HHH Book Day

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN TEXAS RANGERS

By Vickie McDonough

and others

No One Is Too Tough to be Loved

Join seven Texas Rangers on the hunt for a menacing gang, who run straight into romances with women who foil their plans for both the job and their futures.

Partners in Crime by Vickie McDonough
Micah McCullough, a Texas Ranger working undercover in the Markham gang, is tasked with guarding Laurel Underwood, a silversmith, who was kidnapped to create plates for printing counterfeit money. Laurel knows she doesn’t have the expertise. Her only option is to stall and seek escape. What will the outlaws do when they learn her secret?

THE PERFECT BRIDE

By Debbie Lynne Costello

Avice Touchet has always dreamed of marrying for love and that love would be her best friend, Philip Greslet. She’s waited five years for him to see her as the woman she’s become but when a visiting lord arrives with secrets that could put her father in prison, Avice must consider a sacrificial marriage.

Philip Greslet has worked his whole life for one thing—to be a castellan—and now it is finally in his grasp. But when Avice rebuffs his new lord’s attentions, Philip must convince his best friend to marry the lord against his heart’s inclination to have her as his own.

BANDOLERO

By Nancy Farrier

Yoana Armenta’s reckless behavior results in her being captured by bandoleros, Yoana fears her impulsive nature has caused irreparable disaster. Amado Castro gave a deathbed promise that he intends to keep – at all costs - even if he must break a childhood vow. When his choice endangers Yoana’s life, he struggles with the decision to honor his word, or to protect Yoana, whom he has come to care for more than he could have imagined. Now as the bandoleros threaten to sell Yoana and her tía to a fate worse than death, and the rancheros want to hang Amado, they must make choices. Will they trust God, or will they do what seems right to them?

THE WIDOW'S PLIGHT

by Mary Davis

When Lily Lexington Bremmer arrives in Kamola with her young son, she’s reluctant to join the social center of her new community, the quilting circle, but the friendly ladies pull her in. She begins piecing a sunshine and shadows quilt because it mirrors her life. She has a secret that lurks in the shadows and hopes it doesn’t come out into the light. Dark places in her past are best forgotten, but her new life is full of sunshine. Will her secrets cast shadows on her bright future? Widower Edric Hammond and his father are doing their best to raise his two young daughters. He meets Lily and her son when they arrive in town and helps her find a job and a place to live. Lily resists Edric’s charms at first but finds herself falling in love with this kind, gentle man and his two darling daughters. Lily has stolen his heart with her first warm smile, but he’s cautious about bringing another woman into his girls’ lives due to the harshness of their own mother. Can Edric forgive Lily her past to take hold of a promising chance at love?

THE WIDOW OF ROSE HILL

By Michelle Shocklee

Widowed during the war, Natalie Ellis finds herself solely responsible for Rose Hill plantation. When Union troops arrive with a proclamation freeing the slaves, all seems lost. How can she run the plantation without slaves? In order to save her son’s inheritance she strikes a deal with the arrogant, albeit handsome, Colonel Maish. In exchange for use of her family’s property, the army will provide workers to bring in her cotton crop. But as her admiration for the colonel grows, a shocking secret is uncovered. Can she trust him with her heart and her young, fatherless son?

REVEALING LIGHT

By Marilyn Turk

Sally Rose McFarlane follows her dream of being a teacher when she accepts a position as governess in post-Reconstruction, Florida. A misunderstanding of her previous experience in Ohio forces her to keep a secret to retain her job. When she learns about the recent Jim Crow laws, she realizes she also has to hide her bi-racial ancestry.
When Bryce Hernandez, former Pinkerton agent, becomes a law partner to Sally Rose’s employer, he and Sally Rose become involved with each other to stop a smuggling operation involving their employer’s dishonest business partner.
What will happen the family Sally Rose works for learns the truth of her work experience and her parents? How will Bryce react when he finds out? And will anyone find her when she’s captured by smugglers, or will it be too late?

