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In late-19th century Detroit, the primary modes of transportation were walking or using horses. Although the invention of the "safety bicycle" in 1885 and the reinvention of the pneumatic tire in 1888 finally made bike riding widely available, they were never a chief mode of transit, let alone the transportation of goods. Using a bicycle to get to work in Detroit in February probably wasn't seen before asphalt streets were plowed by gas-powered trucks. Cyclists in Detroit, c. 1890. Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library The overwhelming majority of people in the city simply walked where they needed to go. Only rich families could afford horses of their own. Horse-drawn wagons delivered goods, and locomotives were used for long-distance travel--but the city itself was designed for pedestrians. The first public street car in Detroit ran along Jefferson Avenue 1863 and was pulled by horses. Although there was some (unsuccessful) experimenta

I recently ran across something on the interwebs that was just too cool not to pass along -- at least in my own odd sense of the word "cool". A while back, I did a post about the 1868 Beers map , which is probably the historical map I use the most in my research. Besides the fact that it's a very fine map (and colorful, too!), one of the reasons I use it so much is the simple fact that I have all of it in one place. For all the other maps, I only had various bits and pieces of them culled from different places -- some totalling more or less the entire area, some with gaps. Now, however, I've found a full version of my second favorite map, the 1849 Rea and Price map. I don't know when they put it up, but sometime recently the New Castle Community History and Archaeology Program  (NC-CHAP) posted a full-sized, high resolution, zoomable version of the map. You can find this version here . To be honest, since even the best copies I had seen of the map were in black an

Last week I received a wonderful gift in the form of an envelope filled with coverflats for my next Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch book release Imperial Scandal (April 2011 ). This week I'm buried in deadlines. So it seemed a good time for post a preview of Imperial Scandal . Here's an excerpt that takes place at the Duchess of Richmond's ball , the iconic entertainment at which Wellington received confirmation that Napoleon was on the march. The ball was on 15 June, 1815. The battle of Waterloo followed on 18 June. This except picks up on Suzanne at the ball with Aline Blackwell, her husband's cousin, and the Duchess of Richmond’s daughter Georgiana Lennox. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Swags of crimson, gold, and black, the Royal colors of the Netherlands, veiled the rose trellis wallpaper in the Duchess of Richmond’s ballroom. Ribbons and flowers garlanded the pillars. The younger Lennox

The Samuel Dennison House in 1986 A lot of the historic houses and locations of Mill Creek Hundred featured on this site lately have been in quiet, secluded, out-of-the-way places. That doesn't mean that all of them are, of course, and Limestone Road, being one of the oldest roads in the area, has more than a few old homes still lining its path north to the farmland of Pennsylvania. Several of these sites have already been featured, like the Harmony School , the Mermaid Tavern , the Aquilla Derrickson House , and the McKennan-Klair House . This time, we'll take a look at a house a slight bit younger than these, but still no youngster at 135 years old -- the Samuel Dennison House. The Dennison House is located just north of Papermill Road, about 130 feet back from the west side of Limestone Road (it once sat closer to the road, until Limestone Rd. was widened and realigned in 1964). It's a 2 1/2 story, five-bay house built of local fieldstone, although it is plastered everyw

I'm not quite sure why croquet feels like it belongs at a Regency House party, but it clearly does. Maybe it's the sweet, stuffy nature of it? Or the historical and English feel of it (white linen and vast lawns). Whatever the reason, people can easily picture Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters playing the game on a sunny afternoon and many an author has stumbled into this trap.  Sadly, croquet is solidly Victorian. According to English Costume for Sports and Outdoor Recreation it was introduced to England in the 1850s, most likely by Lord Lonsdale, who was one of the first to lay out a court at his country estate. The OED also dates “croquet” to 1858: “ Field 10 July 33/3    There is no game which has made such rapid strides in this county [Co. Meath] within a few years as croquet.” Manuals for the game support such a date as well, Routledge's Handbook on Croquet dating to 1864 and Croquet, a new Game of Skill dates to 1867.We also have quotes such as this one from The

In January 2012, my novella - Gauchos & Gumption: My Argentine Honeymoon – will be published by Turquoise Morning Press. This is a fictionalized memoir by my grandmother, Leora Maria Banning (see photo at left), about her trip to South America in 1910. Accompanying the journal are actual photographs she took on the Argentine plains with a simple box camera. Writing this work has been something of a struggle. All writers struggle, I know. We go through periods of “ohmigod how do I do this?” And we wish for hope to sustain us - a sort of church for writers. For me, that “church” is other writers’ work. While working on Gauchos I have been buoyed up by four novels in my genre – western historicals – which I found inspiring. Naturally, I can’t resist talking about them. Settler’s Law , by Doris H. Eraldi (Berkley, 2010). This isn’t a romance, exactly, but it does portray one of those really special unspoken-bond relationships that I find moving and believable. The hero (

