The British Are Coming, Y'all!

Some Wild and Not-So-Wild Women of The West

Relevant History welcomes historical mystery author Ann Parker, whose award-winning Silver Rush mystery series, published by Poisoned Pen Press, features saloon-owner Inez Stannert in the 1880s silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Ann's ancestors include a Leadville blacksmith, a Colorado School of Mines professor, and a gandy dancer. Ann and her family live in the San Francisco Bay Area (although she'd really really love to move to Colorado), where she slings scientific and corporate verbiage by day to pay the bills and writes historical mysteries at night to satisfy her soul. For more information, check her web site, author blog, and group blog (on alternate Thursdays), and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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"Go West, young man, go West!"

Such was the statement theoretically made by men such as Horace Greeley and John Soule. "The West," the location of which was ever on the move as civilization marched in the direction of the setting sun, was the place where restless, adventurous, and ambitious men could theoretically make their mark.

But what about restless, adventurous, and ambitious women?

As it happens, many of them went West as well.

The West, it was believed, was full of opportunity to those who were willing to apply a little elbow grease and who were lucky. Being in the right place at the right time was as much a factor then as now.

Women—with and without men—flocked to the West to make a future, build new lives, and (I'd be lying to say otherwise) sometimes to find a mate.

Leadville, Colorado, the main location for my Silver Rush historical mystery series, is a case in point. Leadville is located at the 10,000-foot mark in the Rocky Mountains, where winter lasts nine months out of the year. But that didn't stop people from coming to make their fortunes, starting with a mini-gold rush in 1860 and progressing to a very impressive silver rush in the late 1870s.

One of the first adventurous women to set down stakes in this area was Augusta Tabor, who came west in 1860 with her husband Horace Tabor and their tiny son Maxcy. The Tabors headed up to the remote California Gulch in what was to become Leadville, looking to get rich. The Tabors weren't alone. The area was crawling with prospectors hoping to make a fortune. To most, this meant a life of moving from claim to claim, chasing the glitter of precious metals. But others saw the business opportunity in the region. One of those discerning folks was Augusta. According to Edward Blair's book, Leadville: Colorado's Magic City, "She quickly set up her baking business and in addition served meals. She found that some men 'did not like men's cooking and would insist upon boarding where there was a woman.'"

As Leadville developed, more women arrived of the proper and not-so-proper sorts. The latter included women with appellations such as Red Stockings, Sallie Purple, Mollie May, and Winnie Purdy. At the other end of the virtue spectrum were the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, who established the first hospital in Leadville in1879. Both the sisters of the red-light district and the Sisters of Charity received a fair bit of press as to their activities—the good, the bad, and the ugly, as you might imagine.

But what about the rest? What were they up to?

When trying to get a grip on the lives of women during this timeframe, the newspapers are one source. There are miles of column inches written about who attended what soirees, what they wore, and the music they danced to and what they ate. But there are also letters, diaries, and journals. One of my all-time favorites in this genre is A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote. Mary Hallock Foote was a writer, an artist, a mother, and the wife of a mining engineer. Her writings and drawings serve up many details of the life of a proper woman in the wilder parts of the West in the late 1800s.

The 1880 census is also a gold (or perhaps that should be silver) mine of information as to the occupations of women in the silver-mining boomtown. Besides the Sisters of Charity (13 in all) and prostitutes (52 owned up to that profession to the census takers), there were actresses and dance hall employees (at 53, they outnumbered the prostitutes by one), domestic servants (185), laundresses (130), teachers (15), restaurant keepers and cooks (55), and dressmakers and milliners (76). What I always find interesting in analyzing a census are those professions where just a few women hold forth "in a man's world." For 1880, such professions in Leadville included journalist (1 woman/30 men), saloonkeeper/bartender (3 women/228 men), miners (4 women/3,204 men), physician/surgeon (4 women/69 men), and (and hostler/teamster (1 woman/255 men). To me, "the numbers tell the tale." Women looking for opportunity could find it, but they were tough and determined.

