Why would you care about long-dead people, even if they were your relatives?

Because the past informs the present. Your characteristics, your family’s educational background, your family’s income, where you grew up, how you lived all stem from those long-ago relatives and what they did.

You don’t agree? Okay, let’s start with where you live. Let’s say you grew up in a big city, Chicago, for example. How did your parents get there? Job transfer? Or did one of them grow up in the Windy City? Let’s say your mother grew up in Chicago, met your father in college and they settled there. You visit your grandparents frequently as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now how did your grandparents get there? Let’s jump back in time and say that your great, great grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the early 20th century. What did they bring from Ireland that you still experience today? Drinking? Catholic religion? A recipe for Irish stew? A raucous St. Paddy’s day celebration? See, your ancestor’s affect your life today even if you didn’t realize it.

Okay, you’re convinced, but you don’t know that much about your ancestors. Your surname sounds English so maybe your ancestors came from the UK. One little-known fact about the heritage of the majority of Americans is that more are descended from Germans than any other country. The two world wars, however, encouraged those with German names to Anglicize them to avoid discrimination (remind you of any people being ostracized today because of the nationality?). What’s more, you’re descended from more and more people the farther you go back so you likely have a blend of nationalities in your background.

Aren’t getting a bit curious now about where you came from?

Luckily, help’s at hand. 

The first thing to do is to interview living members of past generations of your family. Sylvia Nash writes an interesting blog titled, “Past and Present: Writing Mysteries Suspended in Time.” Her post on January 2 recommended interviewing your living ancestors, something most people don’t think of until it’s too late. Nash lists some basic questions to ask and adds links to how to interview.

To go beyond those still living, consider joining Ancestry.com. Once you join, you may find other family members interested in participating and adding information, too. They can use your subscription as long as you give them the ID and password. Only one person, however, can be on the site at one time.

Starting with the names, birth and death dates, city, state, and country of those ancestors you know or as much as you know about them, Ancestry allows you to search birth, marriage and death records, census and voter lists, military records, immigration records, such as ship manifests, in this country and worldwide if you choose that subscription. But the most helpful feature is the ability to post on message boards and connect with other people searching the same ancestors.

What a surprise it is to learn that your father’s great grandfather was a coal miner in Virginia or that a distant grandmother emigrated from Poland. Or that these early settlers farmed in Iowa.

I learned so much about my ancestors that I’m writing mystery fiction using my distant grandfather, Joseph Bimeler, who led a beleaguered band of religious dissedents out of Germany and founded a town in Ohio as a character in the stories. That led me to visit the town, Zoar, that still stands full of museums and reenactors who bring the past to life for visitors.

See, you might embark on a whole new career if you traced your ancestry. I can promise you, though, you’ll find an entrancing journey along the way.

Mary Dolan explores her ancestry in next week’s blog, discovering untold family secrets!

Midwives were the answer. Local women, usually with children of their own, learned midwifery as apprentices, as did many 19th century physicians. Observing and helping with deliveries honed their skills and exposed them to the variety of problems they’d face when working on their own. To be a midwife required help at home. The midwife could be called away suddenly–often in the middle of the night–and could be gone a day or more if the labor lasted long. For their work, midwives might receive modest compensation, however, they might be paid with a chicken, household goods, or lumber.  

But it wasn’t easy to be a midwife. Midwives dealt with births that could go horribly wrong and seldom progressed easily or rapidly. Experiended midwives might administer ergot fungi or make the woman walk about to speed an intransigent birth along. Needless to say, complications, easily handled today, often spelled death for the mother and, possibly the infant.

An unmarried mother? No problem. The midwife served as her confessor. If, in the throes of labor, the woman screamed out the father’s name, he was forced to marry her. It was believed that at that moment of pain, the woman would most certainly be telling the truth. Many reluctant men were brought to the altar a few days hence.

Martha Ballard, who served as a midwive for more than 30 years and whose practice spanned both the end of the 18th century and well into the 19th, kept a diary, invaluable to us today. Historian Laurel Thatcher Uhrich brought Martha’s diary to life in her book, The Midwife’s Tale. In it, she puts Martha’s scribblings into context of the place and time, early New England. Martha recorded her work at home, tending her garden, spinning, knitting, cleaning, and the inevitable constant sewing. Then she’d be called away, worrying all the while that her work lay fallow at home. Nonetheless, she tended to her mothers with care and proudly wrote that, although she’d lost infants over the years, she’d never lost a mother.

