You just never know, when you’re doing research, what little tidbit is going to jump out at you and make you say, “What? Really?”

(a sneaky aside, read the post carefully for a chance to win my newest release, Black Hills Blessing. I just got my authors copies of this 3-in-1 collection of short sweet romances set around a buffalo ranch in South Dakota. It’s western-y, but contemporary. Sweet romantic comedy with a buffalo stampede.)

I read things here on P & P all the time that I’ve never heard of before. Such was my reaction to the fun fact that President John Tyler, who became president after the death of William Henry Harrison, had fifteen children.

Was the White House over crowded or WHAT?

He killed off his first wife having eight kids. (Okay, I admit that’s my spin. . .I’m sure she was thrilled every time she found out she was pregnant. . .I’m sure she’d come to John in her negligee and say, “I want another baby, darling, please.”)

Yeah right.

And she didn’t die having a baby, that’s just me being snippy.

President Tyler lived 72 years, was vice president and president, was the son of the governor of Virginia, served in the military during the War of 1812 (though he saw no action), was elected to the House of Representatives and later the Senate and was the first vice-president to ascend to the presidency through the president’s death, which set a whole lot of precedents we still follow today.

Out of all of that, what interested me was those 15 kids.

How many bedrooms are there in the White House anyway. Yeesh.

They were probably as crowded as I was growing up with seven brothers and sisters in a Nebraska farm house. His first wife—mother of eight—died while he was president.

Here are some quotes about Letitia Tyler:

Letitia was shy, quiet, pious, and by all accounts, utterly selfless and devoted to her family. (Mary here-they just don’t make wives like this anymore.)

She met John Tyler, then a law student, in 1808. Their five-year courtship was so restrained that not until three weeks before the wedding did Tyler kiss her — and even then it was on the hand. (Mary again–the man clearly came uh…uh…let’s call it…un-restrained later…thus the eight children)

The most entirely unselfish person you can imagine…Notwithstanding her very delicate health, mother attends to and regulates all the household affairs and all so quietly that you can’t tell when she does it.” (Mary with more to say–they owned slaves–it’s not like the woman was doing any heavy lifting.)

Their 29-year marriage appears to have been a singularly happy one. (Mary–I’m glad for them–except if the woman was so shy and quiet how SURE are they about her happiness. But fine, whatever, they were ecstatic)

As First Lady, she remained in the upstairs living quarters of the White House; she came down just once, to attend the wedding of her daughter (Elizabeth) in January 1842. (Me again–??? Excuse me? She only came DOWNSTAIRS ONCE????)

Pardon me while I wonder if she was, by chance, hiding from her husband and potential baby #9. Perhaps she was under the floorboards upstairs, waiting quietly, hoping he’d fall asleep for once in his freakin’ life.

After his first wife’s death, Tyler remarried within a year, to Julia Gardiner. You really can’t blame the guy, I mean c’mon, he had eight kids to take care of. These days, that’ll get you your own reality show. Please insert your own Jon & Kate Plus Eight jokes here.

Here are a few words about Julia Tyler. She began seeing Tyler in January 1843, a few months after the death of the First Lady while he was president. (Mary wonders if she’d heard about the eight kids. Such things could be hushed up back then)

One of Tyler’s daughters, Letitia, never made peace with the new Mrs. Tyler. (Gotta go with Letitia here)

She was thirty years Tyler’s junior and it would be simple to make trophy wife and gold digger comments, but honestly, she had seven children with the man. No doubt she was hiding from him after a while, too. Crowded under those floor boards. In fact, that’s probably where the first Mrs. Tyler was.  Alive and well and in hiding.

His second wife was YOUNGER than four of his children.

And I found this particularly fascinating. . .two of Tyler’s grandchildren are STILL ALIVE. Doesn’t that strike you as weird? Tyler lived at the same time as John Quincy Adams. He served in the War of 1812. Think of that! Tyler was the first president born after the constitution was ratified. He goes back almost all the way to the beginning and he’s still got LIVING GRAND CHILDREN!!!????

That makes me feel really strongly connected to the past. It’s still a very young country in some ways.

Tyler also brought Texas into the union, so—as writers and lovers of western romance—we all gotta give him snaps for that.

Here’s your chance to win Black Hills Blessing. Leave a comment telling me how you told your husband you were expecting…or if you haven’t had that particular experience, name the most interesting, intriguing, terrifying, funny ‘there’s a bun in the oven’ story you know.

