Rocky Top Ramblers: June 2018

Friday, June 29, 2018

Amana Colonies, IA

The Amana Colonies are seven villages on 26,000 acres (11,000 ha) located in Iowa County in east-central Iowa, United States: Amana (or Main Amana), East Amana, High Amana, Middle Amana, South Amana, West Amana, and Homestead. The villages were built and settled by German Pietists, who were persecuted in their homeland by the German state government and the Lutheran Church. Calling themselves the True Inspiration Congregations (German: Wahre Inspiration's Gemeinden),[3] they first settled in New York near Buffalo in what is now the town of West Seneca. However, seeking more isolated surroundings, they moved to Iowa (near present-day Iowa City) in 1856. They lived a communal life until 1932.

For eighty years, the Amana Colony maintained an almost completely self-sufficient local economy, importing very little from the industrializing American economy. The Amanians were able to achieve this independence and lifestyle by adhering to the specialized crafting and farming occupations that they had brought with them from Europe. Craftsmen passed their skills and techniques on from one generation to the next. They used hand, horse, wind, and water power, and made their own furniture, clothes, and other goods. The community voted to form a for-profit organization during the Great Depression, the Amana Society, which included the Amana Corporation.

Today, the Seven Villages of Amana are a tourist attraction known for its restaurants and craft shops. The colony was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

Heritage Haus Antiques is one of many antique shops in Amana...

View down the main street... antique shops, wineries, restaurants, toy shop, general store, and butcher shop.

Ackerman Winery has a nice selection of fruit wines.

Ronneburg restaurant

lunch at Ronneburgs

Toy shop next to general store...

General store

Norman Rockwell's Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn Series

Norman Rockwell illustrated for Heritage Press two of Twain’s most famous books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1936 and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1940.

The first sketch of Tom climbing out of his window...done before Rockwell visited Hannibal.

Rockwell's final version after seeing Samual Clemens childhood home in Hannibal.

In the book Tom Sawyer, Tom was based on Sam & his childhood.

Norman Rockwell donated the original paintings of the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn series to the Hannibal Museum.

More Scenes of Mark Twain's' Hannibal, MO

Becky Thatcher House

John Clemens' Justice of the Peace Office(Sam's father)

List of boats that Samual Clemens plotted on the Mississippi...

Sam on the river

Young Samual Clemens

Mark Twain and wife, Olivia

Hannibal lighthouse on the Mississippi

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Mark Twain Museum Interpretive Center is where we started our tour of Samuel Langhorne Clemens childhood home in Hannibal, MO.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, was born on November 30, 1835, in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri, the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens. When he was 4 years old, his family moved to nearby Hannibal, a bustling town of 1,000 people.

Sam's friend, Laura Hawkins, was the inspiration for his character Becky Thather

Tom Blankenship's home, a friend of Sam Clemens, who he based the character of Huck Finn

"Lover's Leap" Hannibal, MO

View of Hannibal, MO on the Mississippi River from Lover's Leap.

Mississippi River with a lot of barge activity...

Ted looking over Lover's Leap

There are at least eight geological formations in Missouri known as Lover's Leap. One of these formations is located on the southeast edge of Hannibal and is a major Mississippi River promontory exposing a cap of Burlington Limestone, and underlying Hannibal Shale and Louisiana Limestone formations. These high bluff promontories inspired local legends involving an Indian maiden who commits suicide with her lover or jumps to her death to avoid marrying a warrior she despises. There are several possible sources for Hannibal's local legend including one that claims it was the work of the imagination of Hannibal newspaperman Orion Clemens, Mark Twain's older brother. The following is an excerpt from "History Of Marion County" by E. F. Perkins in 1884:

"Lover's Leap" is a large bluff in the southern part of Hannibal. It was given this name about 1840, by some genius who applied to it the scene of the oft-repeated story of the Indian Maiden who dashed herself down from a rock precipice rather than wed a warrior she did not love.