If you’ve visited the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, you’ve likely seen them—striking structures fashioned of weathered brick and rustic timbers, rising out of the red earth as if they’d been there for centuries.  They look as if they could be Indian ruins or remnants of old Spanish haciendas.  The truth—these buildings sprang from the creative genius of a unique American woman named Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter.

Born in 1869, Mary Colter traveled with her family through frontier Minnesota, Colorado and Texas.  When her father died in 1886, she needed a way to support her mother and sister.  After graduating from the California School of Design in San Francisco, she returned to St. Paul, Minnesota where she taught mechanical drawing at Mechanic Arts High School.  But she was destined for bigger things.

Enter Fred Harvey, the man who forged a tourism empire in the American Southwest.  Harvey may be best known for his bevy of pretty, wholesome Harvey Girls who came west to work in his hotels. But Mary Colter was never a Harvey girl.  In 1901 Harvey hired her to decorate the interior of the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Her talents were recognized, and she began working full-time for Harvey’s company in 1910, moving from interior designer to architect.

As one of the few female architects in the country (although she was never licensed) Mary Colter completed 21 projects in 30 years for Fred Harvey.  She created a series of landmark hotels in places like Santa Fe, Gallup, New Mexico and Winslow, Arizona.  But her most famous and enduring work was done at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Because she was fascinated with Native American architecture and the landscape of the Southwest, her Grand Canyon buildings took on this flavor and became her signature works.  She was a perfectionist with a reputation for bossiness, creating structures that looked ancient and rugged as soon as they were finished.

A chain-smoker, she often wore pants and a Stetson.  She knew how to shoot a pistol and was an avid collector of Indian jewelry.  Her collection numbered about a thousand pieces, and she wore rings on every finger.

Mary Colter lived to the age of 88.  By the end of her life, many of her important buildings had been abandoned or torn down.  Disheartened, she told a reporter, “There is such a thing as living too long.”

Her Grand Canyon buildings, however, have been preserved.  If you go there you can see them today, in all their haunting beauty.

Here’s a link to more photos of her work: 

http://www.friendsof1800.org/COLTER/colter.html

Have you seen Mary Colter’s buildings at Grand Canyon?  Do you have a favorite piece of architecture somewhere?

Frances Wright grew up as an orphaned Scottish heiress, but instead of leading a life of luxury, she indulged herself in a lifetime of learning. Her prominent calls for reform paved the way for women into the next century.

A Greek scholar as a girl, she wrote and published plays. She and her younger sister Camilla came to America in 1818 to see one of those plays.

After observing her surroundings while traveling, she wrote Views of Society and Manners in America. The book, ahead of its time, was widely read in Europe and established the author’s reputation as a savant.

During her travels, she met former presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The tour gave her a first glimpse at slavery, after which she threw herself into abolitionism and wrote another book. Besides her efforts through the written word, she bought 640 acres of wilderness near Memphis and created a place where slaves could learn skills and adapt to freedom.

Fanny continued writing and lecturing, and in the late 1820s she took a position on equal property rights and equal educational opportunities for women. Ahead of her time, she promoted fair divorce laws and accessible birth control.

Public speaking was an activity reserved for men, and Fanny took sharp criticism. Scandalous gossip was directed at her, preachers denounced her, and the press characterized her as “a female monster whom all decent people ought to avoid.” Tall and imposing, she was eloquent and her speeches effective.

Her signature look was an all-white suit or dress, and she carried a copy of The Declaration of Independence, often referring to it. In 1829 she founded the Workingmen’s Association in New York City and in the 1830s was a supporter of the Jacksonian democracy. In 1831 she married.

After having two children, she wrote a book in 1838 calling for world government. She divorced in 1852, perhaps utilizing those divorce laws she’d fought so hard for, and died a few months later after falling on the ice.

Fanny Wright will live on in history as the first female public speaker and a fierce advocate for women’s rights.

I admire strong women. Meredith Abbot in my October Christmas novella is just that. Daughter of a railroad tycoon, the only thing expected of her is to marry well. She’s doing her best, but a snowstorm and a sexy U.S. Marshal derail her plans. When outlaws ambush their Pullman, Jonah Cavanaugh discovers Meredith is no shrinking violet.

I’d love to send an advance copy to someone who comments today!

LADY GYPSY was my 2nd book with Dorchester and was initially released the month the Towers came down.  For those of us unfortunate enough to have new releases out during that chaotic time, our distribution took a huge hit.  There were days when I wondered if my book ever got out of the New York warehouse.