The Siberian Seven

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia became a communist nation and over the next 70 years amassed a great deal of territory, becoming the Soviet Union. One of the goals of the Soviet Union was to completely eliminate religion from society. This is where the policy of separation of church and state came from. The goal was to wipe the church from having any voice in public. Bibles were banned, and churches were closed. Although the government didn't outlaw all religious expression in private, preferring to educate and encourage citizens to give up religious beliefs, many Communists leaders participated in militant atheism.

This caused many horrific instances of persecution. Churches were closed, and the assets given to the state. Parents had children taken away from them for teaching them Christianity. Christians were arrested, tortured, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their faith. While all Christians were at risk, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Adventists were targeted the most.   These small group of evangelicals frustrated the government because their numbers kept growing in the face of persecution. No matter what the Communist government did to them, they could not get them to recant. Most who were caught and arrested received 20 year prison sentences at the Gulag or were committed to insane asylums for the rest of their lives if they weren't tortured and killed.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the government was coming down hard on Pentecostalism, showing propaganda movies depicting Pentecostals as bloody fanatics and lunatics. In 1963, two Pentecostal Christian brothers petitioned the United States to give them asylum. The US refused because they didn't want to make the growing tensions with the USSR worse. The brothers were thrown in prison for five years. 

In 1968, after getting out of prison, Pyotr and his wife again petitioned the US and were again denied. Pyotr was sent to a mental institution, and his wife received a three year prison sentence. In 1978, the Pentecostal Christians again petitioned the US. This time, an Alabama pastor sponsored them and they were accepted. Now the problem was getting permission to leave the USSR.

In June, 1978, seven Pentecostals had the courage to go to the American Embassy. One of them distracted the guards while the other six escaped into the embassy gate and than managed to make his way inside. How they did this is a little foggy because these Soviet guards were diligent. They claimed it was a miracle. It was also a miracle that the Americans in the embassy accepted them into the building. They lived in the embassy basement until they were allowed to leave for the United States five years later on June 27, 1983.

Tamera Lynn Kraft writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. Her Novels, Red Sky over America and Alice’s Notions and her novellas Resurrection of Hope and A Christmas Promise are available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.

What Happened to the Doolittle Raiders? One Last Plane! (Plus a GIVEAWAY!)

Cindy K. Stewart and I have been tag-teaming our posts on the exciting adventures of the Doolittle Raiders. And it’s been my favorite kind of tag team—the kind where she does the bulk of the work! 😊 As Cindy wraps up her series, she’s letting me cover the final plane: Plane #6, the Green Hornet. It’s one I have a special claim on, since three of its crew members appear in my upcoming debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter.

The crew of Doolittle Raid Plane #6, the Green Hornet.
L to R: Chase Nielsen, Dean Hallmark, Donald Fitzmaurice, Robert Meder, William Dieter
By US Air Force [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By now you probably have the background. Just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sixteen of the Army's medium-weight B-25 bombers left the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Hornet—a feat never attempted before or since. They deployed their payloads on Tokyo and other key targets on the Japanese main island. While the mission achieved its military objective, due to a communication breakdown the sortie left seventy-two of the eighty airmen stranded in enemy-occupied China.

Cindy has been filling you in on how the Chinese resistance smuggled most of the downed airmen out—at great risk and, ultimately, tremendous cost. One of the most dramatic stories belongs to the crew of the Green Hornet.

Crash Landing

I have a vintage copy of the book Four Came Home by Carroll V. Glines, in which Chase Nielsen, the Green Hornet’s navigator, tells their story in detail. With their fuel exhausted, the Green Hornet attempted a crash landing into the sea off China’s coast. They came down fast and hit the water hard. The enlisted men—Donald Fitzmaurice (gunner) and William Dieter (bombardier)—were both severely injured.

All five of the airmen managed to get free of the bomber and climb on top of the wreckage, but what was left of the B-25 was sinking rapidly. Tragically, the life raft proved inoperable. While the three least injured men tried to get it inflated, poor Dieter slipped into the waves. Co-pilot Robert Meder managed to grab Fitzmaurice just as a huge wave smashed the rest of them into the water.

