never actually had to pay it, though. On April

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, fifteen enslaved persons commandeered a barge that

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Speaker 1: belonged to the Confederate Quartermaster Department and they managed to

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Speaker 1: sail that barge to a Union ship. It's possible but uncertain,

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Speaker 1: that Smalls had heard about this and it inspired him

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Speaker 1: to take his own action. It's also possible that he

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Speaker 1: had heard about Major General David Hunter of the Union Army, who,

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Speaker 1: in addition to making several attempts to just free all

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Speaker 1: enslaved persons in the territory that he commanded, also ordered

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Speaker 1: that any black person who could reach the Union line

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Speaker 1: be considered free and accepted into military service. Regardless of

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Speaker 1: Smalls soon made a similar escape himself. Robert Small's escape

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Speaker 1: from slavery took place during the United States Civil War.

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Speaker 1: This war had been brewing for decades before it actually began.

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Speaker 1: As tide turned against slavery in the Northern States, the

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Speaker 1: Northern States began abolishing slavery, passing laws to prevent the

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Speaker 1: return of escaped slaves to the states where they had

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Speaker 1: been held in bondage, and otherwise trying to pressure the

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Speaker 1: remaining slave states into abolishing the practice as well. The

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Speaker 1: slave states dissatisfaction with all this increased dramatically in eighteen fifty,

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Speaker 1: when California, a free state, was admitted into the Union

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Speaker 1: without a corresponding slave state to preserve the balance of

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Speaker 1: power and Congress. This slave state free state pairing is

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Speaker 1: something that we talked about recently in our episode on

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Speaker 1: the Honey War. Every state admitted after eighteen fifty was

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Speaker 1: also free, and each new free statement that the slave

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Speaker 1: states had less and less power and faced greater and

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Speaker 1: greater risk of Congress taking action to abolish slavery entirely.

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Speaker 1: Slaveholding states had been threatening to seceed from the Union

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Speaker 1: for decades. A number of compromises, including the Missouri Compromise

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Speaker 1: we also discussed when we talked about the Honey War,

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Speaker 1: had kept the Union to gather temporarily, But as the

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty presidential election approached, the prevailing wisdom was that

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Speaker 1: the election of a Republican president would guarantee that slaveholding

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Speaker 1: states would begin to break away from the United States.

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Speaker 1: That Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, elected on November sixth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty. On December twenty of that year, South Carolina

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Speaker 1: became the first state to secede. In its Declaration of

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Speaker 1: Causes of Secession, South Carolina outlined its reasons for leaving

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Speaker 1: the Union after citing the Declaration of Independence and stressing

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Speaker 1: repeatedly that the Revolutionary War led to each former colony

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Speaker 1: becoming a quote free, sovereign and independent state. The declaration

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Speaker 1: of causes went on to read, quote an increasing hostility

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Speaker 1: on the part of the non slaveholding states to the

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Speaker 1: institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations,

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Speaker 1: and the laws of the general government have ceased to

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Speaker 1: affect the objects of the Constitution. South Carolina's Declaration of

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Speaker 1: Causes then raises objections to several other states passing laws

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Speaker 1: that fugitive slaves would not be returned from there to

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Speaker 1: their slaveholding states of origin. By the time Lincoln was

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Speaker 1: inaugurated on February first, eighteen sixty one, six more states

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Speaker 1: had succeeded. Three of them issued their own declarations of causes,

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Speaker 1: all of which make extensive references to the issue of slavery,

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Speaker 1: the refusal of non slaveholding states to return escape slaves

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Speaker 1: to their former owners, and efforts took her tail or

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Speaker 1: abolished slavery. The first shots of the United States Civil

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Speaker 1: War were fired on April twelfth, eighteen sixty one, at

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Speaker 1: Fort Sumter, a then federal fort in Charleston Harbor, where

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Speaker 1: Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on the fort.

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Speaker 1: The fort's commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after two days.