Thanks to the raging popularity of ebooks, though, LADY GYPSY is alive again and has reminded me how fascinating Gypsies were.  Liza, the heroine, is one of my all-time favorites.  Fathered by a Gaje (non-Gypsy) she never knew, she and her Gypsy mother are outcasts by her people.  By the sheer nature of her story and the life she was forced to live,  she’s unique and colorful.  The way I depicted her with the obstacles she must overcome were true.

Let me share with you some of the Gypsy ways:

Scratching – Most Gypsies were highly suspicious of the Gaje.  When they encountered one they deemed unwelcome, they would scratch themselves or start coughing violently, giving the implication they possessed a skin or lung ailment which quite effectively sent the Gaje scurrying.  They would take this skill into the Gaje stores, too, a butcher shop, for example.  After scratching and scratching, they would freely touch hams or sausages.  The disgusted butcher would send them on their way with the ‘soiled’ meat free of charge or at a drastically reduced price.

With their possessions few, from time to time the Gypsy would stop at a farmhouse and ‘borrow’ something they needed, say a pair of scissors or an old pot.  The Rom (Gypsies) found it unecessary to return the item to its owner; they would simply leave it behind when they were finished with it.  In their minds, they weren’t ‘keeping’ the item, and besides, another kumpania (family group) would come along and could use it as well.

Vurma - leaving signs or messages along a trail.  If a Gypsy had to break camp quickly to avoid the police, they would leave signs for family members left behind.  They’d hang bits of material or lengths of colored thread on tree branches slightly higher than the normal range of vision, choosing branches pointing in the direction they’d left.   Pinecones, small heaps of stones, chicken bones, broken glass, etc. would be used, too, pointing the way if there were no trees along the road.

Ghost Vomit (Johai) –  The Rom believed a spirit called ‘little grandmother’ (Mamioro) brought disease and fed on filth.  They believed she left behind ghost vomit (slime found on garbage) which could heal Gypsy ills.  Mixed with flour and baked until it was hard, the Gypsy would chip off small pieces and carry it in their bujo, a small medicine bag.  Johai would be mixed with garlic and pepper and other herbs, placed in a small bag, then sewn into an unbaptized child’s clothing, for example, or a sick person’s clothing, to keep them safe.

Marhime – Most of us think of Gypsies as being eternally dirty in their shabby clothes, uncombed hair and bare feet, but in truth, they were fanatics in their cleanliness rituals.  A woman was considered marhime (dirty) from the waist down.  If her skirt hems touched a man besides her husband, he was soiled by her and considered unclean, a source of shame amongst the kumpania.  If her skirts brushed against plates, cups or drinking glasses, they had to be destroyed. 

While parked along a riverbank, a kumpania followed five different orders for drawing water.  Water for cooking and drinking was taken farthest upstream; next to that, water for washing dishes and bathing.  Farther downstream, water for horses, then water for washing clothes, and lastly, the water used for the clothes of pregnant or menstruating women.  Right down to using separate buckets for each use.

However odd we might think it, this custom of considering women marhime assured her of both privacy and protection, giving her dignity, power, and a sense of mystery to men.  Not necessarily a bad thing, eh?

These are only a few of the strange Gypsy beliefs that I”ve incorporated into Liza’s world.   To read more:

LADY GYPSY, Kindle Edition

LADY GYPSY, Nook Edition

Also available at Smashwords!

Do you know of any other customs, Gypsy or otherwise?  Do you or your family have any quirks the rest of us would think a bit strange?

With all the recent hoopla about Paul Revere’s ride going on LOL, I came across a valiant young woman who fell through the cracks of history. Sybil Ludington, America’s female Paul Revere, took a night time ride through Dutchess County, New York in 1777 to warn the militia that the British were burning the town of Danbury, Connecticut.

She was 16. 

Sybil, whose name is spelled many ways (she herself signed “Sebal” to her Revolutionary War Pension application), was one of twelve children born to a respected officer of the 7th Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia. Colonel Henry Ludington later became an aide for General George Washington. 

She had just turned sixteen in April 1877 when twenty transports and six warships bearing a total of 2,000 British troops landed at Fairfield, Connecticut, moving eight miles inland. They harmed no private property along the way. 