The waves soon separated the men. They braved more than three hours in the water before reaching shore. Sadly, when Lieutenant Meder finally managed to drag himself and Fitzmaurice onto the beach, he discovered that Donald Fitzmaurice had succumbed to his wounds.

Nielsen stumbled into a trench in the dark and lost consciousness. He came to the next morning and crawled to a vantage point. He found himself overlooking a cove and a Chinese fishing village. He soon also found himself at the business end of what he described as “a real antiquated buffalo gun.” The young Chinese soldier aiming it at him ordered him to “Stand up or me shoot.”

The soldier directed Nielsen at gunpoint to walk up a path away from the beach. But he seemed wary, often glancing over his shoulder. After a few minutes, Nielsen heard a boat motor in the distance. “Run fast!” his captor commanded. “Japs come. Kill me, you!”

Once they reached thick cover, the soldier stopped and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “We fight Japanese. You no worry now. Go fast. follow me.” He brought Lieutenant Nielsen to a Chinese Nationalist army garrison. The Green Hornet’s other two survivors, Lieutenant Meder and the plane’s pilot Dean Hallmark, soon turned up there too.

The garrison commander, Captain Ling, promised to do his best to get them to Free China. But he emphasized the risks. If the Japanese caught them at it, Americans and Chinese would all be summarily shot.

Several Near Misses

When dawn broke, the Chinese smuggled the three airmen back to the cove and put them aboard "a sampan." They experienced their first near miss when the vessel was searched by a Japanese patrol. They sailed for two days upriver until they reached the sizable walled city of Wenzhou. Captain Ling announced he could take them no further, but would set them up with others they could trust.

At dark, they passed through a gate in the city’s ancient wall and were handed off to an older gentleman named Mr. Wong. They enjoyed a pleasant dinner with Sage Wong, an articulate former Buddhist monk who had studied in England. 

A boy rushed in to alert Mr. Wong that Japanese soldiers were searching the city. Mr. Wong hurried the three airmen down an alley in an effort to escape through the city gate, but Japanese were setting up a machine-gun station there. He tried leading them toward another gate, but peering around a corner they saw machine guns there too. 

Ancient gate of Linhai, a city in China's Zhejiang Province near Wenzhou.
By Marcus Hsu  talk [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

What happened next was like a scene from a movie. Mr. Wong called a group of Chinese in flowing robes over and they surrounded the three big Americans. The airmen crouched and hid in the middle of the group and they all shuffled along together across the twelve-foot main road and into another building, right in front of a Japanese detachment.

Mr. Wong determined the Japanese were conducting a methodical search and the Americans had no choice but to hide where they were. There was very little to work with. Hallmark dove into a corner and Nielsen and Meder covered him with everything they could grab—grass mats, sacks, old blankets. They shoved a rickety bench in front of the pile, then climbed up into the open rafters and pushed into the darkest spots in the corners.

After some time, a Japanese soldier entered. His eyes rested for a moment on the pile where Dean was hiding, but he turned and left.

Betrayed

The men breathed a deep sigh of relief but remained hidden. A few more minutes passed. Another group of soldiers entered. The airmen were astonished to see the Chinese National garrison commander, Captain Ling, followed by a Japanese officer with a couple of his men. One of the soldiers lowered his rifle. The other strode up to the corner where Dean was hiding. He kicked the bench out of the way. 

The officer addressed Dean in clear English. “Where are the other two Americans?” When Dean wouldn’t answer, he pistol-whipped Mr. Wong until he fell to the floor moaning--directly beneath Nielsen’s hiding place in the rafters. As the officer stepped back, he lifted his head. He looked straight into Nielsen’s eyes.

The three survivors from the Green Hornet joined the five men who bailed from Plane #16, the Bat Out of Hell, ultimately enduring forty long months of Japanese prison "hospitality." Sadly, of those eight men, only four came home. I’ve summarized the rest of their story, and how God used that tragedy for His glory, here and here. And I hope you’ll consider reading my novel when it launches in December!

