Many times I’m asked which genre I like the best–historical or contemporary suspense. Actually I like them both. Each genre is challenging, exciting, and full of possibilities to create a unique story.

            I started thinking about historical suspense and how I enjoy incorporating hold-your-breath anticipation into my stories. Yep, partner, I’ve been writing historical suspense all along. Victims are dumped on doorsteps. The innocent are in fear of their lives. Outlaws prey on the unsuspecting. Range wars. Railroad tycoons who are hungry for more land. Tornadoes. Disease. Fires. All those stories need strong heroes and heroines who must choose between taking a courageous stand and risking danger or allowing tragedy and chaos to continue.

            Sounds a whole lot like a western.

            Except a western is limited to a setting in the western United States and the time period from after the Civil War to the turn of the twentieth century. Conflicts are generated from problems among Native Americans and settlers, ruthless outlaws, and rich landowners who want to take what belongs to hardworking people. Most westerns use an unlikely hero to save the day. We read about handsome, slow-talking, cowboys, a few who tell the girl goodbye and kiss their horses. J Of course there are objections to any story line.

            Westerns reach out and lasso a snippet of the past that entertains us. These stories can be suspenseful, but not all historical suspense novels are westerns.

            Historical suspense novels are bubbling over with action. They tug on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental forces of our characters. They take any portion of the past and add enough detail to make the story real. Diligent writers sprinkle in plenty of creativity to keep us glued to the page and on the edge of our seats.

            Facts are a requirement. Readers will despise you if you break that rule. Libraries and state historical societies are dynamic resources to assist the reader. I much prefer visiting the area and snapping many pictures. Many times local or state-published books about the setting and its people give us rich tidbits of information.

            Strong characters and unpredictable plot twists are essential in every suspense novel. The advantage of treating your readers to a historical suspense is the journey back in time to a slower pace of life when men and women lived by their wits, and hard work meant the toil of your hands. The romance of your favorite era combined with a suspenseful story will keep your readers craving another adventure!

DiAnn Mills

www.diannmills.com

A Woman Called Sage, Zondervan April 2010

I was researching a completely unrelated topic the other day when I came across a reference to water witching.  Intrigued, I decided to follow the enticing rabbit trail and learn more.

Water witching is a specialized form of dowsing, which is the ancient practice of locating items using a rod or stick.  This implement is referred to as a dowsing rod, divining rod or witching stick.  When dowsing is employed to locate a source of water it is sometimes called water witching, and its practitioners are referred to as witchers.

Witchers as a group are rarely in accord as to the ‘proper’ method for performing the task or on how and why it works.

The forked stick seems to be the instrument of preference for most practitioners.  The witcher grasps each of the forked ends, palms up, holding the stick with the stem pointed outward.   Willow, peach and witch hazel (which is one explanation for where the term ‘water witch’ came from.  The other is that it is an occult reference.) seem to be the most widely preferred as they produce sticks and twigs that are very are flexible. The witcher walks across the terrain, the idea being that when he reaches a spot directly above a buried source of water, the stick will point downward. 

But there are many other methods and divining rod materials as well.  Some dowsers who use the forked branch insist that the stem will point upward, not downward, or begin to vibrate and twitch when they reach the proper spot.  Others eschew the forked stick altogether, preferring to use two metal rods.  Materials for these rods include brass, copper, steel or other metals.  They hold these rods perpendicular to each other and when they arrive at a spot that hides and underground source of water, the rods will either cross or fly backward, depending on the witcher.  Other items favored by various dowsers include coat hangers, pendulums, keys, scissors and whale bones.

Dowsing has a very long and colorful history, dating back, some say, to biblical times.   There are cave paintings in Africa dating back 6000-8000 years that seem to depict a dowser at work.   When and how it migrated to Europe is not known, but it was present in England during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603).   During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries dowsing was denounced as heresy.  Even being suspected of dowsing was cause for being arrested and placed on trial as a heretic.  Martin Luther himself declared dowsing to be “the work of the devil”.   During the Victorian era, however, dowsing became fashionable.  The Victorians had a fascination with spirituality and mysticism and dowsing seemed to fit right in with this attitude.  The practice showed up in both frivolous pursuits such as parlor games, to the more serious endeavors such as being employed by mining companies to aid in their search for excavation sites.

