Coming to America - Live Theater

By Kathy Kovach

Storytelling is as old as time. It’s how God wired us. I’m sure Moses sat near the fire, regaling the Israelites with stories about his ancestors. “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,” (Psalms 78:2, ASV.)

Centuries later, Jesus took principles and made them into relatable stories that he orally taught to those gathered. “Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the multitudes; and without a parable, he didn’t speak to them,” (Matthew 13:35, WEB.)

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians honed storytelling to an art. They were so successful that their blueprint stood the test of time. Entire nations were influenced, none more so than Great Britain.

From there, it was only a matter of time before it would hop the pond.

In 1510, European theater made it to Puerto Rico, giving the island the honor of becoming the first to hold refined performances in the Americas.

In the 16th century, theater moved north, and plays were performed in the Spanish-held territories that eventually became the United States. In what is now known as Louisiana, several performances took place on October 12, 1721. The town of Los Adaes celebrated the arrival of the Spanish governor, the Marquis de San Miguel de Aguayo. This cultural event brought the people together to solidify Spanish control after a time of uncertainty.

Hamlet and his mother

By the early 18th century, two theaters had been built in Williamsburg, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. However, it wasn’t until the British actor and theater manager Lewis Hallam brought his theatrical company to Williamsburg in 1752 that the first complete company of actors was organized. The Hallam Company performed the top European plays at the time—Hamlet, Othello, and Richard III  to name a few. Their first, Merchant of Venice, was performed on September 15, 1752. Unfortunately, they encountered opposition from religious organizations and moved the operation to Jamaica around 1755.

English actor David Douglass met Hallam in Jamaica. After Hallam’s death, Douglass married his widow, actress and theater director Sarah Hallam. The two traveled with the company, now known as the American Company, to Philadelphia where they opened the Southwark Theatre in 1766. This was considered the first permanent theater in America. On a roll, they also built the John Street Theater in 1767, modeling it after Southwark. There, the first American-written play, The Prince of Parthia by poet Thomas Godfrey, was performed in that same year.

Quakers

American Colonial era theater suffered the same opposition as England had during its turbulent times. Those in Puritan and Quaker regions felt it was frivolous and often sacrilegious. Others opposed any British influence, as most of the plays had come from there. Massachusetts in 1750, Pennsylvania in 1759, and Rhode Island in 1761 all banned theater performances. Most of the states followed during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) thanks to the Continental Congress.

It was difficult to come back from such prejudices. In 1794, Yale College president, Timothy Dwight IV, wrote the following in Essay on Theatre:

". . . to indulge a taste for playgoing means nothing more or less than the loss of that most valuable treasure: the immortal soul."

Yikes!

Encampment at Valley Forge

Despite the congressional ban, George Washington himself recognized the importance of entertainment as a distraction. He asked for his favorite play, Cato, set during the Roman Civil War, to be performed for the troops after the harsh winter at Valley Forge.

The storytelling seed has been planted deep within all of us. Its branches weave through time, barrel over social status, and travel across continents.

Welcome to America, Live Theater!

 

Titanic: Legacy of Betrayal

A TIME-SLIP NOVEL

A secret. A key. Much was buried on the Titanic, but now it's time for resurrection.

Follow two intertwining stories a century apart. 1912 - Matriarch Olive Stanford protects a secret after boarding the Titanic that must go to her grave. 2012 - Portland real estate agent Ember Keaton-Jones receives the key that will unlock the mystery of her past... and her distrusting heart.

To buy: Amazon

Kathleen E. Kovach is a Christian romance author published traditionally through Barbour Publishing, Inc. as well as indie. Kathleen and her husband, Jim, raised two sons while living the nomadic lifestyle for over twenty years in the Air Force. Now planted in northeast Colorado, she's a grandmother and a great-grandmother—though much too young for either. Kathleen has been a longstanding member of American Christian Fiction Writers. An award-winning author, she presents spiritual truths with a giggle, proving herself as one of God's peculiar people.