They were after the storehouses of Continental Army supplies that had recently been moved to Danbury, Connecticut for safe keeping. Unfortunately, the stores of food, tents, clothing, wine and rum were poorly guarded. Rather than destroy the wine and rum, British soldiers consumed it, and drunken troops started fires as military discipline waned. 

Messengers were set afield to announce the arrival of the British and the fires. 

Upon hearing the news from a messenger, Colonel Ludington tried to round up his scattered 400-man militia, but night had fallen thick and stormy. The exhausted messenger, unfamiliar with the outlying area, was of little help. So Sybil stepped up to ride out and alert the settlers. 

Whether she volunteered or her father instructed her with the route, no one knows for sure.

What is known is, Sybil began her ride in heavy rain about nine p.m. She traveled 40 miles from her home. Returning the next day, she not only had avoided capture by British soldiers in the area, but had outrun British loyalists, and “Skinners” –outlaws who cared about neither side. 

Although Colonel Ludington’s militia arrived too late to save Danbury, they fought the Brits as they left the area.

After the war, Sybil married a Catskill lawyer, Edmond Ogden, and had one son, Henry. Upon her death at 77 in February, 1839, Sybil was buried near her father in the historic Maple Avenue Cemetery in Patterson, NY. Today, historical markers trace her route, and a sculpture by artist Anna Huntington commemorates Sybil’s ride can be seen on the shore of Lake Geneida in Carmel NY. 

Poet Berton Braley penned a clever take on Longfellow:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of a lovely feminine Paul Revere
Who rode an equally famous ride
Through a different part of the countryside,
Where Sybil Ludington’s name recalls
A ride as daring as that of Paul’s.

In April, Seventeen Seventy-Seven,
A smoky glow in the eastern heaven
(A fiery herald of war and slaughter)
Came to the eyes of the Colonel’s daughter.
“Danbury’s burning,” she cried aloud.
The Colonel answered, “‘T is but a cloud,
A cloud reflecting the campfires’ red,
So hush you, Sybil, and go to bed.”

“I hear the sound of the cannon drumming”
“‘T is only the wind in the treetops humming!
So go to bed, as a young lass ought,
And give the matter no further thought.”
Young Sybil sighed as she turned to go,
“Still, Danbury’s burning–that I know.”

Sound of a horseman riding hard
Clatter of hoofs in the manoryard
Feet on the steps and a knock resounding
As a fist struck wood with a mighty pounding.
The doors flung open, a voice is heard,
“Danbury’s burning–I rode with word;
Fully half of the town is gone
And the British–the British are coming on.
Send a messenger, get our men!”
His message finished the horseman then
Staggered wearily to a chair
And fell exhausted in slumber there.

The Colonel muttered, “And who, my friend,
Is the messenger I can send?
Your strength is spent and you cannot ride
And, then, you know not the countryside;
I cannot go for my duty’s clear;
When my men come in they must find me here;
There’s devil a man on the place tonight
To warn my troopers to come–and fight.
Then, who is my messenger to be?”
Said Sybil Ludington, “You have me.”

“You!” said the Colonel, and grimly smiled,
“You!” My daughter, you’re just a child!”
“Child!” cried Sybil. “Why I’m sixteen!
My mind’s alert and my senses keen,
I know where the trails and the roadways are
And I can gallop as fast and as far
As any masculine rider can.
You want a messenger? I’m your man!”

The Colonel’s heart was aglow with pride.
“: Spoke like a soldier. Ride, girl, ride
Ride like the devil; ride like sin;
Summon my slumbering troopers in.
I know when duty is to be done
That I can depend on a Ludington!”

So over the trails to the towns and farms
Sybil delivered the call to arms.
Riding swiftly without a stop
Except to rap with a riding crop
On the soldiers’ doors, with a sharp tattoo
And a high-pitched feminine halloo.
“Up! up there, soldier. You’re needed, come!
The British are marching!” and the drum
Of her horse’s feet as she rode apace
To bring more men to the meeting place.

Sybil grew weary and faint and drowsing,
Here limbs were aching, but still she rode
Until she finished her task of rousing
Each sleeping soldier from his abode,
Showing her father, by work well done,
The he could depend on a Ludington.

Dawn in the skies with its tints of pearl
And the lass who rode in a soldier’s stead
Turned home, only a tired girl
Thinking of breakfast and then of bed
With never a dream that her ride would be
A glorious legend of history;
Nor that posterity’s hand would mark
Each trail she rode through the inky dark,
Each path to figure in song and story
As a splendid, glamorous path of glory–
To prove, as long as the ages run,
That “you can depend on a Ludington.”

