In The Dividing Season, my book set in 1910 West Texas, a woman rancher makes a surprising discovery in a Sunday House

Karen in front of the Weber House which served as her inspiration

that had been built by her grandfather in the late 1800s. The woman recalls many stories exchanged and rehashed between her father and his brother about the wild times they’d enjoyed in the Sunday House when they were young men. Stories of cheating poker games, plots to catch cattle rustlers and cattle buying contracts gone bad.

Until the book’s editor suggested that I explain what a Sunday House was, I hadn’t realized that few people are aware of the houses’ significance to German settlers who ranched and farmed the remote hills and prairies of Texas.

Think about it. Back in those early settlement days there were no Holiday Inns, Marriotts, or LaQuintas on every corner of town. When ranchers and farmers had business to conduct in town he—and as often as not she—rarely had  time to finish his or her list of errands before having to head back home before full darkness. It became a common thing for settlers to build very small “houses,”

Sunday house

usually one room, ten feet by ten feet to twelve feet by fourteen feet, on small town lots for the convenience of having a place to stay overnight. Most of the houses had lofts tucked up under cedar or cypress roofs where children slept on cots. The lower floor had a curtained off area where adults slept. A “kitchen corner” with a small table and wash basin were about as elaborate as the tiny houses got.

Whole families would ride a wagon or buggy into town on Saturday mornings (a half day’s ride for most) and visit the dry goods store, hardware store, and bank. Then they’d stay overnight in their Sunday House and attend church services the next morning. Most carried along picnic baskets, and after church services they ate, napped, attended baseball games or visited relatives before the return trip home.

Time spent in town to buy supplies, attend church services and visit was often the only social activity families enjoyed after long weeks of isolation on remote ranches. In New Braunfels, Castorville and Fredericksburg, Sunday Houses were being built as late as 1909.  When I researched Sunday Houses online for this blog post I’d hoped to find new insight as to why Sunday Houses seem particular to Texas. I’ve not run across any mention of them elsewhere in the U.S. with the exception of similar “houses” in 1660s Middlebury, Connecticut and in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. I can only assume that the vast open, empty reaches of Texas necessitated the need for such a convenience.

The custom of Sunday Houses slowly died out with the introduction of motorized vehicles and better roads. Many of the houses still stand to this day and have been renovated as museums, tidbit tributes to a time gone by. Some have been modernized and are rented as Bed and Breakfast getaways.

To find out more about The Dividing Season visit Karen’s website at: www.karencasyfitzjerrell.com

I’ve reviewed The Dividing Season on both Amazon and Goodreads, and here’s a bit of what I said:

“:…Fitzjerrell’s style is restrained yet poetic, capturing the atmosphere of the scenes she describes as well as their physical presence. Her characters come to life with those small, intimate details only a practiced eye detects, the minutiae and small gestures that embody the individual. Her keen observation breathes life into the everyday rituals of a time long gone and makes the reader yearn for a past he never knew. Such involvement with the book is well rewarded, although that is not to say that the story is predictable. While Fitzjerrell keeps a tight rein on her prose, the pages are kept turning until the very end.”

Aauthor Nancy Jardine

I’m very pleased to have visiting here Nancy Jardine, a fellow author at The Wild Rose Press.  Nancy lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where she taught  11-12year olds for many years but now writes full-time.  Aside from her romantic fiction, she has completed the first in a series of YA time travel books and is currently working on a family saga.  As you’ll no doubt gather, this has entailed a bit of sleuthing into her family tree.  Welcome, Nancy!

I’m delighted to be with you, Andrea, and thank you very much for this opportunity. I’d like to share with your readers how history, and ancestry in particular, can influence plots in contemporary novels.

Hold on! Was that word contemporary? Wouldn’t ferreting out historical details regarding family trees be more appropriate to constructing a historical novel…or a family saga? The answer is a resounding yes, but I’ve found that historical and ancestry research can also be deftly employed in contemporary history mysteries. It can be more versatile than might, at first, be imagined!

My debut romance novel, MONOGAMY TWIST (published Aug 2011), required me to draw up a fictitious family tree, the plot having evolved while I was engaged in ancestry research, and simultaneously re-reading the work of Charles Dickens. MONOGAMY TWIST took shape as my own light-hearted version of a Dickensian bequest, with weird conditions. Luke Salieri is principal beneficiary in the will of a woman he’s never heard of. To inherit the substantial English estate Luke must reside in the property, for one year, with a spouse he doesn’t have. He needs a woman immediately! Rhia Ashton’s the perfect answer: a professional ancestry consultant, she’s unmarried…and gorgeous. Rhia gradually uncovers the mystery name of his benefactor; catalogues the house contents; and helps with the restoration of the old house. How convenient for Luke! Fierce initial desire blossoms into love over the year…though the path takes many twists and turns!

So what spurred that premise for a contemporary novel? In August 2010 I got some startling news-I’ve a cousin, living in Canada, that I’d never known about! My family is in no way unique since war, and emigration, added greatly to estrangement among British families during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. On hearing the news I launched in, joined an on-line ancestry program, and now have huge binders of printed details to back up the on-line information. Some of those initial research skills were used to plan MONOGAMY TWIST during late 2010. I enjoyed weaving the twists and turns of that first history mystery so much that I wrote a second contemporary history mystery with a more complicated plot. TOPAZ EYES (currently seeking a publisher) required the creation of a complex family tree-the novel centering on a world-wide search for a fabulous missing jewellery collection. Distant relatives, all unknown to each other before the quest starts are brought together to uncover the jewels. Danger, death and intrigue make the quest a perilous search-yet love blossoms between two of the protagonists (not blood related). Another theme of the novel is the family bonding, and loyalty, that is created along the way.

