LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR by Marisa Masterson

 It started with a name and then a title. Sookie's Silence. I wanted to use that unusual nickname for my next heroine. I needed a word to go with it, so I chose silence. But why was this heroine silent?

Had she been assaulted? Threatened? I considered all of these and dismissed them. It came to me that Sookie was silent because she could not talk. How would I write a novel where the key female had no dialogue?

Sign language! I had to create a language for her.

I started by researching whether sign language was even invented at that time. Through this research, I discovered the sweet story of a minister who lived out Christ's command to love our neighbors.

It was in Connecticut and the year was 1814. Minister Dr. Thomas Gallaudet had a neighbor whose daughter was deaf. Despite her handicap, Alice appeared to be extremely intelligent. Gallaudet tried to teach the girl to read and write. Quickly, he realized he didn't have the skills to educate her. 

Instead of giving up, the minister raised money to go to Europe. There, he studied at the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes. When Gallaudet needed to return to America, he convinced one of the leading teachers from that school to move to Connecticut. The man agreed, knowing he would help set up a school for the deaf in the United States.

The two men established the American School for the Deaf. This school was free for its students. Over the next forty-five years, many more schools came into existence because of Gallaudet's efforts.

American School for the Deaf

And why? Because one many loved his neighbor enough to make a difference in her life and others in desperate need. I've never read Gallaudet's personal writings, but I am guessing he felt the Lord's calling to do this. And his efforts were certainly blessed.

Back to Sookie. My heroine doesn't have the benefit of learning in a school for the deaf. And, she isn't deaf after all, only mute. She and her sister create a language between themselves and even record it in a dictionary of sorts. This language appears throughout my book as well as a page from their dictionary.

Intrigued? Sookie's Silence releases April 13. Pre-order today if you want to be sure it's on your reading device right away.

Origins of American Sign Language and it's growth in the 1800's

Helen Keller, famous as an outspoken political activist was both deaf and blind, but she brought a great deal of awareness in the late 1800's and early the 1900's that having a physical disability -- having two physical disabilities -- does not impair the mind.

Before the advent of American Sign Language in the early 1800's, deaf people in America lived in absolute silence. They had no ability to communicate their needs or their thoughts to a world that treated them as unintelligent as well as disabled.

It wasn't until one American, a minister named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, took an interest in how his deaf neighbor's child seemed, in all aspects, to be intelligent, but struggled to communicate. He traveled by boat back to France in 1814, which already had schools and asylums for the deaf, to find a teacher who would be willing to return to America with him to start the first school for the deaf in 1817 in Hartford Connecticut. Together the developed a system of sign language and taught at the school until retirement in the 1850's. By then, over 1500 students had graduated from the school and graduates from the school had established over twenty more schools for the deaf across the country.

My maiden name is actually Keller, a cousin of Helen. As a child I grew up knowing about our family connection and did several reports on her for school. I also studied ASL and developed a rudimentary understanding of it, but have lost much of it over the years because I didn't use it. In my current story-in-progress, my heroine is a spunky, ambitious deaf girl who is helping an orphan girl learn ASL and potentially get adopted on the first orphan train which left New York in 1854.

P. Creeden is the Sweet Romance and mystery pen name for USA Today Bestselling author, Pauline Creeden. Animals are the supporting characters of many of her stories, because they occupy her daily life on the farm, too. From dogs, cats, and goldfish to horses, chickens, and geckos -- she believes life around pets is so much better, even if they are fictional. 

My upcoming book featuring the deaf heroine will be available April 10!

Preorder your copy now:

http://bit.ly/PromiseOfHomeCreeden 

CITY DIRECTORIES

How many of you, other than the old time salesperson, spend time in city directories?  I love reading them, especially the older ones.

Colorado Springs, 1870 (/) photographer unknown

Our library starts with the 1879 issue. Not only does it contain the names of people living in the area, it also has information on the various organizations, businesses and a list of government officials. So invaluable when doing research.

Another wonderful aspect of the city directory: Businesses. What people did in the 1800s and how they labeled their work is such fun to see. I thought I would share some of the interesting ones, along with the people who were listed as the owners, etc.

In the 1879 directory:

Bill Poster:
Sullivan John W., Mountaineer office.

Carriage Trimmers:
Baumgarten, J., s side Huerfano, e of Cascade.
Marsh, H. A., s side Pike's Peak, e end.

Fish and Oysters:
Blake, John W.

Ice Cream: 
Robbins W. B., n side Huerfano, w of Nevada.
Rogers Bros., s side Huerfano, w of Tejon.

Ice Cream Dealer:
Johnson T. E., e end Huerfano, w of Tejon.

In 1882 the directory:

Artists:  Craig, Charles, 118 s Tejon st.

Carriage Painters:
Cant, G., & Co., 112 e Pike's Peak ave.
Gardner, J. H., 1'28 e Pike's Peak ave.
Lynch, James, 16 e Huerfano st.
Storer, A, H., I 16 s Cascade ave.

