Two weeks ago we blogged about Calamity Jane.  Here, as promised, is a portrait of the man she claimed to be the love of her life—Wild Bill Hickock. Sadly, perhaps, Calamity is barely mentioned in sketches of Wild Bill’s life.  We can only guess that their fabled romance was either one-sided, on Calamity’s part, or mostly invented by the dime novel writers of the day—the same writers who transformed Wild Bill into an American legend. 

James Butler Hickock was born May 27, 1837 in Troy Grove, Illinois. In the years prior to the Civil War, he worked as a hunter, a muleskinner, a bodyguard and as a wagonmaster on the Santa Fe trail. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he became a civilian scout at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  Wild Bill’s legendary career began in 1861 when he was tending stock at a station for the Overland Stage.  When three men came to collect money owed them by the station’s owner, a fight broke out.  Bill and a fellow worker brutally killed the men who’d come to get their cash.  They were tried and acquitted on grounds of self defense.  Four years later, a writer would turn this incident into a heroic stand, with Bill holding off a gang of terrorists and receiving eleven bullet wounds in the process.  Similar encounters dogged Bill for the rest of his life.  He was a brave man, but reckless and prone to violence.  In many cases, his exploits were blown up to serve as fodder for the pulp fiction market of the day.  Bill swiftly became an American pop star.  Between 1867 and 1871 Wild Bill served variously as a lawman and army scout. Sometimes his tactics were too much for the townspeople.  In 1869 he was appointed sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas.  After killing two men he was voted out of office.  In 1871 he was appointed marshal of Abilene.  After a gunfight in which he accidentally shot and killed his own deputy, Wild Bill turned in his badge and began to drift.  For a time he toured with Buffalo Bill’s show, but he hated acting and left to become a professional gambler.In 1876 he returned to Cheyenne where he married Agnes Lake Thatcher, the owner of a circus.  From there he went to Deadwood, hoping to strike it rich in the gambling saloons.On August 2, 1876, he was playing poker when a drifter named Jack McCall shot him in the back of the head.  At the time he died, Wild Bill was holding two black aces, two black eights and the jack of diamonds—to be forever known as the “deadman’s hand.”  He was buried in Deadwood.  His famous Sharps rifle was buried with him. Many actors have played Wild Bill in films.  Who’s your favorite?  Which portrayal seems most accurate?  Who would you like to see play Bill in a movie about his life?

A perfect combo for this western author – as well as the heroine in my next ‘Bride’ book ~ Lily loves her cowboy and her hot chocolate. While researching beverage servers of the 1800’s, I discovered the wonderful world of antique chocolate pots–like a coffee pot, only specifically designed for serving hot chocolate. They just don’t serve hot chocolate the way they used to. I was intrigued to find out that chocolate was so revered by the Aztecs that they used chocolate as both food and currency. Near the end of the XVIII century, Spanish explorers took chocolate back to Spain where it became the Kings’ Official Drink in New Spain and Europe. Europeans began preparing chocolate with cream and sugar, creating what we know today as Hot Chocolate.

The first chocolate pots, like that of my heroine (shown above – 1852), were made of sterling silver, and sometimes copper. Similar to coffee pots, chocolate pots were designed with shorter spouts and did not have filters, though some had holes through the center of the lids for stir sticks. Ceramic chocolate pots gained popularity in the 1890’s and 1900’s, the leading manufacturer being Limoges, in France. I’m suddenly in the mood for a chocolate party 🙂

Good Morning! Hope everyone’s day is going well. My topic today is prices. I swear, I went to the grocery store recently and carried out two little sacks. I thought there must be some mistake when the bill came to $79.60. Bread was $2.29 and a gallon of milk was over $3.00. That got me comparing prices of things in the 1800’s. Besides, I needed to know the price of coffee for the story I’m working on.

I can’t imagine paying just this little amount for staples. Blows my mind. And remember that the prices varied by location and quality. Prices in mining towns were higher than most anywhere else. These prices were from about 1880 to the turn of the century.

A Pound of Tea —  12 cents to $1.00                                                

A Pound of Coffee —  15 cents to 35 cents

5 Pounds of Flour —  14 cents

A Pound of Preserved Meat — 12 cents to 25 cents

5 Pounds of Sugar — 34 cents

A Dozen Eggs — 20 cents

A Pound of Butter — 25 cents

A Pound of Bacon — 12 cents                                                                    

A Gallon of Syrup or Molasses — 40 cents to $1.15                                        

One can of peaches — 20 cents

I didn’t find any prices for bread since everyone baked their own or milk because most had a cow or a goat. Totally different from today, huh?