I wrote a while back about a woman, still alive, who’s husband served in the Civil War. You can read that HERE.

All of this American history seems so distant and yet here we are with people living who’s lives were directly touched by people who go way back to the beginning, or very nearly.

I like that.

Not enough to have 15 children, but I like that.

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My daughter lived near Pittsburgh for a while and this story of the Johnstown Flood was something she talked about. I’ve always thought it was interesting and today I decided I’d write about it for Petticoats & Pistol.

The Johnstown Flood occurred on May 31, 1889. It was the result of the failure of the South Fork Dam situated 14 miles upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania during a torrential rainstorm. The dam’s failure unleashed 4.8 billion gallons of water on the city and killed over 2,200 people.

The South Fork Dam, which formed a lake surrounded by wealthy homes, had been neglected for years. It frequently leaked and any repairs to it were hastily done with straw and mud. During a 24 hour long rainstorm, small creeks became roaring torrents, ripping out trees and debris.

On the morning of May 31, 1889, Elias Unger, awoke to see Lake Conemaugh dangerously close to cresting the dam. Unger assembled a group of men who tried to unclog the spillway, blocked by debris. Twice, Unger send telegraph warnings to Johnstown. But there had been false alarms in the past and the telegraphs were ignored. Unger and his crew worked all morning, finally abandoning the disintegrating dam at 1:30 p.m. Because the water had been overflowing all day, there were floodwaters in Johnstown’s streets of up to ten feet, and still the city was not abandoned.

At around 3:10 p.m. the South Fork Dam burst. The first town to be hit by the flood was the small town of South Fork. That town was on high ground and they were aware of the danger. Despite houses being destroyed or washed away, only four people were killed.

As the waters rushed downstream, it picked up debris. The debris was heavy enough that when it hit a 78-foot high railroad bridge, the flood temporarily was stopped by the stone bridge’s arch. But after around seven minutes, the bridge collapsed and the flood resumed its course. The water backing up for those seven minutes gave the floodwaters even more force when they hit the next town in it’s path, the small town of Mineral Point, one mile below the railroad bridge. The flood swept away every building in town and killed 16 people.

The village of East Conemaugh was hit next. By this time the flood was heavy with debris. A fast thinking train engineer John Hess, sitting in his locomotive warned people by tying down the train whistle and backing his train toward the town. His warning saved many, inlcuding Hess, even though the flood hit his train, picked it up and tossed it aside.

Now comes Woodvale. Just before it hit town, the flood slammed into the Cambria Iron Works at Woodvale. Now the floodwater is carrying railroad cars and barbed wire. Of Woodvale’s 1,100 residents, 314 died.

Some 57 minutes after the South Fork Dam collapsed, the flood hit Johnstown. The inhabitants of Johnstown were caught completely by surprise. The wall of water and debris reached a height of 60 feet in places. When the town was hit, people were crushed by pieces of debris. Many were caught in barbed wire from the wire factory upstream.

At Johnstown, a stone bridge, which was a substantial arched structure for a railroad bridge formed a temporary dam, stopping further progress of the water. The flood surge rolled upstream along the Stoney Creek River. This surge of water, flowing against the current, went as far as it could, then turned and flowed back to Johnstown causing a second wave to hit the city from a different direction. The debris piled up against the Stone Bridge caught fire and killed at least 80 people. It burned for three days. Afterwards, the pile of debris there covered 30 acres and reached 70 feet high.

Because of the metal and wire in the debris, a mass remained that took three months and dynamite to remove. The Stone Bridge is still standing, and is often portrayed as one of the images of the flood.

The total death toll was 2,209, making the disaster the largest loss of civilian life in the United States at the time.

Since there the Galveston Hurricane and the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers are the only events to kill more people in America.

I’ve got a new book releasing in March called Black Hills Blessing. I’m hoping by my next posting day, I’ll have a copy in my hot little hands to give away. It’s contemporary, not historical, set in and near a buffalo ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakot.

I’ll talk more about it soon. If you’d like details about my releases sign up for my newsletter through my website or blog.

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I’m delighted to be back as a guest at Petticoat and Pistols, a blog that’s chockfull of great information! I’ve found myself perusing previous posts, sharing a laugh or a nostalgic sigh as I filled up on historical tidbits.

