Visit the historical sites where it all began: the pioneers' homes and churches, the sites of births and deaths, the special places where visions descended and revival arose. For each landmark Adventist Pioneer Places includes maps, GPS coordinates, and captivating stories that will sweep you back in time.

This is the remarkable story of the trail that became the longest street in the world, as officially recognized by The Guinness Book of Records. Begun in 1794, Yonge Street was planned by the ambitious Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe as a military route between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Anxious to bolster Upper Canada’s defences against the new republic to the south, which he heartily loathed, Simcoe had his Queen’s Rangers survey and develop the route from Toronto to present-day Holland Landing, and laid out lots for settlement. Even the trusty Rangers, as one surveyor complained in 1799, needed little excuse to lay down tools and vanish "to carouse upon St. George’s day." Handsomely illustrated with the author’s drawings, and painstakingly researched, this book captures the not-so-distant days when muddy Yonge Street was the backbone of pioneer Ontario.

"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror In place-names lie stories. That’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City’s streets and parks, boroughs and bridges, playgrounds and neighborhoods. Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated eight hundred languages now spoken in New York. As recent arrivals continue to find new ways to make New York’s neighborhoods their own, the names that stick to the city’s streets function not only as portals to explore the past but also as a means to reimagine what is possible now.

"As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River. McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler's son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent figure in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as trees of a size never imagined, floods, fires, wolves, bears, even an earthquake, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough's subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them. Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments."--Dust jacket.

This important original work with stylish illustrations by the author/artist F.R. (Hamish) Berchem, promises to be a worthy sequel to his earlier book on Yonge Street, The Yonge Street Story 1793-1860 (now out of print). The fascinating story of Yonge Street has involved an endless array of memorable personalities including the young reporter Charles Dickens; publisher J. Ross Robertson; successful Scots merchants John MacDonald, John Catto, Robert Simpson and Irishman Timothy Eaton; coal and wood merchant Elias Rogers; Hessian officer Frederic, Baron de Hoen; theatre magnate Ambrose Small; and soldier, financier, philanthropist Major General Sir Henry Pellatt. This is also the story of some of the communities that dot the northward route of Yonge Street from Toronto - Richmond Hill, Thornhill, Aurora, Newmarket, Holland Landing, Bradford and Penetanguishene, the latter for many years the northern terminus of Yonge Street. Today, as Highway 11, the world’s longest street winds its way through Ontario’s "Near North" to Rainy River, a remarkable tribute to the vision of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe.

Elizabeth Blackwell, though born in England, was reared in the United States and was the first woman to receive a medical degree here, obtaining it from the Geneva Medical College, Geneva, New York, in 1849. A pioneer in opening the medical profession to women, she founded hospitals and medical schools for women in both the United States and England. She was a lecturer and writer as well as an able physician and organizer. -- H.W. Orr.