Finished reading: New Bern History 101 by Edward Barnes Ellis 📚 Purchased from Mitchell Hardware during a Christmas stay in New Bern. Of the two popular history books on the town, this was the more substantial in terms of names, dates, and stories on the city’s colonial, Revolutionary, and Civil War history, along with the devastating 1922 fire that swept the city. It also includes extra chapters where the author both dumps his reporter’s notebook and provides key historical documents. I learned a lot but … in retrospect, I probably would have enjoyed the other book more, as it had shorter chapters, more pictures, and looked like more of a fun souvenir while telling more of the town’s quirky stories, like the one about the Taylor Sisters, who aren’t mentioned at all in the Ellis book.