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.

     
One hundred and eight years ago today, Fannie Merritt Farmer opened the door to Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston. 

I’m sure most of you have at least heard the name Fannie Farmer and are aware that there is a famous cookbook that bears her name.  But how much do you know about the woman herself?  Fannie Farmer was a woman of keen intelligence, unusual motivation, avid curiosity and personal courage.

Fannie, born in 1857 in Medford, MA, to Mary Watson Merritt and John Franklin Farmer, was the oldest of four daughters.  Her father was an editor and printer and both parents placed a high value on education – it was expected that Fannie would go to college.  However, when Fannie was 16 she suffered a paralytic stroke and could not continue her education.  For a number of years after her stroke she was unable to walk and remained in her parents’ care.  It was during this time that Fannie developed an interest in cooking. 

At the age of 30, Fannie, who now walked (though she would have a pronounced limp for the remainder of her years), enrolled in the Boston Cooking School. This was at the height of the domestic science movement and the school utilized a scientific approach to cooking and food preparation.  It also trained women to become cooking teachers at a time when their opportunities for employment were limited.  Fannie attended the school for two years, learning what was considered the most crucial elements of the science – nutrition and diet for the healthy person, cooking for convalescents, methods of cleaning and sanitation, techniques of baking and cooking, and general household management.  During her time as a student, Fannie studied under Mary J. Lincoln, who published the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.  This cookbook was used in a number of cooking schools, most of which were established for the training of professional cooks and cooking instructors.

Fannie proved herself to be one of the school’s more outstanding students and was kept on as assistant to the director after she graduated.  During this time, Fannie started exploring the association between eating and health.  She went so far as to take a summer course at Harvard Medical School to aid in her understanding of this connection.  Eventually she was appointed school principal and then, in 1894, director.  It was just two years later, in 1896, that Fannie revised and reissued The Boston Cooking School Cookbook.  The publication of Fannie’s book was a highly significant event in cooking history.  Before this publication, ingredient measurements were imprecise, using  subjective notations such as ‘the size of an egg’ or ‘a teacup full’.  Such vague measurements made it very difficult to duplicate results from cook to cook.  Fannie’s cookbook introduced the idea of using standardized measuring utensils with an emphasis on taking care to use level measurements..  In addition to the more than 1800 recipes, the book included scientific explanations of the chemical processes that occur during cooking as well as essays on housekeeping, the importance of cleanliness in the kitchen, canning and drying produce and nutritional information.

Little, Brown & Company, who produced the book, had doubts that the book would do well and so only produced 3000 copies, which were published at the author’s expense.  However, the book proved so popular that Fannie saw twenty-one editions printed during her lifetime.  It has remained a standard work and it is still available in print today, over 100 years later.

Fannie continued to serve as director of the Boston Cooking School for eleven years, then resigned and went on to establish her own school.  Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, as it was known,  emphasized the practice of cookery rather than just theory.  Its target students were housewives rather than future academics.  Fannie also focused on developing cooking equipment for the sick and disabled.  She became a highly respected authority in this field and was invited to deliver lectures to nurses, women’s clubs and even the Harvard Medical School.  Her lectures were printed by newspapers across the country making her influence widespread and her name a household word.  She also wrote a popular cooking column for a national magazine, the Woman’s Home Companion, which ran for ten years.

In addition to the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook (Later known simply as the Fannie Farmer Cookbook), Fannie published five other cookbooks.  They are:

• Chafing Dish Possibilities,  1898.
• Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent, 1904.
• What to Have for Dinner,  1905.
• Catering for Special Occasions, with Menus and Recipes, 1911.
• A New Book of Cookery, 1912.

Later in life, Fannie suffered a second paralytic stroke that confined her to a wheelchair for the last seven years of her life.  However, that did not prevent her from carrying on her responsibilities.  She continued to lecture, write, invent recipes and travel.   In fact, just ten days before her death, she delivered a lecture from her wheelchair.  Fannie died in 1915 at the age of 57.

