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Showing posts from 2013

Brandywine Springs Tour -- September 21

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Alright, I hope this isn't too last-minute of a notice, but I think we've come to a consensus. Although I did say I'd do a tour with just a few people, it seems that there are several people who can't make it this week, but can make it next week. Since this isn't anything where there's a reservation or set plans involved, I've decided to wait the extra week in order to allow more people to attend. I hope this isn't a problem for those who said they could come this week. And for what it's worth, the Weather Channel's long-term forecast has it in the 70's with a 0% chance of rain on the 21st. All in all, this seems like the best thing to do. We can nail down a time that's best for everyone, but since a few seemed to indicate that early afternoon was good, I'm suggesting 1:00 for now. The tour should take somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on how much I ramble on. As I mentioned before, we'll walk through the

The 1844 MCH Election Flag

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This is another item from the cache given to me by Fran Casarino, descendant of the Banks and Chambers families. (The Jabez Banks items from a previous post came from her, as well.) I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, but I thought it was certainly interesting enough to share with everyone. It's a newspaper article from 1959 that mentions an item I had seen referenced once before. One that would have been quite familiar to Mill Creek Hundred residents a century and a half ago. As seen in the photo on the right, the item in question is a flag, purchased by a group of MCH residents in 1844. The accompanying article, shown below, gives the rest of the story. (Reminder: click on the image to view a larger, easier to read version.) Way back (in this blog's very first post , as a matter of fact), it had been noted that the Mermaid Tavern on Limestone Road (just north of the Pike Creek Shopping Center) was for many years the polling place for the hundred. One of the r

Welcome, Elena Greene!

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FLY WITH A ROGUE by Elena Greene Available Now!  Having fallen on hard times, Emma Westfield provides for herself and her young brother by teaching at the school in their village. Life has taught her to hide her passionate nature, but her resolution wavers when a handsome aeronaut crashes his balloon nearby and is brought to her cottage. Estranged from his family, Captain Gilbert Manning has spent most of his life in the British army, campaigning from India to Waterloo. Now that the war is over, he supports himself and veterans of his company by giving balloon exhibitions. Emma learns that the outwardly devil-may-care rogue recovering on her sofa bears inner scars as grim as those on his body. Gil knows he’s not an eligible suitor, but he longs to teach Emma to embrace life despite all its tragedies. Although they struggle against it, their passion sweeps them along, taking them on a scandalous flight across the English countryside. They must marry, but can the

Brandywine Springs Tour and/or Next Gathering

OK, time for me to 'fess up (and for those of you of a certain age, no, this has nothing to do with Davey Crockett). Back when we all met up in February (where has the year gone?), we seemed to decide that we'd like to do some sort of gathering again sometime. A meeting at Brandywine Springs park in the spring was suggested, an idea I liked. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to seeing if I could reserve a pavilion they were all booked for the entire summer. With the demographic range we'd be likely to have present, I felt a reserved pavilion was necessary to ensure that everyone had a comfortable, shaded place to sit. Once the spring sprinted by me, I figured that trying to get a reasonable quorum together during the summer would be tricky. And considering the weather, probably also sticky. Now that the summer of '13 has been laid to rest (again, wasn't it February like a few weeks ago?), I thought it was a good time to start thinking about group activities ag

Moore House - 1366 Bagley

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1366 Bagley Street, Detroit. Photo courtesy of Blake Almstead and Joshua Clark. This quintessential mid-19th century worker's cottage has stood at the corner of Bagley and Eighth Street for at least 139 years. Addressed as 70 Baker Street early in its history, it has been home to more than a dozen working class families in its life. When was it built? It's not certain when 70 Baker Street (now 1366 Bagley) was constructed. One potential source of information could be a map drawn by New York cartographer Henry Hart in 1853, indicating the location of every existent building in Detroit. Detail from Henry Hart's 1853 map of Detroit. There is only one problem. This house was literally a few feet outside of the city limits when that map was drawn. The Baker farm had been annexed by the city in 1849, but this house stands just within the former Woodbridge farm, which wasn't annexed until 1857. Below is a comparison of this block as it appears on the 1853 Hart map and a

From Bush to Obama

Since July 4, 2010, I have been suggesting here that George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was the key President of our third great national crisis, and that he set us on a course which we are fated to keep for some time.  That course involved lower taxes and a permanent deficit that made a drastic government response to economic crisis impossible at home.  Abroad it included a new definition of America's role in the world: essentially, it asserted a unilateral right to remove any regime that either supported terrorism or developed or used "weapons of mass destruction," broadly defined, that we believed should not have them. That doctrine repudiated more than a century of American adherence to international law, as well as the charter of the United Nations.  Sadly in Syria the Obama Administration has adopted a modified version of that doctrine. The United States reserves a unilateral right to take any military action it finds appropriate against a regime that seems to have u

Hello, Dolley!