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The Dahlonega Mint

by Denise Farnsworth

By the middle of the 1830s, the Georgia Gold Rush was in full swing. Miners who had first filled their pockets (or goose quills, the early method of storage and measurement for payment) with gold dust panned directly from the streams had moved on to tunneling into the hills with vein mining. Boom towns sprang up where gold dust and nuggets could be traded directly for provisions and services. Larger mining operations offered script called "miner's money" that could be redeemed at company stores. But for those who wanted to secure their gold, a problem arose.

Miners could send their earnings to the Philadelphia mint or deposit it at the branch bank in Savannah. But they would receive only two-thirds of the gold’s estimated value at the time of deposit, with the balance paid when the mint fixed the bullion’s value. Or they could use a private minter like Templeton Reid in Gainesville. But a letter to the editor of the Georgia Courier revealed that Reid’s coins held less than face value…which was true because he’d failed to account for silver and tin alloy.

In 1834, a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate allowed for the establishment of branch mints in the South. By the next year, the locations for these mints had been fixed—New Orleans, Louisiana; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Dahlonega, Georgia. Dahlonega’s mint was to be constructed using the same plans as the Charlotte Mint. Architect William Strickland, well known for his Greek Revival style, designed a structure of two stories composed of brick, covered with stucco, and containing twenty-seven rooms.

Lawyer and Methodist minister Ignatius Few was appointed commissioner in charge of the new mint. He purchased ten acres just south of town from William Worley for $1050. Few quickly encountered multiple challenges inherent to the mint’s remote mountain location, such as securing bricks, stone, lumber, and good labor. Benjamin Towns of Athens won the construction bid and agreed to finish the mint within eighteen months.

By early 1837, Few allowed the delivery of machinery although construction was not quite complete. Fifteen large crates containing over $15,000 of equipment including two state-of-the-art steam presses, shipped from Philadelphia to Savannah, then upriver to Augusta. There they began a two-week trip on ten wagons to Dahlonega.

Dr. Joseph Singleton

Receiving wind of the construction delays, the Philadelphia mint dispatched inspector Franklin Peale, who arrived in Dahlonega in November 1837. His report: “The workmanship of the Mint edifice is abominable.” And it went on from there to describe inadequate bricks, a leaky roof, and defective first-floor arches. By the time the mint opened in February 1838 under Superintendent Dr. Joseph Singleton, the contractor was still at work, the water pump to supply the steam engine did not work, and copper and silver necessary to the coining process had not arrived. 

Despite these technical problems and a host of staffing issues and in-fighting that followed, almost a thousand ounces of gold were deposited during the first two weeks the mint was open for business. The first coins, eighty half eagles, were struck on April 21, 1838. The first quarter eagle was minted almost a year later. In 1849, gold dollars were produced. The mint operated until the Civil War began in 1861.

Dahlonega quarter eagles

For a deep dive into the staffing and operations of the Dahlonega Mint, you can consult The Neighborhood Mint by Sylvia Gailey Head and Elizabeth W. Etheridge. For a fictional romance about the town of Dahlonega during the opening days of the mint, try my latest release, The Schoolmarm and the Miner. A teacher seeking independence. A widower guarding his heart. In Georgia's gold country, the richest prize may be the love they’re afraid to claim. https://www.amazon.com/Schoolmarm-Miner-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0GMRS3Q88/

Denise Farnsworth, formerly Denise Weimer, writes historical and contemporary romance mostly set in Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Rolling Out Toilet Paper

 By Suzanne Norquist

Before toilet paper was a commodity on store shelves, someone invented it. Patents were issued, marketers developed strategies, and legal battles were fought. However, because bathroom time is private, no one celebrated the inventors. Little is known about most of them. The timeline for toilet paper’s major milestones is ambiguous and contains conflicting information.

To begin, I’ll offer a nod to the ancient Chinese people, who invented the first version of just about everything. In the fourteenth century, they manufactured millions of packages of perfumed toilet paper sheets for wealthy families, including the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family.

