Why the Ashtabula, Ohio Train Disaster of 1876 is Ranked 5th In U.S. History

 
By Donna Wichelman

Among America’s most horrific train accidents in history, the Ashtabula, Ohio, train disaster of December 29, 1876 ranks fifth. It was the worst of the nineteenth century.

Present-day Ashtabula Lift Bridge Over the Ashtabula River: ID 390769547 | Ashtabula Ohio © Ralf Broskvar | Dreamstime.com

The Ashtabula train disaster caught my attention when I was conducting research for Book Two in my Silver Singing Mine Series, Rhythms of the Heart, which comes out later this year. I wanted an event in my protagonist’s life that would compel her to leave Hudson, Ohio to live in the mining town of Georgetown, Colorado. In Chapter One, we discover that her husband and two children perished in the train disaster, which propels her to join her parents in Colorado.

What events occurred on the night of December 29, 1876 that caused ninety-two people of one hundred sixty passengers and crew to perish and sixty-four others to sustain critical injuries?

Hindsight is often twenty-twenty, as they say. But in the case of the Pacific Express making its way west from Buffalo, New York to Cleveland, Ohio, the men who designed and built the bridge over the Ashtabula River should have foreseen their errors in judgment. Apparently, they ignored them.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ashtabula_bridge.jpg

The Pacific Express consisted of two engines to drive eleven cars and a full complement of people. So, when a frightful driving snowstorm ensued that night, some might have had the impression that the tremendous amount of snow on the tracks affected the train’s approach to the one-hundred-fifty-seven-foot-long bridge.

However, as the train began to cross the bridge, the man driving it heard a tremendous crack. Fearing the train wouldn’t make it across the bridge, he picked up speed. Unfortunately, only the first engine made it safely to the other side. The second engine and all eleven cars plunged into the ravine. 

Drawing of the Ashtabula Train: Disaster: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ashtabula_Bridge_disaster.jpg

Initially, most of the people onboard survived the crash. But they were trapped in the twisted wood and metal. The oil lamps that had provided them with light now became a raging inferno as the snowstorm’s winds swirled around them.

Two prominent people were among the passengers who perished. Mary Roxana Birchard, the first cousin of Rutherford B. Hayes—the next president of the United States—should have received a $5000 inheritance from her deceased uncle in Sandusky, Ohio. She was an autograph collector and compiled an album of signatures from famous people, including her cousin, Rutherford B. Hayes, Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior, Herbert Hoover, and Daniel Webster. The album was at auction for between $2,000 - $3,000 in 2013. 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Rutherford_Hayes_1870_-_1880_Restored.jpg">Mathew Benjamin Brady</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Serving as governor of Ohio at the time of the train disaster, Hayes instigated the investigation of the cause of the accident. He wrote in his diary: "Our cousin Mary Birchard, of Fayetteville, Vermont, was lost in the fearful railroad accident at Ashtabula, Friday evening. We have learned none of the particulars as to her fate beyond the general facts of the catastrophe. The accident was the most dreadful that has ever occurred on any railroad in Ohio and has rarely been equaled in the number of victims and other circumstances of horror anywhere. Poor dear Mary! She was a kind-hearted, lovable woman."

The other well-known person onboard was composer and evangelist Philip Bliss. Repudiated to be the second most famous hymn writer in history, perhaps to surpass Fanny Crosby if he had lived long enough, he wrote hymns like Hallelujah, What a Saviour!, Jesus Loves Even Me, Almost Persuaded, and It Is Well with My Soul just to name a few. He survived the crash. But when he couldn’t find his wife, he returned to the train car to find her, and neither was seen afterward.

Philip Bliss: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ppblisscdv.jpg

The investigation ordered by Hayes used a coroner’s jury, which discovered several factors that caused the disaster. While the industry used almost exclusively wood in its construction of bridges during the early days because it was cheap and easy, wood had its issues. Over time, the industry began to use more steel and concrete. The Lakeshore and Michigan Southern Railway, under the leadership of Director Amasa Stone, constructed an iron truss bridge designed by Charles Collins across the river. But the design was flawed, and maintenance on the bridge was nonexistent. In addition, a deadly snowstorm with accumulated depths of twenty inches and fifty-four-mile-an-hour winds complicated matters. Altogether, given these factors, the passengers of the Pacific Express had little hope on that fateful night.

On the day Charles Collins testified before the jury, he went home and took his life. Two years later, Amasa Stone took his life.