How, exactly, does dowsing work?   Though a number of studies have been performed, there is no scientific explanation to support the authenticity of dowsing as a reliable method of locating water or other items.  But countless numbers of eye witnesses and practitioners stand by its results.  Some scoff that it is all a sham.  Others say that it is an innate skill many of us possess if we would only learn how to tap into it.  Still others believe that it comes from the practitioner’s heightened sensitivity to magnetic fields given off by various objects.

Dowsing is still widely practiced today as evidenced by the number of  professional dowsing societies in America and Europe.  The oldest of these is the British Society of Dowsers founded in 1933.

So what about you – do you have any experience – either direct or indirect – with the practice of dowsing?

On Monday nights my husband and I get together with some friends down the street.  They live just eight houses away, so we walk.  No big deal, except last Monday it was snowing and my husband was at work.  I braved the cold and the wind alone, feeling the sting on my face and the ache in my fingers. In spite of my polka-dot boots, my toes were cold.

I had one thought as I kicked my way through the oh-so-deep ten inches of snow on my driveway.  I’m a weather wimp! Considering the amount of snow in the Midwest and the piles of white stuff in Virginia and Washington DC, I have nothing to complain about.  Our cars have good tires, and the county will (eventually) plow our street. I’ve got food in my fridge, electric heat and a fireplace. I’m as snug as the proverbial bug in a rug.

How different things were when America experienced what became known as “The Little Ice Age of the 1880s.”  

This period of intense bad weather began with the winter of 1880-81. If you’ve read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, you’ve got an idea of the intensity of that time.  Her books are fiction but largely based on fact. Set in South Dakota, the story portrays days and days of snow, white-out conditions, a lack of firewood and a food shortage. The snow was so deep the trains couldn’t reach the town with fresh supplies.

In Brown County, Nebraska, this winter is one of the most severe ever. The snow buried the natural grazing, and at times it was so deep cattle could barely move. Thousands of head starved to death. Of the 3000 cattle on the Cook Ranch, only 800 survived. This winter had a secondary impact. Devastating losses forced cattlemen to shut down their operations, which opened the prairie to farmers and new settlement.

Ironically, the winter of 1881-82 was unseasonably warm. The average temps in the Twin City area were 27 F, but it ushered in a period of record breaking cold. For the next six years, winter temperatures (Dec. to Feb.) recorded in the Twin Cities area averaged from 0 F F to 9 F.

The cold weather in 1886-87 affected all of the United States but especially the West. Beginning in October, the country experienced waves of intensely cold arctic air, and snow fell much of December. These storms devastated the cattle industry. Winter began earlier than usual, and the summer had been unusually hot and dry. Some old timers noticed the tell-tale signs of a harsh winter–animals growing thicker coats, eating more food–but these natural warnings were largely ignored until it was too late to prepare.

The freezing temperatures killed cattle and people alike. White-out conditions made it impossible for people to see even a few feet, causing them to get lost close to their houses and thus perish in the cold.

The winter of 1887-88 offered a bit of a break temperature-wise, but in March 1888, the East Coast got a dose of the winter woes plaguing the center of the country.  A blizzard that came to be called “The Great White Hurricane” paralyzed the East Coast from Maine to the Chesapeake and killed 400 people.  More than 40 inches of snow fell in New York City. Major cities were isolated for days.

 How about you? Have you had enough winter?  Do you have snow in your yard, or are you basking in winter sunshine? I’m in Lexington, Kentucky with 6 inches of the white stuff on the ground and a midday temp of 24 degrees.  But you know what?  I’m fortunate indeed to be warm, cozy and safe.

Coming March 16th! 

 Kansas Courtship!

