NAPOLEON, SHEEP, AND WOMEN'S DRESSES by Marisa Masterson

 Fall and cold weather--it's the season when a person smells cedar. Well, it would be in the 1800s.

Why cedar in the fall or early winter? The answer is merino.

Did you know that merino wool comes from specially bred sheep.? Their wool is softer than other breeds of sheep. It also has a natural kink to the fiber so that it insulated a person's skin and was strong. This makes for very durable garments.

My newest Christmas book is set in December on the Great Plains. For her wedding, my heroine Rosemary wears merino, a dress she inherited from her mother. 

Frida stood from her spot at Rosemary’s feet. The girl pulled on the sleeve of dark merino dress. It was her best, a dress her mother had owned near the end of her life. Durable, the wool showed very little wear and made Rosemary feel connected to her mother on this special day. Fragrant cedar wafted from it. She had carefully packed it with cedar chips last year. Moths would chew on it, otherwise. That fact was well known. (Raisin Pie by Rosemary, releasing December 2023.)

Why does Rosemary treasure the merino? Certainly because it belonged to her mother, but there is more to it. The history of merino in the United States explains it.

Merino sheep were bred in Spain. It was illegal to export the sheep. The Spanish fiercely protected their control of the special wool and the money that exporting it brought to them.  

When Napoleon invaded Spain, that changed. An ambassador to the United States brought over some of the sheep as a gift. Merino soon was suddenly no longer a rare, expensive fabric. Instead mills in Vermont produced it for fifty-seven cents per pound.

In less than forty years, there were more than one million of these special sheep in Vermont alone. That state became the center for the wool mills that produced merino, and the wool craze started. 

Vermont Historical Society Collection

The sheep outnumbered humans by six to one, there were that many. Why? The wool craze had begun. It lasted until the market was flooded with the fabric.

Being a woman in this time before central heating must have been a cold experience. And regular wool scratched a person's skin. Merino was soft and extremely warm. What a wonder those dresses must have been for ladies at that time! 

Merino dress with velvet trim, 1814

Imagine feeling warm in a drafty house with a fireplace that gave off little warmth. And it was all because a little dictator tried to conquer Europe.

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Old World meets American ideas in this Christmas romance!

Her German town was worlds away from the Great Plains. Rosemary Mast left her Pennsylvania Dutch community to find a home with distant relatives in Kansas. Only, none of her family was there. 

What she found was a man desperate for help with his orphaned niece and nephew. She was also desperate and agreed to go with him.

Rosemary expected the man to be like others she had known while growing up, even though he was a Swede and not German. Was her new husband crazy? He asked for a funeral pie for Christmas!

Wolf Acker embraced being an American. Now his bride's strange superstitions were driving him crazy. All he wanted was a raisin pie for Christmas day. She would not make it. What hope was there for their young marriage when she refused to change?

What will need to happen so this young couple can make a sound marriage and provide a good home for the orphaned twins in this sweet historical Christian romance? Can a man love a woman who drives him crazy?

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