Ancestry research brings to light such exciting anomalies! Some of what I’ve uncovered is downright sad; some amusing; and lots of it would have been hidden behind locked cupboard doors as late as a generation ago. I believe nowadays, though, with such fantastic internet access that nothing will remain a secret for long (some people might call this an intrusion of privacy). So far in my ancestry researches I’m glad I haven’t found a murderer- that wouldn’t fit my current writing plans-but who knows? If I turn up one of those I might have to get into penning the heaviest suspense genre instead of mysteries!

 All those pieces of ‘well that’s amazing’ research have given me fodder for ‘what if’…stories. Have a try yourself and see how quickly you may find plenty of intriguing details to get you started on a family saga, or a historical novel. The handling of real documentation, and accurate historical data, can afford you the freedom to dream and write a fictionalized piece of writing.

How might ancestry research help unlock the imagination of a writer who might be temporarily out of ideas? Getting a multitude of accurate, down and dirty, details from many sources is now much easier: internet access to records fantastic. Back up with general and social historical facts of the era gives plenty of scope for writing fiction.

Sometimes researching records is easy. At others it leads to a frustrating pile of loose ends-with many unexplained connections, and details that don’t seem to fit. My homeland, Scotland, initiated a compulsory recording of births, deaths and marriages in 1855/ revised 1856. Those records include names, and occupations, of mother and father. From an occupation you can worm out details of likeliest workplaces. Perhaps even how the parents met? Coupled with Census data, that can lead you to find out how permanent, or transitory, the work was more than a century ago. For instance, being a hand-loom weaver in north-east Scotland, during the 1840s, could be a precarious occupation. The vagaries caused by supply and demand often resulted in a hasty removal to find new work, and a new place to reside, the whole family uprooted at regular intervals. Finding answers to a scenario like that might lead to a bit of research on the most likely-and plausible-locations to use in a novel. Inaccurate, or anachronistic detail, is not recommended in historical writing-someone is bound to notice!

Scottish marriage certificates, post 1856, I’ve found even more useful. Names; ages and occupations of the marriage couple; and their addresses before marriage, means you can improvise/ invent how, and where, they met. Given names for all four parents-and their occupations-sets home backgrounds. Which church the marriage banns were read from? How important can that be to the novelist? It can avoid inaccurate details depending on the locations involved…and can allow the author flexibility to home in on the church practices of the time. How large a church? How small a meeting hall?

Names, and addresses, for the two witnesses give scope for developing friendships in your novel, perhaps even setting up secondary characters to lead on to a series of novels. Get the research books out and pad out the daily lifestyle, the poverty of the era…or alternatively the richness of the employers. Poor versus rich has a definite place in the historical novel, or saga, it being a huge factor in the lives of the protagonists. Gleaning all those details from one marriage document can be fabulous information to get you started. That history mystery, historical, or whole family saga is laid before you…

For a future novel (already in my queue as a result of an ancestor who emigrated to the New World) I can envisage my need to investigate records available in America, Canada, and perhaps Australia for sibling information. What might I find there that I can use in future novels? I don’t know, yet, but I hope the research will furnish me with lots of ideas. The keen genealogist will not be thwarted by limited records anywhere…they will ferret out other sources!

Before that? I’ve got to get my already started family saga out of the way first!

I wish you all happy sleuthing (aka ancestry research) and happy writing…Slainthe!

Nancy

Thanks for visiting, Nancy–and thanks for the offer of those gift cards and gift tags depicting Scottish Castles, for one lucky person who leaves a comment.  Nancy will make her selection on May 12th and I’ll announce it here.

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Monogamy Twist- by Nancy Jardine

Luke Salieri thought he’d seen everything. But when he inherits a dilapidated English estate from a woman he’s never heard of—and with quirky conditions besides—it’s a mystery he wants resolved immediately. There must be a woman out there who can meet his needs. But how far will he have to go to persuade her? Lucrative employment for a whole year? The job of researching the old house and its fantastic contents is enticing – but Rhia Ashton can’t see herself living with gorgeous Luke Salieri and not wanting his body as well. Can she live and sleep with him for a whole year and then walk away? Rhia has her own ideas about what will make it worth her while.

MONOGAMY TWIST is available from:

The Wild Rose Press : http://bit.ly/wOpGbT

Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/ynu0t0   Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/wwaGCv   Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/AuMbii

Link to YouTube Book Trailer for Monogamy Twist is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJVzbrkJQzA

Website: http://nancyjardineauthor.weebly.com

Blog: http://nancyjardine.blogspot.com

In the 1880s, Cheyenne, Wyoming, was reputedly the wealthiest city on earth on a per capita basis.  Conveniently located on the transcontinental railroad system, it proved an ideal spot to establish a gentleman’s club catering not only to the British aristocrats that were now there, but also to the cattle barons, railroad magnates, industrial giants and political movers and shakers within its reach.  Set up to rival the Corkscrew Club in Denver, which admitted only foreign noblemen, the Cheyenne Club was originally called The Cactus Club, but the name was soon changed.  It was built in 1880 with specifications that would rival any London club. There were two grand staircases, tennis courts, wine vaults, a grand piano, reading, billiard, dining and smoking rooms.  Rooms were paneled throughout with hardwood floors overlaid with Turkish carpets, and had tiled fireplaces displaying Shakespeare quotations.  Its six bedrooms were completed with walnut dressers and presses, marble-topped commodes and beds of hand-carved walnut.  And the library table provided members with copies of Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and the New York and Boston newspapers, as well as The Drover’s Journal so that they could keep abreast of the Chicago beef prices.  Needless to say, the club also boasted a telephone, Cheyenne #76.