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Speaker 1: With the nation now actively at war, more States seceded

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Speaker 1: from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Later that year,

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Speaker 1: the Confederacy least a wooden steamer named the Planter, from

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Speaker 1: owner John Ferguson, who had been using it to carry

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Speaker 1: cotton along the Peade River in South Carolina. The Confederate

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Speaker 1: Navy also conscripted its enslaved crew, One of them was

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Speaker 1: it's wheelman, Robert Small's. Once under the control of the

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Speaker 1: Confederate military, the Planter shifted from hauling cotton to carrying

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Speaker 1: supplies between various fortifications around Charleston, as well as laying

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Speaker 1: mines then referred to as torpedoes in the waterways. Often

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Speaker 1: these supplies consisted of munitions and ordinance. The Planter itself

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Speaker 1: was also armed with a cannon and a howitzer. On thirteenth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, in addition to its own armaments, the

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Speaker 1: Planter was carrying four guns and a gun carriage. The

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Speaker 1: guns were bound for Charleston's middle Ground battery at Fort

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Speaker 1: Ripley and the carriage for Fort Sumter. While working aboard

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Speaker 1: the Planter, small then twenty three, had proven himself to

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Speaker 1: be extremely reliable and trustworthy, so much so that on

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Speaker 1: the night of the thirteenth, the three white officers who

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Speaker 1: were who were assigned to the Planter, Captain C. J. Ralia,

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Speaker 1: Pilot Samuel H. Smith, and Engineer Zerik Pitcher, left it

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Speaker 1: with no white officer aboard. They went into Charleston for

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Speaker 1: the night, probably to socialize or to visit family. This

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Speaker 1: is actually grounds for court martial. For a couple of weeks,

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Speaker 1: the smallest had been putting together a plan that would

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Speaker 1: allow him to take advantage of just such an opportunity.

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Speaker 1: This was not the first time that the officers had

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Speaker 1: gone ashore overnight, so at about three am, he donned

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Speaker 1: the captain's jacket and his big straw hat, adopted his

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Speaker 1: usual posture, set a prayer, and moved the Planter out

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Speaker 1: of the wharf, which laid directly across from the headquarters

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Speaker 1: of Confederate Brigadier General Roswell Ripley. From there they proceeded

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Speaker 1: to the North Atlantic Wharf, where his wife and children,

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Speaker 1: along with several other enslaved people, were concealed aboard another

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Speaker 1: boat called the Edawah. Once everyone hidden in the Edawah

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Speaker 1: was aboard the Planter and their number total nine men,

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Speaker 1: five women, and three children. Their goal was to reach

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Speaker 1: the Union blockade, ten ships arranged off the coast to

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Speaker 1: prevent the Confederacy from using the Atlantic Ocean for things

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Speaker 1: like trade or troop movements. To do so, they had

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Speaker 1: to run up the South Carolina flag and Confederate colors,

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Speaker 1: then successfully make their way past five different Confederate sentry stations.

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Speaker 1: This required sounding the correct signals and responding correctly to

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Speaker 1: signals from the outposts, plus nobody could notice that there

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Speaker 1: were no white people on this boat. You'll see a

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Speaker 1: lot of like memes floating around the internet about Robert

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Speaker 1: Smalls and how awesome he was, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: them claimed that he read a code book in order

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Speaker 1: to do this, but at this point he was not

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Speaker 1: actually literate, so it's more likely that he had observed

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Speaker 1: what the officers were doing and memorized what they were doing,

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Speaker 1: and then recalled all of that flawlessly during this escape.

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Speaker 1: The last outpost that they had to get past was

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Speaker 1: Fort Sumter itself. In theory, they could have given the

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Speaker 1: Fort a wide berth and maybe avoided this one last

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Speaker 1: exchange of coded signals, but Smalls really wanted it to

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Speaker 1: look like they were just the normal ship doing something

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Speaker 1: completely routine, albeit at an extremely early hour, for as

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Speaker 1: long as possible. Exchanging that last set of signals with

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Speaker 1: Fort Sumter was not the most dangerous part of this escape, though.

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Speaker 1: Once they received the okay to continue, they had to

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Speaker 1: get out of range of the Fort's guns before striking

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Speaker 1: their Confederate colors. If they struck the colors too soon,

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Speaker 1: they would be shot and sunk by the Confederacy, But

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Speaker 1: if they waited too late, the ships in the blockade

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Speaker 1: would probably think they were on a ramming course, so

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Speaker 1: they would be shot and sunk by the Union instead.