 Circa 1940 Bus Route Map (photo by Mike Ciosek)  You know how sometimes when you're not even thinking about a problem and BAM!, out of nowhere, a flash of inspiration comes to you? That's what happened to me a week or two ago when I (belatedly) realized I might have a resource to answer some questions raised by a few previous posts. This goes back again to the discussion about trolley and bus service in Mill Creek Hundred, triggered by the picture on this post , which then spawned this one . The resource I finally thought of dates to the time just after tracked trolley service ended, but while trolley coaches (or trackless trolleys) still plied the roads along with  gasoline buses. What it is specifically is a map showing the routes of those services in New Castle County. The large, wall-mounted map (probably about 4ft x 5ft) is located in the back video room at the Red Clay Valley Visitor's Center, at the Wilmington & Western Railroad's Greenbank Station. The m

Thanks so much to the History Hoydens for hosting me today as I celebrate the recent release of my new Victorian historical, ROMANCING THE COUNTESS ! I’m the type of writer who enjoys a good challenge. Actually, the measure of the challenge’s difficulty depends on how 1) how much sleep I’ve had recently and 2) how much screaming my daughters have subjected me to that day. =) For the story of ROMANCING THE COUNTESS, I wanted to focus on the developing relationship between the hero and heroine more than any exotic or unusual setting. With this in mind, I chose to write a large portion of the story with a country house party as the background. Although a country house party isn’t extraordinary for historical romances, I’d never written one before so it was exciting for me. Yet I also wanted to write of activities that could have occurred at a country house party that weren’t typical from my experience as a romance reader. Therefore, I conducted a little research and found something which

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Rose Lerner. Some of you may remember her from her critically acclaimed first book, In for a Penny . Her long-awaited second book, A Lily Among Thorns (doesn't she have the best titles?) is now in stores. Just to make things more interesting, she has a hero with a rather unusual profession-- and she's here to talk to us about him today. She has also very generously agreed to give away a copy of A Lily Among Thorns to someone who comments on this post. Welcome, Rose! The hero of my new book, A Lily Among Thorns , Solomon Hathaway, is a chemist who manufactures dyes for the family tailoring shop. My memories of high school chemistry mostly involve being extremely afraid I would spill acid or cyanide on myself--I'm neurotic and a klutz, bad combination--and the little I did know didn't help me much with writing a Regency scientist. Even after all my research, the occasional elementary mistake had to be corrected by scienti

From frequent contributor of helpful, interesting, and sometimes frustrating information Donna Peters, comes this excerpt from the April 12, 1753 edition of The Pennsylvania Gazette :     BY virtue of his majestywrit of venditioni exponas to me directed, on Saturday, the 28th inst. will be sold, by publick vendue, at Roaringtown, in Mill creek hundred, New Castle county, A tract of land, containing upwards of 300 acres, divided into 2 plantations; each plantation has valuable improvements, and is situated on the publick road which leads from Conestogo to Newport, and White clay creek landings, being convenient for either store or tavern, and is but 4 miles distant from divers places of Divine Worship (or from said landing) and lies commodious to sundry merchant mills, is in a very healthy part of the country, well water, and has many other good conveniences. Also on said day will be sold, A house and lot of ground, containing one acre, near White clay creek landing; the whole being the

Instead of a blog tour to celebrate the release of RIPE FOR SCANDAL, my editor, Alex Logan, and I did a half-hour interview about my background as a historical re-enactor. We delved into why I’ve done just about every type of re-enacting except Civ-War, how clothing was held closed (during which I totally forgot about pins *sigh* which were probably the most common method for holding a gown closed during the 18th century), and just want kind of skivvies my hero might (or might not) be wearing! Give it a listen, it’s fun (and you can hear my “Burning Man laryngitis” as this was done the day after I got home from everyone’s favorite fire and art festival in the Nevada desert). Blog Talk Radio Interview with Isobel Carr

