History of Mother's Day by Donna Schlachter

Photo by Simon Berger from Pexels

Mother’s Day, although past for this year, has a long and varied history. Attributed to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the celebration of their mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele is believed to be the first references to setting aside a specific day to remember and honor the contributions of not only goddesses but also of the women in our lives.

Photo by Javier Cruz from Pexels

Early Christians, wanting to reach these pagan cultures, initiated their own festival called “Mothering Sunday”, designed to draw believers and seekers alike into local churches or ‘mother church’, and was held on the fourth Sunday in Lent.

Photo by Sharefaith from Pexels

As with most religious celebrations, eventually secularism took hold. In the 1860s, Ann Reeves Jarvis started “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs”, where women were taught the skills needed to maintain their households, including cooking, cleaning, sewing, needlework, child-rearing, and so more. Following the Civil War, the group changed its name to “Mothers Friendship Day”, where women from both sides of the conflict were encouraged to befriend each other in hopes of aiding the country to reunite.


By 1870, Julia Ward Howe, with an eye on world peace, instituted her Mothers Day Proclamation and set June 2nd as the date for the celebration of the work of the women in her group.

Photo by Eva Elijas from Pexels

In 1905, Ann Jarvis died, and her daughter, Anna Jarvis, who never married, worked tirelessly to set aside a day each year to honor the sacrifices made by women for their children and their families. By 1908, the day was being celebrated in many towns and states, often with the support of a local department store. In 1912, the government officially set aside the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day.

However, by 1920, Ann Jarvis was disgruntled at the commercialization of the holiday, and spent the rest of her life (she died in 1948) trying to undo all her hard work.

Photo by Giftpundits.com from Pexels

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day with cards, flowers, gifts, and oftentimes a day off from cooking and other household chores.


Celebrating Around the World

In Thailand, the day is celebrated on the birthday of the current queen, which currently is in August.

In Ethiopia, a multi-day celebration is held in early Fall.



No matter its source or how you celebrate, mothers are certainly important. None of us would be here without a mother. And regardless of the number of children borne, mothers are molders, those tireless individuals who fashion us into the productive adults we all strive to become. As women, we all have an important job to do—setting the example for the next generation, and teaching other women how to fulfill their God-given calling to impact and change lives.



Resources:

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/mothers-day

https://www.shutterfly.com/ideas/mothers-day-bible-verses/

Donna lives in Denver with husband Patrick. As a hybrid author, she writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, devotional books, and books on the writing craft.





 

 

 

 

 

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Freedmen's Schools

By Michelle Shocklee

When the American Civil War ended in April 1865, nearly four million slaves embraced freedom for the first time. They were free to make their own choices, free to move about the country, and free to be educated if they so desired. Due to anti-literacy laws in many southern states dating back to the early 1800s, most of the former slaves could not read or write. It's difficult to imagine elected government officials creating laws that prevent people from learning to read or write, yet, shamefully, those very laws stood for decades.

   

From the first days of their freedom, the former slaves desired formal education. And not just for children, as we think of school attendees, but for adults too. Opening the doors to schools that already existed where white children were educated sadly wasn't an option, so new schools had to be created. To help with the reconstruction of the South, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land, or the Freedmen's Bureau, an organization that provided assistance to newly freed slaves, offered rations to refugees and freed people displaced by the war, supervised the development of a labor system, and established Freedmen's schools throughout the South. Gaining an education was not only a symbol of freedom, but it also provided the former slaves the means of protecting themselves when dealing with potential employers. Understanding labor contracts and other legal documents was vital to the newly freed men and women.  

A freedmen's school on the James' plantation in North Carolina

In Richmond, Virginia, one of the earliest freedmen's schools was established in the eastern end of the city at Chimborazo in June 1865, on the site where a large Confederate hospital had operated just a few weeks before. During reconstruction the Freedmen's Bureau used its authority over former Confederate properties to provide buildings for schools. The Freedmen's Bureau, missionary associations, and African Americans themselves funded the schools. The New York Friends' Association supported the Chimborazo School, which had enrolled over three hundred students by November 1865. The register for October 1868 reflected students ranging in age from four to twenty-nine. Chimborazo School became a part of the City of Richmond's newly established school system in 1870.