High praise during a time when physicians, using forceps, bleeding, and opium. Martha reports seeing an infant born with all its limbs dislocated after a doctor used forceps. Bleeding weakened the mother so that she had little strength to participate in the delivery, and opium slowed contractions, lengthening the labor.

Doctors suffered another hazard in the early years. Too bashful to allow men to see their bodies, even in the midst of labor, women might force male physicians to deliver their infants by reaching under her skirts!

Also doctors might lose a mother to childbed fever. What they didn’t know because the germ theory had yet to be discovered, was that they’d inadvertantly contaminated the woman’s body by failing to wash their hands after leaving another patient’s bedside. Infection inevitably followed. Apparently Martha washed her hands as a matter of course.

We owe our lives to midwives of the past. Without them, we wouldn’t be here!

Now, put yourself in the 19th century. If you wanted to kill someone then, you could of course use a knife, hachet, shotgun, or rope, among other violent ways. But all of these methods would tell murder and could spell disaster for you. Poisons, on the other hand, could be concealed. Sadly, no ready-made cartons of ant poison could be found on Walmart shelves then nor would you find a convenient supply of sleeping medication at your local pharmacy. You could, though, find plenty of plants to do the job.

What are they, you ask? Lots.

DISCLAIMER: This information is intended for writers and other curious folks. No endorsement nor encouragement to actually poison anyone is intended nor advised.

I spoke to the “poison lady,” Luci Zahray, who clued me in (sorry, pun intended) on the many plants that could put an end to your problems with a troublesome enemy, friend, or relative.

Here’s a partial list:

Lily of the Valley–this inocuous, spring-smelling flower is deceptive. Just soak the leaves in water for awhile, serve the water to an unsuspecting guest and voila, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and hallucinations immediately start the inevitable death from heart failure.

Oleander–An ornamental shrub and house plant hides powerful cardiac glycosides that cause death much like an overdose of digitalis does, that is, promptly

Privet–yes, the hedge. The entire plant is poisonous but the berries contain the highest concentration of ligustrin, a fast-acting poison. If you’ve ever developed a skin rash after trimming this hedge, you experienced mild privet poisoning.

Pokeweed–a funny-sounding shrub that can cause severe stomach cramps ensue after eating only a few of its berries and lead to a violent death.

Thornapple–also known as jimson weed that can cause delirium, incoherence, coma, and death.

Deadly Nightshade–also known as belladonna. Dried leaves steeped in tea can paralyze a subject albeit death comes slowly.

So I lied about 101 ways. There are many more poisonous plants plus minerals, such as arsenic, that can kill. Nineteenth century poisoners were constrained by the availability of plants accessible to them, but I have no doubt that many a death went unrecorded as a homicide in those bygone days. I’ll be back in a month with more choices for you.

For any would-be poisoners, please be informed that today chemical analysis can uncover almost any deathly substance. In addition, any suspicious death is bound to be investigated. So, I’ll leave you with this thought: only poison your enemies in fiction. That’s what I do.

Ginger cookies

1 lb. soft brown sugar
1 lb. butter
1 qt. molasses
1 3/4 lbs. flour (more if needed)
1 1/2 tablespoons ginger
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup milk

Cream together sugar and butter, stir in molasses. Add flour and spices. Lastly add soda dissolved in warm water. Chill overnight. Roll out as thin as possible. Cut with cookie cutter into shapes. Place on cookie sheet and brush with milk. Bake at 300 degrees until done. (I know, what’s “until done?” Good German bakers knew when!)

These cookies were made at Christmas in Zoar and were a special treat for the children.

Here’s another Christmas treat made in Zoar:

Peppernuts (Pfeffernusse)

Peppernuts

Add flour enough to handle well. Roll into balls size of hickory nut. Bake at 350 degrees until done (that again!). Keep in covered crock for a week or more to ripen.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not tried either of these recipes. If you do make them, be sure to let me know how they turned out.

In the meantime, good holiday eating!