I’m especially excited that in three days The Substitute Bride, Steeple Hill Love Inspired Historical, will hit the shelves. It was a fun story to write—with a mail-order bride, disgruntled groom and a small, personality-filled town. Here’s a peek:

They Struck a Bargain for Marriage

Fleeing an arranged marriage, debutante Elizabeth Manning exchanges places with a mail-order bride bound for New Harmony, Iowa. Life on the frontier can’t be worse than forced wedlock to pay her father’s gambling debts. But Ted Logan’s rustic lifestyle and rambunctious children prove to be more of a challenge than Elizabeth expects. She doesn’t know how to be a mother or a wife. She doesn’t even know how to tell Ted the truth about her past—especially as her feelings for him grow. Little does she know, Ted’s hiding secrets of his own. When their pasts collide, there’s more than one heart at stake.

Why was Ted disgruntled? When he and Elizabeth are about to speak their vows, the bride suggests one teeny change—the name on the marriage license. J A clear sign trouble lies ahead for this couple.  

 Perhaps you know an interesting or funny incident that took place at a wedding ceremony. If so, please share.   

 As a homemaker and mother, Elizabeth Manning is definitely a “fish out of water.” Yet no matter how inept she is, she never gives up, even finds unique ways to handle the children and her new and very challenging life on the farm. I admire her spirit and fortitude—the same attributes that enabled women to survive the challenges of the West.      

 In my quest for information to write this story a friend suggested I read Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier. The author Chris Enss relates fascinating stories of men and women who wed sight unseen. My husband and I dated for 2½ years. After we married, it didn’t take long to discover we still had things to learn about one another. All good, of course. LOL Can you imagine the surprises in store for these couples who may have only exchanged a few letters or perhaps a picture and often never met until their wedding day?

 Why did these women leave behind everything and everyone they knew to take the amazing step of marrying a stranger? Some were motivated by the fear of spinsterhood. Others had a desperate need of life’s necessities and hoped for a better life. In today’s world a high percentage of marriages are arranged, a norm for many cultures.

 In the Gold Rush era in America, men in the West needed wives. Men and women seeking a mate placed personal advertisements in newspapers, giving physical description, their financial situation and whom they sought. Throughout the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s a weekly newspaper, The Matrimonial News, printed in both San Francisco, California and Kansas City, Missouri, facilitated matchmaking.

 In Hearts West, I found the mail-order bride account of Eleanor Berry, a teacher from California, particularly interesting. Twenty-two and afraid she’d be a spinster, Eleanor responded to Louis Dreibelbis’ advertisement for a bride. Louis described himself as wealthy and average-looking. Their three month correspondence led to a marriage proposal. Eleanor resigned her teaching position and took a train then a six-horse stagecoach carrying twelve other passengers. The trip was uneventful trip—until four bandits held up the stagecoach. As they were about to use gunpowder to blow the door off a safe onboard, Eleanor protested the loss of the trunk holding her trousseau. When the leader hauled it down, Eleanor noted a jagged scar on the back of his hand. Reaching her destination, Eleanor prepared for the ceremony. Though her groom looked surprised when he saw her and Eleanor thought his voice sounded familiar, the two exchanged vows. As Eleanor signed the marriage license then passed the pen to Louis, she saw that same jagged scar. She screamed and ran upstairs. Louis rode off, wondering how his bride had recognized him as the thief. Eleanor returned home too embarrassed to admit what happened, but when the truth came out, she attempted suicide. The fast action of her guardian and local doctors saved her life. Two months after the robbery, sheriff’s deputies caught up with Louis. He testified against his fellow bandits, was released and given a one-way ticket to his hometown in Illinois, warned never to return to California. Hearts West makes fascinating reading and I recommend it to anyone interested in mail-order bride stories. Though I’m unsure how many marriages occurred, the accounts of those that did prove the outcome of these mail-order bride matches varied from wedded bliss to the misery Eleanor experienced.

 An interesting attempt at meeting the need for wives was devised by Asa Mercer. In 1864 and again in 1866 when men far outnumbered women in Washington Territory, Mercer tried to bring a shipload of marriageable women from the East to Seattle. Bachelors gave Mercer money to finance the trip and bring them back a bride. Delays and other complications hindered the success of Mercer’s plan. The number of the Mercer Maids, as they came to be called, willing and able to make the trip didn’t live up to the expectation of the waiting bachelors who’d paid for a bride, creating quite an uproar when the ship docked five months after it left New York’s harbor. The trip had cost more than Mercer had calculated so he couldn’t refund their money or live up to his promises. Though Mercer’s intentions were good, others intentionally swindled people who paid money for a mail-order mate that never materialized.

