Wildflowers is the first in the Sisters at Heart series and is set in Missouri shortly after the end of the War Between the States. When I worked up the proposal for this series, I had my characters and their occupations set in my mind. I planned that one of the characters, Rosemary Saxon, would be a nurse during the war, and then would follow the same occupation afterward. 

Well, surprise, surprise. When I began to research nurses in the Civil War, I learned that very few of them were women, and the ones who were female were generally older and/or widows. For a young unmarried woman to touch men’s bodies, even to tend to wounds, was considered vulgar. Throughout the war, male nurses outnumbered female nurses 4 to 1. The general public believed women would only be a nuisance and get in the way of the doctors.

Where female nurses were allowed, they were required to be plain-looking women. Their dresses were to be brown or black, no bows, no curls, no jewelry, and no hoop-skirts. The last prohibition made sense, since the hospital aisles were narrow. 

So, where did this leave Rosemary, who was to be a continuing character in the series? Using my artistic license, she’s attractive, not plain, but I did make her “old.” She’s twenty-seven. J In addition to her God-given gift of mercy, she’s also determined to the point of being headstrong. She needs to be to stand up to the prejudice she encounters.

In Where Wildflowers Bloom, Rosemary is the best friend of the story’s protagonist, Faith Lindberg. Oh, and did I mention Rosemary has a brother, Curt? How many of us remember having girlfriends with handsome brothers? I’ll just say that through Rosemary, Faith and Curt end up spending quite a bit of time together.

So, like Rosemary, have any of you taken a job in what is considered a man’s field? Did you encounter prejudice? On a more romantic note, did any of you ever fall in love with the brother of your best friend? How did it work out?

 I hope you’ll look for Where Wildflowers Bloom at your local bookstore, or through an online retailer. Please visit my website at www.annshorey.com for more information about Where Wildflowers Bloom, as well as my other books.

Where Wildflowers Bloom

How far will she go to follow her dreams?

 The War Between the States stole a father and brother from Faith Lindberg—as well as Royal Baxter, the man she wanted to marry. With only her grandfather left, she dreams of leaving Noble Springs, Missouri, and traveling west to Oregon to start a new life, away from the memories that haunt her. But first she must convince her grandfather to sell the family’s mercantile and leave a town their family has called home for generations.

When Royal Baxter suddenly returns, Faith allows herself to hope that she and Royal will finally wed. But does he truly love her? Or will another man claim her heart?

Ann has graciously agreed to give away a copy of Where Wildflowers Bloom today, so be sure to leave a comment in order to be entered in the drawing!

Years ago, when I saw the pull-down attic stairs that ensnare him in Christmas Vacation, I yammered so much and so often about a similar set-up here at home that I finally wore Hubby down, and he put one in for me.

To make a long story short, our attic stairs AND the whole attic space now crammed with my stuff are now simply called “The Griswold” by all our family and friends.

 But in real life, the Griswold is a rare, valuable Civil War-era .36 caliber percussion revolver. Make that, War of Northern Aggression-era .36 caliber percussion revolver.

Here’s how it happened.

In 1835, Connecticut-born Samuel Griswold purchased land near Macon, Georgia and established a small township he named Griswoldville. Along with soap and candle manufacturing and employee housing, post office and church, he built a cotton gin factory.

New Orleans gun maker Arvin Gunnison relocated to Griswoldville after the Yankees took his home town. At the request of the Confederate Ordnance Department, he and Samuel Griswold teamed up to supply as many guns as possible to the army. Instead of cotton gins, Griswold’s factory began its stint as the manufacturer of guns remarkably similar to the Colt Navy 1851. At first blush, the Griswold was easily mistaken for the Colt. But the Colt was assembled with far superior materials and technology that were not available in the blockaded and far less industrialized South. (It is said that only 20,000 factories of any kind were located in the South compared to 120,000 in the north.)