I'm hosting a drawing for a copy of Kristy Cambron's split-time historical novel, The Lost Castle, for new subscribers to my newsletter. You'll also receive updates on my novel, including an opportunity to gain complementary pre-launch access. To enter, please REGISTER HERE by Saturday, June 30. (I'm also giving away a second copy to a current subscriber, so those of you who registered in previous months will have another chance to win. :) )

I stepped away from a marketing career that spanned continents to write what I love: stories of reckless faith that showcase God's hand in history. I'm so excited to work with the all-star team at Mountain Brook Ink to launch my debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter, this December! Inspired by a remarkable true story from World War II's pivotal Doolittle Raid, The Plum Blooms in Winter is an American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis Contest winner. The novel follows a captured American pilot and a bereaved Japanese prostitute who targets him for ritual revenge. Please also feel free to check out my blog, Five Stones and a Sling, which hovers in the region where history meets Bible prophecy meets current events. It's rich ground--we live in a day when prophecies are leaping from the Bible's pages into the headlines!

I live outside Phoenix with my husband, a third-generation airline pilot who doubles as my Chief Military Research Officer. We share our home with two mostly-grown-up kids and a small platoon of housecats.

Historic Saint Augustine Part One

Saint Augustine, Florida is a modern-day mixture of historical buildings and tourist focused attractions for which Florida is so well known. The city is located on the east coast or the north-central area of the peninsula and is approximately nine-and-a-half square miles.

Boasting a Christmas illumination display that would make Clark Griswold proud,

Courtesy of Flicker.com

Saint Augustine’s Night of Light’s is one of the nation’s brightest with almost two-million lights. The restaurants range from exclusive gastronome to old fashioned empanada meat pies. Spooky nighttime tours of the haunted downtown and the striped, Saint Augustine Lighthouse are but a few fun things to fill your evenings.

The area is steeped in history from the early sixteenth-century, to the civil war, to WWII, and into the twenty-first century.

Here’s a bit of early history about Saint Augustine and the surrounding area.

1. In 1513, Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon lived in Puerto Rico. He left the islands to explore the northern continent on March 4 and arrived on the Florida coast on April 2. Along with three commissioned ships, the Santiago, the San Cristobal, and the Santa Maria de la Consolacion, the adventurer traveled 

Courtesy Wikicommons

the coastline of Florida from Mosquito Inlet to Charlotte Harbor. De Leon named his discovery, La Florida, in honor of the Easter Season and Pascua Florida, the Spanish festival of flowers. Legend says de Leon was in search of—not gold—but a fountain of youth the native population said existed in the area. Today, you can visit the mythological fountain in the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park near Saint Augustine. 

2. 1565, King Phillip II of Spain sent Pedro Menendez de Aviles to Florida after he learned the French had established a settlement near Jacksonville, Florida—an intrusion onto Spanish lands in the New World.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles arrived on the Florida coast with 10 ships and 1500 men around September 1565. His orders were to establish an outpost for Spain along the coast and eliminate the French settlements on Spanish land.
He settled St. Augustine then immediately attacked Fort Caroline, a French settlement near Jacksonville, Florida. During the conquest, Menendez ordered some of the Frenchmen to be hung from trees. He carved a message into a tree trunk that read "Hanged Not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans."
Menendez continued his quest until he fulfilled his promise to the king to eliminate the French and establish St. Augustine for Spain.

3. Sir Francis Drake, English sea captain, privateer, naval officer, slave trader and explorer, attacked St. Augustine in 1586. His forces destroyed the wooden fort, San Juan de Pinillo. 

Boazio map. Courtesy wiki-media

An Italian artist who traveled with Drake, Boazio, rendered a map of the city during the siege. Boazio’s drawing is the earliest portrayal of the city of Saint Augustine and provides historians with important landmarks and information about the design of the city.

4. Carolina Charter of 1665 enlarged the original grant for the Carolina Colony. The new boundary extended into Spanish territory and was defined as 29° north latitude. The extension of the Charter encompassed Saint Augustine. The city had been controlled by the Spanish for over 100 years. A border dispute between the English and Spanish erupted in the Americas. The dispute wasn’t fully settled until the Georgia colony was formed.