 But if not for those brave women who moved west to marry and make a home for their husbands and children—establishing families, as well as founding institutions like churches, schools and libraries, we might not have seen such flourishing civilization of the frontier.  

 Did any of your ancestors marry for convenience? If so, please share their stories.  

 Thanks for chatting at Petticoats and Pistols today. For a chance to win a copy of The Substitute Bride, please leave a comment.

 Visit Janet online at:

www.janetdean.net

www.janetdean.blogspot.com

www.seekerville.blogspot.com

Email her at:janet@janetdean.net

Ready for a literature quiz?

During the 1800s and early 1900s . . .

1. Which books were despised by “high moralists,” condemned by preachers on Sunday, frowned upon by schoolmasters and schoolmarms on weekdays, and dismissed by critics and librarians as destroyers of the character of our nation’s youth?
2. Which books were eagerly consumed by bankers and bootblacks, lawyers and lawbreakers, soldiers and sailors, working girls and housewives and youths alike?
3. Which books did schoolboys conceal behind geography books during class?

The answer to all three quiz questions is: the “dime novel,” the paperback answer to fiction in the 19^th century. Extremely popular, publishers churned out hundreds of titles—sometimes one new title a week—during the second half of the 1800s.

So, whose great idea was it to capture the hearts and minds of readers with colorful, romantic adventures and (in the process) take American literature in a new direction? A direction that lives on today in the “trade paperback” market of genre books, like—you guessed it—the romance novels of the authors of Petticoats and Pistols.

A couple of fellows by the names of Beadle and Adams came up with the idea in 1860. They took the popular “serial” papers (a chapter a week in a newspaper) and decided to publish complete novels instead—books anyone could afford: ten cents. Eventually, as other publishers caught the vision and competed for readers, Beadle and Adams introduced the half-dime library, as well.

Their first published book, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, tells the tragic tale of a beautiful Indian maiden who follows her heart and marries a white settler. Tragic because she dies in the end. How many authors here allow their main characters to die at the end of their romance novels? Hmmm . . .  I thought as much.

Malaeska was a runaway hit right off the bat. It sold 65,000 copies during the first few months. (Considering the entire population of the U.S. was only twenty million, I’d say the book did well.) It didn’t hurt that Beadle and Adams chose a popular literary author, Ann Stephens, to pen the first book.

With that success under their publishing belts, the company issued several more dime novels in quick succession. One of their most popular was Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier. This paperback novel was President Abraham Lincoln’s favorite story. It was written by a nineteen-year-old school teacher named Edward Ellis and sold over 600,000 copies. Go figure . . .

So, what made these books so popular? Besides the subject matter—pirates on the high seas, courageous freedom fighters in the French and Indian War, and Indians raiding white settlements—dime novels were packed with patriotic themes, high morals, virtue, and “the good guy always wins, while the bad guy always gets what he deserves.”.

Why then, were preachers and teachers and “high moralists” so against these dime novels? There was no vice and very little passion in the books—squeaky clean we would call them today. The only thing I can figure is that fiction in general was on the “DO NOT READ” list of many folks during the 1800s. Here is a thought from the Reverend J.T. Crane from Popular Amusements magazine, 1869, which sums up why our youth (or anybody else, for that matter) should stay away from novels:

• Let our young people be constantly on their guard against the mental enslavement which marks the confirmed novel-reader. Common novel-reading is a fearful evil, and against it there are arguments numerous and weighty, which all will do well to heed.

You can read the entire article, but I warn you, it is lengthy: http://www.merrycoz.org/books/CRANE.HTM

Just for fun, I have included the opening lines to a dime novel. To read the entire novel, go here: DEADWOOD DICK’S DOOM

Chapter 1

Too Late for the Stage

DEATH NOTCH!

Did you ever hear of a more uninviting name for a place, dear reader? If so, you could not well find a harder role, where dwelt humanity than Death Notch, along the whole golden slope of the West.

It was said that nobody but rascals and roughs could exist in that lone mining-camp, which was confirmed by the fact that it was seldom the weekly stage brought any one there who had come to settle . . .

To see a few popular covers for women’s romance dime novels, go here:

ROMANCE COVERS

If you would like to read a popular story from the “romance” dime-novel genre, click here: Mischievous Maid Faynie

*************

The main character in my Circle C Adventures books, Andi Carter, loves to read dime novels. I haven’t quite figured out how to incorporate such a “vice” into a storyline yet, but with three older brothers (all eligible bachelors, by the way, ladies), Andi has access to such reading.  

