My Mother gave me a great gift — five, three-inch binders full of the history of my family. Apparently I come from a group with a colorful past and have used some of their activities in my stories. She often spoke of the ranch at La Honda and I treasure some items that belonged to my grandfather while he lived there. When I first started blogging, I found this great story and love to share it with others.

The following accounting was obtained from Roscoe Wyatt, Oscar John and Walter Ray.  Oscar and Walter both remember the Younger brothers in person.  Wyatt was a conscientious historian.  Personal interviews included two of my family members:  Emma John Weeks and Percy Weeks.  Oscar John (87 at the time of the interview) worked on the Bandit Built Store.  He knew the Younger brothers from when they hid out on his La Honda ranch.  

Among the men hired to build John Sears’ store, referred to as the ‘Bandit-Built Store’ in 1877 were the Younger brothers from Forsyth, Kansas.   At that time no one in La Honda, CA, knew them as the Younger brothers, because they were posing as cousins to Oscar John and Walter Ray.  Jim Younger actually lived behind the Redwood City Court House for one year using the name of Joe Hardin.

Three Younger brothers and their sister

Cole, Jim, Bob and John Younger lived in Forsyth, Kansas on their father’s ranch in May, 1861, when the Civil War broke out.  Cole, the youngest son, joined the Confederate Army and became a colonel.  In November of that year, a short leave gave him a chance to visit his parents.  As he approached the ranch, he found the place engulfed in flames.  A band of Union troops and local Northern sympathizers reached the ranch before him and stole all of the stock before burning the grain, corn, and feed.  They also threw his youngest sister, who suffered from tuberculosis, out on the cold ground, causing her death.  When their father discovered what had happened and put up a fight, they hung him from a tree on the ranch.  This left their mother, oldest sister, Molly, and three younger brothers homeless.

Within hours Cole, along with a friend, organized local Southern sympathizers and within a few hours they started wiping out their enemies.  It’s reported that Cole alone killed one hundred men that he knew had something to do with his father’s and sister’s death.  By the end of the war, Cole had a price on his head for desertion, killing for revenge, and a long list of other charges.  He left his family in the care of his cousin, John Jarret’s parents.  He, John Jarret and a few friends left for California where they hoped to find sanctuary at his uncle’s ranch in San Jose, but ended up using a ranch in La Honda as their hideout.

Oscar John and his stepfather met the gang as they rode onto the ranch.  Oscar was ten years old at the time.  He recalls unsaddling ten horses.  Everyone but Cole Younger and John Jarret left the ranch.  They helped build the lakeside Ray ranch into a large two-story building.  Cole and John traveled back to Kansas in order to bring the rest of their family west.  They learned their mother had died and that Jim and Bob Younger had been accomplices to the James gang robberies.  Cole was convinced the Ray ranch was the best place for the remainder of his family until everything blew over.

They arrived back in La Honda August, 1876, when big changes were happening.   A new sawmill belonging to R.J. Weeks (my ancestor) opened and John Sears just started clearing an old bear pit site for his store and hotel.  At last luck was with the Younger family.  Oscar John talked John Sears into hiring his cousins from the east, no questions asked.  The three brothers and John Jarret went to work on the store.  Oscar John recalls seeing Cole shingling the roof of the store.  When the store was finished, the men returned to the Ray ranch to work the harvest.

John Jarret spent that season at the Ray ranch, one season in Redwood City and then went back east.  He returned the next year and started work on my family’s ranch.  While he was there, he married Molly Younger, thereby becoming Cole’s brother-in-law as well as cousin.

The James Brothers were planning to rob the Northfield Bank in Minnesota.  They couldn’t pull the job by themselves and no longer trusted their gang.  They sent a message to Cole by a man named Giles.  Since the Youngers knew Northfield, they expected them to participate in the robbery.  Frank and Jesse James sent a message stating that if the Youngers refused to come, they would have them exposed to the law.  Cole decided to participate to save his sister and brother-in-law.  He left a rare set of pearl handled pistols with Jarret at the Weeks Ranch.  He realized if he got caught with them, they’d be a dead giveaway as to his identity.

Cole Younger Gang

Cole had an agreement with Jesse James that this bank robbery would be their last appearance in the mid-west.  Jesse assured Cole that after this job, they would never have to worry about money again.   Unfortunately, the robbery went wrong.  During their escape Jim Younger was shot in the jaw.  Jesse wanted to kill Jim because it would hinder to their escape.  Cole absolutely refused.  So, while Jim lay bleeding in a wet creek bottom, the James brothers made a clean getaway.  The Younger brothers gave themselves up to the law to save Jim from bleeding to death.  Cole, Jim and Bob Younger were sentenced to serve terms in the Minnesota Penitentiary.

When John Jarret learned what had happened to his brothers-in-law, he happened to be working away from the Weeks ranch and only coming home on the weekends.   Giles showed up at the ranch with a forged note from Cole.  Molly wasn’t home so he gave the note to their housekeeper.  It was written to Molly and asked that she give Giles the two rare guns.  The note stated that Cole’s prison term was just about up and that he wanted to sell the guns so he could get a new start in life.  The housekeeper, remembering Giles from his first trip, thought he was on the level and handed over the guns.  Jarret, for some unknown reason, came home that night and found Giles there with the guns in his possession.  After he read the letter, he knew it was forged because Cole always wrote in of care of him, not Molly.  Giles confessed that he had a chance to sell the guns to an Illinois museum.

Jim Bartley, La Honda rancher and teamster, visited the Younger brothers at the Northfield, Minnesota Penitentiary.  He learned that an old sweetheart of Jim Younger visited him regularly.  She promised to marry him when he got out of prison.  Jim looked forward to that day, planning once more to start life anew.  However, the woman turned him down when he got out.  His heart was broken.  Having nothing to live for, he rented a room at a cheap boarding house and shot himself through the head.