Even so, most of the world didn’t use specialized paper for this purpose until the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the Industrial Revolution and indoor plumbing created new products and needs.

In the 1800s, steam-driven paper-making machines lowered the cost of paper and increased its supply. As a result, manufacturers and salesmen found new uses for it.

In 1857, Joseph Gayetty marketed “Medicated Paper for the Water Closet”. He infused sheets with aloe and other remedies, creating a premium product. He touted it as healthier because it wasn’t covered in ink like old newspapers or catalogs.

Not much is known about Mr. Gayetty. Census records indicate he may have been born in 1817 or 1827 in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. By the time he started selling medicated paper, he had a wife and five children (one who later took over the business).

Some in the medical community called him a quack, but that didn’t seem to affect sales.

At one point, B.T. Hoogland's Sons filed a lawsuit against the company for trademark infringement related to an unpaid debt. Gayetty’s company won. A couple of other similar lawsuits followed. However, the medicated toilet paper continued to be distributed for several decades.

Timelines overlap around the 1880s, with three prominent paper companies and inventors selling similar products. This is about the time flush toilets came on the scene, requiring paper that wouldn’t clog the pipes. Before this, the masses didn’t see a need to purchase a specialty item when they already had a free supply of old newspapers, catalogs, and Farmer’s Almanacs. 

Around 1880, the British Perforated Paper Company marketed boxes of toilet paper in individual squares. However, their biggest market was to barbers for wiping shaving cream off of razors. Walter Alcock purchased the company and added perforated toilet paper rolls to the line-up. Some sources credit him as being their inventor.

Around that same time, the Scott brothers founded the Scott Paper Company, which sold squares and rolls. Edward Irvin Scott, who had been a school teacher, joined one of his brothers in a paper business. In 1867, they sold butcher paper from pushcarts. When that venture failed, he and his other brother opened a new company that sold paper bags, wrapping paper, and such (including toilet paper). They built a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania.

This 1885 advertisement from the Rocky Mountain News shows toilet paper for sale as tissue, in plain rolls, or in perforated rolls. It also offers fixtures for rolled toilet paper with or without a cutter.

In the beginning, the Scott brothers marketed the paper to other businesses to sell under their own brand, avoiding the delicate subject of bathroom habits. They customized rolls by varying things like the size and weight of the paper and adding private labels.

In 1896, Irvin Scott’s son, Arthur, changed the marketing to build a national brand, known for consistent quality.

Meanwhile, in New York, Seth Wheeler, the son of an agricultural equipment manufacturer, dabbled in paper manufacturing. In 1871, he patented a machine to make perforated, rolled wrapping paper, then organized a company to produce it.

He later received several patents for perforated, rolled toilet paper, the holders, and the machinery to produce it.

He even created a tiny pocket- or purse-sized roll of toilet paper known as the “Wheeler Pocket Companion.”

He filed a lawsuit when the Morgan Envelope Company tried to patent a similar roll that was oval instead of round. Wheeler won that suit. The courts said the shape wasn’t sufficiently different to justify a separate patent.

Although the paper didn’t change much over the years, advertising did. In 1928, Charmin added a feminine logo and touted its product as being soft.

In the 1930s, Northern Bathroom tissue advertised its product as “splinter-free.” Yikes. Does that imply that previous products contained splinters? The answer isn’t clear.

Double-layered rolls were introduced in 1942.

Not much has changed since then. Cost has come down, and every modern building keeps a supply, but no one mentions the men who brought it to us.

So, the next time you decide to drape it over someone’s house on Halloween, remember the unsung heroes of toilet paper’s history.

 ***

 

Love In Bloom 4-in-one collection

“A Song for Rose” by Suzanne Norquist

Can a disillusioned tenor convince an aspiring soprano that there is more to music than fame?

“Holly & Ivy” by Mary Davis

At Christmastime, a young woman accompanies her impetuous younger sister on her trip across the country to be a mail-order bride and loses her heart to a gallant stranger.