Teachers for the new schools came from all walks of life. There were both men and women, single and married. Some came from the North, but some also came from the South. Some were black, like Charlotte Forten and Mary Peake, who taught in "contraband schools" prior to the end of the war, and had been born, raised, and educated as free citizens. While teaching reading, writing, and math skills was important, not all schools for freedmen were devoted exclusively to academic training. Most provided instruction in some vocational skills, and some were designed as plantation schools, farm schools, sewing schools, or industrial schools. Although the work was difficult, it was also rewarding. As one teacher wrote in a letter to her family, "This is a most absorbing life: there is so much to be done, one never feels like stopping anywhere through the hours of the day. It is death to ennui. I, for one, was never so truly happy as in this work."

Everyone, however, was not pleased with educating blacks. Many freedmen's schools were burned, as described in this quotation from the Nashville Press in September 1866:

A freedmen's school burning during the Memphis riots in 1866

"We are sorry to say that some very mean rascals burned down the freedmen's school at Decherd the other day. The fellows who perpetrated the act deserve to be kicked out of civilized society. As they will be required to rebuild the school-house, and will have colored troops sent there by the bureau forthwith to prevent any further interference with the humble and laudable efforts of a poor people to educate and improve themselves, they will find out that laying schoolhouses in ashes is a very unprofitable sort of amusement to indulge in."

The newspaper went on to publish a letter from Major General Johnson to General Fisk, commander, stating that in areas of Nashville where Union troops had withdrawn, "colored schools" were being forced to close and the teachers ordered to leave. The Major assures the General that he will "post colored troops there to enforce the laws, and protect the schools."

Despite hardships, lack of funds, and opposition, the schools grew and thrived. By the end of 1865, more than 90,000 former slaves were enrolled as students in such public schools. By 1870, there were more than 1,000 schools for freedmen in the South. Colleges were also established under the Freedmen's Bureau, offering higher education to young black men and women.

Freedom had brought many changes for blacks, and education was one key to making sure those changes were positive ones.

A marker commemorating a Freedmen's School
in Morgan County, Georgia

Michelle Shocklee is the award-winning author of The Planter's Daughter and The Widow of Rose Hill. Her historical novella set in the New Mexico Territory is included in The Mail-Order Brides Collection. Michelle and her husband of 31 years make their home in Tennessee. Connect with her at www.MichelleShocklee.com.

THE WIDOW OF ROSE HILL

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?

https://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Shocklee/e/B01MYD4TRE/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1486004955&sr=8-1

MONTANA CATTLE BARON CONRAD KOHRS

"They were a rugged set of men, these pioneers, well qualified for their self-assumed task. In the pursuit of wealth a few succeeded and the majority failed,...the range cattle industry has seen its inception, zenith, and partial extinction all within a half-century. The changes of the past have been many; those of the future may be of even more revolutionary character." —Conrad Kohrs, 1913

Conrad Kohrs and his friends in the parlor of the main ranch house.

Once a sprawling 10-million-acre cattle ranch, the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historical Site is now open to the public to explore. It is not a petting zoo for cows and horses, nor is it a dude ranch. Nope, it’s a working cattle ranch where cowboys still have chores and work hard every season of the year. The ranch is a unique opportunity to take a glimpse into an important period in taming the Old West.

The Montana gold rush of the 1860s lured many a man to stake his claim, but few realized the lucrative potential of selling beef to the miners in butcher shops at the camps. Miners would pay in gold for a nice, juicy steak after eating beans morning, noon, and night.

Carsten Conrad Kohrs, an immigrant from Germany, may have followed his gold fever from California, to Canada, and finally to Montana in 1862, but he soon discovered the motherload of gold on the hoof and became one of the first Montana cattle barons. He had learned the butcher trade from relatives in New York and Iowa and set up a butcher shop, at first taking advantage of the herds of longhorns driven up from Texas.

