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My current work in progress (a western) is set in the year 1871. Here’s what else was happening: History Congress enacts a Reconstruction law regarding elections Congress enacts the Ku Klux Klan Act to enforce 14th amendment “Greenbacks” are adopted as legal tender William “Boss” Tweed is convicted of fraud in New York Brigham Young arrested for practicing polygamy Fire obliterates Chicago Race riots against the Chinese erupt in California William I, King of Prussia, is proclaimed German Emperor Paris capitulates; France signs armistice (Franco-Prussian War) France cedes Alsace-Lorraine to Germany The Commune in Paris rules for two months Italian Law of Guarantees allows the pope possession of the Vatican British Act of Parliament legalizes labor unions British Columbia joins Dominion of Canada Basutoland becomes part of Cape Colony Britain annexes diamond fields of Kimberley Rasputin, Russian monk, born (died in 1916) Literature Lewis Carroll: “Through the Looking Glass” Stephen

An area's history does not consist solely of its people, places, and buildings. There are also significant events that occur that each add their own little piece to the grand puzzle of history. Often these events, while exciting to those involved at the time, are soon forgotten by later generations. One example, the passage of the British army through the area in 1777, was touched on in the Hockessin Meeting House post (and may be returned to someday). Another such event was the two-stop visit in 1904 of the fiery temperance advocate Carry Nation. Her rallies at both ends of the hundred were attended by thousands, and were no doubt the topic of countless conversations for a long time afterward. Carry Nation, for those who may not remember history class, was probably the fiercest and most popular temperance (anti-alcohol) advocate of the early 1900's. She first came to prominence in Kansas, where, armed with bricks and her trademark hatchet, she would go to saloons and liquor s

Hockessin Friends Meeting House From the time the English took control of Delaware in the 1660's, and especially with the arrival of William Penn in 1681, it is no exaggeration to say that the most important group of people to the development of Wilmington and New Castle County was the Society of Friends, or the Quakers. Persecuted in England for their religious and pacifist beliefs, many Quakers came to settle in Penn's New World colony. With their dedication to hard work, education, and simple living, the Quakers quickly became the dominant force in the area's industry, and remained so for about 200 years. The first Quaker Meeting House in Delaware is believed to have been the Newark Meeting, which was located near the present-day neighborhood of Carrcroft in Brandywine Hundred. By the late 17th and early 18th Centuries, Quaker meeting houses had popped up in Wilmington, New Castle, and southern Chester County. In the early 1730's, Mill Creek Hundred's growing Qua

Kiamensi Mill employees, 1895 Most of the mills mentioned in posts so far, like the Harlan Mill  and the England Mill , have been fairly small operations, run by only one or two men. And while most of the mills in the area were like this, there were a few industrial sites that operated on a larger scale. For a good part of the second half of the 19th Century, one of the largest employers in Mill Creek Hundred was the Kiamensi Woolen Company. Situated on Red Clay Creek at Kiamensi Road, just south of Marshallton, the large textile mill and the community it spawned are now nothing more than a vague memory. The first mill on the site certainly dates from the 1700's, but to be honest, the early history of the millseat is a bit hazy. Scharf gives a fairly detailed account of the ownership of the site, but I think that he might be confusing a few different sites together. (I think the confusion stems from conflating different Red Clay mills, as well as the fact that mills in Stanton (lo

It's Romance Writers of America's annual conference this week, so most of the Hoydens are in Orlando. See you next week (unless we can't help ourselves and have to blog the conference).

I’m curious what readers have to say about character names. Me, I like the memorable ones. Jo Beverley’s Mallorens (Cynric, Arcenbryght, Elfled) and Mary Balogh’s Bedwyn’s (Freyja, Wulfric, Rannulf) are prime favorites. There’s something that appeals to me about digging down into history and pulling forth names that have been forgotten, overlooked, and left to molder. I think it’s nice to be able to play off of this with more common names (especially if the names either show you something about the character or let you play wildly against type). I’ve got a whole set-up in my new series (tip of the hat to the aforementioned historical romance goddesses) where the parents ar e both history buffs, which the mother having a penchant for Scottish history and the father being a classics scholar. All of their children have one name from the royalty of ancient Scotland and one from the pages of the classics. It was great fun to come up with them (the hero of my upcoming book Ripe for Pleasure

