The History of Hemp

Our country used to use Hemp for a number of things. Our founding fathers grew hemp. Here are a few other things about hemp:



Schoolbooks were made from hemp and flax paper until the 1880's


It was legal to pay your taxes with hemp from 1631 till the early 1800's



Refusing to grew hemp was against the law in the 17th and 18th centuries



For thousands of years 90% of all ship sails and ropes were made from hemp



80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes and bedsheets were made from hemp till the 1820's with the intro of the cotton gin



The first bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross flag, 1st draft of Declaration of Independence and Constitution were made from hemp



Oldest records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China



Early canvas paintings were painted on hemp linen



In 1916 the US Govt predicted that by the 1940's all paper would come from hemp and no more trees would need to be cut down (1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees)



Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil till 1937



There is much more that hemp is used for but I think you get the picture. But, the BIG point is that the govt had a chance to save mother earth and her trees but they didn't. They gave in to greedy business men who would lose money if hemp was used and by giving in we all lose.

A Little Bit Of History

My in laws shared this with us in an email and I thought I would share it with all of you.

In Marble Arch, London there is an old Hotel/Pub which used to have gallows adjacent to it. A prisoner, who was to be hung, was taken in a horse drawn dray, accompanied by a guard, who would stop the dray outside the pub. The guard would ask the prisoner if he would like "ONE LAST DRINK".

If the prisoner said yes it was referred to as, "ONE FOR THE ROAD" and if he declined that prisoner was "ON THE WAGON"

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They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery.

If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor". Worse then that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot they "Didn't have a pot to piss in" and they were the lowest of the low.

History Research

I use Ancestry.com for a lot of my research. The last few months I have noticed quite a change in them. Documents that I once were able to research, don't come up anymore.



Fortunately for me, I made hard copies of many important things. It just means I have to get up off my arse and look thru the hundred of copies that I have made.



I think the internet has made me a bit lazy or the fact that I am getting older and it takes me longer to do things (sigh). To have the energy back that I had even 10 years ago would be nice :)

Pikes Peak Library Pictures cont.

2.

ok, a little history here.

My parents had a # of 1.

houses. Picture #1 is the inside

of one of these houses. Now, the

library is saying that Picture #2

is the outside of picture #1.

Wrong, picture #2 belongs to

either the Tutt's or C.L. Tutt's

secretary, Merton W. Bogart

(I'll be doing more on good ole

Merton, he was Tutt's secretary

not my dad's and I have hard copy proof of this)

So, back to the houses. Julie wanted to live at the Broadmoor Hotel, she had friends that lived there. I heard this argument every single day. Her and my dad would argue about it, my dad would tell her "I am not living where I work." She would not let it go, she was like a pit bull. After my dad's death, she had a part of the hotel redone for her apartment. This is what she had wanted for a long time but it wasn't what she thought it would be.

She lived in fear the whole time she was there. Her phone calls were monitered and she only got a very few. This was by order of the Tutts (remember this was the time of calls going thru the hotel switchboard). She would not eat any of the food prepared for her from the hotel kitchen. When it was delivered to her apartment rooms, she would have the waiter eat the food in front of her. She was deathly afraid she would be poisoned.

So much for wanting to live at the hotel.

Rocky Mountain News

Tomorrow will be a sad day for Colorado, the oldest newspaper in her state will close its doors.

Rocky Mountain News printed its first issue on April 23, 1859, her printing press came from Omaha, Neb. on an oxcart. The Rocky Mountain News was born at the start of the Colorado Gold Rush and she has seen and reported it all.

Her life was almost snuffed out in the 1940's, but was saved by her editor Jack Foster when he convinced the owner to make changes. She got a tabloid design, which made it easier to read and Frances Foster, Jack's wife, introduced America's first advice column called "Molly Mayfield". It was an instant hit and many newspapers began having advice columns which opened the doors for Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren.

She merged with her rival The Denver Post in 2001, both papers are owned by the same company. She has won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000, 2003 and 2006, in 2002 she won Best of the West. In 2007 she was redesigned to a magazine style and then put up for sale in 2008. With no buyers, the owners are closing her doors.

The Rocky Mountain News has been there through all gold rushes, she was around when the Governor owned a gold mine in Cripple Creek, she was there when Rockefeller brought in the militia and gunned down miners and their families, she was there in the 1920's when the Governor and mayor of Denver were members of the KKK, she was there in the 1960's when the Denver police Dept. was so corrupted and doing business with the mafia, she was there when they cleaned that mess up (just like L.A. in the 1930's).

Tomorrow, she will no longer have her voice. Her hallways will forever be silent but if we are lucky her voice may be able to sing to us from the archives in the Denver library and if we are very lucky, then ALL of her stories will be there.

Farewell, Rocky Mountain News!

History is not History, till it is the truth
Abe Lincoln