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Speaker 1: They had actually made no plans for what to do

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Speaker 1: if they wound up being captured. If it came down

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Speaker 1: to it, they were ready to fight back against the

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Speaker 1: Confederacy with the armaments that were aboard the ship, and

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Speaker 1: to blow up the ship's boiler if necessary, even though

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Speaker 1: that would mean the deaths of we went on board. Basically,

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Speaker 1: the only things that they considered to be acceptable outcomes

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Speaker 1: in this escape were escaping or death. Being enslaved again

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Speaker 1: not on the list. At sunrise, as they approached the

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Speaker 1: Union ship onward, Robert Smalls and his men took down

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Speaker 1: their Confederate flag and they ran up a white sheet

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Speaker 1: it was possibly stolen from the hotel where his wife worked,

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Speaker 1: and the Union gladly accepted their surrender and took possession

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Speaker 1: of the planter. This meant that Robert Smalls, his family,

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Speaker 1: and their friends who had escaped with them were now free.

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Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about what happened after that, because,

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Speaker 1: like we said, this is really the beginning of a

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Speaker 1: much longer story and we're going to talk about that

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Speaker 1: in our next episode. Yeah, he basically just stole a

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Speaker 1: Confederate ship out from under the nose of the Confederacy

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Speaker 1: and handed it over to the Union. Was like, Hi, guys,

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Speaker 1: I brought you this boat. Well, and we might get

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Speaker 1: emails about the wordship versus boat that just we know,

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Speaker 1: don't bother. Well, and I just I love this story

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Speaker 1: because it's just the whole thing took such ingenuity and

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Speaker 1: like craftiness at every turn that you you just cannot

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Speaker 1: help but be wowed by it. It also shows how

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Speaker 1: difficult and dangerous and rare it actually was, or enslaved

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Speaker 1: people to escape. I mean at this point, this was

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Speaker 1: during the Civil War, there were perhaps more opportunities for

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Speaker 1: people to escape, just because there was so much more

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Speaker 1: chaosks going on, and there were Union troops who were

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Speaker 1: actively interested in helping people to escape to freedom. But

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Speaker 1: one of the things that that people sort of misbelieve

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Speaker 1: about enslavement and about the Civil War is that there

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Speaker 1: was just an enormous, enormous influx of of of enslaved

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Speaker 1: people who were successfully escaping all the time. And one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons for that is that most of the

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Speaker 1: first person knowledge that we have about enslaved and especially

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Speaker 1: like in the United States the institution of slavery is

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Speaker 1: from people who did successfully escape and then went on

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Speaker 1: to write a slave narrative. And this is like a

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Speaker 1: tiny it's not a it's not an accurate sample of

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Speaker 1: all enslaved people. It's like the slave narratives that we

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Speaker 1: have came from the people who were able to escape

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Speaker 1: and then we're able either able to learn to read

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Speaker 1: and write, or we're able to find someone to help

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Speaker 1: them write um right down their story. And it's not

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Speaker 1: an actually representative sample of all of the enslaved people

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Speaker 1: in the United States. So, uh, still an awesome story. Um,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's very intriguing to me how because he

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Speaker 1: was from South Carolina and because of when he was

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Speaker 1: born and where he lived and what he did, so

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Speaker 1: much of his life parallels the arc of United States

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Speaker 1: history that ran through these decades. It's a good one.

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Speaker 1: Do you also have some listener mail for us? Do

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Speaker 1: I have one short one that I'm going to read

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Speaker 1: along with one that's slightly longer. Uh. They are about

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Speaker 1: our Honeywar podcast. And for the short one is from

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Speaker 1: Ryan and Ryan says, Hi, Holly and Tracy writing about

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Speaker 1: the boundary lines dispute for the Honeywar episode. You thought

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Speaker 1: it was funny and it is that they would go

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Speaker 1: through all the trouble to re measure and then use

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Speaker 1: the original. Anyways, as a civil engineering student, we are

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Speaker 1: required to take a surveying class. In said class, we

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Speaker 1: learned that even currently a surveyor is always right, regardless

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Speaker 1: of if they actually are the lines of measurements they

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Speaker 1: take are legally correct and binding. Kind of funny, just

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Speaker 1: a fun to a fun tidbit if you didn't know.

