Why Didn’t Abraham Lincoln Travel?

by Megan Fernandez on


Abraham Lincoln as a tourism driver is nothing new – history buffs have been making pilgrimages to Washington, D.C., Gettysburg and Abe’s Midwestern stomping grounds for decades, and Springfield, Ill., attributes the majority of its annual $350 million tourism and convention business to the rail-splitter. But actually following in Lincoln’s footsteps doesn’t take a traveler very far.

Lincoln never crossed an ocean, a curiosity that clashes with what we might expect given his means, his intellect and Mary Todd Lincoln’s famous taste for the finer things in life. Despite the difficulties of international travel in the mid-19th century, it wasn’t unheard of. William Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, made it as far as the Middle East on a fact-finding mission. Benjamin Franklin had darted back and forth between the American colonies, England and France 100 years earlier.

It’s understandable that Lincoln was too preoccupied to travel during his presidency. Still, it’s a bit surprising that by his death in 1865, he hadn’t ventured farther than New Orleans, New York or Missouri.

Leisure travel to Europe wasn’t a popular concept in Lincoln’s time. “It would have been dangerous, for one,” says Dale Ogden, a senior curator at the Indiana State Museum who oversees a significant collection of the Lincoln family’s belongings. “And Europe was in turmoil anyway.”Domestically, the railroads that Lincoln worked for as a lawyer weren’t yet popular options for vacation. Even the train that took the president-elect from Springfield to D.C. on his Whistle-Stop Trip in 1861 wasn’t exactly posh. “Lincoln’s car would have been private as opposed to luxurious,” Ogden says. “I don’t think it would have been particularly unpleasant to travel by rail in 1860s, but it wouldn’t have been even remotely close to what it became 20 years later.” Instead, Lincoln “vacationed” at his summer home in D.C.

Yet travel made a serious impact on Lincoln’s life, an aspect examined in “The Lincolns: Five Generations of an American Family,” an exhibit that recently opened at the Indiana State Museum. He was frequently on the road on horseback as a circuit attorney in Illinois, and the job separated him from his eldest son, Robert, during the child’s formative years. Ogden says this is a primary reason why Lincoln and Robert didn’t have a close bond. “Lincoln was a workaholic,” he says. “The fact that he did travel so much, because of his work, had a major role in the family dynamic.”

The museum holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Lincoln artifacts, and “Five Generations” is only the second exhibit organized from its contents. A few of Mary’s travel accessories, including her opera glasses and ostrich fan, are currently on display, highlighting her trips to Europe after Lincoln’s death.

[Photo credit: Paukrus via Flickr]

Exploring A Snowy Traditional Village In Estonia

by Sean McLachlan on


After so many years living in Spain, it was nice to visit Estonia and experience a real winter again. That numbness on the tip of your nose while the rest of your body is bundled up and warm, the way sounds get muffled by the snow, the intricate designs the icy branches etch into the sky – winter is a good season when you don’t have to experience it for too long.

The best way to experience winter is to get out into the countryside. Day trips from the capital Tallinn can be tricky, however, as the bus system isn’t the greatest. One quick way to experience country life and get a bit of history is to spend a few euros on a taxi and go to the Estonian Open Air Museum just outside of town.

This remarkable place is the Colonial Williamsburg of the Baltics. Historic buildings have been collected here from all regions of Estonia to recreate several traditional villages. Costumed employees practice traditional crafts as visitors wander around the forested paths between the villages.

I went on Shrove Tuesday, which is a special event in Estonian culture. The village tavern was serving up pig trotters with the warning not to wipe the grease off your chin if you wanted to ensure a prosperous and lucky new year. After a messy lunch that’s going to make me rich and fortunate in 2013, I headed out into the country lanes. Being the middle of a weekday, it was quiet. Visitors were spread out over the museum’s several acres and for the most part all was silent except for the crunch of my boots in the snow. Every now and then I’d hear the jingle of sleigh bells and see a happy family scoot by, driven by one of the museum employees.

%Gallery-179095%It’s a big day for kids, who go sledding on this date. For some reason sledding ensures that flax will grow tall in the new year. The child who sleds the farthest guarantees that his or her household will have the best flax crop. A gaggle of squealing Estonian kids hurtling down the slope next to one of the windmills were having too much fun to care whether the flax grew tall or not. Nearby was a merry-go-round set atop a frozen pond, spinning extra quickly on the ice.

Estonian kids have turned the making of snowmen into a fine art. Kadriorg Park, back in town, had an entire population of snowmen, snow women, snow dragons, and a snow bear climbing a tree to get a snow squirrel. Scattered around the 18th- and 19th-century buildings of the Open Air Museum I saw snowmen hanging out enjoying the holiday. It made me wonder how old the tradition of making snowmen is and why it started.

The homes, barns and churches collected here are now rarities. During Soviet times the emphasis was on collectivization and most old rural buildings were allowed to decay. So it’s a rare treat to see their distinct, homey style and watch kids play at the same games their ancestors did when these old buildings were new.

Read the rest of my series: “Exploring Estonia: The Northern Baltics In Wintertime.”