“Periwinkle in the Park” by Kathleen E. Kovach

A female hiking guide, who is helping to commission a national park, runs into conflict with a mountain man determined to keep the government off his land.

“A Beauty in a Tansy”

Two adjacent store owners are drawn to each other, but their older relatives provide obstacles to their ever becoming close.

Republished from Bouquet of Brides

Buy links: https://books2read.com/u/bOOx8K

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Bloom-Mary-Davis/dp/B0FPLFYCXR/

  

Suzanne Norquist is the author of two novellas. Everything fascinates her. She has worked as a chemist, professor, financial analyst, and even earned a doctorate in economics. Research feeds her curiosity, and she shares the adventure with her readers. She lives in New Mexico with her mining engineer husband and has two grown children. When not writing, she explores the mountains, hikes, and attends kickboxing class.

 

Phantom Ships of the Chesapeake

—By Tiffany Amber Stockton

There's something about open water and a dark sky that invites stories. Just think about all the sea shanties that have been written or the rich maritime folklore full of tales. And on a coastline with as many shipwrecks, storms, and hard histories as this one, there's no shortage of gaps to fill.

The Coast That Swallowed Ships

The waters off Assateague Island and along the Virginia Eastern Shore were among the most treacherous on the entire Atlantic coastline. Shallow shoals, sudden storms, and tricky inlets meant that ships met grief here regularly. There are dozens upon dozens of documented wrecks in this stretch of coast alone.

One of the most famous involves a Spanish warship called the La Galga. In September of 1750, she was driven ashore in shallow water at Assateague by a hurricane that rerouted her voyage from Havana back to Spain. The crew made it to shore, but the ship didn't. And according to local legend, not everyone who went down with her stayed quietly beneath the waves. It is said the spirits of those who died in the wreck still comb the beach near the Assateague Lighthouse to this day.

Now, I'm not here to argue for or against ghost stories. But when you walk that beach at dusk and the light shifts the way it does over open water, the stories don't exactly feel unreasonable.

Fire on the Water

Ghost ship legends tend to follow a pattern along the Atlantic coast. The image that shows up again and again is a ship on fire, visible from shore, impossible to approach, there one moment and gone the next.

The most famous version of this legend along the northeastern coast belongs to a ship called the Palatine, said to appear as a burning phantom off Block Island in Rhode Island. Benjamin Congdon, born around 1788, gave what he called a typical explanation for the apparition. He said the burning ship was sent by an Almighty Power to punish wicked men who had wronged her passengers. The people didn't just tell ghost stories for entertainment. They used them to make moral sense of tragedy.

That same impulse shows up all along the coast. When something terrible happened at sea and no good explanation came with it, the story that filled the space often came with answers. Greed was punished, cruelty was answered, and the innocent were remembered. The ghost ship wasn't used just to scare people. It was a form of justice that the law couldn't always provide.

What the Stories Were Really Doing

The part that interests me most as a fiction author is what the stories meant to the people who told them.

The Chesapeake region had the ideal conditions for this kind of folklore. Isolated coves, historic battle sites, and centuries of storms and shipwrecks all set the stage. These weren't just idle campfire tales. They were community memories, shaped into compelling narratives. A phantom ship burning on the water could be a warning to stay away from a dangerous stretch of shoals, a reminder of a tragedy the community hadn't finished grieving, or a way of saying that some things don't go unanswered even when no one is watching.

And there's a thread of faith underneath all of it. The watermen and island communities were deeply rooted in their churches. They didn't read ghost ship sightings as random. They read them as meaning something. In their understanding, things had consequences. Those who observed the burning Palatine shortly after the original wreck believed it to be a warning from an Almighty Power. That's not so far from a worldview shaped by Scripture.

I think about Pop-Pop's stories again here. He never told ghost stories exactly. His tales were always adventure, always rescue, always triumph. But he understood the dangers of the water. History happened out there. People died out there. And he didn't dismiss any of that reality. He simply chose to reframe the stories in a way that meant something to my brother and me.