Spices were outrageous — $12.00 to $75.00 a pound so not too many could afford it. But most of the spices were imported so they had to figure in the cost of shipping. If you think about it, spices are just as expensive today. I paid around $3.00 the other day for 4 oz. of cinnamon. I think that computes to something like $48 a pound. Yikes!

The pioneer learned to be very frugal with their foodstuffs. If weevils got in the flour, they sifted out the little bugs and used it anyway. They didn’t throw much away. And asyou can imagine, losing their staples to some kind of disaster meant doing without, so they protected their food supply with vigilance. They also planted gardens and raised animals for their meat. They lived off the land and scratched out an existence. It might not’ve been luxurious, but they survived. Life was far from easy. I’ve loved watching a new TV series that called Kid Nation, where they placed 40 kids in the Nevada desert in an old ghost town with just the basic necessities. It’s been interesting watching how those children cope with cooking over a wood stove, hauling their water, and using outhouses. Kinda funny at times seeing their frustration. But, they’re learning a lot of skills that will help them through life. They’ve sure developed an appreciation for the things they have. And I say that’s a very good thing.

At http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873707.html you can find prices for selected items for a variety of years, plus at Info Please.com you see the population of the U.S. from Colonial to present day. Lots of fascinating information and statistics here.

And at www.softwave.info/incanus/sears.html  you can learn that bullets costs between 14 cents to $4.25 a hundred. Revolvers were 68 cents to $13.75. They also list the price of clothing and all kind of household goods. A great website to bookmark.

Try this site http://home.insightbb.com/~d.lawson/  for just about anything pertaining to medieval times to American colonial times to the Old West. This is an excellent site for research. I reference it a lot.

Then, I found a neat website – www.westegg.com/inflation/  — where you choose a year, put in an amount and it’ll tell you what that price equals to today.

For instance….$500 in 1880 is worth roughly $10,438 today

And we’d pay $3.25 for the pound of coffee that was 15 cents in 1880. That’s about what I pay.

Research is a must when writing and especially historicals. Writers want to make their stories as realistic as possible and any tidbit we can learn helps our stories come alive even more. I’m always finding little details about things that can put my reader on the page with the characters. That’s what writers have to do. And, writing has rewarded me with increased knowledge of the world in which my characters lived. History is full of fascinating things just waiting for me to uncover. I’m a sleuth deluxe when it comes to digging for facts.  

Anyway, it’s kinda neat to see how prices compare to things as they were back in the 1800’s. I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a look back. Maybe you won’t cringe too much the next you go to the grocery store.

What do you think about the price of groceries?

Ever yearn for the pioneer life of gardens and milk cows?

Our Big Fall Fest Bonanza is still in full swing. If you haven’t registered, go to the Primrose News Office page. Time’s a wastin’.

In the years since I first started writing novels, I’ve explored the west’s many legends: the gambler, the gunfight, the soldier, the fallen woman, the rancher, the half-breed. I’ve written about the Utes whom I greatly admire as among the best horsemen in the west.
The one symbol – or legend – I’ve never written about, but have been fascinated with, is the emigrant.  I’m in the midst of correcting that neglect.

One of my friends disagreed with my use of emigrant in speaking of those traveling across the country to California or Oregon. Emigrants, she contended, come from other countries. But that was the term given them in my handy “The Prairie Traveler” written in 1859 by an Army officer.   I mentioned the book before and you’ll probably hear much more from it because it has become my bible.

While it’s fun writing about the vivid characters that populate western fiction, I don’t think there’s been enough written about the “everyman” who risked everything to make the four to five month perilous journey to an uncertain future. My true heroes have always been those who packed everything they owned in a wagon, risked Indians and drought and mountains to achieve a dream.

We often talk about movies here. I haven’t seen any mention of a movie called “The Oregon Trail,” starring Fred McMurray, another of my off-beat favorites. It’s probably as true to the real facts as any film I’ve seen.

I come by my interest honestly. I grew up on tales my father told of his father’s homesteading in Arizona. My grandfather took his wife and six children to homestead in Arizona in 1912, and the stories are wonderful, including one in which my grandmother went outside to find by dad, then two, playing with a rattlesnake.

But as usual, I digress. More stories about that later.

I thought, instead, I would include some more information about the trail west for these sturdy individuals. The journey from the jumping off point of towns along the Missouri River to California or Oregon usually took six to eight months. Many guidebooks promised no more than three to four months time – a summer vacation. But the guidebooks were wrong.    Starting in mid-April, the emigrants would discover that the overland passage took every ounce of ingenuity and tenacity they possessed. They traveled in wagons with no springs, under a canvas that heated up to 110 degrees by midday, through drenching rains and summer storms.

