Have an Animal Cracker! - and a Giveaway

 By Davalynn Spencer

Crackers are my downfall. Especially those that are slightly sweet. Somehow, I feel less guilty for binging, um, I mean eating a few.

No cooking required, right? Add a hot cup of tea or coffee, and I have a perfect meal substitute to fuel me through a writing project. Maybe that’s why D.F. Stauffer's animal crackers showed up in my latest novella, Just in Time for Christmas.

The year 1875 in the Old West saw most people preparing their own food with few exceptions: those who could afford to hire a cook or eat at cafés and hotels, and those who showed up on time during a cattle drive for whatever Cookie had prepared.

There were no fast-food places, unless one considered hard tack and jerked beef fast food. If so, that fare could be found a short reach away in one’s saddlebags.

American tastes for British “biscuits” (crackers) ensured the import of such delectables from England, which led domestic bakers to try their hand at the craft. (The term “cracker” was reportedly coined by New York baker Josiah Bent in 1801 for a crunchy biscuit/cookie.)

D.F. Stauffer and son Albert in the Stauffer's Steam Biscuit Bakery delivery wagon, 1989.
(Image from author's collection: A Cookbook, by D.F. Stauffer, York, PA Mennonite Biscuit Cookie Company)

D.F. Stauffer Biscuit Company’s famous animal-shaped crackers first showed up in York, Pennsylvania, in 1871. According to the introduction in A Cookbook, by D.F. Stauffer, David F. Stauffer began his venture with five barrels of crackers from a business founded in 1858 by Jacob Weiser. The Stauffer cracker barrels were delivered by wheelbarrow. Today, Stauffer's products are delivered by semi-tractor trailers across the United States and several other countries. 

Two additional Stauffer bakeries also produce animal crackers and other products in Cuba, New York, and Santa Ana, California. Some crackers come in unique flavors, such as cheddar-cheese whales and ginger-flavored “snaps,” but animal crackers remain their best seller. 

From author's "collection." Stauffer's Animal Crackers

In the 1800s, other domestic bakeries joined forces as the New York Biscuit Company in 1889. The National Biscuit Company formed in 1898, which we recognize today as Nabisco.

Over the years, conglomerate mergers have swallowed the once privately owned bakeries. But Stauffer’s Animal Crackers live on (not to be confused with Nabisco’s Barnum Animals of 1902 origin). 

From author's collection.

According to the stauffers.com web site, Stauffer's is currently owned by Meiji Seika of Japan. There are currently 13 animal-cracker shapes. My favorite, of course, was always the horse. 

Thirteen animal shapes still offered today by Stauffer's Animal Crackers.
Image courtesy Wikipedia.

What about you? Do you (or did you) have a favorite animal-cracker shape? Regardless of its origin, share your chosen animal shape in the comments below, and I’ll toss your name in the cookie tin for a drawing. The randomly-chosen winner will receive a signed print copy of A High-Country Christmas Romance Collection which includes Just in Time for Christmas.

Happy munching!

Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. As the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, she writes romance for those who enjoy a Western tale with a rugged hero, both historical and contemporary. She holds the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction, teaches writing workshops, and plays the keyboard on her church worship team. When she’s not writing, teaching, or playing, she’s wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Learn more about Davalynn and her books at www.davalynnspencer.com. Become a newsletter friend and receive a free historical novella: http://eepurl.com/xa81D.

Virginia City’s Great Fire of 1875

If you were like me, you may have heard—or even sung—the following little children’s song in your youth.

Late one night, when we were all in bed,

Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed,

And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,

"There'll be a HOT time on the old town tonight."

FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!

The song was a parody of the tune of “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and was meant to be about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (although it was later found that poor Mrs. Leary and her cow had nothing to do with starting the Chicago fire). Songs like these get lodged in the fabric of our childhood and help us to recall major historical events like this fire, which burned for several days, killed up to 300 people, and left another 100,000 homeless.

But there are other fires we don’t recall or may never have heard of. I featured one such event in Heartfelt Echoes, my novella from the First Love Forever Romance Collection. It was the Great Fire of 1875, which burned a large portion of Virginia City, Nevada.

Virginia City was a boomtown which sprang up in 1859 with the discovery of the Comstock Lode—the first major silver deposit to be discovered in the United States. Of course, as you probably know, once gold, silver, or other such mineral/ore deposits are found, people flock to that area and towns crop up quickly. In the case of Virginia City, the new settlement formed almost overnight. People flooded in to work for one of several major mining operations.

Virginia City in 1868-1869.