I would be remiss if I didn't call attention to this story from last weekend , in case anyone missed it. In what is now becoming a disturbing pattern, there was yet another fire at the abandoned Mundy Farm, also known as the Rev. Patrick Kenny Farm . This time, the fire was located in the large, stone barn that looms over the site where Fr. Kenny's house once stood. The historic 1812 house was destroyed in a fire on February 10, 2010. That blaze was determined to have been arson, and in September 2010, two teenage boys were convicted of setting the fire. This most recent fire occurred last Sunday, September 11, as many of the firefighters were preparing for a memorial service at the Delcastle Recreation Area in remembrance of the 343 firefighters lost in the 9/11 attacks. The fire was extinguished in about a half an hour, but did "significant damage" to the structure. The barn, the original part of which was constructed by Rev. Kenny soon after he took up residence i

Okay, I admit it: I get confused easily in strange places and historical places are the worst for befuddling me. Some people can figure out what’s where from a list of directions (turn left here, take two steps forward, slide sideways, etc.) but not yours truly. I need the visuals. Give me a map. Big, bold and preferably in color. A few angels and dragons don’t hurt, either. I love Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – but the map describing the Fellowship’s quest thrills me to the bone. Libraries of maps are wonderful places. The Beau Monde website offers many maps of London, which allow me to plot a walking tour through centuries-old streets. The United States Geological Service (USGS) has been mapping the United States for the past 125 years. It’s now making all of those glorious maps available online. (Yes!) They can be searched by state and location, plus date. Studying a map can tell so much. Battlefield maps talk about the land’s shape (e.g., mountains, valleys, rivers,

 Samuel P. Dixon House, 1986  Sitting very close to Barley Mill Road, just south of Brackenville Road, is what was, until recently, a simple, four-bay fieldstone house. Along with a large stone barn and a springhouse, it represents yet another relic from what was once one of the most prominent families in the northeastern part of Mill Creek Hundred -- the Dixons. Along with the Dixon-Jackson House and the Dixon-Wilson House (both in Hockessin), the Samuel P. Dixon House dates from the time when the descendants of Irishman William Dixon owned large tracts of land in the area. Although from the front (not including the new large addition on the far side, not shown in the picture above) the house looks like one uniform structure, it was actually built in two stages, probably in succeeding generations. The original section (the left half in the picture above) was built about 1791, and was a two-bay, single room plan common among Quakers of the time. Several decades later, likely by the

I'm pleased to announce the release, on September 22, of my second nonfiction title this year: THE ROYALS: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF THE BRITISH MONARCHS . This gorgeous illustrated hardcover book is a Barnes and Noble exclusive (so you will only be able to find it at their brick and mortar stores and at their web site). It covers over a thousand years of history, from William the Conqueror to Prince William of Wales. In fact, Prince William's wedding this past April was probably the primary reason that an editor from beckerandmayer! (the third party publisher who produced the book on B&N's behalf) contacted me just before Christmas last year and commissioned me to write the book. And while I know perfectly well that dear William is not yet a monarch (and there are other royals I profile in the volume who also never sat on the throne), B&N chose the title and was most emphatic about sticking to it. THE ROYALS has a unique feature, which makes me feel like "history

I've been pondering if a Colonial American romance might work---editors have in the past said no, but as I reader and a writer, I am looking for a fresh setting and fresh story. And there was such a thing as an American beauty (a must for a romance heroine). So I researched a little about what colonials thought was attractive--not much different than today---signs of good health: good teeth, nice skin, nice hair. I looked into what it what it might require cosmetically. Here are a couple of recipes I thought were interesting, including one on how to freshen up your room: Rose Balm- For hands, feet, elbows, and general dry skin 1/2 pound hogs lard (can be purchased in grocery stores labeled "lard") 1/4 pound or less of white wax (candle stubs or canning wax work well) Rose water* Alkanet root or cochineal pigment (if desired) Place lard in a good size bowl. Pour a couple tablespoons full of rose water over the lard and mix well with your hands. Let it set for a day. Most l

I recently posted an excerpt from my next Malcolm & Suzanne book, Imperial Scandal , on my website. One of the commenters, Jeanne Pickering, had come great observations about the protectiveness (or lack of it) of one of the characters, Raoul, toward the heroine, Suzanne/Mélanie. I t’s his ruthlessness that gives Melanie her independence and her freedom to be “feral”, “fierce” and “reckless.” He never tries to protect her by restraining her actions. He uses her for those qualities seemingly without hesitation. But the common trope in a romance is that, if a good man loves a woman, then he wants to keep her from endangering herself. He may not act on those feelings, he may even recognize the inconsistency between loving her for her strength and wanting to protect her from harm but those protective instincts always seem to arise. So when we are seeing from the good man’s POV, we will eventually hear those thoughts. Which made me ponder the question, is protective behavior