The main ranch house was built in 1862 by Johnny Grant
and known as the most beautiful home in Montana Territory.
Conrad Kohrs bought the property in 1866 and added a brick addition in 1890. 

Starting small, Kohrs purchased his first ranch in 1866 from Johnny Grant near Deer Lodge in Montana Territory. At first, he only grazed the cattle sold in his butcher shops, but then his business grew until he was shipping 10,000 head of cattle every year to the Chicago stockyards that supplied beef to most of the country. Eventually, he amassed a cattle empire that ranged over four states and two Canadian provinces.

The range was unfenced, and by the 1870s, the bison had almost been wiped out, and the Native Americans couldn’t fight the onslaught of settlers and cattle ranchers. Cattlemen bred the longhorns that came from a Spanish strain with English shorthorns and helped multiply Kohrs herds.

Cowboys herding cattle on the Kohrs Ranch in 1910

The open grasslands of Montana Territory offered unlimited grazing land. Once a herd overgrazed an area, the cowboys simply moved the herd to new pasture. Feed was plentiful.

By the mid-1880s, raising cattle was so lucrative that foreign investors and Eastern opportunists rushed to Montana to make their fortunes. Raising cattle was big business. Ranches multiplied and herds grew larger until there was not enough grazing land to feed them all.

Then came the deep snows and bitter-cold winter of 1886-87 that wiped out almost half the cattle in Montana. When homesteaders started fencing their 160-acre plots of land with barbwire, it was the beginning of the end for the cattle barons.

Even though the cattle “gold” rush only lasted less than half a century, the pioneering spirit of the cattle ranchers changed the industry forever. Much like small farms, there are still cattle ranchers in Montana who take the risk of making money off the range, but there are none who can rival the cattle barons, especially Conrad Kohrs.

All photos in this post are courtesy of the 

National Park Service and are public domain.

***

Will my hero Buck McKean in Dreams of My Heart become a cattle baron in The Reluctant Brides series? Stay tuned for book 2, Love of My Heart, that releases February 1, 2019.

My feisty Irish bride Kate O'Brien McKean asks her Texas cattleman husband Buck for an annulment in Dreams of My Heart, book 1 of The Reluctant Brides series, setting off a chain reaction of events that endangers them both. The historical romance set in 1875 Montana Territory releases April 1 from Mountain Brook Ink. The e-book is available for preorder on Amazon.

After a career spent acquiring and editing books by numerous bestselling Christian authors, Barbara J. Scott has returned to her true love—writing. Barbara and her husband Mike live in the Nashville area, with their two Chihuahuas, Riley and Sissy, both rescued from puppy mills. Reading, writing, and research are her passions. Want to know more? Connect with Barbara at www.BarbaraJScott.com.

Medical Treatment in the Old West

In the Old West, there were plenty of ways to die, including snake bites, bullet wounds, STDs, dysentery, rabies, childbirth, and Malaria (known as ague) along with a host of other diseases or accidental injuries.

Prior to the Civil War, poor people had a better chance of surviving sickness or injury than their ritzier neighbors. Doctors of that time, if they were trained at all, tended to bleed their patients to balance the humoral systems of the body, up to as much as a pint per day. Not only had they never heard of a germ, none of them even grasped the rudimentary basics of personal hygiene. Physicians would never think of washing their hands or sterilizing their instruments before working on a person. A pre-Civil War patient was better off using home remedies than making a trip to the doctor in town.

Battle of Spottsylvania in Virginia byThure de Thulstrup

The Civil War changed medical treatment forever and ushered in what we think of now as the modern era of medicine. More than 12,000 physicians treated millions of soldiers on the battlefield during the conflict between the North and South from 1861 to 1865. Bleeding a man with leeches while he was already bleeding from a ghastly bullet wound didn’t make much sense, so doctors veered off the track of traditional medicine and got creative. Amputation became the norm to stave off infection, but doctors also gained insight that would help save future patients and their limbs.