Limited to 200 members, the Board of Governors appointed a 3 -man committee to oversee its by-laws, which expected, of course, gentlemanly behavior.  The rules were designed to keep this haven a small corner of civilization in an otherwise untamed territory.  Wagers of any kind were prohibited (though it is said some high stakes games went on in the private rooms), and there were no games whatsoever on Sunday.   Smoking was not permitted until after 7.30pm in the dining room, and pipe smoking was completely prohibited.  “Loud” and ”boisterous” noise was also prohibited; cheating, drunkenness and profanity were grounds for expulsion.  “Any act so dishonorable in social life as to unfit the guilty person for the society of gentlemen” was proscribed.  But there was, at times, no rhyme or reason to the punishments dealt out—often, perhaps, dependent on the friendships within the committee.   When one member put a shot through an oil painting of a pastoral scene, saying this painting of two bulls was a travesty on purebred stock, he was suspended for three months (the painting now hangs, complete with bullet hole apparently, in the Wyoming State Museum.) When another member—so wealthy as to afford a $4,ooo ‘drag’, the equivalent of a modern day stretch limo– spoke up on the suspension of his brother for striking a waiter, he was censured for his language.

The club suffered a fire in 1882, sending half-naked residents out onto the street, and thereby proving a handy excuse to expand the premises.  At a cost of $10K, the new addition included a larger, more elegant dining room, decorated with Japanese papers, a servants’ dining room, and a completely new kitchen with 3 dumb waiters & refrigerator for meats, plus trunk room and laundry. There were now 14 bedrooms, new bathrooms, a post office for the convenience of members and electric lighting.  No wonder the great and the good passing through were delighted to be guests; these included Andrew Carnegie, Oscar Wilde, and Owen Wister, who called the club, “the Pearl of the Prairies.”  The Wyoming Stock Growers Association had gatherings in the club, as did the legislative council, and the Board of Trade had its headquarters here. Some say that more laws and decisions were made here affecting Wyoming than anywhere else, and it is even rumored that the Johnson County War was planned here.  Furthermore, many of the cattle barons preferred living at the club rather than on their ranches, and why not?  With lunch at 25¢ and dinner at 75¢, and plentiful Havana cigars, most likely the club was better than home.  Food was of the highest order with oysters, fruits, and fresh vegetables brought in, olives, cheeses, and chocolates, not to mention fine wines and liquors and endless champagne.

Such profligacy was not to last.  After the disastrous winter of 1886-87, many of the cattle barons were gone, their ranches virtually disappeared.  Never great landowners since most of them had depended on open range, the money was gone.  This citadel of comfort and exclusivity in a vast wilderness was unable to repay its debts and closed its doors.  It was temporarily re-organized as the Club of Cheyenne with a much larger membership, and this evolved into the Industrial Club, forerunner of the town’s Chamber of Commerce.  In 1936 the building was razed to make room for a new home for that organization.

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My thanks to the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, for providing the above photo.

Further reading:

Spring, Agnes Wright: The Cheyenne Club, Mecca of the Aristocrats of the Old-Time Cattle Range, Don Ornduff, 1961

Spanish style costume in Rejoneo

Back in January I had the good fortune to be traveling in Colombia. I found myself up in coffee country at the time of a festival in Manizales and this, to my great interest, included a type of bull fight called a rejoneo.  In rejoneo, the matador, now called a rejoneador, is on horseback and it is his skill as a horseman that is the better part of the performance.  One of the finest exponents of this sport, Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza, was in Manizales; he travels with a stable of 9 horses, several of which got a chance to strut their stuff in the course of the corrida.  While I never learned the breed of horse he employs in these events, they looked very similar to the Lippizaner of the Spanish Riding School , but perhaps more compact and muscular and, indeed, they do very similar haute dressage steps.  They danced in place, pirouetted in the face of a charging bull and quick stepped sideways out of the way with a grace that makes quarter horses look plain clumsy (please take a moment to watch Pablo in action here).  Four horses are used, each with a different specialty for the four stages of the fight—sort of like switching from your roping horse to your cutting horse. And the rejoneador will have the help in the ring of a toreador on foot to distract the bull when needed.

The entire performance was quite a spectacle.  It started with a parade around the ring, the rejoneadors dressed appropriately in eye-catching costume.  Hermoso de Mendoza sports the usanza española, a conservative outfit of short jacket, waistcoat, brown leather chaps and broad flat-brimmed hat.  One of the other rejoneadors, the older Antonio Ribeiro Telles, wore the more flamboyant Portuguese suit which looks like something out of the 1700s with its long, brightly colored and embroidered jacket, white breeches and tricorn hat.

Example of the Portuguese costume

The audience around me was no less ostentatious.  While the men were for the most part comfortably dressed for a day in the sun watching sport, the women put on a fashion show of eye-catching jewelry, fancy tops over tight pants (including one young lady wearing a backless leather number) and 6 inch heels.  Between each session food and booze was passed around in happy abandon, despite the fact we had just witnessed the bloody slaughter of a bull.

The rejoneo apparently started in Spain and Portugal as training to fight the Moors.  After the expulsion of the Moors, their noblemen began lancing bulls for sport although the Spanish eventually stopped the practice.  The bulls used nowadays are fairly slight, weighing in at around 1200 lbs. in order to be fleet of foot.  They have charming names like Flower and Pickle, but I don’t think that makes them any less deadly.  The spectacle is being enhanced in the 21st century by various new fangled ideas.  For instance, the rejon de castigo, or punishing lance, which is used to start off the proceedings, reveals a flag when it punctures the bull.  One of the rejoneadors, young Willy Rodriguez, had replaced the flag with an ‘explosion’ of sparkles

an explosion of sparkles

which delighted the crowd. But, nonetheless, with all of this show I had to ask myself where is the excitement?  There’s grace and beauty in the horsemanship, that’s for sure, but watching bulls get methodically slaughtered and hence vomiting blood is not the most pleasant pastime I’ve ever encountered.