To answer this question, I’ve asked D. P. Lyle, MD and mystery writer, to tell us what he’s learned about childbirth in the past.

In the 1600s there were no hospitals and doctors knew very little. How little? It wasn’t until 1628 that Sir William Harvey (1578-1657) published “De Motu Cordis,” his famous treatise, outlining his discovery that the blood actually circulated through the body. Prior to this, physicians lived under the erroneous assumptions espoused by Aristotle, Galen (approx AD 130-201), and Andres Vesalius (1514-1564). The Germ Theory of infectious diseases wasn’t even a flicker in the minds of scientists. It wasn’t until 1870 that Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch developed this concept. Vaccination as a means of preventing disease was over a century away: Smallpox (Edward Jenner, 1796), Anthrax and Rabies (Pasteur, 1881 and 1882, respectively), Tetanus and Diptheria (Emil von Behring, 1890), and Polio (Jonas Salk, 1952). Antibiotics such as penicillin (Alexander Flemming, 1928) did not exist and surgical anesthesia (Crawford Long, 1842) wasn’t around.

Needless to say, childbirth in the 17^th Century was a risky proposition. Mothers often died as did the infant. Most commonly from bleeding and infection, since methods to control bleeding were crude and treatment of infections was non-existent. The problems of breech or other abnormal births led to death more often than not.

At that time, few doctors existed, especially in America, and the population was predominately rural. Most people lived on farms or in very small communities and the large majority of these areas did not have a doctor for miles if at all.

Though trained midwives were common in Europe, there were few if any in America during Puritan times. Thus, deliveries were often performed by a member of the community. Perhaps one of the older women, who became a de facto midwife. She would likely travel by horseback or on foot from farm to farm and attend the births.

The deliveries would take place in the home, usually in the bedroom. If the home was a single room cabin, family and friends would wait outside until the ordeal was over. Hot water, freshly washed cloths, bare hands, and a healthy dose of fear and anxiety were the only available tools. An understanding of post-partum infections (called Puerperal Sepsis) wouldn’t be delineated until Ignaz Simmelweis developed sterile delivery techniques in 1847. If severe bleeding or infection occurred, prayer and comfort were the only salves. And if the infant entered the birth canal in an abnormal fashion, such as a breech (butt first) or footling (foot first) presentation, death of the mother and the infant was likely. Obstetric anesthesia and analgesia consisted of a piece of wood or leather the mother could bite down on. Perhaps in some communities alcohol or tincture of opium would be available. Interestingly, both alcohol and opiates tend to diminish uterine contractions with the net effect of prolonging the mother’s ordeal.

The husband would not likely be present during the delivery. That is a more modern invention. The 1600s were very puritanical. Even a physician wasn’t often allowed to undress a female patient for his examination. If he needed to listen to the patient’s heart or lungs, he would place his ear against the patient’s chest. With a female patient, this was rarely allowed. Thus, Rene Laennec invented the stethoscope (1816) to circumvent this problem.

All in all, childbirth was a dangerous, bloody, and noisy affair. Also immensely rewarding, since the very survival of the community depended upon it.

Connect with Dr. Lyle on his website: http://www.dplylemd.com/ and check out his blog for more forensic info: http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com/

 Anne Perry is my all time favorite historical mystery writer. She writes two series, the latest book featuring William Monk, a 19th century investigator in England, and Hesterly Latterly, a nurse. Both characters struggle with personal demons to do the right thing. Her other series features a police officer and his wife. All of her books explore the depth of human decency as well as depravity and complex plots keep me compelled to keep reading. She’s also written Christmas mysteries using these characters as well as a WWI series. I highly recommend them all.

Another favorite writer is Charles Todd, actually written by mother and son team. I only recommend their Bess Crawford series. The character is a WWI nurse who struggles with the overwhelming injuries she sees, the futility of war, and solving mysteries as well, all without being too good to be true. Her faults, though minor, ground her in the real world that readers can imagine.

Charles Finch is a newer author whose books take place in 19th century England. His very likable characters are Charles Lenox and Lady Jane. The latest is A Burial at Sea.

Jacqueline Winspear is another favorite. Maisie Dobbs is a former WWI nurse (are you sensing a theme here?) turned private investigator in post-war England. Her next book releases in March 2012.