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Speaker 1: I love the podcast. Ryan Thanks Ryan, I did not

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Speaker 1: know that, but it makes total sense. Basically, even if

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Speaker 1: the survey is wrong, the survey is right. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: other one is from Amanda. Amanda says, Hi, Tracy and Holly,

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Speaker 1: thanks for such a great podcast. I'm without a radio

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Speaker 1: in the car, so I listened to the podcast downloaded

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Speaker 1: on my iPhone to and from work. Sometimes I sit

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Speaker 1: in the car and wait till the podcast is over

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Speaker 1: before going into the building. That actually, I'm gonna take

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Speaker 1: a break from the letter. That pleases me a lot

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Speaker 1: because that's the thing the NPR likes to brag about.

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Speaker 1: So I feel like we're in good company with causing

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Speaker 1: people to have drive away moments. I recently listened to

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Speaker 1: the honey Wars podcast and it reminded me of a

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Speaker 1: more recent episode in Town that is fraught with similar

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Speaker 1: childishness presented in the town squabwal Note. I'm in Newmarket, Ontario,

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Speaker 1: about forty five minutes north of Toronto, Canada, in the

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Speaker 1: small town twenty four thousand of East Willhelmbury, just north

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Speaker 1: of Newmarket. The then mayor decided to get his chainsaw

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Speaker 1: and trim the trees that blocked his view in the

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Speaker 1: mayoral office. At town Hall. He got a little carry

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Speaker 1: away and trams trees on the neighboring property, which is

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Speaker 1: the historic site of the Sharon Temple, built more than

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Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy five years ago. The trees were

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Speaker 1: planted around the same time, more than a hundred seventy

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Speaker 1: five years ago. He did such a botch job the

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Speaker 1: trees eventually had to be removed because they were deemed unsafe.

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Speaker 1: That incident was known as the Sharon Temple tree massacre.

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Speaker 1: Just saying childishness from state parentheses city officials is not

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Speaker 1: something of the past. And then the uh and then

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Speaker 1: Amanda sent lots of links to articles about this incident.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Okay, I will confess that often I pick

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Speaker 1: things in the podcast that, even if we don't specifically

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00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: say it on the podcast, are things that still happened today.

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00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:40,360
Speaker 1: So uh so I was glad to get this more

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00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: current example. UM. Thank you so much, Amanda, and thank

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00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: you so much Ryan for your emails. If you would

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00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:48,920
Speaker 1: like to write to us, we were a history podcast

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Speaker 1: at how Stuffworks dot com. You can write to us

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Speaker 1: about anything except for the pronunciation of bufort uh. We

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Speaker 1: are also on Facebook at Facebook dot com. Slash miss

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Speaker 1: in history, and we're also on Twitter and miss in

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Speaker 1: history are Umbler is miss in history dot tumbler dot com,

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Speaker 1: and or on pentest at pentrist dot com slash miss

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00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: in history. If you would like to learn a little

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00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: bit more about what we've talked about today, come to

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00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 1: our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works dot com.

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00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,880
Speaker 1: Put the word escape into the search bar. You will

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00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: find an article that is called breaking out a Dozen

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00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: Great Escapes, which does not talk about this particular one

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00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: that we discussed today, but that does talk about some

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00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:27,120
Speaker 1: of history's other extremely dramatic and ingenious escapes. You can

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00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: also come to our website, which is missed in history

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Speaker 1: dot com, and you will find show notes for all

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Speaker 1: of our episodes. We can read what sources we use

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00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: to research what we're talking about. You will find an

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Speaker 1: archive of every episode we have ever ever done. You

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Speaker 1: will find tips or how to look for episodes in

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Speaker 1: the archives. If you're not quite sure how to find

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Speaker 1: what you're looking for, you can do all that and

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Speaker 1: a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: or miss in history dot com for more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot do you do you