For those of you interested in taking a look at the original 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook here is a link to the online version  http://www.bartleby.com/87/

My time travel romance, My Heart Will Find Yours, is set in 1880s Waco, Texas. Located on the Brazos River, in its early history, Waco was known as Six-Shooter Junction. Trail drives herded their cattle across the Brazos in Waco and the cowboys usually spent time in the bawdy houses of the Reservation or Two Street as the red-light district was known. Drinking in the multitude of saloons and card games sometimes led to fights, often involving the use of firearms.

When the suspension bridge opened in 1870, and the railroad arrived in 1871, business in Waco thrived. Trail drives repeatedly lost cattle when herding their livestock across the Brazos. It wasn’t uncommon for a man to be caught in the undertow and drown. Cattle bosses were willing to pay the 50 cents per animal to get their cattle across safely.

In her book, A Spirit So Rare, Patricia Ward Wallace broaches the topic of how women forged a path in the early history of Waco. Her chapter on prostitutes is titled Women of Controversy. Since prostitution plays a minor role in my western time travel romance, I’d like to borrow her title and share some of what I learned.

The first noted record of prostitution in Waco is documented in an 1876 city directory. Matilda Davis of 76 N. Fourth St. is listed as a madam with 10 occupants in her house. The women listed their occupation as actress. Waco had no playhouse at the time. In 1879, the city issued the first license for a bawdy house for an annual fee of $200 and a good behavior bond of $500.

Waco officials legalized prostitution within the Reservation in 1889 making Waco the first town in Texas and the second in the United States to condone a controlled red-light district. Madams paid a yearly fee of $12.50 for each bedroom and $10.00 for each bawd. Prostitutes paid an additional $10.00 license fee and paid the city physician $2.00 twice a month for a medical exam. This guaranteed they didn’t ply their trade outside their designated territory and were disease free. The city prohibited drinking within the area. Fines for violators ranged between $50 and $100. With the large number of prostitutes it’s easy to see the city benefited from trade within the Reservation.

Prostitutes were prohibited from being seen on the streets outside the Reservation yet they were allowed to trade with local businesses. No more than two at a time could travel via a city hack to the stores. Usually tradesmen sent clerks to the curb with merchandise. Some store owners required the prostitutes to stop at the back door.

Life was hard for these working girls. Violence abounded in the bordellos as did drug and alcohol use and abuse. Though licensed, the police had little to do with the establishments. The madams disciplined the women in their houses and maintained order among their clientele. On occasion the police were called when robberies or assaults occurred.

Waco’s most famous madam was Mollie Adams. She had worked in another house but in 1890 opened her own three-room operation. By 1893 she had a seven-room establishment. In 1910 she’d obtained enough wealth to commission a house to be built by the same firm that built the First Baptist Church of Waco and the building now the Dr. Pepper Museum. Her home at 408 N. Second St., had indoor plumbing, electric fixtures, two parlors, a dance hall, and a bell system wired to every room. Her portrait, included here, hung over the fireplace. Though wealthy at this point in her life, she died in an indigent home in 1944. Lorna Lane, the madam in Madison Cooper’s epic novel, Sironia, is supposedly modeled after Mollie Adams.

In 1917, the US Government ordered cities with military bases to shut down red light districts to protect the health of America’s soldiers. Not wanting to lose Camp MacArthur and its 36,000 troops, the city shut down the Reservation in August of 1917. It is rumored some bawdy houses managed to continue business through the 1920s.

References: Wallace, P. W., A Spirit So Rare, pp. 148-156. http://wacohistoryproject.org/Places/reservation.htm

Photo: Courtesy of Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

Thank you the Petticoat and Pistols ladies for having me as your guest today. Readers, I love comments. Leave me one and “Felicia Filly” will draw a winner for an e-copy of My Heart Will Find Yours. Visit my website at www.lindalaroque.com to read the first chapters of my books. I give away an ebook every month on my blog at http://www.lindalaroqueauthor.blogspot/

Happy Reading and Writing!

Linda 

Nan Aspinwall, born in Nebraska in 1880, was skilled at trick roping, sharp shooting, archery, stunt riding, bronc riding, and steer riding. She also portrayed an Oriental dancer called Princess Omene.