Cole and Bob dropped into obscurity after serving their terms.

There was a lot of unjustified killing and bad deeds that happened during the Civil War. I know what the brothers did was not right, but maybe they thought it was the only way to get justice. I don’t know how I would have reacted if I’d come upon the slaughter of my family members. It was a rough time in our history. Do you think they overreacted or that maybe hunting down the killers was justified?

You might be a writer if……

You might be a writer if….You pick up a mastodon tooth and write a whole story in your head in 10 seconds.

You might be a writer if….you walk down a street in a historical village and imagine being pursued by killers and time traveling into the past.

You might be a writer if….a woman in a museum starts talking about laundry in the 1870s and you’re riveted.

You might be a writer if….you saw the end of the Sixth Sense coming.

You might be a writer if….your children’s baby books are covered with writing and have almost no pictures.

In Too Deep releases TODAY

You might be a writer if….you take a tour of Carlsbad Cavern and are mentally transported back in time to the first guy who ever saw the place. And thirty four years later, you still remember that moment of being transported so vividly you write a series of romance novels about it.

My one and only trip to Carlsbad Cavern was about 34 years ago. I didn’t write my first book for sixteen years. But when I did, I had a LOT of ideas, this was one of them. What would it have been like to be the first person to go into that cavern?

When we walked through Carlsbad there was a nice sturdy fence, roping off all the dangerous pits. There were lights everywhere and we could see the beauty and easily avoid the danger. But what if you’d gone in there with no idea what it was?

What if you’d seen bats fly up out of a hole in the ground and went to look for where they’d come from and found a deep, black hole? What if you were curious, as was Jim White, the first man on record as being in Carlsbad Cavern, and you got a long rope and lowered yourself down? There are bottomless pits…okay, they probably have a bottom eventually, but I suspect the bottom is way, way, way too far down to be anything but deadly.

It’s pitch black. There are beautiful things—stunningly beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. Water dripping, building those rock formations. You’d be drawn by the glimpses of beauty. Your only light is a lantern or a handmade torch or a candle. You’d be fascinated and, if you weren’t really careful, you’d be dead in no time.

When I walked through Carlsbad Cavern, long before I’d ever thought of writing a book, I was writing a book. And it stayed with me until finally it was time. I fictionalized the cavern because the true history of Carlsbad is so well known I couldn’t be faithful to it.

In Bookstores Now

Three little boys find a cavern on their remote Colorado ranch. Three boys close in age, all adventurous. All tough little guys without parents watching them very close. The brothers stick together. They imagined themselves as a team, three brothers against the world. And then disaster strikes. One of them is terribly hurt. Their parents can’t stand the strain of their boy’s devastating burns and his screaming nightmares that will not end.

Their family is torn apart.

Ethan blames himself and he can’t bear the pain of what he caused. He left home the minute he was old enough. Now he’s back after years of lonely wandering. And though he’s sworn to never go near that cavern again, he’s found that his life may depend on finding the courage to face that dark pit.

In Out of Control—Book One of The Kincaid Brides Series—I told Rafe’s story.

Coming in August

Now it’s time for Book Two, In Too Deep. Ethan Kincaid and Audra Gilliland. A marriage of convenience between two easy going people. They should have rubbed along happily together for years. Except unexpected passion surprises them both. And unexpected danger draws them both into that deadly, beautiful cave.

Coming in August is Seth’s story. Over the Edge, available for preorder now. The crazy man who turns out to have some crazy things in his past that are catching up to him.

To get your name in a drawing for a signed copy of In Too Deep, tell me the best vacation–or adventure–you’ve ever taken.

Or buy In Too Deep on Amazon

Find out more at :

http://www.maryconnealy.com

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

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

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

Here’s how it happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more Griswold info:

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

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

Click on my latest book cover to purchase:

Their ancestry dates back to cattle brought to Mexico by the Spanish.  Some of these cattle went wild.  Over time they developed the resilience and survival skills that make Longhorns what they are today.  Early Texas settlers mixed the blood of these feral Mexican cattle with their own eastern cattle.  The result was a rugged, long-legged animal with spectacular horns and a coat that could be blue, yellow, brown, black, red or white, plain or speckled.   

But Longhorns are more than looks.  They have strong survival instincts and can find food and shelter in rough weather.  Longhorns can breed well into their teens or longer, and they’re known for easy calving.  A Longhorn cow will often go off on her own to have the calf in a safe place.  The calves can stand up sooner after birth than other breeds.

With their long legs and hard hoofs, Longhorns made ideal trail cattle.  After the civil war millions were driven to market.  They also stocked most of the new ranches on the Great Plains.    But times changed for the breed.  The “Big Die-up in the winter of 1886-87 and the spread of barbed wire fences brought an end to the open range.  Breeds like the white-faced Herefords put on weight faster and had fattier meat, providing needed tallow.  Ranchers crossed these breeds with Longhorns to produce hardier stock.  By the 1920s,  only a few small herds of Longhorns remained.

In 1927, Longhorns were saved from near extinction by the U.S. Forest service, who collected a small herd to breed in Oklahoma.  Other groups in Texas gathered small herds to keep in parks.  They were regarded as curiosities, but the stock’s longevity, disease resistance and low-fat, low-cholesterol meat revived the breed as beef stock—although many ranchers keep them purely as a link to Texas history.

Does anybody out there have experience with these amazing animals?  Any good stories?

There are no Longhorns in my March Western, THE LAWMAN’S VOW.  But you can get a sneak peek and an excerpt on my web site: http://www.elizabethlaneauthor.com. 

Watch for a giveaway next month.

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

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

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

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

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

Mosby's Headstone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.maryconnealy.com