In honor of the release of my new CCA, Book 5, Trouble with Treasure, I’m offering up an autographed copy. This one’s full of rattlesnakes, bank robbers, gold-hunting, and survival in the Sierra range of 1880s California. Good, western fun. Read the first chapter at www.circlecadventures.com

To enter the contest, just comment and let us know on which side of the “dime-novel debate” you would find yourself (and why), if you were living during the 1880s. Try and imagine yourself with young teenagers. Would you want them to read these books? Would you take the “high road” or would you embrace the dime-novel “mania”?

“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

Linore Rose Burkard

Those who enjoy the excitement of a western romance, with all its shoot-em-out
pistols and gunsmoke, may not realize that regency romances might also feature a
fair amount of weaponry. While the rules of engagement (for fighting, that is, not matrimony)
were vastly different than those in operation during the years of the “Wild, Wild, West,”
duelling was a real part of regency society, and war was all around. Both required weapons.

It’s impossible to give a good overview of weapons and their uses in any sense of the word
in one short blog-post, but for a few  great pictures of vintage weapons, subscribe to my newsletter.
Regency weapons will be featured in an upcoming issue, including actual photos of weapons in the collection of Vonnie Hughes, a
regency romance writer. Subscribe HERE–it only takes a minute, and one new subscriber during the month
of November will win a free copy of one of my books! It could be YOU.

Beginning with the American Revolution, British and Hessian muskets and rifles were in abundance
not only in the army, but in British society. The guard and coachman on a carriage, stage coach
or the mail would carry a blunderbuss. Even some elements of the famous Red Coat–the
costume of the British soldier–became fashionable for civilians, such as the bicorne (or tricorne),
and Hessian boots. But most civilians did not cart around a heavy, awkward rifle or musket. Instead,
they favored pistols, which could fit in a coat pocket, or sit snugly inside a box made just for that
purpose, in a carriage or coach.  Travelers in particular would keep a pistol tucked inside
a pocket or luggage, and the ever present threat of highwaymen, particularly at night, made this
a practical, necessary precaution.

Then there was the pistol at home in its elegant wooden box, shiny and lovely to behold, kept
stashed away somewhere until it was needed, say, for a duel. Guns of the day often had finials, silver fittings
on English walnut with intricate lacy inlays of silver wire. Popular during the regency was a British Holster Pistol,
 carried by both soldiers and civilians, and made by John Richards of London. Later in the century,
cylinder engraving became an art which made many antique weapons collector’s objects from the start.

Duelling was not akin to the saloon brawl that escalated into gun shots in the West. Instead, it
was a more formal affair; but this is not to say that duels did not result from hot-headedness.
Any perceived insult against one’s self, one’s honour, one’s wife or sister could result in a duel being arranged.
The injured party would demand “satisfaction,” which in turn had to be answered–accepted by the
principal. Once the duel was agreed upon, both parties had to choose “seconds,” back up men who had
to be present at the event. Their first job was to try and effect a reconciliation, which meant trying to make the
perpetrator apologize for his offence. Failing that, they ensured that the rules were followed; that there was no foul
play; and, in the event that the dueller got cold feet or passed out, the “second” would step
in as his substitute, though in practice, this rarely if ever happened. In the event of great injury or death, the second was also
a witness, and quite possibly the only means of procuring much-needed medical attention to a wounded man.

 Calling for a duel was not to be done lightly, as it could result in death. But once called, it
was a matter of honour, and few men would refuse the challenge without suffering a loss of
respect. If a man was killed as a result of a duel, his killer would be charged with murder. 

Lots of old guns can be seen HERE.

Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for a copy of you choice of either Before the Season Ends or The
House in Grosvenor Square.

Linore Rose Burkard is the creator of “Inspirational Romance for the Jane Austen Soul.” Her characters take you back in time to experience life and love during the era of Regency England (circa 1811 – 1820). Fans of classic romances, such as Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and Sense & Sensibility, will enjoy meeting Ariana Forsythe, a feisty heroine who finds her heart and beliefs tested by high-society London.