She was eventually the highest paid star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East troupe. None of these things are what she became really famous for. Two-Gun Nan’s true claim to fame came in 1910-11 when, on a bet from Buffalo Bill, she rode from San Francisco to New York on horseback. At the age of 31, she covered 4496 miles in 180 days in the saddle, alone. The 180 days includes a week spent in the hospital when she and her horse ‘fell off a mountain.’

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I have no idea exactly what that means and I couldn’t find details but she and her horse were in good shape when they finished their historical coast to coast ride. Like a true showman, she didn’t end her ride quietly. When Nan arrived in New York she rode into a 12 -story building, on into the freight elevator and rode it to the top floor.

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Two-Gun Nan became an instant legend. At a time when the frontier to the west had closed, and barbed wire cut across every stretch of once open country along the entire continent, this cowgirl single-handedly found a way to rekindle the American fascination of saddling up, heading to the horizon, and banging around the vast expanse of a country that spread from one sea to another. Perhaps more importantly, she proved this dream and this country were open to women as well as men.

The ride became part of the greater Western mythology almost instantly, where it remained solidly for half a century. In 1938, almost three decades after the ride, Nan’s journey was included on the Mutual Broadcasting System’s national radio broadcasts of Famous First Facts. The media legend of the ride again was recounted on the radio in 1942 on a broadcast of Death Valley Days. About 1960 “Death Valley Days” did a television show about her cross-country ride, for which she was a technical advisor. In 1958, Nan’s adventure made the jump to black-and-white television when it appeared in an episode of the Judge Roy Bean television show.

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Born Nan Jeanne Aspinwall, she added the last name Gable when she married her first husband, Frank Gable, around 1900. These two traveled and performed together, and after 1913 even ran their own touring wild west vaudeville production, Gable’s Novelty Show.

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Frank died around 1929, and Nan dropped from view not long after that. Nan remarried at some point in the 1930s to a man whose last name was Lambell.

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With the new name of Nan Jeanne Aspinwall Gable Lambell, the adventurous cowgirl spent the last 34 years of her life living in anonymity and solitude by choice. She died on October 24, 1964 at age 84 in San Bernardino, CA.

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Her death certificate listed her as a life-long housewife.

Mary Connealy

On my recent foray to San Antonio, Texas, I had on my list of things to do– all walkable from my hotel– a visit to the Buckhorn Saloon and Texas Ranger Museum not far from The Alamo. It was here that I “met” a very intriguing couple, Ad and Plinky Toepperwein.

A native Texan, Adolph Toepperwein (1869-1962) took his childhood love of rifles all the way and  became a renowned trick shooter.  He toured on the vaudeville circuit, and in 1901 began a 50-year relationship with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company as an exhibition shooter.  It was during a visit to one of their manufacturing plants that he met a 19-year old employee, Elizabeth Servaty, and fell instantly in love with her. He was 34. While Ad’s sharpshooting career is totally amazing of itself, I’m going to introduce you today to his bride, a pretty amazing shot all on her own.

As soon as Elizabeth, a Connecticut native, married Ad Toepperwein in 1903, he taught his bride to shoot. She had never fired a gun in her life. During her training, she shot at tin cans with a .22, and after several tries, made her first hit, telling Ad, “I plinked it.”  Referring of course to the distinctive sound of bullet hitting tin.  Ever thereafter, she was known as Plinky. Practice-shooting at  easy targets like cans is today known across the world as “plinking.”

To quote Ad himself, Plinky was  “a  natural.” Within three weeks of her first lesson, she joined his act,  shooting one-inch pieces of chalk from between his fingers and empty shells off his fingertips.

She and Ad began touring as a husband and wife trick-shooting team in a career that spanned 40 years.  At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, they set one incredible record after another. They shot while standing on their heads and while lying on their backs. They broke two targets at the same time, one in front and one behind using a mirror. Some of Plinky’s aerial targets included marbles, metal discs, apples, oranges and eggs.