Mausoleum of Charles Collins' Family: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtabula_River_railroad_disaster 

Amasa Stone: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amasa_Stone.jpg

In the late nineteenth century, train accidents were common. Many reasons contributed to this. Chief among them was financial. Railroad foreman felt pressure from the companies to rush workers to complete their projects, resulting in shoddy workmanship.

The other train disasters falling in order from fourth to first include: the Wellington Avalanche Train Wreck of 1910, the Malbone Street Wreck, the Great Train Wreck of 1918, and the Eden Train Wreck of 1904 in Pueblo, Colorado.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, released in December 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. They love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.

How the 1872 National Mining Apex Law Divided Friend and Foe

By Donna Wichelman

In a recent interview for a guest blog, a friend asked which historical parameters were imposed on the writing of my historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, and where I had to fill in the gaps with my imagination. Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction, which, in the case of the Apex Law or what is also referred to as the "extralateral rights" law, one wonders how the national government could have passed such egregious legislation. To understand why the 1872 legislation was passed, we have to go back to the history of mining in nineteenth-century America.

The California Gold Rush did more to create western expansion across America than any other development. Once men heard about the discovery of gold, they literally "rushed" to the western territories, bringing on tens of thousands in mass migration and the demands for quicker and better transportation. People became crazed, lured by the possibility of making their fortunes. They came on steamships through Panama or around Cape Horn. Many joined wagon trains on the Overland Trail, while others built the Transcontinental Railway from New York to California.

Image by Denise Henze from Pixabay, AI Rendering of a Steam Engine on a Railroad

Image by Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay

Some found their fortunes panning for gold along river banks. But soon, those resources dwindled, and hard rock mining, digging deep into the belly of the earth, began to take over the industry, giving rise to demands for technological advances such as the Burley Drill to better access the minerals underground, steam boilers to operate hoisting equipment down the shafts, and smelting furnaces to extract valuable metals from the ore and remove impurities. The Gilded Age was on in the West, as mine owners needed more laborers willing to work in difficult conditions.

Image by Erich Westendarp from Pixabay, AI Rendering of a Steam Boiler

Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay Mine

As men migrated west, they soon discovered quantities of gold, silver, copper, and other metals could be found in Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Black Hills. The atmosphere was ripe for mining towns to spring up everywhere across the West as the demand for services increased--banks, food, clothes, and various other supplies necessary to survive. 

By 1872, the United States government recognized the need for regulation. Until that time, practices for open mining and prospecting on public land tended to be universal and supported by state and territorial regulation, but illegal under federal law. After the Civil War, eastern congressmen, looking for a way to pay the war debt, viewed western miners as squatters on public land and proposed the seizure of western mines to be put up for public auction. One congressman, Fernando Wood, advocated for the government to take ownership to benefit the treasury.

Image of Gold Nugget by Csaba Nagy from Pixabay

Western representatives argued that miners and prospectors promoted commerce and the settlement of new territories. A series of legislation was passed, including the "Chaffee laws" of July 26, 1866, named after Colorado Territorial representative Jerome B. Chaffee, that legalized hard rock mining on public land. Similar law was passed July 9,1870 for placer mining.

Then, on May 10, 1872, the General Mining Act of 1872 (much of which is still intact) codified the informal system of acquiring and protecting claims on federal public lands. All citizens eighteen and older have the right to locate a lode (hard rock) or placer (gravel) mining on federal lands where such land is open, which consists of 350 million acres of federal public land still today.

Mine Tailings  from the Terrible Mine Seen From I70 near Georgetown, Colorado: Donna's Gallery, June 2019

One piece of that legislation, however, became and still is a general headache for mine owners. In A Song of Deliverance, I based the feud between my hero, Stefan Maier, and the villain, Georg Töpfer, on a real feud in 1873 that took place between the Pelican Mine--owners Eli Streeter and Thomas and John McCunniff--and the Dives claim owned by John McMurdy, having purchased part interest from Thomas Burr and a deed from William Hamill. Unfortunately, the Pelican and Dives claims overlapped, and litigation ensued.