Back in New York 6 days later, things were a bit more high tech over at Madison Square Garden where I moseyed on down to catch the last day of the PBR.  With flashing bright strobe lights and the initials PBR bursting into flames,

PBR bursts into flames at Madison Square Garden

twenty competitors swaggered out into spotlights. Professional bull riding is billed as America’s toughest sport and it is also the fastest growing.  While the common sense of time and humanity has influenced the men to wear protective vests, ‘crashes’ and injuries to the riders are common.   Basically the men are wearing traditional cowboy gear:  boots, hats, chaps and leather gloves. Occasionally a man will trade his Stetson for a helmet with face guard but other competitors feel this weight unbalances them.

And we’re now dealing with a different kind of bull; these creatures are 1800 lbs and over and specially bred for their overall agility and strength.  Their names reflect this: no Pickles or Flowers here.  The day I attended, I witnessed Back Bender, Bad Blake and Angry Cactus attempt to murder a few men.

Bull rider at MSG

Sitting inside on comfy cushioned seats rather than the traditional rodeo arena bleachers, we munched American fare of popcorn, hot dogs and soft drinks.  I was surrounded by just about every homesick westerner and Brazilian who happened to be in NYC that day—all of us wearing our western gear. It’s sadly true that the only horse around was the one the roper rode; he’s the guy who’s at the ready to throw a noose around the bull if the animal really gets out of hand.  And of course there are the bullfighters, commonly called rodeo clowns, who distract the bull so that the competitor can make his way to safety.

Bull riding is a distant cousin of the rejoneo.  It purportedly began in Mexico where haciendas would have contests of riding and ranching skills known as charreada.  One of the contests devolved from bull fighting had the bulls ridden to death.  I don’t think even Ty Murray, ‘King of the Cowboys,’ would be capable of that these days!  In any event, this sport went through several permutations—riding the bull until it stopped bucking, then just riding steers, and so on—as it made its way up into Texas and then on to the rodeos of the old west. Eventually, in 1994, the PBR was formed to handle bull riding as a separate entity from rodeo.

So is bull riding exciting?  Is it a pleasant pastime?  I don’t think “pleasant” is the word to use here, but “exciting,” yes.  As long as you don’t move your eyes from the chute you’ll have plenty of excitement watching the most dangerous 8 seconds in sport. This is an activity that requires stamina, strength, and courage—this is NOT about ‘just hanging on.’ But what should one feel about the fact that it is now men getting hurt rather than the bulls? Most of these guys have had so many breaks to their poor bodies they’re virtually bionic.  And yet they come back for more—their choice!  Poor ol’ Flower and Pickles were led out like lambs to the slaughter, provoked and then killed.

It’s a tough old world out there and it makes me feel we haven’t come far from watching gladiators in the arena.

Velda Brotherton

I’m very pleased to have as my guest this month the very energetic and multi-talented Velda Brotherton.  I first encountered Velda through  Women Writing the West and was delighted to subsequently find that Velda and I are both being published  by the Cactus line of The Wild Rose Press.
While her forthcoming novel, Stone Heart’s Woman, is a western historical romance, Velda’s multi-faceted career includes both fiction (historical and contemporary) and non-fiction books, writing workshops and speaking engagements. Velda’s extensive knowledge of American history is an obvious starting-point for her historical novels but it is the personal research she does that truly helps bring her books to life.  Here she talks about the journey she took and research she did for Stone Heart’s Woman.

Researching Stone Heart’s Woman

The idea for this book came when we drove north out of Oklahoma one fall day headed for Nebraska. It’s my husband who usually thinks of specific places to visit because he’s a consumate reader of both fiction and nonfiction. We stopped first at a former fort, Camp Supply, that is now used as a prison. Men there care for horses, and we were treated to a visit with one of the inmates and some of his horses. We were also allowed to tour the old fort and go in some of the buildings.

This is where I first heard about the Northern Cheyenne and their flight to freedom. As we traveled on north, hubby said let’s go to Ft. Robinson. That’s where they fought their final battle with the soldiers. Of course, he’d read some of the stories about this tragic trail, not made nearly so famous as the Trail of Tears. None of the tales of desperate acts of survival by Indians have been so heart rending at the 1500 mile flight of these people when they fled Indian Territory in 1878 headed back to Yellowstone country and their original home.

It’s a story of epic proportions. The army pursued them, taking lives as they could. But the Cheyenne persisted until they reached Ft. Robinson, where the small remainder of their numbers were locked up. I still didn’t have my book, though. I wanted to write a western historical romance set during this time, but so far, didn’t have much to help me there.

Then I bought a book called Cheyenne Autumn written by Mari Sandoz and in it saw this simple sentence: “Then there was a light-haired boy called Yellow Swallow, the Cheyenne son of General Custer.” That was a first hint at a character. Not this boy, perhaps, but a man, the son of Custer when he was much younger, who would be the right age to take part in this war. But on whose side would he be? He would certainly be pulled in two directions.

Then I was reading an old article written about Dull Knife, the leader known as Morning Star by the Cheyenne, and a quote at the end of the article, mentioned Stone hands joining. And Stone Heart was born. He had a white name, but not one of any consequence. He would be my hero, a man torn between two worlds who would have to make a choice between his father’s people and his mother’s. What a wonderful character he would be, with his golden hair like Custer’s, and his mother’s bronze skin. A boy educated in the white ways, whose father is doing his best to destroy the Indian culture.

But wait. A romance needs a heroine too. I had already written several books having to do with heroes and heroines of mixed blood (Cherokee and Sioux) as I’ve always been fascinated by how such children would handle their ethnicity. My father had Cherokee grandparents on both sides, as well as white ones, so the curiosity is understandable.

