Sweet Americana Sweethearts Blog is Five Years Old

I'm really bad about remembering birthdays and anniversaries. Remembering the five year milestone of the start of the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog is no exception. Although two months late, I still wish celebrate and say thank you to all the authors who have blogged for us over the years. Just as important, thank you to all of you readers who signed up to follow the blog and read our posts.

To celebrate, I wish to introduce the blog’s founding authors and their first posts on the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog. Please click on the title to see the first post for each author.

 

     The first authors who posted in July 2015:

Zina Abbott – The Sultana Disaster

Shanna Hatfield – The Teutonic

Angela Raines-Doris McCraw – The Woman in History Everyone Should Know

Linda Carroll-Bradd – Not Only a Place to Sit

 

     Added in August 2015:

Penny Estelle – Timothy Hershey and the Beginning of Abilene, Kansas

Kristin Holt – Five Things I Learned from THE MENACE TAKES A BRIDE

Kathryn Albright – Romancing San Diego’s Amazing Past

Amelia Adams – Writing History, Whenever It May Be

Times and needs change, but I’m pleased to note that four of those authors besides myself are still blogging. 

Thank you to all of you readers who read our posts and buy our books. You are why we write.

Old Time Medical Advancements - Part One - Cleanliness Practices and Stethoscopes

Thanks to Melnick Medical Museum for the surgical room image

Part One - Cleanliness Practices and Stethoscopes

The eighteen hundreds saw many advances in the healing arts.

One practice that has affected so many generations since came from England. Influenced by the Frenchman Louis Pasteur’s work, Doctor Joseph Lister began looking for a means to sterilize wounds. A common belief of the time was that exposure to ‘bad air’ caused infections in wounds. 

Dr. Lister didn’t believe that. After seeing that fields irrigated with sewage waste then sprayed with phenol (also known as carbolic acid) had no ill effect on the livestock that grazed it later, he began experimenting with the solution.

In August 1865, the doctor applied a piece of lint dipped in carbolic acid solution onto the wound of a boy who had a compound fracture at Glasgow Infirmary. No infection developed, and the child recovered. Lister advanced the movement toward modern surgical cleanliness practices by publishing six articles from March to July in 1867 in The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal still in publication today.

In addition to cleaning wounds, he pioneered sterilizing instruments and having assistants spray carbolic acid over the operating room. He instituted that surgeons wash their hands before and after performing any procedure, always wearing new gloves for each operation.

Modesty brought about a tool that no doctor nurse or paramedic is ever without today.

In 1816 French doctor, Rene Laennec at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris invented the stethoscope. Uncomfortable with putting his ear on the chests of the female patients in order to heart their heartbeat----the practice of the day----he used a rolled up a piece of paper instead. 

Like an old ear trumpet used by the hard of hearing in those days, the paper turned into a wooden tube Dr. Laennec called a stethoscope. (Stetho + scope “chest-scope”)

Several advances by other doctors of his invention came over the years, including a single flexible tube attached to better earpieces, standard by mid-century.

Then in 1852, George Philip Cammann perfected the design that uses two tubes that fit in both ears that is now the modern standard.

I've been having so much fun researching medical practices and advancements in equipment for my upcoming book A Bride for Jacob in the Nursing the Hearts collection series and was sure you'd find it as interesting! 

My next release is Bitter Honey, book 22 of the awesome, ongoing Lockets and Lace Collection series and my third contribution in as many years! Don't miss the Lockets and Lace COVER REVEAL CELEBRATION on February 24th at our Facebook group, the Sweet Americana Book Club!  

BLESSINGS Y'ALL!

Bio: Praying her story gives God glory, hybrid author Caryl McAdoo writes in several genres, including Biblical fiction, contemporary Christian romance, young adults and mid-grade, and her most popular historical Christian romance----her family saga series are readers' favorites. Caryl's next book launching in March will be her fiftieth title published.

She and Ron, husband of fifty-plus years share four children and eighteen grandsugars, life's biggest blessings according to Caryl. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County, in the far northeast corner of Texas with five dogs and a plethora of barn cats.

Caryl loves hearing from readers! Contact her through any of these (following, subscribing, and liking):  website   Amazon   BookBub   Facebook   

Carylin' on the Oregon/California Trail ~ Day Two

On Day Two (Monday, December17th) of our great adventure, we woke up in Saint Joseph, Missouri! I’d never really even heard of St. Jo before the year before when I joined the Lockets and Lace Collection series written by the Sweet Americana Sweethearts Bloggers. In its planning, our leader Zina Abbott (AKA Robin Echols) informed the majority of the ladies chose the historical city for the location of the Bavarian jeweler’s shop where the beautiful lockets that would be the connection that ran through our stories were created.