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My editor’s notes for revisions to the 464-page manuscript of my next nonfiction release, INGLORIOUS ROYAL MARRIAGES: A Demillennium of Unholy Mismatrimony (NAL/November 2014), just arrived in my inbox yesterday, so this will be a brief post, as I need to buckle down ASAP. I think this is my first History Hoydens Post since moving down to our nation’s capital. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t taken advantage of the myriad opportunities to explore the cool things about the city, steeped as it is in history; but last Sunday my husband decided that I needed to get out a bit more. So we went on a two-hour walking tour of "Georgetown during the War of 1812." The irony is that the war didn’t really touch Georgetown proper—except that we DID begin the tour at the federal-era Dumbarton House, now the HQ of the Colonial Dames of America, known as the place where Dolley Madison (my favorite First Lady) stopped for tea on August 24, 1814, the day she fled the White House with, among

The Tenth Muse and Framing Historical Fiction

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I just got back from a fun and thought provoking few days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland (there are my daughter MĂ©lanie and I above at the Member Lounge). Along with well-loved plays such as an enchanting A Midsummer Night's Dream and a complex, touching, brilliant My Fair Lady , we saw a couple of very intriguing world premieres, Liquid Plain and The Tenth Muse . Both were historical, Liquid Plain about African Americans who had escaped slavery in the 1790s, The Tenth Muse about nuns in 18th century Mexico.  Both plays were strong and intriguing and provided a great deal of conversational fodder for my friend and fellow writer Penelope Williamson and me over lattes and cosmopolitans. In particular, The Tenth Muse got me thinking about how we frame historical fiction. The play is inspired by the story of Sor Juana InĂ©s de la Cruz, famed for her writing and intellectual pursuit. But instead of dramatizing Sor Juana's story directly, playwright Tanya Saracho s

Europe and the US

Three years ago, a Chicago labor lawyer named Thomas Geoghegan--a nearly exact contemporary of mine and a fellow Harvard graduate--published his sixth book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get A Life. It got very little attention and not a single public library in the state of Rhode Island, where I was still living, decided to acquire it.  I finally got my hands on it this month and I have just finished it.  In some respects I was disappointed.  Geoghegan makes clear that is was a miracle that this book (or his others, which deal with issues drawn from his own working life) was written at all.  Like most trial attorneys, he is ridiculously busy, but he arranged in the 1990s and 2000s to spend a good deal of time in Germany, which is the focus of the book.  It isn't particularly well organized and it could have used a lot more hard data to make its points.  But it still leaves a powerful impression.  By the middle of the twentieth century,

Clothing of the Working Class: The Cranberry Girl

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This is another from Walker, c. 1814. To me, it looks like she’s wearing a blue bedgown with short sleeves, black mitts, a white apron, a brownish-red (dare I say puce?) petticoat, a red handkerchief, black half-boots, and a chip-straw bonnet with blue ribbons. I could, however, also make a case for the blue gown being of a front-fastening style from the turn of the century like the one pictured below. It’s just that it wasn’t the norm for these to be worn over a colored petticoat.

Follow-Up to Greenbank and Marshallton Mills Origins Posts

I was originally going to call this post a "wrap-up", but in these types of matters nothing is ever really wrapped up. That's especially important to keep in mind in this case, I think. Now that all three parts of Walt Chiquoine's amazing work on the origins of the Greenbank and Marshallton mills [ Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 ] are up, I wanted to take a moment and look at a few specific angles. There's a lot of information in what Walt has written, and there are a few key points that I want to make sure don't get lost. But do you want to know where there's even more information? In the full version of his report! Yes, the three posts published on the blog here are actually an abridged version of the full work. The full version, in PDF form and including even more information and documentation, can be found here . A permanent link can be found along the righthand margin of the blog. I want to thank Walt again for A)doing all this research in the first place,