In my imagination I finally discovered an Irish girl living with her mother and brothers in St. Louis, who followed her fiancé west into Nebraska when he promised to marry her. He abandoned her in a small town not far from Ft. Robinson and she took to the stage, singing and dancing to entertain men and earn enough money to go home. But the good women, led by the preacher’s wife, decided to run her out of town on a cold January day in 1879, just about the time of the final outreak of the Cheyenne and the ensuing bloody battle around Ft. Robinson. A battle Stone Heart has decided to join to help his mother’s people escape.

After our trip to Ft. Robinson and driving along the trail the Cheyenne walked on that long ago day, I knew this was a story that needed telling. But through the eyes of this white woman and Stone Heart as they struggled to come to terms with what life had handed them. Did Custer have other children with the Cheyenne women? It is said he did. The Cheyenne told of a daughter with yellow hair, so I figured it wasn’t too far a reach to add another son to the mix.

Historical research can carry us into the most adventuresome of worlds. Since I began to write historical romances, I’ve learned to love history for the stories it tells and those it makes possible to tell. How fascinating to create fictional characters and place them in the middle of a factual time and place to see how they’ll react. What unusual things happen when we do something like this. It’s like visiting the past ourselves and living there for the time it takes to write the novel.

I had a long way to go in my research, but I was ready to begin my story. Usually, I do the basic research until an idea springs forth, then I begin to write the first draft, making notes in the margin where I’ll need to do more research. It takes me at least a year to research and write my novels. Stone Heart’s Woman is the seventh published historical romance, all in the western sub-genre. The first six are available on Kindle. I’m working on another one discovered when we took another trip, this time west through Texas. The research is finished, a vague synopsis written. I never outline a book, just write out a few pages of who, what, where, when and how. I can’t wait to begin the draft. No telling where it will lead me.

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Stone Heart’s Woman is  available from The Wild Rose Press in paperback at http://www.tinyurl.com/7shy2sy   The ebook will be available Feb. 17th.

Velda’s website is at http://www.veldabrotherton.com/ and her blogs can be read at

veldabrotherton.blogspot.com

vbrotherton.blogspot.com

velda-brotherton.blogspot.com

839,972 Pounds Roasted Daily

A few months back I was deeply engrossed in reading a number of cowboy memoirs of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, doing research for the historical western romance I was writing.  I was amused to discover the number of everyday products the men mentioned consistently, some of which have now gone from the shelves.  There was Sapolio soap powder, Eagle Brand milk (still going strong) and, as any western historian will know, Arbuckles’ for coffee.  Ike Blasingame, in his Dakota Cowboy, (University of Nebraska Press, 1958)  gives Arbuckles’ more than a passing mention; he describes the chuck wagon and “A flat-sided coffee grinder was bolted to the side of the wagon, handy to reach, for in those days our coffee was made from freshly ground coffee beans.  Most all outfits used the famous Arbuckle brand.  It came in huge burlap bags holding one hundred one-pound packages of whole beans which were ground in the mill as needed.  I remember the stick of candy in each package, as well as a coupon, good for dozens of premiums—handkerchiefs, lace curtains, shears, Torrey razors, and jewelry of all descriptions, including wedding rings.”

Having read about Arbuckles’ so often, I decided to try to discover a little bit more about the “Coffee That Won the West” and see what had become of it.

Right up through the Civil War, coffee was primarily sold ‘green’ and had to be roasted by the consumer.  This was done in a skillet over the campfire on the range or in a wood burning stove at home, and it had to be done in small batches:  while green coffee beans could be stored indefinitely, roasted beans were subject to oxidation, leaving the beans rancid within a couple of weeks.  Furthermore, such individual roasting made for inconsistency, and one burnt bean could ruin an entire batch. Beans sold by grocers pre-roasted were subject to not only this inconsistency but also to mixed quality and to the vagaries of the grocers’ scales.

The family grocery business of Arbuckles’ was established in Pittsburgh in 1859.  John Arbuckle dropped out of college to join the firm, which included his brother Charles, in 1865, and his first innovation was to pack roasted coffee beans in 1-lb. packages, ready for the customer.  In 1871 the Arbuckles Bros. Co. was formed and moved to New York.  John Arbuckle then went on to invent an egg and sugar glaze that “closes the pores of the coffee, and thereby all the original strength and aroma are retained.” (from the back of an Arbuckles’ trade card, circa 1890s). Packed in l lb. packages, the coffee was an instant hit and Arbuckles’ Ariosa Coffee was born.  By the 1880s, Arbuckles’ was the largest coffee importer in the world.

Part of their success was due to their marketing innovations.  The bags of coffee were packed in sturdy crates, which eventually found their use in grocery store shelving and other impromptu uses such as repairing homes for the Navajo in AZ.  Now collectible, one crate that survived intact recently sold at auction for $300.  The bags themselves had an attractive, bright red and yellow label and contained a peppermint stick; this proved to be a means by which Cookie could bribe cowboys to grind the beans.  Arbuckles’ was also the first, in 1873, to advertise coffee on a full color handbill.  And best promotions of all were the coupons, as Ike Blasingame mentions above, along with trade cards.  The trade cards were works of art in themselves, and the different series included all the US states, countries of the world, humorous sketches, patriotic scenes, and maps.

Card No. 28, North Dakota

The reverse side could be anything from an ordinary postcard backing to advertising slogans, recipes or a picture of the factory as above.  Now collectors’ items, they are often available on eBay, and a cookbook of the recipes has also been released.