Such is the legend of Sybil’s ride
To summon the men from the countryside
A true tale, making her title clear
As a lovely feminine Paul Revere!

 A couple days a month, I’m a muckraker at the local horse rescue in the foothills here in Central California. Each critter has his/her own story, always heartrending and inspiring both. Recently, a mommy horse from Nevada allegedly rescued from a slaughterhouse gave birth to a little colt at the comfortable, lovely sanctuary. 

Although I’ll feature more of “our” horses in a future blog, I couldn’t resist showing you baby Jasper and his mama. And the rescue of horses brought to mind something I’d seen on a History Channel program long ago, about a woman fighting to preserve and protect the wild horses and burros on the American plains. I couldn’t remember the rescuer’s name. Mustang Sally stuck in my mind. But researching her, I found out she was “Wild Horse Annie”, otherwise known as Velma Johnston. 

Truth is, the moniker “Wild Horse Annie” was given to her as a pejorative by men who thought her cause amusing, if not silly. But she wore it as a badge of courage.

 Born in Washoe, Nevada, in 1912, Velma Bronn grew up on her parents’ “Lazy Double Heart Ranch”. Here she learned all about the humane treatment of horses and training them by gentle methods. A childhood bout of polio had her in a body cast for six months and left her with some disfigurements that caused cruelty from her schoolmates. This led her to concentrate on studies and the animals in her life. 

After her marriage to Charles Johnston, she and her husband took over the operation of her family ranch, later turning  it into a “dude” ranch for children. And Velma took a job as a secretary for an insurance company.

 At this time, no humane laws protected the herds of wild horses descended from the horses and burros left behind by explorers, conquistadors, miners, and pioneers. Most ended up slaughtered for pet foods, and the capture methods were horrific. Hard to write, but many were chased by airplanes or trucks until they collapsed from exhaustion, nostrils then wired shut, necks tied to truck tires while the vehicle continued its chase. After that horror, animals were packed so tightly in truck beds they couldn’t move, or fell and were trampled.

Velma was to write that she knew airplanes were used to capture the mustangs, but the practice didn’t touch her directly until 1950, when her ignorance was jarred.  While driving to work one day, she watched blood dripping from the truck in front of her and followed it to a rendering plant. Outraged and sickened by what she saw, especially the suffering and death of a year-old foal, Velma vowed to do something to keep this horror from happening again.

Her efforts got her Nevada county to pass a ban on the aircraft capture in 1952, and to pass laws that prevented round up by vehicles on private property. Nonetheless, federal lands were exempt…and 80% of Nevada was federal land. But Velma continued her fight.  On 8 September 1959, her efforts resulted in the federal law prohibiting the hunting and capture of horses on state land. Public Law 86-234 became known as the Wild Horse Annie Act.

 In 1971, under Velma’s influence, Congress unanimously passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, which banned capture, injury or disturbances of wild horses and burros, and for their transfer to suitable areas when populations became too large. 

Before her death from cancer in 1977 at age 65, Velma had been featured in Time magazine, and is said to have inspired Marilyn Monroe’s’ character in Arthur Miller’s 1961 Western, The Misfits. Appearing as herself, Velma starred alongside Lloyd Bridges and Dina Merrill in the 1973 Western, Running Wild. 

Of course there are still “gathers” (round-ups) and controversy, mismanagement and claims of mistreatment, but that’s something for another blog, another day.

 For today, I just loved learning about another strong Woman of the West.

The crusading journalist known as Nellie Bly was a real-life heroine in every sense of the word.  Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864, she was the third child of a wealthy Pennsylvania judge and his second wife.  She was raised in comfort until the age of six, when her father died.  Unfortunately he left no will providing for his second family.  Elizabeth’s mother and her five children were thrown into poverty.

In desperation, her mother married an alcoholic who abused her. When she later filed for divorce, Elizabeth testified at the trial.  At fifteen, Elizabeth entered normal school, hoping to become a teacher and support her mother.  But with her family so poor, she was only able to attend one semester.  She then moved to Pittsburgh with her mother.  For seven years she helped run a boarding house, taking other work when she could find it.  She dreamed of becoming a writer.