Not only did Plinky please the crowds, but she also set records in the process. She was the first woman to break 100 straight targets at trapshooting, and she repeated this amazing feat  more than 200 times, often with a twelve-gauge Winchester model 97 pump gun.

 She also earned the world endurance trapshooting record by hitting 1,952 clay birds out of  2,000 thrown in five hours and twenty minutes. And this time span included the time needed to cool the gun barrel and unpack targets!

She missed only eight, hitting an unheard of 97.6%.  

Celebrity shooter Annie Oakley, a member of the Trapshooting Hall of Fame, once told Plinky, “Mrs. Top . . . you’re the greatest shot I’ve ever seen.” In 1969, Plinky  was inducted into the Trapshooting Hall of Fame in Vandalia, Ohio.

Although trapshooting was her main focus, Plinky was equally skilled with rifle, pistol and shot gun. Elizabeth Servaty Toepperwein became the first woman in United States History to qualify as a national marksman with the military rifle. Amidst all this, she gave birth to and raised son Lawrence, who sadly predeceased her in 1940 at only 36 years of age.

Despite her amazing talent, Plinky was proud to never have shot an animal. And while it’s informally believed she was a better all-around shot than her trick shooter husband, they never held a contest to find out for sure.  Plinky died in her San Antonio  home with her husband at her bedside, on January 27, 1945, and was buried in Mission Burial Park, San Antonio.              

After Ad’s death on March 4, 1962, he was laid to rest beside his wife. Shortly thereafter, a Toepperwein museum housing the memorabilia of the couple’s many years of marksmanship was displayed on the grounds of The Lone Star Brewery in San Antonio.  In late 1998 the Toepperwein Gallery was moved  to the Buckhorn Saloon and Texas Ranger Museum a few blocks downtown from The Alamo, where I came to know Plinky and Ad. 

How about you? Anybody ever gone trapshooting? (I tried at the Bandera Gun Club and was a total failure.) Anybody have a childhood hobby you’ve carried into adulthood, or even become a pro at it?

To order, click on cover. It’s a featured release at White Rose Publishing.

I often get ideas for this blog from my ‘It happened on this day in history’ calendar.  When I turned to today’s entry I saw it noted that today was the birthday of Martha Washington and I thought it would be interesting to look up fun facts on her for this blog.  Once I started my research, though, I discovered my calendar had it wrong.  Other sources I checked all agreed that her birthday was, in fact, June 2nd.   Be that as it may, however, I’m going to list the information I dug up, much of it news to me.

Personal Stats

• Full name:  Martha Dandridge Custis Washington
• Born: June 2, 1731
• Place of Birth: Williamsburg, Virginia
• Father: John Dandridge
• Mother: Frances Dandridge
• Husbands (2)
  (1) Daniel Parke Curtis (died 8 years into the marriage) Children: 1 daughter and 1 son
  (2) George Washington  Children (none)
• Education: No formal education
• Religion: Episcopalian
• Died: May 22, 1802
• Place of Death: Mount Vernon, Virginia

Interesting/Fun Facts

• She married her first husband when she was 18 – he was twenty years her senior.  Their home was called the White House Plantation.
• The death of her first husband left her wealthy in her own right.
• Martha did NOT enjoy role of First Lady – she felt trapped by it
• She had a ship, a row galley, named in her honor – The USS Lady Washington. 
  It was the first U.S. Military ship to be named in honor of a woman. 
  It was also the first U.S. military ship to be named for a person who was still alive.
• She is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note.  Hers was the face on the front of the $1 Silver Certificates of 1886 and 1891 and on the back of the one issued in 1896.
• She was the first American woman to be commemorated by a postage stamp – the 1902 eight cent stamp.  In subsequent years she had two other stamps issued in her honor – a 1923 four cent stamp and a 1938 one and a half cent stamp.
• She often followed her husband into the battlefield when he served as commander in chief of the Continental army.  In fact, she spent the infamous winter at Valley Forge at his side, and was instrumental in maintaining some level of morale among officers and enlisted troops.
• She was opposed to her husband’s election as President of the U.S and refused to attend his inauguration.
• The title ‘First Lady’ was not coined until after Martha’s death.  She was known as ‘Lady Washington’.
• She was jealous of her privacy and destroyed most of the letters she wrote to her husband as well as the letters he wrote to her.