Before the Civil War, anyone could hang out a shingle as a doctor, and in the Old West, frontier medicine was often administered by quacks peddling snake-oil and unregulated opiate drugs. Many of them were unsavory characters hiding out in small towns. Native American medicine men knew more about healing the body than the average doctor.
When the War Between the States broke out, the qualifications for becoming an army doctor or surgeon were minimal. But in 1862, a revolution in medicine was set in motion by U.S. Surgeon General William Hammond. He made it a requirement that all military physicians receive training in public health, hygiene, and surgery.

Then he sent out an odd, yet revolutionary request to all field medical personnel in the Union Army to forward any notes or specimens of morbid anatomy that might add to the knowledge base in the practice of military medicine and surgery. Rather than basing medicine on accepted tradition, i.e. bloodletting, Hammond ushered in medical treatment based on evidence. The samples he collected provided case studies to train and prepare doctors during and after the war.

After the Civil War, rather than returning home, many of those battlefield-trained doctors headed west and set up offices along the way. They trained other physicians and medical assistants and practiced the new methods they had learned during the war.

Gunshot wounds, which often became infected and led to amputation or death, were treated post-Civil War by leaving the wound open and cleaning it regularly until new skin developed, rather than amputating or taking out the bullet and then sewing up the patient, which led to infection.

The knowledge gained on Civil War battlefields saved countless lives in the years to come in the Old West.

         ***

My hero Buck McKean suffers a gunshot wound in my upcoming historical romance novel Dreams of My Heart, book 1 of The Reluctant Brides series that releases April 1, 2018 from Mountain Brook Ink. Thankfully, the doctor who treats him in my story set in Deer Lodge, Montana Territory was a battlefield surgeon during the Civil War.

After more than twenty years spent acquiring and editing books by numerous bestselling Christian authors, Barbara J. Scott has returned to her true love—writing. Barbara and her husband Mike live in the Nashville area, where sweet tea is a food staple, with their two Chihuahuas, Riley and Sissy, both rescued from puppy mills. Reading, writing, and research are her passions. Want to know more? Connect with Barbara at www.BarbaraJScott.com.

Locust invasion and US Army aid

Cara Grandle here.

Have you ever read a western, settlers or pioneer novel where a major environmental catastrophe was involved? Floods, fires, blizzards? How about locusts? Over the next few posts I’m going to talk about interesting historical facts behind several of these obstacles.

Starting with locusts.

Locust storm wipe out everything. Crops. Food. Wood. Even the wool off the sheep’s back. They were a serious threat to survival. An invading swarm could mean starvation for all around.

Where should we begin?

How about finding out the difference between a grasshopper and a locust?

Quoting the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior contributor, Alexandre Bsevolo Latchininsky, Entomologist says, “All locusts are grasshoppers but not all grasshoppers are locusts. Out of 12,000 described grasshopper species in the world, only about a dozen should be considered locusts.”

Phew. Only a dozen. Which after we figure out what defines a locust you will be as grateful as I am that only 12 of 12,000 behave this way:

• Dreaded and destructive. 
• Like a firestorm. 
• Travel on the winds. 7 mph. Looks like a dust cloud. Desert locust covers huge area. 
• Wings crackling. Thrumb-humbing buzzing. 
• Scientists don’t know how the insects choose to land. Maybe color…the green of food looks like a McDonalds stop. They eat everything. One woman reported wearing a dress of white with green stripes. The locusts settled on her and ate every bit of the green stripe in the dress before anything could be done about it.
• Locusts are three inches long, weigh one ounce, and eats its body weight in one day. 
• Locusts respond different than grasshoppers to crowding. It changes color. From russet browns to yellow and black. Then it eats a belly full of poison plants, so if a predator eats him it will not eat another. The head changes shape. They band. After they eat all the local food, they swarm. 
• The swarm is able to eat up to 200 tons of vegetation in a single day.
• Locusts swarms have been recorded on every continent accept Antarctica.
• Locusts outbreaks happened on a small scale every 3-5 years, with a major infestation every 6-8 years. 