The first thing I wanted to do was go find the jewelry shop 😊 Of course, it was fictitious, but I messaged Robin asking her for the address, hoping to give her a little smile! In my 2019 Lockets and Lace story UNIQUELY COMMON, they lined the covered wagons up on Francis Street waiting their turn to get on the ferry and the other side of the Missouri River. So we went looking for that very street!

On the way, we passed the statue of the Pony Express carrier which St. Jo is also known for, but that came after 1853 when my story takes place. We were not only able to find the historical street, but we followed it right down to the river just as our characters—and thousands upon thousands—did so long ago. They would wait sometimes for weeks in line for their turn. Imagine how messy the streets must have gotten. Port oxen, poor people!

You can still see how the far bank had been contoured to dock the huge ferry that would carry up to ten wagons with the oxen still hooked up to pull it on and off the ferry! Each Spring thousands of folks with a dream for a new life descended on the town of St. Jo and camped all around the hills and meadows.

This is where they would find a wagon master they trusted and join his train. Trains usually consisted of from ten to fifty wagons.

Some were going to Oregon, some to California, and others headed to Utah, but all were waiting for the prairie grasses to start growing, indicating the time had come to hit the trail.

Each year, there was only a short window for everyone wanting to go west to leave. They couldn’t go before the grasses started growing because their stock needed food, and to wait too late to leave meant risking not getting over the mountains before the winter storms set in.

The Donner Party gained great fame because they ended up eating their dead, but they were not the only ones who died in the snow and icy mountains short of their destination. The Donners only missed it by a week. Time was critical.

Ron and I planned to drive the two hundred sixty-seven miles to Fort Kearny in a few hours; it took those pioneers almost three weeks to travel to the fort in Nebraska, their first destination. It wasn’t ‘Nebraska’ back then though. When the settlers crossed the Missouri River, they were no longer in the United States, but the wild, unsettled west.

I tried to imagine how they felt. They had to be so excited to be going, They’d made the decision, planned, saved, in most cases invested their life savings. And though I’m sure they knew the trip would be hard, how could they begin to imagine the troubles and hardships they’d face? And once on the trail, there was no turning back.

The topography between Saint Jo and Fort Kearny wasn’t too hard with its gently rolling hills. The animals and people were fresh, so the first three weeks weren’t so awful.

I’m sure they were thinking, ‘We can do this.’ On reaching Fort Kearny, they’d only put about fifteen percent of their two-thousand-mile trip behind them.

The grazing around the Fort was plentiful and the Platte River’s water, sweet. It was at Fort Kearny that the settlers picked up and started traveling parallel to the Platte River.

All the trains traveled alongside the rivers, and it was the Platte and North Platter that took them a long way, providing water for the animals and pioneers on the trail. 

In those days, the government was interested in emigrants settling the west. Their goal was for the “Manifest Destiny” to come to fruition, for the United States to stretch from sea to shining sea! So, they built the forts to help them on their way. The pioneers could rest a few days there, restock, make repairs.

The forts purposes weren’t really what I’d thought from all the ‘Old West’ movies and TV programs, and not all of them even had walls like we envision. Fort Kearny had a collection of buildings that expanded to as many as thirty in its latter years. Television would have us believe Indians were a constant threat.

But in fact, the red men were friendly to the travelers and helped them. There’d be as many teepees camped around the forts as prairie schooners to trade. Some traded their animals for fresh ones, expendable household goods for food, trinkets like mirrors or hairbrushes for tools.

The natives knew the covered wagons were only traveling through and posed them no threat. It was in the later years, after the hundreds and thousands of settlers littered the pristine lands and started stopping and settling their lands in the mid and late 1860s that attacks became common on the trails.

Fort Kearny was built in 1845, the year after the first wagon train headed west, served twenty-three years as a U.S. Army fort, and was never attacked. It was the eastern anchor of the Great Platte River Road (a portion of the Oregon/California Trial) and an important waystation for military and travelers. They could send or receive mail there.

In the 1850s, when the most pioneers migrated as many as two thousand emigrants and ten thousand oxen passed through Fort Kearney in a day during late May, the height of the season.

Next destination Ash Hollow! Plus lots more on Day Three!

BIO: Award-winning Author Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory! And her best-selling novels are blessed with a lion’s share of 5-Star ratings! With forty-three-and-counting titles, she loves writing as well as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She celebrated fifty years of marriage to Ron in 2018, and the couple shares four children and eighteen grandsugars. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County, in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door. 

Contact Caryl: Amazon   BookBub   Website   Facebook   Twitter   Google+ 

Be watching for UNIQUELY COMMON, Caryl's 2019 Lockets and Lace title launching in April and REMI, her May release that picks up where UNIQUELY COMMON leaves off . . . same characters, different love story. :) SAVE THE DATES for Cover Reaveal Parties! February 21st for REMI, and the authors of the Prairie Roses Collection! And March 4th for UNIQUELY COMMON and all the new 2019 Lockets and Lace titles!     
           