Quotations attributed to Martha Washington

• “I am fond of only what comes from the heart.”
• “I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.”
• “Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance…is a celebration of that miracle.”
• “I live a very dull life here… indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from… “

All in all, it sounds like Martha Washington was an interesting, intelligent, strong-willed woman – one I would have enjoyed meeting.

Please join the Fillies in a big YEEHAW for Karen’s 5 Spur review of A Tailor-Made Bride from Love Western Romances

Do you ever watch those makeover shows? Perhaps a talk show host takes an audience member backstage and sics her personal stylist on her. Over the course of an hour the woman gets her hair cut, dyed, and styled; has her make-up redone by a specialist; and trades in her ho-hum duds for a chic new outfit that flatters her in all the right places. She emerges at the end of the episode to oohs and aahs and wild applause.

Or maybe you’ve seen the transformations on shows like The Biggest Loser where people spend months with personal trainers and dieticians and drastically recreate themselves into models of healthy living. They lose hundreds of pounds and metamorphose from couch potatoes into marathon runners.

I have to admit to watching these shows from time-to-time. There is something about them that inspires me. Maybe it’s the fantasy of a having a fairy godmother hiding in my closet, ready to pop out with her magic wand whenever I have a bad hair day. Or perhaps it’s the desire to rediscover that fit person inside me that I somehow lost track of after three babies and the onset of middle age. The more I got to thinking about it, the more I thought it would be fun to incorporate some of that inspiration into my stories. But how? I write historicals. Did women of the 19^th century have any understanding of physical fitness?

As it turns out, they did.

In my research for A Tailor-Made Bride, I discovered that a social reformation movement regarding physical fitness for women and children swept our nation back in the mid-1800s.

After the Industrial Revolution, many people left farms and ranches to find employment in nearby cities. Because they were no longer working the fields, their lives became increasingly sedentary. This led to a great decline in women’s health, especially among the middle and upper classes. Reformers like Catharine Beecher (sister to the famous abolitionist and author, Harriet Beecher Stowe) spoke out on the need for regular exercise among women and children. She published a book in 1856 entitled Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families where she describes an exercise system that could be utilized in schools or at home.

Perhaps the most influential reformer of this era, however, was a man named Dioclesian Lewis. In the 1860s he developed a system of light gymnastics for women and children and went on to found a school specifically to instruct physical education teachers, most of whom were women. He lectured extensively and wrote several books on the subject of fitness, the most notable being The New Gymnastics for Men, Women and Children, published in 1862. It is this book that my heroine, Hannah Richards, follows so diligently.

During the course of the story, Hannah employs many of the devices Professor Lewis advocated, such as small wooden dumbbells, Indian clubs, and exercise rings.

The guiding principle was to use small weights with many repetitions. In this way women and children could participate in the same manner as the men. Professor Lewis even recounts a story of how several of his young male students scoffed at the two-pound dumbbells, claiming they needed more weight to make the exercises challenging. However, after they completed the regimen with three-pound weights, they unanimously returned to the lighter ones. Hannah issues a similar challenge to Jericho Tucker at his initial mockery of her routine. After trying it for himself, the livery owner, like the young men at Professor Lewis’s academy, changed his tune.

Hannah uses her knowledge of calisthenics as well as her skill with a needle to affect a 19^th century makeover for Jericho’s sister, Cordelia. But these outer changes can’t compete with the inward transformation taking place within Hannah and Jericho, themselves.

What inspires you the most about makeover stories? Have you ever experienced one yourself? Ever made a change in your own life after witnessing the effects of a similar change in someone else’s?

Karen

http://www.karenwitemeyer.com

Karen is giving away to a copy of A Tailor-Made Bride, so pop in and join the discussion. Here’s a little taste of the book – so you know what you’ll be getting.

A Tailor-Made Bride

When a dressmaker who values beauty tangles with a liveryman who condemns vanity, the sparks begin to fly!