Pre-order at Amazon:  Kansas Courtship, Love Inspired Historical, March 2010

One of the best known text books in the history of the American school system is the McGuffey Reader.  Some estimates put the number of these books sold between 1836 and 1960 at over 120 million copies.  This places it in a category alongside Webster’s Dictionary and the Bible for number of copies printed.  Of course they have continued to sell to this day – at a rate of 30,00 copies a year every year since 1961.

The editor of these famed texts, William Holmes McGuffey, was born near Claysville, Pennsylvania in 1800, but grew up in Ohio.  The son of Scottish immigrants, McGuffey was raised in a household that fostered strong opinions on religious beliefs and the value of education.   These influences carried over into his adult life.  An interesting fact about W.H. McGuffey was that he had a remarkable memory and was known to memorize entire books of the bible.

At age 14, McGuffey became a roving teacher.  His first assignment had him in a one room schoolhouse with 48 students.  It wasn’t unusual for the young McGuffey to work 11 hour days, six days a week as he taught in a series of frontier schools in Kentucky and Ohio.  And in most of these schools, since few textbooks were available, the children brought their own books, primarily the Bible.

During this time, McGuffey also pursued his own education, eventually graduating from Washington College in 1826.  Shortly thereafter, he accepted a position as Professor of Languages at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.  A year later, he married Harriet Spinning.

McGuffey soon acquired a reputation as a lecturer on biblical and moral topics.  When Truman and Smith, a small publishing firm in Cincinnati, became interested in creating a series of graded readers for primary level students, it was Harriet Beecher Stowe, a longtime friend of McGuffey, who recommended him for the assignment.  The year was 1836 and within a year of signing the contract McGuffey completed two of the four books in the commissioned series.  For his work he received $1,000.  The next year he completed two additional books.  The fifth and sixth books in the series were later completed by his brother Alexander in the 1840s.

McGuffey Readers contained stories, poems, speeches and essays.  They were among the first student texts in the nation designed to be progressively challenging with each volume.  The first Reader introduced the alphabet, employed the phonetic method of learning words and other basics.  Once a student had mastered those skills, the second Reader used vivid stories and placed an emphasis on understanding the meanings of sentences.  The third Reader, which was equivalent of a current 5th grade text, focused on the definitions of words.  The fourth Reader taught students advanced reading and comprehension skills.  Unlike previous texts which employed uninteresting lists and memorization, McGuffey threaded new vocabulary words within the context of literature, gradually introducing new words while repeating the old.

A hallmark of McGuffey’s Readers was their strong moral tone.  He believed spirituality and education were essential and intertwined in the fostering of a healthy society.  The works selected for inclusion in his Readers, besides teaching the basics of reading and grammar, were designed to teach principles of religion, morality and patriotism.   They also included themes on nature, games, manners and proper attitudes toward family, God, companions, authority figures, the less fortunate and animals.  In these works, right was always victorious and wrong was always punished.  The stories emphasized goodness, truth, honor and strength.  These books helped to frame nineteenth century America’s morals and values, tastes and character.

McGuffey also had strong beliefs on how teachers should conduct their classes.  He suggested that teachers read aloud to their students, he listed questions after each story to test comprehension and encouraged teachers to study the lessons as well.

Gradually, other texts began to replace the McGuffey Readers in the schoolroom.  The call for more rigorous grade distinctions, less emphasis on morality and spirituality, and a changing view of teaching methods speeded up the decline in their usage.  But they have never completely disappeared from the scene and are still in use today, especially in the home schooling environment.

McGuffey penned very few other works in subsequent years.  He advanced in his career in education, taking positions of  progressively greater responsibility, including college president, until he retired as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Virginia.  McGuffey died in 1873, and is remembered as a great philanthropist and as a man who found success as an educator, lecturer and author.

We’re going to start and end this week with research books. On Monday, Winnie gave us a wonderful look at a book containing information and recipes from San Francisco in the late 1800s. Now I want to share a really cool book I discovered a couple of years ago. I mentioned it during our fun week of recipes back in September, but I didn’t get into what a truly great research resource this is.

