(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 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”?

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