Early Texas Towns and Cities -- Mount Pleasant

In the northern part of East Texas, when Texas was still a part of Mexico back in the early 1830s, the Caddo Indians lived peaceful lives in their rounded huts and were known for their large burial mounds. Legend speaks of a particularly high hill the Caddo called ‘Pleasant Mound,’ soon to be known as Mount Pleasant.

When pioneers came to the frontier, the area’s rich land, many creeks, forests, and abundant wildlife, the place lured many to settle and build their homes there. The area is known today as Titus County, named after Andrew Jackson Titus (1814-1855), who was an early resident of the settlement.

In Vow Unbroken, Andrew Titus owned and operated the first trading post, and meets my hero Henry Buckmeyer of the Texas Romance Family Saga series in 1832 when he buys an extra team of mules to get the heroine’s cotton harvest to market in Jefferson. They end up being fast friends with the trader showing up in many other books of the series.

Then in 1840 and the new Cross Timbers Romance Family Saga, Andrew sells the clan from Tennessee a few Texas Headrights along with supplies. He’s the one credited with the good roads between Clarksville, thirty-plus miles to the northwest to Pleasant Mound for the grangers to move their crops to market in the river port of Jefferson.

The Caddo remained in northeast Texas as late as 1845, living peacefully with the white men, but as more and more Anglos came from the east, most disappeared, moving north of the Red River into Oklahoma. On May 11, 1846, the Texas legislature created Titus County. Three other pioneers, John Binion, Sr., Richard Moore, and L. Gilbert, then set aside a forty-eight block town site, laying it out to serve as the new county seat.


The town experienced a steady growth in the 1800's that included farmers planting in the rich soil and lumbermen harvesting the large supply of hardwood trees. By 1850 the population was recorded at two hundred twenty-seven, but by the end of the century, rose to over three thousand. Countywide, the population tripled from three thousand to nine thousand-plus in one decade (1850 to 1860. Land sold for two to ten dollars per acre.

Back then the county was much larger including our present-day Franklin and Morris Counties. High waters along the many creeks and the flooding of the Sulphur River often halted travel in the early years. Record time to haul cotton from Mount Pleasant to Jefferson was five days by ox wagon.

Truck farming with cotton and corn as the main cash crops grew commercially significant. Most families kept oxen, mules, milk cows, hogs, and chickens. They hunted deer, turkeys, pigeon, bear, and small game such as rabbits to eat with the vegetables grown in their gardens.

They lived simple lives with farmers going to town to handle business and purchase other necessities, bringing heavy wagon traffic to Mount Pleasant’s town square. Hitching rails were provided to tie their teams while they shopped with merchants who extended credit with a mortgage on the farmer's crop.

In 1861, Texas voted to secede from the Union, though it was a close and highly contentious debate. Titus County residents voted for it 411 to 285 then as many as three thousand men left to fight with the Confederates. During the Civil War, Mount Pleasant became the site of a confederate transportation depot. Its mission to build wagons, fit them out with teams of oxen, horses, and mules caused a boom to the population.

The wagons were to move men and supplies to the front including beef, butter, corn, rice, cotton, oats, sweet potatoes, flour, cornmeal, leather, lumber, pottery, tobacco, whiskey, and wool. The new depot hired on blacksmiths, carpenters, harness makers and wheelwrights. were employed, and the city’s population boomed.

An old pottery founded during that time moved to Mount Pleasant as well and became one of the largest industries of its kind in the state. Lignite coal mines added to the town’s economy, as did the many new manufacturing plants—nine sawmills, eight gristmills, seven tanneries, and a steam powered distillery.

After the North won the war, grave markers all over the county testified that too many of their young men had given the ultimate sacrifice. A statue of a Confederate soldier facing north was erected in memory of more lost men who never returned. Veterans coming home found farms mostly neglected for the four long years of the war and the area suffered.

It took close to two years before most farms were operational again with cotton "king" once again.

Bio: Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory which is what she lives to do. Her award-winning, best-selling novels enjoy a lion’s share of 5-Star ratings from Christian readers around the world. With thirty-eight titles, it’s obvious she loves writing almost as much as singing the new songs the Lord gives her—listen to a few at YouTube. She and high school sweetheart Ron celebrated fifty years of marriage in June 2018; they share four children and eighteen grandsugars. The McAdoos live in the woods south of Clarksville, seat of Red River County in far Northeast Texas, waiting expectantly for God to open the next door.

Contact and follow Caryl at: Website  /  Amazon  /  BookBub  /  Facebook  /  Twitter  /  YouTube  /  Puzzle

Wagons Ho!