 353335889 | Silver Nugget © Niel Ibragimov | Dreamstime.com

At the forefront of the Pelican-Dives case was the apex law or “extralateral rights” one part of the 1872 National Mining Law. According to Christine Bradley in The Rise of the Silver Queen, “The right allowed the owners of a claim the exclusive right to mine a vein if the apex, or highest point, occurred within their property. The owner could follow the vein’s downward course beyond the property’s sidelines but not beyond the end lines unless [they] purchased the neighboring claims … In reality, such veins seldom existed in the mining world. Veins and ore pockets went everywhere and often surfaced in other claims.” 

Fierce feuding between the Pelican-Dives owners continued into the 1880s, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation fees and one murder. Ultimately, Pelican and Dives merged into one company under William Hamill’s direction.

The extralateral rights law still exists today and continues to be a source of disputes among mine owners. Regulations under this law are complicated, and the courts have to sift through the various parts of the legislation to determine whose rights are being violated. Many miners contend the law is outdated and needs to be revisited. But will the federal government move on this question? Well, it is the federal government. So, anything can happen ... or not.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, released on December 3, 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. They love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.

When A Summer Vacation on a Steam Engine Turns Into a Historical Romance Series

By Donna Wichelman

Long before my Singing Silver Mine historical romance series came to pass, our family became fans of the Georgetown Loop Railroad living museum attraction in Georgetown, Colorado. The three-foot, narrow-gauge railroad through the Rocky Mountains provided a delightful summer excursion with our then four-year-old daughter only forty-five minutes west from Denver. Little did I know its importance in the history of Colorado would take a prominent place in a series I would write many years later.

Georgetown Loop Railroad Summer 1995: Donna's Gallery

Summer Fun on the Georgetown Railroad
Summer 1995: Donna's Gallery

The find of gold by Lewis Ralston at the confluence of the Clear Creek and South Platte River in Arvada and his return to the same site in present-day Arvada eight years later touched off the gold rush to the Rockies in 1858. The discovery set off a chain of events that eventually sent Kentuckians George F. Griffith and his brother David T. Griffith up the Clear Creek Canyon to the South Fork of the Clear Creek in June 1859.

The Griffith Brothers set up a camp on June 15th and found gold two days later. Not long afterward, they built a cabin at what is now Seventeenth and Main Streets in today’s Georgetown. By June 1860, they’d created their own mining district called the Griffith Mining District, and in the spring of 1861, David Griffith surveyed and platted the town of Georgetown with approximately forty residents and two mills.

Talk of a railroad in the Territory of Colorado was already underway by the mid-1860s with the influx of immigrants and a new ore on the scene—silver! The Colorado and Clear Creek RR incorporated in 1865 and reorganized as the Colorado Central and Pacific RR in 1866.

In 1867, John Evans and David Moffat incorporate Denver Pacific Railroad to build a railroad between Denver and Cheyenne to connect with the Transcontinental between New York and San Francisco. The railroad was completed in June 1869 and more people descended on the territory.

As the mining districts of Central City-Black Hawk and Griffith Mining continued to grow, so did the desire to establish railroads to transport ore down the mountain. The Colorado Central and Pacific became the Colorado Central RR and laid 11 miles up the Clear Creek from Golden. By 1870, the Colorado Central had connected with the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific at Jersey Junction two miles north of Denver.

However, with the dawn of a new decade came Eastern interests and political wrangling among corporate entities, and the Union Pacific, Colorado Central, and Denver Pacific/Kansas Pacific jockeyed for control. Still, miles of track continued to be laid along the Clear Creek and into Central City and Black Hawk, and locomotives were delivered to Golden until the end of 1872.

Then the financial crisis of 1873 struck. The nation had already been hard hit, but now Colorado and the railroads were feeling the crunch. Though grading continued and routes were still laid, the Colorado Central found itself unable to pay its bills. Between financial woes, weather-related blockages, and corporate squabbling, the people of Georgetown had to wait another four years for the Colorado Central Railroad to reach them.

Despite the delay of a railroad, Georgetown continued to prosper and burst at the seams with people from all parts of the globe who’d made their fortunes in silver. There was every reason for the town to be optimistic as the train finally rode into town in August 1877. Georgetown had become the Silver Queen of Colorado.

Georgetown Narrow Gauge Railroad
iStock-471011565

As it turned out, the title was short-lived when Leadville overtook Georgetown with its rich silver veins and people began to migrate once again at the end of the decade. But the Georgetown Loop was an engineering marvel for its day, having devised “a system of curves and bridges reducing the average grade to three percent … including three hairpin turns, four bridges, and a thirty-degree horseshoe curve from Georgetown to Silver Plume,” says the Georgetown Loop RR website. The $3 train ride became one of Colorado’s “must see” attractions.

