Raising Children in Colorado Springs in the 1870s

 

Rose Bartlett - Raising Children in the New Town of Colorado Springs.

This is part of a series I've been writing and wanted to share Rose's story...this is a repost from another blog.

Post (C) by Doris McCraw

writing as Angela Raines

Photo (C) Doris McCraw

In 1900 Rose E. Bartlett celebrated twenty-eight years of marriage to Ephraim C. Bartlett. The couple, who married around 1872-3 were both from Maine and married in that state. At the time of their marriage, Ephraim was thirty and Rose was twenty-one 

It seems Ephraim had returned to Maine from Pueblo, Colorado where he was living in 1873. Rose had started teaching school at age seventeen. However, census records show she left teaching and listed the occupation as a housewife from her marriage forward. You do have to wonder, with her background, what kind of foundation she gave her children as they grew.

Copy of Old Birth Record
from Ancestry

The couple had seven children, five who were alive in the 1900 census. 

Frank Arthur Bartlett, born 1888 in Colorado, who was a music teacher in Colorado Springs in 1911, died in 1962 in California at the age of seventy-four. He served in World War I as a Sergeant.

Guy Roderick Bartlett, born in 1874 in Colorado, died in 1940, in California at the age of sixty-six. He was married but had no children as far as any records show.

George Powers Bartlett, born in 1885 in Colorado, died in 1974 in Colorado. He was married and had three children.

Harvey Lewis Bartlett, born in Colorado in 1879 died in 1920 in Colorado. He was not married.

Frances Lena Bartlett Hill, born in 1875 in Colorado, lived to be ninety-two and was buried in The Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, California. So far, I've not located a spouse for Frances.

The other child listed to the couple is Alice Dell Bartlett. She was born in 1877 and died in 1879 in Colorado.

Rose Ella Powers Bartlett died in 1919 just four days shy of her sixty-seventh birthday. She is buried with her husband who preceded her in death in 1912. Although they married after the end of the Civil War, they were both from the same area in Maine and Ephraim may have known Rose before he served the duration of the War.

For other stories in this Civil War series, click the links below.

John H Long -73rd Illinois - Western Fictioneers

Isabella Long - Prairie Rose Publications

Sgt. James W. Bell - Western Fictioneers

Martha Lynn Bell - Prairie Rose Publications

Captain Richmon Finch- Western Fictioneers

Sarah Jane Durkee Anderson - Prairie Rose Publications

Esther Walker, Part 2 - Western Fictioneers

Esther Walker - Prairie Rose Publications

Alpheus R. Eastman - Western Fictioneers Blog

Helen Rood Dillon - Prairie Rose Publications Blog

Virginia Strickler - Prairie Rose Publications Blog

Henry C. Davis - Western Fictioneers Blog

Chester H. Dillon - Western Fictioneers Blog

Until Next Time: Stay safe, Stay happy, and Stay healthy. 

Doris

An Unlikely Romance by Jo-Ann Roberts

I readily admit I am an avid student of history. I've always been drawn to everyday people who lived, loved, and fought alongside notable characters from the past. In elementary school, you'd find me in the history section of the Berkshire Athenaeum reading stories of  the early years of Mary Mapes Dodge, Betsy Ross, and Clara Barton. During high school and college, I took as many history classes as my schedule would allow. As an adult I fell in love with all of John Jakes' series, thrilled when many of them came to life on television. Victoria Holt, Jude Deveraux, and Roseanne Bittner were-and still are-among my favorite authors. When I began writing, I naturally gravitated toward historical romance. 

So I wasn't surprised when inspiration for my new series, Mended Hearts, came from the real-life romance, Undaunted Heart: The True Story of  a Southern Belle and an Yankee General by Suzy Barile.

In February, 2019, our local NBC affiliate, WRAL, aired a weekly segment, "The Tar Heel Traveler" narrated by Scott Mason.  Just in time for Valentine's Day, he tells the love story of Miss Ella Swain, daughter of the President of UNC-Chapel Hill, and Union General Smith Atkins of the 92nd Illinois Volunteers, a mounted cavalry. (To view the segment  CLICK HERE)

Their meeting, courtship, and marriage gave North Carolinians a lot to talk about for generations. Their story even made its way into state history books. But over time, the facts of their love story gave way to legend.

When a brigade of General Sherman's victorious army marched into Chapel Hill the day after Easter, 1865, the War Between the States had just ended, and President Lincoln had been assassinated. Citizens of the picturesque North Carolina college town had endured years of hardship and sacrifice, and now the Union army was patrolling its streets. One of Sherman's young generals paid a visit to the stately home of David Swain, president of the University of North Carolina and a former governor of the state, to inform him that the town was now under Union occupation.

Against this unlikely backdrop began a passionate and controversial love story still vivid in town lore. When President Swain's daughter, Ella, met the Union general, life for these two young people who had spent the war on opposite sides was forever altered.

But, as a close friend of the Swains wrote, when Atkins met Ella, the two "changed eyes at first sight and a wooing followed".  The reaction of the Swains and fellow North Carolinians to the North-South love affair was swift and often unforgiving.

Ms. Barile, a great-great-granddaughter of Ella Swain and Smith Atkins, tells their story, separating facts from the elaborate embellishments that the famous courtship and marriage have taken over the generations. Interwoven throughout Undaunted Heart are excerpts from Ella's never-before-published letters to her parents that reveal a loving marriage that transcended differences and scandal.