The grips of the Griswold-Gunnison gun (love the alliteration!) were one piece of walnut. While the Colt’s frame and trigger guard was forged from case-hardened steel, the Griswold’s was solid brass, and not for beauty’s sake. The South simply didn’t have enough graded steel to use. Furthermore, the cylinders on most Griswold-Gunnison revolvers were cast from iron left in a bare metal state without any chemical treatment to prevent rust. So they rusted.

 In fact, many Griswolds had brass with a pinkish tinge. Copper had to be added to brass to make it go farther. When brass was not available, the Griswold, or “G & G” was made from iron or iron alloys.

Although not as top-notch as the Colt, the G and G’s were a decent-quality weapon, particularly when one realizes the shortage of materials and machinery to reproduce them. In their three-year history, about 3,600 of the revolvers were made. It is believed that the approximately two dozen black workers at the Griswoldville factory were not treated as slaves but received the same wage and treatment as other workers.

The Griswold was priced to sell for $40 in an era when $35-40 was a good monthly salary. In comparison, the Colt sold for about $14.

The G and G enterprise ended on November 22, 1864, under the smokin’ guns of General Tecumseh Sherman on his “March to the Sea.” The week prior, his troops had captured Atlanta and begun their slash-and-burn across the state of Georgia. In Griswoldville, the men of the Third Cavalry Division under Brigadier-General Judson Kilpatrick burned the gun factory and all other factories to the ground.

The rarity of the Griswold has the few remaining guns priced at auction well into the seven figures! (Now, if only I could find something of value in my own Griswold….)

For more Griswold info:

http://www.vincelewis.net/griswold.html

http://www.gunclassics.com/griswold.html

Click on my latest book cover to purchase:

How much do I love SuperChannel?

A friend mentioned that I would probably like a new series called Hell On Wheels. I checked it out (On Demand) and the husband and I watched the first episode and LOVED it.

It all starts with a Union Soldier in a confessional, seeking absolution for things he did during the war. In particular, what happened to a woman. When the confessional is over, both man and priest emerge, but it’s not a priest at all. It’s Cullen Bohannon – the woman’s husband. And he’s out to get every man that brutalized and then murdered his wife.

It takes a cold dude to kill a man in a church and then walk out with his greatcoat flapping.

His search takes him to Hell on Wheels – the travelling camp of the men building the Union Pacific railroad. As you can imagine, it’s rough. A good portion of the workforce is freed slaves, and as we all know the term free was a formality more than anything else. He’s hired as a supervisor to the crews, and strikes up an unlikely friendship with Elam Ferguson (played by Common).

The whole thing is ruled by Thomas Durant, who’s a bit greasy and not above manipulating senators and stocks to see that the railroad gets built. Durant’s chief surveyor, Bell, is killed in an Indian attack but his wife, Lily, survives – and it’s Bohannon who brings her back to camp. And all the while Bohannon is trying to find the last of the men responsible for the death of his wife.

It’s a great story, a fantastic setting, wonderful, complex characters (The Swede as Durant’s “muscle” is deliciously creepy). Of course the cast isn’t hard to look at either. My husband is rather partial to Lily Bell.  I, of course, adore Bohannon (played by Anson Mount). In fact, there may be a reclusive rancher in a story soon that bears a striking resemblance.

And I’ll admit it – best of all was the night Bohannon and Elam had to fight each OTHER. I looked at my husband and said, “I hope they fight with their shirts off.” Yes, I’m just that shallow.

The result?

A bit of history, a bit of romance, a lot of action. Can anyone say “All aboard!”

I have a character in Out of Control, book #1 of my Kincaid Bride’s series, the youngest brother Seth, who spent time in Andersonville Prison during the Civil War.

So I’m just researching Andersonville to find for sure where it was and when it opened and closed. No sense having poor old Seth stuck in a prison that had been closed down for two years before he got captured, right? And this is all backstory. This is NOT important. We’re talking maybe two or three sentences in the whole book. But little details like this, for writers, become maddening and fascinating. All I needed was the where and when. I could’ve gotten that in two minutes on Wikipedia. So did I give it two minutes and get back to my manuscript?