Libya, June 2012, 2 million people starved to death after a locust infestation that could have been prevented with infestation control. A political move by a now deceased leader led to this tragedy.


Utah, July 1847, A swarm of Mormon Crickets, a wingless desert locust three times the size of a regular desert locust, marched by the millions clearing 10,000 acres of crops. Cannibals, they march to keep from getting eaten by the locust behind them. The swarm lasted for three weeks.


Rocky Mountains, June 1875, the sun was blocked for five days as the land was infested with Rocky Mountain Locusts. Named Albert’s Storm. Albert Child was a county judge and a weather watcher who measured the swarm with his weather tools. He determined that the swarm was 100 miles wide, 1,800 miles long, and 1.5 miles high, containing 3.5 trillion locusts covering 198,000 miles. 300 thousand acres destroyed.
As the weather cooled the swarms would collect on the railroad tracks to absorb the heat of the sun by day and retain it well into the night. They wouldn’t get out of the way of the train, creating a slippery gooey mess that made train passage precarious.


Famine. Death by starvation. 

Survival facts:

Farmers tried all sorts of things to scare the insects away. They built trenches and filled them with fire only to have the grasshoppers smother the fires. One survival tactics was to eat the locust. Many pulled the legs and wings and fried them in butter to stay alive.

Only 1 in 10 families were left with enough provisions to last out the winter. Kansas alone lost one third of its population. Folks abandoned their stakes and return to the east, slowing The Oregon Trail flood by 20 percent. 

 

Where is the hope in such news?

People are resilient. People do great things.

Hope:

The first ever organized relief effort preformed by the US Army was in answer to this locust invasion.
During that terrible winter, soldiers distributed thousands of heavy coats, boots, shoes, woolen blanket and nearly 2 million rations to suffering families in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado Territory and Dakota Territory. More importantly, it gave the Army a beginning experience with this type of aid.


Add more hope:
The eggs from this massive storm hatched and were frozen out by an early winter storm and the people passed The Grasshopper Act which made it mandatory for able-bodied men to work for at least 2 days during hatch season to eliminate locust larva or be fined $10.00. On top of that, they offered a bounty of $1.00 a bushel for locust's larva collected. By the 1880s they had recovered enough to resume exports. Some switched to winter crops that could be harvested before the larva hatched.


And the final hope:
The Rocky Mountain Locust is now considered extinct. The last sighting was in 1902 in Canada. The reason they are extinct is still considered a mystery.

With all this crazy, it’s amazing to me that there aren’t more stories of locust invasion in pioneer, western, and settler stories. Hmmmmm. Book idea anyone?

Have you ever experienced any sort of insect invasion? I'd love to hear from you.

If you've made it this far, I'd like to tell you about something new. I started a podcast. Home for writers, readers and regular Joes. If you are a podcast listener and you need a dose of joy-meets-common sense come on over to Life Caraphrased. 

CaraGrandle is a Historical Romance Novelist who prefers to write about the early settlers of the Pacific Northwest. Think trappers and loggers and scroungy-backed woodsmen. She is represented by the Steve Laube Agency. Cara leads the author4TheAuthor writers group on Facebook, home to 190 writers. Together they're pressing back on busy and making a space for their dreams. 

Cara is currently out on submission. Follower her journey on her Facebook author page.

Prayers much appreciated. Smile.

Batter Up, Ladies! The Beginnings of Women's Baseball

Baseball is said to be America's greatest past time, and it's as old as America itself--if not older. While Abner Doubleday is attributed with inventing baseball in New York in 1839, some scholars think people were playing a sport much like it on US soil by the 1790's, and that game was based on another played in medieval Europe, People have apparently been hitting balls with a stick for a long, long time!

"Medieval Baseball"` Cantigas de Santa Maria, circa 1280. Public Domain

Regardless of its origins, baseball was extremely popular in the mid 1800's--not just among men, but women, too, despite many people's beliefs at that time that ladies shouldn't partake of vigorous exercise.