Life was not easy in those days and in those places. The law was hard put-upon to keep the lawless element in hand, and sometimes the citizens—including the women—took matters into their own hands. For instance, a local postmaster in the Leadville area, A.R. Brown, told the following tale concerning two proper Leadville matrons, Mrs. Bradt and Mrs. Updegraff. The women were passing two city lots recently purchased for building a school and noticed that one of the school lots had been jumped and the trespasser had put up a shanty on the grounds. (In 1879, real estate speculation was rife downtown, and prime lots were regularly being "jumped" by scoundrels who would simply move in and take over the lots at gunpoint.) According to Brown, Mrs. Bradt's and Mrs. Updegraff 's "western fiery spirits of justice to schools and school property led them to take the law into their own hands," resulting in their tearing down the lot-jumper's shanty and calmly walking away.

Now that's the spirit that won The West!

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A big thanks to Ann Parker. She'll give away one copy of her latest release, Mercury's Rise, to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I'll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. International delivery is available.

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The Winner of The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

Sophia Rose has won a copy of The Cavalier of the Apocalypse by Susanne Alleyn. Congrats to Sophie Rose!

Thanks to Susanne Alleyn for showing us some astonishing political parallels in history. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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The French Revolution and the 99 Percent

Relevant History welcomes historical mystery author Susanne Alleyn. She's the granddaughter of 1960s children's author Lillie Vanderveer Albrecht and is the author of the Aristide Ravel historical mystery series, set in revolutionary Paris, as well as of A Far Better Rest, a reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities. She is currently working on the fifth Ravel mystery; a non-mystery historical novel, also set in eighteenth-century France; and a nonfiction project. Visit her at her author website, and at her blog, where she chats with fictional sleuths from across the centuries. Make sure you check out her entertaining and insightful interviews of sleuths Hetty Henry (from Relevant History author M. E. Kemp), Annie Fuller (from Relevant History author M. Louisa Locke), Mary Wollstonecraft (from Relevant History author Nancy Means Wright), and Lt. Michael Stoddard (my fictional sleuth).

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Most people’s knowledge of the French Revolution is pretty much limited to 1789, Bastille Day, and howling mobs, illustrated with snippets from The Scarlet Pimpernel. Guillotines, lots of gore. So what should make all that stuff Relevant History? We in North America don’t have kings and queens to overthrow. There’s no palace of Versailles, no Marie-Antoinette swanning about with a three-foot hairdo.

Well, just about everything we think of when the words “French Revolution” come up (aside from Bastille Day) actually happened as a result of the second revolution.

Eh?

The second French Revolution?

1789 is the date most people learn about, and “the Revolution” seems like a highly compressed event (Bastille falls, mobs in streets, Antoinette loses head, mass guillotinings, all within a few months). But “the Revolution” actually went on for five years, from 1789 to 1794. And during those five years, France had, not one, but two revolutions, the relatively peaceful 1789 one—and the 1792 one, which initiated the messier and much more violent chapter known as the Terror.

The 1789 revolution? It began with a financial crisis, and a polite rebellion of middle-class delegates who had come to Versailles to make suggestions to Louis XVI about how to fix the financial crisis, and climaxed with the attack on the Bastille, after which Louis (mostly) caved in. It was responsible for legal reforms, and transformed France from an absolute monarchy to a limited, constitutional one. The bourgeoisie (rather than the nobility) now were firmly in charge under the king, in an elected assembly. Everyone who wasn’t a hidebound, tight-assed ultraroyalist was overjoyed by the changes. (Until Louis proved himself to have no allegiance to the new constitution by unsuccessfully trying to escape.)