THE ORIGINAL WHITE HOUSE COOKBOOK

A Comprehensive Cyclopedia of Information for the Home,

Mrs. P.L. Gillette & Steward of the White House Mr. Hugo Ziemann, 1887 Edition

To the

Wives of Our Presidents,

Those Noble Women who have

Graced the White House,

And whose Names and Memories

Are dear to all Americans,

This Volume

 Is affectionately dedicated

The Original White House Cook Book has a wealth of information that isn’t restricted to a single locale, a single setting in our history. There are complete menus showing family dinners or how a fancy dinner was put together in the late nineteenth century in America; dyeing or coloring cloth–and eyebrows; how to repair a hole in a silk gown; even table etiquette.

Here’s an example. General Grant’s Birthday Dinner started with clams, went to Consomme Imperatrice Bisque de Crabes (crab bisque), then to a variety of hors d’oeuvres, followed by trout, mushrooms, filet of beef… and then they got to the entrees! They served chicken and veal with green beans and asparagus, followed by sorbet to cleanse the pallet. Next came squab and salad, then fruits and pastries. The meal ended with glace, or glazed fruit, petit fours and coffee.

I feel stuffed just reading about it.

The book includes the seating arrangements for a dinner when the President was in attendance, how glassware should arranged on the tables, even what to put in the ladies’ corsages and the men’s boutonnieres.

Toward the back of the volume is a section dedicated to caring for those who visit the White House; how colds are caught; how to clean black lace; and how to render muslin clothing less likely to catch fire. In the author’s words: “Remember this and save the lives of your children.”

You can even learn how to make Rose Water or Bay Rum, Cold Cream or Hair Invigorator. Or my particular favorite, how to remove freckles. And no, I haven’t tried it yet – but I might.

This is a fun book with a wealth of helpful information. For example, if your heroine is a mail-order bride who grew up working in a wealthy household, you can find what kinds of skills she might have learned in this book.

THE ORIGINAL WHITE HOUSE COOKBOOK 1887 Edition, Mrs. P.L. Gillette & Steward of the White House Mr. Hugo Ziemann [I located it on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; Borders.com has a different edition available]

Have you discovered a research book that you feel is exceptional? Share it, please.

I can’t decide if the topic of this blog is interesting or just plain gross. My nose wrinkles when I think about it. I get itchy. My neck prickles. I don’t get this old Victorian practice at all, and it strikes me as too weird to explain.

This fascination started during a chat with my mother-in-law. We were looking at some of her treasures, things that have been in her family for a long time. One of those items was something I couldn’t identity. 

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it’s called,” she answered. “But women used it to save hair they pulled from their brushes.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Why would they save it?”  (Anything that comes out of my hairbrush goes in the trash or down the toilet.)  

Neither of us knew, so I did some googling and discovered Victorian hair receivers, “ratts” and the lost art of hair jewelry. 

In Victorian times, just about every woman had a hair receiver on her dressing table. She also had a lot of hair. After brushing it, she’d cull the broken strands from the brush and put them in the container.  Hair receivers were typically made of porcelain, glass, wood or celluloid. They sat in plain sight and were generally quite pretty.  They’re most easily identified by the finger-sized hold in their lids, designed to allow a woman to push through the hair.

Hair receivers kept a dressing table clean and free from loose strands, but what do you do with the hair? Commonly, the collected hair was used to make pin cushions. The wad could be quite dense, and the oil on the hair had a lubricating effect on the pins. The hair could also be used to make small pillows.  The soft texture gave it an advantage over pin feathers, which could be prickly.

The collected hair had another common use. A woman’s hair was considered “her crowning glory.” As a result, Victorian women had elaborate hairstyles. To get the fullness and volume, they used “ratts” (sometimes spelled rats).  A ratt was made by stuffing a hairnet with hair, sewing it shut and inserting it into the elaborate coif.  A ratt, roughly the size of a potato, gave a Victorian woman her trademark “Big Hair.”