The history of Saint Augustine is sometimes overlooked in the modern teaching of American history. We tend to focus on the Plymouth Colony and the Virginia Colony, forgetting the Spanish imprint on the New World. Though sometimes violent, the contribution of men like King Phillip II, Juan Ponce de Leon and Pedro Menendez de Aviles are huge and worthy of a place in America’s textbooks. Have you visited Florida or the Saint Augustine area? What did you think? Please, leave a comment below and let us know about your experiences in the historic city. And don't forget part two of the history of Saint Augustine will post the 27th of July.

   

Multi award-winning author, Michele K. Morris’s love for historical fiction began when she first read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House book series. She grew up riding horses and spending her free time in the woods of mid-Michigan. Married to her high school sweetheart, they are living happily-ever-after with their six children, three in-loves, and ten grandchildren in Florida, the sunshine state. Michele loves to hear from readers on Facebook, Twitter, and here through the group blog, Heroes, Heroines, and History at HHHistory.com.

Michele is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.

Romancing France

By J. M. Hochstetler

America’s alliance with France during the Revolution was a decisive factor in defeating Britain. But as is normal in the relations of nations, treaties are not so easily formed, and a whole lot of maneuvering, arm-twisting, romancing, and sleight of hand went on behind the scenes to get France on board. Today we’re going to take a brief look at the American commissioners delegated by Congress to manage the process, beginning with the first man on the ground.

Silas Deane by William Johnston

Silas Deane was born in Groton, Connecticut, on January 4, 1738. He was a lawyer, a prosperous merchant, and a delegate to the Continental Congress. On March 2, 1776, Congress appointed him as a secret envoy to France, and as soon as he arrived in Paris he began negotiating with French Foreign Minister Comte de Vergennes for financial aid and unofficial shipments of arms and munitions. His position became official when Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee arrived in Paris with congressional orders appointing the three of them as the diplomatic delegation to France.

A month after the Treaties of Amity and Commerce and of Alliance between France and America were signed on February 6, 1778, Deane received a letter from Congress recalling him. He arrived in Philadelphia to discover to his shock that reports by Arthur accused him of financial improprieties even though both Vergennes and Franklin had written letters commending him. After a long and bitter dispute over the charges, Deane was allowed to return to Paris in 1780 to settle his affairs only to discover that he was almost ruined financially because his investments had plummeted in value and ships carrying his merchandise had been captured by the British.

Even worse, the British intercepted letters in which Deane described America’s military situation as hopeless and suggested negotiating with Britain. Nicely, they forwarded them to General Clinton in New York City. The general in turn gave copies to a loyalist newspaper publisher, James Rivington, who shared them in his Royal Gazette. The result was that Deane was labeled a traitor by his fellow countrymen. Sometimes you just can’t win!

Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, 1778

Benjamin Franklin was the chief American commissioner. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706, he was one of seventeen children born to Josiah Franklin, and one of ten borne by Josiah’s second wife, Abiah Folger. Over the course of his life he founded many civic organizations and became an author, printer, politician, scientist, inventor, philosopher, postmaster, and diplomat, among other things—in addition to being one of our Founding Fathers. One might say he was an overachiever. Just thinking about his accomplishments makes me tired!

Franklin lived in London for many years serving as an agent for several colonies in addition to his scientific and philosophical endeavors. In December 1776, when he was 70 years old, Congress appointed him as one of three commissioners along with Deane and Lee and sent him to France. While living in Paris, he always wore a bearskin hat and dressed in plain clothing rather than the expected elaborate court dress, a habit that contributed largely to his reputation as the premier republican from America. Since he was well known among the French philosophes for his scientific discoveries, he was welcomed with great enthusiasm, especially by the ladies, who universally adored him. Consequently he was a prime mover in securing the alliance with France in 1778 in spite (or perhaps because) of his habit of staying up late schmoozing with the French movers and shakers (and especially the ladies), and then getting up late in the day. This frustrated to no end John Adams, who rose promptly at 5 a.m. to get to work. The commission was finally dissolved in September 1778 when Congress appointed Franklin as minister plenipotentiary to France, a position he held until he negotiated the Treaty of Paris in 1783 along with John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens, which formally ended the war.