With the many reforms that the 1789 revolution brought, optimistic citizens probably pointed to their new constitution and parliament and claimed that France was halfway to a rather conservative democracy. But it was still, undoubtedly, a democracy for the bourgeoisie and the bankers. The constitution created in 1791 favored the wealthy: rich financiers and industrialists, the upper middle class, and the landowning aristocracy, who had lost their titles and their nastier feudal privileges, but none of their property. Men who paid a certain amount of taxes were called “active citizens” and were able to vote and run for office. But it won’t come as much of a surprise that most ordinary people didn’t pay enough taxes to qualify, and thus were “passive citizens” and effectively muzzled, kept out of any participation in government—which suited the aristocracy of wealth very well. The short version: the ruling class, with some new blood in it, kept on ruling.

Well, surprise, surprise: It didn’t take the urban blue-collar population, the lower middle classes and the working classes—known as sansculottes—long to realize that, ultimately, they had gained no power and few material benefits from the revolution of ’89. A few key events mark where that first hopeful, happy revolution began to go wrong, and where the sansculottes began to grumble. The first was Louis XVI’s bungled attempt to flee; that fiasco made plenty of people permanently distrustful of their chief executive. Then the new constitution disenfranchised about 70% of the population. And then there was the war, with France’s old enemies Prussia and Austria—possibly one of the stupidest wars ever blundered into, with the starry-eyed but unworkable idea that Liberty should promptly be exported to the rest of Europe, which cost many lives and a lot of money, and never seemed to end. And so the sansculottes grew steadily angrier and more frustrated, particularly with the new, “democratic” ruling classes who weren’t sharing the benefits of their nice, moneyed, bourgeois revolution.

Perhaps this story begins to sound familiar?

We in the United States have been lucky. The outcome of our first revolution, our bourgeois, capitalist, conservative democracy that was established in 1789(!), has lasted well over two centuries, while the first French Revolution and its bourgeois, capitalist, conservative constitutional monarchy lasted barely three years. Our bourgeois republic, with reforms and regulations tweaking it over the centuries, has worked pretty well.

In France, though, it didn’t take long for the overpressured system to crumble. In the summer of 1792, the sansculottes of Paris had had enough; they held their own blue-collar revolution, toppled the monarchy, went in for participatory government in a big way, and demanded many more rights, including quite a few measures intended to promote economic, as well as social, equality. The leaders were, of course, middle-class professionals (as ever), but this time they were going to pay some attention to the sansculottes and do what “the people” demanded.

Yep, it’s sounding familiar.

Our system in the USA is growing more and more corrupted in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Our “99 percent”—our sansculottes—are beginning to realize how, as many previous reforms have been whittled away over the past few decades, the bourgeois republic has failed them. Are we, too, on the way to a second revolution, the 1792 revolution, a revolt against the greed and indifference of the one percent who do nothing for their millions but shove money around?

Let’s hope, if it happens, we can manage it better. Because the real 1792 revolution, under conditions of war, paranoia, and squabbling factions, led soon enough to the unforgiving emergency dictatorship called the Terror—and then political infighting and show trials and guillotinings (and more paranoia). Which eventually led to an exhausted population that said “To hell with it,” and let a certain charismatic young general named Bonaparte take over and clean up the mess.

Will the 99 percent rise up in a second American Revolution against the tyranny of Wall Street, giant corporations, lobbyists, and venal politicians?

It sounds kind of attractive, doesn’t it?

And perhaps, if it happens, it may lead to something better. But let’s hope we’ve learned some lessons from history, because, under similar conditions, the Second American Revolution might lead us straight to the Terror—and finally Napoleon—instead.

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A big thanks to Susanne Alleyn. She’ll give away one hardback copy of The Cavalier of the Apocalypse to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I'll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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The Winners of Uneasy Spirits

Norma Huss and Sophia Rose have won copies of Uneasy Spirits by M. Louisa Locke. Congrats to Norma and Sophia Rose!

Thanks to M. Louisa Locke for showing us the impact of 19th-century Spiritualism. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week.

Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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Women and 19th-Century Spiritualism

Relevant History welcomes M. Louisa Locke, a retired U.S history professor, has recently published the first two books in a series about Victorian San Francisco, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, both best-selling historical mysteries on Kindle. Locke blogs frequently on self-publishing, is a featured contributor to Publetariat, and is on the Board of Directors of the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative. She lives in San Diego with her husband, a dog and two cats, and she is working the third book in her series, Bloody Lessons. You can find more about her work on her website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

On February 5, 1870, Victoria Woodhall and her sister Tennessee Claflin opened a brokerage firm, becoming the first women to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. These two women, who had spent their youth traveling around the country as Spiritualists and clairvoyants, had achieved this remarkable position (that would not be duplicated by any other women for nearly a century) by convincing the banking and railroad millionaire, Cornelius Vanderbilt, that the financial advice they had given him came from their contacts with the spirit world. After this advice helped him recover from the loss of millions in a bruising fight over control of the Erie Railroad, Vanderbilt, in turn, provided the necessary backing for them to open their brokerage firm. With the money she made on Wall Street, Victoria Woodhull then founded the newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, from which she launched her reformist career, including her support for women's suffrage, marriage reform, birth control, and the eight-hour day. In 1872 Woodhull went on to run for President of the United States for the newly formed Equal Rights Party.

While Victoria Woodhull was a highly unusual individual, the way in which she used Spiritualism to justify entering into economic and political realms that were well outside the accepted domestic boundaries of American womanhood was anything but unique.

Spiritualism, as a religious movement, took off in the United States in 1848 when the young Fox sisters began to communicate with the dead through a series of mysterious rapping sounds. Spiritualists believed in universal salvation and that spirits could communicate with the living. Mediums began to appear throughout the United States, and they professed to have the ability to speak with the dead through a variety of mechanisms, including spirit guides, celestial music, alphabetical codes, and slate writing. These mediums went into trances and spoke before large audiences in public halls, and they held séances and private "sittings" where the spirits gave advice and foretold the future.

The persistently high death rate among children in the nineteenth century and the devastating loss of life during the American Civil War did much to make Spiritualism attractive to members of the American public. Spiritualists assured them that their loved ones were not doomed to the eternal damnation of a Calvinist hell and provided the solace of continuing contact. In addition, the apparent parallels between the new scientific discoveries of electricity, magnetism, and long distance communication and the claims by mediums that they could use a "spiritual telegraph" or "magnetic healing powers" permitted Spiritualists to feel they were embracing a more modern form of religious belief.

Women found Spiritualism a particularly welcoming movement. Based on the belief that the individual could communicate directly with the divine through spirits, Spiritualism challenged the authority of established churches and permitted women an unprecedented degree of power. As Spiritualists, women spoke in public, formed and led organizations, wrote newspaper articles, and made money as mediums.

I first learned of the role Spiritualism played in women's lives while I was doing research on women who worked in the cities of San Francisco, Portland, and Los Angeles at the end of the 19th century. I kept finding women who listed their occupation in the 1880 manuscript census as "clairvoyant" or "trance medium." Then I found that women listing these occupations dominated the personal advertisements in local papers like the San Francisco Chronicle.

Take for example, the following advertisement: "Mrs. Crindle, Physical and Test Medium, 681 Mission. Correct information on stocks. Circles Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, 50c. Sittings, $1."—San Francisco Chronicle, 1879.

As an ordinary woman, without the backing of a man like Vanderbilt, Mrs. Crindle would never have been able to join a brokerage firm. However, as a medium she could give financial advice, based not on her expertise and experience but on her supposed psychic ability to communicate with the spirit world.

Another example can be found in the way in which women used their purported abilities as mediums to practice medicine at a time when male doctors were challenging the traditionally female job of midwife. Spiritualists helped found the Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia in 1850 (the first in the nation), and you can frequently find advertisements like: "Mme. C. Antonin M. D. Medium. Medical, also languages; correct diagnosis and successful treatment of all chronic and female diseases; consultation in English, French or German."––San Francisco Chronicle, 1879.