No-o-o-o-o-o-o!

I ended up reading and reading and reading. It was horrible and engrossing. A real time sink for me, and yet I couldn’t tear myself away. I tell people that I hate research, but the REASON I hate it is because I get sucked in it, drawn deeper, lured down side trails, moving farther and farther from what I originally was hunting for. Such was Andersonville. And today I’m not even going to write about the prison, which could be ten posts on its own. The starvation, the brutality, awful.

No, what I found was a group called Mosby’s Raiders. I think I’d heard this term before. Mosby’s Raiders. But I didn’t connect it to Andersonville. If anything I’d have put the group in a category with Quantrill’s Raiders in Kansas who wreaked havoc after the war. Further research reveals a video game called Mosby’s Raiders and a singing group, so that’s maybe why I’ve heard of it.

Mosby's Headstone

Mosby’s Raiders was a group within the walls of Andersonville. They were thieves who attacked the other prisoners. Since everyone was starving it might be understandable that people would become savages in their fight for survival, but Mosby, who’s name was William “Mosby” Collins of the 144th New York was a thug.

He led a group of up to 700 men armed with clubs, slingshots, brass knuckles and homemade knives. And he wasn’t just surviving, he was getting rich.

But this STILL isn’t what I want to talk about today. Within Andersonville a group of men emerged who called themselves the Regulators, and they are the focus of today’s post. The Regulators were given police-like power by the head of Andersonville. They led a force of men who rounded up over 200 of these raiders and brought them to trial.

On July 11, 1864, six of the leading raiders were hanged, ending their control of the prison. So, six men are hanged, what of the other 194? And those are the ones they caught? There were rumors of up to 700 Raiders, remember?

After the executions the regulators, led by Key (this is the only name I could find for the leader of the regulators), knowing how many men were left that were loyal to the raiders, were in constant danger of assassination if they remained inside. The head of Andersonville found a way to protect them. He got them assigned as nurses and ward-masters in the hospital, which separated them from the general populations.

The accounts I read of the hanging were riveting. The prisoners loathed the men who were hanged. But it was also Yankee soldiers hanging other Yankee soldiers while the Confederate guards looked on. So much conflicting emotion was involved.

So this was my inspiration for my next book series. These Regulators. And remember this is all well after the war is over. But what if?………(Authors always use What If?) What if these men remained friends after the war? This would be a huge bond between them. These would be righteous men, men who would do what is right even when it was terribly hard. They would be used to having each other’s backs. They would trust each other completely.

http://www.maryconnealy.com

The War Between the States never came to the Texas Panhandle, although the last battle of the Civil War was fought in Texas down by Brownsville. Reconstruction didn’t touch the Panhandle either … not until at least a decade later.

The Panhandle was occupied by sheepmen with their short-lived, peaceful culture along the Canadian River, buffalo hunters, the Comancheros, and the southern Plains Indians. Neither the sheepman nor the cattleman owned an acre of Panhandle property; but they were, in that vast land, the law unto themselves.

The “Mother City of the Panhandle” Mobeetie was founded in 1875; followed by Tascosa in 1876, and Saints’ Roost later known as Clarendon in 1878. Amarillo didn’t surface until nearly a decade later in 1887 … and, there was a very good reason why!

Up until the end of the war, the southern Plains Indians remained essentially undisturbed, mainly because of the sectional controversy and the war itself. In the early 1870’s professional buffalo-hide hunters entered the Panhandle from western Kansas. Normal Indian resentment toward this incursion was heightened by their understanding that the Medicine Lodge Treaties of 1867 guaranteed them exclusive hunting grounds south of the Arkansas River.

The renowned Comanche war chief and mentor between the Indians and the white nation,  Quanah Parker, probably would never have become a Comanche war chief if it had not been for the war.  He was only thirteen in 1860 when a concerted effort was launched to subdue the Plains Indians in Texas; however, the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 gave the American Indians a thirteen year respite from determined military attack.