A lot of us probably have a lock of hair in a scrap book. I’ve got a snip from my oldest son’s first haircut. In Victorian times, this sentimental practice went far beyond a snip or two in a locket.  “Hair art” might have been the “scrapbooking” of its day.  It was considered a suitable occupation for young ladies and gave rise to a variety of interesting creations.

Mourning brooches were common. With high infant mortality rates and the devastation of the Civil War, death was very much present. Jewelry made from the hair of a lost loved one was seen as a fitting memorial. Friends and family members often exchanged sentimental tokens. The hair used in hair art didn’t typically come from hair receivers. It was carefully selected for color and texture and had to be straight to get the desired effect. Hair jewelry is deserves a blog of its own. 

So what do you think? Are hair receivers gross or useful?  I’m still on the fence, but I’m in awe of women who made such good use of something I’d have thrown away.

Horace “Haw” Tabor may not have been long on talent or ambition, but he made up for it with sheer dumb luck.  1878 found the 48-year-old Tabor running a store in Leadville, Colorado, while his loyal wife Augusta kept a boarding house.  Storekeepers at the time had the option of providing a “grubstake” for miners on their way to the wilds for a shot at fortune.  In return, the storekeeper was entitled to one-third of any riches the miners discovered.

That spring, Tabor grubstaked a pair of sorry-looking miners named August Rische and George Hook.  They didn’t seem to know much about prospecting, but the two of them wandered into the hills and, by pure chance, dug into a vein of pure silver.  Their Little Pittsburgh Mine yielded $20,000 a week.  Haw Tabor’s $60 investment earned him $2 million in the first year alone without getting his hands dirty.  In short order he became mayor of boomtown Leadville and lieutenant governor of Colorado.  Augusta, unable to adjust to her husband’s meteoric rise, became more and more reclusive.

Enter Baby Doe.  Born Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt, and newly divorced from her slacker husband, Harvey Doe, she was blue-eyed, blond, spunky and irresistible.  In 1879 she met the newly Rich Haw Tabor.  Despite their 26-year age difference the two fell in love.  Over the next few years, as Tabor’s relationship with Augusta became more distant, his liaison with Baby Doe became increasingly public.  In 1881, Tabor quietly obtained a backwoods divorce from his wife (without bothering to inform her).  At some point he and Baby Doe were quietly married.

Eventually word of the secret divorce reached Augusta Tabor.  She hauled her ex husband into court and received a million dollar settlement.

 In 1883 Tabor was appointed to fill a 30-day vacancy as U.S. Senator from Colorado.  He and Baby Doe took advantage of the chance to stage a lavish Washington wedding, attended by no less a person than President Chester A. Arthur.  Soon, however, the gossip caught up with them.  The priest who’d performed the ceremony declared the marriage illegal because both parties had been divorced.  But since they’d already married each other earlier, it didn’t make any difference.  The wedding had been pure theatre.

That was the end of Tabor’s political career.  Although he and Baby Doe lived well for a time, and he attempted to run for governor and senator, public opinion had turned against him.

            In 1893 the final blow came when the federal government announced that it was going to stop buying silver for its currency and convert to the gold standard.  The crash ruined Tabor.  Everything he had was sold, but nothing he could do was enough to support Baby Doe and their two daughters.  In 1899 he died of appendicitis in the single room he shared with his family.  Shortly before his death, he reportedly told his wife to “hang onto the Matchless Mine.”

 Baby Doe spent the remaining thirty-five years of her life in a cabin outside the Matchless Mine in Leadville.  Still beautiful, she could have easily remarried.  She chose instead to “hold onto the Matchless.”

 In Early March, 1935, her frozen body was discovered on the floor of her cabin.  Deserted by her two daughters, she had passed into legend.  Her life has been the subject of two books, a Hollywood movie, two operas, a screen play, a one-woman show and countless other books and articles.