That dream came true when she read a series of columns in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, from a popular writer who wrote that women belonged at home doing domestic tasks and called the working woman “a monstrosity.”  Elizabeth’s spirited rebuttal about the plight of women and girls who had to work so impressed the paper that they hired her and gave her the pen name “Nellie Bly” after the Stephen Foster song.  Her first story was about poor working girls.   Her second called for a reform of the state’s divorce laws.  The paper, however, wanted to confine her to the women’s page, writing about social events and fashion.  Bly convinced the editors to let her be a foreign correspondent in Mexico, where she sent back stories about the lives of the Mexican people.  On her return, however, she was again confined to the women’s page.  That was too much.  Nellie quit and struck out for New York.

After knocking on doors for six months, she talked her way into the office of the New York World.  The editor, possibly to brush her off, challenged her to write a story about the patients housed in a New York mental institution.  Impersonating a mad person, Nellie came back from Blackwell’s island ten days later with stories of beatings, ice cold baths and forced meals that included rancid butter.  Her story stirred the public and politicians and brought money and needed reforms to the institution.  At the age of 23, Nellie Bly had begun to pioneer a new kind of investigative journalism.

In the years that followed, she exposed corruption and injustice, always taking the side of the downtrodden.  Her fame also opened the doors of the rich and famous, and she profiled many celebrities of her time.  The peak of her fame came when she took a whirlwind trip around the world in 1889 to beat Phileas Fogg, the fictional hero of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”  Traveling by ship, train and Burro, she made it back to New York in a little over 72 days, cheered by huge crowds.

At the age of 30 Nellie Bly married a 70-year-old industrialist named Robert Seaman.  After his death ten years later she ran his business until it went bankrupt.  Then she turned back to reporting.  Picking up where she left off, she championed worthy causes, including finding homes for abandoned children.  She died from pneumonia in 1922, at the age of 57, after a life that would rival any work of fiction.

Nellie is one of my favorite real-life heroines.  Do you have your own favorites?

 Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, but another tragic “first” is associated with his death: On July 7, 1865, Mary Surratt, age 42, became the first woman in America’s history to be executed by the federal government. 

Although she constantly maintained her innocence, she was convicted of “Treason, Conspiracy, and Plotting Murder of President Abraham Lincoln.” Her execution is long considered a gross miscarriage of justice, although the men hanged with her were unquestionably guilty of plotting the assassination as well as the unsuccessful abductions of Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. 

Although birth year varies,  most accounts have Mary Elizabeth Jenkins born  in May 1823 in Waterloo, Maryland. Well educated for a girl of the time period, she studied at a Catholic female seminary in Virginia and married John Harrison Surratt when she was seventeen. Three children, two sons and a daughter, were born to them. After their home just outside of Washington DC was lost to fire in 1851, the couple rebuilt a combined home and tavern and post office in Prince George’s County. The community eventually became known as Surrattsville. After John died in 1862, deeply in debt,  Mary rented the property for $500 a year to a former policeman named John M. Lloyd, and moved to a house she owned at 541 High Street in Washington. For extra income, she rented out some of the rooms.

During the Civil War, her eldest son joined the Confederate army, and younger son John Surratt Jr. worked as a Confederate agent. This was when and how he met other agents including John Wilkes Booth. Booth stayed at Mary’s boardinghouse from time to time. No one has ever claimed she had even an inkling that these men worked for the Confederacy. 

Three days after  Lincoln’s death, police searched the boardinghouse and found a hidden photograph of the assassin John Wilkes Booth. Several boarders were arrested for conspiring to assassinate the president. Also arrested was John M. Lloyd, the man who rented her Surrattsville property.  Threatened with a murder charge and kept in solitary confinement, Lloyd and a boarder, Louis Weichman, agreed to give evidence against Mary in return for their freedom. 

It is certain that she was not party to any assassination plans. Booth’s diary and other evidence that could have cast doubt on the prosecution’s case against her were suppressed by the government, and some of the testimony against her was false. 

Since Lincoln had been Commander in Chief of the Army,  Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton declared the assassins should be tried by a military court. Although President Andrew Johnson and most of the Cabinet members disagreed, including Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells, Attorney General James Speed agreed with Stanton. Therefore, the defendants did not have the advantages of a jury trial. They were instead judged by a nine-member military commission set up by President Andrew Johnson. 

Five out of the nine members of the Military Commission recommended that Mrs. Surratt be shown mercy “due to her sex and age”. President Johnson later claimed he was never told this, Despite a large number of friends and neighbors who appeared in the court to stress she had never been disloyal to the Union cause, Johnson gave the order to hang the woman who he pointed out “kept the nest that hatched the egg”. 

