A Remarkable Curiosity: Dispatches from a New York City Journalist's 1873 Railroad Trip

by Jerald T. Milanich (Compiler)

Collected in this volume for the first time are Cummings's portraits of a land and its assortment of characters unlike anything back East. Characters like Pedro Armijo, the New Mexican sheep tycoon who took Denver by storm, and more prominently the Mormon prophet Brigham Young and one of his wives, Ann Eliza Young, who was filing for divorce at the time of Cummings's arrival. Although today he is virtually unknown, during his lifetime Cummings was one of the most famous newspapermen in the United States, in part because of stories like these. Complete with a biographical sketch and historical introduction, A Remarkable Curiosity is an enjoyable read for anybody interested in the American West in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2008

About the author

Jerald T. Milanich is an American anthropologist and archaeologist, specializing in Native American culture in Florida. He is Curator Emeritus of Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville; Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida; and Adjunct Professor, Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Milanich holds a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Florida.

Milanich has won several awards for his books. Milanich won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Archaeological Council in 2005 and the Dorothy Dodd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Historical Society in 2013. He was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.

Milanich's research interests include Eastern United States archeology, pre-Columbian Southeastern U.S. native peoples, and colonial period native American-European/Anglo relations in the America. In May 1987 he was cited in a New York Times article:

Milanich is married to anthropologist Maxine Margolis, also a professor at the University of Florida. They are the parents of historian Nara Milanich, who teaches at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Donna Jo Atwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

The the basis of this book is a series of newspaper articles written by Amos J Cummings in 1873 as he and his wife traveled by train from New York City through the "Wild West" and on out to California. He had a lively writing style and obviously enjoyed interviewing people.
But the editor of the articles, Jerald T. Milanich, has added a ton of information, both about Cummings and about the people he wrote about. It was an interesting look at the West of 150 years ago as seen by an Easterner.