I’ve written a few books about life on a wagon train and I find the research interesting. I have great admiration for those brave pioneers who left their comfortable home to walk across the country under the most primitive conditions. Some had no idea where they would end up or what to expect at the end of their journey.

In search of inexpensive land and opportunity, American pioneers migrated westward by the thousands. The early British American colonies for the most part hugged the Atlantic Ocean. As the population of the colonies grew and expanded, westward migration began and never really stopped.

The migration of pioneers had pushed the American frontier to the Mississippi Valley by the 1830s. Traders, explorers and missionaries who traveled further west described of fertile valleys, great forests and abundant farming, mining and hunting opportunities in the Oregon, California, Missouri frontiers and other western regions west of the Mississippi River. 

From the 1840s to the 1860s more than 300,000 pioneers crossed the plains and mountains of the West along various routes such as the Oregon and Santa Fe trails.

How Did They Travel?

Sometimes they show the pioneers using Conestoga wagons pulled by horses, with the pioneers riding. Actually, Conestoga wagons were too big and heavy for the Oregon Trail. Converted farm wagons, called Prairie Schooners, were actually used and pulled generally not by horses, but oxen.

Oxen were slower, but more reliable and tougher than mules. They ate poor grass. Oxen were very strong and could haul fully-loaded wagons up ravines or drag them out of mudholes. A large wagon needed at least three pairs of oxen to pull it.

What Trails Did They Use?

The major southern routes were the Santa Fe Trail, the Southern Emigrant Trail, and the Old Spanish Trail, as well as its wagon road successor the Mormon Road, a southern spur of the California Trail used in the winter that also made use of the western half of the Old Spanish Trail.

Wagon Trains were composed of up to 200 wagons, though more common were trains of 30 or less wagons. It was decided early on that the larger the caravan of wagons, the safer the travelers would be. 

What Did the Pioneers Need For the Trip?

BEDDING & TENT SUPPLIES: blankets, ground cloths, pillows, tent, poles, stakes, ropes. TOOLS & EQUIPMENT: set of augers, gimlet, ax, hammer, hoe, plow, shovel, spade, whetstone, oxbows, axles, kingbolts, ox shoes, spokes, wagon tongue, heavy ropes, chains.

FOOD: flour (600 lbs.), bacon ( 400 lbs.), coffee (60 lbs.), baking soda, corn meal, hardtack, dried beans, dried fruit, dried beef, molasses, vinegar, pepper, eggs, salt, sugar (100 lbs.), rice, tea (4 lbs.), lard (200 lbs.) 

Beans and rice, dried meat and salted bacon, dried fruit, hardtack or crackers (hard dried bread which had to be softened in water to eat). They took flour and sugar and sometimes baked bread, biscuits, or pies

A wagon and oxen team cost each family about $400 to $600. The total weight of wagon's cargo pulled by the oxen was about 2500 pounds. That was a lot of money back then.

What Were the Biggest Hazards?

Contrary to popular belief, attacks by Native American Indians were rare. Often, the local Indian tribes welcomed the Wagon Trains to trade. Although the long westward journey caused numerous deaths and injuries through accidents, weather and terrain related causes; the biggest danger was disease.  Thousands of pioneers died along the way due to disease and lack of medical attention. 

Illnesses claimed far more lives than violence, and the majority of violent deaths on the trail were entirely accidental.

·           Disease. Illnesses such as food poisoning, typhoid and, particularly, cholera were the primary causes of death for travelers on the Oregon Trail. ... 

·           Wagon Accidents. ... 

·           Drowning. ... 

·           Gunshots.

A Typical Day on the Trail

4:00 am: a bugler blows a trumpet or a rifle is fired by the night guards to wake up the camp. 

5:00 am: cattle are rounded up after being allowed to graze during the night (except when Indians threatened). 

5:30 am: women and children are up and fixing breakfast of usually bacon, corn porridge or “Johnny Cakes” made of flour and water. 

6:30 am: women rinse plates and mugs and stow bedding, while the men haul down tents and load them in the wagons.

7:00 am: after every family has gathered their teams and hitched them to wagons, a trumpeter signals a “Wagons Ho,” to start the wagons down the trail. Average distance covered in a day was usually fifteen miles, but on a good day twenty could be traveled. 

7:30 am: men ride ahead on horses with shovels to clear out a path, if needed. 

“Nooning Time”: animals and people stop to eat, drink and rest. 

1:00 pm: back on the trail. 

5:00 pm: when a good campsite with ample water and grass is found, pioneers stop to set up camp for the evening. Wagons are formed into a corral. 

6:00 pm: families unpack and make supper. 

7:00 pm: mothers do chores, men smoke and talk, young people dance. 

8:00 pm: camp settles down for the night, guards go out on duty. 

Midnight: night guards are changed.

My Newest Release is A Bride for Nathan, book 3 of the series: Proxy Brides.

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