 The only connection this story has to my March 2010 book, THE HORSEMAN’S BRIDE, is that they both take place in Colorado.  But I wanted to give you the first look at my cover.  More about the story next month!  Or if you’d like a sneak preview, you can check it out on my web site: 

http://www.elizabethlaneauthor.com

The Texas Rangers, one of the most well-known law enforcement agencies in the world, has an on-again off-again history. First established in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin to “act as rangers for the common defense, the Rangers were disbanded and reformed many times over the years, mostly at the whim of whatever politician was in power at the time. It wasn’t until 1987 that the Texas Legislature enacted a statute that made the Texas Rangers a permanent entity of the Department of Public Service.

Through those years, the Rangers have worn several different styles of badges. Contrary to legend, they didn’t start out with stars on their vests. The first Rangers carried a Warrant of Authority, signed by The Adjutant General, that granted them the right to enforce the law when and where they saw fit.

It wasn’t until 1889 that the first Texas Ranger badge was created. Made from a silver Mexican coin, this unofficial badge was made from a Mexican silver dollar by the Rangers riding the southern and western parts of the state. The five-pointed star design is thought to have come from the unofficial seal of the state first used in 1835.

It changed a bit over the years:

An official, state-issued badge didn’t come along until 1935.

And even that changed again in 1957:

In 1962, in a decision that the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety called “going back to the tradition steeped Mexican silver badge worn by their predecessors during frontier days,” the department adopted their permanent badge.

The “wagon-wheel” design is a five-pointed star, symbolizing the “Lone Star” of Texas, supported by an engraved wheel. The oak leaves on the left side represent strength and the olive branch on the right signifies peace, just as they appear on the Texas State Seal. The center of the star is reserved for the Company designation or the rank of Sergeant or Captain or Senior Captain.

This is the star you will see on the uniform of every Texas Ranger, along with their boots, revolvers and signature white cowboy hats.

If you want to know more about the Texas Rangers, visit their website: www.texasranger.org. There’s some fascinating stuff on that site.

“Captain” John Hance was reputedly the Canyon’s first non-Native American resident.  He built a cabin east of Grandview Point at the trailhead of an ancient Native American trail he improved to allow access to his asbestos mining claim in the Canyon. He started giving tours of the canyon after his attempts at mining asbestos failed, largely due to the expense of removing the asbestos from the canyon. 

The trail, completed in 1884 and commonly called the Old Hance Trail by historians, was to become Grand Canyon’s first tourist trail, as Hance quickly realized there was money to be made guiding wide-eyed tourists into the depths of the Canyon.

 I love this. This is what makes America great. Hance abandoned mining for tourism in the mid-1880s. To me that’s just a man seeing a way to make money, supplying a product others want, a product that is born out of his life and his skill and his hard work.

 Hance delighted in telling canyon stories to visitors, favoring the whopper of a tale over mere facts. With a straight face, Hance told travelers how he had dug the canyon himself, piling the excavated earth down near Flagstaff (a dirt pile now known as the San Francisco Peaks). 

I exchanged emails with a man who works at Grand Canyon National Park and does re-enactments of John Hance’s tall tales. I asked him if any of those tales were written down and he directed me to one recording of a tale similar to one John Hance told. But Hance never told the same story, the same way, twice and he never wrote any of them down, so only oral history survives. Despite his many outrageous claims, Hance left a lasting legacy at the Grand Canyon,  passing away in 1919, the year the Grand Canyon became a National Park.  Hance was the first person buried in what would become the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery.

The trail John Hance found still exists. It’s listed as unmaintained and in poor condition. A Falcon Guidebook, Hiking Grand Canyon National Park, calls it a vigorous rim-to-rim backpack of three or more days—the South Rim’s most difficult trail. One man, an experience back country hiker said that even having been over the trail before, the time he took the trail with it in mind to report on it, he got lost five different times-by lost I mean he realized he’d gotten off the trail and had to backtrack to find it. There are miles with no discernable trail. I also, just because research is maddening, found this account of the Hance Trail.