Today, the Georgetown Loop RR still amazes and attracts people from all over the world who want an “old time” experience on a narrow-gauge train through the astounding terrain of the Colorado Rockies. Along the route, the visitor can also disembark for a tour of the Lebanon Silver Mine—a once prolific source of silver in the district. They also offer a gold-panning experience. An Autumn Fest runs through the month of October when actors make the experience fun and engaging by dressing up as characters from the 1870s.  Then, beginning in November/December, they run a Santa North Pole adventure and Santa’s Lighted Forest trains.

Actors Portraying 1870s Characters, Georgetown Loop Railroad
October 2018: Donna's Gallery

Lebanon Silver Mine Tunnel, Georgetown Loop Railway
October 2018: Donna's Gallery

For more information about the Georgetown Loop Railroad and its holiday events visit https://www.georgetownlooprr.com/

And if you are a train aficionado and interested in a historically immersive experience about train travel in Colorado, visit the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado https://coloradorailroadmuseum.org/. 

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, will be released by Scrivenings Press in December 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. They love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.

What Drove Many Irish Women to Immigrate to America in the Mid-Nineteenth Century?

 By Donna Wichelman

I saw the Dingle Peninsula for the first time in 2009. Its untamed beauty inspired me even then. Only in 2018, on my second trip to the Dingle Peninsula, did the extraordinary landscape, its place in the history of the Great Hunger, and the people who lived there spark a story about a poor Irish woman in the Gilded Age who left it all behind to live in the Colorado Rockies.

But what did women like Anna leave behind and why?

Dingle Peninsula Looking from Connor Pass--Donna's Gallery 2009

Dingle Peninsula at Connor Pass--Donna's Gallery 2009

The Dingle Peninsula is located in southwest County Kerry, its remote mountainous finger jutting into the Atlantic Ocean being the western-most point of mainland Ireland. Anna would have walked the undulating hills of her homeland carpeted in emerald grasses and watched the roaring ocean crash against her rugged Irish shoreline. Sheep would have also grazed in the fields, while rainbows often painted the skies.

Town of Dingle, Ireland Across the Harbor--Donna's Gallery 2018

Rugged Irish Shoreline, Dingle Peninsula--Donna's Gallery 2009

Typical Sheep Grazing in the Fields--Donna's Gallery 2018

Image by Kang-Rui LENG from Pixabay

Yet, Anna would have also experienced a land that twenty years before had been ravished by the Great Hunger of 1845 – 1851--a time when the potato blight tragically killed more than one million people in Ireland by disease and starvation. County Kerry was the hardest hit. (Click on Famine Cottages to find out more about the site at Slea Head and read a real-life story of a family who lived during that era.)

Slea Head Famine Cottage Slea Head, Ireland

ID 137293521 © Miroslav Liska | Dreamstime.com

The social crisis that ensued from the Great Hunger changed Irish history. From the twelfth century, the British had occupied Irish soil. For six centuries, the British population grew in Ireland, many buying land and making money off the produce. Some became wealthy landlords. In the meantime, Britain played fast and loose with the Irish, passing laws but giving the Irish Parliament a small role.

But when the Irish Rebellion of 1798 failed, Britain enacted the 1800 Act of Union, bringing Ireland under full rule by combining the United Kingdom of Great Britain with Ireland. This set the stage for what occurred during the Great Hunger and continued to affect the course of Irish history into the twentieth century.

When the Great Hunger struck between 1845 - 1852, one million Irish died, and another million emigrated, mostly to the United States or Australia. Though the potato blight, a fungus-like mold called Phytophthora infestans, affected much of Europe in the 1840s, the Irish situation was made so much more devastating, because the British Parliament put undo pressure on the Irish food supply. 

Initially, Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister of Britain, attempted to alleviate the famine by buying £100,000 of sweet corn from the United States and having it shipped to Cork. He believed that by selling it cheaply, the cost would remain low. He also initiated a roads project to keep people employed and a relief commission to raise funds to keep the price of food low.

Though Sir Peel tried to repeal the Corn Laws that kept the price of grain artificially high, he was met with much controversy and resigned. The new Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, failed to help the situation. Worse yet, Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the relief effort, limited government aid on the basis of laissez-faire principles and a belief that God's judgment was on the immoral Irish who needed to be taught a lesson.