Many used my trusty “Prairie Traveler” handbook that advised using oxen instead of mules. You could also hitch a cow to a wagon if necessary, or ride an oxen as one would ride a horse.

One feature that fascinates me about the “Prairie Traveler” is the mile by mile description of the route. By the mid 1850″s the trail was plain for all to see, worn by earlier wagons, but information was still necessary.

Here are a few excerpts from the Handbook giving directions from Westport, Missouri to Pike’s Peak.

4 ½ miles (west from Westport): Indian Creek – the road runs over a beautiful country. Indian Creek is a small wooded stream, with abundance of grass and water.

8 3/4: Cedar Creek – the road passes over a fine country, and there is a good camping place at Cedar Creek.

8 ½ miles: The road is smooth and level, with less wood than before. Camping good.

9 ½ miles: Willow Springs – at nine miles the road passes “Black Jack Creek,” where there is a good camping place. The road has but little wood upon it at first, but it increases toward the end of the march.

At 20 miles, our traveler reaches the Big Bend of the Arkansas – “The road strikes the sand-hills of the Arkansas River. They are soon passed, however, and the level river bottom is reached. The river has a rapid current flowing over a quicksand bed . . .

Then we reach Black Squirrel Creek. “This is a locality which is very subject to severe storms, and it was here that I encountered the most severe snow-storm that I have ever known on the first day of May, 1858. I would advise travelers to hasten past this spot as rapidly as possible during the winter and spring months . . .”

And on it goes, mile by mile, the handbook stating where the grass and wood flourished, where to cross the river, and remarking on the best sites for camping, hunting and resting.

It makes fascinating reading, particularly as I imagine myself sitting on the wagon seat, my backside longing for the day to end, yet looking forward to the next stage of the journey.

I’ll continue to offer more directions in coming weeks and hope you’ll come along for the journey.

Do you love stories and films about real Western characters?  I do.  One of my favorites is Calamity Jane, whose outrageous lifestyle and genuine courage made her a frontier legend.

The record of Calamity Jane’s life is a mixture of fact and fiction.  Much of that fiction was invented by Calamity herself.We do know that her real name was Martha Jane Cannary, and that she was born in Missouri in 1852. In 1866 her family emigrated to Montana.  Her mother died on the trail, and her father passed away the following year.  Martha Jane became the head of the family and eventually struck out on her own.           

By the time she was 13, Martha Jane could cuss like a man and had learned to like whiskey.  She was a fearless rider and a dead shot.  In 1870 she became a scout in the campaign against the Indians.  At this time she began dressing in men’s clothes.  Sometimes she even passed as a man.  Her heart was warm and womanly.  But men’s clothes suited the rough work she did.  Her appearance also made it easier for her male associates to accept her as an equal.           

 Around the same time, she acquired her nickname.  Calamity claimed it was given to her by an officer she rescued from an Indian attack.  More likely it came from her way of drawing trouble wherever she went.  As one old-timer said, “If she sat on a fence rail, it would rare up and buck her off.”           

 Calamity remained with the army until the mid-1870’s.  Then she met James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickock and rode with him and his friends to Deadwood, South Dakota.  In Deadwood she worked as a pony express rider carrying the U.S. mail through dangerous country.           

Legend has it that Calamity and Wild Bill were lovers.  She was almost certainly in love with Bill, but he was married to a girl back East and had no romantic interest in Calamity.  After Bill was shot dead during a poker game, Calamity chased down his killer.  The man got away but was eventually recaptured and hanged.Calamity remained in Deadwood for a time.  During the winter of 1878 she helped nurse residents through a smallpox epidemic.  After that she returned to the army for a time, drove freight wagons, tried ranching, and finally drifted to Texas.           

In 1885, at the age of 33, Calamity married Clinton Burke and later gave birth to a daughter.  No one knows for sure what became of the child.            

By now Calamity Jane was a legend.  Friends persuaded her to cash in on her fame.  She toured and made many public appearances, some of them with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.  But hard living had taken its toll.  She returned to South Dakota where she died in 1903, at the age of 51.  At her own request, she was buried next to Wild Bill, “the only man I ever loved.”           

I’ve always wished someone would make a good, historically accurate movie about the life of this amazing woman (the Doris Day musical, delightful as it was, doesn’t count).  How about you?  What actress would you cast as Calamity?  Who are some of your favorite real-life Western characters?  Don’t forget to sign up for our contest!  We have some great prizes.