On 29th June, 1865, Mrs. Mary Surratt, who in court had dressed in black and covered her face with a veil, was found guilty along with seven men for involvement in the conspiracy to murder Lincoln. She, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold were sentenced to be hanged at Washington Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865. Reportedly, her last words on the scaffold were “Don’t let me fall.”

Mary’s son, John Surratt, Jr., who had participated in the failed  abduction plots, was tried that summer before a civil court. Although the jury stood eight to four for acquittal, he was not released from prison until June, 1868. 

Four years after her execution, Mary’s daughter Anna Surratt successfully pleaded for her mother’s remains. Today, Mary Surratt rests in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C. under a simple headstone reading “MRS. SURRATT.”

Ironically, at the time of Mary’s death, a case was pending before the Supreme Court, questioning the jurisdiction of military courts in cases involving civilians. In 1866, less than a year after she was was hanged, the Supreme Court ruled that a military court had no jurisdiction in civilian cases, if the civil courts were open. Her sad story has been the subject of several fascinating books as well as Robert Redford’s recently-released film, The Conspirator.  This is another of those historical “tidbits” that I never learned in school.

Susanna Dickinson would probably agree with those who say, “Life in the early days of Texas was an adventure for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses.” Texans and historians will always remember her as the sole adult Anglo survivor that witnessed the massacre at the Battle of the Alamo.

I recently finished reading a novel titled Escape From the Alamo, written by Dac Crossley, a retired professor who lives in Georgia. However, as he says, he’s still “a Texas boy.” To me, he’s a gentleman Western author who writes about Texas Rangers in the Wild Horse Desert of South Texas. His latest novel, though, is different. Without relating the plot, he does mention Mrs. Susanna Dickinson, a survivor of the fall of the Alamo. She was real, just like Davy Crockett and Colonel Travis.

Why was Susanna Dickinson in the Alamo in the first place?

 She lived in Gonzales in Mexican Texas with her first husband, Almaron Dickinson. As Antonio López de Santa Anna entered the city, Dickinson reportedly caught up his wife and baby daughter behind his saddle and galloped to the Alamo, just before the enemy started firing. In the Alamo, legend says William B. Travis tied his cat’s-eye ring around Angelina’s neck. Angelina and Susanna survived the final Mexican assault on March 6, 1836.

On March 7, Santa Anna interviewed each of the survivors individually. He was impressed with Mrs. Dickinson and offered to adopt Angelina and have the child educated in Mexico City. Dickinson refused the offer. A few days after the battle, Santa Anna released mother and daughter to act as a messenger to General Sam Houston.
Susanna Dickinson reported that after the battle, the following had occurred during the siege and ultimate fight:

• There were very few casualties before the final assault. She did not know the number.

• She confirms that the legendary “line in the sand” incident, where Col. William Travis gave the defenders the choice of staying or leaving, did happen–but at a different time.
• She hid inside the chapel and did not see the actual battle.

• She saw the body of Davy Crockett between the chapel and the barracks building.

• She saw the body of Jim Bowie with two dead Mexican soldiers lying beside him.

• She was taken to a house where she’d previously lived, and from there could see the pyres of the dead being burned.

• The next day she was taken before Santa Anna, and a soldier convinced Santa Anna to release her rather than imprison her.

• At some point after the battle, she has no recollections, only that she wept for days.

Susanna was a strong woman and a survivor, but the memory of those days would haunt her the rest of her life. She sometimes suffered from what she called her “black days”. She married and divorced 4 more times and is reported to have lived in a brothel for a time before she met and married Mr. Joseph Hannig. She and Hannig had a successful marriage until her death in 1883.

~*~*~

In my most recent release, Texas Promise, the hero is a Texas Ranger, and he marries his childhood friend, Jo Cameron. My novels feature brave, strong willed heroines–such as Susanna Dickinson. I’d love to give away a copy of Texas Promise. This novel is in eBook form. I can send the pdf version, or if I can learn how (oh, this new technology!) I’ll send a copy for your Kindle. P&P will choose a winner.   

BLURB:

After two years, Jo Cameron King’s life as a widow abruptly ends when her husband returns home to Austin. Unable to understand her angry and bitter husband, she accepts a call to travel to the New Mexico Territory to meet her dying birth father whom she knows nothing about. Her plan to escape her husband goes awry when he demands to travel with her.