The Light You Can Explain and the Light You Can't

Before the Assateague Lighthouse was operational, ships navigated this coastline by whatever lights they could find, and sometimes they found none at all. The lighthouse was built precisely because too many ships were lost in darkness. A real light saved lives. A false light, in some of those darker legends, lured ships to destruction.

That tension of true light versus false light runs all the way through Scripture. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Psalm 119:105. The people who lived along these shores and watched for burning ships in the dark knew firsthand exactly what it meant to need a reliable light.

The phantom ships still show up in Eastern Shore stories. Some of them probably have explanations like bioluminescence, fog, or distant burning debris. Some of them are just stories that got better with each retelling. Either way, they tell you what the people who lived here feared, and what they believed. 

Niels Bohr: One Scientist's Quiet War Against Hitler

by Martha Hutchens

Niels Bohr, 1935, Public Domain, Wikipedia Commons

No book covering the history of science would ignore Niels Bohr. His concept of atomic structure formed the basis of much of twentieth-century physics and chemistry. But in this blog post, I mention his scientific brilliance mainly because of the platform it gave him.

As early as 1924, Bohr watched events in Germany cautiously. He questioned Werner Heisenberg, one of Germany’s premier scientists, about the ominous anti-Semitic trends “obviously fostered by demagogues.” Heisenberg dismissed them as the work of “some of the old officers embittered by the war.”

As early as 1919, scientists in Germany resented the worldwide attention given to Albert Einstein, who was Jewish. But the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, enacted on April 7, 1933, proved Germany had no place for Jewish scientists. The act decreed that civil servants, including university faculty, must be Aryan. A quarter of Germany’s physicists lost their livelihoods. Several either had or would earn the Nobel Prize.

By this time, Bohr led the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen. He was one of Denmark’s most respected citizens and had extensive connections throughout the scientific community.

Bohr traveled through Germany to determine who needed help. He met Otto Frisch and told him, “I hope you will come and work with us sometime; we like people who can carry out ‘thought experiments.’”

Bohr was not the only physicist trying to rescue fellow scientists. Leo Szilard and Otto Stern were also finding positions for those displaced by Nazi racial laws. Many fled to England or America, while others found refuge in Copenhagen with Bohr.

Bohr did not merely help displaced scientists find jobs. On the same trip, he met James Franck, a Nobel Laureate. Franck was Jewish, but because he had fought at the front during World War I, he was exempt from the civil service law. Years later, he said a meeting with Bohr gave him the final push to protest publicly. Franck resigned his position on April 17, 1933, and made sure the newspapers knew why.

The rescue effort for Jewish scientists was exhausting and stretched beyond Germany. In October 1933, George Gamow and his wife escaped the increasingly hostile Soviet Union. In 1938, Lise Meitner fled Austria after the Anschluss. Later that same year, Enrico Fermi fled Italy after Mussolini adopted anti-Semitic laws.

Also in 1938, Bohr addressed the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Denmark. He publicly challenged Nazi racism before an international audience. It was a brave stand because he believed Germany would eventually invade Denmark. He was putting a target on his own back.

On April 8, 1940, Bohr dined with the King of Norway before returning to Copenhagen. In the early hours of April 9, Germany invaded both Denmark and Norway. Denmark did not resist militarily. The American Embassy offered the Bohr family safe passage to the United States, but Bohr’s first concern was burning the files of the refugees his committee had helped escape.

Laboratory flasks like those used by Niels Bohr to hide two
Nobel Prize medals during World War II.
Depositphotos, @Harmony Video Production.

Even on that chaotic day, he worried about two gold Nobel Prize medals friends had left in his hands for safekeeping. Their names were engraved on the back, and exporting gold from Germany was a serious crime. Bohr and a colleague dissolved the medals in acid and left the flask sitting on a laboratory shelf. After the war, the gold was recovered and the Nobel Foundation recast the medals.

One of the most ambiguous meetings in atomic bomb history took place in Copenhagen in 1941. Heisenberg, now leading Germany’s atomic bomb project, traveled there for a scientific conference. Bohr routinely boycotted joint Danish-German activities, but he agreed to meet privately with his former friend.