Fish and Oysters:
Brighain & Callaway, 32 s Tejon st.
Ericson 8z Neff, 25 s Tejon st, a!
Hopkins & Conger, xro e Pike's Peak ave,
Mook, Anson E., 32 n Tejon st.

Intellegence Office:
Buckingham, Mrs. R. H., 117 s Nevada ave.

The 1882 Directory also included information regarding what is now known as The Deaf and Blind School:

INSTITUTE

FOR THE

Education of the Mutes and Blind in Colorado

[ LOCATED AT COLORADO SPRINGS.]

-

Quarterly meetings of the Board held on the Second

Tuesday of August, November, February and May. Visitors

admitted daily from 8 o'clock A. M. to I o'clock P. M., except

Saturday and Sunday. Pupils Publish " Deaf Mute Index,''

weekly, Hugh M. Harbert, editor,

TRUSTEES.

President, R. G. Buckingham, Denver.

Treasurer, G. H. Stewart, Colorado Springs.

Secretary, Matt France, Colorado Springs

Superintendent, J. R. Kennedy.

Matron, Mrs. Mary E. Kennedy.

Principal, ----- ------.

Assistant, Hugh M. Harbert.

(For future reference: the school was started in 1874, the same year as Colorado College. For a brief overview: School Founder, and the current information: https://www.csdb.org/

So much information and a gold mine for me when I'm creating characters and their lives and business. In my novella, "Home for His Heart", Clara owns a restaurant. The city directory for Colorado Springs in 1879 showed a number of women restaurant owners, so I felt confident the fit would work. Here is a brief excerpt from that story:

Purchase on Amazon

 Clara hummed as she put the finishing touches on the venison roast. In the two years since

arriving in Agate Gulch she prepared an annual special meal for friends. The past year had been
especially wonderful. Even the gingham curtains on the restaurant windows smiled with her tune. She
felt she could finally put Henrietta ‘Ettie’ Heath to rest. Clara Cross was her life now.

Oliver was in the past, and would stay there.

Sensing someone behind her, she turned to see her friend, Sally, standing in the door.

“You know, you should sing in the church choir,” said Sally.

“Oh, I couldn’t sing in public. The idea of all those people looking at me and judging, I couldn’t
stand it,” replied Clara with a shudder.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Member of National League of American Pen Women,

Women Writing the West,

Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

Photo and Poem: Click Here 

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Schools for the Deaf

In the very early days, all the way back to the time some three hundred years before Christ, the famed scientist and philosophers Aristotle and Hippocrates claimed the deaf were much like morons without the ability to learn. Those without hearings were segregated and treated with indifference and pity. But as time marched two thousand years forward to the Renaissance period in Europe that belief went out of favor when scholars began teaching the deaf.

An Italian mathematician, Geronimo Cardano , had a deaf son and began teaching him using the written word in the 1500s. Soon other parents brought their children to him for instruction. Then in Spain a monk and a priest took on the challenge to teach deaf children, the latter using a manual alphabet. In the 1700s, a Catholic priest in Paris Abbe Charles Michel de L’Epee established a free public school for the deaf using what we know as sign language today.

It wasn’t until 1817 that its counterpart opened in Connecticut, called the American School for the Deaf, opened under the efforts of Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc, an instructor in a European school for the deaf. Students came from all over the US. By 1863, twenty-two schools teaching sign language, mostly established by the students of Clerc.

From one of these schools in Pennsylvania, my hero----in a new story I’ve written----Ezekiel hails. He studied there not because he couldn’t hear but because of his speech impediment, debilitating stutters. He and his mother traveled west to open a school for the deaf in Red River County in Texas where she’d grown up. Her brother had agreed to donate the home place for the endeavor.

One of his first pupils is the title character, a four-year-old named Harmony who lives in a farmhouse on the rolling prairies of the northeast corner of the state with her widowed mother and two aunts, the Parker sisters. All three are attracted to the new preacher-teacher, and little Harmony is head over heels herself.

I hope you’ll remember to look up SILENT HARMONY that launches January 23, 2018. Be blessed today and thank you for leaving a comment!

Do you know someone who's deaf? Can you communicate with them?

Bio : Caryl McAdoo prays her story brings God glory, and a quick scroll through her novels’ rankings by Christian readers attests to the Father’s faithfulness. She loves writing almost as much as singing the new songs He gives her—look her up on YouTube to hear a few. Her high school sweetheart husband won her heart fifty-one years ago, and now they share four children and seventeen grandsugars. Ron and Caryl 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. 

Links :  Author Pages:  Amazon  /  BookBub  /   Simon & Schuster   /      BookGorilla  /  Southern Writers Magazine  

Website (All First Chapters offered here)  /   Newsletter  /  YouTube  (Hear Caryl sing her New Songs!)  /  Facebook  /  GoodReads  /  Google+  /  LinkedIn  /  Twitter  /  Pinterest
Blogs:  The Word & the Music (Personal & Writing)  /  HeartWings (Devotional)  /  Sweet Americana Sweethearts (Historical)