Ms. Burkard’s novels include Before the Seasons Ends and The House in Grosvenor Square (coming April, 2009). Her stories blend Christian faith and romance with well-researched details from the Regency period. Her books and monthly newsletter captivate readers with little-known facts, exciting stories, and historical insights. Experience a romantic age, where timeless lessons still apply to modern life. And, enjoy a romance that reminds you happy endings are possible for everyone.
Linore’s Website HERE

I didn’t write the passage below, but thought it a great collection of info on Hurdy-Gurdies and Dancing Halls during the mining boom, a colorful part of western mining towns, one that started off for the most part as wholesome entertainment.

In the first years after the California gold rush of 1848, the first saloons and dance halls of the West were tents or primitive cabins with pounded dirt floors, but quick prosperity soon created a range of styles and degrees of elegance, so that by the late ‘7Os and early ‘8Os, establishments of luxury and opulence vied for the attention — and the money — of the miners.

The lure of money and gold soon brought the amenities of civilization, meaning more available women, drugs, gaming, and entertainment. The mining and trail towns of the West, such as Leadville, Cripple Creek, Deadwood, Tombstone, and Abilene, soon earned unsavory reputations as sinks of depravity, and while they probably could not compare to the contemporary urban scene, they were truly wild by 19th century standards. Large mobile populations, free of the restraints of family, anonymous, with no reputations to protect, created an environment of violent death, unbridled morals, and general rowdiness to match. Many of the dance hall girls as well as the men fell prey to death in the violent gunfights, venereal disease, and the widespread use of such narcotics as opium and laudanum.
“Fights in Leadville kept life from being monotonous,” a local historian wrote. “Misunderstandings ended in knifings, shootings, and free-for-alls. Men fought on the streets, in saloons, in dance halls, in hotels, at the theatres.”
By most accounts, the earliest dance hall girls were considered good girls, at least by Western standards. The very first women in the mining camps of California were German girls who were called hurdy-gurdy girls after the musical instruments of the same name, and the name also became attached to the dance hall. While a long way from virginal status, the first girls were so prized that they did not have to participate in prostitution. Because they were so few, women in the early dance halls were expected to follow a respectable code of behavior and men were expected to keep their distance. One old miner recalled seeing a sign in a hurdy-gurdy house: “A SKIRT IS A SKIRT AND MUST BE RESPECTED AS SUCH!” The owner of the Alhambra, a hall in Silverton, Colorado, posted the following set of rules:
Rule 1. No lady will leave the house during evening working hours without permission.
Rule 2. No lady will accompany a gentleman to his lodgings.
Rule 3. No kicking at the orchestra, especially from the stage.
Rule 4. Every lady will be required to dance on the floor after the show.
Rule 5. No fighting or quarrelling will be allowed.

As competition grew rapidly, the fine line between prostitution and the dance hall thinned, blurred, and finally disappeared.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year’s. Mine was wonderful but I’m ready to settle down and get back to a regular routine.

A few years ago it used to be big business for folks to go out and pick up cans alongside the highways and sell them. But that seems to have fallen along the wayside, whether due to loss of interest or the price they were getting paid.

In the Old West lots of people turned to the bone business to survive. Men loaded up their wives and children in their wagons and set out across the Plains, picking up animal bones, especially those of dead buffalo. Those people who made a living doing that were called “bone pickers.”

From 1870 to roughly 1883, herd upon herd of buffalo were decimated by buffalo hunters. They’d shoot the animals and leave them to rot in the sun. Then along came the bone pickers to pick up the bones and haul them to the nearest railhead for shipment back East. Firms that specialized in the making of fertilizer and bone china paid dearly for the gruesome shipments.

Bone Pickers earned around eight dollars a ton for the bones, which was pretty good money for that time. It kept a lot of people from starving I imagine.

And they sometimes caravanned with as many as 100 bone wagons traveling together. All those bone wagons must’ve been quite a sight. Here in Texas, San Antonio shipped 3,333 tons back East between July 1877 and November 1878. It was big business.

Bone roads crisscrossed Texas, and Wichita Falls, the place where I lived until recently, sat on a major one. Strange isn’t it that you never know all about a place and find out new things only after you move away?

To avoid “bone wars,” the pickers lived by an unwritten code. The first one upon an area had the right to those bones and no one else could come in take over. That way, the bone picker didn’t have to guard his territory day and night or rush to get through.

Bone piles stacked alongside railroad tracks sometimes reached ten feet high, twenty feet wide, and a quarter of a mile long. That’s a lot of bones. This is a neat picture of some beside a railroad track.

Once all the buffalo bones were gone, bone pickers turned to collecting cattle bones. Ranchers would pay to have pastures kept clean of bones. This practice continued well into the twentieth century.