Because Bohr was under surveillance, the two men talked while walking together. Historians still debate what happened during that conversation. Heisenberg later claimed he wanted to discuss the moral implications of atomic research. Bohr believed Heisenberg was probing how much the Allies knew about Germany’s progress. Perhaps both were true.

Germany depended heavily on Danish agriculture during the war. Denmark, in turn, cooperated only as long as Danish Jews remained safe. In 1943, the relationship deteriorated. The Nazis disarmed the Danish army and confined the king. Danish Jews were no longer protected.

In September, Bohr learned that his émigré colleagues were slated for arrest. He contacted the underground, which helped them escape. Soon afterward, the Swedish ambassador hinted that Bohr himself was now on the arrest list.

The Bohr family escaped by fishing boat to Sweden. The Swedish government had already offered asylum to Denmark’s Jews, though Germany denied any roundup was underway. In reality, Danish citizens were already hiding their Jewish neighbors. Bohr met with Swedish officials, including the king, to advocate for his fellow Danes. On October 2, Swedish radio publicly announced the asylum offer. Within two months, more than 7,000 Jews escaped to safety in Sweden.

A British Mosquito aircraft, the type used to fly Niels Bohr
 from Sweden to safety in 1943.
Deposit Photos, @Paulspix

The Bohrs later flew to England. To avoid anti-aircraft fire, the plane flew at high altitude and required oxygen masks. Unfortunately, Bohr’s helmet did not fit correctly, and he missed the order to begin oxygen. He passed out during the flight but arrived safely in England. Robert Oppenheimer later joked that “The Royal Air Force was not used to such great heads as Bohr’s.”

Bohr eventually joined the American atomic bomb project. Click here to learn more about his life after he left Denmark and his trips to Los Alamos.

Best-selling author Martha Hutchens is a history nerd who loves nothing more than finding a new place and time to explore. She won the 2019 Golden Heart for Romance with Religious and Spiritual Elements. A former analytical chemist and retired homeschool mom, Martha occasionally finds time for knitting when writing projects allow.

Martha’s debut novel, A Steadfast Heart, is now available. You can learn more about her books and historical research at marthahutchens.com.

When his family legacy is on the line, rancher Drew McGraw becomes desperate for someone to tame and tutor his three children. Desperate enough to seek a mail-order bride. But when the wrong woman arrives on his doorstep, Drew balks.

Heiress Kaitlyn Montgomery runs straight from the scandal chasing her toward a fresh start on a secluded ranch. She strikes a bargain with Drew—a marriage convenient for both of them.

But the more Kaitlyn adapts to ranch life and forms a bond with Drew’s children and their enigmatic father, she realizes that this ranch is where she is meant to be. And then her past catches up with her…

 Tape: The Tie That Binds

By Izzy James

Reproduction of Colonial Tape

Textile work. Nowadays it’s done primarily as a hobby. I have been an avid needleworker since I learned to knit when I was eight years old. It is rare to see me without my knitting, and these days tatting. It is a peaceful and useful pastime. In colonial times, a woman’s time spent with needles, yarn, and thread was working time. Today I thought I would talk about tape.

Tape in colonial times refers to cloth ties that were used for closures on everything. Petticoats, pockets, hair ties, powder sacks, satchel straps, wagon cover ties, drawstrings, garters, all if these and more required tape.

A docent demonstrates one use of tape. 

Tape had all types of uses.

 

Colonial Women's Pockets were tied around the waist under the skirt.

There were decorative trims available for purchase from England, but most people weren’t tying their petticoats with them. The basic utilitarian tape, ubiquitous to life in the colonies was made at home. On simple looms also made at home. 

There were three basic types:  “the paddle, lap, or knee tape loom; the box tape loom; and the standing or floor tape loom."

 

Antique Scandinavian Tape Loom

Box or Table Tape Loom

 

Floor Tape Looms were a bit more complex than their more portable counterparts.