While the Arbuckle Bros. diversified into other areas of commerce, including sugar refining, and owned a ranch in WY as well, it was as coffee magnates that they were primarily known.  When 20^th Century improvements in packaging made the glazing of beans unnecessary, the company continued to blend premium coffees.  John Arbuckle developed a ‘Yuletide’ blend that was eventually marketed as Yuban, now owned by Kraft Foods.  Sometime after John Arbuckle’s passing in 1912, the company was sold on to C.W. Post of cereal fame, eventually becoming part of General Foods.

I’m further indebted to the University of Nebraska Press for their kind permission to use the above passage from Ike Blasingame’s Dakota Cowboy,1958.  Blasingame was the rough string rider, or bronc twister, for the British-owned Matador Cattle Co. when it moved from Texas to the Dakotas.  He describes his 8 years with them, from 1904-1912, in highly literate and perceptive language.  It’s a book anyone interested in the history of the Old West should read.  Available here.

Courtesy of Moreton Frewen Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming

I first learned of Moreton Frewen when reading Elisabeth Kehoe’s book, Fortune’s Daughters:  the Extravagant Lives of the Jerome Sisters (Grove Atlantic, Ltd., 2004). Frewen, born 1853, a younger son of a wealthy and well-connected Sussex squire,
was not originally considered suitable for oldest of the Jerome sisters, Clara, who had been brought up in Paris, virtually in the Court of Louis Napoleon.  He could not expect much of an inheritance as the extensive properties held by the squire were entailed under primogeniture.  Moreton, as a gentleman by birth, would normally be expected to enter the clergy, the Services or politics.

But fate took a hand.  In 1878 Frewen went to Texas with John George Adair, a wealthy Irishman who had half-interest in Charles Goodnight’s JA ranch in the Llano Estacado.  Frewen, an adventurer by nature,

became enthralled by the idea of the West’s cattle industry..  Back in England, he squandered the remains of his £16,000 (approx.$80,000) inheritance and returned to America with his brother Dick and into the arms of Clara Jerome.

The Jerome family was wealthy enough and certainly snobbish enough to originally turn up their noses at the younger son of the Duke of Marlborough as a suitor for their middle daughter, Jennie (who would be mother to Winston Churchill), so when, in 1879, the penniless Moreton Frewen began to make his suit, he was hardly in the running.  Moreton went on to Wyoming with Dick and four friends, first for hunting and subsequently to seek out the land to establish Frewen Bros. Cattle Co.  By late December the Frewens were on their own searching for range in an inhospitable climate.  After helping a band of Shoshoni kill enough buffalo for winter food, the brothers decided to use the herd as snowplows, stampeding them through a mountain pass to flatten the snow drifts so that they themselves could get through.  The range they eventually discovered and settled was a swathe of the Powder River Basin extending eighty miles north and south and fifty east to west; their headquarters were more than 200 difficult miles from Rock Creek station on the Union Pacific.

The ranch house that Moreton built avoided the mosquitoes and took advantage of an outcrop of coal for fuel.  Purportedly the first two story residence in Wyoming, it had a solid walnut staircase and woodwork imported from England, papered walls and a ‘minstrel’s gallery’ so that musicians could entertain guests in the dining room, which could seat 20 comfortably, or in the main room which was 40 ft. square.  Materials for a telephone line were brought in and this ran 20 miles from the headquarters to the Frewen Bros. store at Powder River Crossing.  A piano was imported from Chicago along with chintz hangings and chair coverings; a library was well-stocked. There were, of course, living quarters for servants.  It cost Frewen around $900 a month to run and was named Big Horn Ranche (sic); the cowboys called it ‘Castle Frewen.’

Courtesy of Moreton Frewen Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming

And it was all built on borrowed money.

The herd was started with 4500 head bought from the ‘76’ brand; it would eventually increase to ten times that amount with 9000 sheep and some 700 horses.  Sadly for Frewen, the number of herds on the Powder River would also increase.  While the first round-up in Wyoming in 1874 required only 2 divisions, in 1884 there were no less than 31 divisions and the round-up system became law in the Territory. In one division alone 200 cowboys with 2,000 horses worked 400,000 cattle over a 6 week period, with Reps visiting other divisions to get any cattle that may have strayed; 3 ropers succeeded branding 166 cows in 80 minutes!

Moreton, of course, won Clara eventually and the couple were married in high society’s Grace Church in NY, June, 1881.   Clara made the arduous journey out to the ranch where the Frewens had a long list of lords and ladies who came for opulent hunting parties, scouted by ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, in the autumn.  But when Clara joined one group and became ill, thereby suffering a miscarriage, she returned to New York never to set foot in Wyoming again.

By August, 1882, Moreton had bought out his brother and formed the Powder River Cattle Company with himself as unpaid manager, taking shares for the value of the ranch.

From a 24% dividend one year, by 1885 the company was in deep trouble.  Two bad winters had brought losses, and rustlers, raiding Indians, wolves, grasshoppers and prairie fires had taken their toll, greatly exacerbated by overcrowded ranges. These were being reduced by a growing number of homesteaders; ranchers had a policy of filing only for land for water rights or their own homesteads or line camps, often counting on employees to file sections and re-sell in due course.   The open range between these filings was now heavily encroached upon, leaving too little grass for far too many cattle.

Moreton Frewen had innovative ideas for increasing the company’s income by shipping cattle directly to England, bypassing the Chicago meat-packing consortium (much of the thrust for anti-trust laws in the U.S. came from wanting to  break their monopoly). But every venture took money he had to borrow and the creditors began knocking at his door while the Powder River Company was losing money as well, partially due to his mismanagement.  At a time when ocean crossings took 12 days, Moreton was rarely at the ranch (he claimed to have made 100 crossings in his lifetime).  Finally, in 1885, he was dismissed from his position, his own shares worthless.  The most horrific winter of ’86-’87 with cattle losses between 50-75% put an end to the era of the large cattle companies; the final nail in the coffin of the Open Range was Wyoming’s Johnson County ‘War’ in 1892.