One source of evidence for females playing "base ball" (as it was called back then) comes from the first women's colleges in America. Students asked for teams and space to play in the 1860's, implying they already knew the rules and what to do. Vassar College formed two teams in 1866, but provided no instruction, supervision, or equipment.(Click here to see a wonderful photo of one of the teams!) 

Other colleges had teams, as well. Baseball was a little rougher than it is now (it included shoving, tripping, etc.), and the play at Smith College was apparently so unmannerly the administration banned it from campus for a time.

Baseball fever among females wasn't limited to women's colleges, of course. In September of 1875, Springfield, Illinois hosted an exhibition game between the Blondes and the Brunettes. The Blondes won, 42-38, but from that point forward, teams with those names comprised of blondes squaring off against brunette players toured the country for several years.

The Dolly Vardens of Philadelphia was an African American ladies' team. (There were several teams of white male players in Pennsylvania who went by this name in baseball's early days, and the two teams are sometimes confused.) In 1883, the New York Times reported that Miss Ella Harris was team captain of the calico-clad Dolly Vardens, and on a game day, the opposing team missed the train and had to forfeit. 

Late 1860's fashion, not ideal for playing baseball! by Henri le Leure, Carte-de-visite portrait of Margherita of Savoy-Genoa. Public Domain {{PD-1923}}

Uniforms were not worn by female players then, nor were gloves (by male or female players). Women wore their every day clothing, which could mean up to thirty pounds of fabric: slips, corset, dress, stockings, etc., and heeled shoes.

In the 1890s, things got a little more comfortable, clothes-wise, when players began to wear Bloomers. The Boston Bloomer Girls club found it far easier to run in the loose pants instead of a skirt. The Bloomer Girls toured America in 1897, playing (and often beating) men's clubs. 

Palisade, CO women's baseball team, around 1910. Public Domain.

It wasn't until the 1930's, however, when female baseball players toured out of the country and signed minor league contracts. In 1943, Philip Wrigley (owner of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley's Gum) founded the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a precursor to today's modern leagues and clubs.

Thanks to the female pioneers of yesteryear, women and girls all over the world play baseball and softball for enjoyment and exercise. 

***

BIO:

Susanne Dietze began writing love stories in high school, casting her friends in the starring roles. Today, she's the award-winning author of over a dozen historical romances who's seen her work on the ECPA and Publisher's Weekly Bestseller Lists for Inspirational Fiction. Married to a pastor and the mom of two, Susanne lives in California and enjoys fancy-schmancy tea parties, genealogy, the beach, and curling up on the couch with a costume drama and a plate of nachos. You can learn more on her website, www.susannedietze.com. 

Her new novella, The Right Pitch from July's Of Rags and Riches Romance Collection, features a 4th of July exhibition game between two ladies' baseball teams during the Centennial Celebration of 1876.

All Aboard the Jarrett-Palmer Express

After 1869, when Leland Stanford drove the ceremonial Golden Spike connecting the Union Pacific and Central Pacific rail lines to create the first transcontinental railroad in America, passengers could travel from coast-to-coast by rail. The voyage took approximately one week, at speeds averaging 20 mph.

The week-long trip was incredibly fast for the time, but in 1876, the trip was accomplished--one time only--in just eighty-three hours.

Henry Jarrett & Henry Palmer are the duo responsible for coming up with this amazing event. One might suspect they were in the railroad business, but in fact, they managed a New York theatre company. Eager for a way to promote their troupe, they determined they'd travel to the west coast by rail in four days, where the actors would get off the train and perform Henry V in San Francisco.

It was an incredibly complicated, cooperative effort that required tremendous planning and expense. Naturally, the trip received a good deal of press in the months leading up to the departure--which Jarrett & Palmer must have enjoyed, since tickets to Henry V sold well, too. At last the big day came, and with much fanfare, the train pulled out of the station in Jersey City, New Jersey, on June 1, 1876.