So, are there any bone pickers out there? What is the most desperate thing you’ve ever done to make ends meet?

This anthology is still on sale just in case you don’t have it yet. And look for the upcoming new one, Give Me a Texas Ranger, in July 2010!

(Disclaimer:  First of all, I have to tell you I came down with the Shingles during the holiday weekend, and my brain is a wee bit fuzzy, so please forgive any typos today.)

I’ve talked a lot about the trek west by early settlers, probably because for years I’ve been fascinated by the people who piled everything they owned in a small wagon, braved drought and snow and Indians, and, armed only with hope, aimed toward an unknown future in an unknown land.

I’ve talked about the trek itself.  How it took a full day to travel ten miles. How settlers planned what to take with them. About courtship on a wagon train.

But I’ve not talked about the children who had little choice but to go along.

These children were given a voice in a book titled “Children Of the West, Family Life on the Frontier,” by Cathy Luchetti.

It was often a very hard life.   One of every two children died during the early days of the west.    But then many, many children were born along the way.    “Family life on the frontier was a daily lesson in tenderness and devotion, want and privation, as well as some excess — particularly when it came to child-bearing.   Seemingly, nothing could halt the rising tide of towheaded, sun-bleached children who peered out from curtainless windows and whose squallings echoed from shanties, sheds, soddies, log huts, and frame houses throughout the west.”

Many of those children travelled west with their parents or were born along the way.    And here they found both beauty and tragedy.

“The stunning obligation of daily travel, the endless vistas of wind-bent bluestem grass, seemed to daze the travelers, distorting all sense of direction or degree, leaving only a displacement of the ordinary world,” wrote Author Cathy Luchetti.

Let’s listen to the children and what they had to say in their journals. The book’s author quoted one young girl’s journal, “The West is so big and bare,” it made her feel ‘so alone and so sad she just had to cry.”

For Maggie Hall, the sense of space left her near dizzy. “We had to travel more than half way to California to get out of Texas,” she marveled.

“The first part is beautiful and the scenery surpassing anything of the kind I have ever seen – large rolling prairies stretching as far as your eye can carry you,” wrote twelve-year-0ld Elizabeth Keegan wrote in 1852.   “The grass is so green and flowers of every description from violets to geraniums of the richest hue. Then leaving this beautiful scenery behind, you descend into thw woodland which is interspersed with creeks.”

Wrote another budding writer, “The meadows covered with beautiful wild flowers. . . where we find white poppies too thorn-ladden to pick. Birds fluttered up from the dewey larkspur, the glossy black wings of the prairie blackbird like the flash of ebony. Birdsong swelled, from the low hoot of the owl to a bobwhite’s confused stutter.”

Camping – at first – seemed a thrill and children adapted rapidly. One infant grew so familiar with the howl of coyotes that the ticking of a clock seemed terrifying. “He’s become a child of nature,” the father said. After seven and a half months on the trail, it was all the boy ever knew.

There was also a lot of fun to be had, whether picking wild strawberries or sliding down a slick clay riverbank. Hiking appealed to these young adventurers, as did hunting.

But danger was a common companion.

Children were often lost. Two young girls wandered down a trail that looked to them like a “romantic castle.” When they saw Indian horsemen in the distance, they ran to their wagons, only to find lone wagon tacks and settling dust. “Frightened but sensible, the girls carefully followed the tracks back to their anxious parents, who assumed the girls had been kidnaped by Indians. Group politics had dictated their behavior: forced to move on by the rest of the train, they had left their children to an uncertain fate.”

Also according to “Children of the West,” nature’s violence was witnessed daily from thunderstorms to torrential rains in which “tents would be blown down, and everybody and everything would be soaked with the driving rains,” according to 11-year-old Lucy Ann Henderson who crossed the plains in 1846. Even more frightening were oxen whipped into a frenzied stampede by startling displays of summertime lightning.”

The towering box seat of a wagon was also perilous. Perched five feet above the ground, it proved to be a constant danger to children. They would often play on the box and one jolt would send them onto the ground below, often with serious injuries. If a wagon lurched into a pothole or hit a rock, children rocketed off.

Encounters with Indians were frequent, but more prevalent was the fear of an encounter, which led to recurring nightmares and moments of anxiety. A young boy, obsessed by the idea of Indians, felt drawn to become what he most feared, dressed up in a blanket and startled the night guardsman. The guard shouted out, the teenager ran and the guard wounded the boy, who barely survived.