Dalton King, believing lies his Texas Ranger partner tells him about Jo, seethes with hatred toward his wife. Now he must protect Jo from his partner’s twisted mind, while sorting out the truth. Jo’s bravery and loyalty convince him she’s innocent. But can they regain the love and respect they once shared?

Buy Page Link Texas Promise: Book I-The Cameron Sisters:

http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-109/Celia-Yeary-Texas-Promise/Detail.bok

Thank you Petticoats and Pistols! I enjoyed writing this blog and meeting you.

Celia Yeary-Romance…and a little bit ‘o Texas  
http://www.celiayeary.blogspot.com
http://www.celiayeary.com
New Releases

Texas Promise-eBook-Desert Breeze Publishing

With the election tomorrow, I just had to blog about women’s suffrage, especially since it was the western states that first allowed women to vote in America, a fact that always intrigued me. Other Fillies have previously blogged about this, but a reminder never hurts.

Efforts to give women the vote started back in 18^th century France, but it wasn’t until 1906 that Finland became the first nation in the world to give full suffrage (the right to vote and run for office) to all citizens.

Lawmakers in the United States weren’t that receptive. Most men in the east insisted that women would be unable to properly fulfill their societal domestic roles if granted equal rights.

But the people in Wyoming weren’t going to wait. Frontier women in Wyoming were pulling their weight, working side by side. Wyoming was still a territory when its legislature in 1869 approved a revolutionary measure stating: “That every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this Territory, may at every election to be holden under the law thereof, cast her vote.” William Bright, the bill’s sponsor, had come to share his wife, Julia’s, belief that suffrage was a basic right of American citizenship.  Women could vote in local and state elections.

It became the first government in the world to extend voting rights to its citizens.

According to WOW Museum, “tourists and journalists made regular pilgrimages to the territory, like anthropologists observing an exotic tribe. Some were on the lookout for the ‘pestiferous free-love doctrine,’ which eastern critics of women’s suffrage feared so heartily. But they were hard-pressed to find anything that shocking in Wyoming .” Twenty years later, Harper’s Magazine ran a story describing Cheyenne women in their Sunday bet, “politely registering voters door to door as if promenading through Central Park.”

Soon after the bill passed, one of Wyoming’s most acclaimed women, Esther Hobart Morris, who had once been victimized by laws favoring men, was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1870, and her success paved the way for more women to succeed in government. Within a year of her judicial term, women sat on a Wyoming jury for the first time. Wyoming’s pioneering gains prompted Susan B. Anthony to call for Eastern women to emigrate en mass to the Cowboy State.

In 1893, voters of Colorado made that state the second state to pass women suffrage states. Utah (it had been granted earlier and rescinded) and Idaho granted the right in the mid 1890′s while the eastern states stood strong against such destructive policies.

The United States did not pass the 19^th amendment giving voting rights to women until 1920.

Now why would a western backwater like Wyoming, where there were more antelope than people, challenge the status quo?

There were reasons given by outsiders.   It was an attempt to bring more women to an area short of them.   Maybe a publicity stunt to attract more settlers?

I like to think it’s because the challenges of the west gave women unique opportunities. They were often forced into untraditional roles: ranch owners, horse wrangler and business owners. Many could shoot as well as their husbands, fathers, brothers. They fought off Indians, raised cattle on dry windy prairies or in the snowy Rocky Mountains. Horsewomen rode astride in trousers, tracking and shooting elk, bobcat and pronghorn. Families crowded into dusty sod houses for shelter during blizzards. Again, according to WOW Museum, for most women, the right to participate fully in the community’s politics became a fact of life as necessary as working, eating or breathing

My grandmother did not live in a western state.   She didn’t get the right to vote until 1920 and when that day came she very carefully dressed and cast her very first vote. She was supposed to move with her husband to another city days earlier, but she refused to go until she voted. She never missed an election and neither did my mother.

And perhaps because of that memory repeated over and over,  I haven’t missed one either.

Do you have any election or voting tales??

Sam, my heroine in my new book, The Lawman, is a pistol toting, whip welding, card playing woman of the west.

She was not unique for the time.

There are  many “real life” heroines of the west from which I modeled Sam. Some came from a book, “The Cowgirls,” by Joyce Gibson Roach. I’ve blogged about women from the book before because it includes some very remarkable ones.