Jericho “J.T.” Tucker wants nothing to do with the new dressmaker in Coventry, Texas. He’s all too familiar with her kind—shallow women more devoted to fashion than true beauty. Yet, except for her well-tailored clothes, this seamstress is not at all what he expected.

Hannah Richards is confounded by the man who runs the livery. The unsmiling fellow riles her with his arrogant assumptions and gruff manner, while at the same time stirring her heart with unexpected acts of kindness. Which side of Jericho Tucker reflects the real man?

When Hannah decides to help Jericho’s sister catch a beau–leading to consequences neither could have foreseen–will Jericho and Hannah find a way to bridge the gap between them?

Thumbing through my ‘In This Day In History’ calendar, I saw that May 9^th is the birthday of Marie Isabella Boyd, better known as Belle Boyd, one of the most colorful and famous female spies for the Confederacy.

Born in the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia on May 9^th, 1843, Belle grew into a confident and headstrong girl.  Her father owned a general store and managed a tobacco plantation, and when Belle was twelve he sent her to Mt. Washington Female College in Baltimore, Maryland to complete her education.  She graduated in 1861, a very well educated woman for her time, and in July of that year, somewhat by chance, her career as a spy had its beginnings.  According to her own account, on July 4th a group of drunken Union soldiers tore down a large Confederate flag that hung on her family home and replaced it with a Union flag.  When one of them cursed and pushed at her mother the already angered Belle became enraged and shot the man on the spot.   Chaos ensued as the soldiers began firing shots at the house and threatened to burn it down.  It wasn’t until the guards arrived that the near-riot subsided.  The Confederates, naturally, considered Belle’s act one of simple justice.  The commanding officer of the Union forces conducted a hurried investigation and convened a board of inquiry.   Belle, putting aside her pistols, employed her feminine wiles, augmented with tears and pretty smiles, with the result that she was exonerated. 

However, sentries were posted around her home with orders to keep a close watch on her.  The intrepid Belle used this situation to her advantage, charming at least one of the officers into revealing military secrets which Belle handed over to the Confederacy.  And thus began her career as a spy.

Her exploits grew more daring and colorful with time.  It was said that Belle Boyd was not graced with a pretty face but that she had a ‘fine body’ and ‘winning ways’ which the Union troops found quite charming.   Not for her were disguises of modestly inconspicuous housewives and dowdy travelers.  Belle reveled in her own flamboyant personality and played it to the hilt.  Employing a dramatic air and joyous recklessness, she flirted and cajoled and dissembled her way into the confidence of her enemy and stole what secrets and information they held close.  She could appear at one moment cunning and naïve the next, confounding her opponents.

Unashamedly unconventional, she shocked even close friends with her antics – visiting camps, calling on officers in their tents, dancing with both Northerners and Southerners.  Belle obviously believed in having a good time while she performed her duty.  And her secret weapon, one that got her out of hot water on more than one occasion, was reliance on male gallantry.  She had an uncanny ability to appear contrite, confused and naively overwhelmed, a skill that elicited the ‘pat her on the head and send her on her way’ response from men in authority.

By the time of her 21^st birthday she’d been arrested a half dozen times, ‘reported’ nearly thirty times and imprisoned twice.  She’d even, in one of her more sensational and romantic exploits, persuaded one of her Northern captor to marry her and switch sides!

During her second imprisonment, the summer heat and confinement took their toll on Belle’s health.  Doctors told her she needed to get away on a trip and Belle hatched a plan to resume her espionage activities by carrying Southern dispatches to England. 

In May of 1864 she boarded the three-masted schooner Greyhound, a cotton bale transport ship, under the name Mrs. Lewis.  They were barely a day out, however, when a Federal vessel began pursuit.  The risk for Belle was dire.  The Federal Government took extreme exception to those who carried messages from the Confederacy to European powers.  In an attempt to outrun their pursuers, the Greyhound’s crew tried to lighten their load by tossing overboard their cargo of cotton and even a keg containing twenty-five thousand dollars.  When capture seemed inevitable, Belle burned her precious dispatches.  The Federal forces did in fact overtake the Greyhound, boarded her and took control.   The ship was placed under the command of an Ensign Samuel Hardinge who sailed it directly astern the Federal ship Connecticut as they made their way to Fortress Monroe.