Arthur Lee was born in Virginia in December 1740, the youngest of four notable brothers that included Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and William Lee. He was educated in medicine and law at Edinburgh and London and for several years practiced law in London, where he met Benjamin Franklin. He was critical of Franklin’s extravagant lifestyle, which was not auspicious for their relations when Congress sent him to Paris to work with Franklin as one of the commissioners. He didn’t get along with Deane either. In fact, Lee didn’t get along with most people. He was naturally suspicious of everyone and by all accounts was not liked or trusted by French officials, which, as you can imagine, didn’t help in negotiating with them. Franklin could hardly be civil to him, and John Adams was hard put to keep peace between the two men so the commission could actually accomplish its work. Although Lee persuaded Congress to recall Deane for financial irregularities, he was also recalled soon thereafter.

Interestingly, Lee was one of America’s first spies. He gathered information in France and Britain and also accused Edward Bancroft, who functioned as secretary to the commission, of being a British spy. More on him in my next month’s post. He was indeed a spy—a double agent, in fact—but unfortunately the other commissioners didn’t believe him, probably because they disliked him. As a result Bancroft continued his nefarious activities undiscovered to the end of the war. It was many years later after he and his colleagues had passed away before he was exposed.

John Adams by John Trumbull, 1792

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735, in Braintree, Massachusetts, the oldest of 3 sons of John Adams Sr. and Susanna Boylston. He’s also one of our Founding Father and served as the He was a lawyer, diplomat, politician, one of our Founding Fathers, the first vice president under George Washington, and the second president of the United States.

When Deane was recalled, Adams was named to replace him. He arrived in Paris in April 1778 only to learn that the alliance with France had been concluded in February. He found it frustrating to work with his fellow commissioners. He thought Lee paranoid and cynical and considered Franklin to be irritating, lazy, and overly accommodating to the French. He also distrusted and disliked Bancroft, though he didn’t believe Lee’s accusation that he was a British spy. In spite of not speaking French when he first arrived, Adams worked hard to impose order where it was lacking in the delegation’s finances and record keeping and soon became the commission’s administrator.

In September 1778 Congress named Franklin minister plenipotentiary to France. They sent Lee to serve in Spain, but left Adams hanging with no instructions. Feeling that he’d been slighted, Adams left France the following March. He returned in 1782 as a member of the American delegation negotiating the peace treaty with Great Britain.