My list of favorite historical mystery writers would be incomplete without my mentioning Priscilla Royal. Her English medieval series features prioress Eleanor (how could I not like this?) and Brother Thomas. It matters not that the characters lived in the middle ages. Their foibles afflict us all but, unlike most of us, their courage and fortitude inspire us. I interviewed Priscilla on an earlier blog if you want to know more about her and how she writes her intriguing mysteries. Her eighth mystery, A Killing Season, was out this fall.

So there you have it–5 of my favorites. I’ll be back with more in a few weeks. In the meantime, let me know your favorites. Comment for all to see!

How hard could it be?

Answer: Very. Not only must you create a compelling, tension-filled mystery, you must build an accurate story world.

Contemporary mysteries require research, too, of course. Murder details must be accurate. The weapon’s action must correspond the the victim’s wounds, for example. So you need to know about firearms–how far does a bullet from a nine-millemeter or a revolver go? Can a bullet hit someone under water? (The answer is no.) How long would it take to die from a drug overdose? And how would you know if it was accidental or murder? From TV we know that COD is cause of death and TOD is time of death. Neither expressions would be used in historicals in the 19th century.

How do you build an accurate story world?

Here are some suggestions:

        Begin with primary sources such as letters, diaries, and photographs. Here’s an example of a letter I found in the Ohio Memory Project, a division of the Ohio Historical Society. Fortunately, the letters were transcribed. See some photos in the Ohio Historical Society collection. Next search for legitimate research sources. I found a dissertation by an Ohio State student  chronicling the life of the Separatists, beginning with their experiences in Germany in the early 1800s. Then I found a book by Kathleen Fernandez titled “A Singular People: Images of Zoar”.

        Travel to the site, if possible. I made several trips to Zoar, Ohio, discovering a research library where I was allowed to copy materials including several masters’ thesis on the community. Take lots of photos. You can see a few of these in the photo album on my website. My files contain 500+ images from the Ohio Historical Society as well as my own. I use them constantly as I write-what did the stove look like? How did a woman dress? Where’s the door into Adelaide’s cabin?

        Create a map of the location if you can. Then, as you write, you’ll be able to imagine your characters as they move about.  Here’s my map of Zoar, accurate for 1830. 

        Follow up with studying the work and lives of inhabitants. For example, I needed to learn about herbal medicines, midwifery, cabinet making, and blacksmithing along with food preparation, kitchen gardens, and harvesting.

There will be no end to the research you can do so be careful not to be so caught up in it that you forget to write your story!

Come back next week and I’ll share with you some of my favorite historical mystery writers. 

M E Kemp relives Puritan life

This week I’ve invited M. E. KEMP, who writes an historical mystery series featuring two nosy Puritans as detectives. Her latest book is Death of  a Dancing Master. She lives in Saratoga, NY.
       
Ninety years after the Pilgrim’s feast of thanksgiving in 1620, the
Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony still celebrated the holiday
– only it might be in July or in May or in January depending upon what
occasion for which to be thankful. That might be for the end of King
Phillip’s War or the arrival of a sloop bearing kegs of molasses. And
Thanksgiving didn’t originate with the Pilgrims, either, but with
celebrations for various causes by the Church of England. In fact, Guy
Fawkes Day was a much more celebrated occasion on November 5th, the day
Fawkes tried to blow up the British parliament. In Boston it became a
rowdy holiday with the North End rivaling the South End, both Ends
parading around the streets carrying a “Guy,” a straw dummy until they
finally met up and ended in a  huge brawl and a bonfire.

When the Puritans did decide it was time for a Thanksgiving it was a
veritable feast, with turkey to be sure, but also with beef, venison,
all kinds of water fowl, ham, shellfish and other bounties of the sea. 
( I confess I’m envious of those days when 6 foot lobsters washed up on
the beaches after a storm. Lobster was so plentiful it was considered
a trash-fish.  Now, that’s the kind of trash food I could go for!) 
Pumpkins and apples played a large part in the feast, in forms besides
pies.  Both foods were dried for use over the winter.  And there was
drink – lots of hard liquor! Our ancestors were lushes.  Beer and hard
cider were every day drinks, with wine, brandy and rum; rum-punches
being a favorite of gatherings. Even the ministers imbibed unGodly
amounts of liquor at their ordination dinners. They welcomed new
ministers into the fold with every kind of liquor available. Tavern
bills show this to be the case.  Of course, you were expected to hold 
your drink–drunkenness was fined, preached against from the pulpit 
and perhaps even meant a spell in jail.