Marshallton UME Church, about 1905 Marshallton Union Chapel, later named Marshallton United Methodist Church, was built in 1886. Through the years additions have been added and a few modifications made, but it is still in operation, located at 1105 Stanton Road in Mill Creek Hundred. Just east of the church is the Springer-Cranston house where Edwin J. Cranston resided. It was from Cranston that the land for the church was bought. Marshallton United Methodist was named for the community it serves, which was in turn named in honor of John Marshall, the founder of Marshall Rolling Mill, which was erected and began operations in 1836. While the country gothic church was added to the National Register in 1987 based partially on its architectural characteristics, just as important was the central role it has played in bringing the community together. In the 1880’s, a majority of the residents of Marshallton and the neighboring Kiamensi community worked in either the rolling mill in Marshall

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals--apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. - Mark Twain's Notebook Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as the irrepressible American humorist Mark Twain, is on record for despising the French. Although I have not been able to locate the quote verbatim, he is said to have remarked that ever since the expulsion from Eden mankind has been sinking lower and lower: "right now he is a little lower than the French." Tart words, indeed. Mark Twain in 1871, two years after his European grand tour and Innocents Abroad In 1869 Twain toured Europe, sharing his mostly negative views of the lands across the pond in Innocents Abroad . But one location legendary for its opulence, surprisingly, impressed the literary curmudgeon: VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden--but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the

Considering that three of the four sides of Mill Creek Hundred are formed by waterways, combined with the importance of waterpower for milling, it's not surprising that a fair number of the historic structures in MCH are along its borders. However, there is one house of significance that lies on the other boundary -- the Delaware-Pennsylvania state line. And when I say, "lies on the boundary", I don't mean that as a figure of speech. The state line actually runs through the middle of the house! Merestone is also a good example of how a house can stand for many years before something happens to it that makes it "historically significant". The Merestone House (whose name comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "boundary stone") has an interesting history that dates back almost 300 years, but it didn't make its mark until about 60 years ago. It lies in what I would call the northern edge of western MCH, on Yeatman's Mill Rd. just north of Corne

My son's ideal day on his summer vacation---is spent wandering a civil war battlefields, reading all the stone markers and looking for shell casings that somehow have been overlooked by all the other tourists who have traipsed across the paths for the last 150 years. Needless to say, while he is wandering...so is my mind. I wonder why, after hearing all the stories, the first hand accounts of love and loss, great loss, and occasionally miraculous love stories that emerged from the war, why is this historical period almost taboo by publishers of romance? As historical romance writers, I am sure we have all heard editors and agents tell us "the American Civil War doesn't sell." We don't often write about it. Neither do we often read it. I wonder why not? Did Gone with the Wind say it all---is there no other great civil war romance left to tell? Medieval romance sells---a time period that was just as bloody and violent. But the American Civil War? Don't even try

In addition to writing posts about the historic places and people of Mill Creek Hundred, once in a while I'd like to turn my attention to some of the resources that I have found to be helpful in tracing the history of the region. By doing this, I hope that maybe I can help someone else along in doing research of their own. These resources could be books, websites, organizations, or, in this case, a map. In 1868, a company from Philadelphia called Pomeroy & Beers issued their Atlas of the State of Delaware. It is a large, hand-colored book of fairly detailed maps of the entire state. There are individual maps for each of the 30 or so hundreds that existed in the state at the time. Additionally, there are a number of separate maps for specific towns and cities, such as Wilmington, Dover, Newark, Georgetown, New Castle, and a few others. For some smaller towns, there are insets along side their hundred's map. And for some reason, the inset for Stanton is located on the New Cas

No doubt many people have, while driving down Red Mill Road, figured that it got that name because there used to be a red mill along it somewhere. Well, they're right. What many of those people may not realize is that the mill, along with an even older house, is still there. They also happen to be among the oldest structures still standing in Mill Creek Hundred. John England was a Quaker and an iron master, originally from Staffordshire, England. He came to America in 1723 to oversee construction of Cecil County, Maryland's Principio Furnace Iron Works , of which he was part owner. Principio was one of the first major iron works in America, gathering interest from all over the colonies. In fact, John England had frequent dealings with an investor from Virginia named Augustine Washington, whose son George would go on to become rather famous in this country. In 1726, John bought 600 acres in northern White Clay Creek and southern Mill Creek Hundreds, purportedly to find iron ore