Texas Governor Sam Houston, victorious in the 1858 Texas election on a platform of quieting the Indians on the frontier, launched an ambitious program for merciless pursuit of the incorrigible Native Americans by the whites.  By the end of 1860, a sizable number of men had been raised in Texas to fight the Indians: rangers, minute men, and federal troops. With such forces available, it looked like doom for the Indians who regularly depredated in the state. It was a combination of these three forces which attacked the Nokoni camp on the Pease River in 1860 and recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah’s mother.

But in 1861 the Civil War broke out, and the frontier was temporarily forgotten, the people of Texas continuing to pay in blood and plunder by Indians.  The planned subjugation of the Comanches and their friends was postponed until more than a decade later.

In order to avoid the expenditures necessary for Indian wars, both North and South made overtures to the Indians.  The Comanches, on finding themselves sought after by both governments, accepted peace with one or the other, as it suited their convenience.  Peace with the Indians meant that troops could be withdrawn from the Texas frontier to be used on the Civil War battlefields.

The “Comanches of the Prairies and Staked Plains” signed a treaty with the Confederacy in 1861, promising to prepare to support themselves (the Confederacy would supply them with cattle to start herds and furnish them with supplies and to live in peace and quietness. But as long as there were buffalo to chase and unprotected farms and ranches to raid, the Lords of the South Plains had no intention of holding themselves to such an agreement.  All nine of the Comanche bands except the Antelope band signed the treaty … probably the most representative gathering of Comanches ever assembled up to that time.  If he survived the 1860 Pease River recapture of Cynthia Ann, it is assumed that Nocona, chief of the Wanderers (Nokoni), attended the treaty-signing council and possibly brought along his young brave, Quanah, who was 14 at the time.

The North failed to live up to its 1863 treaty with Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches which promised $25,000 in presents and annuity goods to the Indians I they would stop terrorizing the plundering travelers on the Santa Fe road. These southern tribes, planning retaliation, made an alliance with the northern tribes (Cheyenne, Arapahoes, and Sioux).  In 1864 attacks on the frontier were heavier than ever, Indians capturing thousands of horses and selling them to the army through the Comancheros.  The route to Denver was under heavy attack by Indians.  Emigration was stopped and much of the country was depopulated.

After the Civil War came to a close in 1865, the government fluctuated for almost a decade between a modified “get-tough” policy with the Indians and a Peace Policy, administered by Quakers, who believed that honesty and kindness could solve the problem.  Sporadic token military marches into the Panhandle area included Kit Carson’s 1864 First Battle of Adobe Walls and Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie’s 1871-72 Battle of Blanco Canyon and Battle of McClellan Creek. None of these brief campaigns really damaged the Plains Indians.

Quanah Parker had almost free rein in the Llano until the the Red River War, 1874-75. It was only then that the determined attitude evidenced in 1860 was adopted once more … this time by the federal government.

Of interest, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, also known as the Battle of Palmito Hill and the Battle of Palmetto Ranch was fought on May 12–13, 1865, on the banks of the Rio Grande a little east of Brownsville, Texas.  Many historians, as well as the Official Record of the Civil War  consider the battle to be a post-Civil War encounter, with the Battle of Columbus in April being the last recognized battle of the War Between the States.

I want to acknowledge Pauline Durrett Robertson, a life member of Panhandle Professional Writers, and her book Panhandle Pilgrimage, as the source for much of my information.  Pauline’s book is definitely my bible of the history of our region.

“A Texas Christmas” hit the New York Times bestselling list the last two weeks, and the USA Today last week, thanks to our readers.  For one lucky commenter, I will send you an autographed copy of the anthology.

This is Minnie the “boss” of Books and Crannie Books in Terrell, Texas.  Minnie is a Hurricane Katrina rescue cat and knows her books!