These looms were in constant use in the home to produce the tape so necessary to colonial life. There were no zippers, dresses were still held together with straight pins--while wearing them! Children, boys and girls, were taught to weave tape as well as adults. Like knitting and other forms of textiles, tape looms accompanied girls when they made visits to friends or attended working “bees” where women came together to work on something large like a quilt. They would have traveled with families over the Wilderness Road to their new homes in the West. 

 

The Governor Mifflin of Pennsylvania and his wife, who is working on her box loom.

In my book, The Road Home, Beti is a shepherdess and a weaver. She uses a rigid heddle loom that would fall in the paddle or knee tape loom category. The rigid heddle she uses was given to her by her mother. Who received it from her father on the eve of their courtship. 

According to an old Nordic tradition, a young man presented a small gift at the beginning of a courtship to the girl he’d chosen to marry. The tradition says that if the woman accepted the gift the relationship began, if she returned the gift that was the end. Small band heddles with meaningful carvings were just the right type of gift for this tradition. Women often gave a gift of their own in return. Usually textile items like “knitted mittens or stockings, suspenders, or stocking bands.”

Tape was made primarily of flax (linen), hemp, wool, or cotton. The fiber would have been harvested, spun, and dyed before being woven into yarn, cloth, or tape. The process takes considerable time even today. Thankfully we have alternatives reading available so we don't HAVE to weave our own closures, but looking at the many beautiful patterns and varieties of tape I can't help but wonder about how much we have to be thankful for. So much history is hidden from us because the plain, homely things like making tape and how much tape was used was never recorded. 

A Cinderella story about a pirate's daughter on the Wilderness Road to Kentucky.

Beti Boatman, pirate's daughter, long dreamed of traveling to a place where no one knew her name. When looters showed up on the day she buried her father her choice was made. Leave her home or allow the only two people in the world she loves to live in constant danger.

When Zeke and what's left of his regiment organized a wagon train west, they did not expect to encounter a woman traveling alone. Beti insists she doesn't need his help, but Zeke knows better and the strong need to protect her runs deep. Things get complicated when looters track Beti down. And emissaries from her mother’s country claim Beti is a real princess. Now Beti must choose: the hardships in Kentucky or a throne.

Izzy James lives in the traces of history in coastal Virginia with her fabulous husband in a house brimming with books. Born with a traveling bone and an itch to knit. Izzy travels to every location where her books take place, from Williamsburg to Wyoming, popping in yarn stores along the way. 

Connect with Izzy through her website at izzyjamesauthor.com and sign up for her monthly newsletter. 

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References:
Handwoven Tape: Understanding Weaving and Early American and Contemporary Tape, by Susan Faulkner Weaver, Shiffer Publishing, LTD, Atglen, PA, 2016. 

Norwegian Pick-Up Bandweaving, by Heather Torgenrud, Shiffer Publishing, LTD, Atglen, PA, 2014

Images:

Pocket: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a8/ed/2b/a8ed2b213a21ecc6030751413ebb4ea7.jpg

Tape: https://i.etsystatic.com/7762935/r/il/585045/5419240255/il_600x600.5419240255_b229.jpg

PA Governor and wife: https://i.pinimg.com/236x/e0/a7/6b/e0a76b73423db7ab496177a76acd8d4e--morris-th-century.jpg
Loom: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/08/bb/5c/08bb5cb78f76ae6a65e1f572a685896c.jpg
Loom: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/20/da/11/20da11d1a63232774199f26d5dbb597e.jpg
Loom: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dvu9dy5wEOs/VqvmxycQ-9I/AAAAAAAAAaA/njL5Qea1kKY/s1600/Jonathan%2BSeidel%2Btape%2Bloom.jpg
 

Women of Resistance: Sara Ginaite Rubinson

“What I saw, I cannot forget. It will always be with my mind.”