Not surprisingly, when I began to cast around for a profession for Annie Fuller, the female sleuth in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, I thought of women like Mrs. Crindle and Madam Antonin. I had already decided to make Mrs. Fuller, a young widow, a boarding house keeper, the primary job held by married or widowed women in 1879 San Francisco. However, I also wanted her to have a job that would bring her into contact with possible criminal activities. So, I had her supplement her income as a clairvoyant, Madam Sibyl, who gives both business and domestic advice. Here was an occupation dominated by women that paid a decent wage, would bring her into contact with both men and women, and would give her a degree of personal autonomy.

It is the death of one of Madam Sibyl's clients that precipitates Annie Fuller into her first murder investigation in Maids of Misfortune. And, in the sequel, Uneasy Spirits, it is Annie Fuller's experiences as Madam Sibyl's that prompt one of her boarders to ask for her help in exposing a fraudulent trance medium.

As to its relevance to the present, whether fictional T.V. characters on shows like the Ghost Whisperer or Medium, or in real life, women still dominate the profession of psychics. They still offer to contact loved ones and provide business advice and healing, and they often claim the ability to solve crimes. And, much to my amusement, I found that a real psychic now works next door to where my fictional Madam Sibyl lived in 1879 San Francisco!

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A big thanks to M. Louisa Locke. She'll give away an ebook copy or a print copy of Uneasy Spirits to two people who contribute comments on my blog this week. I'll choose the two winners from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.

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Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne's free newsletter.

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Regulated for Murder Named "Best of 2011"

Regulated for Murder has been selected by Suspense Magazine as "Best of 2011" in the Historical Fiction category. Huzzah! Thank you Suspense Magazine!

For ten years, an execution hid murder. Then Michael Stoddard came to town.
Bearing a dispatch from his commander in coastal Wilmington, North Carolina, redcoat Lieutenant Michael Stoddard arrives in Hillsborough in February 1781 in civilian garb. He expects to hand a letter to a courier working for Lord Cornwallis, then ride back to Wilmington the next day. Instead, Michael is greeted by the courier's freshly murdered corpse, a chilling trail of clues leading back to an execution ten years earlier, and a sheriff with a fondness for framing innocents—and plans to deliver Michael up to his nemesis, a psychopathic British officer.

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Winners from the Gratitude Giveaways Hop 2011

Days 1–2: "Thanksgiving in History"
Author: Suzanne Adair
Contribution: copy of Regulated for Murder
Winner: Maggie Toussaint

Day 3: "Gratitude in Rome: Ancient Roman Harvest Festivals"
Author: Suzanne Tyrpak
Contributions: copies of Agathon's Daughter: Hetaera
Winners: Liz Veronis, Linda

Day 4: "A Tudor Thanksgiving"
Author: Peg Herring
Contribution: copy of Her Highness' First Murder
Winner: Sophia Rose

Day 5: "The First Thanksgiving: the Pilgrims and What Really Happened"
Author: Margaret Lake
Contribution: A Walk in the Woods
Winner: Liz Veronis

Day 6: "A Puritan Thanksgiving"
Author: M. E. Kemp
Contribution: a book cover pin
Winner: Patty G. Henderson

Days 7–8: "Thanksgiving's Different Faces in Revolutionary America"
Author: Suzanne Adair
Contribution: copy of Regulated for Murder
Winner: Kathryn Merkel

Day 9: "Post-Civil War Thanksgiving"
Author: Gwen Mayo
Contribution: copy of Circle of Dishonor
Winner: Melora Brock

Days 10–11: "Gratitude and Perseverance"
Author: Suzanne Adair
Contribution: copy of Regulated for Murder
Winner: Brenda W.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Thanks to my wonderful guest authors who contributed so much to this year’s Thanksgiving giveaways. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History during the Gratitude Giveaways Hop. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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Gratitude and Perseverance

Welcome to my blog, "The British Are Coming, Y'all!" From 17–27 November, I'm participating with several hundred other bloggers in the "Gratitude Giveaways Hop," accessed by clicking on the logo on the left. All blogs in this hop offer reader-appreciation giveaways, and we’re all linked, so you can easily hop from one giveaway to another. But here on my blog, I’m posting essays from Relevant History author guests on the theme of gratitude and thanksgiving. We'll give away books and gifts during the eleven days, to show appreciation for our readers. To find out how to qualify for the giveaways on my blog, read through each day’s Relevant History post below and follow the directions. Then click on the Gratitude Hop logo so you can move along to another blog. Enjoy!