It’s a little surprising any children survived infanthood. “Folk remedies were passed from midwife to mother to daughter to child, and the brewing, stewing, seeping and administering of them was an act of love and lore.”

For instance, here’s cure for a sore throat in children: take a small piece of pork and fasten it to a string. Thrust the morsel down the child’s throat, and then with the string draw it up and allow it to swallowed and drawn up again, repeating many times.

In Idaho, the favorite folk cure for colic in children was to blow tobacco smoke into a saucer of milk, then feed the milk to the baby. In Mississippi, catnip tea was given to babies until they were five or six weeks old.

Wrote one young girl, “I could still feel the warmth and grease of poultice made from turpentine and lard heated, soaked and wrung out of a piece of flannel which she put on as hot as I could stand it on my chest and back. Sometimes goose fat was used and many times skunk grease which, though just a wee bit off in smell, seemed most effective. Once I even had on my chest hot fried onions for a phlegm breaker.”

These are only a few small glimpses of being a child on the seven and eight months on the trail.

I have one more, one my father’s brother told. My father was only a toddler when his family homesteaded in Arizona.. One day his father came out of their small cabin to find him playing with a rattlesnake, teasing it with a stick. The snake met a rather hasty end, but if his father hadn’t chosen that moment to check on him, there probably wouldn’t have been a me.

Happy New Year everyone.

So how do you plot a Mail Order Bride story?

Wanted: A single woman who is willing to walk away from the life she knows to travel across the country or even around the world and marry a stranger. She must be willing to bear his children and take care of their home, all while causing him to grow in his affection for her.
      The Mail Order Bride plotline is typically one in which a man living in a Western country, most commonly in the Western United States, marries a woman from a depressed or oppressed country or from the male-deprived East, sight unseen. Personal advertisements for matrimony served as the link between Mail Order Brides and the men who sent for them.
     In Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier, author Chris Enss retells the stories of real women who responded to the ads of bachelors who had followed the call of land, gold, or the railway out West and found themselves in need of a wife. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan is one of the most popular examples using the Mail Order Bride plotline in fiction. Papa lost his wife and placed an ad in the newspaper. Easterner Sarah Elizabeth Wheaton responded, setting her adventure in the West with the widower and his two children in motion. The classic tale began as a children’s novel and emerged as a popular Hallmark television movie.
     Yes, the Mail Order Bride plotline is most commonly seen in nonfiction recordings of history and in historical fiction, but don’t discount its usability for plotting a contemporary story. The 1993 movie, “Sleepless in Seattle,” offered a twist on the classic story template. A motherless boy desperate to help his father find a new wife called into a radio show and told his father’s story of loss and loneliness. Letters flooded his father’s mailbox opening the door to a compelling and heart-warming romance.
     My historical novel, Two Brides Too Many, had been in the marketplace less than a week when I received a note from a reader who said she loves Mail Order Bride stories, and that’s what drew her to my story about two sisters who placed ads in a Colorado newspaper. What pulls us as writers and readers toward such a scenario?
     Mail Order Brides represent a stalwart breed of women who exude courage, strength, and a sense of adventure. They are women seeking a new beginning, opportunities, and financial security.  
     You begin with a gutsy woman, young or old, who has a need to be married, but doesn’t have any promising prospects in her current circumstances. Connect her to a possible mate through a response to some sort of advertisement. Then have fun with “what if’s.”

     The fellow placing the ad or responding to an ad may end up being the one your heroine marries, but what if he isn’t? What if he isn’t who he purported to be? Or maybe it’s her who wears a façade. Why? And where does the misleading and misgivings take your characters?

In Two Brides Too Many, two of the Sinclair sisters from Portland, Maine arrive at the depot in Cripple Creek, Colorado expecting to meet their intendeds and neither of the men show up to greet them. One eventually marries the man with whom she’d corresponded, but her sister weds another man. What if it’s a third party who initiates the ad as did the son in “Sleepless in Seattle?”   
     Play with the clash of expectations and reality. And think up twists and turns at every intersection.
     Mona Hodgson is the author of Two Brides Too Many, her debut historical novel available exclusively at Walmart Stores until May 2010.         

  You can connect with Mona at

 www.monahodgson.com,

www.facebook.com/monahodgson, or

 www.twitter.com/monahodgson.
Click to Buy TWO BRIDES TOO MANY