To complete the journey in the four-day time frame, trains would have to move at high speeds, and necessary stops would have to be as short as possible. All the way to California, rail workers ensured as smooth a path as possible, clearing the way of debris and diverting other trains onto side tracks so the Lightning Express could zip by. At every scheduled stop, supplies, water, and coal were ready for quick loading, as were staff, including conductors, brakemen, firemen and engineers. Likewise, the engine was switched out five times to avoid mechanical issues.

The Lightning Express must have caused a great deal of inconvenience for the railroads and passengers on other trains, but if anyone minded, they seem to have been in the minority. Day and night, people lined the tracks to get a gander at the train, and several towns shot off fireworks when it passed. Reportedly, a man's funeral was interrupted by the coming of the train; everyone went to look at it and returned to the church to finish the service afterwards. 

Businesses and agencies got in on the act, too. The New York Times shipped its newspaper to Chicago on the train, Wells Fargo put a safe in the baggage car, and the USPS created a postmark for mail that went on the train. 

Being a passenger on the Lightning Express wasn't the most comfortable experience, however. Traveling at a high rate of speed wasn't as smooth then as it is on modern trains. The jarring and jolting made it difficult to sleep, walk, or cook, so most food was served cold. When passengers did manage to catch a few winks, they awoke to cinders on their faces.

To be a coast-to-coast trip, the passengers took the train as far as it would go, Oakland, California, and boarded a ferry to take them to San Francisco. A mob was waiting, even though the train was twelve hours early.

At last, the passengers arrived in San Francisco. Despite a few difficulties with equipment and weather, the Lightning Express completed the trip in just three days, eleven hours, and 39 minutes--an astounding achievement in technology.

The production of Henry V was a success, too, just as Jarrett & Palmer hoped, but the legacy of the express train known by their names is far more lasting as a mechanical achievement, national source of pride and celebration, and a stepping stone for more efficient travel in America. 

For more, read: The Jarrett-Palmer Express of 1876, Coast to Coast in Eighty-Three Hours, by J. C. Ladenheim, Harvest Books, 2008.

Find on Amazon for more information

GIVEAWAY:

The Jarrett-Palmer Express inspired the train in my new novella, The Honeymoon Express, just released as part of The Rails to Love Collection by Barbour Publishing.

Enter to win a copy of The Rails to Love Collection by expressing interest in the comments and including a way to reach you before 11:59 pm EST Oct 6, 2016. A winner will be announced here on Oct 7. (Sorry, US only, please.)

BIO: Susanne Dietze is the author of nine new and upcoming historical romances. She has a special affection for trains because her father is a railroad enthusiast who pegged the engine on the book cover as being from New Zealand. You can learn more about her on her website at www.susannedietze.com.

The Healing Hot Springs Hotel of Cañon City, Colorado

By Davalynn Spencer

Photo courtesy Cañon City’s Famed Hot Springs Resort    

When my maternal grandfather, Tillman Harrison Jameson, was a young man, doctors sent him from Texas to Cañon City, Colorado, to “take the waters” and clear his burdened lungs in the dry, pristine air of the Rocky Mountains.

It worked.

I never knew this grandfather, for he died before I was born. But my mother often spoke of her father’s recuperative six-week stay in Cañon City near an incredibly deep gorge. Little did I know that someday I would live in that very city, walk across a bridge spanning that very gorge, and discover the history of the Hot Springs Hotel where people came from miles around to “take the waters.”

For centuries, hot springs steamed near the mighty Arkansas River of southern Colorado as an anomaly against the rugged Front Range. And it was exactly this unusual hot spot that drew the Native Americans, trappers, and traders to winter in the mild climactic area, not far from the mouth of a 1,000-foot gorge known today as The Royal Gorge.

History tells us that explorer Zebulon Pike and company camped at the hot springs in 1806. In the early 1860s, a group of hardy West-seekers claimed the surrounding fertile land of the upper Arkansas River Valley and Cañon City was born.