The city reached its peak in the mid-1870s, it’s maximum population topping out at about 25,000 residents. Of course, this was just when the Great Fire of 1875 broke out.

On October 26, 1875, the perfect storm occurred. A boarding house on “A” Street, halfway between Taylor and Union Streets, was home to a rowdy bunch of men and women. Said boarding house residents were known to be carousing until about 2:00 AM the morning of October 26. The home, belonging to a woman known as “Crazy Kate,” was known for its rough characters and many wished for it to be closed. That hadn’t happened, much to the dismay of the surrounding community.

Only a few hours after the carousing had finally stopped—right at dawn—a small fire broke out in a downstairs hallway. Under normal circumstances, the fire should have been easily handled by the Virginia City Fire Department. However, on this day, a strong westerly wind was blowing, and it fanned the small fire to life. The flames lapped at the building, quickly overtaking the structure until the wind blew the flames to some of the neighboring homes. Also at risk was a livery stable that the boarding house sat behind. Soon, several buildings were burning. With the fierce wind, the flames traveled quickly, and within a very brief time, the fire was out of control, spreading to the north, west, and south simultaneously. The Virginia Cidy Fire Department came, but their fire engines were small and there wasn’t enough water for the growing conflagration. The firemen could do little, if anything, other than to direct residents to evacuate.

When the residents realized there was little chance of saving the buildings, they turned their attention to saving their belongings instead. Many grabbed whatever they could and ran. However, the flames continued to spread. Mayhem ensued.

Eye-witness accounts say that from the mountains surrounding Virginia City, the town seemed to be a sea of flames. The roar of the fire surrounded residents on all sides. The sounds of roofs and walls collapsing as buildings fell victim to the inferno also punctuated the city. In some places, buildings exploded with such violence that the concussion rattled pottery and windows at a town five miles away. Smoke billowed through the streets and hundreds of feet into the air, making finding one’s way nearly impossible.

The residents ran where the firemen directed—to a “safe” area, but as soon as they arrived in the safe zone, they were told to move again. The ever-advancing flames continued to devour the city. Residents were forced to run to new “safe zones” as many as six or eight times, and each time they left more and more of their rescued belongings behind. In some cases, it was furniture. In several other instances, it was larger items like pianos. The flames roared through the city and destroyed all manner of things—clothes, business wares, family heirlooms. Nothing was safe.

Historic firefighters.

The fire raged for hours, burning through Virginia City’s business district, as well as many homes. When the flames finally died out, the burned area fell between Taylor Street to the south, Carson street to the north, Stewart Street to the west, and the Chinese quarter to the east, encompassing 75% of the city. The hoisting works of all three major mining companies—the Ophir, the Consolidated Virginia, and the California—were destroyed, as well as about 400 feet of shafts on one of the mines. No building was safe. Even brick buildings burned as quickly as wooden structures. In fact, the fire had burned so hot that the wheels of train cars were melted on their tracks!

The losses from the fire were estimated to be around $7,000,000, and some 3,000 Virginia residents were left homeless. While it was a horrific time for ther residents of Virginia City, it was also a time that showed the helpfulness and resilience of humanity. Neighboring towns and cities such as Carson, Gold Hill, and Reno stepped in immediately to help. Carson provided food enough for 2500 people. Other towns donated clothing and other goods for those who’d lost everything. Neighboring towns—and even neighboring states—took in refugees who were left without homes or shelter as they headed into the winter months. And people came from all around to clear away the debris and begin rebuilding.

Virginia City did rebound and rebuild. Unfortunately, the Comstock Lode played out within a few years after the fire, and the city’s population fell drastically, as is often the case with mining towns.

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list numerous times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son, and four fur children.

First Love Forever Romance Collection

A first love is never easily forgotten...
and coming face to face with that person again can be awkward when the heartstrings are still holding on to the “what ifs.”

In settings from 1865 to 1910, nine couples are thrown back on the same path by life’s changes and challenges. A neighbor returns from law school. An heiress seeks a quick marriage. A soldier’s homecoming is painful. A family needs help. A prodigal son returns. A rogue aeronaut drops from the sky. A runaway bridegroom comes home. A letter for aid is sent. A doctor needs a nurse. Can love rekindle despite the separation of time and space?

Heartfelt Echoes by Jennifer Uhlarik
1875—Virginia City, Nevada: A short, urgent letter mentioning his childhood love, Millie Gordon, forces deaf Travis McCaffrey to turn to his estranged birth father for help rescuing the woman he can’t forget.

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.