Sara Ginaite Rubinson, Jewish-Lithuanian-born Canadian resistance fighter

Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas to form the Kingdom of Lithuania in 1253, eventually expanded until the 14th century when it became the largest country in Europe as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Uniting with Poland to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569 created one of the most prosperous states in Europe. Then came the mid-1700s when neighboring countries “dismantled it, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuanian territory.(1)” Then came the end of World War I, and Lithuania declared its independence.

This is the world into which Sara Ginaite was born on March 17, 1924. Her family was well-to-do and well educated. Her father worked for various foreign companies with clients from all over the world. According to an interview late in Sara’s life, those first few years were idyllic, and she had many friends in her hometown of Kaunas. When she was ten years old her parents, like many other Jews, removed her from the German private school after Hitler came to power. Jewish parents in the community formed their own school, and Sara attended. They persevered.

Then came 1940 when Lithuania was overrun by the Soviet Union. Not long after the invasion Jewish

schools were closed, residents were evicted from apartments that were confiscated for members of the Soviet army, businesses were liquidated at a fraction of their value, and thousands of Jewish people were deported to Siberia.

The following year, Germany invaded and created ghettos into which Jewish people and other “undesirables” were moved, including Sara and her family. But life only got worse. The Kaunas Pogram was implemented which swept through the city resulting in 9,000 Jewish deaths, three of whom were Sara’s uncles. She’d had enough and joined the Anti-Fascist Fighting Organization. but bided her time for the perfect opportunity, and in the Spring of 1942, Sara joined the Anti-Fascist Fighting Organization, a secret group composed of communists, Zionists, and socialist youth movements. They managed to smuggle in weapons, forge identification documents, and engage in sabotage. In a bold act of resistance, the group conducted a series of armed skirmishes with German troops. Unfortunately, the uprising was unsuccessful, and Sara and some of the inmates, including Misha Rubinson who she would later marry, escaped in the Rudninkai Forest.

They connected with “Death to the Fascists Occupiers,” and Sara was appointed to run military operations. Fearless, she returned to the ghetto on two occasions to help others escape. In July 1944, the Soviets liberated Lithuania from the Germans, and Sara and Misha were part of freeing those still held in the Vilnius and Kaunas ghettos. Tragically, Sara’s sister and niece were her family’s only survivors, and life under the Soviets did not improve. It would be another ten years before Lithuania regained its independence.

By all reports, she continued to fight anti-semitism and became a professor of political economics at Vilnius University. After her husband’s death she moved to Canada in 1983, to be with her daughters. She passed away on April 2, 2018 at the age of 94.

_________________

Linda Shenton Matchett writes happily-ever-after historical Christian fiction about second chances and

women who overcome life’s challenges to be better versions of themselves. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born a stone’s throw from Fort McHenry (of Star-Spangled Banner fame) and has lived in historical places all her life. She is a volunteer docent and archivist at the Wright Museum of WWII. She now lives in central New Hampshire where she explores the history of this great state, immerses herself in the imaginary worlds created by other authors, and drinks copious amounts of tea.

Dutch Dawn

Will they survive the 500-mile journey to freedom?

Isak Westgard is only six missions short to be rotated stateside. Then the unthinkable happens, and he crashes in the occupied Netherlands where the chances of him making it back to England are slim to none. The beautiful and tough-as-nails resistance courier begs to differ and claims she hasn’t lost anyone yet. The problem is the longer they’re together, the less he wants to escape.

Annaliese Claasen has escorted her fair share of refugees and downed Allied pilots to safety - too numerous to remember. Until now. There’s something different about the Norwegian-American lieutenant, and it’s more than his good looks. Can she get him out of the country before losing her heart?

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/u/bMjoxV

 
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Ginaite

Sources:
https://thefemalesoldier.com/blog/sara-ginaite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Ginaite
https://intheirownwords.net/sara-ginaite-rubinson-2
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn95120

Photo Credits:
Sara Ginaite: By Yasha Riumkin - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Sara Ginaite, Public Domain
Sara Ginaite Rubinson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVZI0jcm2ZU
Map of Europe indicating Lithuania: By NuclearVacuum, image created with Inkscape