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On 6 September 1565, five Spanish ships commanded by Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés anchored off the northeast coast of Florida in a harbor the Spaniards had mapped and named "San Augustín" earlier that week. Menéndez was neither the first European nor the first Spaniard to cast a conquering eye upon Florida. Enemy French Huguenots had already occupied several settlements along the coast, one just a few miles to the north. Menéndez had been ordered to eradicate them. When he and his landing party stepped ashore, they were greeted by a delegation of Native Americans speaking the Timucuan dialect. Their ancestors had arrived in Florida ten thousand years earlier. They knew the drill for dealing with Europeans.

No pressure, Pedro.

Within a few months, Menéndez and the Spaniards had permanently routed the French military presence in Florida. During that time, several makeshift Spanish forts were destroyed by fire, but the Spaniards rebuilt them. The earliest portions of the city of St. Augustine may have dated from that time.

For most of the remaining years of the sixteenth century, Indians assaulted the settlement at St. Augustine, and for the next two hundred years, the Spaniards contended with fire, famine, disease, hurricanes, and pirates. Settlement of Florida seemed jinxed, and several times, the Spanish government nearly pulled the plug on the enterprise. But each time buildings were destroyed, the Spaniards rebuilt. After each famine or disease epidemic, the population rebounded. The city grew.

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris accomplished what centuries of fire, famine, disease, hurricanes, and pirates had failed to do. The flag of Britain was raised over El Castillo de San Marcos, the squarish castle made of coquina stone that anchors the city. All but three Spaniards relocated to Cuba that year. (One who remained was Luciano de Herrera, who became a spy for the Governor of Cuba. He makes a cameo appearance in my first book, Paper Woman.) In 1784, the Spaniards returned to St. Augustine, courtesy of the second Treaty of Paris. In 1821, Spain ceded East Florida to the United States.

Every time I contemplate the history of St. Augustine, I marvel at the perseverance and resilience of the Spaniards. St. Augustine is the oldest surviving European settlement in the United States, predating Jamestown, Virginia by almost half a century. El Castillo de San Marcos, which dates from 1672, is still standing, an impressive feat of engineering.

The Spaniards who called St. Augustine home were tough. How did they stick it out for so long? Florida was a frontier for Spain—a money pit without the glamour of Spanish conquests in Central and South America. Thus many a Spanish governor in St. Augustine made do with little or no regular supplies from the mother country.

What records show is that despite their hardship, residents in St. Augustine found ways to honor a saint's day or give gratitude for a shipload of supplies or a birth in the royal family. Sometimes a governor would contribute from his own pocket, help create a multi-day fête because the citizens needed the gesture of celebration.

Gratitude helped the Spaniards persevere in Florida for more than two centuries. In history, gratitude and perseverance are often found together.

Before the jingle-jangle rush smothers the last embers of Thanksgiving, remember the words of Edward Sandford Martin: "Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow." (Thanks to reader Liz Veronis for the quote.)

If you're in St. Augustine the first Saturday of December, make sure you attend the annual British Night Watch and Grand Illumination. It's a lovely way to kick off your holiday season.

So now we've made Thanksgiving last eleven days! And that time wouldn’t have been possible without you or my talented guest authors: Suzanne Tyrpak, Peg Herring, Margaret Lake, M. E. Kemp, and Gwen Mayo. What worlds can they open for you? Browse back through the posts. Give these authors your patronage.