These strong, independent women are why I love writing westerns so much. They had opportunities unavailable anywhere else. Widowed or deserted by husbands, they became ranchers, wranglers, doctors, proprietors, miners and entrepreneurs.   They opened rooming houses, taught school, drove mules and even robbed banks.

Eugene Manlove Rhodes in “Beyond the Desert” put into words an unwritten code for cattlemen. “It is not the custom to war without fresh offense, openly given. You must not smile and shoot. You must not shoot an unarmed man, and you must not shoot an unarmed man. . . ”

According to Ms. Roach, there was a different code observed by pistol-toting cattlewomen. These rules advised:

1. Strange men will do well to shoot.

2. Shoot first, ask questions later..

3. If you shoot a man in the back, he rarely returns fire.

4. Scare a man to death even if you do not intend to kill him.

5. If a man needs killing, do it.

My Samantha had at least two and possibly four of those reasons to shoot Marshal Jared Evans, a man she thought a ruthless pursuer of the man who raised her.

She would fit perfectly among Ms. Roach’s real life heroines.

There was, for instance, Mrs. Stevens who lived in Lonesome Valley, Arizona.. When her husband went to town thirty miles away, she stayed home to guard the homestead and their children. She glanced out the window and  saw a rag on a bush outside. Since she didn’t remember hanging anything on that bush, she decided it was an Indian. She grabbed her gun, drew a bead on the rag, and “plugged an Apache right between the eyes.” After the Indian fell, she discovered the ranch was surrounded by Indians. Emboldened by her success, she held off the Indians until some cowboys chanced by and ran off the Apaches. When finished, they asked Mrs. Stevens if she wanted to send a message to her husband. On a piece of paper, she wrote,

“Dear Lewis,

The Apaches came. I’m mighty nigh out of buck-shot. Please send more.

Your loving wife.”

No please come home. Just send buck-shot.

Then there was Willie. The story was familiar because I once wrote a book, “The Scotsman Wore Spurs” with a heroine just like Willie.

Women occasionally accompanied their husbands on cattle drives, but the usual mode of travel was a buggy.    Willie made it on horseback.

Willie was hired by a trail boss  looking for drovers in Clayton, New Mexico. The boy looked about nineteen, according to the trail boss, and made a good hand with the horses and cattle. According to Ms. Roach’s book, the boss declared that Willie got up on the darkest stormiest nights and stayed with the cattle. “Equally as impressive was the fact that Willie did not drink, chew or cuss.”

After four months, when the bunch reached the Colorado-Wyoming line, Willie said he was homesick, asked to draw his pay, and rode off. Later in the day, a well dressed young lady rode in and addressed the trail boss and asked if he recognized her. The startled trail boss finally recognized her as Willie and asked why she had done such a thing.

She replied her father had been a drover and she wanted to know what it was like. Upon hearing a trail boss was looking for hands, she’d taken her brother’s clothes and asked for a job.

But others earned respect without subterfuge. There was Maude Reed, a Swedish girl who gathered a herd of cattle in Colorado. According to a brief news item in the local paper, she started with a few head of cattle, and by strict attention, economy and bearing all the hardships of a frontier life, she became one of the shrewdest and ablest cattle owners in Mesa County.

In Texas, there were fifty cowgirls operating a ranch in the hill country between San Marcos and San Antonio in the mid-1880′s. Some supposedly came from the finest families in the state and some from the worst. They did, of course, all the riding and roping and branding. Their leader was a whip-cracking brunette from the Oklahoma territory whose boyfriend was an outlaw by the name of Payne.

Another Texas woman, Sally Skull, was very skilled in deciding who needed killing. A man once made an unkind remark about her and when she found out about it, she called him out and shot bullets at his boots until he danced.

Having learned about horses from her late husband, Sally was a horse trader. Totally fearless, she traveled south of the border to buy horses and sold them in Texas. She spoke fluent Spanish, hired Mexicans to work for her, and thought well of the Mexican people in general. She used a salty vocabulary which inspired respect from males, but her real talent was in handling firearms. She carried a rifle and was deadly with it. Two pistols hung from a cartridge belt around her waist and she could use them with either hand with equal skill. She also carried a whip with which she popped flowers off their stems for entertainment, She also liked to gamble, and she played poker at Haynes’ saloon which was also frequented by outlaw John Wesley Hardin.

I’ve always believed a writer can’t possible make up anything as fascinating as real life, and this is particularly true of the bigger than life characters of the west.