While Moreton Frewen had many ideas for money making and investing on a large scale, none came to fruition.    Frewen and his wife simply could not live in any style less than that to which they were accustomed.  Even when the bailiffs were in their house, Clara, who had never lived with less than 7 servants, paid one of the bailiffs 10 shillings to polish mirrors and answer the door!  Yet Frewen was also a man before his time.  He foresaw the Panama Canal 35 years before its completion and the St. Lawrence Seaway some 74 years in advance.  He was  a friend to every President from Hayes to Wilson.   And he was daring to the point of foolhardy: once when his horse went lame on the way to Rock Creek, he made the last 40 miles on foot, a journey of 26 hours through snowdrifts and mountains. He also removed a bullet from his own leg, riding 50 miles into Calgary in heavy snow. And of course he was virtually the first settler on the Powder River when the only white men who lived there were hunters and skinners.  Called “hopelessly visionary” by his father-in-law, the nickname given to him by his brother Stephen’s regiment was “Mortal Ruin.”

Moreton Frewen died, aged 71, in England in 1924 with an estate estimated under £50.

My thanks to John R. Waggener, Associate Archivist and the staff of the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie.

Further reading:

Andrews, Allen, The Splendid Pauper, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968;

Woods, L. Milton, Moreton Frewen’s Western Adventures, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, 1986;

Woods, Lawrence M., British Gentleman in the Wild West, The Free Press, 1989

This month I have a guest on my blog, Ann Parker, award-winning author
of the Silver Rush historical mysteries.  The fourth book in the series, Mercury’s Rise, has just been published by Poisoned Pen Press.

A few months ago Ann and I sat down to lunch in NYC where she held me spellbound with tales of the Great and Good–or the Not So Good–who passed through Leadville, Colorado, center of America’s silver mining industry back in the 1800s.  I’m sure you’ll be equally fascinated with what she has to say.

Thank you, Andrea! As we know, Leadville is a long way from New York City, but the two places have some interesting connections. Back in the Silver Rush heyday from late 1879 through the 1880s, many folks came to Leadville for one reason or another, and many from the East Coast. Among them, are some names familiar even to this day.

For instance, the Guggenheims. Did you know that their fortune was founded in Leadville? From his then-home in Philadelphia, Meyer Guggenheim lent a helping hand in 1880 to an old friend, who had gone West many years earlier to make his fortune. To that end, Guggenheim bought a one-third interest in two Leadville mines: the A.Y. and the Minnie. The mines had been barely “holding their own” in terms of shipping enough ore to pay expenses. Soon after Guggenheim joined in, he took a quick trip to Leadville to examine the properties, and hired mining experts to see what they could do to increase the yield. The amount of ore removed from the mines increased to 50 tons a day, but it wasn’t until a fateful day in August that Dame Fortune smiled. Back once again in Philadelphia, Meyer Guggenheim received a telegram from his Leadville associate that stated: RICH STRIKE. FIFTEEN OUNCES SILVER. SIXTY PERCENT LEAD. For 50 tons of ore removed daily, this translates to $1,000 a day in silver alone! (In today’s dollars that $1,000 equates to $22,000. See http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/index.php) As noted in the book The Guggenheims: A Family History, “The A.Y. and the Minnie would be the bedrock of the Guggenheim fortunes.”

Others came to Leadville, passing through or even staying for a while. For instance, Susan B. Anthony arrived in September 1877, stumping for women’s suffrage. She spoke to the miners in one of the saloons, at the time the largest buildings around and the only accomodations for public speakers. Alas, the Colorado Legislature voted down the bill in October 1877, even though the governor of the state stood by Miss Anthony in Leadville and spoke up in favor of suffrage.

The James brothers—Frank and Jesse both—wandered through town and even staked a claim, although it appears they didn’t hang around for long. Leadville’s Carbonate Weekly Chronicle, September 4, 1880, noted, “It is currently reported that the notorious James brothers are now and have been for some weeks ostensibly engaged in working a mining claim in the near vicinity of Leadville.”

Doc Holliday came through a number of times in the early 1880s. He even settled for a while in 1883–84 and dealt faro in the Monarch Saloon (located not far from the fictional Silver Queen Saloon of my series), and ended up shooting and killing a Constable Kelly. Others of Holliday’s acquaintance that chanced through Leadville at various times included Bat Masterson (a personage I gleefully used in Silver Lies) and Wyatt Earp.

Gunslingers aside, famous visitors to “Cloud City” included politicians and poets, pundits, and entertainers. Former President Ulysses S. Grant came through on a five-day visit in July 1880 (a visit which plays a prominent role in both Iron Ties and Leaden Skies), and writer/poet Oscar Wilde gave a lecture at Leadville’s Tabor Opera House in 1882. Wilde’s visit was well covered in the news of the day. The Leadville Herald Democrat ran an article titled alliteratively “OSCAR DEAR—Wilde Wrestles Wildly With the Art Decorative in this Mountain Wilderness.”

Later, in Wilde’s book Impressions of America, he said the following about his trip to Leadville:

“. . . I was told that if I went there they would be sure to shoot me or my travelling manager. I wrote and told them that nothing that they could do to my travelling manager would intimidate me. They are miners—men working in metals, so I lectured to them on the Ethics of Art. I read them passages from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and they seemed much delighted. I was reproved by my hearers for not having brought him with me. I explained that he had been dead for some little time which elicited the enquiry, “Who shot him?” They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice:—

Please do not Shoot the PIANIST

He is doing His Best

The mortality among pianists in that place is marvelous. Then they asked me to supper, and having accepted, I had to descend a mine in a rickety bucket in which it was impossible to be graceful. Having got into the heart of the mountain I had supper, the first course being whisky, the second whisky and the third whisky….”