Our ancestors must have had stomachs of iron.  We can ourselves give
thanks that we don’t have to drink concoctions like “Sparke’s Special,”
which consisted of beer, rum, molasses and breadcrumbs.  Yuck!  Yet if
you survived the diseases of childhood, barring accident, you lived to
a ripe old age.   Well, you were probably well preserved by all that
liquor!

The Separatists were part of this migration to the new world. A fresh, new place, new life for all. They’d carve out a perfect, unspoiled world. And there they’d all strive to become perfect. Well, not all, only believers (according to their faith!)

Helped by Quakers in England and Philadelphia, the Separatists purchased more than 5000 acres in northern Ohio, sight unseen. In the fall of 1817 their leader, Joseph Bimeler (my distant grandfather) led a small group of the more able bodied people to their land. They hired three wagoners to transport their meager goods and the Separatists walked behind the wagons on foot. By late November they’d reached Sandyville, a wretched settlement of log huts in the woods. The wagoners left them there, and they walked the three miles to their land.

What they found appalled them.

Heavily wooded, hilly land, not very fertile, with the Tuscarawas River running diagonally through it. That first night they slept in the open under a large oak tree. The next day they built a tent-like hut of poles, covering them with leaves and earth. They lived in it until the first cabin was built. They continued building cabins as rapidly as possible through the winter. These were simple log cabins with thatch roofs and some, reinforced with tile roofs still stand today.

The only bright spot in the land was the level plains along the river that earlier Indians had cleared. Without that space for planting, it’s unlikely they would have survived.

With cabins built and plantings done, they set out to create their own Garden of Eden in a square block in the center of the village. Twelve paths of righteousness marched toward the center where a giant Norway spruce stood tall surrounded by twelve junipers.  Christ and his disciples.  Intersecting cross paths—temptations—awaited the Separatists if they strayed.   

 

 This photo from the 19th century shows how well they tended the garden. It survives today, tended by volunteers and descendents of the early settlers.

 Did they really live a life of purity and perfection? The records defy this notion. Several “early” births suggest digresion, a letter in 1818 from a Quaker woman complaining about Bimeler, saying “he has them so infatuated they think he’s another Moses,” and Bimeler waited to sign over the title to the entire 5000 acres until he was on his death bed.

But, maybe, like the rest of us today, they tried their best. 

The Society of Separatists, who escaped to America in 1817, rejected the established church in their native Germany. For that, they were brutally punished. (See blog post ”Who Were the Separatists?”). But then of course as soon as they came here and started setting up their own society, it soon became just as rigid and just as authoritarian and just as restrictive as the religion they had run away from.   

The Separatists believed that salvation was between an individual and God and that no intercession by the church was necessary. Thus, their meeting house, a log cabin, had plain plaster walls, no altar, or any symbols from their hated religion from home.

Zoar Meeting House

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each Sunday the Separatists would gather in the meeting house to sing hymns, pray silently, and listen to a discourse by Josef Bimeler, who was both their secular and religious leader. He delivered his discourses extemporaneously without notes or papers. And he continued for several hours! (I wonder if anyone had to leave to use the privvy?)

Here are some words from one of his discourses transcribed by a Separatist at the time he spoke them!

“As many of you know, I turned onto the broad road of destruction and remained there until God himself stopped me. I saw myself obliged to take another way, for I recognized that the road on which I had turned was the broad road, which would without a doubt lead me to ruin. Sought God but he kept Himself aloof from me. He acted as if He did not want to hear my anxious sigh and my urgent cry. And no wonder, for I had very much offended Him.”

How had he sinned?

In uncovering my ancestry, I discovered one. Josef married his first wife, Barbara, in August of 1803. Their daughter was born in January, 1804. Do the math!

FYI, Barbara died before Josef brought his son, Peter, with him to America. Of the early-born daughter, we have no information.

Yet.