Immediately after this segment aired, my active imagination went into over-drive...I couldn't get my thoughts down on paper fast enough! But I was nearing the end of Book Two in the Brides of New Hope series, and Book Three waited in the wings.

Still, this romance wouldn't quit teasing me.

The day I sent off Grace-Brides of New Hope Book Three, my research began on the Tar Heel state during the last days of the Civil War, Sherman's capture of Raleigh, the Union army's march to Durham Station (as it was called in those days), and the surrender of North Carolina.

During this time, my husband and I took a trip to Asheville. Stopping at the Southern Highland Craft Guild on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I picked up a piece of handcrafted wood fashioned into a heart. The attached card stated the Heart Mender "would lighten your heart...allowing your worries and stress to melt away". Bingo! I had the name of my new series, Mended Hearts, and the wooden heart became the connecting thread through all three books based on true events during the Civil War.

The War Between the States has ended...but for Kit and Will their battle had just begun.

   As the daughter of a prominent judge, and well-bred mother whose roots traced back to the War of Independence, Katherine Lambert had been the belle of Adams Mill. Her upbringing, her education, and her privileged world revolved around the latest fashions, picnics, parties, and a host of beaus and friends.

   She was expected to raise children; not her voice.

   Until she defied her family and the Rebel cause by doing the unthinkable...falling in love with a Union cavalry officer.

                                             ***

   When the very elegant, very beautiful Katherine Lambert looked at U.S. Major William Chandler was the moment she marched off with his heart. Though he always planned to carve out his own destiny, to marry and raise a family, he never expected love to find him in a small Southern town.

   Encountering opposition at every turn, he remained undaunted, determined to court and marry Kit, and see who took serious objection.

   They'd hoped their love would mend and heal the wounds of a splintered family, but someone else had other ideas.

Follow me online:  https://www.jo-annrobertsauthor.com/

A FEBRUARY TOMATO by Marisa Masterson

Many men had left to join a volunteer regiment, including the farmers. Boston, Massachusetts could no longer rely on importing food from the South . Can you guess the year or the circumstances?

Probably, the mention of both the South and regiments brought the American Civil War to your mind. In the early 1860s, some food items that the city of Boston enjoyed from the southern part of the country could not be imported. The cold New England winters definitely didn't allow for raising vegetables during the winter. At least, not without a greenhouse.

Greenhouses are not a recent invention. They date back hundreds of years. One, near Boston, became famous as it was owned by Christopher Gore, a former governor of Massachusetts who wrote about his experiments in agriculture as well as changes he made to make the greenhouse more efficient. This was in Waltham, Massachusetts,  not too far from Boston where my novel begins.

Waltham Place, home of Christopher Gore

I used this idea of greenhouses in my latest novel. Beginning in late 1861,  The Massachusetts Bride features a man who left the war and battles behind him. His mother schemes to see him far away from Boston and any temptation to rejoin his regiment so she gives him the farm she's inherited, knowing of his interest in agriculture.

The mother even has the perfect bride for him, a farm girl who wants to leave the city. Thus, because of the focus on agriculture, I was able to work in a marriage of convenience.

Milo rose and stood directly in front of the small woman. “What exactly are you saying, Mother?”
Her smile spoke of strength. She refused to be stopped or intimidated, it told him. “I won’t have you out on North Street with the poor. Or, for that matter, wasting away all winter alone in that empty farm house.”
“She—” They both turned to look at Fiona. The girl seemed to hunch as she sat on the sofa, obviously wanting to disappear. “—will care for you and help you run the farm. It’s what she knows best, not serving as a maid.”

My hero, Milo, transforms two rooms (one on each floor of the house) into a sort of greenhouse with the large south-facing windows. Gore's writings told me how my hero would need to heat the rooms and so I included a large grate placed into the floor with a furnace directly underneath.

Moving over to the grate in the floor, he felt for heat. In the last week, he’d dug an ash pit into the earth foundation of the house. A small furnace hung above it.
After cutting a hole into the floor of the room, he’d installed the grate. Looking up, he studied the grate in the ceiling. Its hole went straight through to the bedroom above, where he also kept plants. More lettuce and radishes, plants that didn’t need quite as warm of temperatures.

Everything he tried here was based on Christopher Gore’s work and writings. The man lived in nearby Waltham. His studies in the use of manure seemed especially important to Milo. He carefully followed the instructions in Gore’s book, mixing cow dung with the dark soil.

And, because my own daughter was wrestling with starting tomatoes from seeds, I made that Milo's focus, too. So, my hero in the book earns money by selling February tomatoes to the people of Boston.


Massachusetts, 1861



All’s fair in love and war.
Hardly! Neither war nor love have been kind to Milo Roberts. He survived a battle no one expected only to have his brother die next to him. Wounded, he lays in a cot and determines to leave war behind, no matter what his abolitionist father says.
Fiona immigrates to the United States after her cousin promises her a job. While on the ship, she worries about the war ramping up in that country. Little does she know danger is much closer than the battlefields.
At the Boston docks, she escapes the trap set for her. When the woman who gave her safety asks Fiona to marry her son, the girl agrees. She longs to live on the farm that will be his when they marry.
If only her husband isn't so tempting.
While the North and the South war, the battle in their farm house involves unfulfilled love and the tormenting nightmares. What can a man do when his beloved wife prefers the cow’s company? With unrest among the Irish and interference from Fiona’s cousin, will his Irish beauty ever love him?

This is a 216 page sweet romance with a historical background.