The first bath house, circa 1878.
Photo courtesy Cañon City’s Famed Hot Springs Resort    

The local Ute tribe touted the curative powers of the springs, and within twenty years settlers had built a bath house upon the site cupped protectively in the shelter of granite outcroppings. No gentle rolling foothills here, perhaps a brutal surprise to settlers traveling from the Midwest or the Appalachians. For the Rocky Mountains jut suddenly from the plains with seismic impudence.

Historian Ruth Stinemeyer writes in her booklet on the springs, quoting a notice in an early newspaper, the Cañon City Times: “The temperature of the Hot Springs about one mile above town ranges from 100 to 125 degrees. It is pronounced to be the thing and many of our people try it.”

Over the years, various owners and operators of the property remodeled or rebuilt the bath house. Patrons from around the country visited for the waters’ restorative powers, and for a time, Cañon City shuttled in a horse-drawn bus those “invalids who are benefitted by the use of hot baths,” the Times reported.

According to Anne C. Vinnola’s book, Cañon City, in the Images of America collection, Dr. J.L. Prentiss built a 38-room, three story hotel and health spa at the springs in 1873. Visitors from Cripple Creek, Victor, Leadville, and other mining towns arrived by train to rest and benefit from the warm waters.

The Hot Springs Resort, or hotel, was an area landmark for more than seventy years and figures in one of my historical novels, Romancing the Widow, a Will Roger’s Gold Medallion winner for inspirational Western fiction.

Denver and Rio Grande tracks heading into the canyon. A stop was made for passengers to walk across the Arkansas River on the wooden foot bridge to reach the resort.
Photo courtesy Cañon City’s Famed Hot Springs Resort

The story’s hero, Haskell Tillman Jacobs—recognize a name?—is a Colorado Ranger on the hunt for a horse thief when he literally runs into Martha Mae Stanton, a recently widowed young woman of Cañon City.

Haskell visits the hot springs, and I write of him crossing the footbridge spanning the rushing river. In my mind’s eye, I see him leaving his horse tethered on the north shore and walking gingerly across to enjoy the baths during the resort’s heydays.

Incorporating actual historic settings and using familial names in my stories are two of the things I enjoy most about writing historical fiction.

Sadly, the famous Hot Springs Hotel can no longer be visited, for the springs today are covered by a private residence. The land surrounding the springs remains somewhat unchanged, aside from nurseries and gardens, but the site can be seen from north of the Arkansas River while hiking the popular Tunnel Drive trail.

An etched glass from the hotel, early 1900s, given to me by a friend.
The miniature lamp is 7 inches tall.    

The wooden footbridge is gone, and so too, are the seekers who traveled to Cañon City to heal their aches and pains and “take the waters.”

But in the heart of one resort patron’s granddaughter and in the pages of her historical fiction, the Hot Springs Hotel lives on.

Best-selling author Davalynn Spencer writes inspirational Western romance complete with rugged cowboys, their challenges, and their loves. She is the 2015 recipient of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Western Inspirational Fiction and has also finaled for the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award, the Holt Medallion, and the Selah Awards. As a former rodeo journalist and newspaper reporter, she has won several journalistic awards and has more than 100 freelance articles, interviews, and devotionals published in national periodicals. She teaches Creative Writing at Pueblo Community College and pens a popular slice-of-life column for a mid-size daily newspaper. Davalynn makes her home on Colorado’s Front Range with a Queensland heeler named Blue and two mouse detectors, Annie and Oakley. Connect with her online at: www.davalynnspencer.com

The 12 Brides of Summer

Sources: Cañon City’s Famed Hot Springs Resort, by Ruth Stinemeyer, reprinted 1997; Images of American, Cañon City, by Anne C. Vinnola, 2010; The Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center

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Davalynn's Latest Release: The 12 Brides of Summer 

Meet 12 adventurous Victorian era women—a beekeeper who is afraid of bees, a music teacher whose dog has dug up a treasure, a baker who enters a faux courtship, and six more—along with the men they encounter while making summertime memories. Will these loves sown during summer be strengthened by faith and able to endure a lifetime?