Coming up next: The Secret Tunnels Under Tallinn!

[All photos by Sean McLachlan]

Tallinn’s Medieval Old Town

by Sean McLachlan on


Tallinn is a medieval wonderland. The capital of Estonia isn’t on a lot of people’s bucket list but anyone at all interested in history, architecture or art will love this place.

The central attraction is Old Town, a medieval walled city filled with old buildings and fortifications. The sheltered bay and the easily defended Toompea Hill made it a natural place to settle. Sometime about 1050 A.D. a fortress was built atop the hill, the first of many. In 1219 the Danes showed up as part of the Northern Crusade to subjugate the Baltics and convert the local pagans to Christianity whether they wanted to or not.

The Danes improved the fortifications and expanded the town, which became part of the Hanseatic League, a trading organization of a hundred northern cities. The Danes sold Tallinn to the Livonan Order, a branch of the Teutonic Knights, in 1346. The Swedes came next in 1561. Tallinn weathered plague and the Great Northern War and became part of Russia in 1710. In 1918, Estonia declared independence from Russia and fought a bitter war against Bolshevik Russia. Independence didn’t last long, however, and the fledgling nation fell first to the Nazis and then the Soviets during World War II.

Despite all this conquering, Tallinn’s historic core has survived remarkably intact. It’s so well preserved that the whole Old Town has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Much of the 14th century city wall still stands, including a couple of stretches where you can climb the narrow spiral staircases of the towers and end up on the medieval catwalk. The Viru Gates, flanked by thin pointed towers from the 14th century, makes a nice entrance into Old Town.

Dominating the town atop Toompea Hill is Toompea Castle and Pikk Hermann Tower. It was used as the center of government since 1229 and is now the site of Estonia’s parliament. Nearby stands the inappropriately named Maiden’s Tower that used to house a prison for prostitutes.

%Gallery-178685%There are several interesting old houses of worship. The oldest is the atmospheric and very chilly Dominican Monastery from 1246. My favorite was the Holy Spirit Church with its colorful Renaissance clock, elaborate altar, and painted pews. The 13th century St. Nicholas got bombed in World War II but was meticulously reconstructed and now houses a display of religious art, including the freaky “Dance Macabre” of cavorting skeletons.

The photo below was taken from the spire of the Cathedral of St. Mary the Virgin, one of the many towers that offer fine views of the city. Also try the Town Hall for a great view. The most visible church that seems to get on all the postcards is the Russian Orthodox St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with its onion domes.

Several of the medieval buildings house museums: Epping Tower has a collection of medieval arms and armor, the 15th-century Great Guild Hall houses the Estonian History Museum, a 14th century merchant’s mansion is home to the Tallinn City Museum, and Fat Margaret’s cannon tower from 1530 is now the Maritime Museum.

One of the most popular attractions is Kiek en de Kök, an imposing tower on the slopes of Toompea Hill. Its basement connects with a network of tunnels beneath the bastions. There’s enough of interest here that I’ll be dedicating a whole post to this place later in the series.

As you can see from the photos, I visited Tallinn this February. While I only saw about five minutes of blue sky in the six days I was there, and it snowed every day, there are advantages to visiting in the dead of winter. First, prices of hotels and flights plummet and you can pick your dates without having to worry about getting a place. This makes it a good budget travel option for those who don’t mind a bit of cold.

If you’re coming from England, you’re in luck. Ryaniar flies to Tallinn from Luton, and easyJet flies from Gatwick. There are also regular connections from Munich, Helsinki, and other important cities.

Tallinn makes a good budget option whatever the season. Old Town is compact enough that you don’t need to pay for transport, and a Tallinn Card gets you free tours and free entry into all the sites. Being so compact you can see a lot of the city in one day, making the card well worth the money. The cost of the card is 24 euros for 24 hours, 32 euros for 48 hours, and 40 euros for 72 hours. Children up to 14 years get the card for half price. The card comes with a good city map and guidebook.

Read the rest of my series: “Exploring Estonia: The Northern Baltics In Wintertime.”

Coming up next: A Snowy Traditional Village in Estonia!

[All photos by Sean McLachlan]

Wickland: The Only Ghost Tour Reality TV Hasn’t Found – Yet

by Megan Fernandez on

The new Syfy channel show “Ghost Mine” is, geographically, a new low for the genre, suggesting that the torrent of paranormal reality programs has exhausted every haunted site above the earth’s surface and left no above-ground spirit unquestioned in the presence of a camera crew. So I had to wonder how in the heck all 3 billion of these shows have missed Wickland in Bardstown, Kentucky, where young, modelesque mediums give a tour every week and practically guarantee that you’ll get to talk to dead people – without any frightening specters of evil or demons or confidentiality waivers.

That’s what happened to me both times I visited last year, anyway. That’s right, as crazy as it sounds, I believe I conversed directly with dead people, even someone I knew, at Wickland. It definitely wasn’t Bardstown’s famous bourbon talking, because I hadn’t had any.