Moreover, Britain refused to give aid to the Irish unless they worked in the deadly diseased workhouses or renounced their Catholic faith. In the meantime, Britain exported the bulk of Irish dairy products and wheat harvests to feed Britain and its territories and legislated a financial tax burden on Irish landowners, who evicted their tenants to save money.

Famine Memorial in Dublin
ID 255062074 | Ireland © Piotr Koscielniak | Dreamstime.com

Famine Memorial in County Mayo of a Coffin Ship Emigrant Ship
ID 126979057 | Ireland © Debra Reschoff Ahearn | Dreamstime.com

By the end of the famine, most of the small farmers had disappeared. Landlords also lost their properties having seen their incomes fall during the famine and going bankrupt from empty rentals. Most of the estates were sold and the strong framer became the beneficiary of the famine--those farmers who acquired large acreages of land and added it to their holdings. These farmers converted from an agrarian to a grazing culture, raising sheep and cattle, and growing in prosperity. 

But not everyone prospered. Only sons could inherit property, and only the eldest son was eligible. Their siblings had to find work as laborers or become tenants of other landowners. Thus, though the system of landholding favored the wealthy class, it also unfairly rewarded some and not others. 

Women, in particular, were vulnerable. It had long been a tradition in Ireland for parents to arrange a marriage based on their ability to provide a dowry. If a woman came from a wealthy family, she could add to the other family's holdings and gain security for life. Some of these women chose to emigrate, unwilling to partake in a loveless marriage.

In addition, not all women were so fortunate as to enjoy the rewards of a wealthy family, and many of them emigrated with the hope of finding employment in the United States to earn a living. Most worked as domestics for a wealthy family. Some came with skills like tailoring and could make a considerable wage sewing clothes for those who could afford it. It was a lucky woman indeed who could also find a husband to marry.

The famine would have enduring results. As the nineteenth century drew to a close and the twentieth century began, the collective memories of those who had survived the famine affected the economic and political culture of Ireland and Irish-Americans. It would also play a contributing role in the anti-British sentiment that would lead to the Irish War of Independence, which began in January 1919 and ended on July 11, 1921. 

The Irish Free State was established on December 6, 1922, but on December 29, 1937, the constitutional name declared the nation to be known as "Ireland." The Republic of Ireland Act of 1948 described the nature of the state.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, will be released by Scrivenings Press in December 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. The love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.

A Real Life Story of Faith and Valor

By Donna Wichelman

If you’ve read my HHH blogs for any length of time, you may remember my series on French Chateaux and one in particular called Le Château De Lourmarin. Located in the region of Provence and the Luberon (hill country), I became fascinated by Le Château De Lourmarin when I discovered its history involving a community of pre-reformation Protestants known as Waldensians in the village of Lourmarin, France. The allure was based on having written two books in a romantic suspense series called the Waldensian Series.

Le Château De Lourmarin, May 2023 Donna's Gallery

Le Château De Lourmarin Gardens, May 2023 Donna's Gallery

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs dedicates less than a page to the Waldensians of the Cottian Alps west of Turin, Italy. Yet, their real-life story of valor and enduring faith in the midst of persecution in Europe throughout the second millennium AD touched and encouraged my heart so much, that I wanted to bring their story to life in a contemporary suspense novel that would give wings to courage and enduring faith in our time.

Historians debate the exact date and origins of the Waldensians, also known as the Vaudois or Valley Dwellers. Some have a compelling argument for the existence of this ancient sect, which originated with the first-century fathers, who settled in the Cottian Alps between France and Italy during a period of great persecution over the next two centuries. They continued to carry out their traditions into the second millennium.

The official Waldensian Church position says the movement began in 1170 A.D., when a rich merchant from Lyons, France converted to Christianity and took a vow of poverty. Others banded around Peter Waldo, and they became known as the Poor Men of Lyons. 

Regardless of which history is correct, a division arose between the Roman Catholic Church and the Waldensians by the end of the twelfth century. Though the Waldensians didn’t want to secede from the Roman Church, they hoped to sway the papacy to cease certain practices they said contradicted the Bible and the pure teachings of Christ.

