Adolphus greeley biography of michael
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The highly polished history series from PBS affiliate WGBH, American Experience, is beginning 2011 with a number of programs featuring events of American history that have seen little or no airtime on television before. These fascinating tales reveal much about people and events that left their mark on the nation and even the world: Dinosaur Wars, Panama Canal—Gateway to the American Century, Triangle Fire. Now, The Greely Expedition, which premieres Monday night, January 31, at 9:00 pm ET on PBS, delivers a story of adventure and promise that devolves into loss and despair—but it is a story worth telling, an episode worth watching.
To relate this story, American Experience turned to veteran filmmaker Rob Rapley, who last year did the well-received biography Wyatt Earp for the series. Rapley approaches a difficult subject with a subtle finesse that allows the story to unfold without interference from flashy style and visual clutter. It is the story of a determined man with an ambitious, promising idea that ultimately ends in tragedy and scandal.
Adolphus Greely was born to poverty in a family ground up by the unforgiving mills of Massachusetts. He saw the military as his way out of the cycle. He joined the army, fought in the Civil War and gained a commission. Af
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Adolphus Washington Greely was born on March 27, 1844, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Greely spent most of his life in the Army, serving in the Signal Corps.
Enlisting in 1861 in the 19th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, he saw action in some of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles such as Ball’s Bluff, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. He was wounded three times. After rising from private to sergeant, Greely accepted a commission in 1863 with the 81st Colored Troops. By the end of the Civil War, Greely was a brevet major of volunteers, and from 1856 to 1867 commanded black troops in the occupation of New Orleans.
In 1867, Greely was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Regular Army and assigned to the 36th Infantry. In his spare time, he studied telegraphy and electricity. While in the Signal Corps, Greely served under General Eugene Carr in the 1869 Nebraska campaign against the Cheyenne Indians. By 1870, he was assigned to Washington, D.C. His new duty was to help Brigadier General Albert Myer, the Signal Corps’ founder, organize the U.S. Weather Bureau., Greely became an adept meteorologist while collecting data and designing methods for the River and Flood Service during 1872 and 1873.
In June of 1878, Greely married Henrietta Nesmith. Henrietta, an extraordinarily
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Front page prescription the Writer Illustrated Rumour, 23 Aug 1884
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