I heard about the little-known Spirits of Wickland Tour from a friend, who happens to be a pastor and, as such, has some extra credibility in the afterlife department, in my eyes. I have no interest in the paranormal, but my husband wastes a few hours each week on ghost-hunting shows, so the next time we visited family near Bardstown and wanted something to do, we signed up for this tour:




If you didn’t make it through the videos, here’s the crux: Wickland is a well-preserved Georgian-style mansion built in 1826 for a family that produced three governors – two of Kentucky and one of Louisiana. Dixie Hibbs, a former mayor of Bardstown and respected historian in the area who has written more than 10 books, oversees the landmark. Until five years ago, it was open only as a historic attraction, and Hibbs wasn’t aware of any ghostly activity. That changed when a pair of local teenagers, Katie and Michael Wilhite, volunteered to help decorate for the holidays.

The twin sisters (Michael is named for their father) were already aware of their “sixth sense” sensitivities – they had been seeing and hearing dead people for years, usually in a scary way, and they weren’t happy about it. But during the decorating session at Wickland and subsequent visits, they had their first friendly encounters with spirits – in this case, some of the home’s former residents. They told Hibbs what they were experiencing, and it didn’t take long for Hibbs to match up the names and physical descriptions the twins provided with her records and launch the interactive tour.

Since then, either Hibbs and the twins have carried on an elaborate ruse of Manti Te’o proportions, pretending to have detailed conversations with spirits every single week, or they’ve been offering the best-kept secret in ghost tourism for a mere $15, cash or check.

“All we really ask is come with an open mind, and all we promise is entertainment,” Hibbs says. “You get to be involved. You get to interact. At most of these spirit things, you don’t get the opportunity to ask questions and get answers.”

She’s being modest about that promise. On both of my visits, copper dowsing rods moved every which way I asked them to; we got logical answers to questions about life in the 19th century; and Katie diagnosed me with a benign spirit attachment and suggested I pray it away. There was also a totally surprise encounter with my deceased father that sounds too nuts to explain without lots of preamble, but I still can’t chalk it up to anything logical because both my sister and I smelled his cigarette smoke, as clear as day.

Second in amusement only to the twins’ stories of their encounters – including a recent trip to a Civil War battlefield in Kentucky where they stunned the park’s director by identifying nearly every dead soldier by first and last name (a record only he had, in an Excel spreadsheet) and found themselves ducking from bullets – are cameos from spirits not connected to the house. Katie and Michael never know who will show up from an unknown time and place to bend their ears. They once heard from someone claiming to be an infamous outlaw, and the more Hibbs questioned him – through one of the twins – the more she doubted that he was telling the truth about his identity. “Ghosts lie, there’s no question,” she says.

Hibbs, more than anyone, dreads the inevitable end of the tour, which has been an unconventional boon to her work as a historian. She records every word the twins repeat from the spirit world and researches its veracity. Last fall, she says she located the home’s long-lost slave cemetery based on tips from past patriarch Charles Wickliffe.

It was the first time Mr. Wickliffe had appeared to either twin, and a moment Hibbs had been anticipating for years. “The craziest part is he’s calling me by name,” she says. “I said [to Katie], ‘When did he die?’ His answer wasn’t a date; he said, Dixie, you know that. Two weeks ago, he came again. I asked why he had returned. He said, Dixie, you ought’ve known I would come back. I told my friend, it’s really weird that I’m on a first-name basis with Charles Wickliffe, who’s been dead 150 years. If I had been told seven or eight years ago I’d be doing this kind of thing, I’d have thought someone had lost their mind.”

Friday nights at Wickland could be numbered. Though the site isn’t showy enough for reality TV, major cable channels are well aware of the twins and their camera-readiness, and at least a couple have considered a pilot. So far, the twins haven’t found the right format. But it could be only a matter of time before they move on from Wickland to TV land – later this year, even, Hibbs believes – and then the enchanting Spirit Tour will become a ghost itself.

[Photo credit: Visit Bardstown]

US State Department Funds Thai Monument Restoration

by Jessica Marati on

The United States State Department’s Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation recently bestowed a $131,800 grant to the World Monuments Fund for restoration work at Wat Chaiwatthanaram, a historic Buddhist temple in Ayutthaya, Thailand.

According to WMF President Bonnie Burnham, “Support from the State Department’s Ambassadors Fund will assist the Thai Department of Fine Arts with continuing efforts to protect the site in light of increasingly severe flooding in the region and will advance conservation activities at the temple.”

Founded in 1350, Ayutthaya was once the capital of the Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya, better known as Siam. For several hundred years, Ayutthaya flourished as one of the world’s largest cities, until it was sacked by the Burmese in 1767.

Today, the remnants of the city are classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, the elements have taken its toll on Ayutthaya’s ancient Buddhist temples and monuments, particularly the widespread flooding that devastated much of the country in 2011. Restoration on the monuments began in 2012, and the project is ongoing.

Correction, 2/19: This article initially stated that the grant was bestowed to the Thai government. It was in fact provided to the World Monuments Fund.[Photo Credit: World Monuments Fund]