The Waldensians also petitioned the papacy for various reforms, foremost among them were translating the Bible into the vernacular and allowing clergy to marry. The papacy would not concede to their position, calling Waldensians and any other Protestant sect heretics. Thus began centuries of martyrdom and persecution that helped set the stage for the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

Ancient School of the Barba Where Waldensians Translated the Bible into the Vernacular: Pra del Torno, Italy: Donna's Gallery 2006

Fast forward to the seventeenth century when Louis XIV became King of France in 1643. Believing he was God’s representative on earth and supported in that view by his mother, Louis brought on a renewed vigor to rid Europe of Protestant sects everywhere in Europe.

In 1655, a great persecution ensued, known as the Spring of Blood or the Piedmontese Easter. Men and women were flayed alive, burned at the stake, and drowned in lakes and ponds. Hundreds of Waldensian faithful were martyred for their faith.

By 1685, the Waldensians were forced from their homes in exile and fled over the mountains to Switzerland. Most wanted to return to their Alpine valleys and devised ways to make that happen. It wasn’t until the height of the Nine Year’s War in August 1689, when the tide of Europe turned against France, that William of Orange commissioned a militia made up of Waldensian and Huguenot soldiers to cross back over the mountains into their homelands in the Waldensian Valleys.

A Depiction of Waldensian Militia, Balziglia, Italy: Donna's Gallery, September 2015

Some of the French Peaks the Militia had to Cross Near Iseran, France During the Mini Ice Age: Donna's Gallery, September 2015

A Notable Ancient Bridge the Militia Crossed near Cluses, France: Donna's Gallery, September 2015

Under the leadership of Pastor Henri Arnaud, the soldiers braved not only French militia but the rains and snows of a mini ice age in the Alps, marching on foot for more than ten days from Yvoire on the south shore of Lake Geneva to their home valleys. They spent the better part of another year in Balziglia before they succeeded in defeating the French. At war’s end, the Protestant world hailed the Waldensians for their persevering faith and undying valor against all odds. They also received the honor and distinction of bringing their people back home in what became known as the Glorious Return.

A Copy of Henri Arnaud's Book on the History of the Glorious Return
Museum at Balziglia, Italy: Donna's Gallery, September 2015

Fortress and Museum at Balziglia, Italy: Donna's Gallery, September 2015

Waldensians lived in their ghetto valleys west of Turin for more than a hundred and fifty years under persecution. Then on 16, February 1848, the unified Italian government finally granted the Protestant church freedom to worship and assemble under the Declaration of Emancipation. On the seventeenth of February, local Waldensian assemblies lit bonfires in celebration of their civil liberties. Waldensians worldwide still light bonfires each year in commemoration of their freedoms.

A Typical Waldesnian House Furnished Simply in a Rodoretto: Donna's Gallery, September 2015

The largest group of Waldensians outside of Italy resides in Valdese, North Carolina. Each summer, the community puts on a festival of heritage, which includes a production called From This Day Forward in an amphitheater to honor the Waldensian's history. They’ve also constructed an outdoor replica of historical sites in Italy on their Trail of Faith. You can find more information about Valdese at www.visitvaldese.com.

Replica of the Cave of Faith in the Angrogna Valley, Italy in Valdese, North Carolina: Donna's Gallery, 

The Waldensian story lives on as a testimony of a people whose valor and enduring faith withstood the test of time. This ought to encourage and strengthen Christians as we hear and read stories about those who are persecuted and martyred around the world in our time.

Post Script: In the summer of 2015, four months after I published Light Out of Darkness, the first book in my Waldensian Series, Pope Frances apologized to the Waldensians for a millennium of religious persecution. It was a momentous occasion for the descendants of this pre-reformation group.

More About the History of the Waldensians:
• The History of the Waldenses by J.A. Wylie
• You are My Witnesses: The Waldensians Across 800 Years by Giorgio Tourn
• The Glorious Recovery by The Vaudois of their Valleys, by Henri Arnaud
• Waldensian Cultural Centre, Torre Pellice, Italy www.fondazionevaldese.org

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys exploring people and cultures of the world and developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna received her master's degree in mass communication/journalism from San Jose State University and became a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, will be released by Scrivenings Press in December 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. The love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.

Beginning July 4th in honor of Independence Day and through July, Donna is running a Giveaway of The Last Will and Testament of Anne Charbonnier, a seventeenth-century short story prequel to her Waldensian Series. Of those who sign up for Donna's newsletter, one person will also receive four full-length contemporary and historical novels written by Scrivenings Press authors. Visit Donna's website at www.donnawichelman.com to receive your copy of The Last Will and Testament of Anne Charbonnier and enter the contest.