The New Hance descends into Red Canyon (a side canyon of the Grand) and arrives at Hance Rapids on the Colorado River. Although the New Hance is a secondary trail, it is well marked and easy to follow. Note that this is really different than the other report. So what is the truth? Ah, research! Such fun.

One picture I found showed people rock climbing down a stretch of rock face, so that seems pretty challenging to me but when you think back to those days, it was probably a wonder to even find a way down. No state roads department was in there clearing it and paving it.

So, has anyone been there? Have any of you gone down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Anyone spent the night at Phantom Ranch or taken the burro ride? If so, you have my deepest respect because this is a truly rugged place.

Tell me about it if you were down there.

 Mary Connealy

I’ve always been intrigued by the snippets I heard here and there about the time the Mississippi ran backwards, but I never followed up to learn more.  The other day I heard another reference to it and decided it was time to do a bit of research.  I thought I’d relay a little of what I learned to you here.

Here in America, when the subject of earthquakes comes up, most of us immediately think of California.  But there is an earthquake-prone area in the Central Mississippi Valley known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone.  It’s also been called the Reelfoot Rift and the New Madrid Fault Line.  The fault runs from southern Illinois to Arkansas, cutting through sections of Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee in between.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, a series of earthquakes which occurred over a four month period, shook the area.  These started on December 16, 1811 and the first two, only six hours apart, had an epicenter in northeast Arkansas.  I was surprised to learn that these quakes have been billed as the most powerful in US history.   

They had magnitudes of 8.1 and 7.0 respectively.  Because of the scarcity of settlements in the area at this time, there was little damage to manmade structures.  The natural environment, however, was violently affected, with the opening and closing of fissures on the earth’s surface, landslides and violent waves on waterways, most notably the Mississippi.

On January 23, 1812, a quake with a 7.8 magnitude struck, this time with an epicenter in southeastern Missouri, and area known as the ‘bootheel’.  Again there was landslides, land warping and rerouting of rivers and streams.

Then, on February 7, 1812 an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 struck at New Madrid, Missouri.  The entire town was destroyed and this time there were numerous first person accounts of the damage.  Witnesses spoke of the ground breaking open, of the sinking and rising of large lands masses, of the ground rolling fluidly like the waves of the ocean.   Water poured into the sunken landmasses from ground fissures and entire hillsides were flattened while lowlands became ridges and bluffs.  In Arkansas, swampy places along the St Francis River suddenly spewed out sand and coal.  The level of the river itself rose by some twenty-four feet.  Below are a few eyewitness accounts:

“In more open country the surface of the earth could be seen to undulate in regularly advancing waves proceeding at about the pace of a trotting horse”

“…the earth was rocked about like a cradle & its surface rolling like waves a few feet high & in places causing fissures in the earth from which large volumes of warm water, sand & charcoal was blown up…”

“…at that instant all the shrubs and trees began to move from their roots, the ground rose and fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake…”

Along the Mississippi River, banks caved in, islands disappeared, boats were overturned or washed away.   The very course of the mighty river was permanently altered.  And for a time, it appeared that the Mississippi did indeed flow backwards.  What actually happened, according to scientists is the following:

A thrust fault created a sudden waterfall and two dams on the Mississippi River’s Kentucky Bend.  Additional falls may have also been created in other areas.  These geographical uplifts caused a severe disruption of the river, generating a major upstream wave and retrograde current as the river adjusted to these changes.

One eye-witness account put it this way:

“… we tied up eight miles north of New Madrid near the house of my cousin… In a moment, so great a wave come up the river that I never seen one like it at sea. It carried us back north, up-stream, for more than a mile. The water spread out upon the banks — covering three or four miles inland.  It was the current going backward. Then this wave stopped, and slowly the river went right again.”

The writer in me is fascinated by these accounts.  Can you picture these scenes, can you imagine the untold stories of loss and courage, tragedy and sacrifice that must have occurred during these events?   What part of this story speaks to you the most?