We tend to idealize important figures in history like our Founding Fathers and the other heroes of the American Revolution, so it’s kind of gratifying to find out that they were very, very human, just like the rest of us. Undoubtedly it was a really fun assignment to work with this group of brilliant, but eccentric diplomats—or not so much. Which of the 4 do you find the most interesting and/or sympathetic, and why? Please share your thoughts!

~~~

J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series coauthored with Bob Hostetler, won Foreword Magazine’s 2014 Indie Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, received the 2017 Interviews and Reviews Silver Award for Historical Fiction and was named one of Shelf Unbound’s 2018 Notable Indie Books. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year and a finalist in the Carol Award.

What Things Cost In The Old West

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. The things authors—particularly historical fiction authors—must research for accuracy in their stories is a mixed bag and always proves interesting. I can’t tell you how many times I find myself questioning what a particular item might have cost in the Old West. I thought you might find it interesting to see the costs of various things in the latter half of the 1800s.

Grocery Items

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can walk into our local grocery store and pick up “a few” items—and drop over $100 without batting an eye. Prices on everything seem to skyrocket. What about 150 years ago?

Old General Store, St. Augustine, Florida, where canned goods and other items line the walls behind the counter.

Here’s just a sampling of common grocery items from a sampling of years. (These prices are pulled from various sources. Costs could have been drastically different in different areas of the country):

	Years
Article	1860	1864	1872	1878	1882
Barrel of Flour	5.25	8.00	--	4.00	--
Pound of Corn Meal	.02	--	.01	.02	.04
Barrel of Salt Pork	16.12	19.75	--	9.25	--
Quart of Beans	.08	--	.09	.08	.13
Gallon of Molasses	.33	.50	--	.25	--
Pound of Rice	.035	.085	--	.06	--
Pound of Starch	.11	--	.12	.10	.09
Pound of Sugar	.06	.13	--	.075	--
Pound of Roasted Coffee	.23	--	.42	.26	.29
Pound of Oolong Tea	.54	--	.69	.60	.58
Pound of Lard	.10	.12	--	.07	--

I find it notable that during the years of the Civil War (1861-1865) and in the 5-7 years afterward, prices on many typical grocery items were higher than before the war, and they dropped down again a decade or more afterward. 

Clothing

We are so spoiled today. We are used to walking into any store—from Walmart to Nordstrom, and anything in between—to purchase ready-made clothing in vast arrays of styles, colors, and price ranges. It hasn’t always been so. In the late half of the 1800s, people still made their clothing, something that is far more of a rarity today than it once was. 

The "dry goods" display in the Old General Store, St. Augustine, FL

A yard of brown shirting material would’ve run .08-.09 cents between 1860-1882.

A yard of ticking would have cost .17-.18 cents.

A yard of satinet (a polished cotton fabric with a similar look to satin) would have cost .54-.59 cents in that 22 year span. 

And if you didn’t have the sewing skills to cut out a pattern and stitch it together, then you’d pay a tailor or seamstress for their services.

Livestock, Saddles, and Other Gear

So much of the Old West culture revolved around ranches, livestock, and horses. So what did these animals and the equipment needed to use them run?

A calf might run $2.50/head.

A yearling would go for $12.50.

A 2-year-old steer would go for $22.50.

A bull would run $90.

A yoke of 2 oxen, good for pulling wagons and the like, would run roughly $150.

An average workhorse to be used around the farm or ranch would also go for $150.

A fine saddle horse would cost more—about $200.

Harnesses for the oxen or workhorse would go for $50 or so.

A saddle, depending on the type, would cost between $30-$60.

If you were looking at a wagon, expect to pay $70 or more.

Guns and Other Weapons

Historic ad for Colt Peacemaker

In the 1800s, if you expected to eat, you typically had to have a gun. Life wasn’t like it is today, with a grocery store on every corner where you can pick up neatly-packaged, pre-cut meat, ready to throw on the grill or into the oven. No…in that day, you hunted for your food. And while perhaps not as prevalent as western TV programs, movies, and novels would have you believe, gunplay with pistols was also an element of western life. So what did those tools of the time cost?

A used single-shot, muzzle-loading rifle would cost $8.

The fancy seven-shot Sharps Repeating Rifle cost $50.

A breach-loading shotgun would go for $60.

And the gun that won the west—the Colt .45 “Peacemaker” ran $17 if ordered by mail-order.

If you preferred the upgraded pearl-handled set, which came with holsters, those Peacemakers were $100.

And cartridges for the guns cost $.50/box.

Salaries of that Day

Of course, none of these prices means a whole lot until you compare it with what typical folks made back then. So what did people earn in common western jobs? 

During the California Gold Rush, carpenters were making $16/day in San Francisco (1849). By the 1860s, this had dropped to $4/day.

Wild Bill Hickok earned $150 a month as the marshal of Abilene, KS. Other Kansas lawmen earned $100, and deputies often made $60-75/month.

Typical ranch hands earned $30/month, plus room and board. If you were a top ranch hand, you might earn $40. A ranch foreman could command $50/month. And the trail boss of a cattle drive sometimes made as much as $100.

The average school teacher would earn $30/month.

Pony Express Riders, for the very short time of that service, earned $25 a week for their efforts and the dangers they faced.

Pony Express ad, showing the pay of $25/week.

A private or corporal in the Army (in 1865) could expect $13/month. A sergeant’s page jumped to $17. A 1^stor 2^ndlieutenant made roughly $105, with captains earning $115. If one was fortunate enough to make it all the way to the rank of General in 1865, they could’ve expected almost $760 in pay.

Oh, and just to keep it real—a soiled dove could expect $1 to $2 per roll in the sheets.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into what things cost in bygone days. If you did, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just please be patient with my response time. My hubby and I are in a training class all week, so I won’t be able to respond until evening, if then.