I recently had the honor of visiting the Coffee Run site on Lancaster Pike, where the first Catholic Church in Delaware was built. Even though the clouds opened up as my family and I were exiting the car, and we were drenched by the rain as we ran across the field to catch a glimpse of the burned-out remains of the Patrick Kenny house, it did not take away from the inspiring reality that we were standing on a historically rich piece of land in Mill Creek Hundred. The early 1800’s brought many immigrants to America from Europe; one such immigrant was Reverend Patrick Kenny. Father Kenny emigrated to Wilmington, Delaware from Ireland in the summer of 1804. He was born June 6, 1763 in Dublin, Ireland and educated in Paris (a fact that would become quite helpful to him later). Upon his arrival in America he lived with the Hearn family in West Chester until September 11, 1808. During this time, Father Kenny traveled and conducted Catholic Masses at five stations and one church, which includ

This summer I had the fun of serving as an historical production adviser on Porchlight Theatre's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses . This past weekend was closing weekend, and I saw the show twice, two last chances to savor the richness of the story and this wonderful production. In many ways elements of the play (based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's scandalous epistolary novel of the same name published in the 1780s in the lead up to the French Revolution, which gives this post a Bastille Day tie in) are not unfamiliar to historical romance. In fact, watching the play opening weekend, it occurred to me that I was seeing the prototype of the current historical romance hero. A rake sets out to seduce a beautiful, virtuous woman. He eventually wins her, but finds he has become emotionally entangled with her himself. It sounds not unlike the plot of Georgette Heyer's Venetia . Save that in the case of Les Liaisons Dangereuses , despite falling in love with the woman h

One of my latest acquisitions is The Lady’s Stratagem: A Repository of 1820s Directions for the Toilet, Mantua-Making, Stay-Making, Millinery & Etiquette . It’s a wonderful book that reprints sections of antique guides on all of the above topics. One of my favorite sections is about personal hygiene. Everything from caring for your teeth to recipes for makeup to directions for bathing (a subject upon which period authorities seem to have been strongly divided, which might explain why so many of us are confused). A wonderful example of this schism of opinion can be found in the sections featuring arguments for and against washing your hair. The Toilette of Health, Beauty and Fashion is decidedly against the practice, claiming that washing your hair frequently results in “head-ache, ear-ache, tooth-ache, and complaints of the eyes” and ends its commentary with the precept: “Wash the hands often, the feet seldom, and the head never.” The Duties of a Lady’s Maid on the other hand act

It’s surprising where research for an historical romance can lead! I’m now writing a western set in 19th century Oregon about a man who wants to try wheat farming (yes, there’s a love story, but research about wheat came first). Wheat has been grown for at least 7000 years -- not for fun, but for survival. Wheat is ground into flour which makes bread which feeds people; were it not for wheat civilization might have petered out thousands of years ago. Not only can wheat be eaten, it can be stored for food during winter and as seed for a new crop in the spring. Villages developed where land was available to grow wheat. Bronze tablets dating from the 9th century B.C. show the grinding of wheat and bread-making in Assyria. Ancient Egypt grew wheat, aided by its network of irrigation canals, which demanded organization and supervision. Growing food led to trade, development of language, mathematics, and business and diplomatic relations with other villages and later nations. . Toda

As you drive down Newport Gap Pike and pass Emily P. Bissell Hospital, have you ever wondered, "Why its named that? Who is Emily P. Bissell? Why does she have a hospital named after her?" I hope to answer some of your questions. Emily Perkins Bissell was born in Wilmington, Delaware on May 31, 1861 to a prominent family. Emily was the first daughter, and the second child, of four born to Champion Aristarcus Bissell, a banker and real estate investor, and Josephine (Wales) Bissell. Emily was educated both in Wilmington and at Miss Charlier's Private School in New York City. When Emily was 15 years old, her Sunday school took a trip to see urban poverty firsthand. I would imagine this was the turning point in Emily Bissell's life. Just seven years later at the age of 22, Emily had raised enough funds to start an organization to provide social services to Wilmington's immigrants. She started a youth club, which was incorporated in 1889 as the West End Reading Room.

Sometimes when I stop and think about it, I'm amazed that any old houses (say, 150 years or more) are still around for us to enjoy. It takes a special combination of luck and caring ownership for a historic home to remain in excellent, near original condition. One such house that has benefited from just this scenario is the Hersey-Duncan house, on Duncan Road just off of Kirkwood Highway. This handsome Federal style fieldstone home not only has enjoyed caring ownership from a single family for most of its history, but its own history is directly intertwined with the history of the area. The story actually begins at least 40 years before the construction of the current Hersey-Duncan House, in the 1760's. It was at this time that a man named Solomon Hersey settled in the area, and built a merchant grist mill along the Red Clay Creek. The millseat was so well positioned, in fact, that the site would see continuous industry from about 1765 until 2003, when a devastating flood close