Belle was immediately struck by the young ensign and him by her.  Before they reached their destination, Sam had asked Belle to marry him.  Though smitten, Belle tarried over giving him an answer.  He was, after all, a Union military man.  When Sam aided her in effecting the Greyhound captain’s escape, however, Belle was convinced and agreed to marry him.

Sam, however, was in trouble with his superiors.  For his part in the escape he was arrested, tried and dismissed from the Navy.  Meantime, Belle had made her way to Canada, where she was still being closely watched by Federal forces.  She finally set sail for England where she did what she could to continue to aid the Confederacy while she waited for Sam to join her.  When he eventually did they were married amidst great fanfare at St. James church in Piccadilly.  One Englishman described the bride this way “Her great beauty, elegant manners and personal attractions generally, in conjunction with her romantic history … concur to invest her with attributes which render her such a heroine as the world has seldom if ever seen.”

Though Belle longed to return to her beloved South, the many outstanding Union threats against her made such an undertaking to fraught with danger.  So while Belle remained in London, Sam returned, ostensibly to visit his and Belle’s family, though some say he carried Confederate dispatches.  He was arrested as a Southern spy and tossed into prison where he fell sick.  Belle sold most of her possessions and finally wrote her memoirs, an embellished version of her exploits as a confederate spy.

In January of 1865 Belle petitioned Abraham Lincoln to release her husband, attempting to use her memoirs as leverage.  Her letter said, in part:

I have heard from good authority that if I suppress the Book I have now ready for publication, you may be induced to consider leniently the case of my husband, S. Wylde Hardinge, now a prisoner in Fort Delaware, I think it would be well for you & me to come to some definite understanding– My Book was not originally intended to be more than a personal narrative, but since my husband’s unjust arrest I had intended making it political, & had introduced many atrocious circumstances respecting your Government with which I am so well acquainted & which would open the eyes of Europe to many things of which the world on this side of the water little dreams– If you will release my husband & set him free, so that he may join me here in England by the beginning of March — I pledge you my word that my Book shall be suppressed

Lincoln did not respond to this offer. But Sam was released from Fort Delaware in February and Belle’s book, entitled Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, was published in London by Saunders, Otley and Company in 1865.

Upon his release, Sam returned to her in London, but prison had taken its toll and he died a few months later of the ailments contracted during his incarceration.  Belle was a widow at the age of twenty-one.

Belle went on to establish a theatrical career in both Europe and America.  She married twice more and had four children. 

She died in Wisconsin while on tour at the age of 56.

While the Civil War raged, Southerners scorned her as a traitor to her birth. Citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason. She was holding her husband’s hand when he was shot by an assassin, and declared insane later in her life. Who was she?

Mary Todd Lincoln.

Since I wrote about her husband Abe a few weeks ago, I decided to learn a little more about her. Mary Ann Todd was born on December 13, 1818, one of seven children born into a prominent family in Lexington, Kentucky. Her mother passed away when she was seven, and she later described her childhood as “desolate.” An excellent student, she spoke French fluently.

In 1839, Mary moved to Springfield, Illinois, to live at the home of her older sister, and here, the tiny young woman became a popular socialite. She dated both Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, but it was Lincoln who won her heart. At their wedding in 1843, he gave her a ring engraved with the words “Love is Eternal.”

Over the next eleven years, four sons were born to the couple who had settled in Springfield. Mary was known as a very loving, devoted mother, but sadly, only Robert (1843-1926) lived to adulthood. When her husband was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846, Mary and the children lived with him in Washington for part of his single term. Back home in 1849, Abraham practiced law for five years before his interests returned to politics. After his well-known series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, he was elected over three other Presidential candidates in November 1860 and inaugurated the next March as the 16th president.