Clothing of the Working Class: The Cutler

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Another one from Walker's 1814 Costume of Yorkshire . Here we're looking at craftsmen practicing a skilled labor. The man at the center is wearing a shirt, a waistcoat, breeches, stockings, shoes, a knit hat, and a cravat. His apprentices are similarly dressed, with the addition of aprons and varying headgear. It's worth noting that the waistcoat depicted is of a slightly older style (the bottom is not squared off like a fashionable one would be) and the breeches are old-fashioned at this point except for leather ones worn for riding. This is obviously a workroom/studio. No doubt the master cutler would slip on his coat before entering the shop proper (assuming he also had his own shop and wasn't employed by someone else to create stock.

Clothing of the Working Class: The Lowkers

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This image is from Walker’s 1814 book. You can see that some of the women are in Empire-waisted gowns (like the beauty who is front and center), but others are still in 18thC garments. The rural beauty is in a round gown, with an apron, mitts, handkerchief, and a cap and bonnet. The woman on the left with her back to us is of particular interest, as she’s wearing her stays (possibly leather ones from the look of them) as her main upper garment, along with a handkerchief, an apron, and a short petticoat. The woman on the far left appears to be in a man’s coat, and the one just behind our rural beauty is in what I think is a form of smock (smocks could be either shirts or coats that were work over your other clothing to keep them clean). The only information I can find about “lowkers” is that it’s a form of “looker” and is related to looking after something. So perhaps these women are so labeled because they are looking after the field/crop.

Clothing of the Working Class: The Salop Woman

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There’s a LOT going on in this image (another from Pyne’s 1805 Costume of Great Britain ). I’m going to ignore the soldiers, as military uniforms are a whole other topic. The old woman pouring the salop* is wearing a long green bedgown over a blue petticoat, an apron, a handkerchief around her neck, and another tied over her head, holding on her hat. There appears to be a red cloak on the back of her chair, which would be very much in keeping with her class. Behind her stands what appears to be a member of the watch (he’s leaning against his box; note the lantern hanging there). He has on a great coat and a simple round hat. And it appears he has a handkerchief tied about his throat. You can just see his brogans peeking out from under the old woman’s chair. Drinking his bowl of salop is a coal dust covered boy. He’s grubby and a bit tattered, in trousers, a shirt with no cuffs, and an open waistcoat. He has a simple knit cap on his head. This is pretty much how I would picture a climbi

Clothing of the Working Class: A Female Street Vendor

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One of the things we rarely talk about in historical romance circles is the clothing of the lower classes (unless they’re servants, then we talk about it a lot). There are two very interesting sources for studying what the lamp lighters, orange girls, fish wives, and mine workers would have been wearing. The first is W. H. Pyne’s Costume of Great Britain (1805). The second is George Walker’s Costume of Yorkshire (1814). The think I find interesting about both of these is that the people shown are predominantly wearing the clothing styles of the late 18th century. I’ll post a few this week and talk about them in detail. Here you can see a street vendor from Pyne’s 1805 work. She’s wearing brogans (simple, unisex shoes), a somewhat short petticoat (typical of a lot of working class women), a blue apron (typical of butchers), what appears to be 18th century style stays (yes, these are quite commonly worn as an outer garment by women of this class), but might also be a bedjacket (the stand

On the Origins of the Greenbank and Marshallton Mills, Part 3

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Researched and written by Walt Chiquoine -- PART THREE: JUSTA JUSTIS JR. AND THE GREENBANK MILL So far, I have discussed the property of Thomas Gillet on Red Clay Creek, and then the southern half of this property settled by Isaac Hersey and his family. Justa Justis, Jr. was settled on the northern property, possibly as early as 1711. As late as 1708, mention of a mill is conspicuously absent from a sheriff’s deed for the entire Gillet property. But in 1747, Justa sells several acres to his son Swithin, mentioning a mill on the tract. This was Swedes’ Mill, later to become the Greenbank Mill. Swedes’ Mill has had a fuzzy history, first mentioned by Scharf in his History of Delaware published in 1888. In Scharf’s own words,   Scharf was let down by his staff, since this story doesn’t hold up. He notes the mill is located on John Stalcop’s “Southern Land” property, but Stalcop’s property is clearly on the eastern side of Red Clay Creek. (Swedes’ Mill is on the western side, on