This is just a sample of some of the “rich and/or famous” who once strolled along Leadville’s boardwalks. If you are lucky enough to go there someday, you can walk on the boards yourself, listen to echoes of long ago, and perhaps glimpse a ghost or two while you take in views of mountain scenery that haven’t changed much these past 150 years. As Walt Whitman said of a day’s journey from Denver to Leadville and back through Platte Canyon:

“Talk as you like, a typical Rocky Mountain canon, or a limitless sea-like stretch of the great Kansas or Colorado plains, under favoring circumstances, tallies, perhaps expresses, certainly awakes, those grandest and subtlest element-emotions in the human soul, that all the marble temples and sculptures from Phidias to Thorwaldsen—all paintings, poems, reminiscences, or even music, probably never can.”

————–

Leave a comment on this post to be eligible to win a Silver Rush mystery prize! Winner will be announced later this week. To see the rest of Ann’s blog tour, check out her Appearances page on her website (http://www.annparker.net/app.htm).

The winner of Ann’s Silver Rush Mystery Prize is Kilian Metcalfe.  Thanks to everyone who left a comment!

Ah, ‘awesome.’  My faithful Oxford dictionary tells me this originates in Middle English and means having “reverential fear or wonder,” while my 1997 edition of Merriam Webster defines it as “inspiring awe, expressive of awe.” To me, the Grand Canyon is awesome, the Rocky Mts. are awesome, but not, as Encarta the online dictionary wishes me to believe, some track on a CD; that may be great to listen to, but it is never going to be awesome.  So am I a grumpy old woman?

Recently, I wrote a description using the word “calefacient.”  Microsoft Word sent out alarms bells in the shape of red underlining which sent me to ‘Look Up’ and on to Encarta.  No results there; the word didn’t exist!  My Merriam Webster happily skips from ‘caldron’ to ‘calendar’ so I went on to Bing, a supposed research site (according to my version of Word) or search engine, and happily found my word.  With a “use it or lose it” notion in my mind, I kept the word in my writing despite my fear that it may now be archaic.  Am I truly that old?  Of course, it has nothing to do with one person’s age; the language is changing as I write, as we speak.  But now, faced with the acquisition of ‘awesome’ in everyday usage and the possible loss of ‘calefacient,’ I’m not so sure how wonderful this all is.  The USA College Entrance Examinations, or SATs, include a large section on vocabulary; is that vocabulary now going to accept the definition of ‘awesome’ as plain old ‘excellent’?

I expect in the end accepting the changes as progress is the best one can do. We may no longer talk about the ‘suspiration’ of the wind or have those little painted stone ‘blackamoors’ outside grand houses to which guests may tie up their horses—both words which critique readers of mine recently admitted to not knowing—yet we can come out of a Shakespeare play having understood the drama perfectly.  Hopefully.  And while I won’t then stand on a street corner and say, “Hark! I believe the M7 autobus approacheth,” (slight mixing of time periods there), I do have a choice as to whether to describe the play as having the ‘sine qua non’ of performances or perhaps find some sesquipedalian ‘bon mot’…like awesome.

I had actually not entered to win (oh,whom am I fooling, please?) but to get feed back on my writing since I had undertaken to start a western historical novel which no one, but no one, in New York reads.  Therefore, I obviously looked to the three judges of this contest for some useful critique.  Two of the judges scored me at 99 and 94 out of 100 respectively and the third—whose marks happily didn’t count as the contest only took the two highest scores­­­­— scored me a whopping 56.  For anyone who’s ever found themselves in a similar situation with a bad review, you’ll know that the only thing to do is to pour yourself a stiff drink.  And that helps until you ask yourself….WHY?  Where the first two judges raved about my dialogue and said they could hear the voices of my characters, No. 3 said they sounded like the 1960s instead of the 1860s.   Whereas Nos. 1 & 2 loved the story and claimed they wanted to read more, No. 3 told me it was over-plotted and maybe I should try writing something else.  In fact, if truth be told, No. 3 didn’t have a single good thing to say about my opus though she did finally concede that I had “flashes of genius!!!”  Not even ‘some bits were ok,’ but actual genius! Hmmm.

So, was she having the literary equivalent of a bad hair day?  Was she simply a hard marker? And who was right?  Is good writing, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?

Some years ago, in another life in Britain, I co-edited a poetry magazine that took both solicited and unsolicited submissions.  It included work from many well known poets from both sides of the Pond—Ginsberg, James Schuyler, Gerard Malanga, Anne Waldman among them—and a number of then unknown poets, including as yet to go stratospheric Peter Ackroyd (unsolicited).  I remember a lengthy argument via snail mail with a pompous Christopher Hitchens whom we refused to publish; even he now admits he made an awful poet.  What I don’t remember is ever having arguments with my co-editor as to what was or wasn’t a good poem.  On the whole, we pretty much agreed what to take and what not to take.  I accept poetry is a different fish to fiction but can there be such a gap between critics as to explain my results?  And, by the way, I looked at the marks for all 20 contestants and the nearest gap to mine was a measly 20 point differential to my 40.  Did my critic just hate “westerns”?  Or did she see something the others didn’t?

So, is good fiction a subjective concept?  When sentences are grammatically correct can ideas, imagery, voices, story be thought ‘good’ by one person and ‘bad’ by another?  Obviously, it can or critics would be out of a job. On the other hand, the existence of classics and bestsellers says that there is often a general consensus of opinion.  But why (and how and when) does a difference of opinion occur?  The book on which they are voicing opinion has been thought worthy by agents and editors as well as the author.  Maybe one person’s ‘good idea’ is another person’s ‘you must be kidding.’ Or maybe that flash of genius sometimes just doesn’t flash enough…