 Mary’s position as First Lady fulfilled her high social ambitions, but her White House years were a mixture of triumph and misery. Among her joys were refurbishing the White House and spending much time on visits with injured soldiers in hospitals. In addition to bringing them food and flowers, she read to them, wrote them letters, and raised $1,000 for the Christmas dinner at a military hospital. Mary provided support for the Contraband Relief Association which helped blacks who came to the North during the Civil War. She was ardently opposed to slavery, and she strongly supported her husband’s pro-Union policies.

However, Mary incurred ire for extravagant shopping orgies that were deemed unpatriotic during such hard times. Her reputation was soundly thrashed because she had relatives who sided with the South in the war. In fact, several kinfolk died fighting for the Confederacy. Resulting, her own loyalty to the Union was often suspect.

Five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant in April, 1865, her husband was tragically assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Mary never recovered from the horrific event.  A month later, she left Washington to live in Chicago, trying a couple of years later to raise money by selling her old clothes through dealers in New York. I loved this tidbit. It reminds me of Princess Diana.

However, unlike Prince William who supported Diana’s venture, Mary’s son Robert — fast on his way to becoming a highly-regarded attorney– was highly embarrassed by her unsuccessful scheme. She moved to Europe for three years, visiting health spas to ease increasingly bothersome arthritis. Upon the death of son Tad, her irrational fears and behaviors alarmed Robert, her surviving son, and he instigated an insanity hearing.

A jury of twelve men declared Mary insane after witnesses testified to erratic behavior and habits. The judge admitted “the disease was of unknown duration; the cause is unknown.” Mary spent about four months in a private sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois. In September 1875, she went to Springfield once again to live with her sister’s family. The next year a second jury found her sane.

Later she traveled to France, visiting spas as her health began to decline. It is suspected she suffered from undiagnosed diabetes, spinal arthritis and migraine headaches. By the time she returned to her sister’s home in 1880, she was going blind. She passed away on July 16, 1882, at age 63. Since physicians wrote “paralysis” on the death certificate, the cause was probably a stroke.

Mary was buried next to her husband in the Lincoln Tomb Cemetery in Springfield. On her wedding ring, quite thin from wear, the words “Love is Eternal” were still visible.

 All in all, it doesn’t sound much like a HEA for the Lincolns, but I sure like that phrase, Love is Eternal. It broke my heart that Mary had to spend months in an asylum on the whim of twelve, make that 13, men. (I guess fourteen, counting her son.) But I was glad to find out Mary and Abe had support and some good times between them, although I cannot remotely imagine losing so many children. 

How about you? Any more info on Mary Todd Lincoln come to mind? Any other First Ladies whom you admire?

In the early 1880s Godey’s Ladies Book was the only reading material available for women. Louis Godey considered himself an authority on proper reading for women, on fashion and even household hints. Godey’s magazine also contained recipes and some fiction.

Cyrus Curtis published a farming magazine called Tribune and Farmer. In 1883 he decided to broaden the appeal of his publication and added a women’s supplement called The Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper.

The supplement was so popular that after a year, Curtis’s women’s magazine became an independent publication with Curtis’s wife Louisa Knapp Curtis as editor for the first six years. She dropped the last three words in the title in 1886 and the magazine became The Ladies Home Journal.

The couple wanted to attract a million subscribers. Some people just set their sites too low, you know? They went about achieving their goal by asking well known authors of the day to write articles and short stories. Writers like Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain attracted subscribers, and circulation continued to climb even when the rate was raised from fifty cents a year to a dollar in 1889.

Louisa eventually retired and their son-in-law took over as editor. Edward Bok added advice columns to the mix. Helen Keller contributed an article on neonatal blindness. Because of the connotation that neonatal blindness was almost always caused by a venereal disease, that article lost the magazine subscribers.

By 1903 The Ladies Home Journal surpassed the million subscriber goal, regardless. Good Housekeeping has been on the market since 1885 and Vogue since 1893, though none of the other publications held the same broad appeal as The Ladies Home Journal.

Today The Ladies Home Journal continues to be one of the leading magazines for American women, offering commentary on issues such as politics, religion, health and child-rearing. You can find one in every doctor and dentist’s office in the country. Amazing, huh?