It’s not always possible to step into the shoes of a pioneer. I value a good history book that walks me through the social, political, and geographic changes of the nineteenth century. But my favorite way to research is hands on. Don’t make me read about the various ways to hitch a team of horses to a wagon. Take me out and let me hitch them myself. Don’t tell me how to make butter. Sit me down at a churn and let me make it myself. (And if I get to put it on freshly baked bread warm from the oven with raspberry preserves afterward, even better!)
So, I am blessed to have two living history museums within a short drive of my home. One is a re-creation of Fort Nisqually, the Hudson’s Bay Company outpost on Puget Sound. Though it was originally situated closer to the Nisqually Delta, in present day Dupont, some of the original buildings were moved to a wooded area in Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park, and other facsimiles were added to represent what the fort would have been like in the 1840s.
The other is Pioneer Farm Museum above the Ohop Valley, on the way to Mount Rainier. The clearing surrounded by forest re-creates an 1887 homestead, and two of the cabins date from that era. With live animals and a smithy, you can really get the feel of living on a pioneer farm. You can grind grain, scrub laundry, card wool, and even curl your hair with a curling iron heated down the chimney of an oil lamp.
Here’s a few of the things I’ve learned:
Make your space count. When you have to cut and prepare the logs, lift them into place, put in a chimney, and add a sturdy roof, you don’t build a 2,500-square-foot California split! The inside of some of these cabins is no more than about ten feet square, and the length often depended on the length of the logs available. You might have a loft or a second story, but the main room needs to do duty as parlor, dining room, kitchen, sewing room, and even bedroom.
Learn to scrape. Sugar came in cones rather than sacks. Cinnamon came in sticks. Even laundry only got clean by scrubbing it over something. Those pioneer ladies must have had strong hands, wrists, and arms!
Follow fashion judiciously. One of the first questions I asked one of the reenactors at Fort Nisqually, who was wearing a large-skirted gown from the 1850s, was about whether they employed the big hoop skirts so popular back East. She confided that petticoats were more the thing out West, and I’m not surprised. How would a pioneer lady have navigated those narrow ladders leading up to the sleeping loft or even squeezed through a door in one of those things?
Whatever I learn, I always factor into my books, and The Schoolmarm’s Convenient Marriage, out November 6, is no exception. My heroine’s schoolroom bears a close resemblance to this one from Pioneer Farm.
Alice Dennison travelled across country to start life over as a schoolteacher in Wallin Landing, north of Seattle. No one there knows the humiliation and hurt hidden in her heart. Then a storm forces her to seek shelter with a handsome logger for the night, and suddenly she’s facing marriage or scandal! Again! Jesse Willets had always hoped for a love match like his parents. But he steps up to save Alice’s reputation through a marriage of convenience. When Alice’s past intrudes, they must work together to discover that true love may not be so distant after all.
In celebration of the new release, I’m giving away a copy of Her Frontier Sweethearts (print in the U.S., ebook internationally), which introduces many of the characters in the new book. When feisty Ciara O’Rourke starts a frontier restaurant, someone thrusts a baby at her and disappears. Logger Kit Weatherly will do anything to protect the niece he never knew he had. Can he convince Ciara to take a chance on them both?
To be entered in the drawing, answer this question: How do you prefer to learn about history?
Bio
Regina Scott started writing novels in the third grade. Thankfully for literature as we know it, she didn’t sell her first novel until she learned a bit more about writing. Since her first book was published, her stories have traveled the globe, with translations in many languages including Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese. She now has more than sixty-five published works of warm, witty romance, and more than 1 million copies of her books are in reader hands. She currently lives forty-five minutes from the gates of Mount Rainier with her husband of thirty years. Regina Scott has dressed as a Regency dandy, driven four-in-hand, learned to fence, and sailed on a tall ship, all in the name of research, of course. Learn more about her at her website at http://www.reginascott.com
Here are a few examples of games from the 1800s that involve a mixing of the genders ~