Then comment on something you learned at "The British Are Coming, Y'all!" during the Gratitude Giveaways Hop that made history relevant to you. Thanks for stopping by!

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I'm giving away an ebook copy of my latest release, Regulated for Murder, to someone who contributes a legitimate comment on my blog today or tomorrow. Make sure you provide your email address. I'll choose the winner in a drawing from among those who comment on this post by Sunday 27 November at 6 p.m. ET, then publish the name of the winner on my blog 28 November. Multiple file formats are available. No eReader required.

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Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne's free newsletter.

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Post-Civil War Thanksgiving

Welcome to my blog, "The British Are Coming, Y'all!" From 17–27 November, I'm participating with several hundred other bloggers in the "Gratitude Giveaways Hop," accessed by clicking on the logo on the left. All blogs in this hop offer reader-appreciation giveaways, and we’re all linked, so you can easily hop from one giveaway to another. But here on my blog, I’m posting essays from Relevant History author guests on the theme of gratitude and thanksgiving. We'll give away books and gifts during the eleven days, to show appreciation for our readers. To find out how to qualify for the giveaways on my blog, read through each day’s Relevant History post below and follow the directions. Then click on the Gratitude Hop logo so you can move along to another blog. Enjoy!

Relevant History welcomes back historical mystery author Gwen Mayo. Mayo grew up in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, but moved to Lexington in order to study politics and history at the University of Kentucky. She is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, Sisters in Crime, and the Historical Novel Society. Her debut novel, Circle of Dishonor, set in post-Civil War Kentucky, was published by Pill Hill Press. For more information, check her web site and blog.

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In 1879 President Rutherford B. Hayes recommended that on November 27, Americans "[withdraw] themselves from secular cares and labors…and give thanks and praise to Almighty God for his mercies." Churches all around Lexington, Kentucky held Thanksgiving services, but after morning devotions there were private and community celebrations. Kentuckians could choose to stay at home for feasting or attend public events.

So what was Thanksgiving like in Lexington? Pumpkin races were held on the on the infield of the racing track. Contestants used wooden spoons to roll the pumpkins to the finish line. Ladies competed in baking contests for either best pie or best cake. On the track, Brown Betty races were held. The "Brown Betty" was a chocolate brown pottery jug filled with bourbon. Instead of Kentucky's famous thoroughbreds lining up at the track, the Lexington Racing Association placed a Brown Betty at the finish line and men raced to see who could claim the prize. Winners of each heat progressed to the next round, and progressively larger jugs of bourbon were awarded to the champions. I am not sure of the wisdom of the timing, but following the races, there were shooting contests in the infield.

Thanksgiving at home included parlor games before dinner. One of the popular ones in Kentucky was the corn game, where five ears of corn were hidden. The guests or family members who found an ear would race at shelling the corn into a dish, the winner being the person who could shell corn fastest. Word games were also popular, as were singing competitions.

Tables were laid with the finest linens and best dishes. Dinner Victorian style was a grand event: pumpkin or oyster soup, large mouth bass, fried oysters or catfish, followed by fruit, cheeses, and dried nuts. Then the serious eating began: wild turkey, duck, or goose followed by ham or roast beef, or venison, sweet potatoes, stewed tomatoes, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, sweet corn, peas, greens, and squash. Breads and relishes remained on the table throughout the meal. Diners expected to have an ample supply of horseradish, slaw, chow-chow (a green-tomato relish), celery, radishes, carrot, pickle, and raw turnip available. Desserts included mince pies (served flaming), pumpkin pie, apple stack cake, chocolate, and coconut, or fruit pies, and ice cream.

It is no wonder that so many of the Victorian age died of heart disease.

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A big thanks to Gwen Mayo. She'll give away an electronic copy of Circle of Dishonor in Kindle, Nook, or PDF format to someone who contributes a legitimate comment on my blog today or tomorrow. Make sure you provide your email address. I'll choose one winner from among those who comment on this post by 26 November at 6 p.m. ET, then publish the name of the winner on my blog 28 November.

