by Charles C. Jett

The Brand That . . . . Aged America’s Patience

A German farmer with too much corn turned his surplus into whiskey — and his family spent the next seven generations teaching a restless country to wait. From a barrel-shed in 1795 to a sixteen-billion-dollar sale to Japan in 2014, Jim Beam survived Prohibition, the death of its founder, and fire on the strength of one thing no rival could rush into being. Here is the story of the brand that aged America’s patience — and what it cost the river the night the warehouse burned.

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by Charles C. Jett

The City That . . . . Lit the World’

Before the oil came out of the ground, it came home from the sea. For one shining generation New Bedford was the richest city in America, dollar for dollar, and the whale oil its ships hauled back from years-long voyages lit lamps from Boston to London — though the men who hauled it were often paid in debt, not dollars. Then they struck petroleum in Pennsylvania and the long ebb began. But “faded” is not “died”: today the same deep harbor lands the most valuable catch of any fishing port in the country. Here is the story of the city that lit the world, and is hauling still.

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by Charles C. Jett

The Brand That . . . . Ground America’s First Chocolate

Before the republic had a name, a mill on the Neponset River was already grinding chocolate. In 1764 a penniless Irish chocolatier and the Dorchester doctor who staked him made the first chocolate manufactured in America — and the name they settled on, Baker’s, is still on a green box in the baking aisle today, the oldest American grocery brand still on a shelf. Here is the story of a chocolate older than the country: the vanished founder, the chocolate girl borrowed from a Dresden gallery, the hard truth in its first century, and the sign over Dorchester that went dark for fifty-six years and was lit again.

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by Charles C. Jett

In the Arena – Vincent van Gogh — He Kept Painting for a World That Had Not Yet Learned How to See Him

He failed at everything before he failed at painting. Art dealer, teacher, bookseller, preacher to the miners — every respectable path threw Vincent van Gogh out before he was thirty.
So he picked up a pencil. He gave ten years to it, kept alive by his brother Theo, and the world rewarded him with almost nothing. He died at thirty-seven believing he had failed. He never saw it turn.
Then a young widow read his letters and decided the verdict was wrong. She spent thirty years proving it. The vindication came. It just came too late for him to hear.
The work outlived the verdict.
The credit belongs to Vincent van Gogh.

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by Charles C. Jett

Courage and Consequence – – The Only Woman Among the Buffalo Soldiers

Born a slave. Pressed into the Union Army as a cook. Barred from soldiering because she was a woman. On November 15, 1866, Cathay Williams enlisted as “William Cathay” and became the only documented woman Buffalo Soldier. She served two years with the 38th U.S. Infantry before a post surgeon discovered the truth. Then the Army denied her the pension she had earned and let her vanish from the record. She wanted to make her own living and depend on no one. She did it as a soldier when no law allowed it. Cathay Williams needs to be remembered.

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