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Thanksgiving's Different Faces in Revolutionary America

Welcome to my blog, "The British Are Coming, Y'all!" From 17–27 November, I'm participating with several hundred other bloggers in the "Gratitude Giveaways Hop," accessed by clicking on the logo on the left. All blogs in this hop offer reader-appreciation giveaways, and we’re all linked, so you can easily hop from one giveaway to another. But here on my blog, I’m posting essays from Relevant History author guests on the theme of gratitude and thanksgiving. We'll give away books and gifts during the eleven days, to show appreciation for our readers. To find out how to qualify for the giveaways on my blog, read through each day’s Relevant History post below and follow the directions. Then click on the Gratitude Hop logo so you can move along to another blog. Enjoy!

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The Declaration of Independence can be viewed as a long, specific list of points on which Britain and the patriot faction in its North American colonies disagreed. In the practice of thanksgiving, we find another example of those ideological differences.

During the first six decades of the eighteenth century, each of Britain's colonies celebrated events such as bountiful harvests in separate ways. The colonies didn't unite for the first time in thanksgiving until after the Congress had declared independence from Britain, and the Continental and British armies were slugging it out. The Congress then appointed specific thanksgiving days and recommended the observation of them for each state. Here are those days of thanksgiving:

• 18 December 1777, to celebrate the Continental Army's victory over Crown forces at Saratoga
• 30 December 1778, to honor the alliance with France
• 7 December 1780, to rejoice that George Washington had avoided being captured by Crown forces during Benedict Arnold's defection
• 13 December 1781, to celebrate the Continental Army's victory over Crown forces at Yorktown

Today, residents of the United States might be baffled at the austere nature of these thanksgiving days for those who were patriots. Each day was designated a day of fasting and prayer. No feasting, no playing. Many patriots who were Christians eschewed revelry, particularly when it was associated with a religious holiday such as Christmas. They sought to distinguish themselves from celebrations that they considered corrupt and immoral. Some of those celebrations were associated with Britain and the Anglican Church. Thus Christmas and Congress-designated days of thanksgiving were somber, low-key affairs.

In contrast are the celebrations of gratitude from loyalists and Crown forces. M. E. Kemp mentioned the flourish with which Guy Fawkes' Day was celebrated in the colonies: fireworks, bonfires, feasting, drinking, brawling. Colonists had good reason to celebrate; had Guy Fawkes and his cohorts been successful in the infamous "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605, the House of Lords would have been blown up, and King James I of England might have been assassinated. Twenty-first century Britons continue to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day.

At the time of the War of Independence, most people associated with the British empire were still honoring the ancient, annual rhythm of solstices and equinoxes. (Consider how many of them made a living off the land and thus had to stay attuned to the seasons.) So for the winter solstice, Crown forces might have had a feast and dance similar to the Yule party I depict in my third book, Camp Follower, with roast pork and vegetables for men of rank and file, and a multi-course feast for officers, followed by dancing. The customs of Yule log and bonfire at the center of such festivities hearkened back to practices of Neolithic people who, on the shortest day of the year, gave thanks for the return of the sun.

Regardless of whether we prefer our thanksgiving no-frill or well-adorned, at its heart, every celebration of gratitude is about pausing to acknowledge that each of us is part of something much larger than a simple congregation of individuals. Life endows us with certain blessings. Perhaps the greatest show of gratitude we can make is in converting our unique blessings into gifts that help others.

Happy Thanksgiving! For what are you grateful?

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I'm giving away an ebook copy of my latest release, Regulated for Murder, to someone who contributes a legitimate comment on my blog today or tomorrow. Make sure you provide your email address. I'll choose the winner in a drawing from among those who comment on this post by Thursday 24 November at 6 p.m. ET, then publish the name of the winner on my blog 28 November. Multiple file formats are available. No eReader required.

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